Work Text:
Mingi, apparently awake, rolls over onto his other side, bunching up the sheets between them. Hongjoong is “busy” looking through the stock of a vintage seller he likes, so it takes a second for him to realize he’s being stared at, then another to find a place in the endlessly scrolling feed where he can stop. The only light in the room is from his phone screen and the faint glow that creeps in under the door, but Mingi’s eyes are easy to detect in the dark, sleepy yet shiny still. He blinks them closed, repositioning his head on the pillow as he asks, “Wh’t’re you doin’up?”
Hongjoong lets his phone fall against his chest, shifting so he’s properly horizontal again. “Couldn’t sleep,” he explains, reaching to hopefully land a hand on Mingi’s cheek, pleased when it meets its destination. “I got like two hours in, which ended… like, an hour ago. Haven’t been able to fall back asleep since.”
He can hear Mingi’s frown. “‘M s’rry, babe.”
“It’s whatever.”
With a stroke of his thumb under Mingi’s eye, Hongjoong pulls away, and Mingi grumbles in displeasure, immediately shifting closer. He’s half on his stomach, half on top of Hongjoong, hair brushing against Hongjoong’s chin as he settles into his chest. There’s an arm reaching over Hongjoong’s body and a long leg that has found a snug place between his. It’s purely selfish, but it might help. In recent months. Hongjoong has come to realize that after a lifetime of insistently being a no-contact no-cuddles sleeper, it actually is something he enjoys. Not always—and he does find himself frequently shaking Mingi off in the morning to get the chalkboard-scraping feeling out, fighting pins and needles, but at least he doesn’t have to little-spoon—but often, and some weighty compression can be just what he needs to be buffered back from the edge of uncomfortably persisting wakefulness. It can be just right.
Sometimes he supposes he just needed the right person, but that thought is so sappy it’s shameful.
He’s sighing into another attempt at sleep, blindly relocating his phone to the nightstand, when Mingi mumbles, “Y’think we could get a dog?”
Hongjoong pauses, thinks it over, furrows his brows when it still puzzles him. “What?”
“We should get a dog,” Mingi reiterates.
So, he wasn’t hearing that wrong. “Where’s this coming from, baby?” he asks, a laugh on the tip of his tongue, free hand anchoring itself in Mingi’s hair with a shake and a rub.
“Been thinking ‘bout it lately. ‘M so jealous’f other people’s puppies.” Mingi sounds mournful. He’s fucking adorable. “‘N’ I just… had this dream.”
Hongjoong lets that laughter loose. He’s thinking, don’t I have enough on my plate with you already, but he keeps that quiet, reshapes it to say, “You and I can barely look after ourselves, how would we handle a dog?”
“We’d make it work,” Mingi insists, that fucking pout on his face when he lifts his head no surprise at all, nor his pleading eyes. Seriously, he’s puppy enough for this household. “Like, I’m lacking on my own, but you help me. ‘N’ I help you.” He drops his chin to Hongjoong’s sternum. “We could do it together.”
It’s not like he’s trying to hit below the belt—this hour in the morning, this barely-at-all-conscious, his brain isn’t at its most strategic—but that might make it worse how severely the sentiment affects Hongjoong. Mingi’s just so honest like that, too open, now that they’re together, with his affection. It’s like all he needed was permission.
He’s kind of right, too. Hongjoong has never had that sort of responsibility before; his only pets were a pair of childhood cats, where the brunt of care was not on him, and as he got older, he found himself too busy, too scattered, stretched too thin and barely taking enough care of himself so in no way even entertaining the idea of looking after an animal. It is true that living and being with Mingi have been good for him, though. Not only for his own sake, though that improvement has been significant, but for the assurance that he can definitely, maybe even more competently, be accountable for someone else.
Still, pet ownership isn’t something he’s thought about himself, but if Mingi really wants it—“I’ll think about it. If—” Mingi perks up immediately, so Hongjoong has to slow him down— “if you find one you really like, I’ll think about it.”
//
“What do you think of this guy?” Mingi, no tact at all, shoves his phone directly over Hongjoong’s laptop, giving him no choice but to pause in his work. “He’s cute, right?”
Hongjoong blinks, leans back, adjusting to the image on the screen. It’s a dog, name listed as Raindrop, little and grey and charcoal-mottled and with some frighteningly blue eyes.
“He scares me,” he answers honestly.
Mingi, pulling his phone back to get another look, frowns. “What do you mean? He’s a baby.”
“It’s like he’s staring into your soul,” Hongjoong says around his straw. “It’s creepy.”
“You’re so judgemental,” Mingi grumbles. He’s quiet for a second, staring at his screen again. “I don’t think it’s that bad.”
“It’s bad to me,” Hongjoong reasons, pulling his leg up onto his chair as a chinrest and getting back to the text he was working on to border this image. “I couldn’t have him around all day, all the time, just weirding me out—” he flaps a hand— “Looking at me like that. I need to be comfortable in my home.”
Mingi relents. “Okay, okay.” He pulls his phone closer, scooting inwards. “Okay. No scary eyes.”
Hongjoong grunts to agree.
Seemingly, Mingi then goes back to scrolling through whatever site he’s found himself on, pout still in place, hair peeking out messily from under his hood. He’s technically supposed to be getting spirited away by Yunho and San at some point, having chosen to wait with Hongjoong in a cafe for company. (For both of them.) Hongjoong just doesn’t know when Mingi will be going, and he’s trying to work, himself. It’s not surprising that this is what Mingi’s doing with his time—he's taken Hongjoong's fatigued open-mindedness very seriously—and it’s good to have him around, but debating puppy eye colors isn’t exactly conducive to productivity.
Not five minutes later, he’s accosted again. “What about her?” Mingi says, pushing another picture into Hongjoong’s screenspace—not as close this time, at least, since he’s not hunched over his computer. His eyes flick up to Mingi’s phone, and, well—he's never been a love-at-first-sight type.
He shrugs. “She’s cute.”
There’s a beat of silence, and he looks up to see Mingi staring at him sort-of-sadly.
“What?”
“Cute?” Mingi parrots, gesturing with his phone to encourage a second look. “That’s it?”
“Well, what do you want me to say?”
“Like, do you like her? Would you wanna adopt her?” Mingi draws his hand back. He looks at his screen, then turns it to face Hongjoong again. “You’re not even reading the descriptions. This one says she was rescued from a house fire where no one else survived, like—” He starts reading, verbatim, “‘Sweetie is just what her name suggests, the most affectionate little dog you could meet. She’s pretty shy, as she was very young when she lost her family and is still only a few months old, so it takes a minute for her to open up to people, but once she does, she’ll be all over you.’ She sounds perfect, hyung.”
The story does tug at Hongjoong’s heartstrings. He can admit that. He does hate to know there’s so many of these animals out there with such traumatic experiences behind them, and she is an absolute darling, no doubt deserving of a home. There are still some reservations he has to deciding this so soon, though; he meant it when he said Mingi should find one he really likes, not just choose an arbitrary, adorable animal on the basis of adorableness—they all will be, except for those icy-eyed weirdos, and, like, freaky naked ones and evil chihuahuas, but Hongjoong doubts those are Mingi’s kind of canine; if anything, he’s worried he would want something that will end up being too big—and availability. “How do you know she’ll trust you, though?” he counters, ready already to defend himself when Mingi goes to retort. “No, really. How do you know that’s the perfect dog when you don’t know if you’re compatible?”
Sighing like the whole world has turned against him, Mingi slumps into the table, phone held up in front of him still. “Do you even want a dog? Be honest.”
“I do,” Hongjoong insists, angling the screen of his laptop inward so he can peer over it at Mingi’s stupid, squishy, totally bare face. He’s such an awful distraction. All Hongjoong can think about when he sees him like this is sinking his teeth into him or pulling his head into his lap to pet. He continues only when Mingi has looked up at him. “I just don’t think this is one of those things you can really tell through a website. You know?”
Mingi shuts his phone off, setting it facedown in defeat. “Yeah, okay.”
“You can find hundreds of dogs on there, but we don’t want just any dog. I want it to be the right one for us.”
“Okay.”
Hongjoong reaches over to rub his shoulder, other hand grabbing his melty iced coffee. “We’ll find one, okay?”
As Mingi smiles his little whale shark smile back at him, he tries not to think about how his maybe has become a proper yes, promises and all.
//
Mingi yelps as he falls back to the floor, positively inundated with yappy little puppies. God, Hongjoong thinks, slicing off another piece of earl grey cake, if he gets attached to one of these tiny freaks, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. The sight of his boyfriend covered in dogs and absolutely overjoyed with that fact makes him feel, unfortunately, incredibly warm and gooey inside, unable to resist smiling himself as Mingi capitulates to getting licked in the face and clumsily tries to pet any puppy he can reach.
To his side, Yunho covers his mouth as he laughs all loud and delighted. San’s next to him, doting all over the calmer terrier in Yunho’s lap, letting it nip at his fingers, rubbing its floppy ears, cooing and smiling with his dimples as deep as Hongjoong’s ever seen them. Sitting with Hongjoong is Seonghwa, sipping at his nasty looking matcha lavender latte and looking pensive in the autumn sunlight. They’re making a whole afternoon of it, hanging in the (nicely not-too-busy for a weekend) cafe for however long everyone feels up to it but, more directly, scouting adoptees for Mingi and Hongjoong. Potentially.
They went to a shelter earlier in the week—a counter to Hongjoong’s comments about the ineffectiveness of the online process, said with an edge of petulance, but it’s what he was asking for, after all—but didn’t feel that spark in any of the animals they met. Soon after, Mingi was lamenting the puppy fever he was feeling to Yunho, who recommended the cafe, somewhere he and San went last month and that’s connected with another local shelter, therefore a good gateway to finding a friend of your own. Mingi was over the moon at the idea, and Hongjoong figured it as good an option as any, so he kept his Saturday free.
It was so worth it.
“Aigoo,” Mingi groans, hauling himself back up into a sitting position. He fits his huge hands over the heads of two dogs, one a pomeranian that looks like a too-toasted marshmallow, the other what Hongjoong thinks is a greyhound, one of those mini ones, and ruffles them both. “You’re giving me a lot of trouble, you guys.”
Hongjoong thinks his heart might burst out of his chest.
“You embarrass me when you look at him like that.”
“Shut up,” he bites, sliding along the bench to elbow Seonghwa, who whimpers dramatically. “Good. You know, I didn’t have to invite you.”
“Sanie would have anyway,” Seonghwa counters. Which is true. He stirs his drink around some, then takes another, prim sip. “Are you really gonna leave here with a dog, though, Hongjoongie?” he asks once he’s swallowed, wiping condensation onto a napkin.
Watching Mingi lift a little thing that’s trimmed to look like a teddy bear into the air and grin as it licks his nose, Hongjoong knows he really, absolutely would. (Well, maybe not one of those. He’s gay, but not that kind of gay.) But, “Well, no, the process doesn’t work that fast. We might not even find the one today, I mean…” The dog wiggles, once it’s lowered, out of Mingi’s grasp and runs around San, making both him and Yunho mock-gasp as they turn to provoke it further. Hongjoong swears their brains run on the same current half the time. They’ve also considerably emptied the basket of toys by the door. “Who knows,” he finishes.
“I just never pegged you as a dog person.”
Hongjoong shrugs. “I’ve always liked them,” he says, cutting off what looks to be the penultimate bite of his cake, “and, I don’t know. Mingi wants one. I’m down for it.”
Naturally, Seonghwa takes this as an opportunity to chastise him. “Having a pet is more than just being down for its presence. You—you’re like the adult equivalent of a kid with a leash backpack on. Are you even prepared to take care of an animal?”
Hongjoong elbows him again. “Bitch,” he says, still chewing. “And I am. I’ve been doing my research and everything! What do you know, anyway? You haven’t reached your sad cat lady years just yet.”
Seonghwa, though hesitant, shoves him back. Then, without a word, he slides over and off the bench and walks up to join the line.
It’s that which makes San realizes, eyes going wide, “Hey, we never even ordered.”
They did not. Mingi has the privilege of a boyfriend to intuit his taste and order for him, but the other two stooges were too distracted by the dogs to consider anything else. Yunho looks at San with just as much surprise, though amused in equal measure, just giddy for the fun of the morning, his hand’s motion over the head-neck-back of a white-and-tan smushed-face dog slowing. “I guess we didn’t,” he responds, looking over to the counter, where Seonghwa’s waiting behind two girls, arms crossed over his middle. “Shit, and their tiramisu is so good, too. I just…”
San, pouting, intuits instantly. “I can’t just leave them all.”
Hongjoong sighs. “Don’t worry, I’ll go,” he calls, scooting off his own seat to stand. “I should be paying, anyway, shouldn’t I?”
“You mean that, hyung?” San asks, looking up at him in wonder. If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging so fast right now. He’s always been more catlike, though—at least, in Hongjoong’s opinion. What do cats do when they’re excited? Claw your arms up?
“Mhm,” Hongjoong affirms. “What do you guys want?”
He takes their orders, including one for a refill from Mingi, who’s now leaning back on one hand and casually stroking a medium-sized black dog that’s flopped across his lap. It’s awful and devastating and really hurts Hongjoong’s heart to see. He may still be learning himself, primed mainly by recent encounters with his closest coworker's shiba, but Hongjoong knows Mingi’s going to be a great dog dad. It was a given, when he broached the subject, that he already had plenty of knowledge on it—more than Hongjoong anticipated, as it turned out, as he’s had answers to any questions Hongjoong hasn’t taken to Naver and even more trivia beyond that. There may be no end to the library of information he has stored in his brain. Hongjoong loves getting a look into it, though.
When he reaches Seonghwa, the cashier is reading out his total, making it easy for Hongjoong to intercept and say, “I can grab that. And can we also have,” he adds, going slowly to hopefully not overwhelm this poor employee, “two iced Americanos, one lemon-mint green tea—hot, a tiramisu, and one of those apple tarts?”
They get the whole thing down and take both his payment and enthusiastic thank you, and Hongjoong keeps Seonghwa with him to wait, slinging an arm around his waist.
It retracts quickly, once he’s through saying, “Sorry I kinda called you a spinster,” and giving two hopefully-reassuring pats to Seonghwa’s arm. “I know it’s not fair.”
Seonghwa huffs, but thaws beneath Hongjoong’s gaze. His eyes shift towards Hongjoong, then away, then back. “You can’t make fun of me just because you finally got your shit together,” he says, bumping a kinder shoulder into Hongjoong’s.
“Like, barely.”
“You’re committing to a pet together, what, five months into this thing?” Seonghwa muses. “I’d say that’s decently together.”
“You think so?”
Seonghwa hums an affirmative. When Hongjoong looks at him, he’s unwinding the loose braid his hair was in, tilted to the right so he can get it one-handed.
He looks at Mingi, then, still just minding the dog that’s on him, profile in nice view while he talks to San, who’s lying back with his legs pretzeled, a dog on each thigh, and Yunho, who’s splitting his focus to play tug-of-war with that terrier from earlier. He shrugs. “I mean, it’s not like I intend on breaking up with him or anything.” Noticing his gaze, Mingi smiles, and Hongjoong sends a little wave back.
“Ugh,” Seonghwa groans. He shakes his hair out, now down, cascading in waves just past his shoulders. He unpockets his phone to check his bangs as he says, “I hate happy people. You were more fun when you were suffering, too.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Wide and wistful, Seonghwa grins, and though he detects the sort of tonal tease that would normally set him off, Hongjoong allows it. He probably deserves it. Seonghwa can have his amusement, anyway, since he was by Hongjoong's side through it all, lending a shoulder and an ear and his hand and a patience Hongjoong can't quantify gratefulness for. It simmers as Seonghwa says, “Yeah, you really weren't.”
They head back over with two trays for their order, making San and Yunho light up and then deflate just as quickly, because how are they supposed to eat without disturbing their friends? San comes up with the extraordinary plan to feed Yunho and then swap, so he sits up, resituating the puppies in his lap, who carry on sleeping, and takes the tiramisu plate to spoon Yunho a bite every so often.
Mingi gets up soon after, with his own companion shaking himself off and shambling away, to sit with the hyungs and sip his drink contently, observing the other patrons and eventually passing Yunho the plate with San’s tart. Yunho, with his big ass Jack Skellington hands, decides for some reason that the best course of action is holding the entire tart and letting San take bites straight out of it, his other hand cupped beneath San’s chin to catch crumbs. The dogs that San is with aren’t even requiring much attention anymore. He could do it himself. Whatever rituals are taking place there are beyond Hongjoong’s reach of understanding.
He thinks he knows the answer, but he asks anyway, “You think you’ve found the one yet?”
Mingi says no, but this time, he’s smiling.
//
Hongjoong’s working when Mingi and Yunho venture to another shelter, but he is home, so he sees the texts right when they come in.
yunho-kangjwi 14:39
Hyung
You have to see this
[img]
They’ve been like this for probably an hr
The picture attached is Mingi (in the baby blue sweats set that was part of Hongjoong’s last Christmas gift for him that always makes him look so boyfriend, so squishable) sitting with a small, pale puppy in his lap, looking down at it with the biggest grin. Hongjoong stares at it for close to ten minutes before he replies.
💔💔💔💔💔💔😣😣😣 Are you kidding me
😭😭😭😭😭😭
Oh my god yunho
yunho-kangjwi 14:47
It’s serious, unfortunately. Very serious
Ok ok give me your location
When he arrives, fifteen minutes shy of an hour later, not even him folding himself onto the floor next to Mingi can get him to take his eyes off her. Hongjoong leans in and offers his upturned palm, letting her sniff at his fingers, and it’s then that Mingi turns to him, a hand on Hongjoong's leg and his voice all awe-soft when he says, “Hyung, I think I love her.”
“I can see why,” Hongjoong says quietly, having gained the trust to be allowed to pet along her back. Up close, he sees some darker fur on her ears and splitting around either side of her muzzle, white between stretching in a thick stripe up her forehead. The rest of her is lightly straw-colored and white on the underside. Her little nose is wetly cold, eyes dark and sweet, and as she flops sideways across Mingi’s thighs, Hongjoong realizes he might really, seriously be a dog person. “We’re not leaving without her, are we.”
“I—” Mingi takes a second, looking between the two of them, and Hongjoong reluctantly manages to raise his eyes to look back. “I—if you. Do you want to?”
Hongjoong slumps into Mingi’s side, head against his bicep. He realizes Yunho’s had his phone camera trained on them this whole time and scrunches his nose towards the lens before relaxing, other hand gone inert by the puppy’s front paws. “The deal was you find a dog you really like, so…”
“You said you’d think about it,” Mingi hedges.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he says, shrugging, “and this just seals the deal. She’s very sweet, does she have a name?”
While she wiggles without a care in the world, Mingi hums. “Mhm. Pumpkin.”
Hongjoong’s going to develop serious heart problems at this point. Like, really, what the hell? They are not leaving without this dog.
They do end up leaving without her, after spending another half hour hanging out, but it hopefully won’t be for long. While Yunho tosses a ball back and forth with her, the two of them fill out the application, Mingi first apologizing for taking up so much of the handlers’ time, but they don’t seem to mind much, in good humor even as Hongjoong asks with slight disdain whether she’ll grow up to be a normal size or he’ll have to spend the next few months getting used to the idea of a massive animal in their apartment. (The answer is no—she’s a spitz-type mutt, something that Mingi nods at in understanding, then explains, to Hongjoong, means she’ll grow to a good, medium size.) She’s vaccinated and microchipped and decently trained already, they just need to take her back in a few months for spaying, and she’s apparently been a tiny delight to have around the shelter. They’re slightly sad to see her go, but more joyous knowing it's into such good hands.
The next almost-week is spent preparing supplies and a home for her, and, for Mingi, practically vibrating with excitement through it all. Hongjoong can’t say he’s any better. One of the pictures Yunho took of the three of them becomes his lockscreen the second he receives it. He anticipates the day they go to pick her up just as much, doesn’t even mind the dent the fees and various accouterments put in their finances, just looks at Mingi holding Pumpkin in his own huge paws and bumping their noses together and feels an almost impossible happiness.
//
“Pumpkin. Baby, angel, sweetie, love,” he begs, “please don’t eat those.”
Hongjoong loves her, but those are Margiela, and aside from the financial setback they put him in, they have a huge sentimental value—fresh out of college, just moved in with Mingi, feeling almost like nothing would ever go right and also like he deserved a gift for having to feel that way and live through what life was throwing at him. The only reason he wasn’t subsisting on cup ramen in the following months is because Mingi knows how to cook and was glad to do so for him, even as a fresh face in Hongjoong’s life, trusted only on the basis of his application and a few first meetings and not at all let past any walls yet.
(Hongjoong thinks he first fell for him over a bowl of sujebi, or maybe earlier that evening, when Mingi had enlisted his help in tearing the noodles. There's no way you can mess this up, he had said, grinning that crooked grin of his, imperfection is perfection here. Such a thought was incompatible with Hongjoong's thought processes—What if it doesn't work, though? What if it comes out wrong? And Mingi had none of it. He had practically forced Hongjoong's hand to tear off the first one, weird and stringy, said there, that’s great, and capitulation came easy, if awkwardly, then. Hongjoong still complained about the sticky feeling the dough left on his fingers afterwards, even if it felt good to shut his kitchen anxiety up, and the way Mingi whined and wiggled when he poked some residue into his cheek made his heart skip a step.
Rain had beat the city into submission and canceled plans Hongjoong wasn't thrilled for in the first place, and as it got worse, thunder stomping in the attic, chill creeping in, they sat on the floor rather than the couch or at the table or anywhere else, filling up on soup, playing alternating albums from their not-yet-merged collections and just talking. It's one of those strangely retained memories of Hongjoong's, in no small part for the moment when he looked at Mingi, sleepy and full with seconds, blinking all slow, and thought oh, no.)
Mingi’s just good; lovely, even, in ways he doesn’t figure are big deals at all, and he’s not even trying to be humble. He’s the furthest thing from it a lot of the time. (Hongjoong does allow it, because the constant self-affirmation is a legitimate tactic Mingi’s therapist gave him, and he is pretty incredible, even when he does get too cocky.) All the care he gives is just common sense to him: every shared meal, the nice notes he started leaving to help Hongjoong remember some things that transitioned into the calendar but still stuck around out of habit and affection, funding gift cards and day trips and matching apparel for the other instructors at his studio, recommending or thoroughly researching ideas of what-to-do-where when Seonghwa or Yeosang ask. He does it all just because he should. Because he loves them.
Being loved by Mingi is pretty special.
The fuzzy baby that’s been running around their apartment and taking up all of Hongjoong’s phone storage in pictures has been making him feel so emotional lately. It’s awful.
But even if those boots didn’t mean something to him, he still wouldn’t want her munching on them. He gently disconnects Pumpkin’s mouth from the leather and lifts her up into his arms, making sure to let her know a second time that that is not what we do around here, not very nice, not at all, and she has plenty of toys, look! Isn’t this one fun!
He manages to distract her, but also himself from his project in the process. He’s lying on the floor with Pumpkin going to town on a squeaky toy a few feet away at the right moment, unfortunately, for the mid-afternoon sun to hit and knock him right out.
When Hongjoong wakes, stupidly early winter darkness has come and settled and he’s definitely shifted his sleep schedule in an irreparable way for the time being, but Mingi’s there, at least. More specifically, he’s on the couch, a TV show on low volume, looking comfortable enough to have presumably been home for some time. His last class today ended at 4:00, Hongjoong thinks.
He groans an expletive, rubbing his eyes and then moving his fingers up through his hair.
The TV pauses. “You’re awake!”
“Yeah.” He sits up and plants his face into his hands, feeling at once achy and nicely soothed. “Wasn’t supposed to fall asleep. How’s the baby?”
Mingi, for reasons Hongjoong can’t bother or manage to figure out, laughs heartily. “She’s okay,” he answers. “Sleepy, too. In her little bed.”
When he looks over, eyes still bleary, it turns out Mingi’s right. Pumpkin is out cold, laid on her side with all her legs stretched out, so dramatic. He laughs, too, a bit. “I thought dogs actually using their dog beds was a myth.” His voice is so scratchy; he desperately needs a drink. He stands and stretches his arms up, which feels incredible, as he says, “She’s such a good girl.”
“Yeah,” Mingi says, smiling audibly. “You know, when I came home, you were sleeping together for a bit.”
“No way,” Hongjoong exclaims, regretting the words immediately when they scrape his throat. He coughs, then coughs some more, insisting, “No way. Tell me you have pictures.”
Mingi nods. “Of course I do. Come here, have some water. Did you sleep okay?”
“Yeah, but now I’m gonna be up all night,” Hongjoong sighs, grabbing Mingi’s bottle as he sinks into the couch, feet coming to rest on the table’s edge, legs mountained. The first sip is a huge relief.
So is Mingi’s hand resting on his thigh, big and broad, while the other opens his photo library and clicks on the thumbnail of a recent image. “Look at you guys,” he says, angling the screen Hongjoong’s way, timbre close and tender. He swipes through a few images, and the tingly embarrassment of seeing himself asleep like that is diluted by how stupid adorable the whole scene is. “I sent these to my mom and she said she wants to come by and meet her granddaughter soon, so be prepared.”
Hongjoong blinks. Granddaughter, god. He’ll need notice to clean the place if someone’s coming by, even if the puppy’s going to undo all his work in a fraction of the time it took to do it, but he approves of the idea enough for a simple, “Okay,” for now.
Mingi locks and drops his phone with a chuckle that Hongjoong feels as much as hears. “Still sleepy?”
The yawn that crawls from his throat doesn’t let him lie, not at all, and the couch is so comfortable it feels like it’s sucking him in. “Kinda. What time’s it?”
“A little past five.” Mingi slumps and wiggles so his head is almost-kind-of-something-like on Hongjoong’s shoulder. It’s not helping with his urge to lie down and curl up for the next week. “Did you guys have a fun day without me?”
Bitter, Hongjoong mumbles, “After she stopped trying to eat my Margielas, yeah.”
Mingi laughs, squeaking when that gets him a pinch on the tummy through his shirt. His hand hits Hongjoong weakly in retaliation. “Yah, hyung. I told you you should start keeping them in the closet.”
“I literally wore them yesterday, I wasn’t thinking about it,” Hongjoong whines. “And she doesn’t listen when I tell her no. I don’t know if I’m being too stern or not stern enough.”
With a squeeze to his thigh, Mingi assures, “I’ll give her a good talking-to when she wakes up.”
“Good. She needs to learn how to respect me.”
“Of course.”
They both break into low laughter then, Mingi first with Hongjoong following, and despite Mingi’s intention on starting dinner after hypothetically finishing the episode he was on, they stay there, sleepily discussing Mingi’s workday and how Hongjoong wants to fucking strangle the client he’s dealing with right now, until Pumpkin starts yapping for some food of her own. Right on time, she is. Mingi gets up to feed them all, and Hongjoong switches the TV over to something he’s been very slowly moving through when he has the time, or isn’t filling said time with more work for himself. He has been getting out more, actually, and not only for the few minutes a bathroom break will take for Pumpkin, but on nice, long walks, bringing his sketchbook with him and drawing traditionally for the first time in forever when they take breaks. He’s taken unfamiliar routes with her, discovering spots near them that he never knew existed, swallowing the weirdness of talking to strangers he comes across because they adore her. And they should. She’s the best.
He usually hates being outside in wintertime, but he knows that, in the past, a lot of that was the seasonal-affective vitamin-D-deficient demon in his brain talking and shoving him into a corner that was by nature impossible to escape. Having an obligation to be leaving the house is making him realize it’s not so bad (especially when Mingi’s there and he can pass the leash off to hold a hotteok or steaming cocoa cup in his hands, and when Mingi huddles close to him, because he’s just as sensitive), and it’s helping him not rot as much or completely neglect his needs when he’s at home, too. Self-maintenance through loving and being loved is a sort of embarrassing ordeal, but he’s accepted he can’t be beholden to himself alone. He needs his community, even if that amounts to meal-prepped lunches from Mingi, occasional music recommendations over text from Yunho, Seonghwa keeping their weekly brunch dates, Wooyoung's pestering, and Pumpkin making him regret leaving his heavy-cardio days behind as they play games at the park.
Even just him and Mingi and their rambunctious baby of a dog is a blessing for him, more love than he deserves and a better future than he envisioned in the fairly recent past. All the uncertainty in the world is no match for the little life they’ve enriched over the past almost-seven (seven!) months, deeper and truer, loving and lasting, strangely unlikely but still, somehow, meant to be. (The sentimentality may eat him alive someday, but she’s so fucking precious, it’s hard not to be sappy. She hangs with him for several episodes of his show after Mingi heads to bed, and they fall asleep again, together, sprawled out on the couch.)