He lies back down almost immediately. “Stay.”
“Stay?” Mingyu huffs indignantly, too busy trying to not move to realize what Jeonghan has planned. “What am I? A dog?”
He regrets saying it the second Jeonghan’s eyes light up. There’s a faint ringing in his ears that he will later realize is actually the FaceTime ringtone and not from Mingyu trying his best to not clench down around Jeonghan.
“Oh? You didn’t know?”
Seungcheol. “Know what?”
“Oh.” Mingyu turns slightly, pivoting on his heel. “Just stay the night.”
The hazy amber light from the sign on the bar catches on the edges of Mingyu’s silhouette, and it’s dark enough outside that he glows.
His eyes shine brighter though, brighter than the street lights and the city lights.
Brighter than the stars in California too. Maybe over Seoul, if only they could see them.
Seungcheol stands at the top of the stairs, round eyes wide as he stares at him. There’s an unsealed box of cigarettes in one hand, and a fresh cigarette in the other. “Oh, Mingyu—”
Mingyu plucks it from his hand and tosses it into the small bin in the corner. Tosses the box into the bin too. Seungcheol just watches him with wide eyes, but he does nothing to stop him either.
“Don’t.”
Seungcheol’s half-smile is twisted. “That’s company life, Mingyu-ah.”
“What’d you tell him your name was?” Seungcheol snatches his hand back.
He tilts his head the other way, eyes deceptively innocently round. Like a stray puppy extorting you for food. “Choi Mingyu.”
Seungcheol chokes. “Yah—”
His eyes sparkle knowingly as he raises an eyebrow. “It’s not like Mingyu is an uncommon name, is it?”
Well, that’s not exactly the problem.
this could easily be explained as letting mingyu and jeonghan take the wheels, letting them escalate things further⎯think nana tour; mingyu, jeonghan, the meringue and their water fight.
and then some.
after writing approximately two thousand words, i started wondering if this particular storyline would better suit gyucheol, or even jeongcheol, and if i was just too biased to see it.
but, in considering this, i was reminded of how often jeonghan and seungcheol are on the same team vs how often mingyu and seungcheol are. however, when it comes to mingyu and jeonghan, it's rarer to see them together, whether it's a mind game or a sports ep. think good offer⎯seungcheol's very much there and he's aware that one of the three of them will betray the other two (see: don't lie 3, where seungcheol goes back and forth between mingyu and jeonghan), but the final showdown comes down to mingyu vs jeonghan. naturally, this led me down a rabbit hole of watching gose to try and figure out if it was just selection bias, and, naturally, i wasn't disappointed. starting with their svtside out ep, this was the easiest to model their sports personas off of. they're magnets when it comes to guarding each other, even when there are better fits for both of them to guard⎯jun, for mingyu, and either joshua or seungcheol⎯they're drawn to each other, despite the size difference, because the skill remains the same. and that's just the beginning, tbh.
they're typecast as the rivals by seventeen themselves, the infamous opposites couple, seventeen's fated rivals. it's almost a guarantee that if they're on the same team, victory is as good as guaranteed.
if i had to describe the trajectory of this fic, i would be slow then FAST. the chaos compounds, and as gyuhan themselves escalate it, the hijinks do too. i had a lot of fun getting creative and picturing what kind of chaos they could get up to, and it was easy for them to carry the story from there. this was arguably one of my easier fics to write, particularly after something more emotionally and thematically complicated like tell me what's the perfect time. a much needed reprieve too.
ultimately, this fic snowballed into what i truly think could be a fun romcom, but is also the most representative of how i think gyuhan could realistically meet in a non-seventeen setting. they're both quite different⎯though i'll always be the first to say that i don't think they're quite opposites the way they say they are⎯but they're also sometimes just two sides of the same coin.
there were a few cut scenes from this, purely because it felt like it was dragging and just because i couldn't necessarily connect the flow of the fic with these additional scenes. namely:
seventeen goes bungee jumping!
initially, i had this idea of exploring the quiet ways jeonghan supports mingyu, like during nana tour when they're going zipling and mingyu is glued to jeonghan until they get to the actual zipline. this was, of course, not at all relevant to the story, and felt too unrealistic to have them all suddenly go bungee jumping/ziplining together, so it was ultimately cut.
there is a ridiculous amount of gyucheol in this and i can't even apologize because they've truly been in my head lately. i desperately need to write them again, once i'm done with all my current wips. that being said, i do think their relationship is very sweet and almost serves as an opposition to gyuhan's antagonistic one. seungcheol's just a sweetheart with a lot of love to give. jeonghan and mingyu may be sweet, but they're certainly in it to win.
i toyed with the idea of keeping score throughout, but then i realized that would be way too complicated considering how many scenes were written out of order⎯something that's out of the ordinary for me considering how hard i find it to conceptualize a story outside of the decided timeline. i did, intentionally drop mentions of the score to hint at how neither of them are really keeping score anymore, which is why mingyu's line to jeonghan after their elimination hurts him more, but that's also the event that gets both of them to reevaluate what they mean to each other, you know?
onto the scenes:
the debate scenes were all my favorites to write simply because i too, was once an argumentative eldest daughter told to pursue law because i liked arguing. as my current wip dives into my own career, you will find that i did not, in fact, pursue law. that isn't to say i won't go apply for an md/jd or something in the future, i mean, who knows. i digress. i really like how the first debate scene sets up the differences in how they view each other⎯mingyu gets shy and jeonghan feels like he's seeing him for the first time, likely because mingyu isn't getting flustered and making a fool of himself. and beyond that, mingyu stealing his t-shirt, just for jeonghan to steal his hoodie? love when they mess with each other like that.
speaking of their clothes swapping⎯in the initial stages of this fic, where i had maybe 20k written⎯i toyed with a separate subplot where they stole from each other, like they do irl. i think this had already escalated to a rather monstrous length at that point, so i gave up on that, because i didn't want to have too many subplots to detract from their shenanigans.
the jihan/minwon/wonshua subplot:
jihan and minwon are pairings that i usually steer clear of writing, because as adorable as they can be irl and as much as seventeen all love each other, they're less compelling for the narratives i wish to portray. including them in this fic was a challenge i gave myself, and while i think they added to the complexity of everyone's feelings for each other⎯and the slow burn, since i didn't want mingyu and jeonghan immediately falling for each other⎯i don't know if i'd ever see myself writing these particular pairings again. i leave that to those who are compelled by them as such.
mingyu and jeonghan in the hospital waiting room was also another favorite to write. the entire scene played out like a movie in my head and was one of the earliest written, even before i knew how they were going to end up in the hospital.
another scene i had mind very early on was the group movie night with jeonghan attached to mingyu. initially, it was supposed to be for another fic, or even a separate fic entirely just for the scene, but i did want their relationship to hold more weight beyond just their rivalry and the humor of it all. mingyu got a chance to really shine, and we've got jeonghan calling him a puppy, so i think it worked out nicely.
the karaoke bathroom makeout scene was a last minute edition, especially since i had yet to figure out what to do about jeonghan and mingyu's stolen hoodie. i hope you enjoyed reading it as much as i did writing it, because i was truly having so much fun.
the zumba class was almost a cut scene! genuinely, it made no sense for it to be there, but my biggest peeve in rom-coms is when the comedy falls of halfway and it becomes a melodramatic romance instead, so i kept it in and reworked the initial idea into something else. forgiveness is sweating in a zumba class full of ajhummas, or whatever it is that they say.
the ending scene brings us full circle to their first meeting. i started the fic with little idea of how it was going to end⎯as someone who truly can't plan out what they write, this is the reason why fics either have to be ridiculously long oneshots that encompass the entire conveyed narrative or spontaneously long wips that get updated irregularly, apologies, i will attempt a proper update schedule again someday⎯but after writing out the karaoke scene, and then putting them through zumba, i knew the answer was to send them back to the start. they even recreate their dialogues and everything, it's cute.
this truly was a labor of love, but a lighter read in comparison to what i tend to write. in some ways, that made it more challenging and it took quite a bit longer to write to publish as a completed fic, but i do think it was truly worth it.
Mingyu tips her head back and presses her lips to Seungcheol’s breastbone, emerging from the water and towering over her as she settles in her lap, sunshine in her lap once more. She trails her lips up the column of her throat, meeting her lips and carefully coaxing a sigh from her.
“Keep me,” she whispers. “Empress, won’t you keep me?”
“Is this not pretty enough for you?” Seungcheol whines.
“If you’d like to meet Mingyu like this, you can be my guest, Seungcheol-ah.” Her nail tugs down and Seungcheol lets go of the robe. Jeonghan’s fingers drag down, running over her gold necklaces and the swell of her breasts, trailing past the gold rod in her belly button to her mound. “You’re very pretty.”
She draws back, fingers shining with slick as she brings them to her lips. She doesn’t drop her gaze even as Seungcheol’s chest heaves, biting down on her lip hard. If they could, her eyes would have flashed red.
Jihoon hesitates, tilting his head curiously and opening his mouth to speak before his lips ultimately part around a different word. “Hyung, your lips, really—You always look like you just got back from kissing someone.”
He doesn’t know what inspires him to say it. In-divine intervention, perhaps. “I kissed you, once.”
