yes!!!!!!! i come from a really small rural town (like, REALLY small. we're talking a population less than 1000) and have Complicated Feelings on what it was like to grow up there. i think a lot about fic where jisung and minho were bffs in high school and on the day of graduation, jisung kissed him, and when minho said nothing in return, he fled and pretty much never talked to him again. cut to years later, jisung is fresh out of flunking out of an idol program and returns home to live with his family, catching up with his old high school friends. he runs into minho in the grocery slash hardware slash fucking deli or whatever weird shit small towns are up to. they start talking, minho mentions he's there because he's renovating the house he just bought (probably one in the town square, somewhere they would have walked by to get to school every day while jisung whined about [pop punk voice] getting out of this shithole town so it's WILD that minho decided to not only stay but buy a house there).

they have coffee and things aren't as awkward as they could be. really, it seems like they could be friends again. so minho invites jisung over to help renovate the house and it's actually kind of fun, so he keeps coming over. and obviously they fall back in love. probably at one point they're forced to address the elephant in the room and jisung is like "you didn't kiss me back!!!!!" and minho is like "you didn't give me time to react!!!! then never talked to me again!!!!!!!" and then they kiss some more probably. that's what i'd write if i feel like i could execute it well, because i have soooooo many feelings about what it's like to grow up somewhere and return with totally new eyes - for the worse or for the better, and i think it'd be interesting to see a minho who's made peace with his life vs a jisung who doesn't know what he wants anymore but knows it Isn't Staying Here.

unless......unless...........

i sketched out a bit a long ass time ago, but i don't know that i'll ever actually be able to write it at the level i'd want to, you know?

but here's a bit of jisung and seungmin:

“You look like you saw a ghost.”

“Close.” Jisung watches the glove box until it softens. “Minho. At Park’s.”

Seungmin’s face eases into a neutral expression. “How bad?”

“Not bad.” He swallows. “He looks good.”

“Yeah.” Eyes on the windshield. “He looks like he sleeps.”

Jisung laughs once. It sounds wrong. “I sleep. All I do is sleep.”

Not like he has anything better since he left Seoul.

Since you failed, his brain offers.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Jisung swats his shoulder. “Shut up. It was… I don’t know. Weird.”

“When’s the last time you talked?”

“Graduation.”

“Shit.”

“You knew that."

“I know you stopped,” Seungmin says. He doesn’t look over. “I don’t know why.”

Jisung presses his tongue to a molar. Old habit. “It’s—complicated.”

That’s one word. The truth sits where it always sits: I kissed him. He said nothing. I left.

Six years of best friends — of living in each other’s pockets — gone in a blink.

Seungmin’s grip tightens until the leather creaks. “It always is with you two.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” he says, too innocent. “Just—do you think of him as unfinished business?”

“Not really.” Another half-truth. He’s good at those.

“You want to see him again?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

The pine tree swings from the mirror. “He bought a house.”

ANYWAY!

that's it. that's the fic. i