B R E A T H E R | svt

0. sockshit potato

xu minghao didn't like wen junhui.

it wasn't like junhui was rude to him or anything, nor was it because junhui had hurt him in any way . . . it was more of a personal vendetta? yeah, you could call it that. xu minghao had a personal vendetta against wen junhui.

why? now that's an interesting question.

you see minghao actually never thought he had it in him to dislike junhui. being just a year younger, minghao had known the other since they were born. they met in grade school when minghao was struggling to cope up with all the korean. junhui, being a chinese himself, had sought out the kid first, offering him a hand of friendship and solidarity.

minghao was forever grateful because he knew that had it not been for the extroverted, playful elder, he would have never been able to get out of his sensitive, introverted shell. not to mention, the boys had polar opposite tastes in stuff so they never clashed either.

while junhui played soccer, minghao preferred to sit and read a book. while junhui pranked his other friends, minghao shook his head and helped soothe the victims (and occasionally if he was in a good mood, he'd set them against junhui as well). while jun was like a hyperactive, happy child stuck in a six feet body, minghao was sarcastic, laid back and the greatest personification of 'a cool guy'.

so what happened that slowly made the younger one get fed up with jun? the answer was simple. it was two words.

college crushes.

insert wonwoo and mingyu in the equation along with minghao and junhui, does it make more sense now? no? oh well, more context needed i guess.

as mentioned before, minghao was an year younger than jun, so while they hung out together most of the times and had a common friend group as well, minghao did have a few people of his own age as well who he could call as friends, lee seokmin and kim mingyu.

they formed a trio well known amongst their peers, given all three were quite a looker for their ages. the trio had it all, a helpful, kind idiot— namely seokmin, a sassy, nonchalant idiot— minghao, and an adorable, clumsy idiot— mingyu. minghao was close with both of them, but he was especially close with the blundering, walking disaster, mingyu.

no, to be specific, he had an unimaginable crush on the blundering, walking disaster, mingyu.

something about how the six foot plus giant could never understand that he was huge and would keep knocking stuff over or breaking them, appealed to the usually cool minghao. he actually found it so endearing, he could watch the big idiot blabber and trip over words as he tried to clean up, for hours.

at one point he would stare at mingyu so much, seokmin made it a point to tape every one of those instances and share them with jun, so that they could tease the very annoyed younger chinese every living second.

even though pretty much everyone who mattered knew, minghao never bothered spilling the beans to the oblivious mingyu. one, he was sure that the feelings would pass and that he shouldn't work much on some silly high school crush, two, he didn't want to ruin the friendship they had, he was quite comfortable where he was right now— admiring and giggling at mingyu's antics from a distance before helping him bring the situation under control.

he was happy. very happy.

but unfortunately, the feelings didn't pass and he got even closer to his crush in the last year, what with jun and his friends now passed out of school and seokmin going MIA suspiciously often with that one guy he had met in his vocal classes. seokmin insisted nothing was on and minghao couldn't believe him any less but mingyu made peace and convinced the chinese to let seokmin be.