only human // skz

PRELUDE} summer vacation

☁️

   The sun beat down on the pale yellow shore that had its sand strewn about and gathered in lumps, being mercilessly kicked about under wandering feet, especially on the little stretch of it where the eight, summer-vacationing college boys tramped about and chased each other. The heat of the blistering July afternoon wasn't enough to keep them from hitting around a slowly-deflating beach ball and tackling each other for it every so often.

   At this very moment, they were (though, only six of them) involved in a game of beach volleyball.

    Seungmin and Jeongin had teamed up from the start, immediately, without so much as a word shared between them and after Jeongin, having never played volleyball, pouted as he struggled to serve over the net, Seungmin grinned and knelt down for him to climb onto his shoulders. Felix thought that looked like fun and got Changbin to carry him on his shoulders as well, which left Minho and Chan feeling dinky on opposite sides of the court while the rest of the game essentially turned into a mecha battle for Felix and Jeongin— one that lasted until Seungmin's legs started to shake and Jeongin hurriedly climbed off of him while Changbin, still going strong with Felix smiling down at him, snickered.

   "You alright, Lix? You're looking pretty red," Chan commented, as Felix was lowered to the sand. "You, too, Minho." He was right: each of them were sporting sun-flushed, too-pink cheeks, noses, and shoulders. Chan tucked the slippery plastic ball under one arm. "Might as well go put on some more sunscreen."

   The two of them took his advice and trudged through the sand to the spread of towels that housed everyone's stuff, from sunscreen to extra clothes to zip-lock-bagged phones. Under the umbrella, that they'd propped up and partly buried under the sand to keep it in place when they got to this spot earlier, sat Hyunjin, serenely painting the shoreline onto the sketchbook balanced in his lap, while Jisung laid on the sand near him, closed-eyed and soaking up the sun.

    "Hello~" Felix chirped, crouching beside Hyunjin on the blanket, rummaging through Chan's bag. "We're here for sunscreen."

     Hyunjin smiled warmly at him, eyes twinkling. And, turning his head for a moment, he waved to Minho, with a slightly-different but still friendly smile on.

    Minho and Hyunjin... they were friends now, for sure. Maybe not the closest, but they were friends.

   "Can I see your painting?" Felix added, popping the cap of an orange bottle and squeezing runny white paste onto his skin.

    "Mhm. But, it's not very pretty, yet," Hyunjin warned. Felix inched forward in his crouch and hooked his chin over Hyunjin's shoulder to take a look, and Minho craned his head to look as well. Felix's eyes shone with wonder as he took in skillful foundation strokes. As Hyunjin had said, it definitely wasn't breathtakingly gorgeous— it had none of the beautiful, mysterious allure of the ocean's blues yet, and the two prominent shapes that appeared to be people by the shoreline resembled stick figures— but the sketched lines Hyunjin had been drawing in promised that all the beauty would come in time.

   Felix was so absorbed with the painting that he didn't realize that the sunscreen was still dribbling out onto his open hand.

   "Felix!" Minho laughed, reaching down to flip the lid of the bottle shut. Still, Felix's palm was completely coated in white goop, and it was dribbling off of it onto the towels beneath them.

    "Ah, fudge!" Felix yelped, hurriedly cupping his other hand underneath it.

    Giggling over the word choice, Hyunjin quickly set down his sketchbook and paintbrush and joined Minho in taking the excess from Felix's hands, each of them coating their own hands in white in the process. Grinning and laughing, the three of them spread the sunscreen on themselves until they looked like ghosts, and Hyunjin turned Felix around to rub some into his back (he hadn't had much to cover on himself since he was still fully clothed in shorts and t-shirt), while Minho stood up and wandered a few steps away, leaving the pair of them alone in the shade.

   Quietly, he knelt by Jisung's side.

    He glanced behind him. Everyone else was caught up in their own worlds. He looked back at Jisung. Jisung now had one eye open, looking at him lazily through a squint. His other eye was squeezed shut, pressed to the back of his hand, while his palm rested on the sand.

   Minho gave a soft smile— the kind that would have to be accompanied by a similarly soft, gentle voice, had he intended to say anything— and reached out, maybe with the slightest hesitation, to let his sunscreen-covered hand come down gently on Jisung's reddened shoulder.

    Jisung tensed up.

    "Woah— that's cold—" he gasped, voice quivering with laughter.

    Lips pressed into a quiet, lingering, closed-mouth grin, Minho rubbed Jisung's shoulders until the sunscreen disappeared into his skin and Jisung's back no longer appeared deathly pale— which was what Minho had to look like right now, because he could still feel the stuff sitting atop his skin.

   With Minho's hand coming to a halt, resting on his mid-back, Jisung propped himself up on his side, then opened and blinked both eyes a few times, getting a good look at Minho.

    "You look half-dead," Jisung giggled. The boy rose to his knees right in front of Minho then, and bid him come closer with a quick flexing of his fingertips.

   Minho scooted closer and presented his face by leaning forward. Jisung gently took his face in his hands and thumbed over his cheeks, rubbed his forehead, swiped his fingers over the bridge of his nose. Maybe he was doing more caressing than working in sunscreen, but maybe Minho didn't mind. He closed his eyes and leaned his face into Jisung's hands.

   He had really missed Jisung.