tai

"Hey, y/n, just tell me. Please?" His pout wins you over. You watch his pleading face for a moment before pursing your lips, deciding on what answer to give him.

"Fine," you say, and his smirk comes back full-force. "My ult is Changbin, if you must know." You grin at his look of disbelief, and secretly you like the fact that he wants to be your ult so badly—because of course he is.

You sip from your hot chocolate while he forms his response, glancing down at your phone to see that you have texts from half of the kids wanting to know where the two of you are.

Minho huffs. "Are you serious? You ult Changbinnie?"

You can't help but laugh a little at his tone, reaching across the table for his hand. "Don't worry, Min, it's not like I'm in love with him."

He whines and complains about it all the way to the dorms, but he never lets go of your hand, and you know that he loves you just as much as you love him.

But boy is it fun to tease him.

/

You're sitting together on the sofa in Minho's dorm, legs crossed over each other's laps, when you decide to joke with him again—it's been two weeks since the last time you talked about your ult, and he occasionally still complains that your ult is Changbin.

On Minho's other side is Felix, half laying across your laps while he scrolls through his secret twitter account that he still won't give you the handle for. He's been really quiet today, so you're a bit worried about him, but if there's one thing you know about Felix, it's how to take his mind off of things.

So you lean into Minho's shoulder and open your mouth to speak. "So, I've decided Changbin isn't my ult anymore."

Your boyfriend makes a questioning sound, and Felix lowers his phone from his face, meeting your gaze with a questioning one of his own. He knows, perhaps better than anybody, that Minho is undoubtedly your ult.

"Changbin," Felix mutters dryly, almost a question.

You grin at him and Minho pats Felix's head. "Yes," he mutters, falsely grumpy. "Changbinnie isn't your ult anymore, y/n?" He turns his head to look at you, and because he looks so soft and gently rumpled, you nearly end the teasing right then and there.

But you manage to stay strong, smiling when you see the look on Felix's face. You think he's beginning to catch on. "Yeah. He's great but you know, there's somebody else that I've just been captivated by lately."

"Uh-huh..."

"Felix has taken over," you say, and Felix coughs, spluttering as he sits up. Minho pokes you in the side with squinted eyes.

"You go from Changbin to Yongbokkie? What about your poor boyfriend, hmm?"

You smile, patting Minho's thigh and gesturing for Felix to lie back down, which he does. "What? He's your ult, why can't he be mine, too?"

Minho huffs, and Felix looks between the two of you like you've put the stars in the sky. You're too fond of them for your own good.

/

A few weeks after your second ult change, Minho brings you breakfast on a rare day off and the two of you lean into each other on your sofa, turning on an anime that the both of you know by heart so that you have background noise while you talk about the past few days—you've barely seen each other because of his busy schedule and your streak of creativity combined, so sharing a day off to be mundane and domestic is nice.

But your boyfriend is a menace, and he begins to tease you; he's not being harsh, it's just lighthearted fun, but you can't help but want to tease him back.

So you say, hugging his arm to you and leaning against his shoulder, "I think my new ult is Seungminnie." You've changed your mind twice this week already via your group chat with the kids, so this is technically your fifth time joking about this with him. He takes it like a champ every time, and usually the kids are there teasing him along with you. The other day, you and Felix made the joke that Hyunjin was your first bias, and Hyunjin had a blast rubbing it in Minho's face.

"Ya!" Minho scoffs, poking you in the center of the forehead and giving you a suspicious look. "I didn't even ask."

Everything goes back to mundanity after your little exchange of jokes, and you nearly forget all about it by the time you're brushing your teeth and crawling under the covers together.

You don't even notice anything off about it when he lays facing the wall—he clasps your hands together when you slip an arm over his waist, so you have no reason to believe that anything is wrong.

However.

In the morning, you wake to cold sheets; Minho doesn't kiss you awake before he leaves for his schedules, nor does he leave you a note as he sometimes does when he's running behind.

A stone settles in your stomach, but you reason with yourself that he was probably just tired or he got a late start. In an attempt to calm yourself, you send him a text to apologize for missing him and to remind him that you love him, and then you go about your day. He's a busy man, and you know that he wouldn't want you to sit around waiting for a text back from him no matter if something is wrong or not.

But the thing is, you don't hear from him until well in the evening, long after you thought his work was supposed to be done for the day. It's not that you're co-dependent, and you don't have to see him every day even though you would like that a lot, but it rubs you the wrong way when all you get from him is a simple 'long day, heading to bed soon'.

He doesn't even tell you that he loves you. Minho always tells you that he loves you. He knows that it's important to you.

So you message Chan right away, worry curling in your gut, dislodging the stone every time it tries to settle.

You thank a god that you've never quite believed in that he answers right away, asking you to meet him at the convenient store closest to the dorms. You haven't gotten ready so quickly in the last two years that you've lived in this apartment.

"Hey, y/n," Chan greets with an exhausted smile. He doesn't usually look so tired, but they've been preparing something special for the holidays and you know that he always overworks himself in an effort to protect his kids. You offer to buy him a coffee and know for sure that something is wrong when he accepts.

"Look, we're all a bit guilty," he mutters as the two of you head in the direction of their dorm. "And I'm already planning the talk I'm going to have with the kids, but..." He glances at you, curls poking out from under his beanie. "Minho's not handling the jokes well. About your ult being everyone but him whenever it gets brought up."

You blink, halting in your tracks. The teasing is bothering him that much and he hasn't said anything to you? You voice your question out loud and Chan sighs, breath fogging in the chilly nighttime air.

"I know," he mutters, "but I think he doesn't want to upset any of the kids if you're being serious. And he doesn't want you to feel guilty if you're being serious. But I just think there are times when Minho doesn't fully grasp how important he is to you, y/n." Chan holds the door for you to enter the building after swiping his key card, and then leads you up the stairs because he knows it makes you uncomfortable when people walk behind you.

You feel your thoughts turning inward, mind racing as you try to figure out what clues you could have picked up on that Minho was uncomfortable with the teasing, and you're lucky that Chan is with you, or you would've walked all the way to the top floor without noticing.

He gestures to the door that leads onto the floor where Minho shares a dorm with the three maknaes and gives you a smile. "Just talk to him, y/n. The rest of us already know that he's always going to be your favorite—he just needs a reminder."

You locate the number to their apartment easily, having been here too many times to count—funnily enough, it wasn't Minho who snuck you a copy of their key, though. Felix gave it to you a few weeks before your six-month anniversary with Minho so that you could set up a surprise for your boyfriend while the kids were away for a few days to prepare for an award show. The four inhabitants of the apartment told you to keep it after the surprise was over.

Seungmin blinks when he sees you, and then sighs. "Thank god. He's been sulking all day." You head to Minho's room after kicking off your shoes, only pausing long enough to ruffle Seungmin's hair.

You tap lightly on your boyfriend's door, relieved when he grumbles loudly enough for you to hear his "come in."

"Min," you say, closing the door quietly behind you. He sits up abruptly in his bed with a book dangling from his hand, confusion and exhaustion written all over his face. "I'm sorry if I woke you up."

"Y/n." He blinks at you slowly, processing, and you tiptoe across his bedroom floor, sinking onto the edge of the mattress. "W- Did you walk here?"

You want to apologize, to promise him that it was all just a joke, that of course he's your favorite member and he always will be. The words climb up your throat, practically choking you, but what actually slips out of your mouth is none of that. Instead, it's "you didn't say you love me."

Your boyfriend frowns. "I didn't say- Y/n, you walked all the way here because I didn't-" He stops himself, shaking his head. "I could've sworn that I did, though." Minho sets his book aside, leaning to snag his phone off of the nightstand and unlocking it. he blinks at the screen a few times. "Sweetheart." He turns his phone for you to see that he'd typed out an 'I love you' and simply forgot to send it. You feel silly, but you lift a hand and tap the little "send" arrow before he sets his phone aside.

"It's not that...," you admit. "I knew something was wrong when I woke up today... And I came to apologize, Minho. I didn't realize how much my teasing was bothering you—but that's all it was: teasing."

He drops his gaze, scratching at his cheek. "I know, that's why I didn't say anything."

"But it still bothered you. Surely you know that you'll forever be my favorite stray kid, right? And just my favorite person in general?" You scoot forward, and the minute you're within reach, he wraps his arms around you and tugs you onto his lap, hugging you to his chest.

He sighs, kissing the spot above your ear. "I love you, baby. You are my favorite person. And don't you forget it."

You know, and you're so grateful that he came into your life when he did. You tell him so.

He lays back against his pillows with you in his arms, pressing a gentle kiss against the corner of your mouth. A thought occurs to you and you can't help but grin.

"Hey Min?"

"Hmm."

"You're my ultimate boyfriend."

Minho groans, threatening to smother you with a pillow for being so cringey, and you remind him that he loves your cringe.

You fall asleep knowing that you're safe in his arms.

fin.