Hearts Aflame

026: Don't Walk Out on Me II

"Are you.. alright?"

Mina heard a tender whisper from beside her; Minseok's mellow and soft mumble. She turned sideways to give him a smile, a smile which felt a whole lot more genuine than how she felt about it. Nevertheless, Minseok accepted it, and shot her back another one in return.

"Yup, I'm fine," She mumbled back, cradling both of her arms together and rubbing them in a kind of nervousness that mocked her, for Mina rarely ever felt nervous for juvenile reasons like a party or a gathering. "Believe it or not, gatherings with a lot of people make me nervous."

After Minseok's escapade of exposing her ass in the car, it made her nervous around him. Not the kind of nervous which made her put walls around her or the kind that tended to make her push people away. It was more like the kind of nervousness that made her self-aware of how much Minseok — and the boys — really knew or know her. Or how else he'd so easily explain to her her own shriveled emotions? Her feelings which she herself didn't know the stems of? He told her of what she felt like he was her, and that he was the one going through this misery with Suho. Such clear insight about her situation made her, well, nervous.

How much more did Minseok know? How hard did he truly know her? How hard did the boys know her?

She remembered when she asked Kai once if he could hear her heartbeats and told her no, but he wouldn't need to anyway since she was pretty easy to read either way. Did all of her boys share the same sentiment? Was she really easy to read or were they superior beings (wolves) that made them more perceptive than others? She truly didn't want to believe that she's easy to read, despite how nice it felt sometimes to be understood by them.

"Really?" Minseok raised an atrocious brow up, a smirk curling up his face even though there was nothing malignant about it. "Never would have guessed it, you're not exactly the shyest gal in the shed."

Oh God, Mina thought, actually giggling, before taking a hold of herself and pursing her lips seriously, shaking her head. "No, Minseok, just no. Don't say Gal ever again."

"What? I made you laugh."

She laughed again at the realization that he did only that because he wanted her to laugh, and sneakily, she felt his hand snivel around her own where he curled their fingers together. She froze at the warm touch of his pads intertwined with hers, the type of freezing where her legs actually felt heavy enough to make her pause, staring at the darkness of the restaurant they were getting closer to. Why the heck was she so reactive to these sorts of mushy things? They've held hands plenty of times before and she didn't freeze like an absolute idiot with speech disability before. Was it because the meaning behind the gesture was a whole lot different now? Was it because she knew they hadn't meant shit before but meant something now? It was the only explanation, and she truly understood where she was coming from.

But damn it, she was not a flushy, blushy kind of gal!

Noticing her actually zoning out, Minseok paused as well and turned to her curiously, wonderment in his eyes at her actions. However, he misinterpreted her intentions pretty clearly.

"Don't worry. I'm nervous around big crowds as well," Mina's subconscious mind told her that he really wasn't, he was just saying that to comfort her. Her fingers began to unfroze, and she twitched them against his hold. In response, he tightened his grip. "We can sit together and have our own secret conversations together. No one will interfere with the captain and his girl, plus you'll be far away from that scum bag Kim."

She weaved a large, throaty exhale out of her chest, her body relaxing — or being forced to relax because God damn it, she didn't want to always overthink things! — and squeezed his hand as well. It was just a hand anyway. "Thanks," she raised their intertwined hands to their eye-level and threatened in a playful way, eyes twinkling. "And don't you dare let go of this hand, you hear, Minseok?"