Lacy Euphoria

His Favorite Girl/Part Two: Becoming Real to Him

🔞 Adults 18+. MDNI. Fictional fanwork using names fictitiously for entertainment. Not real, endorsed, affiliated, or a claim of real events. All romantic and sexual content is between consenting adults. Please consume fiction with media literacy intact.

Originally published on AO3.

The cheesecake suddenly felt heavier in Wynter’s hands when the elevator doors opened. You stepped into the hallway beside her, adjusting the strap of your bag while she glanced from the apartment numbers to you and back again. The drive over hadn’t been particularly quiet. Wynter had spent most of it teasing you about checking the GPS three times for an address you already knew, and you’d retaliated by reminding her that she’d nearly opened the cheesecake box at a red light. None of that nervous energy followed you into the hallway. Standing outside his home made everything real in a way the invitation hadn’t.

Wynter slowed when you reached his door, shifting the box against her hip before looking at you. “So this is it,” she said, watching your hand rise toward the bell before catching your wrist. The seriousness in her expression stopped you before your finger reached it. “Don’t manage us tonight.” You frowned, but she squeezed your wrist before letting go, already recognizing the confusion on your face. “You don’t have to make sure I like him, and you don’t have to make sure he likes me. Let us figure each other out.” The guilty expression you couldn’t quite hide made her laugh as she adjusted the cheesecake against her hip again. “That’s what I thought. Ring the bell.”

You barely had time to lower your hand before the door opened. Mingi stood on the other side looking considerably less composed than you’d expected, his sleeves rolled to his forearms, the top button of his shirt undone, and a dish towel hanging over one shoulder while the smell of roasted garlic and something warm with herbs drifted past him into the hallway. His attention found you first out of instinct, softening for half a second before moving immediately to Wynter. “Hi,” he said, keeping one hand against the edge of the door as he stepped backward to give both of you room. “You must be Wynter.”

She lifted the cheesecake slightly and studied him with just enough seriousness to make you wonder what she was about to say. “Depends. Are you the man who volunteered to cook dinner for two women you’ve never had at your table before?” His nervous laugh escaped before he could stop it, and he nodded as he admitted that unfortunately, he was. Wynter’s expression broke into a smile. “Then I’m Wynter.”

Something inside you loosened when Mingi smiled and extended his hand, but Wynter looked at it for only a second before shifting the cheesecake into one arm and opening the other instead. “We’ve heard too much about each other for a handshake.” The surprise on his face lasted only a moment before he accepted the hug, careful at first and then warmer when she gave his back an easy pat before stepping away.

You were still smiling when his attention returned to you. His eyes moved over you once, not enough to embarrass you but more than enough for Wynter to notice, before his hand settled lightly at your waist as he leaned in and kissed your cheek. The quiet “Hi” he gave you sounded entirely different from the one he’d offered Wynter, and you answered him just as softly before Wynter made an exaggerated sound beside you. “Oh,” she said, nodding slowly as though she’d just solved something complicated. “That’s the face.” You turned toward her immediately and told her not to start, but Mingi was already looking between the two of you and asking what face she meant. Wynter’s grin widened. “His favorite girl face.” His mouth curved before he could hide it, and you stared at both of them before announcing that you already regretted this. Their laughter joined yours, breaking the tension before any of you had even made it through the door.

Mingi took the cheesecake from Wynter and led you inside, apologizing for the kitchen before either of you had seen it. The apartment wasn’t messy. If anything, it looked suspiciously clean except for the evidence of actual cooking scattered across the counters. A cutting board rested beside a pile of herb stems, two pans occupied the stove, and a stack of bowls waited beside the sink while music played quietly from somewhere in the living room. Wynter took in the room before turning toward him and asking how many times he’d cleaned today. He stopped so abruptly that you had to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing. “Once,” he answered, but the stare Wynter gave him lasted long enough to break him. His shoulders dropped as he sighed. “Three.” Her laughter filled the kitchen as she set her purse on the empty stool beside the island and admitted that made her feel better.

When he asked why, Wynter leaned comfortably against the island and told him she’d been nervous all day too. The confession changed something in his posture, his shoulders dropping another fraction before he admitted he was glad to hear it and immediately corrected himself because he hadn’t meant that he was glad she’d been nervous. He rubbed the back of his neck as he realized he was making the explanation worse, and Wynter finally rescued him with a smile. “You’re doing fine. Feed me before you ruin it.”

Dinner rescued everybody. By the time the three of you sat down, the conversation had moved away from nervous introductions and toward the food spread across the table. Mingi had made far too much of it, which Wynter noticed almost immediately. She looked across the serving dishes before turning toward you with an expression you recognized. “Oh, so this is contagious,” she said, pointing around the table when you frowned. “Apparently everybody who loves you panic-cooks.” Mingi looked at you and asked if she did this too, and you reached for the potatoes while telling him he should have seen what she’d brought home the previous week. Wynter pointed her fork at you and warned you not to involve her in this when she’d merely been making an observation. You reminded her she’d started it, and Mingi laughed into his glass while she pretended not to hear you.

For the first time since you’d arrived, you stopped monitoring the room.

Wynter had been right in the hallway. They didn’t need you to manage them, so you let them talk. You listened while she asked about the dish he’d made and learned he’d practiced it twice before tonight. You watched him ask about her life without turning the question into polite small talk, following her answer closely enough to ask another question based on something she’d actually said. When Wynter teased him, he gradually stopped checking your face to make sure it was okay to laugh. When he made a joke at your expense, she laughed harder than anyone and immediately contributed one of her own. Somewhere between the main course and the second time Wynter asked him to pass the potatoes, they stopped behaving like two people meeting because of you and simply started talking.

You reached for your glass while Wynter told him a story you’d heard at least twenty times, but your attention drifted toward Mingi instead. He caught you watching him and gave you a small smile before reaching automatically for the water pitcher and refilling your glass. You didn’t have to look toward Wynter to know she’d noticed, but you did anyway. Her eyes moved briefly from the pitcher to you before returning to him, and although she didn’t say anything, the small change in her expression told you she’d filed the gesture away.

A few minutes later, you leaned toward Wynter when she whispered that she hoped he hadn’t forgotten the cheesecake sitting in the kitchen. Your hand rested briefly against her knee while you assured her there was no universe in which she’d allow anyone to forget dessert, and when you straightened again, you caught Mingi watching the two of you. There was no discomfort on his face, no jealousy hiding behind the smile he gave you when your eyes met. He’d seen the easy intimacy between you and Wynter and understood it for exactly what it was. That mattered more than you expected.

Dinner stretched longer than planned because nobody seemed interested in ending it. Empty plates remained on the table while the conversation moved through music, terrible movies, travel, food, and eventually the ridiculous circumstances that had brought all three of you here. Wynter rested her chin against one hand while listening to Mingi describe how nervous he’d been before opening the door, and when he admitted he’d considered changing shirts for the fourth time, she laughed so loudly you had to put your glass down. She immediately caught the number and asked if he’d seriously changed four times, but he insisted it had only been three. When she reminded him that he’d just said fourth, he tried to explain that he’d only considered the fourth shirt and it had never actually made it onto his body. Wynter turned toward you with tears of laughter gathering at the corners of her eyes. “I like him.”

The sentence came so casually that the room went quiet for half a heartbeat. Your eyes moved to Mingi at the same moment his moved toward Wynter, and she looked between both of you before rolling her eyes. “Jesus Christ, don’t make it weird. I said I like him. I didn’t propose.” Mingi laughed first, you followed, and Wynter shook her head while reaching for her glass. “This is going to be exhausting.”

Dessert moved into the living room because none of you wanted to keep sitting at the table. Mingi disappeared into the kitchen for plates while you and Wynter settled onto the couch, and the second he was out of sight, she turned toward you. You didn’t ask what she was thinking because you didn’t need to. Wynter looked toward the kitchen doorway before returning her attention to you, the smallest smile appearing at the corner of her mouth. “Okay,” she admitted quietly, resting one arm along the back of the couch. “I get it now.”

Your chest tightened, but Wynter saw the question in your face before you could ask it. “Not the attraction part. I already understood that.” Her eyes flicked toward the kitchen again as the sound of cabinet doors opening carried into the room. “I mean him.” You stayed quiet while she reached over and squeezed your hand. The teasing disappeared from her expression when she told you simply, “He loves you.”

There was no accusation in it. No grief. Just recognition. Your fingers closed around hers as you admitted that you loved him too, and Wynter’s thumb moved once across the back of your hand before she nodded. “I know.”

Mingi returned carrying three plates before either of you could say anything else, and Wynter released your hand only long enough to accept hers from him. He started toward the chair opposite the couch after passing you your plate, but Wynter frowned before he could sit down and asked why he was going all the way over there. He glanced at the chair as though the answer should have been obvious and explained that it was where he usually sat. Wynter moved closer to you, opening a space on your other side. “Not tonight. You cooked. Come eat your cheesecake.”

He looked at you before moving.

You smiled.

That was all it took.

He crossed the room and sat beside you, careful at first until the three of you found a comfortable arrangement without discussing it. Wynter rested against one side of you while Mingi’s knee touched yours on the other. Nobody reached across anyone. Nobody tried to manufacture closeness that wasn’t there. Wynter and Mingi weren’t falling for each other, and nothing in the room suggested they wanted to. They didn’t need to. They were learning how to care about someone they had in common without demanding that the connection become anything else.

Halfway through dessert, Wynter pointed her fork toward Mingi’s plate and told him his dinner had earned him another invitation. His eyebrows lifted as he asked whether that meant he’d passed her evaluation, and she pretended to consider it before shaking her head. “Let’s not get carried away. You’re on probation.” He smiled and asked how long probation lasted, but she took another bite of cheesecake before telling him she’d let him know.

You laughed between them, and Wynter glanced at you before reaching across your lap to steal a piece of cheesecake from your plate. Mingi watched her do it before looking at you with amusement and asking whether she always did that. You told him it was constant, and Wynter ate the stolen bite without the slightest hint of remorse. “Get used to me.”

The smile that appeared on Mingi’s face was different from the nervous ones he’d worn earlier in the evening. It came easily now as he looked at Wynter and told her, “I’d like to.”

The words were simple, but you felt them. Wynter did too. She looked at him for a moment before giving a small nod and returning to her cheesecake, letting the acceptance remain exactly what it was without forcing either of them to explain it.

Nothing needed to be named tonight. Nobody needed a rulebook or a speech about what came next. For the first time, the two people you loved were sitting on either side of you without competing for space, measuring what belonged to whom, or asking you to divide yourself into pieces that made everybody more comfortable. They were simply there, in his home, after eating at his table, learning who the other person was instead of imagining them from a distance.

When Mingi’s hand eventually found yours beside him while Wynter rested her head against your shoulder, neither gesture canceled out the other. You looked down at your intertwined fingers before turning your head slightly toward Wynter, feeling the familiar weight of her against you while Mingi’s thumb moved absently across your knuckles.

The secret that had once felt impossible to carry had finally become something else.

Not a simple life. Not a conventional one.

Just yours.

And for the first time, you didn’t have to hide any part of it from the people sitting beside you.