Chapter Text
Seongje loves it.
The loud music, the smell of alcohol taking over the air, the bodies grinding on one another, the few ones moving suspiciously and too close against the walls of the dark corners.
That’s his scene. His playground.
He sees a dude dressed up as Santa with his jacket open on a bare chest offering a small plastic bag to other students and leaving them with an ominous “Ho ho ho.”
Yeah he really loves it all.
Each party he’s been to since he started university three years ago has always been like this and he never tires of it.
It’s hectic, filled with lights that change every two seconds, music that makes the floor shake and people who look nothing like the scholar types they are in daylight and more like people he can actually enjoy.
A pretty girl passes by him, long hair, short dress and nice perfume, he turns around to see her disappear somewhere in the house, appreciating the view.
Yeah, this.
This, he likes more than anything.
The short dresses that leave nothing to the imagination, the bare shoulders that look too inviting, the pretty lip gloss and long lashes.
He advances toward one of the tables filled with all kinds of bottles and half-drank cups. Some spilled, some completely abandoned.
Seongje is too sober for this time of the night and he does intend to remedy that very quickly. He grabs a bottle of unopened something, doesn't matter, it'll do the job. He opens it with his teeth and downs a quarter of it.
Vodka.
Not the best to drink straight from the bottle like that, and not on the first drink of the night. But that will definitely do the job.
Already he feels a pleasant buzz take over him. Heat thrumming in his veins and the lights that keep going from all possible shade in the kaleidoscope start to blend and mix in a way that will give him a headache in the morning for sure.
Slowly he bobs his head to the rhythm of the music and takes the bottle with him.
He’s still not drunk so he’s going to keep it as a best friend for the rest of the night.
He decides to join the mess of bodies in the middle of the room. The fraternity house is large enough to have a living room and for it to be used as a makeshift dance floor.
He moves slow and rhythmic and soon enough there’s a body attaching itself to him.
A gorgeous blonde with a red top that leaves one shoulder open and a skirt that allows the expanse of her legs to be shown off. Seongje prefers brunettes but he’s not picky.
He wastes no time in putting one hand on her hip, the other still holding the bottle. Her back to his front and they grind slowly on each other.
She throws her head back on his shoulder, her hair smells nice and her throat looks glittered, he bends his head down to lick it and she turns her head more to the left to give him more room.
Her small hips keep grinding on his crotch and he can feel himself getting slowly harder in his pants.
His mouth stays on that throat. She smells of fake vanilla and powdered makeup. It’s intoxicating and so he lightly bites at it.
They keep going like that for a bit, forgetting they’re supposed to be dancing. Just his mouth on the hollow of her throat tasting those glitters, her ass circling his crotch that has definitely a bulge growing bigger when she passes on it just right.
She moans low and small and he hears it only because it vibrates through his mouth. That makes him smile.
He’s about to take this further when he hears a hollering voice calling his name with wolf whistles.
Those shouting makes the moment slowly wash away, bringing him back to the room and away from the tempting throat.
He lifts his eyes to see who he knows just caused such commotion. Gotak and Baku of course. Who else.
They jump up and down, hands cupping around their mouths to make their voices travel farther. As if that was needed. The thought makes him roll his eyes.
They are at the very end of the room sprawled out on couches, well not them, but Baekjin and Juntae are. Ahn Suho is sitting on the ground next to a girl with a bob and they seem deep into their conversation.
It’s a familiar crowd. One he knows thanks to the basketball team with their captain being Baekjin and Hyuntak, Humin and him being part of it. The others are friends of them, circles colliding or in Baku and Baekjin’s case this weird thing that they deny.
Unfortunately there is no greater mood killer for Seongje and his horniness than seeing them. Worse seeing them watching him, encouraging him. Yeah he’ll pass.
He puts his two hands on the hips of the girl, clutching his best friend – the bottle – with a few fingers. And gently, with great displeasure, pushes her away whispering an apology in her ear.
She turns to him, confused and a bit frustrated, brows pulling together before leaning up and putting her lips on his. Her gloss wets his lips and she licks the seam of them.
She pulls away, nods more to herself than him and leaves.
He loves this too.
The way there’s no hard feelings, just pleasure exchanged and then you move on. Or in his case stop it short because he has stupid acquaintances – they cockblocked him, therefore they are not friends.
He raises the bottle to his lips and gulps a few more of it. Yeah vodka in its purest form is one of the worst things but it helps wash away the bitter aftertaste of disappointment.
He starts to advance toward them, readjusting himself in his pants shamelessly.
That makes Gotak double over and Baku screams like a school girl.
He simply smirks when his eyes cross Baekjin’s, his dear, dear captain and roommate, who shakes his head at the improper display.
Seongje just keeps his smirk up.
When he’s finally where they are, Baku wastes no time in looping his arm around his shoulder, Gotak fixing him with a stare that reminds him of a proud mother. That makes him laugh while shaking his head.
The vodka starts to make its effect because the movement makes him a bit dizzy and if it wasn’t for Baku and his arm he would have stumbled. Thankfully he’s still fully coherent and aware.
At least enough to frown at the two idiots.
“I could’ve gotten my dick wet, assholes.”
“You’ll get it wet some time later tonight, now’s the time to get shit faced with your lovely friends.”
“Friends where?” He asks completely seriously. “Friends don’t cockblock one another.”
“Actually, I think that’s exactly what friends are supposed to do.”
He scoffs with no real bite, pushes Baku’s arm off him and drops on the couch next to Baekjin.
The other has a mocking smile that Seongje doesn’t like but before he can say anything he offers him a shot glass filled with a liquid filled with glitters.
He takes it and downs it in one go. It tastes great, fruity and very alcoholized.
He quite like glitters tonight.
He’s sure his tongue is gonna shine after having explored a throat full of them and now this drink.
“That your apology for your boyfriend stopping me from getting some?”
“Not his boyfriend.” Says Baku while dropping himself with the grace of an elephant on Baekjin’s laps.
Seongje raises an eyebrow. Because. Like really.
Baekjin simply smiles pleasantly and hooks one of his hands on Humin’s hip before humming.
“Take it as a bribe.”
“For?”
Baekjin throws a glance at him and then at Baku pointedly and then back at him. Seongje sighs like he’s suffering physically.
“Not a boyfriend uh.”
“Some people have to get their dicks wet tonight.” Baekjin answers him, still smiling all nice and good like he didn’t just mocked him cruelly.
Baku snorts in his drink and Seongje flips them both off before grabbing the other drink – same one as the other – that Baekjin hands him again.
“You’re trying to get me black out drunk so I pass out here, am I right?”
“No. But now that you mention it, please do drink a lot.”
Great.
Really. What a great friend and a great captain.
Seongje considers it, flips him off again for good measure and downs it, in one go again.
“And if I miss practice because I’m too hungover, then what?”
Baku gasps dramatically. The idea of missing practice just blowing his mind.
“Well then you won’t have a dick to get wet anymore.”
Ah.
There he is. The lovely captain of the basketball team.
“You guys are thinking about my dick a little too much for my liking.”
“Says you.”
“It’s mine, I can talk about it as much as I wish.”
“Yeah right, that’s the only th—“
“You guys are disgusting.”
Baku gets interrupted by the girl that was sitting on the floor next to Suho. She fixes them with a sharp glare.
Yeongi, if his memory is correct.
Baekjin lowers his head and says a genuine: “Apology.” While Baku cowers in fear.
Seongje tips his glass at her with a small smirk.
Touché.
She huffs before turning back to her conversation with Ahn Suho. Who’s looking at them with an eyebrow raised before shaking his head with a small laugh and turning back to her too.
Seongje goes to fill his shot glass still in his hand with some of his best friend — still a bottle. He throws his head back on the couch and tunes out the rest of everything.
The — not — boyfriends next to him who seem to be a bit too intensely looking at each other while murmuring between them.
He lets the whole room wash over him. The music reverberating through him and making his blood pulse.
The alcohol finally kicking more properly.
The lights flicker behind his closed eyes in flashes of blue and purple.
He hears people laughing, jumping, and glass shattering in the distance. Tough luck for the members of the fraternity.
That’s exactly what he needed tonight.
A plethora of colors, sound, people and alcohol making his head turn all the ways and then some.
He keeps filling his glass and gulping it down like it’s water. After the fourth time, he feels a very judgmental stare on the side of his face.
Ah, sir captain definitely woke up now.
He tries his luck and fills his glass with a fifth shot of vodka but a hand reaches his wrist and takes out his glass.
He doesn’t even resist, just glancing at the side where Baekjin isn’t even looking at him, his hand more securely locked on Humin’s hip and his face tilted up to better talk and hear what the boy on his lap has to say.
Whatever.
He already drank enough.
For now at least.
He stays there on the couch, head thrown back, eyes closed. He doesn’t know how much time passes but he feels the couch dip and shift.
He hears the rustlement of people moving about. The music changing a few times.
When he opens his eyes back, the alcohol had the time to set and to blur his vision a bit. He remains too conscious for his liking and too aware of his surroundings.
He notices that Ahn Suho and the girl — definitely Yeongi, his hazed mind tells him — are now the ones sitting on the couch next to him.
Still very deep in conversation.
They should have gone to a cafe or convenience store, it would have been better to talk than some frat party.
She sits on the arm of the couch, talking with her hands a lot, Suho nodding along and flexing his hands from time to time.
He doesn’t know what they’re talking about but it’s clearly a subject that they hold dear and that displeases them. A frown on both their faces.
He gets up slowly as to not shake his head even more. Wouldn’t want to catch a headache now, that’s him from tomorrow's problem.
He needs more. More alcohol, more blurriness, more buzzing behind his eyes and heat thrumming in his blood.
Seongje advances toward his best friend’s family — the bottle, once more — ready to pick him a companion and pick himself a second best friend.
He’s finally standing in front of the table after having dodged too many bodies. Clearly during his little nap more people joined in.
He’s deciding whether to take one of the unnamed bottles or take a beer, cooling down his descent while still maintaining a buzz.
He doesn’t get to decide on his new friend because he gets rudely interrupted by a divine presence passing right next to him.
Wow.
The otherworldly being goes to grab a cup across from him, their arms brushing Seongje’s. He immediately registers the sweet smell of candy, like cotton candy and lollipop, it reminds him of late night carnival and roller coasters.
The next thing he notices is the outfit that they’re wearing. Black shorts pulled tight over thick thighs, and legs that would be exposed if not for the thighs' high stockings. Blacks too, that stops at mid thigh with the top part being lace.
Seongje has never wanted to be buried in between something more than right now.
He’s staring, he knows he is but he can’t help it.
He’s sure he’d die an accomplished man if those plump thighs were to suffocate him.
He raises his eyes and notices the top and oh.
Okay.
The top is also black, faintly see-through, tight and cropped. Revealing a waist that he’s sure he could circle with barely a bit more than a hand.
And sitting low on that very waist, was a thin silver chain, with tiny silver flowers in between every knot of the chain with a small pink jewel inside each flower.
And as seems to be tonight’s trend, glitters all over that body. The small of the thighs he can see, the lower stomach.
God, he can feel himself getting hard again.
He lifts his eyes higher, ready to see the face attached to perfection itself.
Oh.
Oh.
That’s not a woman.
It’s truly the first and only thought in his already very drunk mind.
Static in his head and mouth parting in surprise.
That’s the most beautiful and attractive person he’s ever met though.
And it’s still not a woman.
This ethereal man, drop dead gorgeous, would-go-to-war-for kind of face and body, raises the cup to his mouth and gulps it down.
Seongje stares at his throat as he swallows.
Yep, definitely a man.
He sees the shine of a lip gloss and the lines of eyeliner on the most incredible set of eyes known to man.
They’re big and shiny, as if there’s a layer of sparkling mist in them at all times. They look on the verge of spilling tears and yet there’s a certain confidence in them that proves those tears are only aesthetic. And god they are.
For a second Seongje wonders what they’d look like if they were to truly cry. Of pleasure. Preferably screaming his name.
He shakes his head at that thought because what the flipping fuck.
That’s a man.
Seongje is also very much a man. One that is straight.
This gorgeous man doesn’t look at him for a second. Doesn’t even acknowledge him much more than necessary.
All the while he hasn’t stopped staring, admiring and quite frankly checking out.
It’s almost humiliating, truly.
Then, when he finishes his drink he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, numerous bracelets on his arm.
Only then does he glances at Seongje, eyes him up and down and then turns to leave.
And wow. Okay. Rude.
Seongje was just ogling him like he discovered new ways to describe divine beauty and this man doesn’t even have the decency of… of what exactly?
What the hell was Seongje expecting.
Nothing.
Really. Nothing.
He follows him with his eyes, body turning as the guy is walking away. His eyes lowers as if on instinct and nothing that crosses his mind is pure. He’s sure that he’d burn on sight if he was entering a church with all the filth inside his head right now.
If he considered the dude’s thighs too good to be true, he could write whole novels about his backside.
Seongje is drunk but he’s also very weirded out by himself right now.
He reasons and tells himself that he’s attracted to a body and the haze on his mind doesn’t help.
That’s it.
The marvelous specimen that Seongje is still watching has reached across the room and has seated himself next to–
Ahn Suho?
And they’re talking.
All three of them, Suho, the girl – still Yeongi – and the bewitching angel.
Seongje is confused for a bit.
He knows Ahn Suho vaguely because they share some people from the same circle, namely Baku and Gotak.
They’re not close but they’re not strangers either.
But still he knows most of everyone that Ahn Suho hangs around, including the girl that he’s definitely brought here and there from time to time.
So how come he’s never seen Pretty Eyes before.
You don’t forget such a face – or body.
And with the way they’re all talking, engrossed in one another, they’re clearly close.
Seongje is still staring and the one he’s intensely and unblinkingly watching seems to feel it at some point.
He turns his head slightly, still listening to whatever Suho was telling him, nodding meekly here and there.
His eyes find him immediately, like Seongje’s staring was so intense that he doesn’t have to search at all to spot him. Which, yeah, fair.
He holds his gaze for a few seconds more in defiance than anything. Like he doesn’t mind the attention, but lets him know that whatever thought he has in his head better remains there.
Seongje smirks slowly and keeps his eyes on him anyway.
The moment gets interrupted by a body crashing lightly onto him. A very drunk, shirtless dude who stumbled at the table.
Seongje stabilizes him and stops him from reaching for another drink, he doesn’t meet much resistance and soon enough some of what looks like his friends come get him, tipping their heads in thanks before departing with him.
He turns back to the couch.
But the eye-candy isn’t there anymore. Neither is Yeongi. Suho just stands there watching his hands as if they’re going to turn into something inhuman. Someone’s been drinking too apparently.
He starts to unconsciously search for him. Through every corner, through the dancing bodies, the chatting one, even the one abandoning themselves to very adult activities in dark corners.
He’d recognize those stockings and thighs anywhere now.
Finally, he spots him leaning on a wall not very far. Some guy leaning over him with a hand on the wall beside him. Gorgeous has a new cup in his hand, sipping it while looking at the other guy completely uninterested.
He keeps watching until the guy leaves, finally taking the hint. He sees Gorgeous rolls his eyes when the other is walking away.
Mmh, bitchy.
Like a princess.
For some reason beyond his comprehension, but clearly very normal for his drunk self, he starts to walk towards the godly man.
The other sees him before he’s there and for some reason doesn’t move away. Just hold his gaze and his brows pull faintly together.
Seongje comes to stand in front of him, he doesn’t like the image they’re painting, too similar to the one he was observing with the other guy hitting on the princess.
Princess looks at him, sips his drink and doesn’t say anything.
Okay. That’s great because Seongje definitely has things to say.
For sure.
Too bad he forgot all of them the moment he reached the guy.
“...Hey.”
Wow.
A real smooth talker, he is.
He’s really impressed with himself right now.
And the princess clearly is as well if the way his eyebrows rise in surprise — or bewilderment at such a lame opening, Seongje isn’t sure, but he doesn't blame him for it — is anything to go by.
He gets no answer. Fair enough, he wouldn’t answer himself either.
He clears his throat and tries again.
It really feels like those claw machines where you get nothing if you don’t try hard enough.
“You’re really pretty.”
Yeah. No.
That one he really didn’t want to say out loud.
But at least that gets him a reaction and a response. The princess's mouth parts in surprise, his eyebrows raise again before pulling himself together and frowning.
Even like that he looks blessed by the gods.
“Not into straight guys, move away.”
And–
Okay. Well that’s great because Seongje is not into guys. So great.
For some reason, that answer brings a short surge of anger through him. It cuts sharp through his inebriated mind.
“Can’t a guy find another one pretty?”
The other snorts and shakes his head.
“He can if he doesn’t spend half an hour watching him beforehand.”
“I wasn’t wa–”
“You very much were.”
After that the guy side steps him and he’s about to leave.
No, no, no.
Not like that.
Plea–
Seongje grabs him by the arm and the guy turns with a fierce glare going from his eyes to his hand. Seongje detaches him and raises both hands in surrender before speaking.
“Wait, wait. You said so yourself, I’m straight. That means I’m not hitting on you.”
The other remains unconvinced.
“... Right… So?”
“So doesn’t that mean I’m the better company tonight.”
“No.”
Flat out, unflinching.
Really bitchy uh.
“Right, because you seemed so interested in the ones actually hitting on you.”
“Your first words to me were quite literally ‘you’re really pretty’.”
“Looks like you remember them well. Especially considering that my first word was actually ‘hey’.”
The guy stiffen and frowns even more, a mean glare to top it all. He crosses his arm too, probably to accentuate his displeasure.
“What the hell is your problem exactly?”
“Come on. I’m sure I can make tonight more fun.”
“That’s not hitting on me maybe?” He retorts with a bite in his tone.
“I did not mean it like that. Straight, remember.” Seongje tells him while pointing at himself.
“You looked at my ass an awful lot for a straight guy.”
“It was an ass, didn’t know it was attached to a man.”
The other frowns even deeper, which really impresses Seongje. That’s an acquired skill to be able to express such visible displeasure. He’s obviously annoyed that Seongje doesn’t back down or is even able to talk back to him.
Meanwhile, internally Seongje, the sober version of him, locked tightly behind bottles of alcohol that holds spears, wonders just what the hell is he doing and what the hell is he trying to do or get.
But just as the guy seems unhappy that Seongje can talk back, well Seongje is very happy about that. Lately, rare are those who look him in the eyes and give him as much fire as he does.
“See? This is already the most fun you had all night.”
“I’ve been here barely an hour.”
“Exactly.”
The other was about to answer when a group of dancing drunks knocked into him, straight into Seongje who catches him instinctively by his waist.
He doesn’t let go of him and instead guides him toward a corner where there are less people. Thankfully he’s fast enough that the other doesn’t get the time to protest. He does however slap his arm away from his waist when they reach the wall that Seongje pushed them to.
“Don’t put your hands on me.”
“Relax princess I was helping.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Don’t do this, don’t do that, is there anything I’m allowed to do?”
“You’re allowed to leave me alone.”
“No that I can’t. “
He sees those mesmerizing eyes roll and he crosses his arm.
“What’s your name, so I can’t stop calling you all kinds of pretty in my head.”
His mouth parts in surprise and genuine confusion comes in his eyes. He seems to think it over for a second before sighing and telling him.
“Yeon Sieun.”
Pretty name for a pretty face.
“Well it’s an honor to meet you, I’m Keum Seongje.”
“I know.” He says with a heavy stare.
Seongje’s mood sours a bit because he knows that Yeon Sieun does not know him for his basketball exploits.
“I’m so—”
“Anyway,” Seongje cuts him off, already ready to change subject and regretting his empty hands, his best friend lying somewhere else. “What are you doing here Yeon Sieun?”
Sieun understands what the boy is doing and decides to go along with it, not really willing to dive into a clearly sensitive subject.
“That’s your question?”
Seongje nods earnestly.
Cute. …No.
“Oh I don’t know, what could anyone be doing at a frat party on a Friday night.”
Seongje looks at Sieun up and down, then with his head still lowered he meets his gaze through his lashes, too predatory-like for Sieun’s liking.
“You tell me.” Seongje says slowly, voice husky.
Sieun is a second too late to answer, pure disbelief and something that he’ll never dare to name overtaking him.
Yeah he’s dressed to catch eyes tonight, so what.
He regains his imaginary footing after some moments, “At least I’m not using this party as an excuse for my alcoholism.”
Okay, maybe a bit harsh. But he didn’t like the implied message of Seongje, or the heat that curled in him at the obvious checking out the other did.
“... I’m not an alcoholic.” It comes out weak and with a distant look not meeting his eyes.
Fuck I shouldn’t have said that.
Sieun fucked up a bit. He feels a tightening in his throat at the slight hurt in the other’s eyes. He knows he isn’t hurt by his words more than what’s behind them.
Sieun sighs already regretting it. But still he grabs the forearm of Seongje and drags him to a couch, not the one Suho is on, talking to a cute boy who seems to drink his words like Suho drinks his cups.
Sieun keeps an eye on him, Suho knows little limits, with food or alcohol.
He keeps his main focus on the boy who looks at him though, stunned at being grabbed and dragged through the sea of bodies.
Seongje has goosebumps rising where he’s held. Yeon Sieun’s hands are soft and small.
“Fine. You wanted to be company, there you are.”
Seongje feels his vision darken a bit at the corners from all the movement and the sitting down. He closes his eyes for a second to come back to himself and the only thing reaching him at this moment is the sweet smell of carnival cotton candy and warm waffles that seems to come from Yeon Sieun naturally.
He inhales and it brings him back to his senses, at least a little.
He really is starting to lose all inhibitions and falling into a hazy place.
Good.
That’s precisely what he wanted.
Fuck, maybe Yeon Sieun was right. But fuck him, and fuck Baekjin and fuck himself too while he’s at it.
In fact to prove to himself that he doesn’t care what anyone thinks, and also with pure spite, he reaches across the table in front of him and grabs one of the filled cups and downs it.
Tequila.
He ignores the stare coming from the side until he finishes the drink and puts it back down. Then and only then does he turn around with a cocky grin spreading. Probably more drunk than cocky but the intention is there.
“So Yeon Sieun, who goes to frat parties on Friday nights, what are you at uni for?”
“Advanced math.”
Seongje looks at him with disbelief and disgust in his eyes.
“Really?”
“I like math.”
“God, how can you look like that and be a nerd?” Seongje mutters under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m impressed.” He says very unconvincingly.
Sieun lifts an eyebrow, not buying it but doesn’t add anything. He simply lifts the cup that he still has in his hand to take a sip.
“What’s your poison?”
“Rum coco.”
“Sounds too fancy to me.”
“Easier to digest than the vodka you were drinking like water.”
Seongje hums though he can’t be heard over the music.
“If you were there for a very specific purpose,” Seongje starts once more, and once again looking him up and down. “Why spend the night on the couch with me?”
“First of all, who said anything about all night, second, you’re the one who begged me to stay with you, and finally I accepted because I pitied you.”
Seongje shrugs, in the end he got what he wanted, the reason is only an afterthought.
“I’ll take pity over indifference.”
“That’s just sad.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that a lot lately.”
He says it in such a deadpan way, dismissing it entirely, that Sieun can’t help but crack a small smile.
Seongje, despite the blurriness in his eyes and the slow humming in his head, sees it like it was 4K.
Yeon Sieun smiles like it’s a secret that he’s able to do so.
Lips going down for a second before rising, slow and shy, almost biting down on the smile like he didn’t mean for it to show on his face. His eyes turning away but they are the ones in which the smile shines brightest, much more than on his lips.
Seongje is stunned once more by Sieun tonight.
Sober Him still locked away by all sorts of living bottles of alcohol holding spears to his throat is as dumbfounded as one can be, asking himself a billion question, mainly: what the fuck am I doing?
“It feels like unlocking a new character.” Seongje lets those words slip out without meaning to.
It snaps Sieun out of his smile who looks at him with his chin raised faintly in judgement.
“Who’s a nerd now, uh?”
Seongje stills for a second.
So he heard. Pretended not to.
Seongje doubles over in laughter. Loud and shameless, opposite of the private amusement of Sieun. He laughs like he couldn’t care less who would watch or hear.
“Fair enough.” He says after having calmed down.
“What are you majoring in to judge me by the way?” Sieun asks with his arms crossed.
“Computer science.”
Sieun puts the most judgmental look on him he’s ever been graced with.
“And you called me a nerd.”
“You are. ‘I like math’ who likes math? Nerds, that's who.”
“You do math too in comp sci.”
“And do I like it? I mentally prepare myself like I’m going to war each time.”
Sieun shakes his head not willing to entertain this trial he’s being subjected to for the choice he made.
“Whatever.”
“Yeah, yeah whatever.”
Quiet settles softly around them, it’s way less awkward now and somehow much more friendly.
But Seongje starts to get restless, his hands are empty, his mind not fogged up enough and the music seems too quiet. He needs more. And unfortunately the great company beside him can’t hold him on this couch more than the need for a drink.
“I’m going to fetch a drink.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer and gets up and if he doesn’t look back it’s not because he doesn’t want to look at Sieun, but because he doesn’t want to know what kind of judgement may be in his eyes.
He does feel the heat of a stare following him the whole time though.
He reaches his favored table of the night and when his hand gets to grab whatever it can another hand comes to interlace their fingers on his. Dainty and delicate fingers, manicured pink nails.
His brain is too fried to react before he’s getting dragged, to the mess of bodies way more grinding than dancing now, once again. He feels like a rag doll with everyone just taking him here and there.
Though he did prefer it when it was Sieun who dragged him earlier.
This time it’s a girl, pretty as is every woman ever, red-haired, no glitters in sight to his disappointment and foxy eyes not doe ones to his bigger disappointment.
But his brain can’t find one good reason to turn her away, so he lets himself be taken wherever and lets her body attach itself to his.
Her back to his front, her arms thrown back behind his neck playing with his hair that reaches below his ears. He puts his hands on her hips and moves as much as his sluggish mind allows him to.
His eyes scan his surroundings, though it’s almost useless because no real information enters his brain.
However he does register the couch in which he left Sieun in. He takes a good fifteen seconds to remember that and another ten to realize it’s now empty.
Right, Yeon Sieun, that he left to go grab a drink.
He doesn’t get to think further on that when he feels the girl in front of him grinding on his crotch, electricity shooting up his veins at the contact.
He loses himself in the moment, lowering his head on her shoulder.
He stays like that so long that he could almost fall asleep, if it was not for the way he’s growing hard for the second time tonight, the constant movement of the one in front of him putting pressure right where he needs it. Him, meeting her moves, faintly thrusting with his pelvis here and there.
When he lifts his eyes again he immediately finds Sieun.
And for some reason he hates it on sight.
He’s against the wall at the far end of the room but right in Seongje’s field of view. And once again despite the fog in his brain it’s like he can see Sieun in 4K.
Though this time it’s hard to see all of him because there’s a body in front of him. Tall and broad, pinning Sieun to the wall. One hand on his hips, the other lifting his thigh – one of those magnificent thighs.
He sees the way Sieun has his arms locked around the neck of the man in front of him. The subtle movement of his body. His closed eyes and pretty blush. He’s clearly making out with him.
He watches it all, eyes never straying.
He watches as Sieun leans his head back, throwing it against the wall, licks his lips, his mouth parting around a moan Seongje can’t hear, he watches the guy lean down on his throat, Sieun grabbing his hair and more moans leaving his lips.
And he watches still when Sieun’s eyes open, meeting his instantly.
Sieun’s eyes widen slightly at being watched so intensely in such a vulnerable state but it’s gone in a second when he feels the guy at his throat lightly biting it, head once more going back against the wall with a silent gasp.
His eyes, when they open again, find Seongje once more.
Their gazes stay locked as Sieun gets his throat licked, sucked and bitten and as Seongje gets grinded on, hair pulled and breathy moans reaching him.
He sees the guy attached to Sieun thrust up and Sieun lips parting around a loud moan that Seongje still can’t hear. All the while, his eyes remain on him.
If Seongje’s blood rushes south way faster than the constant press of an ass on his dick did all night then that’s for him to know and no else.
After that, he can’t watch anymore. So he doesn’t. He doesn’t notice the way Sieun is still looking at him for a long moment before losing himself in desire, or the girl in front of him leaving at some point because his hands start to itch for another drink and so he had stopped moving.
He does notice himself walking away, like a third person view experience, going to one of the rooms he knows has another couch and crash down there before closing his eyes and letting the whole world fade around him.
He can feel the hangover coming in. And a familiar feeling creeping inside him.
Tonight was really not it.
𓁺
Morning definitely isn’t it either.
Seongje wakes up to the bright morning light spilling in the room he is in.
A room that’s definitely not his room. He’s half sprawled on a very uncomfortable couch and half falling from it.
He hears a few groans and whines next to him. He prays to all possible deities that he doesn’t believe in that it’s not what he thinks it is.
He opens his eyes and closes them immediately. Yep, bright sunshine right in his retina, better way to start the day.
When his eyes close, he’s hit at the same time by a very painful throb at the back of his head, an ache at his back and crack at his neck.
Great.
The headache comes in at once, like thousands of needles stabbing him slowly before turning themselves in the wounds. It’s horrendous but familiar and he welcomes it. With effort and a groan.
The second time he opens his eyes, it works. First thing he checks is the room to make sure the noises he hears are not two people sinning next to him.
Thankfully it’s not.
It looks like this room has been selected as a sleeping room for the too-drunk. He sees a few bodies sprawled out on the ground, some sitting on chairs dead asleep, one on the table. Nap room, nice.
He gets up with a great amount of effort, his body sore in places he wasn’t aware he could be sore, his head pounding like it’s making a whole beat-boxing album and his eyes are dry with his glasses askew and dirty sitting on his nose.
When he’s up and standing, he rediscovers the meaning of the word pain.
That headache forming on the couch was a cute kitten, this one is a tiger mauling him, chewing and spitting him out.
He closes his eyes again and like a flash a face appear in his mind.
Who the fu–
Oh.
Right.
With his eyes closed the memories of last night come back to him, not all of them but enough to know what had taken his time last night.
He remembers how he felt attracted to that person, until he found out it was a man, how he sought him out, begged to be his company, well not begged thank you, asked, insistently. Then spent some time with that same person.
Before taking off to drink only to be dragged for a grind on me session with a pretty woman.
Then with a wince and lots of confusion, he remembers watching across the room and getting even harder at seeing the very man who had compelled him being marked by another.
What the fuck was that about.
Seongje is not so toxically masculine as to refuse to admit when another man is pretty. And Yeon Sieun is not pretty. Pretty doesn’t cover half of what he is. He’s drop dead gorgeous, he’s one in a lifetime kind of pretty, he’s I’ll raise armies for you kind of pretty.
And that’s where the problem is.
Admitting a man is pretty, okay. Waxing poetry about him, no, not okay.
Seeing his body and thinking of how much he’d like to be buried between his thighs – plump, thick thighs covered in glitters – wanting to see him cry out his name.
What the actual fuck.
Seongje has never doubted his sexuality. Never needed to.
He likes girls, always has. He’s never even looked at a man for longer than a second. Not looked at his eyes or lips or body and thought of how he’d like to be written in all of those features like he did with Sieun.
He’s straight.
So why does Yeon Sieun seem so tempting.
The more he thinks about him, the more he realizes he can’t blame his drunk mind for that one.
fuck, fuck, fuck.
That can’t be happening.
Seongje, who always has a new girl on his arm, who enjoys seeing them, who enjoys having sex with them, who enjoys their long lashes and pretty nails and cleavage, is now attracted to a guy. To Yeon Sieun.
Yeon Sieun and his doe eyes, his plush lips, his tiny waist and thick thigh, his cotton candy smell, his bouncing ass in his tight shorts and his waist chain trailing on his skin like sin waiting to be unraveled.
Yeah okay, even by replaying the images in his head he understands his drunk-self.
He thinks he’s even getting hard again.
He needs to calm down.
He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and exhales once, twice and a third time before opening them and leaving the room all at once.
He needs to see Yeon Sieun again, sober and in daylight.
To confirm that it was a one off, blamed on his inebriated state and not some angel being coming to crash all his self beliefs.
First, he needs to find Yeon Sieun.
𓁺
It’s Sunday when he’s able to get a hold of him.
After he came home yesterday, ignoring the socks on the handle, the trail of clothes on the floor and the breathy sounds from down the hallways. He walks toward the room from which the sounds come from and promptly, not announcing himself, burst in.
He hears Baku screams like a little girl before grabbing the blanket and covering as much of Baekjin as he can.
Baekjin who’s sitting. On top of Baku. Back to the door and so to Seongje as well.
He turns his head to be able to glance behind. Unbothered and shameless.
Seongje grins wolfishly. And people call him unhinged? They should see this psycho.
“Was the sock not clear enough?”
Baekjin asks him and then in an absolutely unbothered way lifts his covered-under-the-blanket hips before slamming them down, Baku throw his head on the pillow and puts his hands on Baekjin’s hips, keeping him still, with a low groan followed by an embarrassed whine.
“Jinnie, don’t.”
Baekjin considers him before shrugging and deciding to follow with the command.
Seongje, who hasn’t moved from the door, has to realize that this doesn’t get him going. At all.
So what does that mean? That he’s Sieun-sexual now? That he finds anything related to Baku disgusting? Bit of this, bit of that perhaps.
He shakes his head, because that was more traumatizing to witness than him admitting he’s attracted to a guy.
And then as if Baekjin didn’t just fucked himself on Baku with Seongje watching, as if he’s not still sitting on Baku, Seongje sits himself at the foot of the bed.
“Uh? We’re a little busy right now, Seongje.” Baku says with a noticeable note of impatience.
“Oh please I’m sure you two have been busy all night long.”
“Indeed, yet, still here you are.” This time it’s Baekjin, who also sounds impatient.
Wow. He’s really blessed with great friends.
He’s having an existential crisis and they only think about fucking each other.
“Stop thinking with your dick for a second.”
“Now look who’s saying that.”
“Yeah that’s right, the guy who wanted to wet his dick all night is no–”
“I’m attracted to a man, like really attracted, like I already imagined me suffocating in between his legs and making him swear by me.”
He decides to cut straight to it. Because he knows if they get started on their roasting of him they’ll never stop.
And what a way to cut to it.
Their painfully straight asshole of a friend admitting he wants to sleep with a man, while they themselves are sleeping together.
Seongje should have been an acting major with his flair for theater and dramatics.
Baku chokes and jolts a little, which makes Baekjin move and drops his head down in pleasure with a silent moan alongside his hand on Humin’s stomach to stabilize himself. He also slaps him on said stomach, because now is really not the time.
Seongje doesn’t even notice them, too focused on what he just said, brows pulling together mouth parting. Speaking it aloud made it real.
“... Okay. Okay, let’s take it from the top.” Baekjin says slowly. With an exhale.
That makes Baku laugh quietly but he stops at once with the glare Baekjin throws his way.
“You met a man, he shattered your perception of yourself and now what?”
“Stop rationalizing my existential crisis.”
“Seongje.” It’s firm and commanding, and it definitely would remind him of Baekjin in his captain form if not for the fact he was still on Baku’s dick right now.
“Now what? Now what?” He repeats, the second time more a genuine question than a repeat.
“Well, who was he anyway?”
“Yeon Sieun.”
This time they both choke and promptly untangle themselves from one another.
Okay what the fuck kind of reaction is that.
He looks at them, one eyebrow raised.
“Sieunnie?!”
“Sieun-ah?”
They say at the same time and Seongje frowns. So they knew the princess and said nothing? Gatekeeping beautiful people now. Wow.
Really great great friends.
“Oh man I’m so sorry that he was your gay awakening.”
Baekjin nods at what Baku just said.
“Okay first of all fuck you. Second, I’m not gay, the fuck?”
“Right, you imagine fucking Sieunnie into another dimension but you’re so straight.”
“Yeah Sieun, just him, trust me I don’t want to come anywhere near you.”
“That’s exactly what you’ll do if you’re near me though.”
“Like hell, you’re the most re–”
Baekjin interrupts them by clearing his throat.
“So,” he starts with his captain voice, or perhaps his naturally don’t-interrupt-me voice. “You’re attracted to Sieun-ah?”
Seongje blinks a few times looking at him like he said the most obvious thing in the world.
“I mean, have you seen him?”
“Uh, yeah we have for a fact.”
“Yeah that’s right by the way, how come you knew him and I didn’t.”
“I was in high school with him.” Baku tells matter-of-factly.
“We went to the same cram school.” Baekjin tells him off-handedly.
“Then again, how come I’ve never seen him.”
“Likely you have, you just didn’t pay attention.”
“Right, so the first man I’m ever attracted to, I wouldn’t have noticed.” Seongje answers very unconvinced.
“Well, I saw Sieun-ah last night, he was there to catch eyes, which is not his usual go-to.”
Baku nods very earnestly at that. “Fuck yeah, I almost didn’t recognize him.”
They fall silent after that, Humin and Baekjin looking at each other in disbelief and then at Seongje in even more disbelief. Seongje is too focused on his thoughts to care or notice.
He has to see Sieun, as he said, plain daylight, sober mind.
Convince himself that if was a one off, a drunken vision.
“I need to see him again.”
The two others snap their eyes at each other, thinking the same thing at the same time.
“Not a good idea.” They even speak at the same time.
“Why not?”
“Uhhhh…” Baku says as intelligently as his brain is able. Baekjin is awfully quiet, not even coming to the rescue of his precious Humin.
Okay what the fuck is their problem.
“Okay let me rephrase this,” Seongje speaks up again after Baku falls silent. “I’m going to see him again. Period. Dot. End of the sentence. Not a question.”
Baku is about to protest judging by his expression but Baekjin throws him a look and simply says: “You do you big boy.”
Seongje stays seated on the bed for a little longer, not looking at them, thinking, planning.
Then light bulb.
“Give me his number.”
“What? n–”
“Sure there.” Baekjin once again gives in when Baku clearly disagrees, he reaches for the nightstand and takes his phone, clutching the blanket around his legs.
Baku looks at Baekjin with a message in his eyes that says they’ll clearly argue about it when the intruder of the room leaves.
Baekjin sends him the number through message and then looks at him very pointedly, “I hope you know what you’re doing. Now. Get. Out.”
Seongje doesn’t test the limit of the patience of Baekjin, not anything left to get out of them both now that he has all he could and bolts out of the room, but not before passing his head through the door right after leaving.
“Don’t be too loud, children, daddy needs a nap.”
He leaves before the pillow lands on his face and Baekjin can fully plan his murder/kidnapping.
𓁺
So it is Sunday that he’s able to see Yeon Sieun again.
After having been a creep through text for an hour, then begged for another three, when he told Sieun who he was, to not block him and then spend another five trying to convince him to meet. Sieun accepted on the condition that he was paying.
Seongje didn’t even check his bank account before saying yes.
Here Seongje was in a big modern campus cafe. Two stories tall, with wide windows and large tables, a library that only added to the ‘we’re students friendly’ vibes and all kinds of seats at disposal, chairs, armchairs, and padded window seats. And of course, drinks with prices that definitely shattered the whole ‘student friendly’ vibe.
He waits at one of the more hidden booths, more discreet, more private.
Perfect for an upcoming existential crisis.
His palms are sweating and he can feel his heart in his throat. He’s not nervous about meeting Sieun. He’s nervous about what he could feel when he does.
What if sober him still finds him as attractive in daylight as it did during nighttime?
What does it mean about him, about the way he lived life until now. How come he’s never been attracted to men, ever but now he can’t stop thinking about one.
He’s only ever been with women, slept with women, looked at women, been attracted to women.
Seongje passes his fingers through his hair and that brings back the memory of Sieun against the wall being devoured and pulling the hair of the guy who had his mouth on him.
Fuck.
To stop his train of thoughts, that have become painfully familiar since Saturday morning, he takes a sip of the hot burning coffee. The burn on his tongue brings him back to his senses.
He checks his watch and–
Yeah.
Yeon Sieun is late.
At least he hopes that he’s late and not standing him up.
His foot starts to tap on the ground and his coffee is disappearing at an alarming rate for the temperature it has.
Fifteen minutes goes by and three coffees on an empty stomach are drunk before Yeon Sieun arrives.
Surrounded by the sun reflecting behind him, Seongje feels like he’s either hallucinating from too much caffeine or witnessing the coming of a celestial blessing.
Then his eyes seem to focus on Yeon Sieun, and yeah, he’s sure he’s witnessing divine intervention.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Definitely not a drunk thing. Definitely not a lighting thing. Definitely not a party one either.
Yeon Sieun is in fact absolutely, breathtakingly, jaw dropping stunning.
He understands what Baku and Baekjin meant when they said he didn’t usually look like he did at the party. He’s dressed way more casually now. Baggy pants and oversized top. In soft colors that seems to accentuate his doe eyes.
His eyes who also seem to be filled with glistening glitters.
Seongje has to come to terms with the fact that he was indeed attracted to Yeon Sieun. He has to do it right before the boy gets to him. Lest he has an embarrassing gaping open mouth and drool coming out of it in front of him. Or worse tears in his eyes and hands in his hair at his world shattering sight.
He’s attracted to Yeon Sieun. A man. Not a woman. Like he did his whole life.
It’s like the world tilts on its axis just to mock him. He can feel the very familiar panic climbing into him. Though this time it has nothing to do with memories, or guilt or something else that looks like grief. This time it’s because he’s not sure who he is anymore.
He feels like his whole perception of himself is wrong, has probably always been.
He doesn’t like it.
His world has already changed way too much lately. He already felt the universe opening under his feet and taking him under into the dark abyss of nothing.
He can’t afford another change.
Not when he’s still processing the previous one.
Not when this one is questioning everything that was a constant in his life.
Consistency was the only thing he had left. Him liking women, and only women, was a constant. He needed it to remain that way.
And so it will.
So what if he finds Sieun prettier and more desirable than anyone he’s ever been with. He has found certain women throughout his life to be more attractive than others and didn’t try anything either.
Now wasn’t going to be any different.
He watches as Sieun goes straight to the counter and orders, his mouth moving too much and too long a time for a simple coffee order. Then he says something and points at him, directly, no hesitation. So not only has Sieun spotted him for a long time, he also opened a tab at Seongje’s name already.
Great. Shattering all I know about me and taking all my pennies. Really a little princess.
Said princess starts walking toward him after finishing his long order. Seongje does not look at how his thighs move when he walks.
Right before Yeon Sieun is near the thought that Seongje doesn’t know what he’s going to say or do or even want now that he has confirmation that he still desires Sieun occurs to him.
Too late the other boy is now sitting right in front of him.
His smell of cotton candy is still here.
And if Seongje jumps a bit when their legs brush then that’s no one’s business.
They just look at each other, both analyzing the other in the light of day, with their normal wear, silent.
Seongje realizes that he’s the one who needs to break the silence, he’s the one who insisted on this meeting after all.
“... Hey.”
Sieun blinks once at him very slowly, it reminds Seongje of a cat.
“That’s still your conversation opener?”
“What? … Oh, right. No. Well. Yes, I guess.”
Sieun just hums and doesn’t keep the conversation going, looking off to the side.
That’s cool, Seongje has to do all the work. Really cool. Cool, cool, cool.
Being met with Yeon Sieun’s profile is truly not what he needed right now too. Because now he can see the delicate slope of his nose, how genuinely plush his lips are, how his lashes touch his cheekbones on every blink. The faint blush that looks too natural to be makeup.
Fuck.
This is the recurring thought each time he’s met with the beauty of Yeon Sieun.
And truly fuck him. For messing with Seongje’s head, for being this pretty, for being so unbothered.
“I guess you had more vocabulary in you when your blood was filled with alcohol.”
That snaps Seongje out of his mental cursing and reverie.
“Excuse you? You’re not exactly very chatty either.”
“I didn’t beg for this meeting.”
“Neither did I.”
“... Right. I got a string of messages proving you wrong.”
“I asked, insistently, because you wouldn’t answer.”
“You really like to be insistent don't you? And I wasn't answering because you got my phone number without asking me, messaged me for hours on end and still didn't say who you were. Like. A. Creep.”
Seongje gapes at him. That’s not fair. Though it’s true. But still not fair. He had a mission, decency wasn’t going to stop him, never did, never will.
“I’m only insistent because you’re so stubborn.”
“One would take a hint then.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sieun rolls his eyes and huffs, annoyed and frustrated. Truly, Seongje was the only one able to pull such emotions out of him, or rather the only one who made him express them outloud. Usually he just contains them until he’s alone and can curse everyone’s name in the privacy of his room.
He’s ready to reply to that outrageous question when the girl that was behind the counter brings him his long list of food and his one drink.
She smiles warmly at them, asks if they need anything else and leaves when they say no. If he added a generous tip for her when he placed his order, well Seongje was going to find out when he’ll go to pay. He’s the one who agreed to pay after all.
Sieun looks at the two donuts, the three red velvet cookies, the one brownie with caramel topping layer, his mango-strawberry-blueberry smoothie, and the best of the best a peanut butter cheesecake. He glances up at Seongje who looks at all that with a bit of shock. He mutters something about ‘thighs’ that Sieun doesn’t hear.
Doesn't care either. Because he takes a bite out of that cheesecake and outright moans.
In public. In front of Seongje. Who jumps in his seat and looks at him with wide eyes. Unmoving, unblinking.
Before he clears his throat and closes his eyes for a second, when he opens them again, he doesn’t look at Sieun.
Sieun is too busy enjoying – savoring really – his cheesecake to care.
And when he licks his lips to chase the cream on his lips, Seongje does not look. at. all.
He coughs once and decides that he needs to fill this silence with anything before he starts to lose his mind, when he decided earlier that he wasn’t going to. Not on Sieun.
“Why math?”
If he finds the person who stole his ability to talk when in the presence of the other boy, he’ll slowly torture them.
Sieun looks at him, a small pout at having been interrupted in his heaven, and then shrugs.
“Numbers don’t lie. Once you get them, you get them forever. Universal language and all.”
“God, you really are a nerd. All passionate about it.”
Sieun rolls his eyes and takes another bite. He chews slowly, not willing to answer until sugar bursts on his tongue fully.
“I guess I am.” Is his simple answer
That stuns Seongje. Conceding was not something the boy had used him to. Interesting.
“What’s the end goal anyway?”
“Research and teaching. Mostly research though.”
Seongje isn’t sure if it’s the food or the subject, but Sieun seems more agreeable all of a sudden.
“Teaching?”
“And research. Teaching at uni allows that.”
“So you can create the future nerds while doing research on how to be the biggest one.”
“Precisely.”
Seongje scoffs with an amused smile stretching across his lips. Sieun also has the faint hint of a smile pulling at the corner of his eyes more than his mouth.
“Cool.”
Sieun shrugs at that, confident in his major and his future. Not caring for being judged or misunderstood. Though Seongje didn’t do either. He made fun of him liking math but Sieun could see there was no real ill intent behind his words.
“And you? Calling me a nerd while you’re probably going to spend your days behind a computer filled with codes and math. Who’s the biggest nerd here”
“Still you. But I, at least, will be the coolest, hottest nerd. The kind people imagine when they fantasize about nerds.”
Sieun eyes him skeptically, unconvinced. But he doesn't say anything. Silence falls over them like a warm blanket. Sieun enjoying his food, now attacking the brownie and Seongje looking at him.
Less with admiration and desire and more with something nice and almost friendly but not quite.
“Are you not going to eat?”
“And take away from your feast? I wouldn’t dare, princess.”
The nickname slipped out before he could think of stopping it, but he can’t bring himself to regret it.
Sieun is too much like a princess, pretty like one, unbothered by all the attention, smart and commanding, cold and detached to those he doesn’t care for. Seongje likes it. Perhaps a bit too much.
Sieun doesn’t.
He frowns with his brownie halfway to his mouth.
“Don’t call me that.”
Too bad Seongje can see the faint blush rising on his cheek, and descending slightly on his throat. So Seongje just hums but the smirk on his face betrays him.
Once Sieun has swallowed his food, he clears his throat, “Why did you want to meet anyway?”
Ah. The million dollars question.
What should Seongje say?
Ah, screw this, when has Seongje ever cared for anything, why try to make a lie when the truth could make the other more flustered than anything.
So he answers, calm and serious, “I wanted to see if you were as pretty as my hazy memories made you.”
Sieun is quiet for a while, replaying that straightforward answer in his head. He wasn’t expecting that. Sure Seongje had said it back at the party, but he was drunk, so his words meant nothing.
They still don’t, now. The boy is straight, seen with a different girl each time.
Sieun is not blind, Keum Seongje is good-looking, attractive even. He doesn’t go out with those cute girls simply by being nice, especially because he’s not. He looks nerdy with his glasses, but there’s too much mischief and amusement in those eyes that gives him an edge. An edge that says he’s as wild and shameless as he almost doesn’t look. Rough around the edges, sharp on the angles and soft where no one can see it. That’s Keum Seongje in all his glory.
So yeah, Sieun is not blind, but as mentioned Seongje is straight. Him calling Sieun pretty twice in less than forty eight hours doesn’t change that. So while Seongje is certainly pleasant to look at, and too smooth with his words – minus his ways of beginning a conversation – well him being straight kills all the potential.
But the fact that he says it so openly, so uncaring, as if calling a guy to be sure he’s as pretty as you remember is perfectly normal, yeah, Sieun doesn’t know what to do with that.
He lowers his eyes to the table for a second, two, three, then he lifts them to meet Seongje’s through his lashes. He knows exactly what he’s doing right now and how he looks, and he knows it’s working when he hears Seongje inhale sharply.
“So, am I?” He asks in a whisper, blinking slowly.
Sieun might not be interested in a guy who’s straight, it doesn’t mean he’s not going to play a bit into it.
Seongje looks at him, quiet, thinking of a way to answer the question like he did just before, once again deciding to settle on the truth.
“Yeah, you are.” He says it with a shrug, like it’s nothing, like it’s a given. Grass grows, sun shines, math sucks and Yeon Sieun is pretty.
The blush on Sieun spread more and quicker. His eyes lower once more on the table, though this time it’s more a reflex than a wanted action.
Okay, maybe he should actually stop playing that game.
But a compliment is a compliment, and somehow coming out of Seongje and in such a way, like it’s an absolute truth, well, sue him but it’s hard to not feel flattered.
“Then what now? You’ve got your answer.”
“And you’ve got your pastries.”
“I had to get something out of this.”
“And we both did. We make great business partners, see.”
Sieun has a small – very small – smile appearing.
“If you offer to buy me food if I meet you, I might be tempted to accept.”
Seongje stills for a second. It’s said as a joke, a sarcasm thrown in the wild, but there’s also an offer that if he plays right he can get. He doesn't know what he wants out of Sieun, not anymore. But his company isn’t unpleasant, Sieun is quick witted and unafraid to match his energy, that’s a change from those who either get angry or hurt.
When Sieun looks at him with his pretty doe eyes and talks back like Seongje is normal and not the mess he is lately, that makes him feel normal. Like everything’s the same. He doesn’t treat Seongje like a fragile cup who’ll break if the wind blows too fast. He treats him like a nuisance to his time, like Seongje existing in his periphery is an insult. Like Seongje should apologize for breathing near him.
Like a princess.
“If that’s all it takes.”
Sieun's eyes lit up as if he just offered him the world.
Food is the way to his heart, huh?
Not that Seongje wants to be in his heart, but maybe he does want to be in his life.
“By the way, how come all my friends knew of you but I swear I’ve never seen you before.”
“We share the same circles.”
“Yeah I noticed, which doesn’t answer my question.”
Sieun shrugs and takes a sip of his smoothie, “I don’t usually join them when they go out.”
“Why the change?”
Sieun shrugs once more, this time it’s more loaded, more stiff. Sensitive subject then. His eyes look off to the side of Seongje’s head.
“I don’t know, maybe I needed some change.” It’s said softly, with a hint of sadness.
Seongje recognizes that need for change, and that lingering sadness in his eyes that disappears too quickly, the one that says something was ripped away from him before he noticed, same as Seongje. Sieun is a kindred spirit.
“I get that.” And he really does. He doesn’t ask Sieun to elaborate, or explain why he needs that. It doesn’t matter.
Sieun meets his eyes for a second and thankfully there’s no pity in either of their eyes, just understanding. Sieun knows their needs for change, the ache in their heart is for very different reasons. He knows how deep the wound inside Seongje’s is, everyone knows, everyone heard about it, read it in the newspaper. Compared to that, Sieun feels like he’s misleading Seongje, his pain is great but not greater.
Still, he does know heartache, very different yes, but an ache is an ache. It’s merciless in its cut and mocking in its lasting. So he does not pity Seongje, that’s not what he wants, that’s not what Sieun wants for himself either.
“I have an idea then.”
Sieun doesn’t know why but he doesn’t like that tone of voice, or the mischief that’s always there in the other’s eyes growing fast at the ‘idea’.
“How much am I going to hate it?”
“A whole lot.”
“Great.”
“Hey, change doesn’t come when you ask for it.”
Sieun huffs at his fake philosophical tone, “What’s your awful idea?”
“You need your life to flip upside down, I need someone who doesn’t look at me like I’m a broken toy,” Sieun looks at him with wide eyes, clearly not expecting such raw honesty. “Let’s be each other’s change.”
In the back of his mind a voice tells Seongje with the smirk of a devil that Sieun already changed him plenty. He shuts it down immediately.
Sieun is completely still, one hand pressing on the plastic cup of his smoothie. The voice at the back of his head tells him that it’s perhaps a bad idea. A big one. But after what happened he wants to be reckless and say yes to things he’d never have before.
So he simply nods, still a bit shocked. He’s not sure at what. Seongje, his offer, his words, himself. All. None.
“Does that mean I’m allowed to keep your number in my phone?”
Sieun rolls his eyes, back to his normal-self, “You didn’t care to ask for it and now you ask to keep it.”
“Never too late to be decent you know.”
“Much too late after the way you messaged me for hours on end.”
“You didn’t block me though.”
Sieun frowns because yeah he didn’t but the thought had been tempting. But still, he didn’t and that’s the whole problem. So he can’t say anything back and Seongje knows it judging by the smirk playing on his lips.
Sieun would dump his entire smoothie on his smug face if not for the fact he’d never waste food.
When Seongje sees the other pouting faintly and looking away he can’t help but throw his head back in a laugh. He receives a kick in his shin for that.
It hurts more than a light kick should, he winces slightly but tries to hide it. It’s a failure, Sieun notices and his pout drops instantly.
“Shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, are you okay, I forgot that yo–”
“It’s okay, please don’t become like the rest of them.”
Seongje says it with his hand going down to grab at his shin and a small pained expression on his face, but his eyes, his eyes are pleading almost for Sieun to not treat him like he’s made out of glass.
“Your princess kicks don’t hurt, I assure you.”
Sieun frowns return, though it’s less meant and more agreeing to what Seongje is doing, turning his attention away from his leg, his pain and trying to make him angry.
“You’re never going to stop calling me that, are you?”
“You fit the name too well I’m afraid.”
Seongje lets go of his leg, the pain fading bit by bit, and he sees Sieun rolling his eyes.
“What are you doing Wednesday after class?”
“I have my TA office hours.”
“Excuse me?” Seongje looks so offended.
“What’s your problem?”
“You’re a TA?”
“I just said it.”
Seongje rubs his hands on his face as if he could scrub what had just been said. Now it’s Sieun who’s offended.
“Okay. Well, fuck you too.”
“No, no princess, it’s great that you’re the cliché of a studious proper boy, I love it.” He says sarcastically.
He mutters something else under his breath that Sieun doesn’t catch.
“You know what, whatever. Why do you want to know?”
“To celebrate the opening of the season Baku said we should go out. You should come.” After a small pause, he adds: “Don’t worry your suck-up hour will be done by now.”
Sieun frowns and even crosses his arms, Seongje is very lucky Sieun doesn’t waste food.
“Fine.” He lets out in a grumble. “Where is it anyway?”
“Baku’s, he even said he’d bring food.”
“Great, like that his apartment can become even more of a mess.”
“I’m glad we agree on certain things at least.”
Sieun finishes eating his donuts and then takes his half-full smoothie, his other donuts and his three cookies, getting up and urging Seongje to do the same.
At the counter he asks for a bag to take all that home.
“You really don’t want any?” He asks more out of politeness than real concern. Seongje sees that and snorts.
“You look like you're going to rip my arms apart if I say yes, so I’ll leave them to you.”
Sieun smiles small and satisfied, “Oh you didn’t have to.”
He doesn’t even look at him when he says it, and he says it in a way that suggests Seongje absolutely had to. The taller one simply shakes his head amused.
When the girl comes back with his bagged food, she taps on the register screen calculating the final price, “Including the tip you mentioned before.”
She smiles pleasantly, which means that Seongje is definitely going to feel that tip for days.
When she announces the price, Seongje is left to roll his eyes and Sieun looks at him expectantly. “Fulfill your role sugar daddy.”
Seongje pulls his card out and pays not looking away from Sieun with squinted eyes. When it’s done, Sieun lightly taps his arm and then leaves.
Leaving Seongje to stare at his back. And stare he does.
𓁺
Monday and Tuesday pass in a blur of classes, more classes and then a sprinkle of classes. Seongje is bored and annoyed. His head through the whole of those two days is filled with an itch that he can’t scratch. And a face keeps appearing in his mind.
He can remedy one of those problems Wednesday night when he sees Yeon Sieun again, who he’s been harassing once more through text, this time with full consent from the other. His contact was renamed as ‘Princess’.
The other problem though, he needs it soon. Because today once again many turned their heads on him and the pity in their eyes made him want to throw up. Because he’s been sober for almost two days now and his throat is dry for it.
He does realize that he might have a problem, but he can’t help it. Whether he’s tipsy or drunk it doesn't matter, either of those states numb him enough that he doesn’t notice people anymore, doesn’t notice the ache at his leg and the one at his back, and more importantly doesn’t have a head clouded with memories.
But he can’t.
Baekjin has him on watch. Well more like Baekjin is watching him. Apparently confessing that the last time he got drunk and is now attracted to a guy now warrants for having his alcohol consumption controlled.
Baekjin said he can drink, but with moderation, not during the day and certainly not alone.
Seongje knows it’s for his own good, it comes from the right place, but still fuck Baekjin.
He also said that Seongje won’t be let back into the team if he doesn’t comply.
Seongje sweated and bled too much for that stupid basketball team to throw it all away on a whim. So he complies, with grumbles and glares in Baekjin’s direction, but compliance nonetheless.
He’s not so deep into it that he feels like withdrawal, but he does think that most of his problems would easily fade away with a glass, or two, or seven.
Thankfully, it’s now Wednesday, which means Sieun tonight and drinks.
He asks himself which one he awaits most but dismisses it entirely the next second.
He’s currently sitting on the bleachers watching the practice come to an end. He doesn’t get to join, not now. You get a few injuries on your body that endanger the solidity of your bones and suddenly bouncing a ball on a field becomes ‘dangerous’.
There aren’t many people, the basketball team, the coach, the cheerleaders to the side practicing on their own and a few people on the bleachers watching with half interest.
The coach finally calls the end of practice and he hears a few groans of relief along with a few sets of shoulders dropping. Baku comes to slap Gotak’s shoulder with the enthusiasm of someone who hasn’t been running drills for three hours.
He tells him something, probably informing him of the party he’s about to throw at their shared place. Gotak turns on him, his eyes as wide as he can, face turning into anger quickly.
Typical Humin, since the very first disaster of the first party he had thrown at their place a few years back, he’s been informing Hyuntak at the very last minute so the other can’t cancel his plans. And bribing all his friends so they shut their mouths.
Gotak starts to wiggle around and try to hit Baku while yelling, ‘idiot’, ‘dead’, and ‘light of the day’ reaches him on the bleachers but that’s it. Baku has him on a chokehold, literally, and drags him off to the showers with a smile on his face, laughing off the threats and a few hits that land.
Seongje gets up once he sees all the players leave the court and goes to wait for them outside the gym. Leaning against the wall and lighting a cigarette. Night has already fallen and the quiet has wrapped itself around the campus. Not entirely, never, not with some students leaving the library, others some very late classes, some just hanging there in small groups.
The smoke is good, it burns his throat and clogs his lungs the right way. He finishes one and a second, slowly not burning through them like a chimney and then the whole team is there.
They greet him and they all start walking until they arrive at Baku and Gotak’s place. It’s a pretty big apartment, Gotak’s parents are somehow loaded. It’s enough to host the whole basketball team, the cheerleaders and a few more.
Once they’ve all settled, put the music on but not too loud because they’re mostly chilling and not partying, ordered some food and pulled the liquors out, the night can finally begin.
Seongje is on the balcony, leaning on the railing finishing his third and last cigarette of the night, Baekjin next to him seated at one of the chairs on his phone, typing away.
“... Am I allowed to drink, captain?”
Baekjin doesn’t glance up from his phone screen, “For now, yes. Abuse it, and I’ll lock our door tonight.”
“Now that’s encouraging me to get laid more than not drinking.”
“Oh yeah? With who? Sieun-ah?”
Seongje chokes on his cigarette, the smoke staying stuck in his throat and burning through his nostrils.
“Dude what the fuck?”
Now, Baekjin does look at him, appearing all impassive and all, but Seongje knows better, he can see that glint in his eyes that says he’s enjoying this far too much.
“Oh, sorry, you meant with a girl, right?”
Seongje squints his eyes at him not liking how his little problem of Yeon-Sieun-sexuality amuses him.
“Hey you know what? Go fuck yourself.”
“No thank you, I'll ask Humin to do it.”
Seongje gags over dramatically and turns his back on him, preferring the view of the city.
“By the way, you never told me what happened on Sunday.”
It’s asked in such a way that tries too hard to pretend he doesn’t care, that Seongje knows he does. Baekjin is a huge gossip beside his perfectly put together outside, though Seongje knows there’s more concern to his demand than curiosity for gossip.
“We met, he ate a lot, I realized that I’m definitely attracted to him, and decided that I will do absolutely nothing about it, we mutually decided to become friends and I paid for all his food.”
Baekjin remains silent after Seongje finishes his little ramble about what happened.
“I told you it was a bad idea to meet him again.”
“Okay, what the hell in what I just said spells ‘bad’ to you?”
“The whole of it.”
Seongje turns again to face him, disbelief and confusion on his face.
“Seongje you can’t accept you’re attracted to someone and then decide to become friends with them.”
“Well yes I can, good sir, because I don’t think with my dick.”
“Sure you don’t.”
Seongje huffs and throws the cigarette out the balcony.
“I also invited him tonight.”
He says flippantly and leaves the balcony before Baekjin can make the words he so clearly wants to say come out of his mouth.
He’s lucky because that’s at the exact moment he steps foot inside that Sieun does too. With him, Ahn Suho, who talks to Sieun with a concerned expression painting his features.
It looks like talking about coming to a party to Sieun is the trick to make him change his wardrobe. Gone are the baggy pants and shirt replaced by tight fitting clothes that show enough skin to beg for more but never revealing too much. This time no shorts but dark blue linen pants sitting high on his waist and fitting snugly over his thigh, along with a cropped baby tee that shows the barely hint of skin between his pants and his top.
The chain waist is a different one and is used as a belt sitting low on his pants.
Seongje is staring, he really can’t help it. Sieun might not be near him at the moment but he’s sure he still smells like cotton candy. He can also see the lip gloss making his lips shiny and tempting, the glitters adorning his cheeks and the eyeliner making his eyes pop more than usual.
He really is going to be Seongje’s ruin.
Ruin of his mental state and his libido.
Sieun doesn’t seem to be paying any mind to Suho, instead his pretty eyes scan the crowd. Not searching. Just looking. Who is there, what kind of crowd, where are the people he knows. Where is Seongje.
Seongje hasn’t moved much since he stepped back inside and soon enough those beautiful eyes land on him.
When Sieun finds him, he says a few words to Suho and ditches him before he gets a chance to react, to start walking toward him. Seongje sees Suho mid sentence stop, blink a few times, before whipping his head in Sieun’s direction, he looks offended at the dismissal but not hurt. Which leads Seongje to believe that it’s not the first time Sieun does that.
My god, he’s really, really a princess.
Sieun comes to stand in front of him and as he’s usual he waits for Seongje to speak first, like a princess waiting for those of lower rank to bow, so Seongje does.
“...Hey.”
For the first time since he’s begun his conversations with Sieun he actually means to say it, and he says it with a smug smirk. Smug about what, even Seongje isn’t sure.
Sieun simply rolls his eyes.
“You look really pretty.”
“So you keep saying.”
“Must means it’s true then.”
Sieun shakes his head halfheartedly. Seongje asks him if he needs a drink, but he doesn’t wait for an answer before making a beeline for the array of bottles, because truly he needs a drink. Sieun follows him.
He stands in front of so many options and it’s been so long – two days – he doesn't know what to choose.
“You said we should be each other’s change.” Sieun speaks after looking at him hesitate, Seongje turns to look at him, there’s something behind Sieun’s eyes but he doesn’t know what it is.
“I did, and you accepted, proof is: you’re here.”
“I am, I did,” he agrees, nodding, too agreeable for Seongje’s liking. “So tonight I’ll drink what you’re drinking and you drink what I drink.”
Seongje doesn’t know what to think about that, alcohol is alcohol, but it’s Sieun is worried about.
“If I have to drink coconut rum the whole night I’m gonna puke.”
“You’re gonna puke anyway.”
“Fair.”
“Besides, let’s add a rule,” Sieun pretends to think it over a little then looks at him with too much clarity. “Each time one of us drinks, the other has too.”
Okay, no.
Seongje knows he doesn’t consume booze the normal way. He does it in great quantities, but that’s okay because he does it to himself and now it’s like Sieun is asking him to do it to him too.
Seongje can’t do that, he’s not very nice, not very polite either and lacks a lot of decency, been called shameless too much for it to be a lie, but he’s not destroying another life, not even if it’s just for one night.
Then it hits him.
Oh, the conniving, sly, cunning princess.
“You’re doing this on purpose aren’t you.”
Sieun hums and shrugs while looking at the table like it’s the most interesting thing in the room, not caring that Seongje noticed.
“Vodka’s your thing right?”
He says and goes to grab the bottle and a plastic cup.
“And you drink it raw too, no?”
Seongje just looks at him stunned, while Sieun unbothered, open the bottle with his teeth – Seongje won’t comment on that, or the pink tongue he saw press against his teeth – and pour a generous amount of it in his cup, before taking one, two, three sips.
When he goes for the fourth, Seongje grabs his wrist rather violently, but Sieun simply looks up at him blinking innocently.
“I’m drinking that.” Sieun declares, matter-of-fact.
“No you’re not.”
“Well, I’m sure you want to drink tonight, so I have to get to it too.”
“... I’m not going to drink tonight.” Seongje says, firm and commanding. His whole plan of the night is fully ruined now.
Sieun really was his ruin.
But he could endure being sober for a night if it meant not dragging someone down with him.
He can already feel how dry his throat is. To remedy that he grabs a can of soda, pops it open and drinks one, two and three sips.
“There, I drank as much as you did.”
Sieun blinks a few times, many things in his eyes passing and shifting but never long enough for Seongje to grasp any of them. His wrist is still tightly locked in Seongje’s hand.
“So now we’re gonna drink what the other would, right? Well tonight I’m in the mood for soda.”
With those words, he gently moves his hand up Sieun’s wrist, the delicate whisper of a caress on his wrist makes Sieun's eyes widen. When his hand reaches the cup he pries it softly and puts it on the table. His eyes never leave Sieun.
They look at each other not moving or talking, Seongje’s eyes flashes in small bouts of anger, not really at Sieun but also a little at Sieun. While Sieun is unreadable and just nods a few times, mouth parted.
Seongje takes another can and opens it with only his index finger before giving it to Sieun, who looks at that action with a certain intensity that Seongje doesn’t notice, still bitter about his no-alcohol promise.
With their cans in hand, one head filled with bitterness and the other filled with something unnameable, they go sit themselves on one of the couches.
It’s empty of people and offers a full view of the room and still close enough to not feel like a too intimate place. Seongje really doesn’t want that.
They sit next to each other in a silence that is close to peaceful if not for the way Seongje’s shoulders are still a bit tight. Sieun doesn’t say anything, he lets the other calm down a bit and so he simply takes a few drinks out of his can, washing away the vodka that he gulped down. Thankfully he had eaten well before coming here.
Their thighs are so close that on every shift they brush and they can feel each other’s warmth through them too.
It takes a good dozens of minutes for Seongje to face the reality that tonight is going to be painfully sober. Though to be fair, it took way less time than that.
Each time he’d glance to the side and see how Sieun was sprawled out on the couch, once again like a princess, he would have very impure thoughts in his head, yes, but also a voice telling him that he didn’t regret banning alcohol tonight.
Sieun truly looked like a princess, pretty and posed, legs closed, hands folded on them, face uncaring. It looked like the furniture had bent to his every whim and the air had folded on itself to grant him a place.
Seongje inhales and exhales once and another time. Like he’s bracing himself. For Sieun, for tonight, for his mind and the sleep that’s not going to come after this party because his mind is too sober.
“How was TA hour?”
Seongje is the one to break the silence, voice a bit low.
“Mhh, it was alright, lots of numbers discussed, your fear I know.”
“Hate it.”
“You made it clear.”
The silence wraps around them once more, this time far more comfortable.
“How was practice?"
“I wouldn't know, can’t exactly run and hop around for now.”
“You still went though.”
Right he did tell Sieun he’d be at the gym and he’d go to Baku’s with the team.
“If you miss one class, don’t you make sure to get the lesson you missed?”
“I do. I also don’t miss class.”
“Nerd.”
“Creep.”
“... Is that why you went? To not miss anything?” Sieun asks after a second.
Seongje shrugs and takes a sip of his drink but doesn’t add anything, letting Sieun decide on the answer he’d prefer.
“Why did you dress to impress once more?”
“Why not?”
Seongje doesn't like that answer, because he knows there’s a reason other than simply ‘why not’. So he looks with insistence at Sieun, who doesn't say much, before giving in with a sigh and roll of his eyes.
“To impress, you said it yourself.”
“Impress who?”
“Not you, that's for sure.”
“Ouch, that hurts right in my teeny tiny heart.” He says with a hand on his heart and an exaggerated pained expression that conveys his sarcasm.
“You go to parties to get drunk, I go to parties to catch anyone’s eyes.”
“You sure caught mines.”
Sieun’s eyes widen and his head whips to the left, to Seongje.
Seongje didn't mean to say that out loud, but it slipped, too great an opportunity to pass.
He clears his throat to not turn this into something he doesn't want it to. He doesn't want Sieun. No, okay, he does want him. But that’s all this is. And the more he’ll learn about Sieun , the more his mind will clear. And he’ll be able to enjoy Sieun’s presence as a friend and not as his recurrent fantasy as of late.
Because he’s attracted to Sieun, party or not, drunk or sober, dressed to impress or comfortably, but that’s a body, a fantasy. He can want a body. The more he’ll humanize Sieun, which he has since the moment he talked to him last Friday, the more he’ll be able to look at him without feeling the need to dive head first between his thighs.
So far it’s an absolute failure.
Because not only does he learn more and more about Sieun everyday, but he also wants him more and more. If he was a bit honest with himself, he’d say the two are correlated, but Seongje has mastered the art of lying to himself lately.
“Anyway,” Seongje says after he made sure his voice wouldn’t waver. “You don’t just dress to catch the eyes do you?”
Sieun, who had regained his presence earlier, looks confused.
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody dresses like that and expects nothing out of a night.”
“So what if I do?”
It’s said defensively, and him crossing his arms makes it clear, Seongje lifts his hand in surrender.
“Wow, calm down princess, I’m not judging. You do you, or well, others.”
Sieun's eyes widen and his mouth opens in surprise at the audacity, then in the next second he frowns and starts hitting Seongje who doesn’t really defend himself and even laughs.
“Hey, hey, hey, stop that.”
Seongje says and when Sieun goes for the next hit, he grabs both his wrists and pins them against his own thigh.
He calms his laughs, and when he talks he’s a bit breathless while Sieun is fuming.
“Sorry, sorry, too tempting.”
Seongje still has some laughs escaping him, breathless and hiccuped, his hands still holding Sieun’s, who doesn’t look at him and starts to wiggle his hands to free them from the grip on them.
When they’re released, he shakes them like he’s trying to shake off something and huffs, a blush rising on his throat and cheeks.
They let the silence settle once more, both of them not really minding when quiet forms around them, letting it linger and warm the empty space around them. Some time passes, they talk a bit here and there, some people start to join them on the seats, some on the floor.
It’s mid conversation about how they could improve the team effort on court that Humin barrels in with the worst idea of the night.
“GUYS! Let’s play a game!!”
Some groans of protest arise, Sieun rolls his eyes and Seongje looks at Baku like a little child.
“What are we? Six?”
“One of us is!” Baku tells him while sticking out his tongue, this time it’s Seongje who rolls his eyes and whips his head in a glare when Sieun quietly snorts next to him.
“Come on! Truth or dare, a classic to embarrass everyone here. Consider it team bonding.”
“I’m not part of the team.”
“Me neither.”
“Me three.”
Sieun and two others say, along with a few others, even some that are part of the basketball team.
“You’re part of the family so it’s the same.”
Sieun gags at that and Seongje is the one to snort this time. Baekjin comes in at the exact same time, settling beside Sieun, greeting him and talking quietly for a few minutes. Baku is still trying to convince everyone to play his stupid game.
Seongje is transfixed by Baekjin and Sieun, because wow. It’s like watching twins. Too alike, too different. Same fonts, different strokes.
He doesn’t catch what they’re talking about but he hears things like ‘sorry’, ‘asshole’ and ‘classes’. Whatever that’s supposed to be about that.
“Jinnie! Tell them we have to bond by playing truth or dare.”
Baekjin doesn’t look away from Sieun or truly breaks from their discussion but he throws a “Sure.” loud enough that they all hear it.
Baku seems to think that means everyone automatically agrees. In a way he’s not wrong, it’s Baekjin who holds all the cards when it comes to them.
He yells across the room to gather more people and soon enough almost all those who are there gather around the three couches and two armchairs, some sitting on the ground and some on each other. Only a few ignore the call from Baku.
Someone pulls an empty bottle of beer from god knows where and puts it in the middle of the table. Baekjin gives it a glance and shakes his head only now realizing what he agreed to.
Sieun looks at it too and scowls at it, then he looks at Seongje like it’s his fault. Seongje just shrugs.
“We’re playing this game sober thanks to you, princess.”
Sieun turns back to Baekjin not even giving him an answer beside a small annoyed puff of air.
“ALRIGHT! Let’s begin. Me first.”
Everyone reluctantly, or some excitedly, Seongje sees one of the cheerleader claps, another shaking her head with a smile, a few guys on the team whispering suspiciously to one another.
Baku leans from his position on the floor in front of the table and spins the bottle, it lands on one of their teammates. Baku asks him the infamous question, dare is chosen and accomplished.
It goes on and on. Gotak is dared to yell something on his balcony, in his quiet neighborhood, as he mentioned. Baku has to tell everyone his most embarrassing sexual moment, Baekjin looking at him very unimpressed and telling Seongje ‘that wasn’t with me’. One of the cheerleaders has to kiss another. One of their teammates has to kiss another too.
It’s stupid and harmless and almost fun. That is until the bottle lands on Sieun. Then suddenly nothing is fun anymore. It’s Hyuntak who turned the bottle so he gets to decide on what Sieun will do according to his answer.
Sieun hesitates then chooses dare. Something in Seongje tells him that Sieun is used to choosing truth, trying to make a change in his life once more so it seems.
“I dare you to,” Gotak begins, dragging the last word in thinking. “Go sit on Yoosung’s lap and moan in his ear.”
“The fuck?!”
“Holy shit? Is it really Hyuntak who gave that dare?”
Baku doubles over in laughter, while others express their shock, more at the fact that it’s Gotak rather than the dare itself. Sieun freezes for half a second before he asks who Yoosung is.
Seongje is completely still. He’s not sure he’s breathing. Static in his head and a very uncomfortable feeling crawling up his stomach.
He knows who Yoosung is, he’s a teammate, he’s alright on the court and personality wise. That's not the problem, the problem is that Yoosung has been looking at Sieun practically all night long. Yoosung who openly likes men, unlike Seongje who doesn’t and who needs to get his head in the right fucking place right now.
At Sieun’s question Yoosung's shoulder deflates a bit, and Seongje hates how happy he looked the second before. His hands ball into tight fists. Some of the other guys point and laugh to show who Yoosung is.
Sieun shrugs and gets up, all confidence, and why wouldn’t he? He looks good, better than good and the way so many eyes are on him like he’s a star walking amongst them can only confirm that.
Seongje is left next to Baekjin on the couch, who keeps glancing at him like he’s going to do something very bad. At least it’s a change from his recent looks as if Seongje will blow up in a mess of tears. He's not sure which one he prefers, so he just sends him a glare so that he stops. Baekjin raises an eyebrow but then turns his head to look at Sieun and this time it's both eyebrows that rise.
So Seongje follows his gaze and his breath hitching in his throat.
Sieun is already seated on Yoosung. Legs straddling around the other’s. One of his hands on his shoulder and the other tangled on the hair at the base of Yoosung’s nape. They look at each other, Seongje can’t see Sieun’s face, his back to him. But he sees the adoration and want in Yoosung and he feels his leg jump. Baekjin notices too and nudges it to ground him.
Yoosung hesitantly places his hands on Sieun’s hips and drags him closer just a bit, gently.
Then Sieun leans down so his lips are at ear level. Seongje looks transfixed on the little he can see.
Sieun tilts his head slightly which allows Seongje to see the outline of his lips, and he sees them part, he sees that pink and wet tongue licks his bottom lip before he moans. Seongje can’t hear it. None of them really can, except the one who was supposed to hear it.
Seongje hates it. All of it. The sound he can’t hear, the lowered lashes on the little of Sieun’s face he can see, the tightening of the hands around Sieun’s hips and the blush rising on Yoosung’s face, the way his mouth part and his eyes search for Sieun’s. Hates it.
He can feel his nails biting in his palms.
He’s not sure why he feels like that, not sure what to name it. Doesn’t want to name it. He’s the one who decided that he shouldn’t feel anything toward Sieun, not even attraction. He likes women, Sieun is a man. He has no claim over him or anything like that. Doesn’t want to either.
He enjoys Sieun’s company, and that’s genuine, he likes how smart and sassy the other is. How studious and confident. How he looks at Seongje like a functioning human being and not a stick who’ll fall at the slightest puff of air. Sieun is a friend. That’s all he is, all he will ever be.
Sieun is also hot, pretty, with eyes that can drive anyone mad and thighs that Seongje can’t help but want to melt into.
But that’s beside the point.
He’s the one who told Sieun that he was dressed to get laid. Sieun didn’t deny it. So he has no right to feel whatever the fuck it is he feels right now.
After this awful dare is done, Yoosung tells something to Sieun in his ear, Sieun looks at him and tells him something in response that Seongje can’t hear. Yoosung's expression falls and his hand seems to make a move like he’s going to grab Sieun when he gets up from his laps.
Sieun walks back toward Seongje, unreadable and indifferent, he plops himself between Seongje and Baekjin like he was before. When he does that, it forces Seongje and Baekjin to move at each end of the couch.
“What a stupid dare.”
“Indeed.”
Seongje remains quiet, eyes not moving from Sieun’s profile.
Sieun leans forward and spins the bottle. Of course it lands on him. because since Sieun entered his life the universe decided that all possible things related to Sieun shall turn on him.
Whatever he decides, truth or dare, he’s not going to like it.
Sieun looks back at him, mischief on his face. Yeah no, Seongje doesn’t like it.
“Truth or dare?”
Sieun asks but honestly it feels more like a dare in itself. Just like Sieun decided to choose dare because he’s so used to picking truth, then Seongje will do the same.
“Truth.”
Sieun’s eyes gleam and Seongje hates it.
He also notices that everyone can see them, but they both haven’t looked at anyone since Sieun sat back next to him. It feels like they’re in a bubble of their own. Sieun puts one finger on his chin, eyes going up in a mockery of thinking.
“The first time we met,” he pronounces his words, too clearly, too direct and Seongje can feel the question coming. “Did you want to fuck me?”
It’s cruel, it’s unfair and it’s too much.
Seongje’s eyes widen behind his glasses. He registers nothing, no sound, no movements besides Sieun slowly blinking at him, calm and composed waiting for the answer.
An answer he already has if the way his eyelashes lower and his mouth part slightly mean anything. Seongje's deafening silence and stillness answer enough for Sieun.
Seongje notes that if he can’t hear anything, it’s because no one is talking. Not everyone looks at them thankfully, some are too engrossed in one another, others just disinterested at the game after all the rounds.
Seongje’s eyes find Baekjin’s, though he isn’t looking at him, but at the back of Sieun’s head with a displeased frown.
Seongje doesn’t understand why, not really at least. What he understands is that he can’t answer, can’t begin to form the word, open his mouth or make his vocal cords work.
The silence stretches, many heads growing bored of waiting and moving on to keep playing for some and leaving the seats for others.
Sieun and Seongje don’t move, neither their bodies, nor their eyes.
Baekjin clears his throat and gets up, “Sieun, a word?”
Sieun moves his head toward Baekjin and his eyes follow a second later and then nods before he gets up and follows Baekjin wherever.
Seongje stays there, looking at his hands, he doesn’t like what just happened. He doesn’t know why Sieun did that.
Sieun and Baekjin's conversation goes on for a long time because he stays on this couch long enough that his legs start to ache.
He sees them come out of Baku’s room, Sieun looking at him immediately with unreadable eyes and then back at Baekjin who simply nods. That spurs Sieun on who comes back to sit next to him.
They don’t speak for a while. Don’t look at each other either.
Sieun nudges his thigh with his.
“Sorry.”
It’s small and genuine and Seongje is confused.
“About what?”
Sieun looks at him then, straight in the eyes, brows pulling together.
“For that question, it wasn't okay for me to ask you that.”
“It’s a stupid game where you’re supposed to ask stupid things.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then I don’t get what you meant.”
Sieun sighs, clearly frustrated.
“Look, whatever it is you… want from me, it’s not okay for me to expose you like that, in front of so many people.”
Seongje doesn't like the pause Sieun made before saying the word ‘want’.
“Especially when you haven’t figured it out yourself.”
This one he says very quietly. Like he didn’t want to say it. Or didn’t want Seongje to hear it.
“Then why did you?”
“... I don’t know.”
Seongje simply hums, the strange feeling that he had in him dissipating slowly.
“Okay… Well what I ‘want’ is for us to be friends.”
Sieun lowers his eyes for a second, then brings them back up.
“Okay. Let’s be friends.”
Seongje nods and relaxes back on the couch. Feeling way lighter than he did all night, all week and truly in a very long time.
As has become their habit, they let the silence fall around them, not tensed, not with words unsaid. Just calmly enjoying a presence, something they haven’t been able to for some lengths of time.
The hours pass, Sieun and Seongje don’t really move, Seongje goes to smoke on the balcony a few times, Sieun goes to check on Suho when he notices the other drinking a bit too much. They talk about everything and nothing.
Seongje learns that Sieun has always been studious, went to the same middle and high school as Ahn Suho, that he met Baku in high school and disliked him on sight. But he warmed up and now he considers Baku one of his greatest friends.
He tells Seongje he loves sweet things since he started college because in high school he had a hard time sleeping and in college it was a different load of work, so to stimulate his brain he started eating sweets and because he never really had before it was like a kid discovering something. Except this kid now had a bank account which means he could supply himself plenty.
He tells Seongje he likes coffee, but he prefers something fresh and he hates the taste of cold coffee so no iced one.
He tells Seongje that he just got into makeup recently because Juntae, his friend, wanted to try it on him, because he ‘has good features’ and he really enjoyed how he looked so he kept doing it.
He tells him he likes math because he didn’t have many friends in his life beside Ahn Suho because friends, people and talking to them was never easy but solving equations, calculating distance and finding the value of 'x' was easy.
He tells him that Ahn Suho is the one who approached first, that Sieun would never have had the courage to, that Suho despite his happy smile, open heart and extrovert tendencies, was also very alone. That in each other they found something rare and precious: companionship.
Seongje doesn't comment or ask questions, but he sees the way Sieun looks off to the side and how his eyes seem to recall something more than just his first friend. But he sees it and that’s enough to let him wonder.
Sieun says he had a crush on Suho during high school, how he confessed and Suho didn’t know how to tell him that it wasn’t reciprocated. He tells him his heart got broken by the one who got to see him truly for the first time. How he avoided Suho for a few weeks before Suho himself showed up at his door and told him they were being ridiculous.
How it brought them closer than ever after they talked long and hard. How Sieun had never felt more understood and cherished than with Suho. He calls him his soulmate.
Seongje nods, he doesn’t have one, platonic or romantic. He never had that. He has friends, he has Baekjin who’s more than a friend but not a soulmate, he had someone else that he doesn’t have anymore. So he just nods. And let Sieun talks.
Their thighs brush sometimes, Sieun's voice is steady but sometimes it deepens in emotions, or he takes pauses to choose his words carefully, especially when talking about high school. Seongje understands that there’s some deeper history there but he still doesn’t ask.
They look at each other, sometimes at the room, sometimes at Suho both at the same time, when Sieun recalls their shared past. Suho would notice and give them a weird face while pointing at himself to which Sieun would just whip his head in the other direction dismissing him entirely leaving Suho offended once more.
Seongje takes note how he talks very little about the recent months. But he doesn’t ask either. Actually he especially doesn’t ask about that. Because he too wouldn’t want to talk about the last few months.
But Seongje does speak.
He tells Sieun how he doesn’t like sweets that much compared to him. How he enjoys playing basketball because he likes to read the play of his opponents and teammates, he likes to score and he likes to win even more. He tells Sieun that he never really intended to go to uni, it just happened and so he took the major that seemed less boring. How he likes video games and games as a whole, so the prospect of spending his life behind a screen looked cool.
He tells him how he’s not so sure anymore about studying, about comp sci, about his future.
He tells him how violent his early school years were. How he loved it, the fights, the pain, the cracked noses – his or other’s –, how he felt relief in his bloody and broken knuckles. How that’s the only time he felt alive even back then.
He tells him how he only lived with his mother but after the divorce with his father she was basically a ghost inhabiting her body. How she didn’t care how much time the school called for his fights, his grades, his behavior. How she almost lost his custody because she’d never show up to the appointments the school directors would fix.
He tells him how he learnt to live with it very early on, how living with a ghost was too close to comfort and so far from reach, like trying to grasp air with his hands, its warmth constantly evading him.
He tells him how it didn’t get better in middle school or high school. He tells him that he joined a so-called gang, tells him it was truly more some petty school bullies pretending to own the streets. But Seongje loved being part of something, he loved having a legitimate reason for his violence. And a place to exercise it.
How he met Baekjin in high school, how he was quiet and studious, “like you.”, how he looked at Seongje with contempt and disgust. How for some reason Seongje didn’t feel the need to smash his face on his fist like he did with those who looked at him like that. Like he usually did.
He tells him how one day he got ganged up on, five to one, and Seongje was good, knew how to fight but that night wasn’t it. He was getting his ass handed to him. And it was about to be a complete defeat, unequivocally his, when he saw Baekjin coming toward him and help him.
He tells him how Baekjin fought the three that Seongje hadn’t been able to, how he fought gracefully and powerfully, how he helped Seongje up and took him to the hospital.
He tells Sieun how after that he couldn’t stay away from Baekjin, he followed him around, shoved those who were mocking him because for some reason Baekjin never fought back even though Seongje now knew he could.
“I was like a lovesick schoolgirl, following him, eating with him, sitting next to him in class.”
He tells Sieun how slowly Baekjin warmed up to him, how he came to expect Seongje to sit with him in class and at lunch, how he would drag Seongje to a library and force him to study.
He tells Sieun how Baekjin is the only reason he went to college in the first place.
“He was like my Sieun and I was like his Suho.” He tells Sieun while wiggling his eyebrows.
Except he didn't have a crush on Baekjin, just respect and loyalty and then he came to like the silly sides of Baekjin that were well hidden. He says to Sieun he’s not sure he views Baekjin in the way Sieun views Suho, but it’s close.
When the night ends, Seongje walks Sieun until they reach the stairs that lead to the dorm, because of course Sieun lives on campus. He bids him goodnight and says he’ll see him soon. Then he leaves and goes home where Baekjin also is.
Which is surprising, Baekjin never passes up an opportunity to spend the night with Baku when he’s at the other’s place. He doesn't question it though and they both settle on the couch to watch TV.
Neither mention what Baekjin and Sieun talked about, the question of Sieun or the long, long conversation Seongje and Sieun had the whole night blocking everyone out of their bubble.
When Sieun and Seongje go to sleep that night, one earlier than the other, the same thought that they’ve learned a lot about the other crosses their mind. The thought that they’ve found a kindred spirit in one another is also there.
𓁺
This night had solidified something that their encounter at the cafe hadn’t. They knew where they stood. They knew about each other. Some trivial things, some profound. Bits of their past and their wishes of the future, but not their present, not enough at least.
But they grew stronger for it. Seongje would often ask to meet Sieun and they would, sometimes at this cafe they met after the first party, Seongje would always pay, of course he would. Sometimes it would be on campus, a bench outside, stairs that served more as chairs than stairs, armchairs hidden in hallways.
They’d just sit and talk, about their days, their work loads, the people passing by.
Sometimes they’d meet at Baku’s, using his and Gotak’s place like it was theirs. The two never minded when their friends gathered there, an apartment big enough to host a good forty people but only housed two, yeah Baku was always happy to see people inside.
Other times they’d meet at the gym, both sitting on the bleachers, watching. Seongje would tell Sieun about the players, their strengths, their weaknesses, their positions. He’d explain the game to Sieun, the rules and faults. And of course he’d criticize them, for all the missed plays, all they could have done but didn’t, all the wrong choices. Sieun would snicker behind his hand and it would sometimes catch the eyes of Baekjin who would glare at Seongje for making fun of his teammates.
Seongje pretended not to notice the way Yoosung would often look at Sieun, then at Seongje with eyes that would have too many things for Seongje to really care. He’d also pretend not to see the way Sieun noticed it too.
Many times they’d meet at Seongje’s. Baekjin would often be there, he seemed to do that a lot when they were just the two of them, if he had an opportunity he’d bring himself with them. Seongje knew why he did that, but he still didn’t like it.
When they were at his home, Seongje would teach Sieun how to play video games, though he would always end up bitter because Sieun is a fast learner and Seongje hates to lose. Sieun was too good and he took games like he took his studies, with consistency, pure focus and a need to be number one. Seongje had started stacking all kinds of sweets for when the other would be there. Him and Baekjin don't really have a sweet tooth, meanwhile Sieun could finish all kinds of candies, cakes and pastries in mere minutes. Even Baekjin’s eyebrows would rise on his forehead.
A few times, they’d meet at Sieun’s dorm room, never inside though. Seongje would wait for him outside his door and Sieun would come out after a minute or two.
And like right now, they’d meet at the library. Seongje pretending to study, Sieun pretending to ignore him.
Seongje had given up on his lessons and book almost as soon as they touched the library’s table. He settled for annoying Sieun instead. Which had worked for all of ten minutes before he caught up and decided the best course of action was to ignore him.
Now Seongje was just making fun of everyone in the library and Sieun was half listening, half writing down his formulas.
“Them, look at them!” He whisper-screams, Sieun lifts his head and follows his gaze toward two students, a girl and a boy.
“Yeah them! They definitely fucked behind the bookshelves.”
Sieun just rolls his eyes, already use to how crude and shameless Seongje was.
“No, no, look, her hair: a mess, his neck: hickeys! Sieun come on look.”
Seongje add a light kick to Sieun’s shin who gives a scathing glare but Seongje doesn't care and simply points at the boy and girl.
Sieun huffs and looks at them and yep. Seongje’s right, her hair is a mess, and his hand on his throat doesn’t hide the big hickeys forming in patches.
“You missed the biggest hint though.” Sieun speaks quietly, his pen tapping against his lip.
Seongje watches the pen push slightly against the plush of those lips before looking up at Sieun’s eyes with a question in his.
“His fly is open, all the way down.”
Seongje eyes widen with dramatic flair and looks at the boy again, when he sees it he gasps, not loud but still too loud for the library. They receive a few ‘shhh’ in their directions, to which Seongje shows them his middle and Sieun tries to not look at anyone.
Too shameless sometimes. Like the world must accommodate to him and not the other way around.
“How dare they in such a fine establishment.”
Seongje says with a hand to his heart and Sieun has a small smile on his face against his will. Seongje sees it and smiles too.
“Are you done soon, princess?”
“You’re free to go if you’re bored.”
“Sieun it’s past eight already and we’ve been stuck in between books for almost two hours now.”
“I happen to like that.”
“Of course you do. But you shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Books are dangerous, what if one falls upon you and sends you into a coma?”
Sieun looks at him with his most deadpan expression and dives back down on his paper. Seongje groans and flop on the table.
Thankfully for Sieun, he stays quiet a moment. But of course it doesn’t last.
“See those at the table at the back, they’ve been here since before us.”
Sieun knows who he’s talking about, he saw them when he entered the library and he sees them often enough here.
“You know what that means?”
Sieun sighs and looks up again, putting his pen down.
“What?”
“That there are bigger nerds than you here.”
Sieun pauses for a second and then kicks him in the shin. Unlike last time, it doesn’t hurt much more than the initial hit. Seongje doesn’t go to grab his leg or wince at it either. He’s getting better. Instead he laughs quietly.
“Hey, that's good news, that means not all is lost for you.”
“Speak more and I’ll stab you with my pen.”
“Promise?” He says earnestly and too genuine.
Sieun shakes his head, he forgot about the stories Seongje told him, of him liking pain and being hurt, how it activates something in his brain that feels too much like pleasure and adrenaline. Sieun scoffs.
Unbelievable.
He goes back to his work and to ignore Seongje for as long as the other allow it. Which means not long.
“Oh those two. Yeah for sure. Those two just smoked, and I guarantee you it wasn’t nicotine.”
Sieun doesn’t look.
“Red and droopy eyes, goofy smiles, relaxed postures, no one is this happy to be there at this hour.”
That’s something Sieun has noticed about Seongje, since he gave him a breakdown on each player of the basketball team, Seongje is observant. Very much so. He notices too much at times and he knows he is too.
“Come on TA, look, doesn't that piss you off that some honorable students are smoking the devil’s lettuce in this sacred place.”
Sieun can feel his eyebrow tick and when he looks up again Seongje is already watching him. He closes his eyes for a second with a long inhale before looking to where Seongje was pointing.
Yeah those two dudes are definitely not all there.
He looks at Seongje who wiggles his eyebrows and Sieun scowls at him.
“I’m trying to work here.”
“I know, and I am trying to make you stop.”
“By pointing at every misdeeds of others?”
“ ‘Misdeeds’? What are we? The high society of England?”
Sieun doesn’t dignify that with an answer and goes back to writing, shutting down Seongje completely.
He gets bored of being ignored pretty fast and instead starts to hum and sing nonsense. It grates on Sieun’s nerves pretty quickly. And he can’t do it anymore.
He gathers all his sheets and pencils, closes his books shut, puts them in his backpack and stands up. He doesn’t look behind, he knows Seongje will follow. And Seongje does, with a relieved face and a pleased smile at victory.
When they step foot outside, Seongje takes a deep breath, theatrical and overly dramatic, Sieun doesn’t stop a second and keeps walking.
Sieun walks through campus and goes to sit on a table near some trees where lights are just shy of shining. His feet on one the benches and he pulls out his phone.
Seongje just stands in front of the doors of the library for a moment, watching Sieun, watching how he sits himself on the table, knowing perfectly well that Seongje will follow. The worst part is that Seongje will follow and does not mind.
He’s about to climb down the stairs to follow the boy who has him wrapped around his fingers, when his phone buzzes, twice signaling a message and before he could read it his phone starts buzzing constantly, a call.
Baekjin.
That’s weird, Baekjin prefers to message and wait rather than call.
He picks up immediately and it’s even weirder. Baekjin doesn’t speak first.
“Jin?”
“... Seongje.”
Okay, what’s going on? Baekjin answers in something close to a whisper, too small and with a certain lack of confidence that isn’t Baekjin at all.
Seongje lifts his head to look at Sieun, still sitting on the table, on his phone. He lifts his head too and looks at Seongje, in question at first then when he sees the phone near Seongje’s ear and his worried face, he nods and goes back to his phone.
“Are you alright?”
“I don’t know.”
Seongje was starting to get really worried. Baekjin used to have bad episodes like this one, but they got rare throughout the years. And they were never without cause.
“Do you want me to come home?”
Seongje asked but truly it was to give Baekjin some semblance of control, because he definitely was going home once the call ended.
“I don’t want you to do something you don’t.”
“The fuck? I’m offering, I don’t feel obligated.”
“I know you value your time with Sieun.”
Seongje paused. Okay he did like to spend time with Sieun, but he would not prefer to stay with him if Baekjin needed him, which he clearly did right now.
“Okay and? If you need me I’ll be there, you know it.”
“...”
“Jinnie?”
He heard a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the phone.
What the fuck?
Oh.
Oh. He was going to kill Baku.
“It’s him isn’t it?”
“... No.”
It was too small and too quiet for it to be true.
“I’m coming home.”
“Seongje you don’t ha–”
Seongje just hangs up, anger slowly building up inside him and not ready to hear more protest when he wasn’t really asking in the first place.
He’s going home. But first he needs to walk Sieun home.
Sieun who was still sitting on the table, legs dangling this time in a senseless rhythm. Sieun who wasn’t on his phone anymore. Sieun who had some man talking to him. Close and getting closer.
Sieun was too far for him to see his face but just with his body language Seongje could see Sieun wasn’t the most comfortable. The other man was taller and bulkier, not that much but next to Sieun most of everyone looked taller and bulkier. And definitely not more than Seongje.
Seongje was already getting angrier by the second since he ended his call, but with this sight he’s sure smoke was coming out of his ears. His fists were tightly balled and deep down he hoped whoever that was that was making Sieun uncomfortable would not let go. Like that he’ll have a legitimate reason to let go of his rage through his punches.
He starts walking toward Sieun, not too fast but not too slow either. He let the fresh air of the night cool him, but it wasn’t enough. And the more uncomfortable Sieun looked, the more Seongje wanted to hit something, or preferably someone, preferably the one in front of Sieun right now.
When he’s close enough he can finally see Sieun’s face, or rather his profile and without a doubt he doesn’t like whatever’s happening. He looks displeased and ready to run at the opposite end of the world.
His eyes dart around looking for anything to escape this conversation, and they land on Seongje who’s closing in now. He notices that Seongje looks tense and angry but has bigger problems to care for right now. Namely the man in front of him.
Said man has a hand on the table by Sieun’s hips and he’s leaning far too close, while Sieun tries to back down as much as he could. The man doesn’t look angry or happy or even forceful. Which is weird.
He looks at Sieun with familiarity, and Sieun doesn’t punch him in the throat which definitely means he’s familiar. Seongje doesn't care.
Seongje is a few steps away when he starts to catch bits of their conversations.
“... Come on Sieun, I didn’t mean it.”
“Well that changes everything.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Like what.”
“All bitchy.”
Sieun goes for a slap when his wrist gets caught by the other. Seongje, who stands right there, ready to punch and then asks questions later, is about to lose it and paints his knuckles red.
“I saw you at a few parties over the weeks, you’ve changed in a way I like.”
Okay.
That’s it. Whoever that fucker is, Seongje is about to mold his face in a whole new shape.
He doesn’t get to. Sieun notices him appearing like a shadow behind Asshole.
“Seongje!”
Sieun says loudly, catching everyone off guard. Seongje not used to Sieun calling him with such relief and joy and the other at having been interrupted and another presence stealing Sieun’s attention.
Everyone stays there, looking at one another in a very tense silence for about three seconds.
“... Sieun.”
“Took you long enough, I was freezing out there.”
“My bad.”
Seongje can’t form longer sentences, his fury bubbling underneath his quiet words and emotionless face. Sieun was acting a little too bubbly for Seongje’s liking.
The other guy is stunned, at Seongje’s presence and stealing of Sieun’s attention, at Sieun knowing such a dude, at Sieun looking all too happy that Seongje is there.
“And how the fuck do you guys know each other?”
He talks for the first time since Seongje stepped closer, now standing next to Sieun, almost in front of him, almost stepping on the guy and making him face his back.
Seongje swats his arm that was too close to Sieun's hip on the table and instead puts his own. He also forces Sieun's wrist free from the grip it was still in. Both Seongje and the other note how Sieun seems to relax further at that. Seongje’s anger goes down a notch at Sieun's relief, something inside him preens, but the need for violence is still lurking at the corners of his mind, waiting for the right moment to let his fists and need for blood speak for him.
The other frowns entirely too displeased and crosses his arm at the action.
Seongje doesn’t answer. He figured that the two are not strangers, so he lets Sieun handle the situation, he’ll go along with whatever.
“We’re friends.”
The other man scoffs.
“Right. Friends.”
That pulls a frown out of Sieun.
“What’s it to you anyway?”
The other gapes a bit in response, his face flushes faintly in the night too.
“You two just seem close for friends.”
“Okay.”
That’s all that Sieun answers, not elaborating, not specifying or denying. Seongje smirks at that. Such a princess answer. Let the other bathe in his frustration. It’s not up to Sieun to appease his mind or whatever.
Sieun turns his head to Seongje, in another clear dismissal at the other who blabbers and flails his arms a bit.
Seongje adores this way Sieun has of dismissing, shutting out and ignoring anything he deems unworthy, once more like a princess. He can’t pride himself enough for this nickname that fits so perfectly the pretty boy by his side.
“Everything’s alright?”
Sieun asks him and Seongje understands he refers to his call that had left him in a bad mood.
Seongje is brought back to Baekjin, probably sitting in the dark of their apartment. Quietly. Alone. Waiting for Seongje, who had promised to come home. So he nods once to Sieun.
“Baekjin waits for me at home, let me walk you to yours so I can go to him, yeah?”
Sieun looks slightly surprised at the tight set of his shoulders and the simmering anger in his eyes. But especially at the worry and concern in his tone for his friend. Sieun knows he wouldn’t even have the decency to walk Seongje home if Suho needed him so he quietly agrees.
He’s about to hop down when the one who was bothering him seems to remember that he existed.
“Wow, wow we were talking.”
“Were you now?”
It’s the first time Seongje talks to him, or acknowledges him.
“Mind your own business,” he says with a dark look to Seongje and then turns back to Sieun. “Come on baby, let’s finish our talk.”
Baby?
Sieun better holds Seongje back because he’s about to throw some wild hands right now.
“No thank you.”
“Sie–”
He doesn’t get to finish, way too stunned at the way Sieun puts two fingers inside the front of the collar of Seongje’s shirt and pushes him down on Sieun.
Seongje doesn’t get to react or process what’s happening before his lips meet the two softest, plushiest lips he’s ever kissed. The one he had wanted to taste since he first saw them. The one he’s currently tasting now.
He stills a second. And before he knows it, he closes his eyes and kisses back.
His lips move over Sieun’s tainted lip gloss mouth. It makes the moves of his lips sticky and sweet and Sieun answers with just as much vigor.
His hand that was on the table moves higher to keep Sieun seated on the table by his hip, his other hand coming to rest lightly on Sieun’s thigh.
God, those thighs.
He had dreamt of them, often. Thought about dying between them too often. And became hard shamefully at the image of them in the privacy of his room too many times.
Sieun’s arms loop behind his neck, one of his hands pulling the hair at the nape of his neck.
His lips keep moving on Sieun’s, sometimes lightly biting on the bottom one and dragging it very slightly out. He licks the lip gloss off his lips, going slowly over the top one. Sieun is pliant and lets him do as he pleases.
He kneads his hand on the thigh and it’s as soft and fleshy as it looks, and because he’s been obsessing over them for so long, he digs his fingers in the pliable tender meat. It makes Sieun gasps both in surprise and the echo of pain.
Seongje uses this opportunity to chase the tongue he’s been observing also for a long time. The glide of their tongues is wet and messy. Seongje never lets Sieun’s tongue go for too long, claiming it with his own, licking at the roof of his mouth.
Seongje moves without thinking to stand between Sieun’s legs, using his hand firmly closed around his thigh to push it apart, the other opening on its own.
He completely forgets about the man standing behind them, watching all this unfold, he forgets that it’s Sieun he’s devouring right now, he forgets that Sieun is a man, a friend, and someone he swore to himself to not indulge in. Because it was a man.
His anger of before is also forgotten, has been since his lips tasted the lip gloss on Sieun.
He loves the way Sieun tastes, his lips, his tongue, his hands on his hair, his legs parting for him, his thighs warm and welcoming and inviting him to sin.
His tongue licks at the seam of Sieun’s lips and that makes a low sound coming out of the smaller boy. It vibrates on their tongues that are once more dancing with each other. Seongje feels it. And his hands tighten on the boy.
He’s about to lift the hand on his hip to his jaw to tilt his head upright so that he can thrust his tongue inside that tempting mouth.
When a throat clears behind them.
Like glass breaking.
Seongje opens his eyes, lets his tongue drag out and looks at Sieun in awe, want and something close to fear. Sieun’s eyes also open carefully, like he was reluctant to break the moment.
But too late.
The moment has passed. And quite brutally for Seongje.
He looks at Seongje with too much carefulness and something that looks too much like regret for Seongje’s liking.
He hates that look more than anything.
He hates it.
Hates that Sieun is looking at him like he’s going to break.
Sieun had never looked at him like that. Not ever, that was what made him even more different than everyone else.
He can’t bear such a look so he lets his eyes drift apart, and decide that even that is too much. So he just puts his head on Sieun’s shoulder.
Sieun freezes for a second, before his hand still in his hair starts to gently caress it instead of pulling it like a few seconds ago. His other hand subtly rubs slow circles on his back.
Seongje hates that too.
Sieun is comforting him.
For what.
There was nothing that needed comfort.
“Just friends huh?”
Right, there was someone else here. Someone that saw everything. That saw Seongje kissing Sieun. A man. Seongje, a straight man kissing another man. Seongje closes his eyes forcefully at that.
“Fuck off, Dongmin.”
It’s Sieun who speaks, cold and with veiled fury. Seongje is not sure he ever heard Sieun cuss before. He’d probably make fun of that if he didn’t feel like he couldn’t breath.
“I just wan–”
“I said: fuck off.”
He hears the other says something under his breath before leaving with a bitter: “Whatever, fucking bitch.”
Again, if Seongje wasn’t on the verge of an existential crisis, he’d have punched the fucker to an inch of his life for that.
When he’s completely gone, Sieun lifts his head.
Seongje looks so lost and so far away at the same time. Sieun doesn’t know what to do or say. So he just says the first thing he can think of.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry."
Seongje is pulled back to reality by those words and he looks at Sieun, but also not really.
“About what?”
It’s said in such a low voice, like Seongje was about to cry. But his eyes are dry and they don’t look close to crying.
“I shouldn’t have forced you to do that. It wasn’t okay at all. I’m so sorry. I just wanted him to leave. I’m so so sorry.”
Seongje nods because he doesn’t know what to say. There’s nothing to say. He kissed back, he loved it. Fuck he loved it so much.
What scares him is how right it felt. How it felt like it was a long time coming. How he wanted more. How he wasn’t sure how to live normally now that he had tasted Sieun.
How to understand who he was now that he felt like it was the greatest kiss of his life and that it was with a man.
Fuck.
What the fuck.
Sieun looks at him for a second longer, something on his face that looks like hurt and regret. The two for very distinct reasons.
“I’m really sorry Seongje.”
Seongje nods once more.
“You need to go home, Baekjin is waiting, you said. I’ll go home by myself, it's okay.”
Sieun’s voice is clear but not loud like he’s trying to not pierce the calm that’s around them, afraid that doing so would make Seongje blow up.
Seongje just nods and detaches himself from Sieun. Heart heavy and head pounding. He doesn’t like how it feels like goodbyes. It’s not. Him and Sieun will see each other like they’ve done for the past few weeks.
It’s just a kiss. It doesn’t mean anything. It changes nothing. It’s okay.
Seongje just needs a good night's sleep and it will all be okay.
Sieun hops down the table and with one last look full of pain and still regret he starts to walk to his dorm.
Seongje stands there, not really looking at Sieun, not really seeing him.
He stands for a few minutes before his phone buzzes and he remembers that Baekjin is not okay. And he’s waiting at home. And has for close to half an hour.
He goes home, head lowered with the weight of too many questions in it and heart heavy with a feeling he couldn’t name.
𓁺
When Seongje got home Baekjin was sitting on the couch, with no lights or anything else on.
He wasn’t crying, or drinking, or any sign of wallowing sadness.
Well, Baekjin looking into the emptiness of eternity in front of him, unblinking, unmoving, was his sign of wallowing sadness.
Seongje shook his head and decided that whatever little crisis was awaiting him, could wait a little longer. Baekjin was priority.
So he walked to light up a small desk lamp that didn’t violently lit up the room but bathed it in a warm glow and sat next to him. And it was quiet for a lot of time.
Then, Baekjin talked.
How he was getting out of class and saw Baku with someone else behind some stairs, close, too close and clearly intimate. Laughing together.
Seongje had gotten angrier. His fury from earlier coming back with a renewed force.
“So he’s cheating on you, in open daylight?”
“It’s not cheating if we’re not dating. And also never define what we have as exclusive.”
“Okay so he’s a whore.”
“Seongje.”
“He has you if he wants to have sex and he still decides to go see somewhere else?”
“But that’s the point, no? I’m just here for sex. What if he wants more with someone else? With her?”
“Oh bullshit. This motherfucker is so obviously down bad for you. And you are for him.”
Baekjin said nothing.
Seongje knew their history ran long and deep, going from all stages. Friends, rivals, enemies, friends with benefits, rivals again, friends again, with benefits again. And on and on and on it went. Since they were children.
Baekjin had briefly talked about it years ago when Seongje was in his glued-to-Baekjin era in high school. But he had left a lot of details to himself, some for privacy and some because he wanted to keep close to his own heart.
He knew what they had now was not a relationship, as in a couple, it was more than a simple friendship with benefits but less than a romantic relationship.
He didn’t know why because they were so painfully obviously in love with each other. But when he asked Baekjin once, he had just said ‘it’s complicated’.
Fuck yeah it was, everything that came to them was complicated.
“He’ll come back, he always does.”
Baekjin said, with too much conviction and it was just sad to see.
“And you’ll let him once more, won’t you?”
Seongje said with underlying anger and Baekjin had shrugged in a way that meant everything it needed to.
“And when he’ll leave again and you end up heartbroken like that once more, then what?”
Baekjin thought it over for a minute, “Then I’ll be heartbroken and wait for him to come back.”
“That’s just pathetic.”
Seongje hadn’t meant to say that, but it was the truth, cruel and merciless, but true nonetheless. Baekjin didn’t take offense, probably had come to the same conclusion a long time ago.
“I’m okay with that.”
Was all he said in a whisper before getting up and going to his room.
Leaving Seongje to ponder on his own problems in the room that was still too dark.
And he did.
Almost the whole night he stayed there on the couch.
Letting the whole kiss replay over and over. His feelings. His questions that he refused to answer. The look on Sieun's face when they separated.
When the morning light was slowly spilling in the room, Seongje got up to the kitchen and fetched a bottle of alcohol, not looking at what it was, not caring. And drank it all the way back to his room, and in his room too.
When he finished it, he was half sprawled on his bed, his clothes still on, his head pounding, Sieun’s look before he left haunting him and his mind buzzing with the effect of alcohol.
In another room, sat Sieun on his bed.
He had sat there the whole night after having taken a shower and changed for the night.
He sat on top of his cover, his knees pulled to his chest and his hand touching lightly his lips.
He too couldn’t stop reliving the kiss over and over and over.
It had felt good, so, so good.
And it wasn’t fair.
Seongje was straight. He flirted with almost every girl that came his way, Sieun had seen it over the last few weeks they spent together. He looked at them like he never looked at any man.
And yet when he had kissed Sieun, it had felt so good like never before a kiss had. Like no one had ever kissed him. Like worship, like salvation.
It wasn’t fair that a man that would never picture something with Sieun had kissed him like he was his last meal on earth.
And it especially wasn’t fair that Sieun had initiated it.
He really regretted doing that.
He shouldn’t have. Never.
He felt bad and it hurt so much knowing that Seongje couldn’t even look at him after the kiss. It hurt even more knowing that it was perhaps the end of their friendship. Because he didn’t think Seongje would be able to look at him now and he didn’t think he could handle that.
He also didn’t know how to look at Seongje without remembering his tongue in his mouth now.
He had ruined a great friendship just to make someone go away.
He liked spending time with Seongje, even though he would never admit it, especially not to Seongje.
But he did like it. Seongje was loud, shameless, wild and reckless. Never caring what anyone thought, never adapting to the world, the place they were in or the people around them. He lived fully and without restraints.
That was the opposite of Sieun. Or rather the old Sieun. The new one was more confident and enjoyed new sides of life that he never had before.
Though Seongje was still too extreme in his way of being. Something Sieun never would be. And that’s precisely why he liked it. Because Seongje allowed him to see new sides of the world, of himself, through himself and through Seongje.
That was exactly what Sieun needed at this point in his life.
Something refreshing, daring and uncaring of others.
But now it was over.
Sieun couldn’t face Seongje again and Seongje would probably never want to see him again.
When morning came for him, he finally let himself slip under his covers and slept.
A restless limbo more than actual sleep.
Head full of Seongje who kissed like he wanted him and looked at girls like he wanted them.