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Five weeks of pure, searing hatred, coated with a thick layer of unresolved tension, simmering under the surface between rehearsals. Four days until opening night, three mental breakdowns and counting, two triple-shot red eyes, and one unstoppable breaking point: Jaemin shoves Donghyuck into a supply closet, kicks aside an empty mop bucket, pins Donghyuck against the door, and crushes his mouth to his.
Jaemin’s brain stopped working sometime after pulling Donghyuck out of the makeup artist’s chair. Everything’s a bit fuzzy right now.
But he’s done some rudimentary math, and it shouldn’t make sense. Screaming matches after cue-to-cue and almost coming to blows during every dress rehearsal and Donghyuck’s bitterness and Jaemin’s bruised ego shouldn’t all add up to this. And yet.
Donghyuck’s mouth is so soft.
His hands are so warm, tangled in Jaemin’s hair. He missed a spot shaving his chin that scrapes against Jaemin’s as he kisses back, sloppy and rough.
And Jaemin fucking hates Donghyuck, but he doesn’t mind any of this, not really. Not at all.
Jaemin’s heart is racing, and he’s almost frenzied, halfway between anger and desperation. It’s exactly when Jaemin thinks he might burn with it from the inside out, that Donghyuck pulls away with a hitched gasp.
Donghyuck looks debauched. His shirt is a wrinkled mess and his hair is worse, and Jaemin is definitely in the same state. Here right now, there’s none of the consummate, experienced professional Jaemin knows Donghyuck to be. His mouth is bitten red and his eyes are blazing.
Jaemin wants to say something, anything to break the heavy silence. Anything that might come close to what he feels right now, small and hopeful and fluttering in his chest.
Instead, Donghyuck jerks his chin forward, defiant as ever, and says, “You have awful technique.”
That small, fluttering thing is swiftly crushed. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m sorry?” Donghyuck mocks back at him, in a scornful imitation of Jaemin’s accent. “You heard me. I guess Eton left some gaps in your education, after all.”
“I... don’t follow.”
“Christ, you’re as thick as it gets.” Donghyuck shoves him away. “I suppose you’ve gotten this far banking on your pretty face all your life, haven’t you?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Your kissing technique, you arse. I feel like I’ve just been snogging an octopus.”
Jaemin reels. It’s true he doesn’t have the experience that he’s sure Donghyuck has in abundant supply. But it’s not like he’s ever gotten... complaints before.
Coming from Donghyuck, it stings Jaemin’s pride far more than it should.
Donghyuck isn’t finished, though. “Seriously, if this is what our dear Desdemona has been putting up with, I sincerely hope she’s filed for worker’s comp—”
When he gets going like this, Jaemin has always considered, fleetingly, to shut him up with his mouth. He follows the impulse.
The rest of Donghyuck’s sentence is smothered as Jaemin dives back in, more controlled and deliberate than before. He grounds himself in the drag and slide of Donghyuck’s lips, the warmth of his chest pressed against his own, the dip of his waist that Jaemin wraps his arms around tight.
This time, Jaemin is the one who breaks away. He doesn’t stray far, though. Donghyuck’s breath ghosts over his lips as he hovers an inch away from his mouth.
“Fuck you,” Jaemin growls, throwing every inch of his sworn hatred into his words.
Donghyuck bats his eyelashes and says, sugary-sweet, “I don’t think you’re advanced enough for that, sweetheart.” And fuck Donghyuck, seriously, fuck him all the way to hell for how he manages to make Jaemin so angry and so turned on at the same time.
Jaemin fists Donghyuck’s collar and hauls him roughly into another kiss, furious as before. The noise Donghyuck makes against his lips is it’s own reward.
Donghyuck gives as good as he gets, though. He moves to Jaemin’s neck, and manages to pop open two of the topmost buttons of his shirt. Jaemin tips his head back for better access and actively wills his knees not to buckle under him.
“Teach me, then,” Jaemin gasps, “if you’re such a fucking expert.”
Donghyuck pauses and pulls back to look at Jaemin full-on. His eyes glitter. “You’re joking.”
Jaemin says nothing, just tightens his jaw and glares back. He knows Donghyuck well enough to recognize the same steely resolve in him that lives in Jaemin, too—that he can never back down from a challenge.
“You want me to teach you? The Jaemin Na? Pride of the Academy, rising star of the Royal Shakespeare Company, debasing himself to let a commoner give him kissing lessons? Oh, that is rich.”
Donghyuck throws his head back and honest-to-God laughs at him. Jaemin seethes over the prickle of humiliation low in his gut. But he hates himself even more for how it ignites his own need to prove himself. To prove Donghyuck wrong.
Jaemin throws all his weight up against Donghyuck to pin him against the door. He’s pleased to hear Donghyuck inhale, sharp and surprised.
“Teach me,” Jaemin orders, in his lowest, deadliest voice. “Or I’ll give you a hickey even stage makeup can’t cover.”
“That’s not exactly a threat, Your Highness,” Donghyuck sing-songs. His hands, still tangled in Jaemin’s hair, tighten almost painfully. Jaemin shudders. “Throw in something extra to sweeten the deal, and maybe I’ll consider it.”
The bait, of course, is obvious. It’s what sparked this mutual rivalry, the reason they’ve been running circles around each other until now.
“You can switch roles with me,” Jaemin says immediately. “For the last show of the season. You be Othello, and I’ll be your Iago. You know the lines better than I do at this point. Final offer.”
Finally, a crack in Donghyuck’s performance: his eyes widen, his full pink mouth falling open in a silent “oh,” like he can’t believe his luck. Then he catches himself and his face smoothes blank again, unreadable.
He untangles one hand from Jaemin’s hair to offer it to him. “Make it the last two shows, and we have a deal.”
Jaemin snakes his hand up, from where it found its way to Donghyuck’s waist again, and clasps Donghyuck’s hand. They shake on it once. “Deal.”
Donghyuck doesn’t hesitate—he never has before. He pulls Jaemin greedily back into his chest, fingers lacing behind Jaemin’s nape, and kisses him like he has as much to prove as Jaemin does. Maybe even more. Jaemin tries not to melt into it and fails miserably.
“Follow my lead,” Donghyuck says against Jaemin’s lips, smug and intolerable.
Jaemin wants to tell Donghyuck to go fuck himself again, even as a measly attempt in saving a scrap of his dignity. But Donghyuck kisses long and slow and heated, with the same carefully-cultivated precision he moves across the stage. And Jaemin is helpless to not do what he’s told.
“It’s about moderation, see?” Donghyuck pants between kisses, still infuriatingly in-character for how he’s thoroughly taking Jaemin apart. “Tongue should be used sparingly.” Another kiss. “Like this. Pay attention, now.”
Donghyuck teases at the seam of Jaemin’s mouth with his tongue. When Jaemin grants him access, he sweeps his tongue gently across Jaemin’s bottom lip and dips in, to brush lightly against Jaemin’s own, at the same time he slots his thigh between Jaemin’s legs. Jaemin makes an embarrassing, involuntary noise.
Donghyuck breaks off. Jaemin groans in protest and tries to follow his mouth, and Donghyuck laughs at him again, giddy and wild-eyed, and Jaemin would fucking scream if he weren’t sure the rest of the cast down the hall would hear him.
“Okay.” Donghyuck smirks and lets his head fall back, stretching the long, golden column of his throat, and thuds it against the door behind him. “Okay. Now you, try and do what I just did, to me. Can you manage that, Your Highness?”
Well, it’s like he said before—Jaemin can never back down from a challenge.
“Show-off,” Jaemin says, but he’s smiling into it when Donghyuck’s mouth meets his again.
Jaemin does his best to replicate the coy teases of Donghyuck’s tongue, realizing, belatedly, how overeager he was before. He revels for a moment in how Donghyuck never lets him ease up for a second, pushes him to an edge and keeps him there, Jaemin’s aching need and Donghyuck’s sharp, steel-tipped fearlessness, matching perfectly every time.
Distantly, he can’t believe it took them this long to get here.
When Jaemin breaks off, Donghyuck’s breathing is coming in hard gasps.
“Not bad?” Jaemin says with a crooked grin.
“It was—adequate.” Jaemin is pleased to note that Donghyuck’s voice is distinctly raspier than before. “Noticeable improvement.”
Jaemin beams with the praise, as reluctant as it came. Donghyuck is beautiful like this, flushed rosy and glowing, and Jaemin can all too easily imagine him spread out underneath him, stripped bare, vulnerable, wanting.
Later. That will come later. “Happy to be of service.”
Donghyuck’s eyes glint. “You should do it again. Just to make sure. Practice makes perfect, and all that.”
It isn’t a challenge this time. But Jaemin meets it all the same.