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San kicked the back of Seonghwa’s seat, whooping at the top of his lungs. Wooyoung had half a mind to hang out of the sunroof and do the same thing.
Heists were always exhilarating, no matter how many times they did them, and no matter how many times they successfully pulled them off. The thrill of cheating someone out of what they thought they were owed—especially when they weren’t—always set Wooyoung’s heart to racing. It helped (or didn’t, depending on how one looked at it) that it always seemed to be San by his side. The thrill was always bigger, inexplicably more intense for San’s proximity to him at gambling tables or bars or bank counters. His blood was hotter and faster and he laughed more shrilly and his heartbeat thundered louder in his ears when guns were pulled and San touched him, in some way, in any way.
The combination of successfully pulling off a heist and being touched by San was what he imagined being on drugs to be like: being in a fast car with the pedal to the floor. No way to stop. All gas, no brakes.
Seonghwa turned around. “Could you stop kicking my chair like an over-sugared ten year old?”
“Sorry,” San said, but didn’t look it. Wooyoung watched him shake his leg instead. He was also full of a keyed up energy, and they always seemed to pass it forth between them like an infinite echo chamber until one of them inevitably crashed. “I’m just excited. We did it!”
And they had—Hongjoong had split them all up and assigned them to different retrieval tasks, meaning that everyone was responsible for coming back with something on the list he’d held out in one hand. It had been scrawled on what looked like parchment paper; the items were things like a short sword, a compass, a spyglass, the deed to a ship. Wooyoung had wanted to make a joke that it felt pirate-y and if Hongjoong also wanted them to wear eye patches and peg legs but Hongjoong had actually looked kind of serious about it so he didn’t. No one had bothered to ask what the items were for; it didn’t matter. Once one of them was in, they were all in. That’s just how the team worked.
They had, as San had crowed with pure excitement, actually managed to pull it off. Seonghwa, Jongho, Yeosang, and Yunho had actually narrowly managed to save Wooyoung and San’s asses after they’d broken into a shitty old pawn shop and cracked the safe. Wooyoung was under the impression that they didn’t really need help: he and San had been in worse situations before, and Wooyoung wasn’t their best shot for nothing. They’d been standing around the poker table with their guns drawn—Wooyoung had one on the guy who had one on San, who had one on the other guy, who had his on Wooyoung. It was a bizarre four-way standoff that might have ended with blood misted on their clothes, but then they’d driven the car directly into the sidewall of the rickety little shack they’d been gambling in and sent it crumbling to bits. In the chaos and the cloud of plaster dust (that was probably going to kill them as they inhaled, coughing and squinting into it), San and Wooyoung managed to scramble into the car as it pulled away.
The only casualties were the shack, which wasn’t theirs so it didn’t matter, and the front bumper of the car, which was crushed in a little and down a working headlight. There were also two bullet holes above the wheel well, but that had happened before and probably would again. Hongjoong would take it to their mechanic and the mechanic wouldn’t ask any questions and the sleek black car would look brand new, like it always did.
“Yes, we did, but I don’t think celebration requires you to kick the back of my seat.”
San shot Wooyoung a look—Wooyoung was already looking at him and he was going to be embarrassed but then San’s face split in a grin and Wooyoung mirrored it. The prolonged eye contact between them as San looked into his face with that pleased grin like you and me, baby, we did it made Wooyoung’s heart contract and his stomach roll.
He was, of course, just imagining the “baby” in that statement, but. A man could dream.
“Aren’t you tired?” Jongho asked from behind them, squished up against the window where he was boxed in by Mingi, who was asleep.
It was kind of a miracle he hadn’t woken through San’s celebratory hollering, but he had gotten it the worst out of all of them and it made sense that he would be so bone tired. His face was already beginning to bruise near his lip and another was spreading underneath his eyes where he’d probably been hit in the nose—there was a crusted over slice across it as proof—and he smelled faintly of the gasoline he’d used to blow up the car. It made Wooyoung a little upset to see one of them injured even if it was just mild, but it was hard for the mood to be soured when San was so… electric.
“No,” San said mildly. He had yet to stop jiggling his legs. Wooyoung tried to avoid looking at the motion of his thighs in the tight pants he was wearing and failed several times before condemning himself to sitting with his head facing straight toward the back of Hongjoong’s head in the driver’s seat. “I feel like I could rob a whole string of banks right now.”
“Okay, well, you’re not going to,” Seonghwa said without turning around. “We’re almost home and don’t need the trouble.”
“Okay, Mom,” San accompanied this with an eyeroll, but even from the corner of his eye Wooyoung could see the grin on his face as he did it. He imagined it got bigger when Seonghwa quickly turned around to stick his out at San before settling back in his seat.
Wooyoung felt similarly even though he didn’t express it. He also felt like he could rob a bank or run ten miles without stopping. The adrenaline (and, of course, the way San’s hands had gripped his hips and fisted in his shirt when shoving Wooyoung into the car amongst the dust cloud) had his heart pumping, pulse feelable in his eyes. He drummed his fingers on the dusty leg of his jeans as they pulled into the driveway of their safe house.
“Okay, who’s going to help me get Mingi to his room?” Yunho asked, urging Yeosang out of the seat next to him so he could scoot over and pull Mingi with him. “I don’t think I can carry him myself.”
“Y’don’t have to carry me,” Mingi mumbled. Hongjoong turned off the car and everyone turned around in their seats to look at him where he half sat up and rubbed at his eye before wincing. “I’m awake.”
“Mingi,” Hongjoong breathed, and Wooyoung could hear the relief in his voice even before he glanced over to see it on his face. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Just sore. Need to sleep.”
There was some more light back and forth but Wooyoung had stopped paying attention. He was watching San, who chewed the side of a nail and continued to jiggle his leg before seeming to decide he could no longer stay cooped up in the car. Wooyoung watched him throw open the van door on his side and get out with a little pang of what might have been regret.
Regret over what? Not like you’d ever make a move.
It was annoying of his subconscious to say that, but it was true, too. Wooyoung had the nasty habit of constantly vying for San’s attention, getting it, reveling in it, and then simply hoping San would cross the line first. There were moments it felt possible: high stakes heists that had them running down corridors with their hands linked, dragging the other behind them and patching up their wounds on the run, pressing their bodies together in stuffy storage closets where Wooyoung’s heartbeat was audible as it beat right up against the synchronized rhythm of San’s. It always felt like they were just around the corner from crossing the invisible and unspoken line they had drawn somewhere in the duration of their friendship. If only San would be the one to do it—Wooyoung was too afraid to bear the responsibility if something went wrong.
In any case, he kept his mouth shut and instead secretly and shamefully delighted in the way San touched him, even innocently, even as friends. Hands on the back of his neck. Hand sliding across a hip as he passed. Pulling Wooyoung into his lap when he was drunk, burying his face in his neck, arms locked around his middle. Innocuous touches between friends that made Wooyoung close his eyes in the dark quiet of his bedroom and pray for forgiveness when his legs fell apart and he pleasured himself to the memory of them. Mixing up God and San’s names as they spilled softly, silently, repeatedly, from his lips. The disgrace and thrill of original sin.
The wanting was violent for the inexplicability of it, for the way he so badly wanted to say or do something but couldn’t bring himself to do it, afraid of what the consequences would be if he tried and was rebuffed. Not only did he not want to ruin what they had, but he was terrified of simply being rejected. And so the cycle continued like this in agonizing repetition: the wanting, the vying, the testing, the hoping, the shame.
Wooyoung was forced out of the car by the boys in the back. His feet hit the pavement of their secluded driveway and he was immediately looking for San; he found him waiting by the front door and doing half-assed pull-ups on a beam that supported the roof over the porch.
“One of these days that’s going to snap and you’re going to break your neck,” Wooyoung said. He put his hands on his hips and watched the vein in San’s neck stand out with the effort. He was pointedly avoiding the visible strip of skin above his belt where the skin-tight shirt he had on had ridden up when his arms were raised.
San tilted his head down to look at Wooyoung where he was hanging and grinned. “Maybe. You’ll take care of me, right?”
Wooyoung had to grind his teeth a little before answering. “Of course. Not before I beat your ass, though.”
He watched as San laughed and then pulled himself up, using the momentum of his body to swing a little and let go so that he landed right in front of Wooyoung instead of dropping straight to the porch. He swayed a little and caught himself with a hand on Wooyoung’s shoulder; the touch burned through his jacket.
“Kinda harsh, don’t you think?” San slid his arm so it rested along Wooyoung’s shoulders. It was a gesture he had performed a countless millions of times before that moment, but Wooyoung’s desire flared up like a dash of oil in a hot pan. This close he could smell the heady scent of San’s cologne mixed with sweat and body heat and Wooyoung was pretty sure he was going to go crazy.
Relax. It’s the post-heist adrenaline. Relax.
It was and it wasn’t. His heart still thundered and he still felt like he could rob a whole string of banks or pick off targets one by one from a rooftop a mile away with a handgun and a blindfold, but only some of that could be attributed to the heist excitement. Some of it was that shameful, dirty little thrill he got from getting San to touch him.
They watched the rest of their members gather Mingi out of the car—who was up and walking, just a little slowly—without saying anything for a moment. Once they were all in ear shot, though, San leaned forward as Hongjoong unlocked the door to make a proposal:
“I’m really not tired. Who wants to play cards? Anybody?”
Wooyoung didn’t have to agree verbally; it would be assumed that because San suggested it, Wooyoung would be going along with it. Like San, he was not tired, and he needed something—almost desperately so—to take the edge off so that he could. And hopefully without having to secretly get off in his room like some horny, insatiable teenager.
But San’s open request to the group to stay up and play card games (which would inevitably turn into shouting matches) was met with a chorus of low grumbling in the negative. They all filed into the house and one by one seemed to disappear to their rooms with a sorry, Sanie, next time I swear hanging in their wake like a cartoon cloud of dust. After only a few moments it was just Wooyoung and San, alone, standing in the quiet of the living room.
“Just you and me, then?” San asked with a grin.
Of course just them . And of course it was the kind of just them that Wooyoung wanted to smash to pieces: the platonic kind, the just us that implied a comfortable familiarity of friendship and nothing else. But it was the only kind of just us that he got with San and so Wooyoung bit back everything he wanted to say and grinned with him.
“Just us.”
__________
They decided to play in San’s room with the door closed. This made Wooyoung’s heart rate spike in an uncomfortable way until it was a steady trot that he could slightly feel in the pulse point of his neck. San’s reasoning was that it didn’t matter if they got loud and shouted at each other—which was possible, they were both horribly competitive on a good day—and they wouldn’t disturb anyone else. San’s room was the furthest from the rest and there was enough room for them to unfold a TV tray between them to lay the cards on.
Wooyoung had been in San’s room a hundred thousand times for any number of reasons. He had spent the night there, splayed across the bed or passed out on the floor, too lazy/tired/lonely to go to his own room. They had stayed up late for hundreds of hours in the span of their friendship laying shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, staring up at the ceiling in the dark and whispering their secrets to each other like kids. Wooyoung knew it was his fault for falling but it was so hard not to when San would turn to his side and put his mouth to Wooyoung’s ear to whisper some breathy truth to him. Wooyoungie, did you know that I…
He wondered if, like him, San ever wondered about just how much they really knew about each other. If they knew everything like everyone else liked to claim— really it feels like you guys are the same soul in two bodies, get a room, we get it you’re soulmates, and so on, and so forth—then San would have to know that Wooyoung’s affection for him was far beyond that of a friend. He would have to know how much Wooyoung loved him. Wanted him. He would be able to sense and then assuage the horrible shame Wooyoung felt in delighting at his touch, either with reciprocation or with violence.
He had done neither; their friendship remained as it always had. The tension that existed between them—the back and forth sharing of their energy—remained, taught as a guitar string. Every touch was a pluck that vibrated his nerves so strongly it made his teeth hurt.
The familiar sight of San leaned back on one hand on his bed watching Wooyoung shuffle cards where he sat in the desk chair made it worse specifically because he should, in theory, be accustomed to this, being in San’s room. They had done this countless times, too, played card games with just the two of them. It’s how they got so good at gambling. It was not an uncommon thing for someone to come find them after they’d been absorbed in games for hours: trying new tricks, learning new games, trying to sus out the way the other one was counting cards and calling them out on it. It was all so familiar, awful for the innocence of it, terrible for the way Wooyoung wanted to corrupt it.
Worse still because the restless energy that had San shaking his legs and watching every minute movement of Wooyoung’s hands had yet to dissipate. In fact, it seemed to fill the room. It breathed down Wooyoung’s neck and he almost dropped the cards.
Wooyoung didn’t look up. He could feel San’s eyes on him so he kept mindlessly shuffling the deck. “What should we play?”
It went quiet; San hmmed a bit but didn’t say much else. Wooyoung finally looked up after a long moment and was embarrassed to see San leaning back on both hands and watching him. He couldn’t help it; almost out of reflex to avoid the look on San’s face, Wooyoung looked at the strip of tan skin above his belt where the shirt he was wearing had ridden up again. He could just barely see the lower part of San’s navel and although he had seen much more of San before—the way he had seen much more of all of them, such is the nature of living with seven other men who were very comfortable with each other—there was a certain charge in the air, whether only on his end or not, that made his face feel hot. He looked away and pretended to nonchalantly do a card trick in the direction of the ceiling.
It also was not a strange thing for San to watch him; it was how San got good at shuffling cards. They had also been close for so long that it was more rare for San to not be looking at him. But there was a certain edge to the way San was looking at him now that Wooyoung had never felt before. Or perhaps never noticed.
Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself, snatching the card he had flicked out of the air before it got away from him. He’s not looking at you like that.
“What do you want to play?” San finally asked.
Wooyoung shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t care.” He thought for a moment. “War?”
San shook his head.
“Slapjack?”
A moment; another head shake.
Wooyoung squinted at him. “Speed?”
San shook his head a third time but before Wooyoung could open his mouth to complain, San leaned forward and was reaching for the cards. Wooyoung surrendered them immediately when he felt San’s fingers brush his, pulling away a little and berating himself for letting something so small send his pulse racing.
“Let’s play poker.”
Wooyoung groaned. “Come on, there has to be something else. Poker is a game for jobs. What else?”
There was the beginning of a smirk pulling at the corner of San’s lips. It made him feel uneasy and he wasn’t sure why.
“Let’s make it interesting.”
“Interesting” on San’s terms could mean literally anything—it could be the difference between owing him a meal or buying him expensive games. Wooyoung cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Interesting how? I’m not betting you any real money, cheater.”
San laughed. He leaned back again and spread the cards out in an arc on the TV tray with one hand.
“Fine. Let’s bet clothes.”
“What?” Wooyoung felt like he didn’t hear him correctly. Clothes? San probably had more expensive things in his closet than Wooyoung did, what could he possibly want out of betting clothes? “What the hell are you going to do with my clothes?”
“Not like that,” San said, grinning, and it turned sharp in a way that Wooyoung felt in the pit of his stomach like a stab. “I mean use clothes as chips. Strip poker.”
Wooyoung felt his heart stop. “Strip poker?”
“5 card draw rules. Winner gets to decide what the loser takes off.”
It felt a little like Wooyoung was dreaming. As a group they had done stupider things, like dared each other to strip to their boxers and run down the street, or taken towels and clothes from unlocked bathrooms as someone showered, forcing them to bolt to their rooms stark naked. But there was always a group element to shenanigans like that. There were usually at least four of them conspiring at any given time in those scenarios. Now? Here? Playing strip poker, where the winner decided what the loser had to remove? It was just them. Wooyoung pictured winning a hand and telling San to take off his shirt in a way that didn’t belie the violent desire churning his stomach and felt his mouth go dry.
“San…” Wooyoung swallowed. He wanted it—of course he wanted it. In his wildest, most lust-fueled dreams he had imagined San a thousand different ways, shirtless and naked and inside him and fucking with his eyes closed.
But dreams were just that: dreams. It was another thing entirely to cross the threshold. He had wanted San to make a move for so long but now that the possibility had arisen—that San would initiate—it terrified and thrilled him. Wooyoung wasn’t sure he wanted it solely for the fact that he knew as soon as something started he would chase it like a high until he was dead.
San leaned forward. He put his elbows on the TV tray between them and suddenly there was much less distance than there was before. Wooyoung could see the reflection of the lamp behind him in the dark of San’s eyes and his heart thundered in his chest.
“What? Scared you’re going to lose?”
It was a taunt. Childish, really, but it worked. Wooyoung sneered at him in playfulness and chomped at the bit.
“No. You should be scared, though,” he said, and although a part of him felt silly saying it, like they were in some poorly-written heist movie on opposite sides, there was a little bit of truth to it, too. San should be scared—he should be scared of the enormity of Wooyoung’s desire. Wooyoung was a little afraid of it. How easily he cast aside the shame that he felt just to play right into San’s teasing, the competitiveness in both of them rising, eclipsing (at least in part) the logical side of himself that was always so afraid that crossing the line would ruin their friendship. This was simply one of the great dangers of being so close to each other: each knew exactly where to dig their fingers in for maximum effect.
San’s grin was deadly. The line of his shoulders, broad and visible beneath the tautness of the fabric of his shirt, straightened as he felt Wooyoung’s challenge. The room suddenly was several degrees warmer than it had been earlier.
“Oh, yeah?” His voice dropped a little, intentionally lowered to huskiness. Wooyoung curled his fingers into a fist on his knee beneath the TV tray. “Why’s that?”
And it was a miracle Wooyoung could form even a single sentence: the flirting was deliberate. He was no longer imagining it. There was that glint in San’s eye that Wooyoung saw many times when he was scoping out someone that he wanted to take home, a tiger laid low in the tall grass, biding their time. Waiting out the prey to see who should strike first or run. The sharpness of his eyes dangerous as they went back and forth on Wooyoung’s face. That look he had seen and lamented was now turned on him; he was pinned beneath the weight of it.
Wooyoung, heart pounding in his throat, just managed to grin back at him and picked up the deck in a well-aimed single swoop.
“Because, Sanie. I don’t lose.”
__________
But he could, and he did.
A lot.
It was almost embarrassing, really. Funny at first, Wooyoung whined as he threw down his hands that were always at least one card shy of being better than San’s. San would just laugh and then laugh harder as Wooyoung removed whatever it was that San told him to take off: a sock, an earring, his belt. Wooyoung was still completely dressed in his shirt, jacket, and pants but every time San fanned out his perfectly stacked hand against Wooyoung’s he felt more and more naked all the same.
“I thought you said you didn’t lose, Woo.”
Wooyoung made a face at him as he yanked the backing off another earring. It seemed that San was content to pick the stupidest articles of clothing on his body; the main ones had been untouched. Soon he was going to run out of things that weren’t accessories to take off and then San was going to have to start on his clothes.
Before that could happen, though, Wooyoung finally won a hand. San groaned as Wooyoung leapt to his feet out of the desk chair and nearly knocked the TV tray over in his delight. Wooyoung was momentarily so thrilled about finally winning a fucking hand that he completely forgot about how the atmosphere had changed.
“Ha! Finally!” Wooyoung pointed an accusing finger at him. “I know you’re cheating, I just don’t know how.”
San stuck his tongue out at him and then crossed his arms. “I am so not cheating, thank you very much. You just suck.”
“Sorry, tell that to the winning hand on the table right now.” Wooyoung cupped a hand around one ear and leaned forward. “I’ll wait.”
He laughed his little high pitched laugh when San put a hand on the side of his head and shoved lightly. Woooyoung was about to sit back down and deal another round when San said,
“So? What should I take off?”
“Take off—?” Wooyoung stopped, confused for a moment, before the realization hit him like a ton of bricks.
They were playing strip poker. Winner decides what the loser takes off.
He had been so overjoyed at finally winning a hand that he’d forgotten that little fact. Wooyoung dropped his hand and blinked down at San, who was looking up at him expectantly where he still stood in front of the desk chair he’d abandoned in his glee.
The worst part was that San wasn’t really wearing that many layers to begin with. It wasn’t cold; he wasn’t wearing a jacket, only a skin-tight long sleeve and pants. Wooyoung could be annoying and pick an earring or a sock, but other than that…he had two options, shirt or pants? Pants, he thought, might be a touch too far. It might imply something neither of them were really ready for no matter how much the question had pulled the tension tight to strangulation in the room. That left one option.
Wooyoung swallowed roughly. He watched, a little helplessly, as San’s dark eyes tracked the movement of his adam’s apple as it bobbed. Their eyes met again and one of San’s eyebrows went up in silent question. Well?
He licked his lips; San watched that too.
“Shirt.”
San crossed his arms and grabbed the bottom of his shirt in both hands. “You want me to take off my shirt?”
I want you to do a lot more than that, Choi San.
Wooyoung nodded. “Winner’s choice.” It was supposed to be a joke but it came out a little strangled. If San noticed he didn’t say anything.
Instead, he simply did as asked. He gripped the fabric tighter and Wooyoung watched in distant agony at the slow way he pulled it up, revealing torturous inches of stomach and chest at a time, getting slightly caught on the bulk of his shoulders before he was pulling it over his head and tossing it in the direction of…somewhere. Wooyoung wasn’t looking. It didn’t matter where he threw it, to Wooyoung it had ceased to exist at all.
It was almost worse than his imagination. San’s long hair was mussed from where it had been disrupted by the shirt pulling off over his head. His skin was tan and unmarked and Wooyoung watched with an ache in his groin and the depths of his soul as the muscle just beneath it flexed in his forearms when he reached up to fix it. He was struggling to stay coherent; he sat down heavily in the desk chair and pulled the bottom hem of his jacket over his lap.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Wooyoung avoided looking at him directly and picked up the cards to deal another hand. “Like what?”
“Don’t play dumb. You know what.”
He could see the movement of San’s upper body as he shifted on the bed from the corner of his eye and continued to pointedly avoid looking at him directly. “I really don’t.”
It was quiet for a second. Then: “Like you’re going to eat me.”
It was funny. It really was. Wooyoung laid the deck on the table between them and honked a laugh, which was more like the sound a dog toy makes when you step on it. He wanted to do much, much worse things to San than look at him like a piece of meat.
He didn’t say that, of course.
“Whatever. Pick up your cards, please.”
Not answering him directly was apparently a bad choice, because San set his shoulders and then seemed to make sure that Wooyoung never won again. First it was the last earring. The other sock. The bracelet on his wrist. His watch. Wooyoung started to sweat with the more hands that San won and the less inconsequential things he had to offer. Wooyoung tried to catch the way San was cheating—because he had to be, Wooyoung’s “I don’t lose” was supposed to be a flex and not a facade because Wooyoung rarely lost—but always seemed to miss it somehow, and then finally San was laying down a perfect hand and looking him directly in his eyes.
“Jacket.”
Wooyoung swallowed. He leaned forward and shrugged his jacket off, let it slide to the floor. San was still shirtless and the glow from the lamp beamed delightfully on his skin.
Another hand. San won.
“Shirt.”
It was no longer fun in that the joy he felt at winning his own hand had drowned underneath the intensity of whatever was happening now. It had started as a schoolyard slap fight, a simple, silly between-boys type of dare, but now they were playing a strange type of chicken where Wooyoung didn’t really have the opportunity to feign forward because he kept losing. The tension was a heavy hand on the back of his neck and squeezing his guts as he leaned forward to reach behind his neck and grab his shirt with both hands. He pulled it over his head and took a breath when it came off, shaping his mouth in a perfect O, a movement that did not go unwatched. Wooyoung was thrilled in that horrible, dirty way when San bit his lower lip and let it go when their eyes met.
Oh, fuck, Wooyoung thought. I’m in trouble now.
“Do you give up?” San asked, and his voice was nearly an octave lower than usual, the sound of it making Wooyoung’s face flush visibly red across the high planes of his cheeks.
He shook his head. “I’m not a quitter.”
So it went: another hand.
Wooyoung lost.
“Pants.”
Fuck.
Wooyoung stood up. It was easy to hide when he was sitting because his lap was blocked by the TV tray. But now that he was standing, shirtless, jacket also discarded to the floor, there was nothing but his hands to try and hide the fact that he was half-hard and had been since San took off his shirt. Wooyoung could feel the burning in his face as he slowly fumbled with the button on his jeans; if he had bothered to look down he would have seen the flush had spread down his neck and had pinked the top part of his chest, too. So heavy was San’s gaze on him as he popped the button on his jeans and tried not to whimper that Wooyoung didn’t even need to look up to confirm that San was watching him. His uneven breathing was audible in the new silence of the room.
It almost hurt. Wooyoung let his hair fall into his eyes as he pulled the zipper down and tried not to wince at the way it, too, was audible in the quiet. Worse still was the way he heard San’s breathing speed up as he hooked his thumbs in the waistband, intending to push them down but hesitating for a moment before he did.
They were at a very important threshold, one that Wooyoung had dreamed about a thousand times but never once imagined they would cross. But here they were: San, keyed up on the after-heist adrenaline, playing strip poker, eyes glued to Wooyoung’s body where he stood about to remove his pants. Wooyoung knew he had stacked the game in his favor—however he was cheating, Wooyoung would like to know—and that fact in of itself was close to inducing some type of delirium in him. Had San always felt like this about him? Had San been the same, wanting and waiting, unsure if crossing the line was going to fuck them up? Had he just decided he couldn’t wait anymore?
His thoughts were a mess. He could see the way San was shifting on the bed as Wooyoung took a deep breath and pushed his jeans to his thighs in one swift motion. He heard San’s sharp intake through his nose, the noise he bit off, he watched from beneath his hair as San had to readjust the front of his pants. His heart was beating so hard against his chest he could feel his pulse in his temples.
“Wooyoung.”
Two syllables. Wooyoung pushed his pants down the rest of the way and stepped out of them. Two syllables packed so tightly with desire that it made his stomach churn. Wooyoung looked at the damp hollow of San’s throat and cupped both hands over where he was shamefully and finally completely hard.
This was all it took: simple admiration from San, strip poker, enough sexual tension to power a city. Wooyoung was embarrassed at how hard he was just from this.
San didn’t seem to be and Wooyoung was a little envious of his shamelessness. San swiped the cards off the table and to the floor, clearing off the TV tray before he lightly kicked one of the legs to collapse it so it would fold and then let it fall to the side. There was no longer a barrier between them; only a couple feet of empty distance between where Wooyoung stood and San sat on the edge of his bed remained.
“Wooyoung,” he said again, voice catching. “Come here.”
And he was helpless to do anything but. He kept his crotch covered but closed the distance, stepping into the V of San’s legs when he spread them. Just the image of that alone—San, shirtless, pants tight, dick visibly hard, legs spreading to make room for him—was about to make Wooyoung crazy. He closed his eyes and took a shaky breath.
“Hey,” San said, and his voice was soft. He touched Wooyoung’s elbow with one hand. “Are you okay?”
Was he? He didn’t feel okay. Not in the bad way, of course, it would be impossible to feel anything but the nervous elation at his dreams coming true. But it made sense that San asked—Wooyoung could feel the way he was about to start shaking. He nodded, though, a silent confirmation. I’m okay. Keep going.
San dropped his voice to a whisper. “If you don’t like something, tell me to stop.”
And then San was touching him.
It was both everything and nothing like the way he dreamed it would be. San’s hands were warm, almost unbearably so, hot coals on his skin where he placed them on Wooyoung’s hips and held them there for a moment like he was giving Wooyoung the chance to back out. Every nerve ending felt like it was raw and exposed as San slowly slid them up, to his waist, following the slight curve and the dip, rising up his chest to the base of his neck as far as he could reach. Wooyoung couldn’t help but groan when San let one hand slide down his chest while the other lightly wrapped his fingers around the column of Wooyoung’s throat. He tipped his head back and gripped San’s bare shoulders in both hands.
“God, you’re so warm,” San said breathlessly, flexing his fingers on Wooyoung’s neck while the other slid down his stomach to the waistband of his boxer briefs. The touch was feather light when San ran his palm across the length of his hard cock but it made Wooyoung shiver and whimper in the depth of his throat. “And so hard. Christ, Woo, just from this?”
It was a little embarrassing but Wooyoung was completely breathless and his reply came in little pants: “Sorry, I’ve—been dreaming about this. For so long. Ah, fuck—”
The wet heat of San’s mouth on his stomach to the right of his navel sent the rest of whatever Wooyoung was going to say scattering. He dug his nails into the meat of San’s shoulders and whimpered.
“A long time, huh?” San looked up at him and Wooyoung, already about to come bursting apart, looked down at him to see San’s dark eyes completely blown wide. San’s hands found his hips again and then, in one swift movement, he was leaning back to pull Wooyoung down on top of him.
He hit the bed on his hands near San’s head but San was already gripping a handful of Wooyoung’s hair at the base of his skull to pull himself up. Wooyoung gasped at the pleasure pain and then San was kissing him.
Every thought Wooyoung had ever had seemed to completely implode. San’s mouth was hot, insistent; their teeth clicked together and San already had his tongue behind Wooyoung’s teeth. Want, so strong and insistent that it hurt, raged in Wooyoung’s veins like wildfire. He let San yank on his hair to hear him gasp or moan and then devoured the sound with his mouth. San nipped at his lips and panted against them when he stopped to adjust, using his thighs to push Wooyoung higher up, getting his knees settled at San’s hips so that he was balanced in his lap. Wooyoung always thought that he would come off as the desperate one—and he was, in his own way, chasing San’s mouth when he leaned away to take a breath—but the fervor in San’s hands as he touched Wooyoung all over and pulled Wooyoung down against the hard length of his cock in his pants as they kissed was a new kind of desperation that only fueled his insane desire.
“Fuck, so hot,” Wooyoung whined, gripping a fistful of sheets next to San’s head as he rocked his hips down in San’s lap. “This is crazy—”
“Wanna stop?” San panted, but it was clear he had no intention of doing so, considering that he was running his hands down Wooyoung’s back and messing with the band of his boxer briefs. “We can stop.”
“No, please,” and it was so much more of a whine than he intended, but San laughed breathlessly into his mouth and then broke off with a moan when Wooyoung reached down between them to yank on the button of San’s pants. Even if they didn’t go all the way, he was dying to feel how hard San was with his own hands.
“Okay, ah, fuck, Woo—” he stopped with a choked noise when Wooyoung edged the zipper down with his wrist and was sticking his fingers into the waistband of his underwear. “Fuck—!”
The rest deteriorated into moans and whimpers as San returned the favor: he grabbed the elastic of Wooyoung’s boxer briefs and viciously yanked them down to his thighs, cock throbbing in Wooyoung’s hand when Wooyoung’s came free and hung, heavy and flushed, between them.
“Never thought—we’d be doing this—” Wooyoung panted, chasing San’s mouth for a kiss, delighting in the feeling when San gave it to him. It wasn’t exactly how he imagined their first encounter would go, with Wooyoung on top of him and the two of them furiously kissing and half-assed jerking each other off, but sometimes reality was so much better than dreams. San twisted his wrist in just the right way that made Wooyoung’s thighs tense. “Fuck!”
“How long?” San asked. He let go of Wooyoung long enough to reach behind him into his bedside table and, without giving too much thought at how much practice he might have at it, managed to wet his fingers with lube without looking. Wooyoung almost passed out when San knocked his hand away from where he was slowly fisting San’s cock and grabbed both of them in his own.
“How long what?” Wooyoung could barely think. San had scooted them up on the bed enough that San’s knees were bent behind him and Wooyoung sat up to lean against them, lean body stretched out for San to touch as he jerked them off. Every sensation, every catch and drag of San’s fingers, the heat of his body underneath him and the throb of his cock against Wooyoung’s had his head spinning. If this was what foreplay was going to be like, he couldn’t imagine how it would feel to ride him—
“Stop thinking about me fucking you,” San panted. “I’m going to, but not yet.“
Wooyoung could do little else but throw an arm over his eyes and moan. Oh, god.
“Answer my question, how long have you thought about this?”
“Years,” Wooyoung said. He gasped when San flexed his fingers and felt the shaking in his thighs begin to start. “Fuck. Wanted you for so long.”
“And you never did anything about it?” It was amazing they were having this conversation now, of all times, but Wooyoung had to admit that telling San how bad he’s wanted him for so many years was kind of hot. He also knew that it was fueling San’s ego; he could feel the way he liked it in the way his cock throbbed at the sound of Wooyoung’s voice.
“Scared,” he said. The feeling of San keeping a steady pace to jerk them off was finally starting to build up; he could feel his orgasm starting to rise in the pit of his stomach. “Didn’t wanna—oh, fuck, San, oh god—didn’t wanna ruin the friendship.”
“We’re ruining it right now,” he panted back, and his own voice was starting to come apart. “And after I make you cum, Woo, I’m gonna ruin it over and over again.”
The implication was enough—San had no intentions of this being a one off. They could deal with the repercussions later.
Wooyoung grinned at him; San grinned back but it only lasted for a second before he bit his bottom lip. Wooyoung delighted in the way San threw his head back and dropped his mouth open to moan deep and loud when he moved San’s hand to take over.
San had already been close—that much Wooyoung could tell by how out of rhythm he’d gotten and how fast he’d been going. Wooyoung picked up the pace, jerking both of their cocks in one hand, the other planted firmly on San’s chest. They stopped going back and forth as their breathing picked up and synchronized the faster Wooyoung went. The only sound left in the room was the two of them panting and moaning each other’s names.
Finally he could feel San starting to shake. San grabbed his wrist and screwed his face up almost like it hurt: “Fuck, Woo, stop, I’m gonna—you’re gonna make me cum—”
Wooyoung grinned at him. “Good.”
And it was.
With a shout, San dug his blunt nails into Wooyoung’s wrist as Wooyoung flexed his fingers one last time. He came hard, spilling white over Wooyoung’s fingers as he kept going and getting both their bellies messy. Wooyoung was wound so tight that just the visual of San panting and moaning underneath him, stomach wet, skin flushed with fever, was enough to send him over the edge too. He bit down on his swollen bottom lip hard enough to draw blood and came with San’s name spilling from his mouth. San watched all of this leaned up on one elbow and, when Wooyoung was finally done stroking them both through the last bits of feeling, dropped to his back to cover his face.
It was quiet for a moment, both of them catching their breath, until San finally moved his hands.
“Jesus Christ, Wooyoung.”
Wooyoung, feeling sated and near delirious with content, shrugged. “Like I said. Been thinking about that for a long time.”
“Yeah. Clearly.”
They both laughed. “All it took to break the ice was some strip poker, huh?” Wooyoung said, sliding off San’s lap to grab the towel off the dresser San pointed at. He came back and tenderly wiped them both down before fixing their pants and sitting next to San’s hip where he was still laid out on the bed.
“Were you really that scared that we’d mess up our friendship if we hooked up?”
No sense in lying about it. Wooyoung pulled a leg to his chest and put his chin on his knee. “Yeah. I still am.”
San looked at him and it made Wooyoung’s heart squeeze to see how his gaze softened. He closed his eyes a little when San reached up to brush at the damp hair on Wooyoung’s forehead.
“We’re both stupid, then. I’ve liked you for a long time, Woo.”
His heart felt like it was going to explode. Reality really was turning out to be better than the years of dreams he’d had, kept quiet in his secret shame.
“I like you, too.” Wooyoung looked at him. “Will you stop cheating at cards now?“
San grinned. “No.”
He sighed.
♞