Chapter Text
When Jay and Sunghoon begged him to come to their frat’s party this weekend, Jake thought it would be like any other party he’s been to this year. Loud music, overcrowded, topped off with headache inducing strip lights throughout every inch of the house.
Jake’s used to it and he doesn’t particularly mind all these things, really. He knew when they decided to go to the same college three years ago he’d be obligated to go to all their parties even though he decided against rushing. But this week he has already been especially strung out.
His biggest projects before spring break have all seemed to line up perfectly, if not for the sole purpose of torturing him— his TA job that he thought he would enjoy has somehow spread itself into Jake’s daily life, leaking into his free time and not allowing him the pleasure of any beauty rest. And he has a big family event coming up where he will, once again, have to discuss with his mother how he has made only one real, genuine friend (Jungwon from his Bio Lab) and absolutely zero major improvement in his love life since starting college— and he’s in his junior year for God’s sake. Jake’s not ashamed to admit he’s already cried a couple times this week. But can you blame him? As he said, strung. out.
He knew ahead of time he was not exactly in the party mood. At least not frat party mood. But in spite of all this he still came because he is a Good Friend.
But now that he’s actually in the heart of the party, he knows he should have listened to his brain for once when it told him not to come. Sunghoon and Jay at least try their hand at hospitality, pulling Jake through the party and forcing him into small talk with too many people he can’t place the names of, but before he knows it they’re dragged off by one of the other frat members and disappear into the crowd right before Jake’s eyes. Which means he’s all alone now, and there’s people all around him. Even after he escapes to the kitchen there are still just too many people.
The jacket Jake wore to shield him from the chill of early spring air is serving the opposite of its purpose. Jake shrugs it off his shoulders, but he still feels as if he’s overheating. The music is loud and the crowd of people is hot. Too hot. He tries to grab a drink to cool his quickly rising body temperature, but after he sees someone throwing up in the kitchen sink he decides he needs to get out.
He speedwalks to the door when someone bumps right into him, hard— and he feels a cold sensation all over his body.
“Dude, watch where you’re— Oh. Hey, Jake.” The person says like him and Jake have been friends for years. He swears he has never even seen this man’s face before.
Jake stands silent and frozen in his place, mind running a thousand miles an hour and too baffled to even comprehend what’s happening, let alone exchange pleasantries with this random man.
“My bad, man. Hey, sorry about the shirt,” He claps Jake on the shoulder, with a little too much force, but he is clearly wasted so Jake lets it slide, and continues right on past him into the kitchen.
Jake exhales a scratchy breath and glances down at himself. He sees the white of his shirt turn gray with liquid and feels the stickiness of the drink starting to seep through onto his skin. This is great for him right now. Really, really great.
⸺
Jake’s been to this frat house more times than he can count, so he doesn’t even clock in any of his surroundings as he beelines straight to the upstairs bathroom, one that he knows no one else is going to be in.
The upstairs layer of the house is a lot quieter, which helps his headache, but his face still burns from the frustration of the night. He can still feel how overwhelmed he is deep in his bones and his hands still shake.
He makes it to the bathroom and pushes the door open, forgoing turning on the lights to run straight to the sink. He turns the cold water knob all the way to the max and splashes his face approximately one thousand times.
He attempts to rinse off the remnants of beer from his shirt before he finally looks up at himself in the mirror. He looks a mess, but that’s not really a surprise. He tries to fix his hair from all the water splashed onto it, but eventually gives up. He smacks his hands onto his cheeks and groans. In his mind he finally decides that he is going to go back downstairs, attempt to say goodbye to his friends, trudge back to his dorm, and try to finish some assignments without crying.
With this plan in mind he finally goes to turn away from the sink. He’s ready to march downstairs and carry out his course of action. He’s a man with a plan. He faces away from the sink, he stops dead in his tracks.
Jake screams.
“Woah, woah. Calm down,” says the man in the bathtub.
There’s a man in the bathtub?!
“I didn’t think I’d scare you that much.” He laughs while Jake is still stood in shock, hand on his chest as he heaves in surprise.
“What the hell! Why didn’t you say anything before?” Jake’s tone is accusatory.
Jake and the man sitting fully clothed in the empty bathtub make long eye contact and he takes a moment to try to recall if he knows this person.
Jake doesn’t think he has ever seen him before, but he looks about the same age. He’s got a joint in his hand and his legs are too long for him to fully spread out in the tub, tucked up at the knees to make himself smaller. The room is dark, no thanks to Jake not bothering to turn the lights on, and the only source of light is from the open window above the tub.
The moonlight bounces into the room keeping it a dim shade of dark blue, but the large window makes it bright enough that he could see the man’s face staring right back at him.
Jake’s face flushes even more than it was before and, admittedly, for a different reason this time.
“Didn’t wanna interrupt. You seemed pretty stressed, plus you had a whole ritual going on with the self waterboarding thing.” He gestures towards Jake’s face with one hand before he takes a hit from his joint and Jake realizes his face is still dripping with water. He flushes even darker, if that’s possible at this point, and turns around back to the sink.
“...I’m Heeseung, by the way.” The man, Heeseung, says.
Jake doesn’t respond. He presses the towel into his face and rubs aggressively while Heeseung stares.
“What’s your name?” He asks and takes another long drag from the joint, inhaling and exhaling before Jake can even get the words out.
“Jake, or, uh— Jaeyun. You can just call me Jaeyun.” Jake stumbles over his words due to the left-over anxiety from the party still hanging around in his chest, not from the way Heeseung’s gaze seems to burn right through him. The other boy takes his legs from inside the tub and kicks them over the side instead. His feet dangle over the edge.
“Okay, Jaeyun. Want a hit?”
⸺
“Aliens?”
“No.”
“Ghosts?”
“Nope.” Jake emphasizes the end of the word with a pop as Heeseung passes the joint back to him, both boys settled into the too small bathtub.
“Okay, what about the apocalypse?”
Jake coughs a little on the smoke he’s holding in his lungs from trying not to laugh.
“What do you mean The apocalypse?” Jake giggles, “Is there something you know that the rest of us don’t?”
“An apocalypse. Any apocalypse!” Heeseung tries to reason, but the look on his face is too serious. Jake can’t help but laugh again.
“I don’t think it’s impossible. Depends on whether we’re talking about a reasonable cause or, like, zombies.” The giggles have died down, but he still has a smile on his face. He manages to sneak in another drag from the joint before the other can gesture for him to pass it back.
Moments pass and Jake only realizes it’s been quiet for too long when he hears the sound of cars passing by on the street below carrying through the window. He sneaks a glance over at Heeseung and his eyebrows are furrowed while he stares into the dark room.
Jake doesn’t say anything.
He goes in for another hit, but the other boy finally breaks the silence.
“Soulmates?”
Jake lowers the joint from his lips and stays quiet for a placid moment. When Heeseung sees this pause he takes the chance to steal it back and take a hit himself.
“Maybe.”
“Why maybe?” Heeseung turns to face more towards him, their sneakers knocking together where they dangle over the edge of the tub.
Jake is slightly thrown off by the sudden attention, but he tries not to let the way his chest burns at the strong gaze in Heeseung’s eyes show on his face.
“The concept of soulmates sounds really nice, but I find it hard to actually believe in it. The thought that there’s one person out there who’s supposed to be, like, made for you. It’s hard to grasp.”
Heeseung looks at him thoughtfully, yet Jake thinks he almost seems disappointed from the way his lips press into a thin line.
“I really do think it’s sweet, though.” Jake rushes out, “I’d love it if someone thought of me as their soulmate someday.”
Heeseung just prolongs his silence, seemingly unsatisfied with Jake’s answer. Jake fiddles with his thumbs and tries to keep the conversation alive, desperately wanting to move on from the sudden feeling that he has let the other boy down,
“Is there a reason you’re so curious about my thoughts on soulmates?”
The joint is starting to burn out from the neglect, and Heeseung finally passes it back to Jake.
“When I was in middle school we had a couple lessons about mythology. My teacher told us the myth about Zeus and how soulmates were created. About how humans were formed with four arms and legs, two faces,” Heeseung picks at the dry skin on his lips as he talks and Jake’s eyes follow the movement, his head feeling floaty and heavy where it sits between his shoulders. Heeseung continues,
“Zeus felt threatened by the thought of a single creature being so powerful, so he split them in half and left them to wander the Earth. Just searching for each other for years and years until they found their other half. They could never feel complete without the other.”
Jake’s not sure if he’s heard the story before or not, he’s never been much of a romantic nor has he ever been interested in the likes of mythology — but Heeseung is pulling him in more than he’d like to admit, and the words make him feel an ache in his chest.
And maybe he’s just a good speaker, or maybe Jake is just high, but Heeseung’s voice is beginning to sound so devastatingly soothing. It’s a deep rumble of sound from where he sits beside Jake as he speaks, sounding like the words are coming from the very core of his chest.
“It might sound silly, but ever since I heard that story I started to look at people differently. I’d walk around wondering who else might be lonely. Who else felt like they were missing a part of them. Or if maybe they had already found the other half of their soul.”
Perhaps it’s the wrong time for Jake to be feeling such a way, but his mind is hazy from the weed and it sinks its claws into the gravelly sound of Heeseung’s voice until it’s all he can focus on. There’s something about the way he sounds— the way he speaks, that makes a deep sense of calm settle into Jake’s core, spreading through his entire body. A type of calm that he does not even feel while smoking.
Yet he still has half a mind to render the meaning of Heeseung’s words that feel increasingly too personal. The story Heeseung has shared felt less like a retelling of a memory and more like him bearing his soul in this way too small bathtub they sit in. The intimacy of the words paired with the closeness of their bodies— the way Jake’s knobby knees knock into Heeseung’s where they rest bent off the edge of the tub, their sneakers tangling together— for some reason makes Jake nearly want to cry.
Yeah, he decides, he’s definitely just high.
But still, he scoots closer.
Heeseung rips his hand away from his mouth at the sudden press of their bodies— their shoulders now aligned, the material of their clothes rustling as Jake presses the entirety of his side into the other’s— and Heeseung spares his lips from the picking which has resulted in them turning a shade of dark red. A small corner of his bottom lip looks seconds away from bursting, his calloused hands having pulled at the skin too roughly and left it ready to break, leak a deep red line of blood from the flesh. Jake’s tries not to dwell on the sight of the other boy’s lips for too long, though, moving over to lean his head on the other boy’s shoulder. His face touches the cotton of Heeseung’s shirt.
“It’s not silly.” Jake whispers against the material.
Heeseung rests his own cheek against the top of Jake’s hair. He breathes out a quiet ‘thank you’ —and they stay like that.
⸺
They pass the blunt back and forth until it’s burnt down to the tip.
Jake doesn’t usually smoke unless he’s at parties, but he still likes to think he has a pretty good tolerance. He remembers the first time he smoked he barely felt anything and thought that he had the world’s best weed tolerance. That was, until the second time and he only took two hits before feeling his head get fuzzy. Apparently nobody thought to tell him that the first time you smoke weed most people don’t feel anything at all.
Nowadays Jake’s tolerance is pretty high. But, still, they’ve been sitting in the bathroom passing the joint around long enough for Jake’s mouth to go dry and his eyes to glaze over.
Heeseung goes to put the remains of the joint out and ungracefully smushes the lit end on the inside of the tub, leaving black and gray ashes stained on the white ceramic.
Jake makes a noise of surprise.
“Should you really be doing that?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Heeseung shrugs nonchalantly, “It’s my bathtub anyways. I live here.”
“You live here?” The shock in his voice is so evident that even Jake can tell his eyes are bulging out of his head like a cartoon character.
“Yep, I’m a frat boy,” He says with a tisk and a shake of the head, feigning disappointment, “That change things?”
If Jake were to say yes that would be hypocritical of him, considering the whole reason he’s at this party is because his friends are part of the frat throwing it. But it still begs the question of what exactly Heeseung is referring to that it would be changing.
Jake won’t deny that he feels a pull towards the other boy, he won’t deny the way his eyes have been lingering and his skin tingled with untapped nerves when he laid resting on Heeseung’s shoulder. But not once did he consider that Heeseung might have been feeling something similar.
“No, no. It’s just… I’ve never seen you around before. I know a couple of the members.” Jake tries to explain his possibly over-the-top reaction, trying not to spiral on what Heeseung may have been earlier implicating. The only people in the frat that Jake hasn’t become at least mildly familiar with are the freshmen, but he spares one glance at the other and he knows there is no way Heeseung could ever pass as a wide eyed first year.
Heeseung huffs out a smile.
“Just transferred from another college nearby at the beginning of the semester. I missed the rush and everything last term, but knowing the frat president has its perks. Me and Yeonjun go way back.”
He seems almost prideful about it, which Jake supposes he understands. Yeonjun, despite being the head of a frat, is a good guy. He’s well known and respected on campus not only for the frat, but for being one of the best dancers in his department. It makes Jake suddenly curious which department Heeseung is a part of.
“Plus, I did not want to live in one of those tiny ass dorms.”
“Hey! I happen to like my tiny ass dorm.” Jake all but pouts in offense. Heeseung stares back at him with what Jake wants to imagine is a fond expression. But the fondness quickly turns into something else when he winks and says,
“Yeah? Maybe I could check it out sometime.”
Jake feels his cheeks heat up, but he only allows himself to be flustered from the line for a moment.
“Well, before that I demand to see this ginormous, luxurious room that is so much better than everyone else’s puny little dorms.” He shoots back playfully, putting a lilt in his voice. It’s going to be a real ego blow later if he has been misreading Heeseung’s words for flirting.
But, despite Jake’s inkling of worry, Heeseung hops out of the tub, sneakers landing on the floor with a smack, and offers his hand to Jake to help him up as well.
“Would be my pleasure.” He smiles.
⸺
“Me and this kid a year below me share. For now. I have it on very good authority that I’ll be getting my own room next year.” Heeseung opens the door to a room down the hallway and gestures for Jake to step in.
Assuming that he’s a junior like Jake, it’s a given that he will get his own room in the house next year— almost all seniors in their frat do— but Jake still lets him have his moment. Heeseung is likely unaware that Jake knows all the lore about their frat anyways, which is courtesy of spending too much time with Jay and Sunghoon.
“It still manages to be bigger and better than those ‘puny little dorm rooms,’ though.” Heeseung does a spin and throws his arms out in a gesture to the room, making it seem much grander than it really is.
In reality, it’s a pretty normal sized room. Although, Jake will admit, much bigger than the dorm he also has to share with another person. Heeseung makes his way to sit on the edge of his bed while Jake remains stagnant in the middle of the room after shutting the door behind him. Heeseung’s side of the room looks surprisingly homey. He’s got a variety of throw blankets on his bed and his walls are covered with posters for movies and bands that Jake doesn’t particularly recognize. The comparison of his side to his roommate’s is almost comical. Heeseung’s side looks so lived in while his roommate is leaving almost zero trace of human life. Minimalism at its finest.
Heeseung must notice him looking.
“Yeah, that kid’s never around much. I’m pretty sure he joined the frat just cause his parents wanted him to. Somebody told me he’s a legacy. The grapevine says he’s an architecture major, though, so honestly he’s probably killing himself at the library most nights.” Heeseung rambles while he unties his sneakers and kicks them off somewhere by the side of the bed.
Jake makes a noise of sympathy and bounces onto the bed next to him. He mimics Heeseung’s actions and kicks his own sneakers off. They land right next to Heeseung’s pair and Jake can't stop looking at the way his are noticeably smaller in size than the other’s.
“So?” Heeseung’s voice cuts in, pulling his gaze away from the floor, “What do you think?”
Jake makes a show of glancing around the room again and pretending to ponder on his answer. He puts a hand up to his chin in a thinking position and hums. When Jake starts to tap his finger on his chin, Heeseung gets antsy from the suspense and scoots closer. Their thighs touch.
“I like it!” Jake finally lets out, slapping his hands onto his lap for effect. “The vibe is very coming of age movie bedroom.”
“I’m not sure how to feel about that considering I’m in my twenties, but I’ll take it!” Heeseung laughs and knocks their shoulders together. The entirety of Jake’s left side is pressed up against him, mimicking their position in the bathtub. He thinks if they were to get any closer they might morph into one being.
Jake looks down and grasps Heeseung’s hand, the grip of his fingers is unsure, gentle where they brush against Heeseung’s. When the other doesn’t show any signs of discomfort he intertwines their fingers. “No, no. It’s a good thing. I could definitely see myself, like, doing homework in here.”
Heeseung smiles and leans his head even closer.
“Well, you’re welcome to anytime.”
The sentence makes Jake’s cheeks redden and he almost wants to ask the other boy if he means it. But before he can debate voicing that thought, Heeseung pulls their joint hands closer to himself to gather all of Jake’s attention. And when he gets it, he presses their foreheads together.
Their faces are so close Jake thinks that he’s going to kiss him, but all Heeseung does is stare.
Jake has made it a point not to be intimate with any of the members of the frat. He spends far too much time in this house to have to avoid one of the people who live here, or be subjected to any weird or awkward conversations while in the common areas. But Jake’s body is feeling floaty, and something about the way Heeseung is looking at him makes him want to give up his inhibitions.
Honestly, Jake’s surprised he has come this far without seeing Heeseung around and jumping his bones, but most of the time he’s here is spent holed up in Jay and Sunghoon’s shared room. Perhaps tomorrow Jake will blame it on the weed, but he can’t deny that he found Heeseung attractive even before he took his first hit. He can’t explain it, just something about the other boy was pulling him in since the beginning, forcing him to forget his plans of ditching the party and shove his body into the cramped bathtub, settling into a torturous proximity to Heeseung and his pretty face.
But Jake tries to push it down. He tries not to let his mind run wild with the possibilities and all the warning signs in his head telling him that this might be a bad idea.
When his mind is no longer spinning, he centers his focus back onto Heeseung’s eyes staring right at him, dark brown and glossy, a slight red tint settled over the whites, and heavy emotion leaking from his gaze. The alarms in his head fade into silence.
Jake’s left hand is rendered immobile from where it lays intertwined with Heeseung’s between them, but his right reaches over to clutch at Heeseung’s shirt. The action sends Heeseung into back into the present and he breaks the silence,
“I’m not reading this wrong, right?”
“No,” Jake laughs softly, “So are you gonna kiss me, or not?”
Heeseung kisses him. It’s soft for a moment, slow and unsure, and Jake wonder’s if Heeseung is still feeling the effects of the weed just like Jake is, if his mind has been running wild with uncertainty too. But then Heeseung presses in closer, his lips moving against Jake’s confidently, firm, and Jake tries his best to reciprocate.
Heeseung unwinds their connected hands to cup Jake’s cheek with his palm, turning his head to angle the kiss deeper. His lips are soft and Jake feels tingles running down his body just from the simple touch of Heeseung’s mouth on his own. It makes him antsy, and Jake wiggles his toes and clutches his fingers tighter at Heeseung’s shirt in an attempt to get the extra energy out.
When Heeseung’s tongue licks at his bottom lip, Jake’s mouth parts immediately, like his body already knew Heeseung’s next move. Their tongues meet and Jake whines at the taste of Heeseung in his mouth— at the feeling of his tongue, hot and wet, pressing up against Jake’s own. Jake has a moment where he retreats into the back of his head, having half a mind to be embarrassed that his own mouth has gone so dry from smoking, but then Heeseung grips his waist and licks underneath Jake’s tongue and any thoughts not pertaining directly to Heeseung are quickly swept away.
Heeseung groans when Jake shoves his own tongue into Heeseung’s mouth, but then he’s pulling away, leaving Jake nearly ready to chase after his lips before he realizes he can barely breathe. Jake heaves the much needed air back into his lungs and watches as Heeseung does the same.
Then, Heeseung is laying his palms over Jake’s hips, guiding him with his heavy grip and turning their bodies so Jake is laid flat on the bed, his hair fanning out on Heeseung’s pillow. Heeseung crawls over him after placing him down, gripping Jake’s knees to spread his thighs and make room for himself between them.
Jake’s breathing has returned to normal, but his breath hitches once again and his heart speeds up when Heeseung slides his hands underneath his shirt, spanning them out on either side of Jake’s belly button. Jake looks down between them to see the way his hands sit on Jake’s skin, trying to place the reason why he feels like Heeseung’s touch is sending jolts of electricity through his entire body.
“Jaeyun.” Heeseung calls. Jake’s eyes snap up to Heeseung’s, his heartbeat spiking once again at the sound of his name falling from Heeseung’s lips. “Is this okay?”
His hands stay complacent on Jake’s hips, thumbs pressing down into the skin as he waits for Jake’s response.
“Yes,” Jake says almost too quickly, eager to get Heeseung back on him. “Yeah— yeah.”
Heeseung huffs out a breath of air, something similar to a laugh most likely directed at Jake’s eagerness, but then his hands are rushing to run along Jake’s skin like he’s just as eager too. He trails his fingertips as light as feathers on Jake’s sides and abdomen, making him squirm in his place and reach up to curl around the back of Heeseung’s neck, pulling them nose to nose.
Heeseung doesn’t stay close for long, though, leaving a single peck on Jake’s thick lips before leaning down to press kisses to his skin. He moves down, pressing his lips on Jake’s adam's apple. Then down some more, lips meeting the skin at the base of Jake’s neck, right between his collarbones. And he keeps going down until he makes it to Jake’s exposed torso. He pushes Jake’s shirt up to his clavicle and leaves it there.
Jake’s mouth is permanently parted, huffing out small breaths and gasping as Heeseung’s mouth trails wet kisses along his stomach, up his middle, and towards his chest. Jake’s mind is fuzzy and his lower stomach pools with something hot as Heeseung’s lips cover every inch of his skin, Jake clutching at his shoulder as he works.
When Heeseung brings his mouth to hover above one of Jake’s nipples, breath fanning over the pink bud, Jake's hand flies up to grip at his hair. He pulls at the strands harshly, Heeseung groaning aloud at the rough grip. Jake tightens his grasp even harder at the sound, not pulling him away, but pushing him down. When Heeseung presses his tongue flat against the bud Jake’s legs snap together, trying to close shut, but instead end up wrapped around either side of Heeseung’s upper waist.
Heeseung pulls his mouth away from his skin to look up at Jake, eyes blazing where they stare through his bangs.
“You like that?” Heeseung teases, but the smugness doesn’t faze Jake, mind too clouded with memory of the feeling of Heeseung’s mouth on his chest. Jake just whines, something desperate and quiet, before trying to push Heeseung back down onto his skin. Heeseung goes easily, and he litters Jake’s skin with bites, teeth pulling at the skin of his pecs, near his collarbones and the base of his neck, before finally bringing his lips back to Jake’s chest.
His tongue licks at the skin of Jake’s areola and Jake lets out a loud moan at the feeling, so loud that he would be embarrassed if not for the loud music still blasting from downstairs and the muffled chatter of the party he can still hear. The noise just spurs Heeseung on, he brings his lips to press around Jake’s nipple— and he sucks.
“Heeseung.” Jake groans, voice scratchy as his nails dig through Heeseung’s shirt into the flesh of his back.
Heeseung pulls back from Jake’s chest to move his head to the side, lips quickly latching onto Jake’s other nipple that has been left neglected until now. Jake lets out another high sound and his face heats up from how obvious it is that he’s enjoying this too much. But Heeseung doesn’t sense any of his embarrassment, bringing his hand up to play with Jake’s nipple that is now abandoned as he pressed his tongue and lips to the other one. The pad of his thumb presses into the bud before he brings his pointer finger up to roll it, still slick with spit from Heeseung’s tongue.
Jake is so flushed that he can only pray that the blush hasn’t spread down to his neck and chest, but it seems unlikely when just his face alone is burning up so much that it makes his eyes tear up.
Heeseung digs his nail lightly into the pad of Jake’s nipple and it’s so overwhelming that he finds himself dragging the other boy off by his hair, finally allowing his abused chest to breathe.
Heeseung hovers overtop him again, their eyes meeting. Jake shakes his head in disbelief, sending him a look and hopes his message of ‘You’re crazy’ is conveyed well enough through his gaze. Heeseung cracks a wide grin and smiles down at him dumbly— and Jake is certain that he got the message.
Heeseung gives him a moment to collect himself again, Jake clearly overstimulated if his watery eyes and heaving breaths are anything to go off of. He doesn’t try to start anything else, just holding himself up above Jake, caging him in with his arms and letting himself serve as something stable for Jake to ground himself with.
And Jake breathes him in, finding comfort in the way Heeseung takes up his entire vision, blocking him from the outside world. Heeseung shifts his weight onto his right arm, bringing up his left to run a hand through Jake’s dark brown hair, distracting himself with the way it slips through his fingers like silk and lands on the pillow beneath Jake’s head.
Once Jake’s face has cooled and his head feels as if it’s back between his shoulders where it belongs, he curls a hand around the back of Heeseung’s neck. He scratches at the nape of Heeseung’s hair with his nails, bringing the other boy’s attention back to him and trails his eyes along Heeseung’s face.
He forgoes playing with Heeseung’s hair to rest his thumb on Heeseung’s mouth, the pad of his finger brushing along Heeseung’s bottom lip tenderly as if his touch could heal the dark, rough patches on the flesh— the ones that were already near bleeding and are now bitten red from Jake’s own teeth.
“You’re pretty,” Jake’s lips move on their own accord as he stares up at him, like the filter between his brain and his mouth is dissipating completely with every second he spends in Heeseung’s company.
Heeseung grins.
“You’re pretty.” He says back and leans down to press kiss after kiss to Jake’s neck. “So pretty. You’re gorgeous.”
Jake can’t hold back his smile while he reaches up to grab at Heeseung’s hair, gently this time. Heeseung is still mouthing at his neck and spewing out sweet words and Jake’s heart for some reason just feels so full. He gets the overwhelming urge to tilt his chin down and press a kiss to the top of Heeseung’s head, something lovely and lingering to the crown of his hair. Like they’re dating or something. Jake really needs to get a hold of himself.
He tries to slow down the beat of his heart, forcing himself to try to think of something besides the way Heeseung is overtaking all of his emotions. He thinks of the party downstairs, the thump of the bass he can still hear muffled through the walls. He thinks of his friends, if they’ve noticed that he’s gone missing, wonders if they think he left without saying goodbye. He thinks of the paper he has due next week— thinks of the phone call he has to make to his advisor and the project he has to work on for his physiology class.
He thinks of ways to prepare for the next time he comes by the frat house. Wonders how he’s going to handle the possibility of running into Heeseung now that he knows what his lips taste like, knows the sounds he lets out when Jake pulls at his hair and digs his nails into his skin.
It can be casual, he thinks. Heeseung isn’t the first person he’s slept with and then had to go through the grueling process of sprinting around corners and hiding behind Sunghoon’s wide shoulders when he spots them on campus. He doesn’t have to make this out to be anything more than it is— a hookup.
But as Heeseung lines his skin with the soft press of his lips, as they shed their clothes and pull each other closer— as Heeseung opens him up and takes Jake’s beating heart in his hands, pressing it between his fingertips and squeezing himself into the spaces between Jake’s rib cage— Jake’s brain no longer allows him the pleasure of feigning indifference.
He only hopes that tomorrow his body will forget the way Heeseung has carved himself into it.