Chapter Text
Sleep in the summer comes in waves of heat and hours that stretch slow and thick like a sickening syrup; still, stifling air filling the spaces around consciousness and waiting in a dull shade of humidity for a storm to tone it back to grey -
- Bzzzzzz -
- until the sun presses its way through the gaps around the curtain half-drawn in the hopes that the night air would recognise the invitation and creep its way in -
- Bzzzzzzzzzz-
- which is where Wooyoung finds himself, in the heave of sleep where thoughts dredge along the border of dream and lucidity, dripping in the sticky cling of leftover summer night sweat -
- Bzzzzzzzzz -
Jeez, what is that?
- Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz -
Vibrator? No. Of course it's not. Why would it be your vibrator?
Yeosang's vibrator?
No, that's even more stupid… and we told Yeosang not to do that again -
Phone! Phones are a thing.
He swipes his hand blindly under the pillow and fumbles for his phone, Nyang burbling in protest and unfurling his lanky legs with a great flourish. Wooyoung squints at the too-bright screen in the too-bright morning light. What kind of person calls at the ungodly hour of 10:03am on a Sunday?
Unknown number
Ugh…
"Hello?" he mumbles, clearing his throat and covering his eyes with Nyang's tail. He tries with very little effort and even less success to not fall asleep again.
"Hi," comes a clipped reply on the other end, from a voice which then says other words that Wooyoung definitely isn't awake enough to catch.
He peels his face from his pillow. "Huh?"
"I said," (Wooyoung is concentrating now) "I'm sorry for calling, but I think I've found your cat's collar in my garden."
"Oh... " he shifts Nyang's tail from his face and looks at the fluffy black bundle on his pillow, who is very definitely not wearing a collar. "Buddy, why are you naked?"
"Excuse me?" the man on the other end of the phone splutters.
"No! No, sorry… I was talking to my cat," Wooyoung sits up. "He's not wearing his collar."
"I know that," the man replies curtly, "I am currently holding it."
"Yeah, duh, no shit," Wooyoung mutters, screwing the heel of his hand into his eye. It's too hot and too early to be dealing with this.
"Sorry?"
"I said I can come and get it," he looks over at Nyang, who is peering at him with a heavy side eye for not congratulating him on his Very Big Stretch. "Where do you live?"
The man rattles off his address as if he were speaking to the bank, and Wooyoung recognises it instantly as Mrs Lee's old house.
Mrs Lee, the sweet ajumma whose garden backed onto the yard Wooyoung and Yeosang share with the other apartments in the small complex, and who loved the boys and their neighbours, but especially doted on Nyang. She had moved two months ago to be closer to her daughter, and Wooyoung was sure Nyang took it the hardest.
So this must be the new neighbour.
From the sounds of it, he's not as warm and wholesome as Mrs Lee.
He lets the man know he'll be there soon, then tosses his phone aside. He scrubs his knuckles under Nyang's soft chin before stretching out of bed with a crooked groan and slipping on the pair of sleep shorts he'd relinquished to the bedroom floor at some point in the sticky heat of the night in the hopes of cooling down.
Nyang follows, hopping from the pillow with a chirrup and stretching again, making especially sure to vaunt each limb and paw with luxuriant grace before softly bopping his head against Wooyoung's shin.
"Oooh, big stretch," he coos in praise, "Well done, big boy. Let's get you some food."
🐈⬛
Twenty minutes later, after showering, feeding Nyang, and picking through his floordrobe to find a top he didn't mind sweating through within two minutes of stepping outside, Wooyoung rings the doorbell of Mrs Lee's old house in a loose tank top that's already started sticking to him. He peers over his chunky sunglasses to check his hair in his reflection in the porch window. The last time he was here, he and Yeosang were saying a tearful goodbye to Mrs Lee as she gifted them two of the hanging baskets from the porch, plus a box of brownies, too much home cooked food, and several bags of Nyang's favourite treats.
Now, the porch feels devoid of Mrs Lee's colourful flair, concrete and sad, a scruff of dry brown petals the only trace that their beloved neighbour had ever been there.
He makes a mental note to mail her a photo of Nyang and a letter to update her on how the hanging baskets are doing.
The door opens, cracking him out of his nostalgic drift, and for a blissful moment he basks in the sudden blast of freezing air con with a sigh.
The sigh turns into a choke, however, when he sees that the person who answered the door is the most hole-flutteringly gorgeous man he's ever seen in his gay life.
And here he is, sputtering and gasping for air in front of him, and not even for a fun reason.
The man blinks at him with his sharp feline eyes and raises one of his thick eyebrows. He's all dense golden muscle packed into a tight white t-shirt and blue jeans, and frankly Wooyoung needs to calm the hell down and not slut out for once. We've been working on this, Yeosang would say. He doesn't even know this man's name.
Not that that's ever stopped him before. But usually he's not making such a pathetic first impression.
"Are you okay?" he asks, unsurprisingly unimpressed.
"Yeah -" Wooyoung wheezes, incredibly grateful for the inventor of huge sunglasses and their capacity for concealing embarrassingly red, watery eyes. "Sorry, I just -" he clears his throat and wipes his chin, "I'm Wooyoung."
"Hmm," the man opens the door further, one delicate hand resting on the doorframe, and casts a snide glance over Wooyoung's sweaty, spitty self - which again, is not even the result of anything remotely enjoyable.
Wooyoung does a shitty job of stopping his mouth from twisting into a scowl. He didn't drag himself out of bed to be looked at like he's trash.
No, you prefer that to happen in bed, Yeosang's voice giggles in his head. Wooyoung internally swats the voice away and glowers.
"So… can I have my cat's collar back?"
The man all but rolls his eyes. "Wait here," he mumbles as he turns back into the hallway. Wooyoung watches as he stretches lithely over a stack of unpacked boxes to reach for the side table. The hem of his t-shirt hitches over the ridge of his toned hip, the sun-glow skin prickled with goosebumps from the chilly air in the house, and for the first time in all his summers Wooyoung curses the existence of air con for its interference between him and whatever else is hiding under that t-shirt -
" - while I was trimming the bush."
"Your - huh?" Wooyoung almost chokes again. The man has reappeared before him, hand outstretched.
He raises his brow again. "The collar," he jingles it for emphasis, "I found it in the bushes at the back of the garden while I was doing yard work."
"Right! Right…thanks…" Wooyoung says, swiping the studded collar from his hand. "My cat used to visit the woman who lived here all the time. I think he misses her. She would feed him sardines and chicken. It actually saved us a ton in cat food..."
"Us?"
"Yeah, me and my roommate," Wooyoung continues, unsure of why he won't shut up but is glad that he's at least reining what is a truly commendable amount of composure for a Sunday morning, especially when the man folds his arms across his impossibly broad chest and leans against the doorway. "Anyway, Nyang was probably curious to see who had moved in. Sorry."
The man tilts his chin up, decidedly uninterested in that entire exchange. "Sure."
Wooyoung's eyes drift to the soft freckles that drape over the column of his neck, and watches as his throat tightens. Wooyoung gulps, his mouth suddenly so, overbearingly dry.
"So…" he shoves the collar into the back pocket of his ripped jeans, leaving his hand there on his ass cheek to ground him. "Who has moved in?"
The man doesn't answer, instead glancing over Wooyoung again.
Hmm.
Wooyoung runs his free hand through his shaggy hair and down his neck, parting his lips and breathing out slowly.
It's not slutting out, he argues with the Yeosang in his head as he lets his hand linger on his collarbone, I'm just... standing. Just like he's just standing.
He attempts to fix his gaze on the dark, angular eyes surveying him and once again is grateful for his sunglasses when he finds it drifting to the space where the man's waist should be, because jeez, how is it so fucking miniscule - ?
"San."
"San?"
"Yup," he's stopped surveying Wooyoung now, back to blinking at him with that same unimpressed expression. Wooyoung feels his spine tingle despite the heat.
"Just San?"
He shrugs one shoulder. "And my girl."
WHAT??
Abort mission, abort mission, inner-Yeosang screeches, we are NOT trying that again -
"Cool," Wooyoung nods evenly and purses his lips. "Well… thanks for the collar. I'll… see you both around, I guess. Welcome to the neighbourhood."
He waves a wave he thinks doesn't look awkward, but tries not to give it much thought as he turns to leave as calmly as possible. He stuffs both hands shakily into his pockets - sure, double not awkward - and doesn't take them out until he's back at his front door and inputting the code.
He kicks off his flip flops and makes his way to the fan in the living room where Nyang has melted, taking back all of his earlier disdain towards air con and wishing instead that his apartment could be the ice box San's house felt like. He lifts his tank top and lets the fan blow against his skin.
"You're up early," Yeosang calls from the bathroom, and he's right. It's barely past 11am. Yeosang doesn't have to be at work until 12, and Wooyoung isn't usually awake to see him before he leaves.
He emerges from the bathroom, tousling product through his freshly platinumed hair and heading towards the kitchen. "Where have you been?"
"Nyangie lost his collar," Wooyoung gives up on the tank top entirely and strips it off, careful not to drop it onto the baked cat. "The new neighbour had it."
"Oh, San?"
Wooyoung frowns, "You've met him too?"
"Yeah," Yeosang says from inside the fridge. "Yesterday when I was walking home. He was moving a bunch of stuff into the garage. I helped him with a few boxes and he gave me an iced tea to say thanks. He was really nice."
Wooyoung flops onto the couch, pulling the collar from his pocket. It's less a collar and more a studded leather bracelet with popper fastenings that he used to wear all the time, incuding the day he found Nyang as a stray and brought him home three years ago.
"Are you sure we met the same guy?" he asks, tickling Nyang behind the ears and slipping the collar on again with a soft tinkle. He'd fitted a bell and a nametag with his phone number to it, because Nyang had made it clear early on that he hated being an indoor cat. The fact that Wooyoung and Yeosang often worked opposing shifts meant that they could leave Wooyoung's bedroom window open for Nyang to come and go as he pleased.
Yeosang clatters around the cabinets. "Our age? Short hair? Stupidly hot?"
"Massive dick," Wooyoung adds.
There's a slam from the kitchen, followed by Yeosang almost tripping over himself as he scrambles to the couch at breakneck speed.
"WHAT?"
"No, I meant he is a massive dick."
"Oh," Yeosang pouts and sits beside him. "Wait, what?"
"Yeah, he just seemed really stuck up," Wooyoung shrugs, lifting Nyang into his lap and massaging his head. Nyang purrs like a lawnmower, pressing his head into Wooyoung's fingers. "He barely said more than two syllables at a time and just kept glaring at me."
Yeosang reaches out and pets Nyang's belly, and Nyang's purrs go from lawnmower to prop plane. "Weird. He was really nice to me," he muses, then lets out a sparkling chuckle. "Maybe he was flirting with you."
Wooyoung scoffs, "I wish. He has a girlfriend."
Yeosang gasps softly and freezes, cocking his head to the side, his angelic features twisting in thought.
"Aw, man," he pauses, going over his own exchange with San, "Aw, man."
"I know."
"But I thought - "
"I know."
"Abort mission."
"Abort mission. Can't do that to ourselves again."
"I wasted so much flirt on him with those boxes, as well."
"Oh, babe. I'm so sorry."
Yeosang sighs and stands up. "Such a shame," he says as he moves to the front door to put his shoes on. "Did you meet his cat, at least?"
Wooyoung stops the Nyang head spa. "What?"
Nyang paws at his hand softly.
"His cat," Yeosang repeats, slinging his bag over his shoulder, "I didn't see her, but apparently she's really cute."
Nyang reaches a paw up to Wooyoung's chin, tapping him gently.
"Oh my god," he gasps, "Sangie - "
Yeosang looks up.
"I can't believe he didn't tell me about his cat."
Yeosang shakes his head. "Dick."
"Such a dick."