Chapter Text
The sun beats down unseasonably hot upon the Somerset undergrad commencement ceremony. The air is thick with pollen and the restless energy of a student body finally freed from the bonds of academia. Endings and new beginnings. The quad hums with celebration, with the clicks of camera shutters, with the happy tears of family members, and the lingering faculty as they offer their final, individual congratulations.
Yeonjun is tucked neatly into the fold of the crowd, his linen suit clinging to his uncomfortably warm skin. Beomgyu is radiant — he twirls his cap in his hands as his mother fusses over him. The heat makes his cheeks flush attractively, and his smile hasn’t slipped from his face since they all made their way outside.
Yeonjun should be happy, too, but there’s a wall between them. He can’t hug Beomgyu, lift him into his arms like he wants to; can’t smile for the photos Beomgyu has tried to pull him into. Instead, he has to stay a step back, removed the way any professor should be. He chats with Beomgyu’s parents as politely as he can without absorbing what they’re saying.
He feels poised on the edge of something — and then, like he’d been waiting for it all along, he hears the voice that sends him plunging.
“Professor Choi.”
Yeonjun turns, but he already knows. A senior administrator stands before him, his expression unreadable. Dread solidifies in his gut, heavy and long overdue. Clouds roll over the sun and Yeonjun’s blood runs cold. It’s almost too cinematic; Soobin would fail him for this kind of visual storytelling.
“The dean would like to speak with you. Immediately.”
Beside him, Beomgyu tenses. Though they aren’t touching, Yeonjun can sense it, the moment the mask slips. Beomgyu’s smile falters. It lasts only a breath, over so quickly Beomgyu’s parents don’t notice — but Yeonjun does, and it sends him sinking further. He’d hoped to protect him from this, but of course, he couldn’t.
It was always going to end here, wasn’t it?
Yeonjun nods, murmurs an excuse he can’t quite remember, and keeps his expression carefully blank. Then he follows the administrator back to the main building, each step heavier than the last.
Five Months Earlier
The spired bell tower of Somerset University punches through the fog, a beacon for Yeonjun to orient himself as he runs the snow laden loop around campus. Ice and gravel crunch under his feet, a shivering wind at his back. Branches of the encroaching pines swipe at him, snagging on his parka. Another mile ticks by on his smartwatch.
The university, as well as the entire town of Falstaff, is enclosed by mountains, a northern offshoot of the Appalachians, coated with snow until at least March. Their white peaks emerge and disappear through the shifting threads of low hanging clouds. It will be months before Yeonjun can return to their waterfalls and scrambles, but there is merit to taking the well-worn path, too, no matter what Frost might have said.
He pushes himself up the last bit of the final incline, the burn in his thighs a welcome distraction from the day looming ahead. Paperwork, lesson plans, all of the preparation that goes into planning a successful semester. At the height of the hill, he pauses, looking out over the campus sprawling into the valley. White blankets the rooftops of the buildings from the library to Chatham Hall, which houses the English department. Serene, for now.
The trailhead spits him out on Greek row, the brick chapter houses dark and quiet for just a few more days before the new semester starts. The rest of town is similarly hushed throughout Yeonjun’s run home, few cars on the road except those he recognizes as other faculty members headed to work to finish preparing for the incoming students. He’ll be right there beside them before the sun finally makes an appearance.
He turns the corner to his street, spotting the white and blue postal truck parked at the far end of the block. Here, he hops onto the sidewalk where it’s been properly shoveled and salted by his neighbors and slows his pace. The cold air burns his eyes, his throat, his lungs as he takes deep steadying breaths.
The postman, Bennett, meets Yeonjun at his front gate like he has every morning since Yeonjun moved into the aging Colonial at the end of summer. “Good morning, Professor,” he says, digging into the navy blue bag at his hip.
“Whatever it is, I don’t want it,” Yeonjun jokes. He blows warm air into his fisted hands as he waits.
Bennett produces a large manila envelope from his bag, passing it to Yeonjun. “This one seems important.”
Yeonjun takes it along with the stack of credit card offers, bills, and junk. It’s surprisingly thin. He recognizes the gold and red logo of his wife’s attorney and his stomach clenches.
“Thanks, Benny,” Yeonjun says, bounding up the brick steps. “Try to stay warm.”
Inside, the house is quiet, the air filled only with the hum of the radiator. Yeonjun’s movements are deliberately slow, taking his time to peel off his cold, wet layers, as if with this performance he can convince even himself that the contents of the envelope don’t matter. He leaves his sodden jacket on its usual hook and his sodden running shoes in a pool of reddish-purple light cast onto the floor by the stained glass sidelights, and before ripping into the letter, pours himself a cup of black coffee.
The kitchen is only half finished, renovations halted by the weather. The feet of the counter stool scrape across raw concrete as he settles in.
The summons is printed on heavy paper, the black ink gleaming. He reads it over twice before it finally sinks in: the final hearing in their divorce proceedings will be March 10th. He glances at the calendar pinned to the wall beside the fridge — the first day of Spring break.
The house feels still, which is ridiculous — Simone never once stepped foot in here, so the place is unblemished by memories. It’s only his. He made sure of it.
It had been the convenient kind of love. Simmering, but never boiling over. Passionless, but comfortable and easy. They were college sweethearts who followed the blueprint laid before them: undergrad at the institution steeped in their families’ histories; grad school abroad, a modern day grand tour; and then a return home, to settle down. The harder conversations didn’t happen until after the one at the altar: kids, careers, where to plant their roots. But Simone didn’t want to plant her roots. It took a wasted decade for Yeonjun to finally hear her.
Yeonjun rises to his feet, shaking the exhaustion out of his shoulders. Arriving to this hearing date has been a marathon a year in the making. He snatches a pen from the outer pocket of his satchel and scribbles his name across the signature box. One step closer to the finish line.
As he tucks the letter into a new envelope — he’ll have his TA drop it off at the post office later — his cell phone buzzes from its charger on the counter, startling him. He reaches for it reflexively.
You have a new message from @angel313.
Heat prickles on his cheeks and he sweeps the kitchen with his eyes as if there is anyone around to notice him. Angel’s message would be a welcome and warm distraction from the lingering fatigue of the morning, but as his thumb hovers over the notification icon, he catches the time. He’ll have to read it later; if he doesn’t get ready now, he’ll be late for work.
“How was Christmas with the lesser Chois?” Yeonjun asks.
Soobin, Yeonjun’s oldest friend, scoffs, searching for something to throw at him, but everything laid out on his desk is too precious. After a long morning of finalizing grading practices with his two new TAs, Yeonjun sprawls on the emerald velvet couch in Soobin’s office, feet dangling over one tufted arm.
They met Soobin’s first year of undergrad at Somerset, pushed together by several overlapping courses. Yeonjun, a year ahead of him, having learned they shared the same family name, introduced himself the very first week. And though they scoured their families’ registers and found no connection between them whatsoever, it didn’t stop them from spending as much time as they could with one another. If Yeonjun and Simone were the quintessential campus couple, Soobin rounded them out as a perfectly balanced trio.
As one of the very few omegas on campus, Soobin had been assigned a single dorm room, the holy grail for underclassmen and a refuge when Yeonjun needed to escape his blockheaded legacy roommate. They’d been an unlikely pair back then, but their differences only serve to heighten their dynamic now. Their friendship works, and it has worked, for 20 years.
20 years. Yeonjun shoves that horrible thought to the back of his mind where it can continue to be ignored, and stretches his arms over his head.
“My Chois were perfectly pleasant,” Soobin says, continuing to fuss at the old projector and its many, many pieces scattered over his desk.
“I don’t think that’s true. An entire holiday without a comment about the woeful lack of grandchildren?”
“The gossip was all about your divorce, actually.” He sets his screwdriver down, pushes the button on whatever he’d been trying to fix, and the contraption promptly falls apart again. “Did your mother give you a hard time about it?”
He asks it casually enough to render the subject even heavier. Yeonjun is immediately endeared by the softness with which Soobin always tries to handle him. “Not exactly. She’s switching tactics: now that ‘all this business with Simone’ is real for her, she’s all about guilt tripping me into moving back to the city. She says the new house must be so quiet. Like the old house was any different.”
Soobin breathes an incredulous laugh. “Brutal.”
“Tell me about it.”
Yeonjun sits up, the antique couch creaking under his weight. A magic 8-ball sits on the side table and he snatches it up, giving it a shake without asking it a question first. Outlook not so good. Soobin’s office is filled with things like this, eighties and nineties nostalgia and horror movie merchandise. Framed classic movie posters line the walls, the bookcases stuffed with everything from psychology text books to mounted Scream masks.
“How about your dad?” Soobin asks.
“Wouldn’t say the D word once all week. Must have asked about my job ten times, though.”
Soobin shakes his head, tinkering away at the projector still. “Speaking of, well, everything… how are you holding up? It’s almost, done, isn’t it?”
Yeonjun sighs, setting the 8-ball down again. “Final hearing is in March.”
“And that’s good? Bad? You’re not giving me a whole lot to work with here.”
Yeonjun laughs, ducking his head down. The truth is, he isn’t feeling much of anything about it — it’s been going on so long that none of this is news anymore. It’s just part of his life now. He processed it all months ago, he swears. “I feel fine. Maybe it’s a problem that I feel fine, I don’t know.”
“You can feel however you want to feel,” Soobin says seriously. “Even if it was the right thing, it’s still a dramatic life change.”
“Thank you, Dr. Choi.”
“Well, fuck me for caring,” Soobin laughs. He looks away from Yeonjun again, and presses the power button on the projector. It whirs to life, a beam of bright white light aimed at Soobin’s black turtleneck. “Still got it!”
“That thing is older than this institution.”
“Come on, she’s vintage. And Psycho will look great on her.”
“Psycho again? Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
“The kids will learn to appreciate Hitchcock, even if it’s the only thing I accomplish all semester. And you’ll be there this time, won’t you?”
Yeonjun cringes. Soobin is constantly pestering him to attend his screenings. Open to everyone, they sometimes draw a less savory crowd, depending on the picture he chooses, and Yeonjun can always come up with a list of things he’d rather be doing, though he tries to attend at least one each term.
“Fine,” he sighs, “but don’t ask again in May when no one shows up to watch Cleopatra.”
Twelve gongs from the bell tower signal the turning of the hour, grinding their conversation to a halt. Yeonjun raises his eyebrows. “Hungry?”
Soobin gives his projector a look full of longing, like he’d rather do anything than part with it in this moment, but then he nods his assent. “Sure you’re not going to ditch me like you did last time?”
Yeonjun’s already on his feet before Soobin can finish his question, reaching for his wool coat. “I didn’t ditch you.”
“You left me alone with Dr. Castell.”
“I only did what any sane man would do.”
Soobin continues his grumbling about Yeonjun’s traitorous ways as they pack on the layers, scarves and gloves and overcoats. The light through the one tiny window in the office does not offer much hope for the conditions outside: still dark around noon, overcast gray, a swirl of flurries carried by the beat of the wind.
The shiny tiles click under their shoes as their back-and-forth continues — though, it’s mostly one-sided. Yeonjun has never met anyone who can talk as much as Soobin can. He’d win any debate against any opponent by the sheer force of his words-per-minute.
“—and if I never have to listen to her drone on—”
“Oh?” Yeonjun laughs. “And you think you are the arbiter of whether one is talking too much?”
He’d turned to face Soobin and catch the expression on his friend’s face change as he realized he was being teased. The melting into fond annoyance is satisfying. Less so, is reaching for the push bar on the main doors to let them out into the icy air and finding nothing but empty space instead. Yeonjun’s stomach swoops as he windmills his arms to stop from falling over, and Soobin lets out a roaring laugh.
A pair of strong hands steadies Yeonjun and the air erupts with acrid burning sugar, caramel overcooked and singed onto the pan. Yeonjun recovers with a glare in Soobin’s direction, straightens his coat, and turns to face the omega he’d nearly crashed into.
“I’m so sorry—”
Yeonjun is ready to be immediately forgiving, but comes up short when he notices the glint in the omega’s eye, the twist of a suppressed smile on his lips. A student, judging by his age. His scent sweetens by the second as they stare at one another.
“It’s alright,” Yeonjun finally says.
“I’m looking for— do you know if the department head is around?”
The omega’s voice is silky and surprisingly soft, given the depth. It’s an unexpected contrast to his fine-boned hands and the petal pink that tinges his features after a walk through the parking lot in the cold. Long, dark hair falls to sloping shoulders, bundled under an olive green fisherman sweater. He looks between Yeonjun and Soobin with round, glassy eyes.
“Dr. Castell retired between semesters,” Soobin says after a long pause Yeonjun neglected to fill. “Professor Adams will be covering her duties for the time being. Her office is the last one on the left.”
“Thanks.”
Yeonjun takes a step back to make room for the omega to go, watching him as he disappears down the dark hallway and around the corner. It’s silent except for his footsteps as he retreats.
“What was that?” Soobin asks.
Yeonjun shakes his head, clearing the cloud of honeyed caramel fogging up the hall. “I don’t know.”
“We’re just intimidating our students now?”
“I didn’t—”
“You stared at him like a predator,” Soobin laughs, giving Yeonjun’s shoulder a shake. “Come on, let’s get out of here before he comes back and your presence sends him running for Dartmouth.”
The day slips through Yeonjun’s fingers like so much silt, lost to the quiet tedium of preparing for a new term. Last minute syllabus edits, the endless intradepartmental emails, and procuring a new space for the short story workshop after Dr. McGuire snatched Yeonjun’s favorite classroom right out from under his nose. But the workday doesn’t end just because he’s left campus: at home, after a slapdash dinner made of takeout leftovers from various regions across the globe shoved onto one plate, Yeonjun sits before the fire in his living room, a stack of portfolios on the coffee table waiting for him.
He’d had one of his TAs print them for him and assemble them into individual leather folders. He has always preferred being able to touch the works with his hands, flip between the pages, scrawl his thoughts in the margins as they came to him. Something about the tactility of paper under his fingers made the creativity within him flow better, helped him hold onto the information in a way that screens never could. He could never mention this to Soobin, though; he’d never, ever hear the end of the old man jokes.
The first few are from students he knows well by now, advisees over the last couple of years who he has helped, piece by piece, build their body of work. These are all up to date, so he bypasses them in favor of the two newest additions, each nearly fallen through the cracks after Dr. Castell’s hasty departure. A bit of torn masking tape adorns one corner, scribbled over with B. Choi. He sips from the rocks glass in his hand and begins, opening the creaking leather, his eyes landing on the first page, the first few lines of a short story.
The first piece borders just on the right side of aimless, but the writing is sharp, bold, intentional, and Yeonjun quickly realizes the wandering of the storytelling is deliberate. With the barest hints of metaphor, the entire piece is an exercise in restraint, even as the main character loses himself. Yeonjun finds himself reading lines twice, then three times, lost to the patterns this new Choi creates with their cadence.
They whispered about forever like it was listening, as if time had ever bothered to learn their names.
He reads through every piece in the folder and drinks to the bottom of his glass. Every work in here is punchy and disarming, sometimes too honest or too overwrought, but captivating. Each theme is different from the last, but there’s a thread of longing and isolation that carries through the entire body of work. Not the kind of thing he usually expects from his students, and he finds himself swiping open his phone and flipping to his rosters for the next semester’s classes. There, in his short story workshop: Beomgyu Choi.
He almost laughs at the student ID picture beside the name. The omega from earlier today, the one Soobin had accused him of intimidating, smiles up at Yeonjun from the screen. Yeonjun can’t wait to meet him again, to see what more he can do under his guidance.
Yeonjun returns to the portfolio, flipping back through the pieces until he gets to the first one again. There’s a voice here, and a talent, and best of all, Beomgyu seems to be aware of his own skills. There won’t be any shell through which he’ll need to be coaxed — only direction and steering and a bit of cleaning up of rough edges.
By the time he’s through reading the other new portfolio from S. Avery, the fire is down to embers and the clock over the mantle says it’s after midnight. He stifles a yawn and rises from his seat with a long stretch. He takes the stack of portfolios to his study — he’ll have to revisit all of them before he meets with each student, but for now, he’s content with letting them simmer in the back of his mind.
Outside, snow is falling again, the white blanket casting the moonlight in a pale blue through his house. He smothers the rest of the fire with sand and then heads to bed — the semester hasn’t even started yet, and he is already letting the work take over, bringing it late into the night.
While not his first choice, the small lecture room on the eastern side of Chatham Hall is cozy, with large arched windows to let in the watery winter sunlight. Yeonjun stands behind the podium, glancing down at the roster of student ID photos to put names to faces as the students trickle in. Most of them are alphas, their scents strong, but underneath it all is the aroma of burnt coffee and damp wool, exactly what he’d expect from a January morning.
There are twenty names on the list in his hands — far too many, if you ask him. It will be halved in the next week or two; this is an advanced workshop, not a general creative writing class.
As he rereads his notes for the first lesson, he catches sight of one of the last students filing in. Tall and winter-pale, with long, dark hair falling nearly to his shoulders, he slips in quietly, finding a seat near the back. The omega. Beomgyu Choi.
Yeonjun does his best not to stare, to offer an equal amount of attention to all his students. But there’s a shift in the air he can’t deny, a swirl of scents reacting to the rare omega in the room. He quickly looks away, straightening the sheaf of papers in his hands.
When the last students settle in, pulling off damp layers and readying their notebooks or laptops, Yeonjun clears his throat. “Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Fiction Workshop: the Art of the Short Story.”
His voice carries over the classroom, practiced, and hopefully not too formal. He leans against the podium casually, eyeing each of his students in turn.
“This class is small by design,” he says, “and it will get even smaller. I make it no secret that I have high expectations for my students: by the end of your time here, every single one of you will produce work that’s honest, deliberate, and worth reading. That means some of you might not make it past the first two weeks. It isn’t personal — it doesn’t even mean you aren’t a great writer. It’s about whether or not you’re ready to be here. The deadline to drop is two Fridays from now — I suggest you be honest with yourselves before I do it for you.”
The statement hangs in the air, the weight of it sinking in. A few students shift uncomfortably in their seats, but no one says a word.
Yeonjun nods, continuing. “To start, we’re going to dive into a discussion. Then, you’ll spend the rest of the class writing something for me. By hand. Just a page or two. Consider it an audition.”
What makes a story worth reading?
Yeonjun writes the question across the whiteboard and turns to the class. “Not a trick question. I want to know: what do you think? What keeps a reader reading?”
The students shuffle around some more. They glance at one another. A few scribble in their notebooks or tap on their keyboards. Yeonjun expected the silence; after years of doing this, it’s par for the course for the first day. But eventually, someone speaks up.
A girl near the front with ruby red box braids clears her throat. “Good writing?” It isn’t a question, but her unsure voice tilts upward at the end.
“Alright, Ms. Avery, I’ll bite,” Yeonjun says with a nod. “What makes writing good?”
“Style. Making it… sound nice?” another girl says, hidden mostly behind the wide screen of her laptop.
The student beside her shrugs, unimpressed. Yeonjun checks the roster: Gabriel Lowe. “A strong plot. If there’s nothing happening, then what’s the point?”
The girl behind the laptop scoffs. “No, plot isn’t everything. Stories where nothing happens at all can still pack the emotional punch a reader is looking for.”
“You can’t exist on vibes alone.”
“Tell that to Hemingway!”
From here, the debate sparks to life. More students, leaning forward in their chairs, comfortable now, chime in. Arguments about pacing, character, and urgency. The first student, Siobhan Avery, sits back, eyes thoughtful as she listens.
Yeonjun leans back against the desk at the front of the room and watches the discussion unfold, gaze flitting from student to student as they find their voices. They’re always tentative at first, but build their confidence off of each other as the ideas bounce around the room. He’s heard this all before: balancing the weight of plot versus character; style against substance. A few outliers claim that none of it matters, as long as the reader feels something; but of course, there’s pushback on this too: claims that intention from the author matters the most.
It’s perfectly fine. Expected, even. But as Yeonjun folds his arms across his chest and listens, he realizes he’s waiting for something unexpected. It doesn’t happen every year, but this semester, he’s craving it.
Quiet settles over the discussion, just long enough that Yeonjun thinks it’s over, and it’s his turn to prod it along again, but then, from the back of the room, a voice:
“It’s about wanting.”
Yeonjun looks up, meeting Beomgyu’s eyes. He hasn’t spoken since he got here, apparently content to sit back and absorb. Yeonjun had categorized him with the others too shy to speak up on day 1, but maybe he was wrong for that. He doesn’t shrink away from the attention; in fact, he seems more comfortable now with eyes on him, one elbow braced on the fold-out desk in front of him, his chin propped on his hand.
“Go on, Mr. Choi,” Yeonjun says.
One corner of Beomgyu’s mouth twists upward and he sits up straight. “The best stories make you want something. Whether it’s closure, resolution, understanding,” he ticks each item off with his fingers, “it doesn’t matter. There’s a gap between the characters and what they want, between what they feel and what they say. You have no choice but to turn the page until that gap is filled.”
Beomgyu shares a smile with the boy next to him while the other students consider his answer. Yeonjun keeps his eyes on Beomgyu, who matches his stare head-on.
“Okay,” Yeonjun says. “Every story is an unmet desire?”
Beomgyu lifts a shoulder in an easy shrug. “Essentially.”
Discussion erupts again, charged this time. Yeonjun knows the feeling well — it’s the one he’d been craving. One he craves as a reader, as a writer. Something that lingers long after flipping the last page.
But right now, he doesn’t like the way it lingers inside him.
He clears his throat, creating another lull in the debate. “Alright. Let me see you put these ideas into practice. Grab a pen; borrow from the person beside you if you don’t have one, and get used to bringing one from now on.” He pauses while the class shuffles around in their seats, getting ready. “Now, you have half an hour to write me something worth reading.”
By the afternoon, the sky is a dark, cloudy gray again, tufts of snow floating past the window in Yeonjun’s office. The room is warm though, with the golden glow from the lamps and the radiator kicking to life. Yeonjun leans back in his chair, carefully flipping through the pages of Beomgyu’s final, least-polished story. He’s already read it a handful of times, but with Beomgyu here to represent his work, the words reorient themselves around his presence. It all becomes more immediate, contextualized.
Beomgyu watches him closely, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, his hands folded in his lap, a casual pose that didn’t quite match the tautness in his shoulders and neck. His dark hair, which had been sprinkled with snowflakes when he arrived, is tied back with a black ribbon, showing off a long expanse of his neck that disappears into his heather grey sweater. His scent, earthy with overripe fig, fills the room.
Yeonjun sets the sheaf of papers on top of his desk and pulls off his glasses. “Your writing is impressive. Really. But there’s something about your protagonist.”
Beomgyu tilts his head. “What is it?”
“I see what you’re going for here — there’s complexity, there’s nuance. But she’s holding back quite a bit. It feels deliberate, but you’re keeping the reader at arm’s length.”
“And that’s a problem?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Yeonjun answers evenly. “Like I said, it feels intentional, but is it? Is your character consciously keeping her emotions hidden, or is this something you’re struggling with yourself?”
Beomgyu’s lips twitch into a small, amused smile. “Maybe both.”
Yeonjun smiles back, sitting up. “If that’s the case, it can work. But readers require payoff; they need something to hold onto. You’re already excellent at building up the tension, but where’s the reward?”
Beomgyu considers, eyes pointed to the paper between them. He taps his fingers along his shin. “Maybe they have to earn it.”
This is the part of advising Yeonjun loves. When a student doesn’t just listen to his feedback, but prods at it, challenges it. He holds Beomgyu’s stare for a moment and feels the dare there, like Yeonjun is suddenly the one auditioning.
“They do,” he concedes. “But withholding too much, like you’re doing here, can make the character cold and detached. Is that the feeling you want?”
Beomgyu goes quiet for a moment, lips turned down in a frown Yeonjun doesn’t think is as intentional as some of his other expressions. He seems to consider something, gears turning behind his dark eyes. “No,” he finally admits.
“Then you need to be aware of it. If you’re distancing yourself as a writer, your readers are going to feel it, and they aren’t always going to give you the grace you’re looking for.”
“Okay.” Beomgyu nods, thoughtful. He drops his leg down and sits up straighter. “How do I fix it?”
“Trust yourself,” Yeonjun says. “And trust your audience. Give us a little bit more — fill that gap you spoke about in class today.”
Beomgyu’s smile widens, genuine this time. But it fades just as quickly, replaced with uncertainty. “You know, I wasn’t sure how this was going to go. With Dr. Castell, it felt like she gave a shit about my work,” he says, surprising Yeonjun with the sudden coarse language. “I came to Somerset for her. And with her gone so suddenly, I was almost afraid I’d be on my own.”
Yeonjun’s chest aches with a pang of sympathy. “You’re not on your own. I give a shit about my students, and that includes you now, Mr. Choi. You have nothing to worry about.”
“It’s just… she knew my work well, she knew what I was trying to say. It’s strange to have someone new looking at it, especially someone with your reputation.”
A selfish seed grows inside Yeonjun, one that wants to push Beomgyu to elaborate, but he ignores it. Instead, he says, “I’m here to help you refine your work, make it stronger, not change it. Give me some time, and I’ll prove it to you.”
“Thanks. That helps.”
“I have my own thoughts about those places that can be strengthened, but I’d like to hear from you what you think your own weaknesses are. Tell me where you struggle.”
Beomgyu sinks deeper into his seat, letting out a long exhale. “I get stuck in my head. I let an idea get too big and I lose sight of why I started it in the first place.”
“Is it starting that’s the hardest part?”
“No, it’s the middle. That’s where I lose steam.”
Yeonjun worries at his bottom lip with his teeth, giving Beomgyu’s words a moment to process. “Alright,” he says slowly. “Your first assignment from me, then. Less than three thousand words, I want you to start in the middle of the action — no build up, no preamble, nothing to get in your way. It has to have an ending, but you can’t explain everything.”
Beomgyu blinks. A second of silence passes and then he lets out a surprised laugh. “That’s evil.”
“It’s due in 48 hours.”
His jaw drops and his eyebrows disappear behind his dark bangs. “And what is this going to teach me?” he asks, incredulous but good-natured.
“I just want to see, and I want you to see, what happens when you don’t have time to get in your own way.”
Beomgyu shakes his head, but he’s still smiling, and something else flickers across his expression — something like approval, determination. “Alright, Professor, let’s see how this goes,” he says, standing.
Yeonjun rises to his feet, too, Beomgyu’s hour over. “I’m sure it will be something worth reading.”
“Sure. See you in 48 hours.” He picks up his bag from the floor and slings it over his shoulder, and a moment later, he’s gone, leaving nothing behind but the cracked caramel scent of his amusement.
Yeonjun doesn’t leave campus until hours after his meeting with Beomgyu. After answering emails, adjusting enrollment rosters, and prepping for tomorrow’s work, he has just enough time to scarf down a delivery dinner in his office as he reads some of today’s submissions from the Workshop students. After that, he’s stuck in a funding meeting for the MFA students that takes him well into the night. When he finally makes it home, he floats in that limbo between tired and too keyed-up for his nighttime routine to work its typical magic.
It’s late, past midnight, when he gives into the tossing and turning and finally grabs his phone. He pours himself a drink from the decanter in the corner, and it burns its way down his throat, coating his nerves until he’s soothed. Then he pulls up angel313’s profile.
When it started, six months ago, around the same time Yeonjun promised himself he wouldn’t give in to Simone’s games any longer, it was only watching, and only the free content. But it didn’t take long for the hunger to grow, for the free content to no longer be enough. Before he could stop himself, he was subscribing, and then he was catching live streams. Then came tipping — way more than is ever appropriate. And then, the messages.
The message from this morning still sits unread, a little red dot beside the chat icon. Before Yeonjun even gets the chance to open it, a second one appears.
angel313: look who decided to finally show up
yawnzzn: work’s been picking up lately
yawnzzn: miss me?
angel313: maybe. or maybe i miss the attention
angel313: this one’s just for you
A new video appears in their chat box and Yeonjun clicks it right away. The moment it opens, Angel’s voice fills the room, low, almost teasing. He stretches out on his bed, camera carefully angled away from his face.
“Been thinking about you. You’ll probably tease me for missing you but it’s true.”
As he speaks, slow like warm honey, he drags a palm down his chest and over his stomach, pushing his thighs open like he’s making space just for Yeonjun. His cock is hard and flushed red, balls drawn up tight to his body, and his hole glistens with slick.
When commenters in his streams have asked, Angel has always been quiet about his scent. But Yeonjun likes to think of it as something bright and sweet, and his mouth waters at the imagined taste, an urge to devour left unmet.
While Yeonjun watches, Angel continues to message him, but he can hardly answer — he’s too caught up. Mesmerized by the way Angel touches himself, as if he knows exactly what Yeonjun likes. He dips the tips of two fingers inside himself and his voice catches, his chest shaking with the stuttered breathing. And as he pushes all the way in, he lets out a groan that runs through Yeonjun’s blood.
Angel knows Yeonjun prefers to watch him use only his hands — it’s better than any toy in his collection, and there are many. Glass and silicone, false knots that inflate and leave him open later, none of it is as good as his own fingers. Yeonjun can imagine they’re his, can almost feel the way Angel would tense under his touch, and how he’d come undone, too.
Unable to contain it any more, Yeonjun drains the glass in his hand and set it aside. He reaches inside his sweats and wraps a hand around himself. Stroking in time with Angel’s pace, he keeps his eyes glued to the screen, taking in every little detail. Every catch in Angel’s breath. The way his skin flushes all the way from his chest to inner swells of his sculpted thighs.
Then, Angel throws his head back. Yeonjun can catch just a hint of dark hair and a pierced ear before it’s gone again, and Angel lets out a moan — deep, like he’s really being fucked. The tendons in his neck tighten, and Yeonjun wishes, not for the first time, that they were in the same room together.
The things he’d do, given the chance.
“God, I wish it was you—” Angel’s voice breaks apart before he can finish his thought.
Yeonjun knows that tone. He’s watched hours of footage, enough to memorize the different shapes Angel’s voice takes. Angel curls his fingers, his breath a frenzy, his muscles tightening and flexing. Jaw clenched, Yeonjun pumps faster, hips rolling to fuck into his fist. His breath grows uneven.
He doesn’t mean to, he didn’t plan on it, but the moment Angel lets out a choked off moan, breathy and airy and high, Yeonjun’s whole body goes tight. A growl rips out of him as he comes, hot all over his hands. On the screen, Angel fucks himself through it, shaking and trembling until he’s made a mess of his chest, his stomach, the powder blue sheet beneath him.
Yeonjun collapses against his headboard. He wipes his dirty hand off on his pants; he’ll change once he doesn’t feel so boneless anymore. In the meantime, he taps out a quick wow in Angel’s chat box.
angel313: that was fast, even for you
Yeonjun laughs, loud in the dark. yawnzzn: you know how to build me up and tear me right back down again, don’t you?
angel313: enjoy the show?
yawnzzn: I think you already know the answer
Angel’s reply is immediate, and it fills Yeonjun with a heady satisfaction to imagine him alone, waiting at the edge of his seat for Yeonjun’s messages.
angel313: yeah, i do
angel313: sleep well
Yeonjun notices the time in the corner of his phone’s screen and sighs. With a new semester, work will already be piled up before he even gets in the door tomorrow morning. And his sleep schedule is already in pieces. But right now, the concern is so far away from him, it hardly matters. He tosses his phone to the side and pulls himself out of bed to clean up, and for the first time all day, he feels good.