Chapter Text
Doyoung didn’t see Taeyong for a week after he’d kissed Taeyong goodbye on a Sunday morning, happy and exhausted, going home only because he really needed clean clothes and because Taeyong’s attention kept drifting away from Doyoung and towards his computer, towards the song that had gone unfinished because Doyoung took Taeyong back to bed. Doyoung wanted to stay. He wanted to go home and shower and change and then come back to spend the rest of Sunday trying to memorize Taeyong’s tattoos. But Taeyong only nodded when Doyoung said he needed to go, leaning into Doyoung’s kiss and laughing when Doyoung reminded him to lock the door after Doyoung left.
For days, he’d waited to see if Taeyong would call or even text, but his phone remained quiet but for the little ♥️ Taeyong added to the message Doyoung couldn’t help but send on Sunday night, telling Taeyong that he’d had a really great time. He wanted to send twenty more. By Thursday, Doyoung was pacing in Jaehyun’s living room, disgusting himself by asking Jaehyun what he was supposed to do. Jaehyun told him to play it cool, to try and relax and go with the flow because Jaehyun’s modus operandi was to float through life like a very beautiful jellyfish.
Doyoung was no jellyfish. He let Jaehyun get him a little bit stoned instead, just stoned enough that he forgot about his quiet phone for an hour or two.
“Or you could just text him,” Jaehyun said, his head dangling off the edge of his couch, his eyes barely open. Doyoung was playing with his phone again. “Take another hit or send the message. I can’t deal with your twitching. It’s harshing my mellow, man.”
Doyoung was still just loose enough to think it was a good idea, to think that Jaehyun made sense, even if Jaehyun was an outrageous hypocrite. He didn’t really care about harshing Jaehyun’s mellow because Jaehyun’s mellow could use a little harshing most days but he did want to send that message.
Later, when he was totally sober again, he’d wish that he had sent something slightly more meaningful than the “are you busy?” but it worked. Taeyong texted back when Doyoung was rifling through Jaehyun’s cabinets for something worth eating.
yes
but i won’t be soon
“Tell him you’re close to his place,” Jaehyun said, leaning over Doyoung’s shoulder and grabbing an unopened bag of chips that Doyoung was pretty sure were Jungwoo’s favorite. Jaehyun was pathetic. “Ask him to go for a drink.”
“I don’t need your help.” Doyoung elbowed him out of the way. “Go bother Jungwoo.” Jaehyun shrugged and took his chips and his nonexistent dignity back to the living room. Doyoung set his phone on the counter and wrote back:
I’m close to your place right now – hanging with Jaehyun.
Do you want to meet up for a drink if ‘soon’ is maybe tonight?
Doyoung drank the orange juice that Jaehyun bought fresh squeezed from the organic juice bar down the road because Jaehyun had that kind of money to burn and helped himself to the can of mixed nuts just to have something to do while he watched the little dots of a response pop-up and then disappear and then pop-up again.
i don’t feel like drinking
but you could come over
Doyoung put down the juice and the nuts. He leaned out of the kitchen and called out to Jaehyun:
“I need a spare toothbrush. And to use your shower.”
“Do whatever you want.” Jaehyun didn’t even look up from his in-depth perusal of the chip bag. “Just don’t touch the green brush next to mine. That’s Jungwoo’s. For whenever he stays over again.”
Jaehyun was disgusting. And pathetic. But like a broken clock, he was occasionally right and Doyoung supposed he owed him for the little weed and the nudge, so he didn’t comment on the fact that he knew Jungwoo hadn’t stayed over in so long that the green toothbrush idling next to Jaehyun’s belonged in the trash. Instead, he squeezed the back of Jaehyun’s neck on his way from the kitchen to the shower and trusted that Jaehyun knew that he was really trying to say thanks.
~~
Taeyong’s place looked different in the waning daylight. Taeyong looked different in the daylight. He opened the door that Doyoung had kissed him against a week ago and Doyoung realized how rarely he had seen Taeyong with sun on his skin, warming up tones that he thought were made for the silver glitter of a disco-ball. He had the sudden urge to drag Taeyong out of his apartment with too few windows to ever really be bright and take him to sit somewhere in the grass and tip his pale, pretty face into golden beams until he had enough color that Doyoung could believe Taeyong existed beyond nighttime and shadow.
But Taeyong wandered back inside before Doyoung could take him out, his sweatpants riding so low on his hips that Doyoung knew that sunshine would have to wait as long as Doyoung to have the chance to make him hot, to make him burn red. He wanted to touch him. He wanted to talk to him. There were so many things he’d wanted to ask Taeyong all week.
Where have you been? How have you been? Did you think about me as much as I thought about you?
He wanted to tell Taeyong the same – where he had been, how he had been, how he thought about Taeyong to the point of distraction and he had so many things he needed to do that it was really starting to become a problem – but Taeyong was turning on music, something with a deep low beat that Doyoung thought was an invitation. Taeyong spoke to him in beats and rhythms. He was starting to learn the language, slowly, slowly, once dancefloor and one song at a time. This one, he thought, he knew how to translate, to understand what it was that Taeyong wanted.
They could talk later. When the song and the sex was over, Doyoung wouldn’t fall asleep and let Taeyong escape this time. He would wrap him up in bed and whisper to him beneath the sheets about all the things he had been thinking, all the things he wanted to know. He would teach Taeyong how to speak his language, if Taeyoung wanted to learn, if he wanted to stay with him long enough to understand.
“Come here,” Doyoung murmured, holding out his hand to Taeyong, who was leaning against his soundsystem with his arm around his waist. Taeyong gazed at him like he wanted to be fetched, but this time Doyoung wanted Taeyong to come to Doyoung where he was standing in the middle of Taeyong’s living room, waiting to be found. “Come here and let me kiss you.”
Taeyong came, his fingertips cold as they slid over Doyoung’s, his eyes wide and lips already open for the tongue that Doyoung wanted to put in his mouth. Taeyong was malleable and sweet in his arms, sighing into the first kiss of the night like maybe he’d been waiting for it all week, too. Doyoung wanted to ask why he’d never called, never texted if he wanted to be touched, if he wanted Doyoung to kiss him badly enough that he was already hard against Doyoung’s thigh and grabbing at the back of Doyoung’s shirt like he was afraid Doyoung was going to pull away.
“I missed you,” Doyoung tried instead, hoping that if he started, Taeyong would be able to repeat back the words, to practice the language Doyoung wanted them to be able to speak to one another. “I’ve wanted to kiss you all week.”
Taeyong’s hips were moving in time to the song, a slow, deep grind. He tipped his head back and there was a begging in the curve of his neck, in the way he seemed to bend himself into and away from Doyoung at the same time.
“Kiss me then,” Taeyong said, giving back the barest of the words Doyoung had given to him even as he let Doyoung drag him down to the living room floor and get between his legs. He kissed Taeyong on the lips, on the cheek, on chin, on the ripple of his throat and smiled when Taeyong sighed, “Anywhere you want.”
Partial credit, Doyoung wanted to say. Anywhere was good, anytime would have been better, all the time would have been perfect. Taeyong could work up to it. Doyoung was a patient teacher, when he wanted to be. He could give Taeyong lesson after lesson if it meant Taeyong could tell him something like that one day. He’d start slow. With the basics.
“Where do you want me to kiss you the most?” Doyoung put his hands beneath Taeyong’s shirt, counting ribs with his fingers and thumbing his nipples as Taeyong squirmed and shifted and wouldn’t look at him. “Anywhere is so vast. I could kiss you here,” Doyoung teased, picking up Taeyong’s arm and kissing him on the elbow and then moving his lips up to Taeyong’s armpit, kissing him where it tickled, where it smelled and tasted like Taeyong in the raw. “Or here.” Taeyong’s laughter was buttressed by a low moan. It went well with the song. It went deep in Doyoung’s blood, made it flow fast, and made him hard. “Tell me what you want. Tell me where you want my lips the most.”
Taeyong shook his head. Doyoung straddled Taeyong’s hips and considered. His neck was mottled pretty pink. His nipples were peaks beneath his thin t-shirt and his dick was hard.
But Taeyong wouldn’t look at him. Taeyong didn’t want to tell him anything, not even where he wanted to be kissed.
Doyoung didn’t think this was the answer, but he had to ask. Taeyong said so little, asked for even less than he had to know he wanted this much at least. “Do you want me to stop?”
Taeyong looked at him then. Looked at Doyoung like Doyoung was betraying him somehow.
“Would I have asked you to come over if I wanted you to stop?”
“I don’t know,” Doyoung said, telling as much of the truth as he thought he could without showing Taeyong all of his writhing insecurities. “You could have asked me over because you wanted me to feed your fish.”
Taeyong laughed a little, his chest moving beneath the splay of Doyoung’s hands. “Why would I want you to do that when I’m right here? When you don’t know anything about fish?”
“It was just an example,” Doyoung said, suddenly feeling a little stupid that he couldn’t think of any other reason that Taeyong would have invited him over except for the obvious one, which was to fuck on the living room floor. Certainly not to talk or to feed fish. “And how do you know I don’t know anything about fish? I could be an expert for all you know.”
Taeyong was full on laughing at him now, which had never happened before, but also made Taeyong’s look younger and warmer, softer – like someone who could be touched, like someone who knew enough of Doyoung’s language to find him funny.
“Well, are you? A fish expert?”
“No.” Doyoung crossed his arms over his chest and held his head up high, chewing on a bottom lip that wanted to curl around a smile. “I don’t know the first thing about fish other than the fact that you like them.”
“That’s all you need to know.”
Taeyong’s hand reached up and tugged on the v-neck of the shirt Doyoung had stolen out of Jaehyun’s closet because his had smelled like weed and a day of laying around on Jaehyun’s floor. Doyoung wanted to smell good for Taeyong. He wanted to look good for him. To be good for him. To be good enough for someone who could look like art in a pair of sweats and a black band t-shirt, splayed out on the floor with the orange pink of sunset on his skin.
Taeyong smiled. “That I like fish and that I don’t want you to stop.”
Taeyong pulled. Doyoung followed, bracing his hand on the side of Taeyong’s head and diffing his fingers into Taeyong’s worn carpet. Doyoung kissed him, kissed him until Taeyong was making pleased little noises and pushing his hips up into Doyoung’s ass.
“I won’t stop,” Doyoung said, dropping down and covering Taeyong from head to toe, threading his fingers through Taeyong’s hair and tugging until Taeyong had no choice but to look at him. “But I want to know more.”
“About fish?”
Taeyong’s leg wrapped around his waist and Doyoung couldn’t believe that Taeyong was still talking about fish when they were grinding together in time to a playlist that Doyoung wouldn’t have been surprised to learn was titled songs for getting fucked.
“About fish,” Doyoung said, tightening his grip on Taeyong’s hair and riding him a little faster, picking up the rhythm as the song changed again to something deeper and dirtier. “About you.” Taeyong’s eyes were closed and his mouth was open. Doyoung could see the whites of his teeth. The ridges that Taeyong had put into his shoulder when Doyoung had jerked him off slow and sweet, trying to learn how Taeyong wanted to be touched. “Tell me, please, where do you want me to kiss you?”
Taeyong moaned and chased Doyoung’s lips, doing anything with his own but using them to speak. Doyoung wished he knew what Taeyong liked to be called by people he dated. But they weren’t really dating and he didn’t think Taeyong would tell him if he liked to be called baby or sweetheart or something Doyoung didn’t have the guts to even consider, like love or mine. He wanted that to be part of their vocabulary, the language they spoke to one another. One day, he hoped.
“Taeyong,” Doyoung said, going with what he had, what little he knew, pulling on Taeyong’s hair one last time before letting the strands slip from between his fingers. “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to kiss you where I want to most.”
“Yeah, do that,” Taeyong whispered, eyes still closed, lips still waiting for Doyoung’s kiss. “Do whatever you want to me.”
Doyoung thought about telling him that was a dangerous offer but put Taeyong on his stomach instead, turning him over and pulling down his baggy sweats with a little more force that was probably required but he was frustrated and Taeyong’s ‘fuck me’ playlist had kicked into high gear. Taeyong didn’t complain. He didn’t do anything but spread his knees as wide as he could with his pants halfway down his thighs and arch his back so that his ass pert and pretty, telling Doyoung enough to know that he wouldn’t get turned away when he put his lips between Taeyong’s cheeks and did what he’d threatened to do.
He kissed Taeyong on the warm, sticky skin of his inner thighs, kissed his rim and tongued him there, too, licking and murmuring how much he liked it, how often he’d thought about what Taeyong would look like here, how he would taste. Taeyong’s cheek was on the carpet, there was a little strand of drool on his bottom lip and Doyoung could see the blush creeping down from the tips of his ears to the nape of his neck and he knew that Taeyong liked it too. Taeyong wouldn’t tell him, so Doyoung had to read it in the twitch of his thighs and the wetness on the head of his cock when Doyoung reached beneath his hips and stroked him while he tried to work the tip of his tongue inside of Taeyong’s body.
Taeyong was rocking into it, moving his hips in little circles and moaning into his living room floor. Doyoung’s dick was aching in his pants. He’d been thinking about fucking Taeyong for a week and now Taeyong was murmuring something that sounded like please and he wanted to fuck him before the sunset so he could fuck him again before the sunrise. In the dark, he would ask Taeyong about his week. About what he wanted to do with his weekend and whether or not he would want to do any of it with Doyoung. If Taeyong liked to do things together.
“Let’s go to bed,” Doyoung said, thinking about Taeyong’s knees and his pretty face and the way both would get chafed and burned if Doyoung took this any further on the floor. He didn’t want to rough Taeyong up just because he was horny and desperate to get as much as he could before he lost Taeyong’s attention.
“Here,” Taeyong said, opening his eyes and licking away the wetness trailing out of the corner of his lips. “Here is okay, too.”
“No, it isn’t.” Doyoung pulled Taeyong’s pants back up over his hips and tugged him up until he was standing loose limbed in Doyoung’s arms. Doyoung rubbed his thumb over Taeyong’s reddened mouth. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Taeyong said nothing so Doyoung took him to bed, laying him down in sheets that were a different color from the ones he remembered waking up in alone a week ago. He rinsed his mouth in Taeyong’s little bathroom and took the things from the medicine cabinet, ignoring the pills, tamping down the curiosity that he knew would probably kill whatever it was they had going on, if not the cat.
When he came back out, Taeyong was laying in the light that came through the broken blinds, the very very last of the sunset casting shadows on his stomach and in the hollows of his throat. Doyoung stood at the foot of the bed and watched as Taeyong pinched and twisted his nipples, lips digging into his bottom lip and toes curling into the mattress. Doyoung dropped the lube and the condom on the mattress and crawled between Taeyong’s thighs. He was so pale here. No ink. No tan. No bruises or scars.
Doyoung dragged his fingers up and down. Taeyong’s leg hair was soft. His skin was softer. Taeyong scraped a nail over a nipple and moaned. Doyoung put his hand between Taeyong’s soft, unmarked legs and put his mouth on Taeyong’s chest, kissing away swelling red until Taeyong was sighing a little, mussing Doyoung’s hair and letting Doyoung open him up. Doyoung tried not to look too hard, to stare too much but Taeyong was beautiful and he still didn’t know what Taeyong wanted so he looked for clues in the beat drops and fluttering of eyelashes and the tongue that peeked out from between Taeyong’s lips when Doyoung did something that felt good.
“How do you want me?”
Doyoung took his fingers out. Taeyong was ready. Doyoung was beyond ready and soon there wouldn’t be any more light. Doyoung wanted to see Taeyong come with that beam of sunlight on his face.
“Anywhere, anyway,” Taeyong murmured, reaching for him, heels slipping on the sheets, hips tipping up so that Doyoung was sliding against him, his cock on Taeyong’s hole, giving him enough of a hint of what it would be like to fuck him just like this, skin on skin.
“Anywhere, anyway,” Doyoung sighed, failing to suppress his frustration, his anxiousness to make everything he did good. “So specific.”
Doyoung grabbed at the box of condoms, letting his fingers count how many were left and feeling relieved that it was the same number that had been there before and knew that he was as pathetic as Jaehyun, pretending not to care about other lovers when he cared more than he could stand.
“I wasn’t trying to be specific,” Taeyong murmured, a furrow in his brow that Doyoung didn’t like, didn’t understand.
Maybe he was taking too long, maybe Taeyong was getting bored. He wished he knew what positions got him off, what made him feel good. He’d asked the last time. He’d tried to ask now. He was probably used to men who knew what to do without asking.
“Like this, then,” Doyoung said, putting Taeyong’s legs on his shoulders. Doyoung kissed his calf, kissed the underside of his knee and folded him gently over until Doyoung could put one hand on his cock and push the head inside of Taeyong’s rim.
“Like this is good,” Taeyong said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “I’m into it.”
“Yong,” Doyoung whispered, testing the boundaries, throwing something against Taeyong’s blank wall to see if it would stick. “Yongie.”
Taeyong smiled. Doyoung bent down to kiss that smile, to ease him through the stretch and savor the feeling of Taeyong’s rare happiness but then Taeyong’s hips were lifting and Taeyong was groaning like it hurt, taking all of Doyoung at once.
“God, are you okay?”
Doyoung tried to pull out, but Taeyong held fast, tight and clenched around his cock and Doyoung felt like he needed to apologize because it felt so fucking good and he didn’t want to pull out, he wanted to come, he wanted to fuck Taeyong stupid.
“Do it,” Taeyong said, curling up with the kind of ab strength that could have only come from being a dancer, kissing Doyoung’s bottom lip and then his chin, the press of mouth sticky, wet and wanting. “Do whatever you want to me.”
Doyoung didn’t want to do whatever he wanted. He wanted to do what they wanted but Taeyong wouldn’t tell him anything but anywhere and whatever so he did what he could. He put one hand on Taeyong’s headboard and fucked Taeyong with the sun in his eyes. Taeyong went where Doyoung wanted, legs on his shoulders, legs held up in a V in the air so that Doyoung could look down and see his cock moving in and out of Taeyong’s, to see how good it looked when Taeyong took him.
The playlist ended. He could hear the burble of the fishtanks and if he concentrated on nothing but the sounds of Taeyong’s breathing he thought he could hear the sounds of the ocean over the rumble hum of a city that was too awake to be quiet enough for waves. Doyoung put Taeyong on his side and fucked him slow, Taeyong’s leg thrown over Doyoung’s narrow hips and Taeyong turning his neck in a way that couldn’t have felt good so Doyoung could kiss him and whisper to him that Taeyong was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen.
Taeyong put his face in the pillow after that, hiding away his beauty and Doyoung wondered why he hated it so much, to be told how lovely he was. He added it to the list of things to ask, a list that was so long because he wanted to know everything, he wanted to be perfectly fluent in Taeyong, right down to the last noun and verb.
Doyoung took him from behind and ran his hand up and down Taeyong’s spine, bending over to kiss the tattoo on his right shoulder, murmuring to Taeyong that he needed to get something on the left, for balance, for symmetry.
“What should I to put there,” Taeyong murmured, turning over one more time and kissing Doyoung as Doyoung pushed inside and told himself not to say anything that would have Taeyong hide from him again.
“I don’t know. Tattoos are so personal. So permanent.”
“They are.” Taeyong’s gaze was blown wide open. His cheeks were red and his lips were wet. “Forever kinds of things.”
Doyoung wanted to come all over his face. It shocked him, how much he wanted Taeyong. The things he wanted to do to him. Doyoung kissed Taeyong softly and put his hand between their bodies. He was close. He wanted Taeyong to finish first. He needed Taeyong to finish first. He kissed him more deeply, stroked him with a firm grip, trying to remember what made Taeyong spill over a week ago.
“Can you come?” Doyoung asked. Taeyong threw his head against the pillows, hips bucking, his body tense and his face lined with frustration. Doyoung put his lips on Taeyong’s ear and tried again, even though it made him cringe a little, trying to be the kind of cool that he inherently wasn’t. When it came to Taeyong he wanted to know and to know meant to ask, but he’d been left with but to tell. “I know you can.” He tightened his fingers and sped up the pace. “Come for me, come for me right fucking now.”
Taeyong was as beautiful as Doyoung knew he would be, coming in hot, thick stripes over his own chest, hair splayed over the pillow and his skin a burnished, sweat dotted, gold. Doyoung kissed him hard on the mouth, swallowing up his moans, waiting until Taeyong was done gasping and blaspheming and had started to squirm and even giggle, his nerve endings lit up so bright that Doyoung pulled out before he could Taeyong’s fuse.
“Wow, bossy,” Taeyong said, falling back onto the messy sheets with a groan, spreading his knees and reaching down to touch his rim, stretching it down with his thumb. He looked at Doyoung and tipped up his hips. “You don’t have to leave. You can get back in. I can take it if you want.”
Doyoung wanted. But Taeyong would be so sensitive. They’d been at it for a while and he’d come so hard. He shook his head and took the condom off. He didn’t need it. Not at Taeyong’s expense.
Taeyong watched him quietly, turning his head to the side and spitting in his palm. Doyoung moaned loudly enough to drown out any ocean when Taeyong touched him. He didn’t know how much he wanted that, how much he wanted Taeyong to put his hand on Doyoung’s cock and stroke him while looking at him through his eyelashes, a fantasy, a tatted up angel who for some reason wanted something to do with him.
Taeyong licked Doyoung’s come off his fingers and wiped the rest on the corner of the sheets, ignoring Doyoung’s breathless insistence that he could go get a towel, a tissue.
“Leave it,” Taeyong said, rolling into the middle of the bed, away from the spot that was probably damp now with sweat. “We can change them later.”
“Yeah,” Doyoung said, smiling as he shared the quarter of the bed that remained to them both. Taeyong was speaking his language. “We definitely can.” Doyoung held out his arm and patted his chest, the space just over his heart. “Come here, come here and tell me about your week.”
“Okay, okay.” Taeyong laughed a little, a shrill nervous thing. His cheek was hot against Doyoung’s skin. “What do you want to know?”
Doyoung played with his hair. The sun had set now, the bedroom a dull blue gray. Doyoung moved his fingers from hair to ear to neck to shoulder, to the blank space that Taeyong had asked him how to paint in permanent ink. Doyoung’s mind was empty. He couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t his name. He needed Taeyong to fill it, to stuff him full of words and thoughts, of ideas that were The shape and texture of Taeyong. Maybe then he would know the right answer. But
He kissed the top of Taeyong’s head and said, “Anything. Everything.”