it’s morning now, so let's love

by Anonymous

Summary:

Loving has never felt so easy. Being loved has never felt so weightless.

 

(or: a glance into Soobin and Taehyun’s life together.)

 

Honey, when you kill the lights
and kiss my eyes
I feel like a person for a moment of my life

 

Hozier

 

;

 

“Hyung,” comes in Taehyun’s voice, again, and Soobin squeezes his eyes shut, trying to zone out Taehyun’s petulant voice—which, on most days, he loves hearing to death, just not when Taehyun’s trying to wake him up from his precious sleep, which he hardly even gets nowadays, so he doesn’t understand why Taehyun won’t leave him alone and let him have this, “Hyung, come on. You promised.”

Soobin groans, cursing his past self for ever promising to go out in the gym with his boyfriend. “Taehyun-ah,” he mumbles sleepily, “People change. Don’t you know that?”

Taehyun whines—an honest-to-god whine, high-pitched and everything else—and Soobin almost doubts his hearing, suddenly feeling a little more awake than a few minutes ago. “Hyungie,” and oh, great, he’s pulled out the magic word—the one word he knows Soobin can’t resist, no matter how sleepy or unwilling he may be. Once he hears that word come out of Taehyun’s mouth, then he’s utterly fucked. Doomed. No more hope for him. Or his initially-planned twelve hours of sleep this weekend. This is the end of the line. Soobin can feel his resistance melting away in a rapid speed, like a little ice cube under the heat of an August day—defenseless from the start. He never had a chance.

Taehyun, as if sensing Soobin’s rapidly declining ability of resisting Taehyun, drapes himself over Soobin, nuzzling his neck. “Hyungie.”

The word again. And in that voice, too. God. That’s it. Soobin has figured out Kang Taehyun’s true intentions of putting up with him for five years. He’s figured it all out. Kang Taehyun wants him dead. He wants Soobin gone from Earth—no longer breathing, no longer blinking. None of that. Just dead. Motionless. Flatlined from how fucking cute Taehyun is.

Well, if that would be his cause of death, Soobin can’t really find himself minding. It’s only fitting.

Still, Soobin braves himself. Takes a deep breath through his nose. Tries solidifying whatever’s left of his self-control.

“Tyun,” Soobin murmurs in a low tone, still scratchy from sleep, “Get off.”

He can feel Taehyun pout against his neck, lips soft and sticky—from the flavored lip-gloss he likes using so much, probably. “Will you really not come with me, hyung?” and Soobin can only thank whoever’s above for letting him sleep on his stomach because, god, he knows he would crumble in less than a second if he saw the expression that Taehyun was, most probably, sporting right now, “But you promised yesterday, though. After I helped you clean off Odi’s poop from Yeonjun hyung’s Celine bag.”

Soobin feels a flush of embarrassment rush through him at the memory. “Taehyun-ah,” he starts, whining, burying his face further into the pillows, hardly making his speech comprehensible, “I thought we agreed to never speak of that.”

Taehyun just scoffs, and Soobin’s eyes flutter close at the way he feels Taehyun’s words form against his neck before he even hears them, sending a ticklish rush down his spine. “Well, I thought we agreed to go to the gym together, too, but you know how it is,” he says, petulant, “People really do change, don’t they, hyung?”

A sigh follows. He can feel Taehyun’s weight lifting off his body.

God, this is even worser than a cute Taehyun. This Taehyun is the one who bargains. The one who acts nonchalant—disturbingly so—until he’s pushed Soobin enough to get him to do what he wants. The one who knows just exactly which button not to press to make Soobin irritated enough to do something about it.

The bed squeaks under Taehyun’s weight, and it squeaks again when he’s lifting himself off it.

Soobin sighs in defeat. He can hear Taehyun hesitate, purposely slowing himself down. That minx.

He turns over his back, sits up against the bed, and pulls Taehyun into his lap—all in one motion, which is impressive, considering how sleepy and drained out he still feels. “I can’t believe you woke me up at six a.m., you cruel, heartless monster,” he mumbles into Taehyun’s neck, tongue poking against a visible vein, green and dark against Taehyun’s skin, “And just to work out. I can’t believe it. This is my boyfriend, everyone. Isn’t he so caring?”

Taehyun sighs at his boyfriend’s dramatics, carding a hand through his hair, his dark locks felt through the spaces between his fingers. “Hyung, I did this for your own good,” he says, “As your boyfriend, I can’t just watch you slouch your whole life off. You need to move a little. Playing video games and watching dramas can only take you so far in life.”

Soobin rolls his eyes, pulling Taehyun closer to him until they’re chest to chest. “Stop talking like that,” he says, no real bite in his tone, “You’re starting to sound like my parents.”

Taehyun hums, patting his head. “Okay, hyung,” Taehyun says, simple, a tranquil silence briefly settling over them, and Soobin whines like a child when he feels Taehyun try to get himself off Soobin’s hold, “Hyung, let me off. I’m already an hour late for my morning workout. Come on.”

“This isn’t work, Taehyun-ah,” Soobin merely says, “You can afford to skip one or two workouts every once in a while.”

Taehyun doesn’t bulge. “Hyungie.”

His grip loosens, clearly affected by that certain use of honorific, and he hates that Taehyun knows this as well as he does. Taehyun takes this as his opportunity to wriggle out of Soobin’s grip, getting up from the bed and proceeding to do some stretches, as if sitting down to rest with Soobin has exhausted him. Soobin can’t understand him, sometimes, but that’s what probably makes Taehyun so special in his eyes, what makes them work—the fact that they’re so different from each other, but still try to understand and work through their differences with each passing day. They’re far from perfect, and Soobin knows with a certainty that they’ll probably never reach that state, but he’s happy where he is, where he stands with Taehyun. This part of life where they’re just living together—waking up, starting the day, going through the rest of it, then going home. All of those little parts of their lives spent together—that’s where the real magic stems from. The simplicity of it all.

Soobin sinks back into the bed, burying himself in the sheets, figuring that Taehyun has given up on him—or, the more likely assumption: that he’s saving this fight for later, a better time where he has all his strategies against Soobin planned out. “You should really stop calling me that,” he says, and the warm feel of the pillows against his cheeks easily makes him drowsy all over again, eyes starting to flutter close in approaching sleepiness, “It does bad things to my heart.”

“Too bad,” he hears Taehyun say, a little more distantly than before—he’s probably walked outside their bedroom already, “I like calling you that!”

Soobin hums back a wordless response, preparing to doze off again. A few more hours won’t hurt, and those few hours would definitely do the darkening circles under his eyes some good. Soobin deserves this—he has done nothing but sign and review papers last week. And while he would have preferred spending this morning cuddled up in Taehyun’s arms, surrounded by his warmth, his breath against his skin, he knows Taehyun—he’s never been the one to just sit still, always up and going, moving along with the world’s currents. Soobin has always admired him for it—how he moves so fast, so steadily. Always running up the hill, always pushing the stone up, no matter how many times it falls back on him. He just keeps going, and going.

His passion is one of the thousand reasons why Soobin fell for him—and is still falling for, actually. Falling so hopelessly, so readily for Taehyun, day by day. It turns out that falling in love—if it’s the real deal—is a process that never really stops, not the explosive, one-time thing that’s so widely portrayed in movies and books alike. Soobin falls a little bit more in love with Taehyun every time his eyes glimmer with excitement and curiousity whenever he watches another documentary on animal life in NatGeo. Soobin falls a little bit more in love with Taehyun every time he plays with Odi and lets him bite his fingers whenever he thinks Soobin’s not watching. He falls a little bit more in love with Taehyun whenever he catches him dancing to Twice playing on the speakers while he’s in the kitchen, cooking. With every little thing he does, Soobin always finds himself falling deeper in love. It’s irreversible, at this point. Taehyun will never get rid of him, try as he might.

And just as Soobin is about to fall asleep with nothing but Taehyun on his mind, and hopefully in his dreams too, he hears their door opening and the sound of hurried footsteps rushing towards him. He scrunches his face up in confusion, sitting up on the bed. Taehyun hardly forgets to bring anything—keys, water bottle, phone; all the essentials—so Soobin wonders what Taehyun could have left behind. Out of the two of them, it’s Soobin who’s more of the forgetful type.

“Taehyun-ah, what—”

He hardly gets the time to sit up before Taehyun kneels on their bed, knees between Soobin’s thighs, cupping his cheeks and pressing a dozen kisses on Soobin’s face, whatever part his lips can reach—his cheeks, the tip of his nose, the corner of his lips. The mole on his jaw, the space between his brows.

Then a soft, whispered Thank you, hyung against his skin. It’s quiet for a moment—just the two of them in their own little bubble.

“What for?” Soobin asks. They do this every morning. Their little whispers of thanks—it’s how they say I love you to one another.

“I just felt like saying it,” Taehyun says, encircling his arms around Soobin’s neck, staring down at him, and Soobin feels a bated breath leave him, wondering what he’s done to deserve all this—Taehyun in his arms, with his heart bared to him so completely, and all the love and adoration in his eyes, all in plain sight for Soobin to feel grateful for, to hold dear for as long as Taehyun holds love for him, “I already made breakfast. It’s probably gone a bit cold already, but you can just reheat it when you wake up to eat.”

“Okay,” Soobin says. He doesn’t say any more, lets them sit in silence for just a little longer, lets them forget the world spinning outside their window for just a moment more. He places his hands on Taehyun’s waist, leaning his head on his chest.

“Okay,” Taehyun says, simple.

Soobin lets himself smile, ears catching the hidden That’s enough sentimentality, hyung, please let me work out now under his plain tone, and lets Taehyun get off him. “Tomorrow.”

Taehyun’s about to leave the room, briefly pausing by the door way, and raises a brow in curiousity—Soobin is never cryptic with his words, preferring to just spit it out and get things going, much like Taehyun himself. “Tomorrow what?”

“I’ll join you in the gym,” Soobin says, tone resolute, nodding to himself, “I promise. For real, this time.”

Taehyun rolls his eyes fondly. He already knows how Soobin works when it comes to things like promising to join him in the gym: he’ll feel randomly sentimental, and from all the rush of that sentimentality, he’ll make a promise, a promise that, knowing himself, he’ll have a hard time trying to keep, then Taehyun will confront him about it in the morning, then that’s when regret will start to settle in, suddenly floundering for words, cursing himself for making absurd promises and saying absurd things, begging Taehyun to leave it another time, calling him cruel and heartless when he tries to push. Soobin can be so needlessly dramatic sometimes, really. It’s both parts endearing and annoying.

“Sure, hyung,” he says, snickering, disbelief clear in his tone.

Soobin frowns. “Yah,” he says, making sure his voice is stern enough to get his point across, “I said for real this time.”

He doesn’t like the way Taehyun merely brushes off his words, waving his hand as he walks out of their room—it leaves an itch under his skin. Soobin knows he can be flighty when it comes to these sorts of things, but he’s trying, and tomorrow, he’ll really make good on his promise. He can push himself if he’s feeling like it, and no matter how against he may be with working out, it doesn’t mean he’s completely incapable of doing it. He can work out if he wants to—he just chooses not to, not when all that time and effort could be used for the more important things in life, like video games.

And sleeping.

And fucking Taehyun. Truly one of the greatest joys in his life. If anyone asked him to choose between playing video games and fucking Taehyun, he would give up his video games in one breath. No hesitation, at all. He wouldn’t even need to think about it. There isn’t a video game in this world that could ever beat that—

Soobin stops himself, blinking, slowly sinking back into the sheets.

Clearly, he still owes himself a few hours of sleep—and the last thing he wants to deal with in the morning is a hard-on. Well, the second last thing. Joining Taehyun in the gym is a bullet he barely managed to dodge because, as much as he loves his boyfriend, Soobin has already witnessed him working out, even heard multiple accounts from both his and Taehyun’s friends, and all he can say is it’s something he does not want to go through. Ever.

But unfortunately for him, he’s made a promise to Taehyun, and contrary to popular belief, Soobin likes keeping promises—likes trying to, anyways.

Whatever. He’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

 

-

 

After strenuous hours spent typing on his laptop, responding to the never-ending pile of emails in his inbox, and trying not to lose his mind in the process, Soobin finally shuts his laptop close and leans back against his office chair with a groan, the chair creaking with the added weight. He sighs, rubbing his fingers against his temple in an attempt to relieve the headache he’s gotten from spending the whole day staring at his laptop. At this point, his eyesight might just be as bad as Taehyun’s.

Soobin stretches, intertwining both his hands to crack his knuckles and stretching them over his head. He hears something crack and winces at the sound—maybe, Taehyun really is on to something about his sedentary lifestyle.

And as if Taehyun had the ability to get notified every time Soobin thought of him—he imagines that there’s this little creature on Taehyun’s shoulder that taps him every time the creature senses Soobin thinking of Taehyun, which is most of the time, all of the time— the sound of knocking suddenly rings through the room, and Soobin tiredly groans out a worn-out Come in.

The door opens, and he can feel all the exhaustion and fatigue seep out of his body the moment Taehyun enters his view. His pretty, pretty Taehyun—dressed up in the strawberry-themed pajamas Kai bought for him a few weeks ago, silver hair ruffled up so cutely (from his afternoon naps, probably) that it’s almost unbearable, and the cute glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose that he hardly gets to see Taehyun in, nowadays. Soobin can’t help the smile on his lips, which probably makes him look like a sappy fool utterly, irreversibly, helplessly in love—and, honestly, Soobin really can’t say anything else. Taehyun just brings it out of him.

“Tyun, hey,” Soobin says, and even just saying his name lifts the heavy weight off his shoulders, like a breath of relief.

“Just thought you might need a bit of fresh air,” Taehyun says, gesturing to the door he left open on his way in, “I don’t know how you manage to work in here, hyung. It’s so…” he trails off, taking a quick look-around, grimacing at how plain the room seemed—just Soobin’s desk and a few shelves here and there, one of which is brimming with papers, “…stuffy.”

Taehyun is right (he always is). Soobin doesn’t know why he’s subjecting himself to this kind of working environment.

Still, he shrugs. “Well, it’s not like I have much of a choice,” he says, looking around the room with a resigned look on his face, “Would you want papers all over our room? Or the living room?”

Taehyun winces at the thought. “Not at all,” he says, shaking his head.

“Exactly,” Soobin says, nodding as he pats on his lap, gesturing for Taehyun to sit on it—to which Taehyun responds with with no hesitance, immediately setting himself down on his lap, leaning back against Soobin, sighing contentedly when Soobin noses his neck, “Besides, we made it a rule, remember? We keep our work out of the bedroom.”

“It’s a good rule,” Taehyun mutters, closing his eyes for a moment, “You know, hyung, you’d really make a good chair. Your thighs are so comfortable.”

“I’d let you sit on me anytime,” Soobin whispers into Taehyun’s ear, tone purposely taking on a seductive note, “My thighs, my face—”

Taehyun—whose ears are caught on fire—hits him on the shoulder, effectively cutting him off. “Hyung!” he complains, whining, “Why would you say that!”

Taehyun’s always been a prude—so easy, too easy, to fluster, no matter how many times they’ve had—and will have—sex. It’s quite surprising, because Taehyun is by no means shy, and he never hesitates to say the first thing that comes up in his mind—he’s outright, plain-spoken, and isn’t afraid of any possibly uncomfortable confrontations that his words could lead him to. So you can only imagine Soobin’s astonishment—and a little amusement, he admits—when he found out that it’s sex that Taehyun clams up about. Taehyun doesn’t have an aversion to the activity itself, not at all, but if Soobin talks even just a little dirty, even if it’s just a casual joke that they should be able to laugh about, at this point—because doing means much more than saying— Soobin can always expect Taehyun’s reaction to be like this: his ears turning so unbelievably red, turning away from him just to hide how his cheeks are just as red, whiny with his complaints about how Soobin could be so vulgar. Unbelievably so, apparently.

Well, he supposes that part of themselves is their element of surprise—and they’ve been together for very long, so they don’t have much room for those.

“Why are you getting embarrassed over me saying it when you already did—”

“Hyung!”

Soobin giggles just at how scandalised Taehyun sounds, wrapping his arms around his waist as an apology, trying to stop Taehyun from inching away from him. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop,” he says, then briefly pauses just to say, “But really, though—”

Taehyun groans, pushing away Soobin’s arms (with his inhuman strength) and forcing himself out of Soobin’s lap. “Oh, just shut up, hyung,” he says, exasperated, but Soobin’s still amused—a bit endeared, too, maybe—at how Taehyun is still refusing to meet his eyes, his back turned pointedly at him, “I’ll go reheat dinner. Let’s finish All of Us Are Dead while eating.”

Taehyun’s already walking to the door when he says this, and Soobin can’t stop staring at how fit those strawberry-themed—fucking hell—pajamas are hugging his ass. Has he been doing squats lately?

“Hyung?” Taehyun asks again, glancing back to see Soobin’s reason for his lack of response.

Soobin shakes his head, trying to get his mind out of the gutter. “Oh, uh, yeah, let’s,” he says, and now he’s staring at Taehyun’s fit chest, the thin outline of his waist, the way the color of his pajamas—baby pink, thank you, Huening Kai—compliments his skin, and his mind goes wild with how better those pajamas would look better off his body and down the floor. He clears his throat, saying, “Taehyun-ah.”

Taehyun blinks, freezing by the doorway, brows furrowing—he’s being cryptic again, the second time today. “What?”

The corner of his lips tug into a smirk. “I just wanted to say that I think you’d look really good bent over my desk and—”

Taehyun slams the door shut. Distantly, he can hear a Fuck you, hyung ringing through their apartment.

Soobin can’t help the fond laugh that tumbles out of his throat—he really can’t. His boyfriend really is just too endearing—or maybe he’s just too endeared. Either way, it means the same thing. At first glance, Taehyun may seem daunting—a little too serious, a little too cutthroat for someone his age—but behind all that, behind all the first impressions and preconceived notions that people pin on him, he’s one of the most lovable souls that Soobin has ever had the privilege of loving and being loved by. Taehyun has always loved him so sweetly, so attentively—so carefully. Every time Soobin feels down—even just a little—from something that happened at work, he knows Taehyun will always be there to make him tea, to sit down with him and ask him what’s wrong, what happened, you know you can tell me anything, then hold his hand through it all, through the littlest things that trip him down, through the stormy nights that shake up his entire world—Taehyun is always there. He always was, and he always will be.

Kang Taehyun—his lighthouse. His anchor.

Sometimes, Soobin wonders where his life would have gone to without Taehyun by his side, if he never woke up late for the class he took for credit in college and bumped into Taehyun while he ran to his professor’s classroom without much thought for his surroundings, which incidentally led to him spilling his coffee on Taehyun’s shirt—to which Taehyun still teases him about, by the way— and that simple accident led Soobin to the greatest part of his life: Taehyun.

He was being his usual sleep-deprived, clumsy self, and somehow that led him to where he is now—spending a lifetime with Kang Taehyun. Who would have imagined?

Soobin breathes, jaw slack in awe—he always gets into these overly sentimental moods, time to time, always pondering on how lucky he is to have met Taehyun, to have Taehyun in his life, and he can see why his friends love mocking him so much for it.

Taehyun just brings it out of him. Every part of himself—all the good, and bad, and everything else that lie in between—that he isn’t willing to show entirely just to anyone else, not even to his closest friends. There are certain parts of him that are meant only for certain parts of his life. It’s only Taehyun that has seen Choi Soobin’s 360, in all his light and shadow, in all the times his worser thoughts took the better of him, and all the times he felt as though he sat on the top of the world—Taehyun’s been there through it all, has seen Soobin go through his best and worst days, and he’s still here, somehow. He’s still found reasons to continue loving him, in spite of everything, of all the storms.

Taehyun has always loved him from the start. His day one.

“Hyung, hurry up! The ramen’s about to go cold again!” he blinks out of his inner monologue when he hears Taehyun shout, probably from the living room, “Hyungie!”

And the use of that magic word sends Soobin right out of his chair, standing up so quickly he almost gets dizzy from it. He walks embarrassingly fast from his office room to their living room—where they usually eat dinner, preferring to eat while watching something, either a movie or series of their choice, or the news, if they can’t choose anything else—and is pleasantly greeted with the sight of Taehyun already sitting on the couch, two bowls of miso soup on the table, and the show—All of Us Are Dead, Kai wouldn’t stop pestering them until they watched it—already set to be played on the TV, just on pause.

Soobin smiles. He’s so lucky.

He sits beside Taehyun—who hands him his miso ramen and chopsticks. “Thanks, Tyun,” he says, making himself comfortable on the couch, already taking a sip of his ramen, “Mm, this is so good. You cooked it?”

Taehyun hums, reaching for the TV remote. “Yeah, but it got cold by the time you were done with your work, so,” he shrugs, “What took you so long in there, anyways? Don’t tell me you were actually jacking off about fucking me over your desk.”

Soobin chokes on his ramen. That’s the thing about Taehyun—he only gets flustered if Soobin’s initiating the sex talk, but he has no problem with starting it himself. He doesn’t blush, doesn’t stutter—none of those. He is downright shameless, even more so than Soobin when it comes to these things—which, if you ask Soobin, makes Taehyun a hypocrite.

“Taehyun!”

“What, I’m genuinely curious,” he says, and it’s so annoying how sincere he looks when Soobin knows, deep down, he’s hollering with joy at seeing Soobin choke on his own tongue for a change, “You know, if that’s really the case, I wouldn’t mind indulging in your fantasies—but I need to know which kind first. Is it the typical office porn—the one with the secretary and all? I wouldn’t mind acting that part out, but we have to establish proper boundaries. The secretary roleplay is quite—”

Soobin hits Taehyun’s face with his foot. “Just play the show, you brat.”

Taehyun snickers, raising a brow when he steals a glance down Soobin’s pants.

Soobin’s cheeks flare up at the sudden attention down there, pressing his legs together in haste. “Yah! Don’t stare at it just like that!”

Taehyun just rolls his eyes. “I’ve seen your dick more than I’ve seen my noona this year, hyung. No need to get shy about getting a boner in front of me,” he says, so fucking nonchalantly, and god, Kang Taehyun can be such a menace sometimes, Soobin doesn’t know how to deal with him when he gets into this mood, “But noted. Next time I visit you in the office, I’ll come in wearing a secretary’s outfit—with the skirt and all. I’ll even wear my glasses for you, hyung.”

Taehyun’s lashes flutter, the corner of his lips quirking into a subtle smirk, probably smug at how he rendered Soobin speechless, and Soobin breathes through his nose, slowly.

The only way to put out Taehyun’s fire is to start a stronger one of his own.

He clears his throat, putting down his miso soup, and directs his gaze right into Taehyun’s eyes, makes sure it feels smoldering on his skin. “And the next time you visit my office, I’ll fuck you so hard over my desk that you won’t be able to bend over without thinking of my dick in your ass for the next five days.”

Taehyun’s cheeks are on fire, jaw slack, losing all the stride he carried only a few minutes ago—and that is how you know you’ve won over Kang Taehyun: when he can’t think of anything else to say back.

Soobin has to admit he’s a bit addicted to the rush of victory that comes over him at the sight of Taehyun’s flustered face.

“Oh, fuck you, hyung,” he mutters under his breath, hurriedly switching on the show, trying to hide how red his cheeks are by slurping down on his soup.

Soobin laughs, and he wants to tease him more, but the show’s already starting—and he wouldn’t want his teasing to go too far. He respects Taehyun’s boundaries, and he knows when he crosses the line—as much as they love teasing each other, their relationship is built profoundly on trust and respect, and they always make sure to check on each other whenever they think they’ve gone a little too far with their words. They’ve never been shy with communicating with each other, never really hesitated to say what they feel in all its sincerity—it comes so naturally for them. They don’t bottle up their feelings until they burst into flames and burn down everything else around them—they know how to use their words with each other. It’s what makes it so easy being together.

The intro plays shortly, and Soobin’s still so amazed at how well-done it is. “What episode are we at again?” he asks.

“Episode three,” Taehyun replies, curt in tone, eyes intently on the screen. His blush still hasn’t gone down.

He’s so cute.

But Soobin opts to focus on the screen, instead. It’s an interesting enough show, anyways. Soobin is starting to see why Kai was so adamant in convincing Taehyun and Soobin to watch it—not that they needed that much of convincing, since they both like zombie films enough. While zombies are a popular concept in the Korean film industry, it never feels overdone, and they always come up with something new, something fresh. They even reference Train to Busan in this one—which caught Soobin by surprise. They hardly acknowledge the existence of zombies in the media in zombie films like these, but Soobin likes how realistic their approach seems to be. If he were ever caught in a zombie apocalypse, the first thing he’d do is try to run through all the zombie-related media he’s consumed in his twenty-nine years of living, and try to test just how accurate they really are to the real thing, and probably die along the way, knowing himself.

The characters slowly appear in the screen. Soobin hums, leaning closer to Taehyun, taking a sip of his miso soup, wondering how exactly this episode would go—Kai texted him about this beforehand. Get ready for the next episode, hyung, he texted—with a concerning amount of crying emoticons—right after Soobin told him they finished the second episode. They’ve decided to watch the show an episode per day—they’re both a little too busy to watch in one go. Besides, Soobin hardly pulls all-nighters nowadays. Taehyun still has a tendency of staying up until the a.m., but even he’s sleeping a bit earlier, too. Courtesy of work.

So, he watches on, anticipating what exactly in this episode caused such a reaction out of Kai, and he’s naturally an emotionally expressive person, so he assumes it’s nothing big. Probably just some poor animal getting bitten by a zombie.

But at the end of the episode, Soobin is crying—practically sobbing—into Taehyun’s shoulder, body trembling as he tries to muffle his own sobs into Taehyun’s shirt, probably drenching with tears and snot, but Taehyun’s steady in his support, rubbing soothing circles on his back and consoling him with softly uttered words, with whispers of there, there, hyung, let it all out.

And Soobin does. He sobs uncontrollably, his chest hurting as if a dull knife stabbed right through the middle of it, and he doesn’t even know why he’s so affected by Gyeong-su’s death. He feels inconsolable, like nothing in this world could ever undo the hurt in the middle of his chest, and he’s being a little too dramatic over this, maybe, but he’s always been like this, really—he’s always been a little too emotional, too easily teary-eyed over things most people wouldn’t even care to bat an eye on, in the first place. It comes with being sentimental, he supposes. He’s always been a feeler—feels a little deeper, loves a little stronger.

And cries a little harder, too. Too hard, he thinks, judging from how wet Taehyun’s shirt feels against his cheek.

“I’m gonna kill Huening Kai,” Soobin says, sniffing, voice scratchy from all his crying, and he can only imagine how he looks like—puffy eyes, red-rimmed nose, and a tear-streaked face, “I can’t believe he would make me go through this.”

Taehyun runs his fingers through Soobin’s hair, gently stroking his head. “Well, technically, he did warn you beforehand—with the crying emoticons and all,” he says, shrugging, “You should’ve taken his message more seriously. Hyuka never uses more than three sad emoticons unless it absolutely devastated him—and you know that whatever devastates him, devastates you, too.”

Soobin only looks up at Taehyun with brows furrowed in judgment, feeling particularly betrayed for the second time tonight. “You’re choosing Kai over me? Your boyfriend? Of five years?” he says in disbelief, putting a hand on his chest—and blame Beomgyu for that, actually, it’s not his fault that Beomgyu’s flair for dramatics rubbed off him, “Just like that?”

Taehyun blinks. “Oh, you know what they say, hyung,” he starts, “Bros before hoes.”

Soobin lets out a watery laugh at that, wiping the tears still stuck on his lashes with the back of his hand—he always makes him laugh, even in the times where he felt as though he could do everything but. Even during the grayest skies, all it really takes to clear out the heavy clouds is a single ray of light—and Taehyun has been his daylight, his dawn, ever since he’s met him.

He repositions himself, setting himself to rest his head on Taehyun’s lap instead, staring up at him, eyes fluttering.

Taehyun looks at him with something close to devotion in his eyes, stroking his hair, brushing the strands away from his face.

Soobin breathes in, a shaky inhale, taking Taehyun’s hand—the one he’s using to brush his hair—in his own and pulling it closer to his lips, pressing kisses against his knuckles, kissing the bony ridges, the soft skin around it. He traces circles around Taehyun’s ring finger, kisses it, then.

“Hyung.”

The first light of day. His.

Soobin responds with a low hum, playing with Taehyun’s fingers, marveling at how small they seem compared to his.

“If we were in a zombie apocalypse, and I got bit, what would you do?” he asks.

He blinks, pondering on Taehyun’s question. If he and Taehyun were in a zombie apocalypse together, and he got bitten, then Soobin wouldn’t really know what to do with himself—with his life. The characters who survive the end of the world, the apocalypse, are the kind of people who live for something, for someone—even for just their own selves. They’re the ones who keep the fire burning inside of themselves by making their reason—whatever and whoever it may be—their ultimatum, their gasoline to keep the flames steady. Their end-all and be-all. They would be the kind of people willing to risk their own lives, to sacrifice everything they’ve worked for—even if it means losing everyone else—just for that one, simple reason. Taehyun would be Soobin’s reason, would be the one thing he’d keep himself alive for, and if he lost him, whether to a zombie or whatever else, then the answer would be simple.

“I’d let you bite me back,” he answers without hesitation, nodding surely, “I don’t ever want to live in a world where you’re not there, Tyun. Never,” he says, “I can’t even handle the thought of it.”

Taehyun hums, smiling. “Me too, hyung,” he says, “I think that the only reason a zombie apocalypse—or an apocalypse of any kind, for that matter—turns out the way it does, is because no one ever listens to the scientists. To the people who actually know what they’re talking about, and aren’t just pulling their words out of their ass.”

Soobin nods along. “Definitely,” he says, completely agreeing, “And there would be too many people who’d hide the fact that they got bitten by the zombies, so by the time everyone else finds out, it’s too late to do anything about it, and half of them get turned into zombies, too.”

“That’s just our survival instinct acting for us,” Taehyun says, “I would stop myself from hiding the bite from the rest of the group I’m with, but that doesn’t change the fact that that was the first thing I wanted to do.”

“True enough,” Soobin says, because even he can’t say that he won’t think of the same thing, “I think the second worst types of people in a zombie apocalypse are the ones who turn everything into their personal agenda, as if everyone else around them wasn’t dying and screaming for fucking blood.”

For Soobin, sadness eventually translates into anger.

Taehyun lets out a breath, shaking his head, exactly knowing what Soobin is referring to. “His death was unnecessary, that’s true, but I think everything else that happened in this show is, to some point,” he says, nodding, and Soobin can’t help but stare attentively, like a schoolboy trying to understand his lesson for once—he loves listening to Taehyun talk, loves listening to the way he structures his thoughts into his words, “They could have avoided the whole shitshow if they just woke the girl up from her nap. Or if the girl stayed where she is, and minded her own fucking business.”

Soobin chuckles, amused. “Then we wouldn’t have anything to watch, baby,” he says.

Taehyun snorts. “Point.”

They let themselves sit in silence for a while longer. It’s already ten in the evening, quarter to eleven, and while he’s feeling a little drowsy, a little tired from all the emotional work that this episode put him through, he enjoys the silence, enjoys the pair of his hands on his own. Their quiet little existence.

But soon enough, Taehyun, ever the restless one, taps on his shoulders as a gesture for him to get off, and Soobin does with a grunt. Standing from the couch, he helps Taehyun gather the dishes and place them on the kitchen sink—he washes them (Taehyun doesn’t like it when his hands turn pruney from washing too much dishes, and he already cooks their meals, anyways, so it’s only fair that Soobin does the dishes), while Taehyun cleans up the mess they’ve made in the living room (They’re messy people, from time to time, and Taehyun’s always been better at fixing messes, whether they’re his or Soobin’s). It’s a routine that they’ve already well familiarized into their muscle memory, bodies moving on their own clock.

Then, they close the lights on the kitchen and the living room, kiss their darlings (Odi, Sean, and Hobak) goodnight, and take turns in the bathroom—and soon enough, they’re lying on their bed, about to end the day.

Soobin’s still scrolling on his phone—he promised himself a few more minutes in catching up with this one Webtoon novel he subscribed to—while Taehyun’s already laying on his side, comforter pulled up until it covers half of his face, eyes rapidly fluttering close and open. Soobin can tell he’s already sleepy, so he distractedly rubs a hand on Taehyun’s back.

“Hyung,” Taehyun mumbles.

“Mm.”

“You’ll really work out with me tomorrow, right?” he asks, and Soobin stops his reading, feeling the dread drop into his stomach like a heavy stone, “You said earlier. That you’d work out with me tomorrow. For real, this time.”

Soobin squeezes his eyes shut—as if he needed any more reminders. Sometimes, he really hates himself. Why he keeps putting himself through this endless cycle of making promises while doing a terrible job keeping them, he doesn’t know.

It’s a simple thing that Taehyun’s asking from him: to work out with him. And Soobin likes making him happy.

That should be enough of a reason.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding even if Taehyun can’t see him, “Yeah, I will. Don’t worry.”

Taehyun hums contentedly. “Okay, hyungie.”

Distantly, the same old feeling of dread settles under his skin like an itch. Soobin closes his phone, finding himself unable to focus, and lays on his side, wrapping an arm on Taehyun’s waist and pulling him closer to his chest. Their legs tangle.

He can only hope Taehyun wakes up in a merciful mood tomorrow.

 

-

 

“Hyung,” he hears Taehyun say right into his ear, because he holds absolutely no consideration for Soobin or his sanity, and he can only let out a tired groan—isn’t it too early for this? —trying to block away Taehyun’s face by putting a pillow between them, to which Taehyun whines at, and Soobin hates, absolutely despises, how easily the sound gets to him, how fast he can already feel his defenses crumbling to dust. He may play as tough as much as he wants to, but there’s no winning with Taehyun when he wants something from Soobin—he knows all of his weak spots, knows just which button to press, and Taehyun, without question, is nowhere shy in taking advantage of any of them.

“Hyung, come on, you promised yesterday,” Taehyun pleads, and Soobin can just imagine the pout on his lips, squeezing his eyes shut to try and dispel the mental image of Taehyun and how devastatingly cute he probably looks right now from his mind—he would just be walking straight into Taehyun’s hands, if he did, “Hyung.”

“Hyung,” and another once again, “Hyungie.”

Soobin tries to breathe patience—and resistance, too, at that—into himself, because he’s heard from other people that, apparently, if you breathe right, it’ll work well enough. “Look, baby,” he starts, letting out a tired sigh, sitting up and rubbing his eyes open to meet Taehyun’s, “I know I told you that I—”

Taehyun lets out a resigned sigh, putting a hand up, firmly cutting him off. “No,” he says, crossing his arms, and Soobin swallows nervously when he realizes that Taehyun’s tone has gone serious, no more of the high-pitched whiny inflections between his words, “We’ve gone through this once already, hyung, and if you hate the thought of going to the gym with so much, then you should’ve started with that, instead of bluffing and wasting both of our time here.”

Soobin presses his lips together, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, you’re right, Tyun,” Soobin says, apologetic, getting up from the bed to properly face him, to look at him straight into his eyes, reaching to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear, “Sorry I was acting so childish a while ago—and yesterday, too.”

Taehyun shakes his head. “It’s fine, hyung. I know how you get in the mornings—besides, I’m not angry over that, or anything that you did, for that matter. I just wanted you to be a little clearer with your intentions,” he pauses, “And I’m sorry, too, if I seemed forceful about the whole thing. I promise you don’t have to go to the gym with me if you’re really not feeling like it, hyung.”

“No, I will,” he says—he’s already awake, anyways, so Taehyun doesn’t need to force him out of bed anymore, “I made a promise, didn’t I?”

Taehyun chuckles, smiling. “Nice to know that hyung still tries to make an effort in keeping his promises.”

Soobin pouts. “Hey!” he protests, “Tell me one time I didn’t!”

He raises a brow, disbelieving. “Oh, like you’ve forgotten about yesterday already?”

Well, okay, Taehyun has a fair point, he’ll admit that, but he’s talking unfairly, too, because, first of all, Soobin came from a weekday, and he only has two days in a whole week to sleep in, so why would he even sacrifice two of those days to… work out, of all things. So, he thinks that the promise he made to Taehyun a few days back—the one when he begged Taehyun to help him clean Odi’s poop from Yeonjun’s brand new bag, because Odi somehow snuck his way inside there, that little troublemaker, and in return, he’d finally give working out a chance—wasn’t really a promise, per se. It’s a promise entirely said out of desperation (Yeonjun would have killed him if he found out, and Soobin still values his life too much to let himself die under Yeonjun’s vengeful hands), and everyone knows that promises that come from the extremities of the emotional spectrum aren’t meant to be taken seriously—but, well, Taehyun takes everything about working out seriously. He can hardly joke about how much he hates it unless he wants a thirty-minute lecture on how beneficial it really is to one’s lifestyle. They’re both equally as bad as each other, though, because Soobin never hesitates to retort with his own full-fledged, research backed-up rants, too.

“Tyun, come on, how long are you going to hold that over my head?” Soobin asks, groaning, “And I hardly got sleep the day before that, so I don’t think I was exactly physically or mentally equipped to fulfil that promise, as much as I wanted to.”

He did not want to, yesterday, and he clearly does not want to, today—but he’s tired of pulling Taehyun on a string, and maybe he can convince Taehyun that working out really isn’t for him by doing such a poor job of it. Not that he’d need to try to, anyways.

“Oh, I know, hyung,” Taehyun says, patting his cheeks, “But the more important thing is you’re finally going to work out with me! Finally!”

Soobin fondly chuckles at the sheer joy that lights up Taehyun’s face. “Are you really that excited for me to exercise with you? It means that much?”

Taehyun eagerly nods, like an overexcited puppy, his energy—and the joy he radiates, overall—is so contagious that Soobin finds a sort of… anticipation running through him for their gym session. “Of course, it does, hyung,” he says, and Soobin feels a little winded at the conviction in Taehyun’s tone, “It’s two of my most favorite things in the world coming together.”

At Taehyun’s words, a surge of warmth rushes through him—that is, until his brain processes a specific undertone. “Your two most favorite things in the world,” Soobin repeats, brows furrowed and eyes squinted, “I’m the first, right?”

Taehyun blinks, still smiling. “You both are.”

Soobin almost laughs at how Taehyun refers to working out as if it was a person. “Well, if it comes down to it, and you had to choose between me and working out, then which would you choose?” Soobin asks, and before Taehyun can even open his mouth, he cuts in, tutting, “You have to be honest with your answer.”

Taehyun breathes in. He opens his mouth, then closes it.

He’s hesitating.

Soobin gasps, staring at him in dawning terror—Taehyun never hesitates, when it comes to any of these things. “You would choose working out.”

Taehyun smiles at him apologetically, putting up a slow, hesitant—there he goes again—thumbs-up, and Soobin’s face twist with the betrayal that’s piercing through his chest, through the marrow of his bones, through the love he thought would be enough to last them through the thick, the thin— “Taehyun-ah,” Soobin starts, voice watery, “I wish you would have told me sooner.”

“Ah, don’t be so dramatic, hyung,” Taehyun says, playfully slapping him on the shoulder, “It’s not that deep.”

“What, so I’m not allowed to react to my boyfriend choosing working out over me? Choi Soobin? Me?”

Taehyun just rolls his eyes. Soobin really spends too much time with Beomgyu. “Don’t worry, hyung, I know who you are,” he says, pushing Soobin to their bathroom, ignoring his whiny complaints about his boyfriend and his ‘obsessive’ relationship with working out, “Just freshen up, hyung. Brush your teeth, wash your face, then change into the gym wear I already prepared you, okay? I’m going to wait outside.”

Soobin hums his affirmative, staring at his reflection with the most solemn look on his face. God, if that’s how he looked like the whole morning, then he’d choose the gym over himself, too, truth be told. He shakes his head, switching on the faucet and splashing water over his face, then brushes his teeth once he’s over with washing his face.

He quickly walks out of the bathroom, scrubbing his hands dry on his towel, and changes into the gym wear Taehyun prepared for him beforehand—a plain white tank top and simple gray shorts. He doesn’t want to keep Taehyun waiting for him. He knows they’ve wasted enough time bouncing from one pointless topic to another. They make good conversations, though, and he and Taehyun definitely love indulging themselves in them, for all its pointlessness. Quite frankly, all Soobin wants to do is get this over with. He’s never really been too talented with the physical aspects of life—too clumsy to even try to excel in sports, too lazy for the consistent effort that working out requires. He never knows what to do exactly with his limbs, always finding himself stumbling after Taehyun—it’s the reason why he admires Taehyun so much.

Taehyun always knows what to do with himself, and it’s one of the few reasons why when they first met, Soobin couldn’t get him out of his mind—because even with spilled coffee staining his shirt, and Soobin on the ground looking like an absolute idiot, with hair still ruffled from sleep, Taehyun still offers him his hand, a hesitant smile playing on his lips, and that’s when Soobin knew, really. That’s when the misfit puzzle pieces of his life started falling into place—when the mosaic of his life started rearranging itself. That’s when everything else started to make sense, simply put.

He knew, from first sight alone, that he was meant to love this boy for as long as his life—and he is, because here he is, about to step into a gym. A gym. His worst nightmare come to life.

Well. Calling it his worst nightmare might be a bit of a stretch. Working out is tolerable, at best—and if it’s with Taehyun, then who knows. He might even enjoy it.

Emphasis on might, of course.

He walks outside their room, saying quick goodbyes to Odi, Sean, and Hobak (their babies), and leaves the apartment with the keys in his hand, locking their door. He’s greeted with the sight of Taehyun waiting impatiently by the door, feet tapping repetitively on the floor, and he smiles, wrapping an arm around him.

“Hope I didn’t take too long,” he says.

Taehyun shakes his head. “No, don’t worry, hyung,” he says, starting to walk in whatever direction the gym is—luckily for Taehyun, their gym is right on their floor, which is the highest floor, just to say—with Soobin easily following him, “The gym’s just right over there.”

As if he needed any reminding. “I know, Taehyun-ah,” he says, amused, “The gym’s the reason why we chose this complex in the first place.”

“Right,” Taehyun says, blinking, “You know what’s weird, though?”

Soobin hums in answer, pulling Taehyun closer to him.

“I’ve hardly seen other people actually use the gym,” Taehyun says, and really, Soobin doesn’t blame them—he’s hardly stepped foot into the gym ever since he first saw it, “Sure, the equipment’s not as quality as other gyms with memberships is, but it’s good enough for me. More importantly, working out depends more on the attitude of the person towards working out rather than the quality of their equipment,” Taehyun pauses for dramatic effect, then whispers in an exaggerated tone, “And, hyung, I don’t think the people in this complex like working out that much.”

Soobin snickers, rolling his eyes. “I can’t blame them,” he says, “Here I am being forced to work out with my boyfriend at six in the morning. On a Sunday, too!”

“Oh, haha,” Taehyun sarcastically replies.

“But I think the people here do use the gym time to time, too. It would be impossible if no one besides you didn’t,” he says, “They’re probably just not morning people, you know?”

Taehyun hums distractedly, eyes visibly lighting up when they reach the gym. He wriggles out of Soobin’s grip, pushing his arm off his shoulders, and Soobin almost feels offended at how happier Taehyun looks like while opening the gym. An almost, because if Taehyun’s happy, then like an instinct, Soobin is, too.

But he is still a little bit offended that Taehyun would really choose a gym over him. Who even thinks and says that to their significant other?

“Hyung, come on, come on!”

Kang Taehyun—he really is like no one else Soobin’s ever met. He can barely think of a friend or an acquaintance of his that would talk about the gym like it was an amusement park, or their favorite place in the world—and knowing Taehyun, it probably is.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” he says, walking inside, but apparently, his pace is too slow for Taehyun—who eagerly pulls him inside, happily ignoring Soobin’s shocked yelps, forcing him to run to keep up with his pace until they’ve reached the treadmills, which are five in total.

Soobin eyes them—he hasn’t been on one for quite a while. “We’re gonna run first?”

Taehyun nods. “Yeah, I like doing cardio first,” he says, stretching his arms, “It’s a good way to start your workout. Prepares and stretches all the muscles in your body that way,” he pauses when he sees the hesitation cross over Soobin’s face, “Don’t worry, hyung. This is just a warm-up. Just think of it as an appetizer.”

That doesn’t make anything better. How could anyone think of running as an appetizer?

Still, he braves through and gets on the treadmill, staring down at the buttons on the control panel. “So,” he starts, trying to swallow down his nervousness—god, when was the last time he ran on these things?

“So,” Taehyun repeats, when he doesn’t say anything else. Soobin briefly glances back at him. He’s still stretching—legs, this time.

Soobin swallows, eyes lingering on them a little longer than intended. He’s only starting to notice how toned they are. Taehyun’s only wearing a gray tank and shorts that cover most of his thighs.

Taehyun bends down a little, reaching down his toes, holding for a few seconds. Soobin feels his throat go a little dry when Taehyun’s shirt rides up, exposing a generous expanse of his skin, running his tongue over his lips at the sight. Then shakes his head vigorously, trying to get his mind out of the gutter—no way is he going to pop a boner in the middle of Taehyun’s workout sessions. No way. He’s here to work out with Taehyun, just like he promised. Fucking him should be the last thing on his mind right now.

“How long do you usually run?” Soobin asks, when he finds his voice back.

“For at least thirty minutes,” Taehyun says, and Soobin nods—that doesn’t sound too bad, “It could go on a little longer than that, though, if I’m feeling like it.”

“Well,” he starts, swallowing, a bit unsure, and nervous, “are you feeling like it right now?”

Taehyun smiles at him, fond at how lost he probably looks, as if the gym was nothing but a dark, dark world, and Taehyun is Soobin’s only guiding light—and it’s not too far from the truth. All jokes aside, Taehyun really is Soobin’s guiding light here. He could count on one hand the number of times he went to the gym and actually used it, so it’s not an exaggeration for him to say that the only equipment he recognizes here is the treadmill. The last time he went to the gym was when he found out that Beomgyu started working out with Taehyun—he lost a bet or something, from what he remembers—and went there with Kai to make fun of him. It’s only Taehyun’s luck—and Soobin’s own misfortune—that he found another gym enjoyer in their group.

“Don’t look so scared, hyung,” Taehyun says, chuckling, and Soobin rolls his eyes—that little menace is probably having the time of his life right now, “I won’t make you run for more than thirty minutes, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

Soobin nods. “Yeah,” he says, then pauses when a thought comes over him, “Would you let me run for less, though? Less than thirty?”

Taehyun blinks at him, bemused. “You can run for as long as you like, hyung. I’m not your gym trainer,” he says, even though he’s completely acting like one, “I just think that thirty-minutes is the perfect duration for runs like these.”

“You’re training me right now,” Soobin says with a deadpan.

“I’m just giving out tips and recommendations,” Taehyun corrects, “Why aren’t you switching on the treadmill yet, anyways?”

“I’m waiting for you,” Soobin says, “so hurry up. I don’t know why you’re stretching so much.”

It’s distracting him. Do you really need to stretch that much to run? Soobin will have to do his research later.

Taehyun smiles, cracking his knuckles, going on the treadmill next to Soobin’s. “You’re so sweet, hyung,” he says, already pressing buttons in the control panel, and Soobin’s a little surprised when Taehyun’s treadmill starts to run, hurrying up to start his own.

They don’t talk much over the whirring of the treadmills. Soobin figures that Taehyun likes running in the quiet, considering how he hasn’t tried initiating a conversation with Soobin—and Soobin finds that he doesn’t mind the silence, either. While he still wouldn’t make this a day-to-day activity, Soobin can see why most people like running—you lose all thought in the process, in the effort of trying to keep up with the motor that runs the belt of the treadmill, and it’s a good distraction, he has to admit. Not an easy one, that’s for certain, because Soobin’s only a few minutes in—it’s a good fifteen minutes, though—and the speed isn’t outrageously maxed out either, but he can already feel something sharp poking his lower stomach. Stomach cramps are normal during running. It’s something you would learn to bear if you’re consistent enough. He knows this because Taehyun always complains about the cramps in his stomach. Soobin always makes him tea when he does.

Those few fifteen minutes span out to thirty-two—and an additional two, oh, he has truly, officially exceeded his own expectations—and he quickly presses on the Stop! button when he feels his breath coming in short. His chest is heaving wildly, rising up and down in deep pants, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his skin—it feels as gross as it feels as rewarding. It’s the proof of effort. Soobin likes feeling it on his skin—how tired but satisfied he feels.

Although, the satisfaction is more for the reason that he’s finally done and over with it. He certainly didn’t enjoy the burning feeling in his lungs or the sharp stab in his lower stomach. He really can’t fathom how Taehyun does this on the daily and somehow finds… enjoyment in doing so—it’ll remain as one of the world’s greatest mysteries, he supposes.

Soobin gets off the treadmill, walking to the couches and happily lounging on them. He rests his head on the arm of the couch, letting out a contented sigh. The one nice thing about working out—or running, for that matter, because all he did was run—is that it makes resting so much more relieving, makes it feel like a reward, like a sip of water after hours spent in the desert.

“Tyun,” Soobin calls out, wiping off the sweat stuck on his forehead with the back of his hand, fanning himself, “You’re still going?”

He hears the treadmill’s buzz shut down. “No,” Taehyun replies, getting off the treadmill, and Soobin’s in awe at how coherent he sounds, hardly even panting, “I just finished. You ready for weights, hyung?”

Soobin’s eyes widen in surprise. Already?

“Uhm, you’re lifting weights already?” Soobin asks, hands sweating. He just got off running, and he’s not sure if he’s even able to move a muscle—his thighs feel like hell.

“We’re lifting weights,” Taehyun says, but he raises his brows in question, “Hopefully. Are you up for it, hyung?”

Soobin contemplates his answer very deeply. If he were to say yes, then that would mean that he’d be appeasing Taehyun, but in turn, he would have to lift weights—even the mere thought of it sends shivers down Soobin’s back. If he were to say no, however, it would mean letting Taehyun down—although, not by much, because he knows Taehyun would still enjoy himself regardless. He stares at the weights, wincing at the thought of lifting those.

“Maybe I can just watch you?” Soobin suggests hesitantly, a sheepish smile on his face.

“Oh, okay,” Taehyun says, dejected, pouting as he walks over to where the weights are, a little dejected because, well. He was hoping to spend more time with Soobin in the gym—maybe laugh at him for thinking he could easily handle a 10kg dumbbell, because Soobin always goes out his way to impress him, ever since they’ve met, and Taehyun, in all honesty, has always wondered why when he’s already impressed enough with just the way Soobin is—it’s one of the twenty-thousand reasons why Taehyun fell for him in the first place, actually.

Growing up as a child star, he’s been told all his life that he’s extraordinary, special, and that, one day, he’ll find himself someone who shines just as bright as he does—someone just as wonderful, just as amazing. Throughout his whole life, he’s been adored, praised endlessly—oh, Taehyun-ah, you’re so smart, so handsome, what a perfect boy—and somewhere along the way, he realized he didn’t want to be in the spotlight of everyone else’s blind worship. He didn’t want to bear the suffocating weight of being adored, because the thing about being loved—if you could it even call it that—by thousands and thousands of people is that you have to continuously give them a reason to. They love you from afar, while you live in a separate world entirely. Stardom is lonely, is the thing—and Taehyun eventually grew tired of trying to live with the silence after the curtains closed. So he gave up on the life his parents had so desperately wanted to see him pursue and grow into, on the life that everyone else was so convinced was meant for him—but those were their dreams, and he had his own.

And here he is.

He glances back at Soobin—who, he finds, is already looking at him. There is a realness in Soobin’s eyes that Taehyun knows he wouldn’t, couldn’t have found anywhere else—not in the prying eyes of the crowds he used to please, not in his parents’ calculating ones. Soobin is real. He’s real, and he’s gazing at Taehyun with a look in his eyes that Taehyun knows he won’t be able to forget, not even if a thousand lifetimes pass by his eyes. Soobin is real, and he’s here with him—and that’s all Taehyun has ever needed. All he’s ever wanted.

Soobin blinks first, losing their unannounced staring contest—he always does, anyways. A smile breaks out in Taehyun’s face.

“Hyung!” he says, raising his voice a little bit—there’s a bit of a distance between the couches and the weights—then he points to the chairs arranged in the corner, gesturing for Soobin to sit in one, “Come and sit here!”

“Why!”

Taehyun rolls his eyes. “So you could ogle at my muscles, of course!”

“I don’t want to ogle at your muscles!” Soobin shouts back, tone petulant, “And I don’t ogle, mind you!”

That’s a lie if Taehyun’s ever heard one. “Hyung,” he whines out, loud and high, dragging out the word in a desperate voice—he knows Soobin likes it when Taehyun sounds like this, like he’s begging for something he knows only Soobin could give, and maybe, Taehyun likes it, too, likes the reaction it drags out of Soobin, “Just sit here, come on!”

There’s something mischievous in Soobin’s smile, another 180 in his demeanor—from whiny to teasing. “How about the magic word first, baby?”

Taehyun groans—he doesn’t understand why Soobin is being so difficult right now, but no way is he just going to give Soobin what he wants on a silver platter. “Oh, whatever!” he says, turning away, “If you don’t want to sit here, then don’t!”

He starts looking through the shelf of the weights, looking for the 5kg dumbbells. He likes starting small. Ten minutes of lifting 5kg dumbbells on both hands. It prepares his muscles better and allows more room for endurance.

He pretends to ignore the sound of Soobin’s fast footsteps—that idiot hyung is probably running on the slippery gym floor—and the smile threatening to spread wide on his face, already stubbornly tugging on his lips.

Then, suddenly, a pair of arms encircle his waist, and Taehyun lets out a squeal—he’s trying not to giggle—and tries to playfully wriggle out of Soobin’s grip.

“Caught you, kitty,” Soobin whispers into his ears, voice purposely in a low drawl, leaning down to bury face into his neck, and Taehyun can’t be faulted for the blush that blossoms on his cheeks like a spring flower. When Soobin talks in that tone and calls him kitty—fucking kitty, of all names—then he’s certain anyone would have reacted the way he had. Choi Soobin, for all his awkward demeanor and his clumsy words, can be a real menace when he wants to.

Taehyun breathes in, slow, when he feels Soobin’s warm breath fan against his neck. “I…” his breath falters when the tip of his tongue grazes against his neck—it’s ticklish, makes Taehyun flutter with titillation, “…I wasn’t even running. In the first place.”

“Oh, you weren’t?” Soobin is sarcastic when he asks this, tightens his grip around Taehyun’s waist, downright squeezing it, and Taehyun barely bites back the gasp sitting on the tip of his tongue, almost past through his lips, “Could’ve sworn you were.”

Taehyun gulps, trying to act nonchalant. “I’m,” he pauses when Soobin’s fingers play with the hem of his shirt, squeezing his eyes shut, “the one who asked you to—”

He inhales sharply when Soobin’s fingers dip past his shirt.

“To?” Soobin repeats, taunting, his hand trailing up to his chest, roughly dragging his fingers upward to flick his nipple. An involuntary squeak escapes him, and his cheeks heat at the amused chuckle Soobin lets out behind him.

“Hyung,” his voice comes out desperate, a little embarrassed that Soobin’s choosing to do this here, of all places, “Hyung, why are—”

He gets cut off, again, when Soobin pinches it, bordering on painful, just the way he knows Taehyun likes, and Taehyun downright moans, nearly falling forward into the weights, if not for Soobin’s tight grip on his waist, the only thing holding him up.

“To what, baby?” Soobin noses his nape, dragging his fingers over Taehyun’s chest, playing with his nipples, rubbing and tugging, “Come on, Taehyunie, be a good boy for hyung and finish your sentence.”

Taehyun grips on the rails of the shelf like a lifeline, knuckles whitening. “To…” his breath stutters when Soobin’s other hand—the one holding his waist—lowers into his shorts, playing with the red drawstrings that’s tied into a neat ribbon, fingers deftly undoing the knot, “…come…”

“Come?”

“Here. To come here,” Taehyun finishes in a hurry, trying to stop himself from tripping over his own words.

“Well, here I am, baby,” Soobin latches his lips onto his neck, suckling on a patch of delicate skin, and Taehyun whimpers at the heated drag of Soobin’s tongue, “You sound so pretty, Taehyun-ah, do you know that?”

“Hyung, please,” is all he manages when Soobin sucks another mark on his neck, one hand still playing with his chest, and the other dangerously close to his crotch.

Soobin gives last few licks on the pretty marks he’s left on Taehyun’s pale neck, then puts both of his hands on Taehyun’s hips, turning him around to face him. Soobin feels the breath leave him when he sees how fucked out Taehyun already looks when they’ve barely even started anything—his hair is askew, face a mess of reds, and his breaths coming out as short pants.

Taehyun looks up at him, looks right into Soobin’s dilated eyes, heady with dirty intentions, and Taehyun sharply gasps when Soobin’s hands—they’re so big, it’s dizzying—pull him closer by the hips until they’re groin-to-groin. Soobin’s dick presses right against his thigh, and Taehyun shudders at how big it already feels when he knows Soobin isn’t full-mast yet. He’s felt, touched, and sucked Soobin’s cock enough times to know when he’s fully hard and when he’s not.

But even with that, he still feels the breath get knocked out of him at how fucking big Soobin is—how his hands are large enough to cover the entirety of his ass, how his dick feels so heavy against his thigh. He wants to melt into a puddle—it already feels like he has, anyways.

“You know,” Soobin starts, and Taehyun knows nothing good, nothing sweet will come out of that smirking mouth, so he prepares himself for the bullet, “I’ve always wanted to fuck you in a gym.”

And the bullet hits right to his fucking cock.

He curses, fists the fronts of Soobin’s shirt, stands on his tiptoes, and kisses him. It’s rough, hard, consuming, so unlike the times they’ve kissed sweetly under the dim lights of their kitchen, or the times they’ve shared soft pecks in the doorway of their bedroom, just before sleeping. All the gentleness from their mouths is easily replaced with an intent to bruise each other, to pour gasoline on the fire they’ve started in each other—Soobin’s tongue forces his way into Taehyun’s mouth, but Taehyun is unyielding, refuses to lose under a simple kiss, so he meets Soobin’s rough movements with his own. He rests his hands on the bare of Soobin’s shoulders, letting his nails break skin, and Soobin groans into the kiss, grips on his hips so fucking hard it almost feels like a punishment.

And it probably is, because Soobin is rougher now, teeth clashing against tongue, but Taehyun doesn’t hesitate to meet him in the middle, leaning up taller on his tiptoes, tangling his fingers through his hair—harshly tugs on it, swallows the rough groan that comes deep from Soobin’s throat and into the kiss.

Soobin pulls away from the kiss, all of a sudden—he looks angry, brows furrowed. Taehyun bites his lip, a nervous habit, as the guilt settles in him. Maybe he pulled too hard?

An apology is just at the tip of his tongue. “Hyung—”

Soobin doesn’t let him finish what he’s saying, pulling him into another rough kiss, and Taehyun sighs into it, into his mouth, wrapping his arms around Soobin’s neck. A yelp escapes him when Soobin, without so much of a warning, hoists him up in his arms, and Taehyun hastily wraps his legs around his waist, breaking away from the kiss to give him a piece of mind, but Soobin doesn’t even let him collect his thoughts and just slams—literally fucking slams—him against the wall.

Taehyun grunts at the impact. “Fuck, hyung,” he groans throatily when Soobin leans down to bite his neck, tilting his head, “You’re really going to fuck me here?”

“You want me to?” Soobin asks, teeth nibbing on his collarbone.

He threads his fingers through Soobin’s hair. “We don’t have lube, though,” he sighs out.

A silence, and then—                                                                                                                

“I, uhm,” Soobin stops his ministrations on his neck, his tone embarrassed, and Taehyun raises his brows at his sudden bashfulness, “brought, uh, a packet of lube with me.”

Taehyun laughs loudly, the sound echoing through the walls of the gym. “Oh, you horny dog,” Taehyun teases, enjoying the red that paints Soobin’s cheeks, “I can’t believe you brought lube with you to the gym. Wait. Is that why you agreed to go with me this time? Because you have this fantasy of fucking me he—mmpf!”

Soobin cuts him off with another kiss. Taehyun easily melts under it. It’s a lazier kiss, less bite, more tongue, but Soobin’s still as forceful, as rough, and Taehyun is just as eager. Soobin slots his leg between his thighs, and Taehyun shamelessly grinds on it, desperate for friction on his dick.

Soobin pulls away, groaning at the sight of Taehyun humping on his thigh, like a common whore. “God, look at you,” he says, letting out a breath, “You’re so desperate for hyung, aren’t you, baby?”

Taehyun can only offer a shaky nod and a high-pitched whine, head too lost in lust to come up with anything coherent. He doesn’t stop his grinding on Soobin’s toned—so toned, how the fuck—thighs, repositioning his hands to grip on Soobin’s shirt, skin starting to bead with sweat, thighs starting to ache from the absolute effort and desperation he pours into his movements, rubbing his dick against Soobin’s thigh like there’s no tomorrow—but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t give himself a few moments to soothe the soreness in his thighs, because clearly he’s not going to be doing any working out today, so he might as well burn energy through sex.

“Hyung, hyung, please,” he says, panting, and if he wasn’t so fucking desperate to have Soobin’s dick in him, then maybe he’d feel a little embarrassed at how needy he sounds like. How desperate he looks.

Soobin chuckles, and Taehyun is overwhelmed with the urge to close in on himself, the sound so demeaning in his ears that it sends a hot flush of humiliation through him. “You want my cock in you that bad, baby?” Soobin sounds amused, so infuriatingly put-together, hardly bothered at all, while Taehyun’s a shaking, pathetic mess on his thigh. He hates it, hates how hot and whiny and affected he gets for Soobin, even when he isn’t even doing anything much but putting a thigh between his legs with that stupid, annoying smirk on his face, and his dirty, dirty mouth.

“Yes,” Taehyun answers without shame, outright, and he can only imagine just how pathetic he looks—humping on Soobin’s thighs like a depraved slut, and in the gym, too, of all places, so he’s displayed for anyone to walk in on, “Yes, hyung, please just—just, oh fuck,” he curses when Soobin lifts up his shirt and leans in to suck on a nipple, and Taehyun throws his head back against the wall, cheeks flushing at the desperate sounds coming out of his own mouth, “fuck me. Please, hyung, just—”

“You’re such a needy whore for hyung, aren’t you, Taehyunie?” Soobin says, tongue licking over his other nipple, and Taehyun keens, the sound embarrassingly loud through the gym walls, “You spread your legs so easily for me, don’t you? One word from my mouth, and suddenly you’re on your knees, right? I don’t even have to say please.”

Taehyun groans, hates how true Soobin’s words ring in his ears, hates the power Soobin has over him—he would be able to make Taehyun do anything, if he wanted to. “Hyung, please—” he doesn’t know how many times that word has come out of his mouth, and frankly, he would be better off not knowing—he’s embarrassed himself enough today.

Soobin, without warning, puts him down, turns him around, and easily bends him over the side of the selves that hold the weights. He drags his shorts—his underwear, included—down to his ankles, and Taehyun whimpers at the cold morning air, the weight of their situation suddenly dawning on him—they’re in the gym, where anyone could easily decide to go in, and he’s bent over the weights, shorts down to his ankles like a teenager, while Soobin is doing god-knows-what behind him. It feels so dirty, indecent, and Taehyun hates how excited he is at the prospect of being caught—it’s not that he has an exhibitionism kink or whatsoever, because he’s fine, more comfortable, even, in doing things inside the comfort of their bedroom, but he’s not opposed to trying things outside of it. Evidently. Taehyun and Soobin don’t shy around sex—they both have things that get them going, and they certainly aren’t shy to indulge themselves in each other.

He hears the sound of ripping. “Is, is that the lube you brought?” Taehyun asks, his tone just barely on the edge of teasing, shaking his head in amusement, “I still can’t believe—”

He chokes on his words when Soobin traces a finger—slicked, he can’t help but notice—over his asshole, and he clenches, anticipation running hotly through him. “Don’t, don’t take too long,” he says, breathless, knowing Soobin will just use this as another opportunity to drag this out longer than it needs to, “You know I’m still stretched from—”

He moans when Soobin slides a finger in, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to how long they are, no matter how many times he’s been fucked by Soobin’s fingers, tightly gripping on the weights, trying to hold himself steady. “Fuck, hyung, feels so good,” he garbles out, leaning on his tiptoes to make sure he isn’t depending too much of his weight on the shelves, lest the shelves collapse under him—which, the coherent part of his mind decides for him, is an idiotic thought, considering that these shelves already hold tonnes of weight, and were built exactly for that purpose, but Taehyun still wants to be cautious. Just in case. The last thing he would want to experience is the shelves collapsing under him in the midst of being fucked.

“Ah, ah, hyung, there, please, ah, there,” he mumbles nonsensically, pushing his ass back in time with Soobin’s slow movements, his lone finger sliding in and out of his ass like they have all the time in the world—and Taehyun would enjoy this, would enjoy the gentle strokes of Soobin’s fingers, if they had the privacy that their bedroom offered them, but the slick sounds of Soobin’s finger fucking in and out of him echoing against the wide walls of the gym only continue to remind him that they don’t, and that they could be caught at any given moment, “Hyung, come on, you know—ah—you know you can do faster than that.”

Soobin curls his finger, and Taehyun lets out a sharp moan, back arching. “Can I, though?”

God, Choi Soobin is such a fucking tease—which is one of the few things people really won’t expect from him, Taehyun included, because he just has this air around him, the kind that would make you think he would make the perfect son-in-law. The kind that would make you think he would be the sort of man every mother would want for their child. The Good Boy Act, as Beomgyu likes to dub it—and even he had thought of Soobin that way, too, back when they first met, despite the whole coffee incident, which is, funnily enough, what brought them together in the first place. Right after the end of their shared class, Soobin lent him his own sweater—it was in the middle of December, by the way—and offered to wash his shirt in the laundry room back in his dorm. He refused, at first, because it wasn’t a big deal, really, and he didn’t mind waiting until the afternoon to get his shirt washed by himself, but Soobin was adamant, wouldn’t leave him alone unless he finally thought to agree, and Taehyun did, at the end. Watching Soobin brave through how many inches of snow, without even a jacket on, had charmed Taehyun to no end—concerned him, too, in questionable amounts—and had ultimately convinced him to make the decision to ask Soobin out for coffee sometime. An offer of gratitude.

So here they are now. About to fuck in a gym, while he’s bent over weights, with Soobin behind him, who won’t stop fucking teasing like the absolute menace he is. Twenty-two Kang Taehyun would have never imagined this, even in his wildest dreams—and he had wild dreams as a twenty-something, that’s all he’ll say. Ah, the butterfly effect truly can be something.

Taehyun groans, deciding to push Soobin into moving faster himself. Clearly, even his pitiful whining won’t do—Soobin is completely a different person when they have sex. He becomes more confident, less yielding. Maybe, it’s what having a big dick does to a man. Who knows.

“Hyung, if we get walked on because of how fucking slow you are, then at least, I’ll know who to blame when our friends ask us why we were caught fucking in the gym in the first place, because by then, we’ll be in court for trial, and our lawyer would be questioning their choice of career trying to defend us from accusations and witnesses of public indecency—”

Soobin, unexpectedly, shoves in two other fingers, and Taehyun curses at the sudden stretch, his little rant cut off, replaced by high sounds of moaning and whining. “Taehyun-ah,” he says, voice distant, attention entirely caught on how easily Taehyun’s hole accommodate his fingers, tight and warm and stretched, still, “You talk too much. Has anyone told you that yet?” Taehyun is about to respond, a retort on his tongue, when Soobin rams his fingers right into his prostate, and he whines, so loud, that he can hear it echoing through the gym, and he would feel shameful, maybe, if Soobin’s fingers didn’t feel so fucking good inside of him—big and rough against his walls—that he feels like he could cum from it alone, and Soobin hardly needs to strain to find his sweet spot, mapping him out like something he’s already familiarized himself with, over and over, “You’re so loud, too. Ah, Taehyun, what am I going to do with you? I can’t fuck you if you’re this loud, now, can I? You’ll wake up everyone in this complex.”

Taehyun shakes his head desperately, tears springing up in the corner of his eyes at the implication of Soobin’s words. “No, no, hyung, mh, I’ll be quiet, I’ll be quiet, I promise, hyung, I promise, please, please don’t stop, hyung,” the desperate stream of words falls from his lips without shame, and Taehyun sobs at the rough drag of Soobin’s thick fingers inside him.

“You’re so cute when you get desperate, Taehyunie,” Soobin comments, nonchalant, and Taehyun just wants to cry—why is Soobin being so terrible, “But I don’t know if you deserve to be fucked. You’ve been so inconsiderate to hyung these past few days, Taehyun-ah. You woke me up early on both my days-off, and on top of that, you made me go to the gym with you—”

He seethes at that, all the desperate ache in his body momentarily forgotten for the surge of indignation that courses through him.

“You’re the one who promised to—” Taehyun sharply protests, but the words are shoved down his throat with a simple flick of Soobin’s fingers, nearly collapsing on the shelves beneath him, “H-hyung, mnh, just—”

He whines when he feels Soobin pull his fingers out.  “Hyung—”

“Shh, I’m gonna fuck you now, baby,” Soobin says, and Taehyun lets out a shaky breath, feels his shoulders sag in relief, hole clenching in anticipation when he hears the sound of Soobin slicking his cock up—he must’ve brought more than one packet—and curls his nails into his palms when he hears Soobin groan behind him, his raspy voice going right into his dick, “Fuck, you’re so hot, Tyun.”

His breath hitches when Soobin rubs his cock against his crack, teasing. “Hyung, don’t—” the words catch in his throat when he feels the tip push through, “tease,” he finishes with a strangled breath, grip on the weights turning deathly.

Halfway in, Soobin pauses, all of a sudden, and quite frankly, Taehyun’s had enough of his teasing—he’s dragged this out long enough, for certain—and as he turns his head to look at Soobin with—what he hopes to be, at least—an intimidating glare, all proper thought melts away from his head when he meets Soobin’s gaze, dark and heavy and burning on his skin. He’s looking at Taehyun as if he wants this image of him—stupidly bent over fucking weights, shorts pooled around his ankles, large shirt—it’s Soobin’s, he just notices now—covering the whole of his torso—permanently imprinted into his mind. As if he’s trying to memorize every line and curve of Taehyun’s body. His toned thighs. Muscled arms that’s visible through the short sleeves. Veiny hands desperately gripping on one of the weights. The outline of his waist through the thin shirt.

“You’re so beautiful, Taehyun-ah,” is all he says before he slams the rest of his cock in, and Taehyun screams, a high-pitched sound that echoes through the walls, head dropping in between his arms. The stretch stings—it always does in the beginning, and they’ve fucked enough times for Taehyun to get used to it, but the initial burn always catches him off-guard for the first few seconds, always makes him think that he won’t be able to take something as big as that. One way to describe Soobin’s dick is that it’s… directly proportionate to his height. Maybe a little too much.

But Taehyun finds that he might be a little obsessed with it. A little too obsessed, maybe.

“Fuck, hyung, you’re so—hngh—so big,” Taehyun cries out, clenching around Soobin’s wide girth.

Soobin groans at the tight heat around his cock, struggling to stay still. “Taehyun,” he growls out, a warning, “Don’t. Don’t do that. I’m trying to let you—shit—adjust.”

“I don’t need it,” Taehyun says, sharp, briefly turning his head back to glare at Soobin—who, he finds, is staring intently at his ass, openly transfixed at how his hole accommodates to his cock, spread obscenely wide around it—and he looks away, cheeks burning, moving his hips sensually to egg Soobin on into just fucking him, “Come on, hyung, you made me wait long—ah—long enough. Just—just fuck me. Fuck me until the only thing I know is your cock. Make, fuck—make me pass out, hyung. Please.”

Soobin curses, puts his hands on Taehyun’s hips, forcibly keeping him still. “God, Taehyunie, your mouth,” he groans out, fingers roughly kneading the smooth skin of his ass, “Drives me so fucking insane, you don’t even know.”

Taehyun does know, is the thing, because Soobin drives him just as crazy, and the longer Soobin stays still inside of him, the more Taehyun feels his sanity slip away from his reaches—they’re in a gym, if he hasn’t emphasized it enough, and he’s uncomfortably bent over fucking weights, and Soobin still won’t move his stupidly big cock inside of him. Sometimes, Taehyun feels like he underestimates just how much of a tease Soobin could be. He finds pleasure in seeing Taehyun in torment—that has to be the only reason, for sure.

“Then drive your cock into me, hyung, before I find someone else to do it for you,” he grunts out—it’s foul play on his part, he admits, because even if it isn’t outwardly shown, Soobin has always been the jealous type, as subtle as he is about it. Taehyun remembers the time he wore a sweater that one of his friends lent to him—because most of his clothes were still drying, at that time, and they weren’t at the stage of their relationship where they could easily just wear one of the other’s clothing yet—and Soobin had sulked the whole time. It was cute, the way he kept glaring at the sweater, as if it was his personal enemy—Taehyun had found him unbearably endearing that night. He immediately took off the sweater and wore one of Soobin’s, once the pieces clicked in his mind.

But his jealousy wasn’t always cute. Sometimes, if Soobin didn’t like how close he was being with one of his friends—he’s a social butterfly, what else can he say—then he’ll pull Taehyun away and fuck him until the only thing he can manage out is his desperate calls of Soobin’s name. It’s all consensual, of course—something they’ve already properly discussed about before—and all their boundaries are clearly set, communicated without room for misunderstandings. No blurred lines or unspoken tells in between. And anyways, Taehyun enjoys it, Soobin’s jealousy, to an unhealthy amount, is what he’ll admit. It makes him feel wanted. Like he belonged to Soobin, in every sense of the word. And he likes that—likes the feeling of being owned.

It doesn’t make him feel like an object. Contrary to that, it makes Taehyun feel more human. How else could he be so special, so loved in Soobin’s eyes that his skin crawls at the thought of Taehyun with someone else other than him?

Taehyun can’t help but like it—can’t help but purposely pull shit just to draw out Soobin’s jealousy. Stand a little too close with an acquaintance, flutter his lashes flirtatiously at a close friend.

Threaten that he’ll find someone else to fuck. It always gets him a reaction out of Soobin—a reaction that promises great sex. Sex with Soobin is already good, to begin with, but when he’s jealous? When he wants to remind Taehyun—and whoever else—just who he belongs to?

Fucking god.

Soobin’s grip on his hips tighten, almost to a hurtful degree, and Taehyun whimpers pitifully when the rest of Soobin’s length slide out of him, leaving only the tip in. He swallows in anticipation, knuckles whitening at how hard he’s gripping the weights in front of him.

“No one can fuck you better than I do, Taehyun-ah, and I know you know that,” Soobin palms the sides of his hips, “Sure, you can easily go out and find someone to fuck you, because who wouldn’t want to fuck your slutty ass, right?” Taehyun closes his eyes in humiliation, whining, tries to rock his ass back, tries to force his cock back inside his hole, but Soobin’s hands on him have a steel grip, unyielding, “But the whole time they’re fucking you, you’ll be wishing it was me. You’ll be imagining it was me. My cock, my hands. My voice. No one can replace me, and you know that better than anyone, don’t you, baby?”

“Yes, hyung,” Taehyun sobs out—it’s all he can manage, really. The humiliation is fogging his head.

“That’s my good boy,” Soobin praises, then carelessly shoves the rest of his cock in—then out again, and in, and out. He sets a steady, brutal pace from the beginning, ramming his cock into his prostate without breaking sweat, and Taehyun shakes from the overwhelming onslaught of pleasure that overtakes his body, can’t help the pathetic sounds that Soobin forces out of his throat with every deep thrust. He grips on the weights like his life depended on it.

“Fuck, hyung, oh shit, you’re so, so big, ngh,” every thrust leaves him a sobbing mess, “Hyung, ah, fuck, there, there, hyung, please, oh god—”

Soobin chuckles, but it’s strained. “That good, baby?”

“Yes,” Taehyun cries out, little uh-uh-uh sounds punched out of him with every drag of Soobin’s thick cock against his walls, feeling as pathetic as he sounds, “Hyung, harder, harder, please, hyung, fuck—”

Taehyun is loud during sex. He blabbers, talks nonsensically, cries and whines for more like he can’t get enough. Soobin enjoys this side of Taehyun, enjoys how unrestricted he is with himself when a cock’s—when his cock’s—fucking his desperate hole, but the pretty little sounds that come out of his mouth don’t do too well in a room too big, too empty, like this gym. He can hear the sounds echo through the walls, so clear that you can’t mistaken it for anything else, and he buzzes with pride—they must be waking other people up, and they won’t even bother to check the gym because, from Taehyun’s pretty moans alone, it’s obvious enough what they’re doing. It encourages Soobin to even go harder—hard enough that he can feel the shelves—shelves that hold weights—creaking against the gym floor, in timed with his own thrusts.

Taehyun only cries, lets out one pathetic sound after the other, tears falling from his eyes at the harshness of Soobin’s thrusts, mercilessly hitting his prostate, but grows concerned when the shelves drag along with his body, a nervousness seeping into him when he thinks of the possibilities of the weights toppling over—which, he decides, while his mind is being fucked out of him, is not worth the trouble it’ll cost them after. “Mn, hyung,” he forces out, voice shaky, “The, the shelves. They’re—fuck, right there, hyung, right there—they’re moving. Hyung. Don’t—hng—don’t go too ha—”

The last part of his sentence fade into a drawn-out moan, an obscene sound that embarrasses him to the bone, when Soobin thrusts in roughly, nailing his sweet spot so good it leaves Taehyun dizzy. “Thought this was what you wanted, Taehyun-ah,” Soobin says, breathing labored, “You kept begging for it like a desperate whore a while ago. Don’t you remember?”

Taehyun whines, the point flying over Soobin’s head completely. “Hyung, that’s—mm—that’s not what I meant,” he doesn’t know how he’s still speaking coherent sentences, at this point, because it feels like Soobin is trying fuck his brains out until he’s left as a thoughtless mess who’s got nothing in his head but cock, “The shelves, hyung—they’ll—fuck!”

Taehyun cuts himself off with a loud moan at Soobin’s particularly sharp thrust, back arching into an obscene bow, the pressure overwhelmingly building in his stomach, finds himself closer to his orgasm, reaching out his hand to touch his cock—he syncs his strokes with Soobin’s own, and just as he reaches the brink of orgasm, that’s when Soobin decides to—

—pull out, meanly staving him off his orgasm.

“Hyung—” Taehyun starts angrily, turning back to glare at Soobin scathingly, “I was so fucking close, you absolute—”

Soobin disregards the words coming out of his mouth like bullets, pulls him up from his position, instead, turning his whole body around by the hips, and Taehyun feels winded at how effortless Soobin handles him into any position he wants, as if he was dragging nothing but a sand of bag—and mind you, Taehyun is everything but that. All his anger, temporarily, dissolves into genuine wonder—and a bit of dirty thoughts, but it’s mostly really just curiosity. Maybe, Soobin works out without his knowledge? It does explain how he has the strength to lift him up—which has happened several times, already. Will probably happen a lot more in the near future. It’s funny just how quick the tables turn, because Taehyun still remembers the good old days where he used to do the lifting between them. It turns out being lifted without warning whatsoever isn’t the nicest experience, either, so Taehyun supposes this is the universe’s—Soobin’s? —way of making him repent.

Soobin wraps his hands around his thighs, and before Taehyun knows it, he’s lifted off the ground again. “You don’t need to worry about the weights toppling over,” is all he says before he gets slammed into the wall—the second time today, he realizes—and he hurriedly kicks his shorts off his ankles to freely wrap his legs around Soobin’s waist when Soobin presses the tip of his cock in against his hole. His legs shake in anticipation.

Soobin pushes in, and Taehyun keens—this angle makes his cock reach deeper. He continues his pace from before—thrusting in and out, and in and out, without mercy for Taehyun, who can only respond to his brutal pace with helpless cries—and Taehyun’s head thumps against the wall, watches with mesmerized eyes the way Soobin steadily thrusts into him while holding him up, his efforts clearly shown through the sheen of sweat that sticks to his skin, through the low grunts that fall from his lips. Taehyun’s stomach flutters at how heated Soobin’s gaze searches through him, makes his skin feel like on it’s fire, his cock—hanging uselessly between their stomach—pulses in need.

“Ah, ah, ah, hyung, please, I’m close,” Taehyun cries out, breath stumbling at Soobin’s punishing pace, wrapping his legs tighter around his waist, pulls him impossibly closer to him, eyes rolling back when Soobin slowly drags his cock out of his hole and forces it back in with a loud slap! that echoes through the empty gym, “Hyung, hyung, please, please let me cum, please.”

“Am I saying you can’t?” Soobin says, lips against his skin, and Taehyun wants to melt at how raspy his voice sounds, at how his lips wetly trace the shape of his words against his neck, “Go touch yourself, Taehyunie. Give your hyung a little show.”

Taehyun’s hand trails to his cock, biting into his lip as he slowly rubs it with his fingers, mouth falling open in a wordless stream of moans. The steady pressure on his prostate, the maddening slide of Soobin’s thick cock, combined with the gentle strokes on his cock, are embarrassingly enough to send him over the edge—which you can’t judge him too hard for. He’s been teased the whole morning. He cums with a sob, squeezing his eyes close when he reaches his high, body shaking with the numbing rush of an orgasm, cum staining both their shirts. He lets out a shaky breath, clinging onto Soobin, nails digging into the skin of his shoulders, mindless little noises tumbling out of his mouth from overstimulation.

“Good boy, Taehyunie, you’re such a good boy for hyung,” Soobin mutters distractedly, continuing to pound into him until he reaches his own orgasm, drinking in the pretty squeaks and overstimulated whines that come from Taehyun, letting out a mumbled plethora of curses when he cums—he throws his head back when he does, making the veins in his neck prominent, and his mouth waters at the sight. Taehyun tightens his hold on Soobin’s shoulders, whimpering at the filthy slide of his cum flowing inside him.

They give each other a few moments of silence to compose themselves, heads clouded from the post-orgasm haze. Taehyun is still reeling, mind still a mess of thoughts of nothing but the slow drag of Soobin’s cock in him—he still hasn’t pulled out, he notices distantly, and Taehyun clenches, simply out of instinct, but Soobin hisses in overstimulation, hurriedly pulls his cock out—he tucks it back in his boxers, pulling his shorts up. Taehyun whines at the sudden emptiness, hole clenching on nothing, heat rushing to his cheeks when he feels the sticky cum drip out of his hole. The weight of Soobin’s shameless gaze—head drooping low, eyes fixated on his hole—makes Taehyun want to squirm and close in on himself, but he has his legs helplessly wrapped around Soobin’s waist, and Soobin has a steel grip on his thighs.

Soobin, suddenly, sinks to his knees, and throws his legs over his shoulders. Taehyun yelps in shock, hands fisting his hair.

“Hyung, what are you—oh fuck,” Taehyun cries out, when Soobin’s tongue grazes over his hole, unabashedly lapping his cum up, “Hyung, that’s—fuck, hyung—”

His body is trembling from the overwhelming pleasure, eyes squeezing close, shaky moans forced out of his throat. “Hyung,” he moans out, and he’s downright sobbing when Soobin wraps a hand around his cock, “Hyung, too much, too much, hyung—”

His back arches against the wall, cock spurting a weak of string of cum into Soobin’s hands, completely spent for the day. “Fuck, hyung,” he breathes out, exhausted to the marrow of his bones, “I can’t. Shit. I can’t feel my legs.”

Soobin chortles, his hands gently caressing his thighs—a wordless apology. “Sorry, baby,” he says, voice apologetic, standing up from his knees to resume their position from a while ago—with Taehyun’s legs dangling around his waist, but it’s Soobin who’s mostly carrying his weight, “Did hyung go too hard on you?”

Taehyun sniffles when Soobin’s wipes away the streaks of dried tears from his cheeks, shaking his head. “No,” he says, voice rough from all his crying. “It’s. You were good. Too good.”

Soobin smiles at Taehyun’s lack of articulacy—it only proves just how fucked out he’s rendered him, and he can’t help but feel smug at the sight of Taehyun, skin littered with red bruises in the shape of his teeth and hands, dried tears staining his cheeks, and his chest heaving, desperately trying to catch his breath, because it’s only him who gets to see this Taehyun, only him who gets to watch Taehyun fall apart under his hands. “Tyun, baby, get off,” he grunts out, arms starting to strain with the effort of carrying Taehyun upright—it’s not an easy task, certainly, and especially for the lack of muscles in his arms, “We still have to clean ourselves up. Don’t you want a warm bath, baby?”

Taehyun whines, wraps his legs tighter around his waist. “Hyungie,” he says, and Soobin gulps, dread dropping into his stomach like a heavy stone, “Everything feels sore,” he complains, pouting, big teary eyes looking up at him pleadingly, and Soobin wants to cower in defeat already—how is he supposed to say no to eyes like those, “Won’t you carry me there, Soobinie hyung?”

Soobin swallows—he knows Taehyun doesn’t even need to know his answer, not when they both already know the words sitting on the tip of his tongue. “Piggyback?” he offers, a smile on his face. The ache in his arms is getting harder to ignore by the second—maybe he really does need to start working out soon.

Taehyun’s face brightens, nodding eagerly at Soobin’s proposition, unwrapping his legs from Soobin’s waist to set himself down. He leans his weight against the wall, legs shaking the moment he stands up on his own feet, and he hastily holds on to Soobin’s arms to steady himself, looking down and being made painfully aware of his lower parts’ state of undress, heat rushing to his cheeks—really, he doesn’t know why he’s getting embarrassed over something as small as this, when he’s literally been fucked over fucking weights, in the middle of a gym. There isn’t much room left for shame—or bashfulness—at this point.

“Hyung, can you hand me my shorts?” he asks, pointing at the spot where they’ve been so carelessly discarded, gesturing to the state of his legs when Soobin only raises an inquisitive brow—Soobin’s mouth forms an o, nods in understanding, and he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t tease when he leans down to reach for his shorts, but Taehyun doesn’t miss the amused glint that flashes in his eyes, eyes squinting into a glare. Choi Soobin is not allowed to make fun of him, at all, when it’s his and his stupidly big dick’s fault that Taehyun is stuck in this limp-legged state—after they have sex, it’s to be expected—it’s collateral damage, at this point—that Taehyun will be stuck limping, and will be refraining from sitting down on a chair without cushions, for, at least, a few days. Taehyun can tolerate it without too much fuss—because while it is a lingering ache, it’s never been to the point for it to be considered painful, exactly—but Soobin never misses his chance to poke fun at him, always teasing and jabbing, and Taehyun can’t stand the pride—it’s so thick you could choke on it, he swears—that radiates off him whenever someone asks Taehyun if he injured himself. It’s unbearable. Choi Soobin is unbearable.

Soobin hands him his shorts and underwear, and Taehyun takes it reluctantly, eyes twitching at the infuriating grin tugging on the corners of Soobin’s lips, who casts his face downwards to make it seem less obvious—how amused he is at the situation. Taehyun realizes his predicament, then—his other hand is still holding onto Soobin’s arm like a lifeline, while another hand is holding his underwear and shorts. His legs are… well, they feel numb—most likely probably are, too—and if he let go of Soobin’s arm to pull on his shorts, then the chances that he would topple over himself is, while unlikely, still possible.

And Taehyun can’t take his chances. His pride is on the line.

“Hyung,” he forces out his mouth, visibly hesitating with his words, reverting his gaze elsewhere—to the small windows in the other corner of the gym. It’s already bright outside. He clears his throat.

“Yes?”

Taehyun breathes in, slow. “Don’t laugh,” he says, stern, meeting Soobin’s gaze with a glare.

Soobin puts his hands up, a deceitful act of innocence. “I didn’t even—”

Taehyun simply, and without too much thought, moving by instinct alone, shoves his underwear into Soobin’s mouth. “Help me put on my shorts. My legs feel like cotton balls because of your dick,” he says, tone demanding, leaving no room for questions, “Don’t laugh at me. I will not hesitate to kick you,” he says, a warning, handing Soobin his shorts, then blinks for a few moments, “hyung.”

Soobin, sometimes, cannot believe his own boyfriend. They’ve been together for five years—and they will be, for the years to come—but sometimes, in moments just like these, where he has Taehyun’s underwear shoved into his fucking mouth without warning, with Taehyun aggressively pushing him down to the ground to help him put on his shorts, instead of just asking him respectfully like a normal person would, he questions himself. His life. The decisions he’s made that led him to where he is, right now—kneeling on the floor, pulling up Taehyun’s shorts from his ankles, with his underwear in his mouth, trails of saliva dripping from the corners of his lips. He glares at Taehyun—who only smiles down with amusement at him—and he’s already concocting a plan for revenge for this. If Taehyun wants to shove his underwear into Soobin’s mouth, then the preferable choice of underwear that Soobin would be eager to put into his own mouth—

He stands up, putting the underwear in the pocket of his shorts, and wiping the line of saliva from his chin. Wordlessly, he turns around, squatting, gesturing for Taehyun to climb on his back.

Taehyun furrows his brows, suspicious, but he reluctantly climbs on Soobin’s back, slow in his movements.

Soobin stands up without warning, and Taehyun yelps in shock, hurriedly wraps his arms and legs around Soobin, as tight as they could.

“Hyung!” Taehyun complains, slapping Soobin on the shoulder, “Warn me when you’re coming up next time! I could’ve fell off!”

Soobin is silent in his response, not even a wordless chuckle or snicker, and Taehyun immediately quiets down, swallows nervously, chewing on his lips in thought. Did he make Soobin angry? Taehyun admits that he could… go a little too far with his own teasing, sometimes, but Soobin would tell, immediately, if he ever did cross any lines—they aren’t reluctant to use their words, and they don’t let a problem fester in silence. Taehyun knows how to listen—they both do—so if he’s done something wrong, or something to piss Soobin off, then he would have been outright with it, rather than letting Taehyun drown in the suffocating silence. None of them like giving each other the silent treatment, when they find themselves tangled at crossroads, unable to find common ground—they prefer to talk it out, like the adults that they are, and to undo the knots, one by one. Taehyun’s skin crawls the longer Soobin lets the silence sits, and he opens his mouth, tries to ask him if he’s done anything that—

“Taehyun,” Soobin says, and his nails dig into his own palms at Soobin’s unusually cold utterance of his name—no affectionate tones, no sweet nicknames, not even a casual Taehyun-ah, none whatsoever, “Next time you’re going to shove your underwear into my mouth—”

Ah.

Taehyun feels something sink inside him. He knew he shouldn’t have done that—

“—I’d prefer if it were panties,” Soobin finishes, cheerfully, and Taehyun’s mouth drops open, the words—and the dizzying 180 in Soobin’s tone—completely catching him off guard, “Less of a mouthful that way, you know? I don’t really have preferences on the color, but maybe pink? Pink always looks good on you. Matches well with your skin tone. For the pattern, well, it doesn’t have to be anything specific—it doesn’t even need to have a pattern, even plain will do, I’m not choosy when it comes to these things, you know that—but if there had to be, I mean, I think strawberry-themed panties would look good on you. I wouldn’t mind having them shoved into my mouth either, and—”

Taehyun breathes slowly through his nose. “Hyung,” he cuts off sharply, cheeks so fucking red that he’s sure Soobin can feel the heat and embarrassment radiating off him, “please, for the love of everything good in this world, and especially my sanity, stop talking. Please.”

Soobin giggles, like the absolute menace he is in Taehyun’s life, and completely ignores his requests. “Aw, don’t be so embarrassed, Taehyunie,” Soobin says, teasing, “I was just saying my preferences, is all. I mean, I didn’t mind you putting your underwear in my mouth, not at all—it’s just boxers, especially if they’re made from thick fabric, can feel very stuffy inside your mouth. And you know I don’t have a very big mouth, so you could just imagine how uncomfortable the whole experience was for me. I’d feel more comfortable if you stuffed panties inside my mouth, instead—they’re thinner, definitely, and would fit better in my mouth. Lingerie, actually, would even be—”

A man can only take so much.

“I’m going to kick you in the balls after this,” Taehyun promises, tries to make himself sound threatening, but he knows all his efforts are futile—he knows that Soobin’s enjoying this too much to even start to feel threatened by Taehyun’s words, judging by the amused snickers that come out of his mouth.

“Ooh, my angry little kitten, so scary,” Taehyun’s going to kill him, “don’t kick too hard, okay?”

He tightens his arms around Soobin’s neck—a little too tight. 

Soobin chokes, rapidly tapping on Taehyun’s thigh, and Taehyun only lets go when Soobin starts wheezing. “Don’t ever say those words again, hyung,” he says, a little too nonchalantly after literally almost choking Soobin to death, “You’re just completely embarrassing yourself that way. Do you understand, my giant, idiot hyung?”

“I swear, Taehyun, do you really want me to die?” Soobin asks, exasperated, and Taehyun only shrugs, humming, “That’s my fifth near-death experience this week. By your hands. You’re a walking hazard. What did I even do to you?” he cries out, and Taehyun only rolls his eyes at his hyung’s dramatics, “I do the laundry, wash the dishes, feed our children, and keep the roof over our heads. I have a big dick, too, if you couldn’t remember,” Taehyun scoffs, so loudly, “I’m literally the best boyfriend ever, Taehyun-ah, why would you try to kill off the world’s greatest treasure—”

“First of all, hyung, this isn’t your fifth near-death experience caused by me,” he says, offended that Soobin doesn’t remember the exact details, “It’s the sixth. Remember the rooftop incident last Monday?”

Silence, and then an astounded, “Oh, yeah.”

Taehyun continues on. “Second of all, you’ve done many things to me, hyung, so don’t ask that question unless you want to receive a ten-page Word document by the end of the day,” he says, nodding, “And third of all, the size of your dick isn’t relevant in your argument—”

“Oh, now you’re just straight out lying, Kang Taehyun!” Soobin retorts, stopping in his steps, “Sex is a major factor in maintaining successful relationships—”

“Relationships aren’t something measured by success, whatever the hell you mean by that—”

“If you had a boyfriend who was everything that you wished for, then what if his dick was too small? What if the sex was unsatisfactory? Would you still stay? Would you still enjoy yourself in the relationship? And don’t argue saying that sex isn’t that important in relationships because you, of all people, know they are! Would we be where we are if we didn’t have life-changing, mind-blowing sex—”

“Oh, now that’s just outrageous, hyung. First, if I had a boyfriend, who had everything I wished for in life, then the size of his dick would be on the bottom of my worries. And if that boyfriend really had everything I wished for, then unsatisfactory sex would be the least of my concerns. And I’m not trying to say sex doesn’t matter in the development of relationships, because it does, clearly—I’m just trying to say that they shouldn’t be considered as the deciding factor in relationships. The end-all and be-all.”

“But they are. Majority of people in relationships are in relationships just to have an excuse to have sex as much as they want.”

“You’re just generalizing, hyung. Humans are more sentimental than that. You should know that better than anyone else—you’re literally the prime example—”

“I’m not saying that the only thing people in relationships are seeking for is sex—if it was, then relationships would be far simpler to deal with. I’m just saying that—”

“What are you trying to say, then? That our relationship is solely based off on how good we fuck each other?”

“Taehyun—”

Someone else clears their throat, and their generous share of words are easily disrupted. They freeze, guiltily looking up at the source of the voice, as if they were caught in the middle of committing a crime.

It’s an old woman with her grandson, a little boy holding her hand, and they both simply blink—he squirms, suddenly feeling awkward on Soobin’s back. “Are you two okay?” she asks, voice weary and frail, “You’ve been arguing for a very long time now. Lovers’ quarrel?”

“Uhm, it’s not that, ahjumma,” Soobin answers awkwardly, offering a strained smile to the grandmother and her grandson, “We were just. Uhm. We were just having a little discussion.”

“Oh, okay,” she answers, nodding, “Well, I hope you two settle your ‘discussion’ soon enough. My grandson and I are here to run on the treadmills,” she excitedly points to the treadmills, “We were supposed to come earlier, but my Jooseong here forgot to set up the alarms. My daughter woke us up, thankfully.”

The air suddenly turns very, very awkward. There’s a lump in his throat, and his palms start to get slick with sweat.

“Oh,” is all he can manage out, throat dry, at lost for words.

The grandma nods, smiling kindly at them—painfully so. “Yes, well, you boys better be off, then. I can only imagine how tired you must feel,” she says, referring to Soobin, “I can hardly even manage to carry my little grandson on my back nowadays, you know?”

Taehyun and Soobin are still stunned speechless, merely nodding dumbly to her words. Soobin nods, walks faster in his pace, and they both try to bow, as awkward as it may seem in their position.

“Have a good day!” the grandma says. The little boy waves back at them.

They both echo the greeting, but immediately duck their heads—with Soobin sprinting out of the gym, shoes awkwardly creaking against the gym floor.

Taehyun feels like collapsing the moment they’re out of the gym, the doors slamming close.

They’re both panting, breaths shallow.

“Hyung,” Taehyun says, after stretched moments of silence.

Soobin hums, still dazed, but understands perfectly what Taehyun is trying to convey. “Yeah.”

They’re silent the whole way to their apartment, deep in thought, contemplating their entire existence, most likely.

“Hyung,” Taehyun starts, again, and decides to scrap out their encounter with the grandma and her kid from his mind—might as well save himself the headache, “Are you going to finish up anything today?”

Soobin shakes his head. “Nope,” he says, tone disgusted at the mere thought of dedicating an off-day to work, of all things, “I already sacrificed a weekend to do that yesterday. And no way I’m going to sacrifice another just for another round of it. I’m not married to my work.”

Taehyun hums, nuzzles Soobin’s head. “Let’s finish All of Us Are Dead, then?” Taehyun offers.

Soobin smiles, humming. “Okay, Taehyunie, let’s,” he says, and Taehyun feels relieved at the familiar sight of their apartment number, just a few footsteps away—apartment no. 1014, “Let’s take a bath first, though. I feel filthy.”

Taehyun snorts, rolling his eyes. “Imagine how I feel,” he retorts, “Just hurry up, hyung. I want to cuddle on the couch already.”

“With me?”

“With Hobak,” Taehyun answers without hesitation, then laughs at Soobin’s dejected whine, “Well, okay, you and Hobak, then.”

Soobin pouts. “What about Odi? And Sean?”

He rolls his eyes, fond. “They can all join in, too, hyung. There’s more than enough space. Don’t you worry your pretty little head over it.”

They reach their door, and Soobin carefully puts him down. Taehyun grunts, clinging onto Soobin’s arm, his legs still shaky. He watches Soobin pull out their keys, twisting the door open, and Taehyun steps in, letting out a relieved breath at the familiar smell of their apartment—of cherries and fresh laundry. He smiles when Sean comes up trailing to them, excitedly running around them in circles. Taehyun smiles fondly, briefly reaching down to pet him.

“Go take a shower first, Taehyunie,” Soobin says, locking the door, smiling down at Sean, leans down to ruffle his fur, “I’ll go prepare our snacks.”

Taehyun nods, but he still offers a retort. “How much preparing do chips even need?” he says, walking over to their bathroom.

“Oh, haha, Kang Taehyun,” Soobin says, “Just go take a bath. I know that’s just one of your ways trying to rope me into taking a bath with you—which you know never goes as intended. You know how much I hate shower sex!”

And it’s reasonable, in truth—Taehyun isn’t too fond of shower sex, either, but it’s hard to keep their hands off each other, no matter where they may be, as is proven, and it poses too much risk to be even worth trying. The floor is too slippery, dangerously so, and they’re supposed to get themselves clean, instead of the other way around—and shower sex clearly encourages just that.

Showers are supposed to be their alone time with themselves, anyways. A little space from each other does them more than good—lets themselves think for a while, in the tranquil silence that the shower steam offers.  

“Don’t take too long!”

He takes off his shirt, throwing it to the laundry basket. “You know I never do!”

“That’s what you say all the time!”

Taehyun snorts. Well, Soobin is right—he takes unnecessarily long baths, but they’re all called-for. He deserves every minute he spends soaking himself in cherry-scented oils and bubble baths. But he’s quick, this time, aching for the warmth between Soobin’s arms—he wants his cuddles, and frankly, he doesn’t want to make himself wait longer than necessary. It’s a quick shower, a simple wash, and he finishes in no time—quickly, he dries himself off and dresses himself in the pair of pajamas that, he sees, is already laid out and prepared in their bed. His favorite pair of pajamas—the bunny-themed ones, a cute shade of blue. He gifted it to Soobin originally, a few years back—when they were just a few months into their relationship, actually—but Soobin eventually outgrew them, and it’s his now, completely.

His heart warms. Soobin has always been thoughtful.

He walks out of their bedroom and to their living room, chuckling when he sees Soobin already on the couch, huddled up with Hobak on his arm, Sean by his legs, and Odi on his stomach. His hair is wet from shower, and Taehyun raises a brow at that—they have two bathrooms, technically, but Soobin hates using the other one. Taehyun does, too. It’s cramped, oddly smelly (they hardly use it, so the smell isn’t coming from them, evidently), and the warm water doesn’t run in the shower there, weirdly enough. Taehyun wonders what exactly pushed Soobin enough to make him resort to using the Lesser Bathroom (they named it, just to tell the two bathrooms apart). Did he take too long? Did the sweat make him feel too gross to wait it out?

“Hyung,” Taehyun says, pouting when he walks to him, gesturing at the occupied couch, “How am I supposed to fit in there?”

“Oh, hi, baby,” Soobin says, sheepish, tries to make space for him by gently sitting up, repositioning Odi on his lap, then shrugs when he looks up at him, and Taehyun’s chest is bursting into little pieces—he wants to tuck each of them in the folds of his palms, then bare them to Soobin, and let him do what he wants with them, because he doesn’t know how else to show the love inside of him, the love that’s made a home of his soul, “They got excited.”

“I could tell,” Taehyun says, and he sits down on the couch, a smile adorning his lips when Odi shuffles to move to his lap, “Hey, little guy,” he whispers, carefully pets his little nose with a finger. Odi doesn’t bite, to both their surprise, but instead nuzzles up to it. Taehyun’s eyes widen, turning to Soobin excitedly.

Soobin reads his thoughts exactly, dramatically putting his hand on his mouth. “Oh my god,” he says, eyes comically wide, “He actually let you pet him.”

“This is three years of living together, hyung,” Taehyun says seriously, smile widening when he feels Odi’s nose rub against the pad of his finger, voice rising to a squeal in excitement, “Oh my god, hyung, can you believe it?”

Soobin doesn’t respond, eagerly grabs his phone from the arm of the couch and opens the camera app, then takes a video. “We are live today to document a monumental moment, life-changing event on Choi Soobin and Kang Taehyun’s lives!” he talks like a news reporter, and Taehyun laughs, gestures with his unoccupied hand for Soobin to record a little closer to Odi—not too close, though, knowing he isn’t comfortable with a camera shoved up to his face, and at times, if really provoked, could even let his spikes out, “Their pet hedgehog, Choi Odi, has officially let Kang Taehyun pet him! To the surprise of both parents—” Taehyun raises a brow at this, then giggles, “—Odi did not—and let me emphasise this: did not—bite him, which is what he usually does whenever Kang Taehyun tries to pet him, or touch him in any way! Obviously, Kang Taehyun has never minded this—and even happily tolerated it for an extended span of time, several years, at most—” he rolls his eyes—this hyung is so dramatic, “—but he still rejoices! We all do! This development has taken three years of living together, so if any of you watching this has a difficult tactile relationship with your pet hedgehog too, then you don’t worry too much! They’ll warm up to you in good time!”

Soobin stops his recording, then, and his laughter quiets down. Taehyun rubs Odi’s head one last time, then stares up at Soobin, tries to pour all his love into his eyes, hopes that Soobin can see the glint in shining wildly in his eyes.

Soobin lets out an exhale, leans closer to kiss him—softly, this time. The barest of touches. His heart flutters, a gentle thing.

“I love you,” Soobin whispers against his lips, and it feels like devotion, something bigger than them, “so much, Taehyun.”

“I love you, too, hyung,” he says, pieces of his heart interwoven with the syllables that slowly, quietly leave his lips, “Let’s finish All of Us Are Dead, come on.”

Soobin nods, laying his head down his lap when Odi crawls up to Taehyun’s shoulders—Hobak and Sean, as if sensing Soobin and Taehyun’s inattention on them, huddles with them. Sean, by his legs, and Hobak, between his arms. Taehyun smiles at the sight—he’s glad they decided to buy a big couch. He remembers, when they were still fresh off moving in together, buying furniture in Hanssem, and had to spend hours there trying to decide on which couch—of all things, really—to buy. The memory is still clear in his head: he wanted to buy a smaller couch (No one else besides them is going to use it which, in his head, at that time, seemed to be a reasonable enough argument), while Soobin insisted on the bigger one (They have pets, and friends who can’t afford to stay in their own apartments for more than two business days). Taehyun, eventually, relents, because when Soobin argues, he argues—he does, too, obviously, because they’ve always fought with fire, the both of them, but in this one, he agreed to back down, lest it spiraled to a full-blown fight, and in the middle of a furniture store too, of all places. He remembers giving Soobin the cold shoulder right after, but it was nothing a proper talk—and a lot of cuddles on said couch—couldn’t fix. Here they are now, after all.

“Yeah, let’s,” Soobin says, reaching for the TV remote with his long arms, switching on the television and playing the show promptly.

The show plays on, and Taehyun pays enough attention to it, certainly, but he can’t help but let his gaze linger to where he is: Odi laying on his shoulders, Soobin resting his head on his lap. Sean peacefully resting by their legs. Hobak in Soobin’s arms, near his chest. The TV playing distantly in his ears, like white noise. Snacks—all his favorites—on the console table. He replays it in his head, then finds that there’s no need to—it’s right here, right in front of him. They’re real. All of this is.

He threads his fingers through Soobin’s soft hair, stroking his head. Soobin hums, leaning closer, and Taehyun lets out a breath.

“Hyung,” he whispers, barely audible through the noise of the TV speakers, but Soobin hears him, anyways.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” he says. He loves saying that to Soobin—loves the weight of the words on his tongue. The two words that paved this road for them to walk on. Thank you, for the time Soobin washed his shirt, with stains of spilled coffee, in his old apartment’s communal laundry room. Thank you, for the time Soobin comforted him with his favorite Baskin Robbins ice cream and a quiet drive around the city, when he found Taehyun crying outside his apartment, just after finding out he failed in one of his classes—he was too embarrassed to admit it to anyone else, and Soobin was the only stranger he knew well enough to know he wouldn’t make fun of him for it, or ask too many questions he couldn’t bear answering. Thank you, for the time Soobin held him in his arms when he couldn’t find anyone else to turn to, the night he and Kai had a fight that blew out of proportion. Thank you, for the time Soobin listened, so attentively, when Taehyun told him about his past, about his parents and the crowds, and reminded him, fiercely, that he was more than that, more than them.

Thank you, for all the times he’s been—and will be—there.

Soobin kisses his thigh. “For what, baby?”

“This.”

Soobin smiles—and he feels it against his skin, the shape of his lips. “You’ll have this for as long as you like, Taehyun-ah.”

“A really long time, then.”

Soobin laughs, a warm sound. Everything is warm, careful. The softer part of their existence.

He wants to be like this forever—they won’t, obviously, because the world outside will come knocking on their door soon, but he drowns in the quiet buzz of their home for a little longer. Forever is in the moment, after all—in the person. In himself. This will live in him.

And this is his alone. All of this.

Notes:

thank you for taking the time to read! :)