Chapter Text
BEFORE
He doesn’t let up, Kai damn-near begging Taehyun to share a drink with him. It was a bottle of wine he snuck out of his mom’s cabinet. Kept saying, “When are we ever getting a chance like this again?”
‘Cause, it’s true, Taehyun was a bit of a goody-goody and neither of them ever get invited to parties. Kai, because he’s mixed and kids in their high school poked fun at him for it. Taehyun, because he moved to Kansas from Korea three years ago and no one, but Kai, understood his accent.
Taehyun took three swigs, Kai took four. They both laughed it off, the wine was bitter and bit at their mouths in a way neither really found pleasant. Taehyun intended to match Kai and take another drink, but a splash spilled out the bottle and onto Taehyun’s shirt.
“S’what I get for listening to you,” Chastised Taehyun. He looked at his shirt and cursed. “Do you think my parents will notice the smell?”
Kai doesn’t offer a good response. From his spot on the floor, he shrugs. “Borrow something off me to wear home.”
“Mama might bug me about it, though, ask where my shirt is.”
Kai tilted back, leaning his head on the edge of the bed, peering up to Taehyun. His thigh barely touches Kai’s hair. He has to swallow hard.
The fluttering in his stomach when Kai gets too close to him is damn embarrassing.
“You’re a terrible influence on me,” says Taehyun, light-hearted. “Almost always getting into trouble with Kai Kamal,” he says.
Kai grins. He twists and jumps, flopping beside Taehyun on the bed. “I’m the best thing that has ever happened to you!” His voice is louder than he probably thinks - effects of the wine.
The wine, on Taehyun’s end, makes him slow. He reaches to brush his hair out of his eyes. “If you say so,” Taehyun laughs.
“Go on,” Kai teases. “Say it! You love me!”
“‘Course I do, you’re my best friend.”
Kai looks like he wants to say something more, but he eyes Taehyun a second.
Taehyun swallows hard again. He hesitates and strips of his shirt.
“I’m going to shower - could you put my shirt in the washer?”
Kai tells him he will. For a moment, Taehyun can feel himself being stared down as he enters the bathroom.
This feeling wasn’t exactly new, but Taehyun was scared to label it. The second he names it then everything is different. Suddenly he’s not himself anymore.
Suddenly Kai isn’t Kai anymore.
Taehyun, nude and under the stingingly hot water, rinses off the sticky feeling of Kai’s eyes. He scrubs his skin, feeling awful for relishing the attention Kai gave him.
It was impossible to tell whether he really expected anything to come out of Kai’s grins and quick-tongue, but Taehyun is also painfully unsurprised when the bathroom door opens. Guilt eats at him when he thinks, of course. He wanted this - shamelessly wanted Kai.
Kai’s voice bubbles up. “Can I come in?” He asks.
“Come- Come in?”
“In the shower.”
His quickened heartbeat - Taehyun’s breathing stutters. He hates himself for it. Hates that he wants Kai in here. Everything is going to be different now. Everything will be different. Or it won't be, Taehyun could be wrong, he could be totally wrong about this whole thing.
“Okay.”
When Kai draws back the shower curtain, Taehyun feels his stomach twist with adrenaline and anxiety. Taehyun wants to cover himself, but Kai’s just as naked as he is, standing there and taking it all in. “Kai…” Whispers Taehyun. He can’t think.
He knows, he knows, he knows this isn’t quite right. It will hurt. He knows. Taehyun feels it tear right through him.
Kai steps in and says Taehyun’s name back to him. “Taehyun.”
They’re kissing. Kai’s kissing him. God.
Okay. Okay. Kai’s kissing him.
His cock is hard and warm against Taehyun’s. They slide against each other, slippery from the water and precum. Taehyun’s own arousal builds fast. He’s jerking his hips against Kai’s, moaning into his mouth. Taehyun cannot help but be excited. Kai is kissing him, Kai is touching him! He wants him, he wants him.
Even if it becomes nothing he still has this. Kai’s tongue in his mouth and his cockhead rubbing against Kai’s pelvis. He still has Kai on his knees, gagging on his dick as he takes Taehyun all the way to the back of his throat, sucking him off earnestly.
And even when Taehyun cums, even when Kai jerks himself off to completion, they stay on the floor of the shower. They kiss under the stream, wet bodies slotting together like puzzle pieces.
When they’re back in Kai’s room, he corks, then rolls the bottle of wine under his bed, mumbling something about finishing it another time.
Kai lays with Taehyun, naked and tipsy, kissing all over his face. Touching all over his chest and mumbling that if he gets hard again, Kai will just blow him one more time.
And suddenly everything is different.
-----
Kai’s breath made Taehyun’s chest sticky, his cheek sticks to it. There's a soft groaning as Kai pushed himself upwards. His face was groggy with sleep and Kai's hair was a mess - cowlicks sticking up every which way, courtesy of sleeping in wet hair.
They’re still naked. Taehyun nearly gasped when he realized. He eyes Kai’s soft dick for a second before staring at the ceiling, hiding his own body under the duvet.
“We have, like, twenty minutes,” says Kai, passively. He pulls on his boxers casually - like nothing is wrong. Like nothing happened. Is this right, is this how it’s supposed to feel? Taehyun wonders if he was Kai's first kiss. He wonders if Kai knows that he was Taehyun's first.
Taehyun slowly dresses himself, too. When he’s got a pair of underwear on and he’s looking for his jeans and shirt, Taehyun catches Kai looking at him.
Everything is different now.
Taehyun’s shirt was still in the washing machine. He borrows one from Kai.
In the kitchen - Kai’s sisters sit at the table. His oldest sister drinks coffee and mumbles to her mother about work-complaints. “Taehyun-ah!” says Kai’s mother gleefully. “I didn’t realize you stayed over!”
He can’t even look her in the eyes. Taehyun’s petrified with the notion it’s written all over his face, his eyes are just about screaming: I kissed your son last night. He kissed me in the shower and he put my dick in his mouth. He kissed me and touched me in the dirtiest ways possible. Your son kissed me last night and I think I want him to do it again.
Taehyun’s face burns as he replies. “Kai called me while everyone was out.”
“Yeah. I was bored,” Kai supplies. It’s reason enough - they’ve never needed a reason to be with each other. But now everything feels so on edge. “Mama, we have to get going, or we’ll be late.”
“Okay, okay,” she says. When Kai and Taehyun turn out the door, she calls after him. “Taehyun-ah, are you coming back over for dinner?”
“Uh-“ Taehyun stares at the back of Kai’s head, willing to tell him if it’s okay. “I'll have to ask my parents.”
Outside, when they’re in Kai’s car, he feels like he’s suffocating. This was beyond butterflies in his stomach, this was something growing in his throat and halting his breathing to a stop. Watching Kai’s fingers flex around the steering wheel, the veins in his hands identical to when his fingers wrap around Taehyun’s cock, Taehyun finally says something. “Kai?”
Kai hums - pleasant, unaware. He’s not thinking about it, so maybe Taehyun shouldn’t be. “Yeah?”
“Can we—“ Taehyun doesn’t know if there’s a way to have this conversation without sounding pathetic. “Can we talk about last night?”
The twitch in Kai’s face, the quiver of his lip, the gleam of a flame in his eye. He is so mad. Fuming at the idea that Taehyun wants to talk.
“Um-“ He sighs, driving one handed, bringing his hand to his mouth and letting it fall. “Maybe later? It’s- It’s early, Taehyun, I’m- I’m tired and… We’re almost at school.”
It’s not a lie. They’re seconds away from pulling into the school parking lot, so they’ll talk later.
It’s not a lie. They went to bed late. All of the kissing and whatever went on for ages. Taehyun’s fingers were pruning by the end of it. So, they’ll talk later.
It’s not a lie. They’ll talk later, Taehyun feels the most horrific, sinking feeling in his stomach, but he tells himself: they’ll talk later.
Watching Kai open the car door once he’s parked, Taehyun finally answers. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah, later.”
-----
They don’t talk later. Taehyun doesn’t push it again - it just kind of sits there in the car with them every time they ride together. Like something loose under the seats, rattling around at every turn.
It just becomes a dull throb in the back of his head. The night in the shower. Like, it doesn’t need to mature or change. Sometimes Taehyun jerks off to the memory of his best friend sucking his cock, spilling over his fist with a gasp when he remembers kissing Kai on the shower floor.
Their friendship carries on undisturbed, though. Despite everything. Despite the times Kai has grinned at Taehyun a little too brightly or when he stares at Taehyun’s mouth like he might kiss him.
Despite the time when Kai was running his mouth about shit, absolutely nothing, and thought Taehyun wasn’t listening - so he reached forward and held Taehyun’s face for a second. It made Taehyun jump out of his skin, which made Kai’s hand drop from Taehyun’s jaw to Taehyun’s hands, folded in his lap.
Somewhere in Taehyun’s mind, he knows. He knows Kai likes him and he’s not sure what to do with that.
For the first few days after - because that’s how Taehyun is starting to categorize his friendship with Kai: before and after Kai put Taehyun’s balls in his mouth - Taehyun was left on edge every time Kai invited him over, half expecting him to make a move again. It made him the most anxious when Kai’s family was home - because Taehyun wasn’t completely sure if he put it past Kai to give him head with both his sisters in the next room.
But days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and Kai did nothing of the sort.
Within the same span of time Taehyun started to accept it as just . It’s just what happened - just their drunken experimentation - Kai gets invited to his first high school party and tells Taehyun about it in the school parking lot, heading to Kai’s car at the end of the day.
“It was Trevor McMullen who invited me,” explained Kai. He was obviously excited, but trying to play it off.
Cute, thinks Taehyun.
Taehyun hums. “Cool,” he says. “It’s a Sunday, right?”
“Yeah?”
“A school night?” It’s surprising. Kai has always been very responsible about school - it was small things like that, knowing to not be out late on a school night, making sure his homework was done before he even sits down to dinner, studying before tests. Just the small things that Taehyun knows Kai does out of habit.
“Yeah,” Kai responded. He shrugs. “Did you want to come?”
Taehyun never felt particularly comfortable with his classmates. When he first moved to the United States, Kai was quick to be his friend - he loved that Taehyun was Korean. Kai lived in Kansas his whole life and only knew any Korean because his mom spoke it on-and-off. So around the same time fourteen year old Kai began to prod to his mother that he wanted to know more about that side of his family, Taehyun - freshly arrived from South Korea - was introduced to his Chemistry class.
Their peers weren’t necessarily mean, but they never wanted Taehyun to forget he was foreign, different. Not that he would forget, they just didn’t seem to want him to think there was anything more to him.
So Taehyun’s response is simple. “No, I’m good.”
Which prompts teasing. “Ah, c’mon, Taehyun! You don’t want to let loose? Have a few drinks?” Kai lightly shoves him, laughing.
Taehyun thinks - they’re having fun, they’re joking around, being silly. “Well, if I really wanted to, there’s still a bottle of wine under your bed.”
Stiff. Cold. A terrible shift in tone. Taehyun feels the tension sucker punch him, practically feels the wind knocked right out of him. “Dude, don’t- don’t talk about that at school.”
Was it a mistake, Kai, was I a big mistake? “Does this mean we can talk about it when we’re not at school?” Taehyun’s unsure where his sudden boldness came from.
“ What? Taehyun, don’t- C'mon don't do this,” Kai damn-near begs, avoiding Taehyun's gaze.
Taehyun still stares at him blankly. Their entanglement hasn’t even been acknowledged since that morning after, but now Taehyun’s feelings are rising back up in his chest. He’s been thinking of it for months, but now it's right there again. He could practically grab hold of it and it's something so heavy he'd need two hands.
“Kai—“
“Just get in the car, Taehyun,” Kai dismisses.
He does.
-----
They didn’t talk for the rest of the weekend, but by Sunday afternoon, Taehyun realizes Kai has his great high school party in just a few hours. He’ll probably get blind drunk.
Kai likes drinking - He’s mentioned to Taehyun that he swipes glasses of wine or hard liquor from his mom’s stash some nights. It’s something that relaxes him, maybe. Maybe that’s why he needed half a bottle of wine in him to kiss Taehyun.
Despite Kai’s fondness for alcohol, he’s left his and Taehyun’s bottle of wine untouched. Taehyun could still see it, half-drunk, fermenting under Kai’s bed if he bothered to check. They were never going to finish it, Taehyun knew that. Perhaps because Kai didn’t trust himself to, or who knows what he might do.
If a slightly tipsy Kai will do that, Taehyun doesn’t want to know what a stupid drunk Kai will do. Which is exactly why Taehyun walked ten minutes to Kai’s house and sat on the porch swing for another forty-five, till he saw Kai’s truck roll into the driveway at a snail’s pace. Taehyun thinks for a second - oh God, oh no, he seriously drived?
Kai freezes on the stone path that leads to his front door once he is out of the car and finally makes out whose been waiting for him. “Taehyun?” He sounds sober.
“Uh-Hey,” Taehyun stood up, stepping down off the porch.
“What are you… Doing?” Kai’s dressed cute - fitted dark blue jeans and an off white tee, paired with heavy black boots. “Why are you—“
It’s so dark, Taehyun has to squint to see Kai’s perplexed face. “I thought you’d be drunk. I wanted to make sure you got into bed and stuff.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Did you drink?”
“No!” Kai snaps, like he’s pissed at Taehyun for asking. “No, I- I left early.” He sounds upset. “Taehyun, why are you here?”
Kai sounds really upset, like he may cry.
“I thought—“
“You can’t do stuff like this!” Kai suddenly shouts. “You- You can’t wait outside my house for me! God, how long were you here for?”
Almost an hour. “I don’t- I don’t know,” lies Taehyun. “I was just—“
“You can’t do stuff like this!” Kai repeats. “Do you even know what people say about us—“ Kai bites his tongue. “—You… What people say about you...”
People talk about them?
“What do people say… About me?”
Kai huffs. “They call you a queer.”
A queer.
Taehyun tightens his hand into a fist. “You kissed me.”
“Taehyun—“ Kai tries to interrupt, desperate.
“If anything, I think that makes you more queer than me.” Taehyun feels a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes. “You came onto me. You- You keep acting like it didn’t happen, but Kai,” Taehyun gasps. “It did!”
At an absolute loss, Kai cusses. “Fuck you,” he says.
Taehyun’s left slack jawed, wanting to say something, but unable to manage a coherent thought.
The porch door squeaks. Taehyun whips around, Kai’s mother blinks at them with tired eyes. “Taehyun-ah, Kai-yah?” She asks. “It’s nearly midnight - what are you two- Kai, honey, weren’t you two staying at Taehyun’s house?”
Were they?
Kai seems at a complete loss for words. So Taehyun supplies, saving Kai. “We decided to come back here - Kai was having trouble sleeping.”
His mom purses her lips like she’s contemplating believing them, but inevitably sighs. “Just- Just get inside! Get to bed, it's late!”
And what can they do but listen - the boys hurry up the stairs, into Kai’s bedroom. Taehyun was two steps ahead of Kai, but he felt how he was staring him down. It was hard to tell whether Kai was mad or not.
Once they’re in Kai’s bedroom, Taehyun wasted no time with grabbing one of the spare blankets off Kai’s bed. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says simply.
Kai makes a sound and Taehyun swears he heard, ‘no.’
Which, maybe it was. Once they’re both situated and the light is shut off, Kai gets back up and lays beside Taehyun on the floor. Before Taehyun can say anything, Kai is whimpering. “I’m so sorry,” he says. It’s too dark for either of them to see even their own hands, let alone each other, but Taehyun knows Kai is looking right at him. “Taehyun,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s—“ Taehyun nearly says, ‘it’s okay,’ but it isn’t.
“I kissed a girl tonight,” says Kai, absolutely beside himself. “And I hated it.”
“Oh—“
“It was nothing like kissing you,” Kai cries. He’s leaning so close to Taehyun - like, if Taehyun nudged even an inch closer, they would be kissing again. “What does that mean?” Kai knows what it means, but he doesn’t want to hear it, so Taehyun doesn’t say. Taehyun doesn’t say anything. “I just- I wanted to know what… It felt like,” says Kai, defeated. It’s impossible to tell if he’s talking about kissing Taehyun or the girl. Kai’s pressing his hand against Taehyun’s chest. “And I wasn’t thinking, I’m- I’m—“ I’m so sorry.
Taehyun cannot process any of this. He wants to give in - he wants to lean further into Kai’s touch and kiss him.
His hand feels so warm on Taehyun’s chest.
“I liked kissing you so much,” Kai admits. He’s leaning closer, Taehyun’s heart is beating right out of his chest. He can’t breathe.
Taehyun clumsily knocks his mouth into Kai’s, sharply inhaling right before he does. His hummingbird heart screams.
When Kai slides his hand into Taehyun’s jeans, he feels like he just may die.