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The final semester’s final sermon is not even halfway over and Hanbin is already buzzing. He taps his worn out sneakers against the pew in front of him and thinks it's a good thing he's leaving.
By near year he’s going to be living across the world, at a different, secular university, with a different major. He’s supposed to be a grown up about that, but there are still tingles under his skin so persistent he can’t sit still. All this to say that he isn’t concerned with Father Lee Munjeon’s idea of the afterlife and academic achievement as an antidote to sloth.
What he is concerned with is that Kim Taerae is sitting next to him, solidly silent with the school’s final semester guidebook on his lap. In his corduroy pants with ink stains on the knee, Taerae looks unequivocally good, the picture of holiness. Light even streams in from a stained glass window to cast his face in eggshell blue.
Taerae is one of the things he'll leave behind.
Disturbed by Hanbin's motions, Taerae turns to him and the light shifts from the front of his face to the side of his cheekbone, and Hanbin sort of gapes at it before he realizes Taerae is mouthing something to him, mouthing calm down though he knows it won’t do shit for Hanbin’s restlessness.
Hanbin’s been like this for as long as he can remember, for as long as his parents received calls from his hagwon instructors telling them he skipped, or he was antsy, or he was touching the other kids too much. It's nice when a child is tactile, they would say, but you have to understand there are limits. The dean of the university had said something like that too. Not because Hanbin wasn’t doing well, but because he’d skipped so many classes that the goodness of his grades paled in comparison to his lack of attention. He was doing fine.
Taunting, Hanbin sticks his tongue out at Taerae. It’s clean because he rinsed it after supper. Clean like Taerae. Clean for Taerae, though that’s likely wishful thinking.
I’m hungry , Hanbin mouths back.
Taerae tries to hide his smile but it always comes. Making Taerae laugh is inevitable. Hanbin making Taerae laugh is inevitable.
Truth be told, that’s realer to Hanbin, more definite at least, than God. He doesn’t tell Taerae that though. He can handle the gentle chiding, but not the disappointment.
Taerae’s parents aren’t picking him up today so that makes Hanbin even luckier. They’re in Hokkaido for business, which means Taerae will have the car and a shiny new driver’s license, which means he doesn't have to go straight home after this is over, which means Hanbin doesn’t have to either. Which means they can be together.
The thought of together makes Hanbin bounce again, jeans sliding against the smooth wood of the bench.
Taerae reaches out and Hanbin thinks he’s going to be touched, that Taerae will do something like press his knee into the seat or lay an arm across his body, but he doesn’t. His hand just hovers over Hanbin's thigh, and then he draws back with his eyes ahead of him like he’s really listening, and Hanbin figures he should have expected it.
Taerae repeats something Hanbin doesn’t bother to hear, he watches Taerae’s pink lips move around the words he repeats in earnest.
“Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning. Proverbs 9:9.”
“Very good, Taerae-ssi.”
Hanbin’s not touching Taerae, but he can feel him go warm with the praise, and can see his cheeks dimple in satisfaction.
When the service is over Hanbin waits by the bathroom while Taerae speaks to the minister and then says goodbye to his friends. Some of them are Hanbin’s friends too, so he grabs a few on their way out and hugs them or touches their hair. He doesn’t feel like talking to people who aren’t Taerae right now, but touch is something he can always give.
Taerae gives people his smile. Taerae’s the leader of the choir, Hanbin’s part of the choir, they’ve got the whole community involvement thing down to a T. On the whole though, places like this are where Taerae is a little more popular.
The other guys either hug Hanbin back or shy away, curving themselves around his body to move past him into the exitway. Hanbin can tell when the avoidance is because they’re reserved and when it’s because they can see the otherwise invisible bright red GAY stamp across his forehead. Either way, the rumors, only some of which are true, don’t really matter. As long as Taerae doesn’t recoil at his touch, he doesn’t think anyone else deserves the right to.
“Park Hanbin.”
Hanbin spins on his heels to face Father Munjeon.
“Didn’t I tell you if you won’t wear a uniform on Sundays to at least dress appropriately?”
“Well, you see, seonsaengnim ,” Hanbin starts, “it’s laundry day at my dorm—”
“I spilled ramyun broth on Hanbin’s pants during lunchtime,” Taerae says, next to him like a newly crested apparition of welfare and peace. “I’m sorry, seonsaengnim, it won’t happen again.”
“Thank you Kim Taerae-ssi,” the minster says, and Hanbin thinks it’s over, thinks Taerae dipped his hand into Hanbin’s pool of bad luck and saved him, until the minister turns to him again.
“And your nails?” the minister asks Hanbin.
Hanbin looks down at his hands, fingernails streaked with bright pink. He, Taerae, and a couple other boys painted their nails on Saturday and Hanbin forgot to take it off. Well, he didn’t really care to take it off. It looked nice when he flower-posed in the mirror.
Taerae had cleaned his own red nails within the hour after they’d taken pictures. There’s still some residue if Hanbin looks really close, staining the corners of Taerae’s fingers like blood. He’s sure Taerae hates it. It makes Hanbin’s belly flip hot like something’s burning his insides.
When there’s no answer, the minister sighs. Despite it being the last day of classes, he hands Hanbin a white slip with his signature on it to give to the dean of their program.
“Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning,” he says, and then he’s gone.
Hanbin rolls his eyes at the man’s receding back and Taerae grips his arm like it was blasphemous.
“What does that even mean?” Hanbin groans once their teacher is out of earshot.
“It means you need to be taught a lesson,” Taerae smiles. He smiles without knowing what he’s saying, without knowing what a phrase like that does to Hanbin’s brain. He turns and walks toward the back of the church, down the carpeted hallway and down the stairs.
Hanbin follows, the sound of his sneakers squawking against the recently clean floors.
“Do you really think that?” he asks.
Taerae opens the door to the second floor hallway. This is an older part of the church, one that’s rarely ever used. It’s designed strangely, an extra bathroom that’s never clean, a row of outdated confessional booths, and two classrooms that are out of use because there’s asbestos in the walls. Students say one of the classrooms is haunted, there’s a handprint on the chalkboard that can’t be erased.
“No,” Taerae answers, his voice echoing low in the loneliness of this space, “he was way too hard on you.”
They usually just sit in the hallway outside the haunted classroom and listen for ghosts. But Hanbin hasn’t gotten rid of the squirmy feeling under his skin and there’s something softer than usual in Taerae’s voice, so he tugs Taerae into the row of black-curtained confessionals.
Taerae makes a weird surprised noise but sits down in one of the booths, letting Hanbin nudge in next to him. A Hongdae street market holographic picture of the Virgin Mary looks down at them. Hanbin shifts his head back and forth to see the colors change. Taerae doesn’t.
“Why didn’t you say something to defend me then?” Hanbin asks.
Diamond shaped shadows surround Taerae’s eyes under his glasses. He looks down, at his corduroy lap where his stained nails are playing with the ends of loose skin. Even through the lens of his glasses, Hanbin can see how long his eyelashes are.
Hanbin’s not serious but Taerae seems to think he is, and so Hanbin doesn’t do anything to correct him. Sometimes it’s nice to have Taerae worry over him.
“I couldn’t,” Taerae says, “he’d just tell my parents.”
“I know,” Hanbin soothes, “I was kidding. I don’t care what he says.”
Taerae looks at him like he doesn’t understand, doesn’t get not caring about the opinions of people in power. It’s not that Hanbin doesn’t care, it’s that he can’t afford to care too much.
But it’s a pretty little gaze, eyes wide and full with bewilderment, so Hanbin doesn’t bother explaining.
Soften him up a little more , Hanbin’s always thinking, get the tension out his neck.
It’s cramped in here, like Hanbin hoped it would be. Taerae tries to sit far away, but far away in this world for two only means he’s pressing himself against the boundary of a wooden box and it’s digging into his back.
No matter what he does to adjust, they’re side by side and their thighs are touching.
“Hey,” Hanbin says, “relax. You’ll get hurt.”
Taerae shifts forward a bit, angles his body a little toward Hanbin to make himself more comfortable. He’s usually so good at sitting upright but right now he’s slouching, like maybe he wants to be closer too but doesn’t quite understand how they could fit together.
His eyes do the thing where they dart from side-eyeing Hanbin to sizing up their surroundings.
“It’s cute,” Hanbin says out loud.
Taerae’s eyes snap into his. He gives up quickly, studying his supposedly fascinating nails. The corner of Hanbin’s mouth tugs upward, resisting the urge to repeat himself. He reaches out, not far at all, and brushes over Taerae’s thumbnail with the pad of his own thumb.
“You didn’t get it all out, Taerae-yah.”
He digs down against Taerae’s nail and scoops some of the dry polish out of the corners.
Taerae winces, but he doesn’t pull away like he does when they’re around other people. Hanbin digs in harder, and likes that Taerae isn’t withdrawing from the pain.
“You’re not much better than me, you know,” Hanbin says, “but I’m the one who got scolded.”
“Yours was more noticeable,” Taerae argues.
“Because he always looks for reasons not to like me,” Hanbin explains, “I’m branded, like a cow.” He finishes Taerae’s thumb and works on his index.
Taerae is staring at him with a furrowed brow.
“You’re — ” He cuts himself off. He looks frustrated.
“Go ahead,” Hanbin says. Taerae’s hand is so warm under his, it’s almost hot.
“You’re still — even though — people look at you,” Taerae says, “people like to look at you. There’s nothing wrong with who you are. They either like you for the right reasons, because you’re a friendly person, or they don’t, because they think they’re better than you.”
Hanbin wades through the words, practiced enough in parsing out what Taerae is trying to tell him that he ends up with, “so you think I’m nice?”
Taerae laughs, booming, before he remembers where they are and reels it in, and Hanbin likes that sound so much, likes the way Taerae’s mouth expands wide enough to fit a fist, likes the way he shields it with the back of his hand and shares a secret look with Hanbin as if he’s done something worth covering up.
“I said friendly. But people don’t just look at you because you’re friendly,” Taerae explains, “you also have to be… nice to look at.” He cringes at his own words, tries to pull his hand away from Hanbin, probably thinking Hanbin doesn’t want it anymore.
Hanbin grips his palm, molds his fingers around it. Doesn’t even want to laugh. Doesn’t think Taerae’s awkward attempt at complimenting him is funny, because he’s trying, and he barely ever lets himself try.
“So I’m handsome?”
“No,” Taerae says in reflex, but the tops of his ears are dusty pink and he’s looking at Hanbin’s chest instead of at his eyes.
“So I’m ugly?” Hanbin gasps.
“No, no,” Taerae says, smiling now, a defensive hand waving in front of him with the last syllable drawn out.
“Are you sure?”
Taerae’s laugh wavers and ebbs. “I’m sure.”
“You swear to God?”
He’s pushing, he knows, manipulating a situation in which Taerae will want to soothe away Hanbin’s middle-school complexes. Hanbin’s not sure if he moved, or if Taerae did, but they’re so close he can see his breath imprinting against Taerae’s lips, can see the way the breeze of his tongue makes them quiver.
“Taerae-yah,” Hanbin urges. His chin with the way he stops himself from kissing him.
“I swear to God,” Taerae chokes out, eyes glassy and full with something Hanbin could dip into and drink if only Taerae would let him. “I swear to God, you’re so beautiful.”
The restless ball of need in Hanbin’s chest softens into slush, drains through his body quick and warm, shoots out through his fingers as he reaches for Taerae’s nape.
Taerae watches the slow smile spread across his face. His bottom peels away from his top one and there’s space for Hanbin’s thumb, so he fills it.
The inside of Taerae’s mouth is wriggly and wet, his tongue confused about where to sit itself and his teeth almost chattering like it’s cold.
“Beautiful, huh?” Hanbin laughs.
Taerae doesn’t speak, because if he speaks, he’ll drool, and if he drools, Hanbin is sure he’ll remember the mortification forever.
By way of indignation, Hanbin gets an eyeroll. With a flash of irritation, he drags his thumb further into Taerae’s stubborn mouth, sliding it against his tongue.
“Suck it,” he says.
Taerae’s eyes widen. His body goes still for a moment, like it’s deciding for him what he’ll do next. Hanbin can’t wait that long.
“Yah, Kim Taerae. Don’t you feel sorry I was scolded because of you, because you asked me to paint my nails with you?” Hanbin asks, barely a whisper.
He can hear Taerae’s heart race if he listens close enough, can see the shift to submission in his eyes when Hanbin adds, “if you do, then suck it. Or else I’ll think you don’t care.”
Taerae makes a noise, not coherent enough to be words, already watering eyes threatening to spill over. Hanbin almost feels like backing out when Taerae’s lips close around his finger. When a tear spills from Taerae’s eye, he does.
His finger comes out with a quiet pop, saliva tethered between them before it breaks, Taerae aggressively wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Sorry,” Hanbin says, half-meaning it, “really, I didn’t mean for you to cry.”
Taerae glares at him angrily, well, as angrily as a face like Taerae’s can get. He grabs the finger that was in his mouth and seems to size it up before pulling it back between his lips.
Hanbin’s heart skips a beat. It was real, he felt it go out of rhythm.
“If you’re really sorry,” Taerae says, and then he bites down on Hanbin’s finger hard enough to hurt.
“Fuck,” Hanbin hisses, “what the fuck?”
Taerae’s laughing, always laughing, Hanbin’s flesh still in his mouth, warm and wet. There might be blood in there too, Hanbin’s not sure, but Taerae’s sucking at it again, and he can’t move, can’t think about anything besides the tenting in his pants and Taerae’s red mouth and the way it’s shaped all strange and jelly-like around Hanbin’s joints .
Hanbin’s suddenly filled with this desperate hope that Taerae did draw blood, that Taerae is drinking his blood, that Taerae is finally, finally, taking something from him instead of the other way around.
There are bite marks in his skin when Taerae pulls off of him, small pink nicks like paper cuts, and Hanbin thinks, lovely and that Taerae deserves some of his own.
As he sinks his teeth lightly, lightly into Taerae’s neck, Taerae’s breathing hard, like Hanbin’s already done something more to him, and Hanbin realizes his own breaths are mixed in there too, in the noise, in the small space with the 5000 won Virgin Mary print and a worn-into-purple blackout curtain.
If there was someone on the other side, they could see Hanbin and Taerae. They could gasp in disgust, maybe, at the moment Hanbin decides he’s allowed to move again.
He grabs the back of Taerae’s head so he can’t move and touches their foreheads together. Taerae’s fogged-up glasses hit against Hanbin’s face. He probably can’t even see properly.
Hanbin decides to remedy that by taking the glasses off, tucking them into shape and placing them on the ledge. Taerae’s eyesight is terrible, but isn’t this better? In any case, Hanbin can see his eyes clearer.
“Hanbin-ah,” Taerae says. There’s a purple bruise forming under his jaw, barely visible in the muted light. He sounds scared and Hanbin resents it, doesn’t want him to feel like that because of him but doesn’t know how to make it stop either.
“It’s okay,” Hanbin says with a click of his tongue, “let me kiss you.”
Taerae’s gripping Hanbin’s sleeve, the end of it pinched between his fingertips. He’d do this sometimes, absentmindedly, a hand on Hanbin’s back, a finger curled around the material of his shirt.
Hanbin wonders what Taerae will do when he’s gone, who he’ll hold onto.
“We won’t have another chance next year,” Hanbin reminds him. Next year is only a few weeks away. January will start and Taerae will be here. Hanbin will be in Vancouver. Everything will be different, but Taerae won’t feel it. His family, his friends, his grades—he already has everything in Andong.
Taerae doesn’t answer, and Hanbin doesn’t know what else he’ll have left besides the memory of this. So he kisses Taerae. Taerae’s mouth is stiff at first, but Hanbin tugs on his chin and it falls open and if Taerae has everything else then why can’t he give Hanbin this?
“Come on,” Hanbin hisses, “relax.”
Taerae doesn’t relax. He moves Hanbin’s mouth off of his and pants shallowly
“I-I don’t know,” Taerae says, eyes darting everywhere, and Hanbin already knows what that means.
“It’s okay,” he says again, “just do what I do to you, hm?”
Taerae blinks at him, sizing him up, trusting him. He puts a stiff hand on Hanbin’s thigh and leans forward like Hanbin is about to feed him.
Hanbin fits their mouths together properly and gives Taerae a chaste kiss, no tongue, no pushing. If he can’t be patient, he tries to be gentle.
Taerae’s not like the other boys who are quick and needy and excited for Hanbin to get them off before somebody walks into the room. Taerae needs gentle, needs Hanbin to study and learn him.
Hanbin’s seen other guys touch Taerae, they’re always too brash, too forward. They don’t know him. They put their arms around his shoulders before they gauge the expression on his face. They kiss him like it’s work, because it is, because it’s usually an experiment or a dare. Hanbin’s not sure, but he would bet anything that Taerae’s never kissed them back.
This is work only Hanbin can do, pushing Taerae into reciprocity, because Taerae won’t let anyone else push him, won’t let anyone else make him cry besides family and God. Hanbin can be good at that like he can be good at anything else.
He pulls back and lets Taerae chase him. That movement alone is a small victory. Taerae kisses him this time, mirroring him with no grace and a choking sound at the back of his throat.
“Good job,” Hanbin tries to say, but Taerae swallows it down with another kiss, his lips parted and slippery when he opens his mouth for Hanbin to lick into.
He tastes sweet. Not like anything artificial, just sweet like the way his neck smells when he’s fallen asleep in bed or on a couch and Hanbin decides he’s allowed to nuzzle into him.
He’s so aware that Taerae’s mouth is big. Almost everything about Taerae is larger than Hanbin besides his height and his ego. His hands are long and soft against Hanbin’s own. He seems to like holding hands, though Hanbin would much rather be touching him everywhere else.
Hanbin lets it pass, lets the kissing grow hot pink, tongue-and-lip without much else. Taerae’s so undaring, too afraid to make noise.
Taerae thinks he’s hiding it with his sweater vest, but Hanbin’s already seen the swelling in his corduroys. Hanbin pushes again. Has to. He untangles his hands from Taerae’s, pulls apart Taerae’s legs and inches forward until he’s between them, settling his weight there long enough for Taerae to wrap his arms around Hanbin’s neck.
Twisting, Hanbin tugs Taerae until he’s settled into his lap. It happens backwards because Taerae’s squirming, his back to Hanbin’s front, but he’s there all the same, and the friction is light food for Hanbin’s hungry body. Maybe it’s better like this, safer when Taerae can’t see Hanbin’s eyes on him.
But then Taerae turns his head and looks down at Hanbin through his eyelashes. He seems surprised, as if he doesn’t know how it happened, as if he didn’t leverage his weight from the wood to the hard-on in Hanbin’s jeans. He seems something else too. Hanbin can’t name it, but it makes him feel wanted.
He touches Taerae under his shirt, squeezes his hips and feels the ridges of stretch marks there, presses the mound of belly that pushes up against the snap-button of Taerae’s pants.
Eyes flickering, Taerae turns back around so his hair tickles Hanbin’s nose.
Hanbin’s ears are hot, unsatiated from the way he can’t get under Taerae’s skin quick enough. He wants to tear him open here, and here, feel around his stomach and his liver and whatever else is in there, warm and pulsing because Taerae is alive in Hanbin’s arms.
He pops open the snap button on Taerae’s pants.
Taerae freezes up, and Hanbin thinks, that’s it, it’s over, he tried too much too fast. But Taerae doesn’t leave his lap, he just turns in Hanbin’s arms. His knees dig hard into Hanbin’s sides, but Hanbin doesn’t dare try to move.
Taerae’s flushed, all pink down from his cheekbones to his ears. His sweater vest hangs lopsided off his shoulders, his belly peeking through his open pants until he pushes the bottom of his vest down to cover it.
Hanbin tries to uncover it again, but Taerae’s hand is too tight around the material, he won’t let him.
“Okay then,” Hanbin says, conceding, smiling when Taerae kisses him to compensate.
Taerae doesn’t kiss him on the mouth. He kisses Hanbin’s forehead, holds him there with arms around his shoulders, thumbing at the base of his neck. He drags his nose side to side against the top of Hanbin’s hairline until Hanbin starts to feel silly, mushy inside like the fleshy parts of him have been carved out.
This strange ability Taerae has to turn this restless wanting into something patient and tender gets Hanbin all confused.
For a moment, he thinks could stay aching in his pants forever if Taerae was happy just doing this.
Taerae looks down into Hanbin’s eyes. A faint smile dimples his face and Hanbin thinks it could be affection . Not a lot of people look at him like that, not since he was a child at least.
The ache in his pants spreads through the rest of his body thinking of the next few weeks, of Taerae getting smaller and smaller in the back window of his parents car.
“I’m sorry I didn’t speak up for you,” Taerae says, bringing him back.
“It’s okay,” laughs Hanbin, “it’s the last day of the semester. They can’t even use that slip against me anymore. I’m just lucky he didn’t make me sit in the hallway with my hands over my head.”
Taerae doesn’t smile because he doesn’t think their high school years are funny. Truthfully, Hanbin would agree.
“Taerae-yah. I was kidding.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
Taerae studies what feels like every inch of Hanbin’s face with his puppy eyes and the weird mushiness in Hanbin’s gut increases tenfold.
Combative and worried he’ll feel like this forever, Hanbin slips a hand into Taerae’s pants to palm over his underwear.
Taerae gasps, screws his eyes shut.
“No,” drawls Hanbin, stretching the yaaaaa in a way he knows Taerae gets irritated by, “look at me.”
Just this morning, Taerae was wearing his choir robes while they cleared out their lockers in the C building. There wasn’t much in Hanbin’s besides pencils and strips of peppermint gum. Taerae’s locker was full of old notes, scraps of paper he’d used to pass notes between he and Hanbin when they had the same lectures. Hanbin was shocked that Taerae kept all of that.
“I like them,” Taerae said, and Hanbin said something like “you’re going to miss me so much,” and Taerae went quiet enough for Hanbin to think he should have said it the other way around.
Hanbin took some of the notes too (it was unfair for Taerae to have them all), mostly the ones where Taerae was chiding him for forgetting his assignments or asking him what time his classes ended so they could hang out. He stuffed them into his pocket where they’re crumpled now, crumpling even more under Taerae’s body.
Taerae’s body—which he can see flashes of now, robeless because the singing’s all done for today, pants hanging somewhere around his hips as Hanbin dares to put his hand into Taerae’s underwear.
Taerae watches Hanbin’s face, his hands tight around Hanbin’s shoulders, as his cock is touched by someone else for what Hanbin knows is the first time in his life.
“Tell me when it feels good,” Hanbin says.
A slippery sound fills the tight air around them. Taerae curls in on himself like he’s tired, but Hanbin knows it’s not that. He’s prematurely overwhelmed.
“Tell me,” Hanbin reminds him.
Taerae shakes his head, like he can’t. Except Hanbin knows he can, because Taerae will do anything Hanbin asks. A droplet leaks out from the corner of his eye and it reminds Hanbin of the last time he blew cigarette smoke into Taerae’s face.
The first time they met, Taerae didn’t know where his classroom was. There were dirt stains on his backpack and his glasses were crooked. Once a target, always a target. Hanbin had learned that firsthand. Taerae never talked about it, and Hanbin never asked.
They were both fifteen, though Hanbin started to feel like the hyung, dragging Taerae around and teaching him how to look threatening, teaching him how to smoke, though those (especially the smoking, Taerae refused to do it again when he learned what it could do to your voice) were both happy failures. Taerae can’t do a lot of things Hanbin can do, but it’s pretty when he tries, pretty unlike anyone else Hanbin’s ever known.
Hanbin is probably a bad influence. All it will take is one pull of the curtain to ruin Taerae’s reputation in this town. Hanbin’s the one with the out, but he’s torpedoing his hand around Taerae’s dick anyway.
Maybe he’ll pay for this one day, maybe he’ll meet someone who’s not like Taerae and won’t put up with him and he’ll be alone to confront the worst parts of himself.
Maybe.
“Tell me, or else I’ll have to stop.”
“Mm, I—it’s good.”
Wrong, it’s too dry and probably a little painful with how fast he’s going. Hanbin almost rolls his eyes. He spits on his hand and starts again, slower this time. Taerae exhales gratefully.
“Are you a sadist?” Hanbin asks, “tell me when it’s good means tell me when it hurts too.”
The softness in Taerae’s gaze is so unwarranted. He settles a long hand over Hanbin’s heart, the other at the back of Hanbin’s head, and doesn’t answer save for the slow movement of his hips as he seeks more of Hanbin’s touch.
“It’s— it’s okay,” Taerae says, teeth gritted. He’s close, everything flexed where Hanbin can’t see because of all the clothes. His hips lose their silly rhythm, and Hanbin notices a spell of stretchmarks there for the first time before Taerae’s coming all over his hand and his shirt.
“Do you like me or something?” Hanbin asks, pulse jackrabbiting under Taerae’s hand for no reason at all. It’s a stupid thing to ask. He doesn’t want to know the answer.
He wants to hear it desperately. His heart feels smaller under Taerae’s hand.
“I like—you,” Taerae pants, “I do,” like somehow that’s easier than talking about the state of the mess between them.
“I know,” Hanbin smiles, but he didn’t know. He didn’t know at all.
He wants to say something, something romantic that Taerae will like because he’s Taerae and Taerae likes the old CDs from his parents’ dating years, thinks mixtapes are a good idea, but Hanbin comes up short.
All he’s capable of is licking Taerae’s cum off his hand and letting him gape.
“That’s gross,” Taerae remarks, but Hanbin holds a finger up to his mouth and he licks it all off his index.
The face he makes is not unlike the time they went to a cheap tteokbokki place and he tried soju for the first time. Hanbin wants to kiss him more than he wants to laugh.
“It’s your own, baby,” Hanbin says against his lips.
“Do you like it?” Taerae asks, a hint of amusement in his husky voice.
“I love it,” Hanbin says, “tastes good to me.”
Taerae huffs and Hanbin pulls him closer, tries to swallow his breath but it’s too quick. He rubs his hands over Taerae’s hips and watches his cock go limp. It’s pretty, hard or soft, and he touches it just to feel the wetness before it dries all the way up.
They kiss lazily. Hanbin snakes a hand back into Taerae’s pants, feels around his perineum and listens to the labor it causes in Taerae’s breathing, further until he finds the wrinkled warmth of Taerae’s entrance. He circles it with the pad of his finger as Taerae’s muted moans stutter in his ear.
And then Taerae pulls away at the sound of footsteps.
Hanbin thumbs over Taerae’s balls and gets a withering look in return.
“ Just a ghost,” mouths Hanbin.
Taerae shakes his head, eyes wide, and mouths, “ stop.”
Resigned, Hanbin tucks Taerae back into his pants and zips him up slow with a smile on his face and a finger still tucked against his rim.
The footsteps don’t stop, and that’s a good thing. With Taerae’s face suddenly buried in the crook of his neck, Hanbin counts them into Taerae’s ear until they fade away.
They don’t say anything to each other as Taerae drives them home, but it’s there anyway, all the air from the confessional, tight around both their throats, tight around Hanbin’s waist.
He taps his fingers against the window and thinks it doesn’t help that it’s raining and he can see his breath on the glass when he leans his head close. Taerae has the windshield wipers on and he hums a song that nearly drowns out the swishing noise.
“Is your noona—”
“She’s staying with her boyfriend,” Taerae says quietly. He doesn’t look over at Hanbin. He doesn’t even move his hands on the steering wheel.
Hanbin draws a little heart in the window’s fog and says, “look.”
At a red light, Taerae glances over. He smiles at the heart, smiles at Hanbin, grows serious the longer he stares. His throat bobs, swallowing nothing but Hanbin’s gaze, and Hanbin thinks, inelegantly, of Taerae’s asshole, or what he can imagine of it from the way the entrance felt against his finger.
“It’s green,” Hanbin says gently, “the light.”
“Hanbin.”
Taerae says it in a voice like he’s been suffocating.
“I know,” Hanbin whispers, and Taerae pulls his eyes away.
Two more lights and they’re there, turning into Taerae’s street, parallel parking outside the two-story building. Taerae reminds Hanbin to check for bikes and put his hood on before he opens the door.
The trunk clicks open and Taerae takes out a bag of his choir robes and the stuff from their locker, along with Hanbin’s backpack.
Carrying all this stuff frustrates Hanbin’s hands. He wants to hold Taerae instead. He bounces impatiently as Taerae opens the door.
Taerae diplomatically tells him where to set everything down, tells him to go down to the laundry room and stuff all of the robes into one of the machines while he does something in his bedroom. His voice is even but his ears are red. Hanbin knows how badly he’s stalling, but he follows the orders anyway.
It’s not a big house, but it’s lived in. There’s a crucifixion painting in the kitchen above the stove, a dirty shoe rack by the door. Hanbin’s been here a few times, doesn’t know the next time he’ll be here again. Taerae’s parents certainly won’t miss him. It’s not that they don’t like him, it’s that they like Hanbin’s parents more.
Hanbin returns upstairs probably too quickly, because when he pushes open the door to Taerae’s room, there’s a toy car hanging awkwardly out of his hand.
“I-I was just cleaning up,” he says, and when Hanbin raises his eyebrows, he adds, “trying to.”
“You still play with those?” Hanbin laughs, probably too snarky.
Taerae drops the green car on his bed, which is neatly made up. “No.”
There are model cars on his shelves, red, yellow, orange, blue, purple. Hanbin threw one at him once, in high school when they fought over the right way to do a circuit experiment. The die-cast bruised the bridge of Taerae’s nose.
Hanbin can’t remember the colour.
There are talent show awards too, choir pictures, lyrics to hymns in discount golden frames that Taerae probably memorizes when he’s dressing himself in the mornings and undressing himself at night.
Those are little bits of Taerae. The whole Taerae stands before him with quivering lips.
Hanbin crosses the distance between them in two steps and kisses the bruise four times. It faded a long time ago but he hopes Taerae understands that he doesn't want it to hurt anymore.
“Hanbin.”
All Hanbin can see are the tops of Taerae’s glasses, Taerae’s eyelashes. Their hair is still damp from the rain.
“I know, I know.”
Hanbin rubs the small of Taerae’s back, first over his layers of clothes and then under them. Under the vest, under the shirt where his nails dig into the flesh of Taerae’s waist. Their noses are knocking together, nobody’s kissing on the lips.
Taerae makes weird, broken sounds, fists in Hanbin’s shirt again, pulling his collar down and away from his neck. Hanbin makes the work easier for Taerae, tugs off his shirt and lets it fall to the floor.
Taerae’s seen him shirtless before and Hanbin’s seen the way he stares, but he wasn’t quite sure because Taerae looks at everything like he’s curious about it. This time is different.
This time Hanbin is glaringly aware of what’s going through Taerae’s head.
He takes both of Taerae’s hands and places them on his chest. Taerae winces like he touched something hot. With how warm Hanbin’s body is running, it wouldn’t be too far off.
The drawn-up expression on Taerae’s face makes him giggle.
“Touch me everywhere you want, okay?”
Taerae has cold hands, but they’re soft. For a moment, he just sticks his palms to Hanbin’s chest and doesn’t move at all.
Hanbin has his arms at his sides, waiting. He steps a bit closer so Taerae’s arms bend further. He leans forward and kisses the hickey on his neck. Taerae’s palms press down on his nipples, and he kneads them in, watching Hanbin’s mouth as it goes crooked, then checking his eyes as they urge him on.
Fluttery, liquid-doused feelings flit around Hanbin’s brain as Taerae touches down his sides, drawing the goosebumps out with the tips of his fingers.
Taerae has these peeling guitar calluses and they scratch all over Hanbin’s skin, over his ribs, his hips where Taerae wavers and waits.
Hanbin does half the work, unzips his own pants and takes off his belt. The act is second nature, his hands moving on their own while his eyes watch Taerae’s face. Taerae’s eyes, eyes that have never seen Hanbin do this, follow the fake leather to a place on the carpet a few feet away from them.
It settles something in Hanbin and worries at the same time - the fact that he’s done this more than times than he’s talked about, and Taerae can’t possibly know what that means.
He starts to wither when Taerae wraps a hand around his dick.
“Why don’t you believe in god?” Taerae asks.
Hanbin scoffs, tries to laugh but it gets choked back into something more sinister.
“Kim Taerae. Why the fuck would you ask me that now?”
“So it’s true then.”
Taerae strokes him awkwardly. It helps that Hanbin’s already wet and all he has to do is sort of swish it around.
“Well,” Hanbin sighs, “why do you?”
“Because it’s nice to have unwavering faith in something. It’s nice to go to bed thinking about something other than the rest of the world, isn’t it? Why do you think there are so many things we can’t explain as humans?”
A pattern develops in Taerae’s hand as he speaks. He strokes down the head and palms around it, and then back up to Hanbin’s balls like he’s curious about them. It’s much better than Hanbin expected. Or maybe because it’s Taerae. Either way, he finds himself clinging to Taerae’s shoulders when his knees go weak.
Hanbin can’t come up with an answer. This is not one of your beloved religious theory classes, he wants to say. Hanbin almost dropped that class last semester. He whimpers in frustration.
“Are you stalling cause you think I’m going to ask you to blow me?”
Checkmate. Taerae’s hand stills.
“No I was just—”
“Well you should, after making me listen to that.”
He expects Taerae to back out, to back away, to at least complain a little. But it only takes a second before he’s on his knees and an incredulous Hanbin is stepping out of his pants entirely.
Hanbin’s seen Taerae kneel before. To tie his shoes, to pray at home, to pray at church. Of course this is entirely different.
It’s not very good. Taerae’s inexperience is too obvious, all teeth and a lot of pulling off to figure his mouth out.
“Don’t use your teeth,” Hanbin scolds, “just your—oh. Yeah, like that.”
Taerae’s tongue circles the head of Hanbin’s cock, his lips puckered around it when he checks Hanbin’s expression through his eyelashes. It’s a shock to Hanbin’s system, a nightmarish dream come to life. Taerae swallows more of him, and Hanbin moves his hips a little, not enough to hit the back of Taerae’s throat, but enough that Taerae’s eyes water, enough that Hanbin feels a pinch in his veins, and then another, and then another.
“Hey, Taerae-yah,” Hanbin says quietly.
A pop and a gasp, and Taerae is panting up at him.
Hanbin’s desire has never scared him, but he hurts in places he tries to forget. There’s only so much he can say, so much he can do, so much he can put into words, and that’s what frightens him.
Hanbin gets down in front of Taerae and realizes he knows nothing of worship. He doesn’t believe in the god Taerae loves so much. He’d question it, sure, but at the end of the day, god has never once saved him. God has never once loved him back, not even when he was hurt and needed it. Not even when he was scolded, not even when he was gawked at, not even when he was made into something to be cautious of.
Taerae loves him more than god does, even if it’s not a lot and not unconditional. Even if it’s like loving a friend.
But if he said any of those things, Taerae would look at him funny and scared. He’d ask too many questions.
So he says nothing of it. The university in Vancouver isn’t Catholic anyway. No Ministers, no pink slips, no Taerae. He’ll be rid of all this soon, whatever this is. It’s suffocating.
He kisses Taerae too hard for Taerae’s tender mouth to bear and feels him choke on Hanbin’s spit.
“Will you let me—” Hanbin tries to ask, tugging off Taerae’s sweater vest, at the same time Taerae says, “are you okay?”
The sweater vest peels off of Taerae’s hair and he gets it out of his eyes by pushing up with the backs of his hands.
“What?” asks Hanbin, and then, “I’m fine. Why?”
“Your eyes,” Taerae says shortly.
Not fair. Taerae’s the one with tears pooling under his lashes.
Hanbin kisses him so they don’t have to look at each other. His stomach stirs. He feels nearly sick, but only nearly. He pushes it away, gets his hands all over Taerae again, is relieved when Taerae lets him and lets him.
He touches down the cleft of Taerae’s ass inside his underwear and pants, pants that Taerae undoes with one hand and shucks halfway down his thighs.
Taerae keeps kissing him softly, rubbing at the back of his head like Hanbin is a dog.
“You can,” Taerae says.
Hanbin presses his mouth against Taerae’s nose. “I can what?”
“Like, what you did earlier.”
“What did I do?” Hanbin smiles, the anxious knot behind his face unfurling.
Taerae frowns, a sad, frustrated thing, and Hanbin doesn’t have it in him to tease any longer. He prods at Taerae’s ass again, scraping mildly at the entrance while Taerae tries to stay balanced on his knees. The bedroom floors are carpeted, but it starts to burn.
There’s a familiar stiffness to Taerae’s body when he tucks himself up onto the bed. His limbs are misplaced, suspended in the air. Hanbin has to physically push them down and spread him out. He gets Taerae’s pants the rest of the way off and lets him do the underwear himself because it’s only fair.
Hanbin sits in the middle of the bed momentarily paralyzed with an image of Taerae even his sick brain couldn’t conjure on its own. The shape of Taerae’s legs, the blush of his erection, the stretchmarks on his thighs, the shiny white scar on his knee. Hanbin thinks he won’t remember this in a year.
Taerae’s precome is gathering uselessly, visibly, but he won’t look Hanbin in the eyes. His eyes travel down to Hanbin’s clothed dick and he coughs.
It’s only awkward for a moment and then Hanbin moves again, his pulse thrumming in his fingers and behind his eyes. It’s a quick act for him to get naked and shuffle around his backpack but when he’s on the bed again he finds Taerae still wearing his two top layers, sleeves pulled over his hands.
“Really? You’re going to get stuffy.”
Taerae doesn’t move. He almost closes his legs but he doesn’t. Hanbin wants more than anything to be inside of his head, though he could settle for something else too. Maybe that’s close. Maybe that’s the same.
It’s not really the same.
His fingers inside Taerae are greedy and rougher than he means. Taerae’s fleshy and warm like he thought and not like he thought. The weight of the room presses down on his back. Taerae’s glasses are sitting twisted against his face, fogged up again, his mouth skewed to the left.
“Hanbin, Hanbin,” Taerae keeps saying, and the way he wants it doesn’t feel real at all.
“Too much?”
Hanbin meant it cocky, but his voice comes out cracked and raw.
With a shake of his head, Taerae’s glasses skew to the left until he takes them off entirely and stares at Hanbin with glazed eyes. He looks like he wants to say something and can’t.
Hanbin keels over to laugh against Taerae’s stomach, Taerae’s clothes hiked up to his chest. Not because anything is funny, but because there’s nowhere else to put this feeling that’s consuming him entirely. Taerae slaps at him, lazily, and doesn't push his clothes back down this time.
Hanbin’s fingers travel incessantly inside of Taerae, searching. He’s never done this before, never fingered anyone, but he’s had enough hands inside his own body to know where it feels good. That it’s Taerae makes him determined to get it right.
Taerae jerks — his foot hits the toy car he’d thrown onto bed and it flies off the mattress, thudding against the carpet. Hanbin doesn’t hear it. He’s transfixed by the face Taerae’s making, the dusty blush across his cheeks and nose. There, he thinks, though Taerae doesn’t say it.
What he does say is, “Hanbin,” and Hanbin starts to love the sound of his own name.
“Yeah,” he says, stupid with it. It’s just his fingers in Taerae, just his cock rutting against his free hand, but the nerves inside him feel like they’re on fire, veins pumping Taerae’s pleasure into the rest of Hanbin’s body. Like it’s something they share.
Funny, Hanbin’s never been good at sharing.
“Oh fuck, ” Taerae breaths out, hands curled into tight little fists. He shakes hard when he comes, messing up his clothes.
Hanbin kisses the tip of his cock, kisses his mouth again, and Taerae likes it this time, licking Hanbin’s mouth, his teeth.
It hurts, how hard Hanbin is, how Taerae’s already come twice and Hanbin hasn’t even come once.
“Do you want—” Taerae starts unevenly, his eyes on Hanbin’s cock.
“Yeah.”
Hanbin straddles him. He brushes the damp hair away from Taerae’s forehead and pats his cheeks.
“All you have to do is open your mouth,” Hanbin says.
Taerae nods. He opens his mouth and closes it again the way he does before he sings. He squirms around, pulling at his clothes until Hanbin has no choice but to take his shirt and vest off for him. He’s so limp he doesn’t even refuse. Hanbin’s finger brushes against a hardened nipple as the shirt is unhooked from his head. He shivers visibly, goosebumps from post-orgasm and air circulation covering his pale skin.
Hanbin’s chest squeezes into itself as he feeds himself into Taerae’s mouth again.
Taerae’s a good learner, not stilted and toothy like the first time. He has less to do. Hanbin fucks his mouth more patiently than he wants to.
There’s a glowing hue to Taerae’s shoulders when Hanbin looks down. His neck is taut, eyebrows furrowed.
The last few hours have felt like a lifetime.
Hanbin strokes the places Taerae’s mouth won’t cover, and a lifetime shrinks to one minute, a minute in which Hanbin comes half in Taerae’s mouth and half on Taerae’s face and it’s over.
He has to hold Taerae for a long time after they clean up to get him to stop shaking. He doesn’t even remember if someone held him when he first had sex.
Actually, he does, he’ll just never say it. He’s not quite sure if it counts for anything.
As if to cause him more trouble, Taerae asks, stupidly innocent, “have you ever done that before?”
“Yes,” Hanbin says shortly. His chin rests at the top of Taerae’s head. He attempts to think of nothing but the mild scent of Taerae’s hair.
Taerae tries to move, but Hanbin tightens his arms around his torso.
“Yes, but you’re better,” Hanbin adds, and Taerae ceases his fidgeting.
It’s a relief that Taerae can’t see his eyes.
It’s so different with Taerae. For all the ways Hanbin’s wanted him, nothing compares to the next two weeks.
Taerae’s jumpy and secretive, scared to hold hands anywhere but his room, scared to even look his parents in the eyes when he brings Hanbin home. It’s irritating.
But he’s also pliable, persuadable, and tender. They kiss each other breathless in the back of Taerae’s car. It’s novel the way Taerae touches Hanbin so softly and doesn’t seem to get bored of him. His hands shake badly when he fingers Hanbin for the first time. He says it’s because he thinks something like that is important, and Hanbin doesn’t have the words for how that makes him feel.
Hanbin’s never had a real boyfriend but it feels like a glimpse into a life he could have under different circumstances, if he was somewhere else, if he was someone else. A show-home.
Outside of that staging area is the reminder than Hanbin is everything Taerae’s life is not.
They’re lying in Taerae’s bed as evening sun streams through the curtains and the elephant in the room is tomorrow.
Hanbin leaves tomorrow.
He dips a finger into Taerae’s ass and swirls around the drying lube. The nail polish he never removed is chipped speckled. He scratches at both the drying substance and the flaky bits of red.
“Hanbin-ah, that’s gross.”
Hanbin shrugs. He stares at the ceiling and waits for Taerae to clean up and come back to bed.
“You’re giving me a look,” Taerae observes.
“There’s a lot to look at.”
Taerae turns onto his side so Hanbin slings a leg over his hip.
“Why did we do this now?” asks Taerae, “I mean, when you were leaving so soon. Did you do this as a goodbye?”
He looks so scared to say it, which only confirms everything Hanbin already knows about who they are to each other.
“Or did you mean it like a promise?” Taerae finishes.
It’s probably mean, the way Hanbin chuckles. But there’s not much to lose, is there?
“I did it?” Hanbin huffs, “I did something to you?”
“No, I mean—you started it.”
Hanbin’s foot goes numb, nerves gutted. He takes his leg off Taerae’s body and sits up on the bed. One of Taerae’s dumb toy cars is on the bedside table. Hanbin picks it up and opens the passenger side door.
“Sorry I corrupted you,” Hanbin says, real sharpness pricking his voice, “is that what you want to hear?”
“No—it’s just, you knew it was a risk.”
Hanbin’s not sure why, after everything, after high school and half of university, Taerae thinks he would care about that now.
“Should I, like, repent or something?”
“Stop.”
Taerae kneels on the bed. He grabs at the toy car before Hanbin snaps the door off entirely.
“Oh Taerae,” Hanbin says when their faces are close, “you don’t have to worry. God will always love you.”
Taerae blinks at him, the hurt so evident on his face that Hanbin wants to wince.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
The tightness in Hanbin’s chest is just shrapnel from the first time.
“Do you love me?”
Such an unfair question that Hanbin doesn't think he should have to answer. It knifes through him anyway, and comes out stained on the other side, another thing he’ll have to bury.
“You’re going to have to learn to answer your own questions,” Hanbin says, flippant. “You knew this was coming.”
To avoid Taerae’s gaze, Hanbin focuses on putting his clothes back on. Taerae does the same. Neither of them speak. Hanbin allows himself one look at Taerae before he leaves, and that’s it. By the time he’s reached the street, he can’t remember the shape of Taerae’s glasses.
The next morning, Hanbin wakes up aching all over. The soreness in his muscles can’t be attributed to anything but bad dreams, but he can only remember sensations, not plot. The anonymity of it frustrates him. He skips breakfast but takes his vitamins, because you have to start somewhere. A warm shower helps.
He gets a message from Taerae after loading the car he only manages to open on the way to the airport.
TAERAE [12:01]
You said to tell you when it hurt
Hanbin smooths out his pants, stares out the window at ugly office buildings that frame the highway, stares at the back of his father’s head, the corner of his mother’s ear. They’re chatting about Hanbin’s housing accommodations but they don’t look back to see his expression, never have.
He leaves the message on read, and hopes Taerae takes that as the reply he wants to give. What else could he say? “ Sorry I failed you” ? “ I’m hurt too” ? He types them both out and takes them both back. He doesn’t mean the first and the shame of the second will follow him everywhere, so it’s better to say nothing at all.
TAERAE [15:09]
I’m not angry
I know this place was suffocating you
Don’t worry about anything anymore and just be everything you want to be
At the airport lounge, Hanbin shuts his phone off and stares at his reflection. Taerae has always been the kind of person who thinks words help. Hanbin has never been that person, Hanbin will never be that person.
He fiddles with the cross-shaped necklace that rests against his breastbone. His mother hands him a croissant sandwich and he eats it fast to get it over with. It tastes like cardboard, all the butter dried out.
Hanbin puts the necklace in his mouth instead. The iciness of metal spreads to the inside of his ribs, and he lets himself be cold. Just for now, the pang inside his throat keeps his restless body still.