Work Text:
Jihoon used to dream of things that made sense: writing the perfect song, a week off in Los Angeles, and winning Artist of the Year. Now, he dreams of Mingyu frying his heart in a cast-iron skillet and eating it for lunch. He wakes up in a cold sweat and horny out of his mind every time.
Now, Jihoon is under no illusions about this. He knows it’s a sickness, a deviation, something other that ought to be tamped down and flattened into nonexistence.
Jihoon is good at that. Flattening things and making them smaller, easier to manage. He tells himself that it’s only a dream, maybe even a bout of recurring night terrors brought on by stress.
In truth, it’s an itch. It’s one of those itches that exists right underneath the surface of the skin, perennially out of reach and free to roam as it pleases. Jihoon often pictures it as little bugs crawling through his veins. An infestation. Disgusting, maybe, but disgusting is the right word for it, after all. Disgusting, pathetic, sick and deranged. All words Jihoon is intimately familiar with.
The problem is that he knows it’s sick, even as he groggily licks a fat stripe along the palm of his hand. He thinks about how sick it must be even as he pushes his boxers down, the too-tight waistband digging into his thighs. He thinks about how there’s something wrong with him as he curls in on himself, stroking himself with a certainty that he doesn’t feel.
His thoughts spiral when he does it. They always do, so nothing really surprises him anymore. Maybe that’s sad, though Jihoon is so used to it that he finds it difficult to tell, nowadays.
This isn’t new. He’s done it enough times to not be surprised when the thoughts creep in—he strokes himself with a tight grip and wonders if Mingyu likes it that way, too. He wonders what Mingyu’s face looks like when he does this to himself. Jihoon doesn’t want to be there to see it, he just wants to know.
The idea of being there to see it makes him feel even itchier than before.
—
Sometimes, Jihoon wonders if Mingyu knows.
Jihoon spends a lot of his time wondering, circling the same thought in his head until it makes him nauseous. These days, he thinks undeserving. He’s always been told that he’s neurotic, but he’s always thought that he hides it well. Jihoon likes to think that’s true.
He wonders, though. About Mingyu. About the way he can sometimes feel Mingyu’s eyes boring into his soul, the curious gaze marching from the top of his head to the base of his spine. It’s not the undressing type of gaze, not the kind that would make Jihoon hot under the collar. It’s the kind that makes him feel like his skin is being peeled off, his bones whittled into fragile, fine points.
Mingyu does things, sometimes, that makes Jihoon believe he knows. The thing about Mingyu is that he’s just much too nice to say anything about it. He’d never try to hurt Jihoon, and it’s quite a shame that he doesn’t have to try to hurt Jihoon at all. He just does.
It’s Jihoon’s own fault, really. He reads into things where there’s no subtext. He’s always been that way. Really, he can’t help his nature, can he?
He can’t pinpoint the exact moment his fascination—read: obsession—with Mingyu began. Maybe it was the day they first met, when Jihoon decided that Mingyu was the best person he’s ever met. A little rowdy, sure, but his ribs caged a heart that was far bigger than anyone else’s. The bigger a heart is, the easier it is to break. That day, Jihoon decided he’d stay far away for Mingyu’s own good.
Maybe it was when they got a few years older, and the company decided that Mingyu would be the sexy one. He started hitting the gym more, filled out and got broad at the shoulders, and sometimes Jihoon would hide in green rooms and hyperventilate.
Maybe it was during one concert, where Mingyu dried the sweat off those shoulders with a napkin and, with a sharp-toothed grin, he put that napkin right over Jihoon’s mouth. Jihoon laughed, then, because what else was he supposed to do? Get on his knees and beg in front of a sea of tens of thousands of people? He wasn’t that desperate, and he wasn’t that sick.
Or so he thought, at the time.
Jihoon is no stranger to the snowball effect, and he’s equally familiar with the idea of shame. And wanting. And waning, and waiting. These are all things Jihoon is good at and has always been. Shame, and wanting, and waning and waiting all snowball into something uncontrollable. A sick obsession. Something shameful that ought to be handled with care, packed away and never showed to the world outside.
So, when Mingyu does things like shoving his sweaty napkin over Jihoon’s mouth, Jihoon holds the shame closer to his heart, lets it invade him so he can’t invade Mingyu too. If Mingyu knows, he’s too nice to tell Jihoon how disgusting it is, and that’s the way it needs to be.
Jihoon can watch from afar. That’s another thing he’s always been good at. Jihoon is nothing but a fly on the wall, buzzing around to avoid getting squashed by broad shoulders and sweaty napkins.
His fingers slow to a halt on his keyboard, and he leans back in his favourite rolling chair with a sigh. He’s thinking too much and he knows it, and someday his thinking will be the death of him. It gets suffocating at times, watching someone as perfect as Mingyu.
It’s not that Jihoon wants to be with Mingyu. The thought of that is unfathomable. It’s just that he wonders what sort of terrible karmic debt he might have accrued to live like this. It’s sad. A sad, desperate, pathetic way to live.
He clicks around on his computer a few times and deletes the file he’d been working on. He deletes another one, and then another one, and then another one. It’s hard to be good enough, one of them says. What would it even take?
Not something he can let people listen to.
He clicks into another file. Something more manageable, something his members will look at and love without questioning. It’s easier this way, instead of trying to explain the feeling that is nonsensical at best. Jihoon knows his audience. He knows that there’s people that will get what he wants to say, but they’ll judge him for saying it. They’ll shred it apart.
A familiar beeping sound comes from the studio door, a set of four numbers being plunked into the keypad outside. Jihoon leans forward, chest nearly on top of his keyboard, and fits his face into a scowl because sometimes that’s all he knows how to do. The door clicks open and Jihoon takes a deep breath in.
“Hyung, it’s too late for you to be sitting here,” Mingyu says. He has a felt bag in one hand and an iced americano in the other, and his eyebrows are knit in that way they always get when someone’s been working too much.
It’s not always Jihoon. There’s a sick part of him that’s irritated by that, the idea that he’s not special to Mingyu is one that chafes him right down to the bone. It’s a contradiction, because if you asked him, he’d tell you it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s okay that Mingyu takes care of everyone this way, because Mingyu doesn’t mean it in the way that Jihoon takes it. Once again, Jihoon reads too far into things—he sees spaces that don’t exist between single-spaced lines.
That’s his problem, not Mingyu’s.
“Hi, Mingyu-yah,” he says, ignoring the critique. He slides one of many drum samples into the workspace and chops it up in a way that sounds deliberately terrible so that he can pretend he has something worthwhile to work on.
The felt bag hits the desk with a plunk, and Jihoon smiles. He can smell it. There’s gukbap in there. Dwaeji-gukbap specifically. Mingyu makes it when Jihoon’s sick or when he’s sad. He’s neither, now.
(Well, he’s sick. Absolutely. But not in any way that Mingyu will ever find out about. Still, he can pretend for dwaeji-gukbap.)
“You haven’t eaten,” Mingyu says. He unpacks the bag, pulling out glass containers with snap lids of gukbap, scallions, kimchi and dadaegi. He lays the containers on the end of Jihoon’s desk carefully, everything organized. “I don’t like it when you waste away in here.”
Jihoon doesn’t waste away. He works diligently, but he doesn’t correct Mingyu. He never invites arguments, because it’s easier for him to pretend Mingyu is right. The only disagreement he allows himself is a dubious squint in Mingyu’s direction as the other pulls a second, less comfortable rolling chair towards the desk.
“I’ll eat,” Jihoon says lamely. “So don’t nag.”
“You’d better,” Mingyu says. He looks put out, his face scrunched up in the cute way that always makes Jihoon want to poke his nose. He doesn’t, obviously. Jihoon has always been careful about initiating contact. “I worked hard on it.”
“Thank you, Mingyu-yah,” Jihoon says, and it’s sincere gratitude, because Mingyu soaks up gratitude like a sponge at the bottom of the ocean. Once, when he was drunk, Mingyu said gratitude made him feel worth it. So Jihoon extends his thanks, because it’s the least he can do for a person like Mingyu.
Mingyu starts to pop open the lids of the containers, and Jihoon reaches a grubby hand forward to swipe a set of chopsticks and a spoon. Mingyu stares at the spread with a satisfied smile, his lips curved upwards in a private way that few people get to see.
Jihoon likes this smile best. The one Mingyu uses on stage, all sharp teeth and half-lidded eyes, makes Jihoon want to run into the woods and shed his skin so only bones remain. This smile is easier to manage. Easier to feel things about, because anybody would. Jihoon can’t be blamed for his response to it, and that’s what he comforts himself with knowing.
Jihoon smiles back, helpless to do anything else.
—
Mingyu knows things.
Contrary to popular belief, Mingyu isn’t stupid. He notices things, always has. He notices even small, inconsequential things, like his tank tops going missing after dance practice.
He doesn’t really care about the tank tops. They’re a dime a dozen in his closet, and he’s not strapped for cash enough to worry about needing to buy new ones. Sometimes, to test his developing theory, Mingyu leaves them out on purpose, pulling them over his head in the practice room and leaving them strewn on the backs of chairs. When he comes back, they’re gone every time.
It’s a satisfying feeling to be noticed.
Perhaps it’s narcissistic to think this way, but Mingyu would never deny that allegation if it was laid out in front of him. Anybody with a heart would enjoy being admired and looked at, and so what if Mingyu leaves tank tops around because he knows Jihoon will take them? In his opinion, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Jihoon gets to take the tank tops to do only god knows what with, and Mingyu gets to lay in bed at night and wonder if Jihoon holds them up to his face while he jerks off.
Wonwoo calls it the world’s most disturbing game of cat and mouse, but Mingyu doesn’t think that makes any sense. He doesn’t know who the cat is and who the mouse is in this equation, only that he patiently awaits the day Jihoon approaches him about it. He can only imagine the look on Jihoon’s face—the poorly maintained glare, the pale pink flush that always goes all the way down his neck.
It’s nice to be wanted, isn’t it?
Lots of people want Mingyu. He knows this well, feels it pasted onto his bones. They want him. They love him.
Sometimes, he dreams of hands reaching, pressing against him everywhere. Skimming underneath his waistband, pressing into his chest, wrapping around his heart and squeezing it for all it’s worth. Sometimes, the hands have claws. Beautiful claws, dotted with Swarofski crystals and caked in blood.
Other times, he dreams of blunt nails bitten right to the bed, small hands pressing around his throat. Never hard enough to hurt, only hard enough to remind him who he belongs to. This one, of course, is a fantasy. A twisted dream, one that only comes in times of desperation.
The first time Mingyu had the dream, he conducted an experiment. Just to see.
He wiped his sweat with a napkin and pressed it right to Jihoon’s face. He just wanted to know what would happen. He didn’t want it to go this far, but he’s in too deep to stop now.
Jihoon’s want is intense. It’s the sort of thing that lingers, a feeling with nowhere to go except into Mingyu, in through his nose and mouth, burrowing through his lungs. He feels it under his skin, thrumming. He knows Jihoon wants him. He can’t help the twisted glee he feels every time he feels Jihoon’s eyes on him, boring right through him, tearing him apart.
Mingyu likes the sting of it. He likes the way Jihoon’s want has teeth—sharp ones that haven’t been filed down yet.
Maybe Mingyu just likes things that sting. He hates for anything to come easy, so he wants someone who wants him too, but won’t let himself have him. Jihoon overthinks things like that. He lets things simmer for too long, psychs himself right out of affirmative action. It drives Mingyu crazy, it makes his nails itch with the urge to dig into skin.
Jihoon wants him. Mingyu knows this. Mingyu likes this.
Perhaps it’s shallow, or selfish, or narcissistic to admit to all of it. To the way that Jihoon’s desire makes Mingyu feel whole, real.
It’s proof that someone close, someone who sees all of his ugly innards, wants him in spite of them.
—
Mingyu is beautiful.
Jihoon knows this, has never been under any false pretenses about it. Mingyu is pretty, the sky is blue, and Jihoon wants him all to himself.
Perhaps it’s selfish, or greedy, or even megalomaniacal to want all of it. Mingyu is so beautiful that, sometimes, Jihoon thinks the idea of Mingyu belonging to someone is unfair to the rest of the world. It would be an absence, a deep cavern of loss where Mingyu once stood. Jihoon won’t do it.
And, really, Jihoon isn’t stupid. He knows that Mingyu likes to feel wanted. He likes that there’s thousands of people that would throw their lives away for a night with him, and he knows that Jihoon is one of them. Does he like that, too? Jihoon doesn’t let himself think of it much, fearing for his heart. Either answer is a bad one, both paths after the fork in the road ending in a pit of vipers.
If he likes it, Jihoon still can’t do anything about it. He won’t subject Mingyu to his possessiveness, to the way his heart beats in strange time signatures, to the way sometimes he wants to sink his teeth in and never let go.
If he doesn’t like it, then Jihoon has to contend with the idea that he never stood a chance anyway. Just another face in a crowd of people that would bark like a dog for Mingyu’s attention, and how pathetic does that make him? It’s a sickness. One whose cure is just out of reach, brushing against the tips of his fingers.
Jihoon is too close to be feeling like this. Parasocialism doesn’t work when it’s about someone with a tendency to crawl into Jihoon’s bed at odd hours of the night, complaining about his air conditioner being too loud.
Jihoon lets it happen.
He lets it happen, considering it something owed to Mingyu for all of the sick thoughts Jihoon has about him. Equal exchange. Mingyu gets a night of serene rest on memory foam, and Jihoon has to deal with the imprint of him that his rest leaves in the morning.
Jihoon writes song after song, filling document after document with pages of words that make him cringe, that make his brain rattle around in his skull and his teeth vibrate in his mouth. Mingyu doesn’t deserve this. Mingyu deserves reverence, not someone who wants to own, to conquer, to take just to see what there is to give in return.
Jihoon is a selfish person. He has to contend with that knowledge, now, as the pile of Mingyu’s used clothes in his closet grows and grows.
He doesn’t do anything with them. He doesn’t even look at them. He doesn’t even know why he keeps them. He doesn’t even know why he takes them in the first place. It’s a compulsion, maybe. Something bone-deep. A desire to keep a piece of Mingyu in any way he can, no matter how odd and disgusting and shameful it is.
It’s nearly two in the morning when keys turn in the front door of Jihoon’s apartment. Only two people have keys, and Soonyoung would have called—with his voice blaring through Jihoon’s phone—if he planned on coming so late. Jihoon knows who it is, has memorized the sound of his gait against the floor by now. Anything about Mingyu is near impossible to forget.
It’s a wonder how the walls of Jihoon’s apartment start to press in on him whenever Mingyu is near.
“Mingyu-yah?” he calls, his voice ragged with sleep, all sandpaper and gravel.
The door to his room creaks open, squeaking on hinges that desperately need oil, and there’s Mingyu, in his softest sweatpants and tank top. “Did I wake you up?”
“Mhm,” Jihoon says, but he pushes over, making room for Mingyu on his favourite side of the bed.
(Sometimes, the hopeful part of Jihoon wonders what it means that Mingyu has a favourite side of his bed. It’s the right side—it’s closer to the nightstand and the window. Jihoon tamps the thought down whenever it crops up. He flattens it into a tiny disc and stores it in the dark recesses of his head where the rest of the depravity goes.)
“Sorry,” Mingyu says, not sounding very sorry at all. He wears Jihoon’s favourite smile, the private one that only Jihoon knows. Lips quirked up just a little bit, spread just enough for Jihoon to see the sharpness of his incisors.
Sometimes, Jihoon forgets that Mingyu can bite too. Then times like this come around, and the thought haunts him, a looming specter of possibility.
Mingyu shucks his sweatpants like he always does, and Jihoon watches, because Mingyu likes being watched. He blossoms under attention, blooming to life like the golden pomegranates growing in the Groves of Persephone.
(He thinks of what happened to Persephone after she ate one of them. Trapped with no way out.)
Jihoon, in turn, pretends he doesn’t notice the bruise blooming on Mingyu’s upper thigh, peeking out from his boxers. It’s tiny, red and purple, in the perfect shape of a small mouth. He pretends he doesn’t notice these things often, just the way he pretends not to notice Mingyu running off with girls in clubs when he knows cameras aren’t pointing at him.
Mingyu likes being wanted. Jihoon knows this. What Jihoon doesn’t know is whether or not it matters to Mingyu who he’s wanted by. Would he do something if Jihoon presented himself as an option?
Alas, it’s a question with two wrong answers. Jihoon sucks air in through his teeth while he stares at the bruise, and he wordlessly lifts his heavy duvet for Mingyu to fit himself underneath. They position themselves as they always do, with Jihoon’s back to Mingyu and Mingyu’s thigh fit right between Jihoon’s, their legs tangled together so much that Jihoon’s not sure where he ends and where Mingyu begins.
His heart beats at an odd rhythm, and as always, he quells the urge to bite. To own. To want the way he knows he’s capable of—possessive, ugly and all-consuming. Mingyu doesn’t deserve that, and it’s unfair, isn’t it?
The leg between his own feels like an invitation, sometimes.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks.
Later, he’ll blame initiating this conversation on delirium. Maybe burning the candle at both ends has finally caught up to him, the heart-rending want finally cracking him clean in two, a half with a sense and a half that will ask silly questions at two in the morning, even when he doesn’t know that he wants the answer.
He closes his eyes. Bathes in the blessed silence for the mere seconds that it lasts, knowing he isn’t coming out of this without ugly scars across his innards, ruining him forever.
Mingyu’s breath fans across the back of his neck, long drawn out ones. “Didn’t want to,” he says.
Whatever that means.
Jihoon doesn’t answer. He squeezes his eyes shut even tighter, hoping that maybe he’ll wake up from whatever nightmare he’s cooked up this time.
Mingyu keeps talking. “Don’t you want me?”
Jihoon’s eyes snap open. This isn’t how this was meant to go—Mingyu was meant to huddle under the duvet and pass out like he always does, allowing Jihoon sleepless hours of feeling the texture of Mingyu’s skin against his own, feeding a sick fantasy that won’t ever come to life. Can’t.
He doesn’t answer again, but his breathing shallows out, coming out in quick, hollow puffs. Mingyu throws an arm across his middle, squeezing. “You do. Don’t you? Why won’t you have me?”
“Everyone wants you, Mingyu-yah.”
It’s an obfuscation. What Jihoon really means is you could have anyone, Mingyu-yah. You don’t seriously want me. I won’t be able to let you go.
“Not like you do.”
(Three years ago, approximately two months after Mingyu started crawling into Jihoon’s bed and approximately three weeks after Jihoon started stealing tank tops, Wonwoo cornered him in the studio.
He’d said what the hell is going on with you two and didn’t look pleased when Jihoon said he didn’t know. He called Jihoon a pussy.
It stung.)
“What does that even mean?” Jihoon asks.
He knows what curiosity does to the cat. Yet he persists anyway, desperate for knowledge that he once deluded himself into believing that he didn’t need. He needs it now, though, intrinsically—like water, air or music, he just needs to know.
(He never wanted to be with Mingyu. He just wanted to know.
He’s not so sure anymore.)
“You want me like you’d keep me,” Mingyu says. His hand splays wide across Jihoon’s bare abdomen. “You’d keep me, wouldn’t you, Jihoon-ah?”
Jihoon doesn’t have the words to explain it. He can’t explain the way he’s spent years wanting to sink his nails, his teeth, everything sharp about him into Mingyu so that he couldn’t get away even if he wanted to.
Doesn’t seem like he wants to, and Jihoon doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with that.
“I’d be stupid not to keep you,” Jihoon says.
He’s breathless, near panting. He can feel Mingyu’s pinky travel lower, skimming beneath his waistband.
"You could keep me, if you wanted to. I’d let you.”
It feels like standing on the edge of something. A precipice. There’s no coming back from it, and yet Jihoon can feel his restraint loosening, a rope fraying and fraying, until eventually—
Well, it does what a frayed rope does. It snaps.
Soon, Jihoon finds himself on top of Mingyu. He’s not really sure how it happened, just that it did—Mingyu’s smiling up at him, sharp incisors on full display. He cages Mingyu’s head between his hands, and if he really wanted to, he could take all the time in the world to count every hair sprouting from Mingyu’s scalp.
He doesn’t know how long he’ll have this confidence, though, brewing deep in his gut. It probably won’t be long. Confidence comes to him in short sprints.
“You’d let me?” he asks. His voice has gone soft, almost reverent, and if he was in his own head enough, he’d probably be embarrassed about it. “You can’t say things like that. I won’t let you go.”
Mingyu’s hands find Jihoon’s waist, and he squeezes, fingerprints digging in deep. “You can keep me forever.”
Another rope frays. Snaps. Jihoon wonders deliriously if it was a tendon or an artery, something intrinsic and important. Still, he presses his mouth against Mingyu’s, hot and open, and Mingyu invites him to continue, arching upward. Jihoon curls his fingers in the pillowcase.
It’s hard to believe he’s allowed to touch.
“Mingyu-yah,” he says, weak. Years of resolve down the drain, just like this. Jihoon used to think he had a stronger will than this.
“Want me. Keep me, Jihoon-ah. Do whatever you want, okay?”
Jihoon presses his forehead to Mingyu’s, the warmth of it startling. Mingyu’s blushing, a faint dusty rose that makes Jihoon wonder if he can get any pinker, or if this is where it ends. Curiosity killed the cat, but maybe the cat discovered something worth its life before it died. “Everyone wants you,” he says, like maybe Mingyu had forgotten.
Mingyu’s blunt nails dig into Jihoon’s waist again, trapping him. “But they’re not you. Do you want to make me beg? Are you that sadistic?”
Jihoon hums. He’d never considered himself a sadist. An emotional masochist, maybe. Quite the opposite, no?
“I’m not sadistic, Mingyu-yah,” he says. He buries his face in Mingyu’s neck, running his tongue along every ridge and tendon he finds. Mingyu groans.
“Could have fooled me,” Mingyu says. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Jihoon used to think that he didn’t need to be near Mingyu. Just wanted to know. Just wanted to be more like him, maybe—creating light instead of reflecting it in odd, ugly patterns. He knows now that it’s not true. He’s greedy to his very core, and selfish to boot. He’ll take it because it’s being offered, and he doesn’t even really feel bad about it.
He drags his teeth across Mingyu’s bare collarbone.
“You could have told me,” he says, breath hot against Mingyu’s skin.
“There’s no fun in that,” Mingyu says.
His hands travel across Jihoon’s abdomen, fingers dancing softly across every ridge and muscle he can find. He flattens his palm and sighs, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “So fucking strong, Jihoon-ah. Look at you.”
Jihoon flushes, and he can feel the tips of his ears filling with blood, and seemingly the rest of the blood in his body rushing south. Here’s Mingyu, the most beautiful creature Jihoon has ever seen, looking at Jihoon through half-lidded eyes. “Don’t—”
“Don’t what?” Mingyu scoffs. “I’ll say what I want.”
“Mingyu-yah—”
“Fuck, you could probably throw me around, couldn’t you?”
It’s bait. Childish and easy to spot, designed specifically to provoke Jihoon to action. Jihoon, typically, prides himself on restraint, on the ability to spot bait and let it sit in the water unbitten. Not when it comes to Mingyu, of course. Never that.
He sinks his teeth into the thin skin covering Mingyu’s collarbone, hard enough to bruise. Mingyu sucks in a sharp breath and then shudders, tension leaving his body like a puppet with its strings cut. Jihoon licks over the reddened indent of his teeth, humming. “Probably could.”
He pulls the hem of Mingyu’s tank top upwards, yanking until it’s over his head and on the floor somewhere, totally obsolete.
“You can keep that one too,” Mingyu whispers.
Jihoon goes hot all over, caught out and horny and utterly ridiculous, and he sinks his teeth into Mingyu’s pectoral this time, right into the meatiest part. He sucks, just to make sure the mark will take. Mingyu hisses, his hands moving to twist into Jihoon’s hair, tugging on it.
It stings. Jihoon is plagued with the nagging feeling that he’s doing something blasphemous, desecrating holy land. It makes no sense, but nothing does right now, with Mingyu panting and hard beneath him, all tough angles and strong muscle.
Jihoon is ruinous. He wants to ruin, to drag Mingyu down with him. It’s insane. Sadistic, too. Maybe Mingyu was right.
“What do you want from me, Mingyu-yah?”
Mingyu smiles. He gives Jihoon’s hair a harsh tug, pulling him upwards until their mouths meet in a clash of teeth. “I want you to take what you want,” he says right up against Jihoon’s mouth.
Jihoon sighs against Mingyu’s skin, one of his hands travelling down to palm at Mingyu’s hardening cock through his boxers. Mingyu grins, flashing sharp teeth, and there’s something about the image that has Jihoon losing what was left of him, tether snipped clean in two.
In a trance, far too fast to savour any of it, Mingyu’s boxers hit the floor, and Jihoon is slicking his hand up in Mingyu’s precum and stroking him with a tight fist, much like he would do to himself. “Do you like it tight like this?” he asks, and he doesn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice.
Mingyu nods fervently, his grip still vice-tight in Jihoon’s hair. “Come on, are you going to fuck me or not?”
Jihoon goes dizzy. He nearly pitches forward when his feet hit the floor, but he manages to make his way to the dresser and fish out a bottle of lube. It’s nearly full. Jihoon takes a minute to be embarrassed about that, about the way it’ll tell Mingyu that he really hasn’t needed it lately, but he knows Mingyu would be pleased by that.
Good, he’d say with those stupid half-lidded eyes.
Jihoon shakes the thought right out of his head. He’d be the same way.
(A false equivalency. One of many. He needs to keep reminding himself of that before he starts getting in way over his head.)
He settles himself at the foot of the bed on his knees, and he kisses the ball of Mingyu’s ankle, then up the side of his shin, right up to his thighs. The higher he gets, the more he lets himself graze his teeth across the supple skin, gently scraping and dragging as if to remove the outer layer of skin, leaving something shiny and new and sensitive underneath that remembers nobody but Jihoon.
It’s fucked up. It’s even more fucked up when he digs his index finger right into that tender little bruise on Mingyu’s thigh. “Who gave you that?”
“Yah—I don’t remember her name!”
Jihoon smiles, sick and twisted. He feels like a wolf chewing on the leg of the smallest, cutest lamb in the herd.
He sucks over the bite while he drizzles lube over his fingers, leaving it angrier and darker until there’s no sign of the other one underneath. “Better,” he says softly. “Roll over.”
Mingyu takes orders well. Jihoon learns this now, as Mingyu rolls onto his stomach and gets his knees under him. His chest stays pressed flush to the mattress and he fits his back into a perfect arch, knees spread apart.
Jihoon takes a minute to stare. How couldn’t he?
(Mingyu looks practiced in this position. Jihoon’s mouth waters, but he wonders where he’ll stack up. One of many.)
“Did you touch yourself already?” Jihoon asks, though he knows the proof is in the pudding—Mingyu’s already wet, shining.
“Mhm,” Mingyu says lazily. He turns his head to rub his cheek against the soft pillowcase, looking at Jihoon over his shoulder. “Knew I’d get you today.”
Jihoon brings his hand down once, the force of his palm cracking against Mingyu’s ass causing a sting, but he smiles when he sees Mingyu shove his face right back in the pillow, groaning. “You’re such a—”
“Mmm, what am I? A slut?”
“You seem to know that already,” Jihoon says.
(Does he really think that of Mingyu? No, not really. But it seems to be what Mingyu wants to hear, and Jihoon would burn himself alive to keep Mingyu warm. It has always been that way.)
He presses a lubed up finger forward, circling it around Mingyu’s rim a few times before breaching it shallowly at first. Mingyu tries to push back, huffing in irritation, but Jihoon smacks the quickly reddening mark on his ass again, squinting. “Have some patience.”
Mingyu huffs again. “So you finally get to have me, and you’re not even in a rush about it?”
He’s right, sort of. Jihoon feels the pressure of finally like it’s bearing down on his ribcage, mashing the bones into tiny, sharp pieces. He wants so desperately that the feeling of finally getting to take has him on the verge of madness, his eyes watering as he stares down at Mingyu. He pushes a second finger forth, spreading them apart, scissoring to see how much they give.
“You fingered yourself before you came here? How many fingers?”
Mingyu jolts when Jihoon crooks his fingers. “Ah—shit,” he breathes. “Three. Didn’t want you to take your fucking time with it.”
Jihoon slaps his thigh this time. “Quit it, or you’re not getting anything. I’ll change my locks.”
A bold-faced lie and they both know it. Jihoon would sooner take his front door off its hinges so Mingyu could always visit when he wants to. It’s pathetic, a little bit sick, and Jihoon isn’t sure if he’s horrified or relieved to find that Mingyu prefers him this way.
Mingyu whimpers. “Oh—don’t do that, don’t change them.”
Jihoon snorts and crooks his fingers again, finding the soft and fleshy spot that makes Mingyu’s back arch even deeper, another soft whimper escaping him. His lisp is more pronounced when he’s like this, his words slurring together under Jihoon’s attention. Jihoon takes a deep breath in.
“Then you should be good.”
“I’ll be good,” Mingyu says, and he nods as best as he can with his face still buried in the pillow.
Jihoon isn’t sure he believes him, but that’s not important. He adds a third finger instead, deliberately avoiding Mingyu’s prostate, because Jihoon has found that it’s a little bit fun when Mingyu kicks up a fuss. “You’re so impatient,” he admonishes. “You and your instant gratification. What would you do if I stopped right now?”
“Probably knee you in the—ah, fuck—right in the balls, Socrates. Stop fucking around—”
Jihoon pulls his fingers out fast. Probably faster than what’s kind, but he’s not often praised for his kindness anyway. He smiles, a pitying thing, when Mingyu yelps and his feet kick outward. “Sorry, I’m sorry!” he says.
He turns his head again, and his eyes are watering. Jihoon blanches.
“Sorry—I, uh—”
“Why the hell are you stopping?”
Jihoon shudders. “I didn’t ask—”
Mingyu kicks a foot backwards, knocking his heel into the hard muscle of Jihoon’s thigh. A tear slips from his eye, tracking sideways and over his nose, darkening a little spot next to him on the pillow. He’s so pretty when he cries. Jihoon has the insane urge to watch it over and over again.
Mingyu kicks him again, though neither kicks are very hard. “I told you to do what you want. What don’t you understand about that?”
Jihoon wants to bite. He wants to bite and lock his jaw and never let go. So he does.
For the first time in his life, he does what he wants. He plasters himself across Mingyu’s back, nearly folding him in half, and Mingyu arches even more to accommodate him, like he was made to do it. Maybe he was, but Jihoon doesn’t have time to think about that right now. Instead, he sinks his teeth into Mingyu’s left trap. He sucks until there’s a beautiful blooming mark, one all his own.
“Stylist is going to kill you,” Mingyu groans. He grinds backwards, like he’s trying to find Jihoon’s cock through nothing but force of will.
“Don’t care,” Jihoon says.
He licks over the mark obsessively, then makes another one just below it. Mingyu has such a nice back—Jihoon has always thought so. He’d stare at it and then curse himself for it afterwards, hollowed out to nothing but a want for Mingyu with no common sense.
Mingyu bucks backwards again, panting into the pillow. “I’ve been waiting so long.”
Jihoon wants to tease a little more, push and push to see just how much Mingyu is willing to take, but the truth is that he’s so hard that it’s starting to hurt just a little bit. He can feel himself leaking through his boxers, leaving an embarrassing wet patch through the soft blue material.
He peels them off quickly, trying hard to ignore the way that he can see Mingyu’s head turning, can hear him groan at just the sight of Jihoon’s flushed cock.
It’s humiliating.
It’s equally earthshattering.
Jihoon’s not sure which he prefers, so he chooses not to think about it, instead soldiering on with his head held high. He takes himself in his hand and positions himself at Mingyu’s rim, groaning under his breath as he feels it clenching desperately. “Are you sure?”
Mingyu hisses like a cat being dunked in the bathtub. “Lee Jihoon, I swear to fucking—shit—”
Jihoon pushes in with one stroke, bottoming out without slowing down. Probably rude, but the strangled moan Mingyu lets out is more than worth it. Jihoon can only imagine the way Mingyu’s eyes roll back into his head as he takes it.
He’s glad he can’t see it. He wouldn’t be able to bear responsibility for his actions if he could.
Jihoon is good at watching Mingyu. It’s one of his many skills, and it comes in handy the best now, because he can tell when he’s giving it just the way Mingyu likes. It helps that Mingyu’s responsive, naturally so, and when Jihoon pulls out nearly all the way, he pulls no punches as he slams back in.
“Just like that,” Mingyu calls, like face down ass up is any position to be giving orders from.
Brat.
Jihoon brings a firm hand down on his ass, smacking and then grabbing a handful, squeezing the red area. Mingyu yelps but he backs right up into Jihoon’s thrusts, not even trying to have any dignity about it.
(It’s a freedom Jihoon wishes he had.)
He finds an easy rhythm after that. He expected to be out of his mind the whole time, and he is, partially—it’s just not out of pure anxiety like he’d anticipated. It’s desire, kept dormant for so long that once it breaks free, it bubbles up and over. There’s nothing Jihoon wants more than to be like this forever, and to make sure nobody gets to see this other than him.
(One of many. His brain tries to tell him that.
He doesn’t really listen—one of many is still part of the collective, and maybe that’s all Jihoon cares about now.
Maybe.)
Mingyu’s loud about it, too. With each delirious thrust of Jihoon’s hips, his toes curl and he lets out these cute, reedy moans that Jihoon didn’t know he was capable of making. Each thrust seems to put another nail in the coffin of the brat act he was trying to put on only minutes ago, and Jihoon decides he likes him best like this—pliant and willing and beautiful, only for Jihoon to see.
It’s heady. Jihoon has to bite on Mingyu’s shoulder to avoid saying something stupid like were you lying when you said I could have you forever?
He’s not that stupid, and he’s not that sick.
“You feel so fucking good, my Mingyu-yah,” he says right up against the warm skin.
Mingyu warbles something that’s not intelligible, and Jihoon thrusts harder, hard enough to make Mingyu slide right up the bed. It’s easy this way. Far easier than Jihoon ever thought it might be.
“Shit—hyung, I’m—”
“Close, baby?” Jihoon asks, having lost what shred of good sense remained with him.
Mingyu nods against the pillow, eyes puffy, tears tracking down his pretty skin. “Please?”
“Beg.”
Maybe he is some kind of sadist after all. Mingyu only whines, nodding fervently again. “Yes, okay—feels good, please touch me, hyung, please touch my cock, I really can’t take it anymore, it hurts—”
Jihoon takes pity on him, wrapping a hand around Mingyu’s aching cock and stroking messily, aided by the precum sliding down the shaft. It’s filthy, and Jihoon finds himself muttering nonsensical praises into Mingyu’s neck.
Mingyu finishes with a loud keen, staining Jihoon’s duvet. He goes boneless, flat on his belly, and Jihoon has the sense to pull out and stroke himself with his hand, cursing under his breath.
“Never letting you go, Mingyu-yah—so pretty like this, shit—”
It’s over soon after that, cum splattering across Mingyu’s tan back.
It looks like he belongs to Jihoon.
Maybe, now, he does.
—
Jihoon brackets Mingyu’s thighs with his own, later, digging the heels of his hands into Mingyu’s lower back.
“I’m sorry,” he says. There’s a damp rag and a cool bottle of water on the nightstand, and Mingyu’s watching a youtuber open Pokémon cards on his phone. “I was really rough.”
Mingyu hums. “It’s hot. I would have told you to stop if I didn’t like it.”
Jihoon lets out a soft huff, an approximation of a laugh. “I know, but—”
“Shut up. I came so hard my vision went blurry, okay?”
Jihoon balks for a second, and then digs his hands in harder. “Okay. If you’re sure.”
—
Mingyu used to dream of things that made no sense. Phantom hands with bedazzled and bloodied nails seizing him, squeezing until there was nothing left but ash and fragments of bone. Now he dreams of Jihoon and his blunt nails, cupping Mingyu’s face in both of his rough palms.
He wakes up smiling every time.