Archive of Our Own ^beta

The heartthrob of Ssangmun-dong.

It was a fitting nickname for someone like Seong Gi-hun, who in their small town had the most charming smile and the brightest eyes, the most alluring laugh, and a charismatic sense of humor that could make anyone’s chest ache from laughter.

While he’d never been called the nickname to his face, Gi-hun knew that he was universally well-liked at his high school. Over the past four years, he’d accumulated quite a large group of friends with whom he would eat lunch and play sports with after classes were through for the day. Gi-hun’s popularity extended far beyond his physical appearance and his ability to crack jokes. It included his athleticism, his kind personality, and his unwavering optimism that brought smiles to other people’s faces even as they cried. 

All bright lights have shadows, however. 

Cho Sang-woo was arguably Gi-hun’s closest friend, even though they were polar opposites at their very core. Unlike Gi-hun, Sang-woo rarely smiled or laughed, had a difficult time making friends, and failed to attract the attention of his fellow classmates for reasons extending beyond assistance with homework.

Attention had never really mattered to Sang-woo. He preferred to keep his head down, to ace his classes in silence, and to earn the praise of his mother for validation of his intelligent abilities. Where Gi-hun had plenty of care for others, Sang-woo had none. He preferred to mask his vulnerabilities, to keep them hidden from others so that he could never be manipulated or abused, but not even Sang-woo was immune from the throbbing in his chest that came from being around Gi-hun.

He often took his friendship with Gi-hun for granted. Although Gi-hun was a social butterfly and would often talk to people while Sang-woo stood quietly by his side, he always knew that he would never be left behind or forgotten. Gi-hun would often turn to him in a conversation that didn’t involve him, pat his back, and say ‘Right, Sang-woo?’ just to get him to talk.

Gi-hun knew how to get Sang-woo to show a little teeth when he smiled and how to pull a chuckle from his throat when he told a joke. He was released from classes slightly earlier than Sang-woo was because he was a senior, but he would always wait by the light post with his bike so that he could take Sang-woo home.

Sure, attention never really mattered to Sang-woo. Except when it came from one person.

Sometimes, when Gi-hun would talk to girls in front of him, jealousy would take root in his gut, so sour that he’d feel the urge to join their conversation just to pull Gi-hun away with an improvised excuse, but he never did. He’d always watch though, drawing his eyes away from the textbook on his desk or lap to gaze at his best friend.

The process was always the same, and Sang-woo didn’t know why he still cared so much, but he couldn’t help himself from counting off the steps like a practiced procedure. Gi-hun would smile at her as they talked, then the girl would lean forwards towards him, pushing her breasts out the best she could with her restrictive school uniform, and she would laugh at one of his jokes before asking for his phone number. He’d always give it to her, even though Sang-woo never saw him text anyone, and the girl would walk away with a blush on her cheeks and the ghost of a smile remaining on her lips.

Sang-woo knew that there was nothing wrong with the girls themselves. Some of them were quite beautiful, with long layered hair reaching down to their waist and sparkling eyes that matched Gi-hun’s own. Gi-hun had always been extremely picky with the girls that he went out with, regardless of how kind he was to everyone, and the girls that were lucky enough to spend an evening with him claimed that he was a fantastic lay. Not that Sang-woo particularly went out of his way to learn about Gi-hun’s ability in bed, mind you– it was just one of a million inescapable rumors about him that girls would loudly whisper in the corner of Sang-woo’s mathematics classroom.

He was indifferent about the fact that he’d never had sex before, let alone kissed anyone, but sometimes he would let his mind wander and imagine seeing Gi-hun from the point of view of one of his girlfriends. He wondered what the warmth of Gi-hun’s skin would feel like pressed against his own, what it would be like to be chosen by the person at their school that could have anyone they wanted, and what it would be like to be on top of him or even beneath him.

Sang-woo promised himself that Gi-hun would never know how he felt about him romantically or sexually out of fear of sabatoging their friendship. Who really knew how Gi-hun would respond to such sentiment anyway? Sang-woo knew for sure that Gi-hun wasn’t the type to tell the entire school about him, but he guessed that he would ask Sang-woo to keep his distance and move on from his unrequited feelings. Losing his only friend wouldn’t be something that Sang-woo would be able to bear, so he kept his mouth shut and his thoughts private, knowing that it was best if they never saw the light of day.

He could live with the way things were. He could live with the jealousy that clawed at his heart whenever a girl approached Gi-hun to talk to him, because he knew that Gi-hun would more than likely reject them anyways. He could live with never being able to express how he felt, and he could live making his way through high school as Gi-hun’s shadow, because then at least people would always see them as a pair that could never be separated.

*****

It had been two months since Gi-hun had asked a girl out on a date.

Sang-woo hadn’t mentioned it to Gi-hun, but he felt immensely relieved that it had been so long. He could only handle feeling so much jealousy before it became exhausting enough to distract him from his homework, and he found himself smiling just a little more in knowing that Gi-hun would be able to spend more time with him outside of school.

There was something off today, though.

Gi-hun, Sang-woo, and a few of their friends were sitting at their lunch table in the middle of the cafeteria. Like usual, Sang-woo was poring over a textbook with his lunchbox still closed next to him, since he didn’t like to eat while he studied, but Gi-hun was fidgeting next to him more than usual.

He turned away from his book and noticed Gi-hun’s leg nervously bouncing under the table next to his own. Gi-hun’s lunchbox hadn’t been opened yet, which was odd, since Sang-woo was usually the only one who waited to eat. When he finally looked up at Gi-hun’s face, he noticed that he was worrying his lower lip as he glanced around the sea of people eating lunch around them.

Although Gi-hun was quite an expressive person, Sang-woo had never seen him behave this way. Nervousness was not in Gi-hun’s emotional vocabulary. He was a great public speaker, even if his written speeches needed work; he presented complicated projects with ease; and he could perform excellently in sports even if the entire crowd was focused on him.

Clearly, he was looking for someone in the cafeteria, but who could elicit such a reaction out of him? Sang-woo felt the familiar heat of jealousy in his gut as he followed Gi-hun’s gaze to a beautiful girl, a senior like he was, who was sitting a few tables over from them.

Of course. Right when Sang-woo was comfortable with where they stood, he was going to ask someone else out. Glancing back at Gi-hun’s face, Sang-woo reached over and touched his arm.

“You should eat,” he suggested, pointing at Gi-hun’s untouched lunchbox. “You get crabby when you skip lunch.”

Gi-hun returned the eye contact and let out a laugh, but it didn’t sound genuine. “I’m not really hungry today. You can take what you want from it,” he explained, and his gaze went right back to her across the room.

Sang-woo rolled his eyes and, unable to control the bluntness of his question, asked, “You’re going to ask her out?”

The answer was obvious, but Sang-woo needed to hear him say it.

Gi-hun blinked and looked at him again with mild surprise on his face. “Yeah, I was going to. Why? Is that a bad idea?”

He shook his head and reopened his textbook to look disinterested, even if it felt like someone had wrapped a hand around his heart and started squeezing it. “No, just curious.”

“I’m really nervous, Sang-woo. I really like her, and you know that I never get nervous.”

“No one says no to you,” Sang-woo muttered.

“So, I should do it then?” Gi-hun asked, placing a hand on his wrist. His touch felt like fire on Sang-woo’s bare skin, but he didn’t move.

“You’re going to do it anyway, and you already know that she’s going to say yes, so why are you asking me?”

“I don’t know,” Gi-hun said thoughtfully. “I guess I wanted your–”

“Blessing? Approval?” Sang-woo finished, meeting his eyes once more.

“Opinion.” 

Sang-woo’s cheeks flushed and he looked at the girl across the room again. Awkward. “She’s, uh– nice. Pretty.”

Gi-hun sighed. “She has a friend, you know. Smart, attractive. Probably your type. Want me to set something up?”

“No, thanks.”

“Sang-woo, are you sure?” He lowered his voice to a whisper, as not to attract the attention of their other friends. “I feel like you’ve been kind of lonely recently, and–”

“Stop,” Sang-woo shook his head with a little more vigor than what was necessary. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Go ask her out.”

“But–”

“Go.”

Their other friends finally listened in on their conversation, and one of them decided to speak up. “You’re finally asking out Sun-hee?” he asked Gi-hun, who had already begun to stand up.

He nodded, and Sang-woo felt his jealousy burning at this point, souring the acid in his churning stomach. Was he the only one of them who didn’t know her name? Or the only one that didn’t know that Gi-hun had been crushing on her? He felt betrayed and misled, although neither of those things were really Gi-hun’s fault. When Gi-hun talked about girls around him, Sang-woo tended to zone out, so it made complete sense that he would miss such important details.

Sang-woo knew that two months had been quite an unusual length of time for Gi-hun to not go out with anyone. He mentally connected the puzzle pieces. Those entire two months, Gi-hun was never really more available to him— he had been planning for this moment. Sang-woo felt like he was going to throw up.

Gi-hun had never asked anybody out in front of him before, and Sang-woo didn’t know why he’d pushed him to do it. He and Gi-hun would never kiss. Sang-woo would never be able to tell him how much he loved him without losing him as a friend. All he could do was sit back with his nausea and watch as Gi-hun participated in the mess that he’d helped create.

He felt numb when Gi-hun finally approached Sun-hee on the other side of the cafeteria. Sang-woo couldn’t see his face, but he was sure that Gi-hun was smiling. His smile would be a little shy– coy, almost– and his eyes would be glistening like they always were, drawing her in as he spoke to her with gentle words, a soft invitation.

Sun-hee broke into a smile of her own, and Gi-hun took one of her delicate hands, placed a small piece of paper in it, and closed her fingers over her palm.

Sang-woo couldn’t watch any more of this. His mind flooded with images of the two of them kissing in a movie theater, holding hands beneath an umbrella as they walked home in the rain, and of Gi-hun on top of her as he fucked her. Bile rose up his throat, and he winced as he swallowed it back down and forced his attention down to his textbook, trying to cram his mind with information about cellular organelles to suppress his unbidden thoughts.

Lunch dragged after that, and so did the rest of their classes. Uncharacteristically, Sang-woo couldn’t focus on a single lecture. How could he, when it felt like the ground had fallen out from underneath his feet?

Gi-hun was standing next to Sun-hee at the light post, talking to her excitedly as he stood next to his bike. He was waiting for Sang-woo, of course, and for once, Sang-woo felt no urge to interrupt their conversation. Approaching them slowly, he stood next to Gi-hun, who greeted him with cheer.

“Sun-hee, this is Sang-woo, the guy I was telling you about.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Sang-woo. Gi-hun has said so many good things about you, and I’m sure my friend would like to talk to you if you’re interested. She likes the smart types, and you’re pretty cute.” She winked at the end of her sentence, and Sang-woo grimaced at her words.

To both him and Gi-hun’s surprise, he said, “Give me her number.”

Gi-hun slapped a hand onto his upper back, smiling widely. “There you go, Sang-woo! Maybe we can double date sometime.” He glanced back at Sun-hee and gave her a thumbs-up.

Sang-woo forcefully upturned the corners of his mouth as he took down the number of a girl that he never intended to text or call. He’d only done it to gauge Gi-hun’s reaction, and he hardly looked anything but pleasantly surprised. After he took down her number, Sun-hee sweetly said goodbye to the two of them and walked away.

“When’s your date?” Sang-woo found himself asking curiously, watching her leave.

“Tomorrow. Classic dinner and a movie. Can’t go wrong with that,” Gi-hun grinned, mounting his bike. Sang-woo joined him on it, settling his weight on the rear rack since the seat was much too small to properly fit both of them. Out of habit, he leaned forwards and wrapped his arms around Gi-hun’s waist. “Do you want to get japchae or something since we skipped lunch?”

“No thanks,” Sang-woo sighed, watching the scenery as Gi-hun pedaled home. “I’m not really hungry.”

“Aw, bummer,” Gi-hun whined. “I guess that’s alright. I should save money for tomorrow anyways.”

“What do you see in her?” He couldn’t help but ask after seeing how nervous she’d made him today in the cafeteria.

“She’s smart and funny. Oh, and kind too. And beautiful. So many things, Sang-woo.”

Sang-woo was glad that he couldn’t see Gi-hun’s face as he mused over all of the reasons why she was the most perfect girl in the world. Out of Gi-hun’s list, Sang-woo only fit one of those descriptions. Gi-hun would never describe him using those other words, he realized– not that he wanted to be called beautiful, per se, but rather to be known for possessing attractive qualities.

Sang-woo was smart, but he was far from funny. He regarded everyone with contempt rather than kindness, and he found himself to be average-looking. He wasn’t short with delicate hands, gentle facial features, and sparkling eyes. He was tall, an inch taller than Gi-hun in fact, with rougher palms, glasses, and harsh, masculine features– the polar opposite of what Gi-hun was looking for. No wonder Gi-hun would never find him attractive.

They spent the rest of the bike ride in silence, and when Gi-hun dropped him off at home, Sang-woo didn’t invite him inside.

Placing his backpack on the kitchen table to start his homework, he noticed a note that had been left out for him by his mother. It explained that she would be coming home from work later that night since she’d been asked out on a date by another vendor in the market.

When was the universe going to stop reinforcing that Sang-woo was destined to be alone while everyone around him was given the opportunity to be loved?

He placed the note back down on the table and entered the kitchen to view their liquor cabinet. Sang-woo counted three bottles of soju, and he pulled two of them into his arms, walked to his bedroom, and placed them on his pillows for later.

Sang-woo hardly drank alone. He was primarily a social drinker, and ‘social’ meant with Gi-hun only, since he didn’t find it very fun to be drunk by himself. However, since today had been so emotionally exhausting for him, he decided that he deserved to relax in the best way possible.

Maybe after he drank, he would refill the soju bottles with water and place them back in the cabinet, wack one out, and play some video games before he went to sleep. It was Friday, afterall, so he could stay up all night if he wanted.

It sounded like a well-thought out plan to him, so he returned to the kitchen table to rush through his homework. By the time he finished, it was only five in the evening and still far too early to drink. He took a long shower, contemplating the exchanges between him and Gi-hun that day, and when he redressed himself in clothes to sleep in, he cracked open the first bottle of soju and sipped it straight.

The burn did miracles to soothe the unpleasant feelings in his mind, and he paced himself as he downed the first bottle. He felt warm and light, liberated from his mental burdens and intrusive thoughts, and settled comfortably onto his bed, pulling up a TV show on his laptop before opening up the second bottle.

The second bottle went down at the same speed as the first, moderately paced but still enough to make him hit a wall as he traveled into the kitchen to fill the bottles back up with water.

The warmth in his body spread from his core to his cheeks, painting them rosy, and settled lightly between his legs. In the show that Sang-woo was watching, the male lead had begun to kiss the neck of an attractive female in a scene of soft-core porn, and he picked her up and roughly settled her onto the bedsheets before climbing on top and continuing to make out with her. The rest was left to the imagination, but the mental stimulation that Sang-woo had received from watching that scene was enough to spark up the unbidden thoughts that he’d originally tried to rid himself of.

Was Gi-hun rough in bed? Or was he gentle, taking his time to trace the supple lines of his partner’s skin and to press soft kisses to their neck and thighs until they spread their legs open for him? Did he tease them, denying them pleasure until they were dripping wet and begging for it? Or did he give them whatever they wanted, working his tongue over their heat while he fingered them in preparation to be fucked?

He rewinded the show and watched the scene all over again, but this time, he placed a hand on his crotch through his boxers and imagined that it was Gi-hun and Sun-hee. As Sang-woo palmed himself, he doubted that this scene accurately depicted how Gi-hun behaved during sex. The man was too rough. He’d picked up the female lead and all but slammed her into a wall before assaulting her neck, and Gi-hun was too kind of a person to ever handle somebody that way. Unless…

Sang-woo needed more. After all, a television show could only show so much skin, so he pulled up a porn website and started searching through embarrassing categories to find what he was looking for. Finally, after scrolling down three pages of search results, he settled on a video with a man that possessed a similar body to Gi-hun and started watching.

This scene was better, since the man went a little slower on the woman, but it was difficult for Sang-woo to get over the video’s corniness with the nicknames of their characters and the shitty storyline, even when drunk, so he shut it off.

He closed his eyes instead, reaching into his boxers and properly taking himself into a spit-slicked hand. He stroked himself from base to tip as he imagined placing his lips on Gi-hun’s body, taking a piece of skin into his mouth and sucking to leave a purpling mark in his wake. He imagined Gi-hun’s hand touching him instead of his own, asking him if he wanted to be fucked. He imagined tangling his fingers in Gi-hun’s hair and pulling when Gi-hun swallowed him to the hilt, begging him to cum in his mouth.

But yet, he was still unsatisfied. Sang-woo needed to know if his fantasies were accurate, and what was a better way to find out than to ask the man himself? So, in his drunken stupor, he pulled out his cell phone and opened up his list of contacts.

His thumb hovered over Gi-hun’s name for nearly a minute as he hesitated. Would he regret calling him in the morning? Sang-woo knew without a doubt that this was a bad idea, but he was drunk, and bad ideas didn’t exist when two bottles of soju had replaced the blood in his veins. He pressed the call button, though he had no idea what he was going to say.

Maybe he would get off to Gi-hun’s voice alone. Maybe he would work up the courage to ask a ballsy question, and maybe Sang-woo would invite him over with the promise of an entire bottle of soju to himself. Maybe he’d beg and complain about how they rarely spent the night together anymore, and maybe, just maybe, Sang-woo could convince him that he didn’t really need Sun-hee at all, not when Gi-hun had him.

The phone rang for longer than he’d expected, but when Gi-hun finally answered, he sounded like he’d been sleeping.

“Hello?” His voice came out as a mumble, deeper than his usual tone, and Sang-woo felt his cock twitch.

“Hyung,” he greeted, putting the phone on speaker and setting it next to him on the pillow.

“Sang-woo?” 

“Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah, but it’s– it’s fine. What’s up?” Gi-hun closed his eyes as he rested the phone against his ear, still comfortably lying beneath his bedsheets.

“I wanted to know if you were interested in coming over and drinking with me. I’ve got a bottle of soju for you.” Sang-woo lazily stroked himself once, anticipating Gi-hun’s response.

“Sang-woo, you know that it's one in the morning? Have you been drinking alone?”

“Yeah, but I was thinking about you.”

Gi-hun’s eyes opened and he frowned in the dark. “About me?”

“Yeah,” Sang-woo confessed. He pulled down his boxers to expose himself to the air of his bedroom and immediately took himself back in hand.

“What about me?” Gi-hun asked, clearly confused.

“That we haven’t had a sleepover in a while, and that I wish you were here.” Sang-woo finished his sentence with a small hiss as he swiped his thumb over his tip.

“I can’t come over, Sang-woo. My mom would kill me if she caught me sneaking out this late.”

“So don’t get caught.”

“Sang-woo, it’s just not a good idea, you know? Maybe Sunday or Monday night, if your mom says it’s–”

“Say my name again,” Sang-woo sighed.

“What?”

“Fuck– my name. Can you say it again?”

Gi-hun sat up rigidly in bed, swallowing hard as he pressed his phone tightly against his ear. “Sang-woo, what are you doing?”

Sang-woo let out a muffled groan, and before he could answer, Gi-hun asked, “Are you jacking off right now?”

“Y-yeah, I wanted to ask you a question.”

Gi-hun said nothing, though his heart trembled in his chest, and he couldn’t bring himself to hang up the phone.

“Hyung?”

“Yeah,” Gi-hun said, paralyzed by his own shock.

Sang-woo never called him, so the fact that he’d reached out so late, especially when doing something so private, made Gi-hun unbelievably curious, although he was still weirded out.

“When you fuck girls, are you gentle?”

Gi-hun’s mouth was bone dry. “I– I try to be. Listen Sang-woo, I’m flattered that you thought of me while doing this, but–”

“No,” Sang-woo pleaded. “Don’t hang up. I’m so close– please…”

“You’re drunk, Sang-woo. You’re going to freak about this in the morning. I’ll forget about this for your sake, okay? Pull up a porn video or something.” Gi-hun felt heat pooling in his groin knowing that Sang-woo had brought himself to the edge from his voice alone, but he willed it away because he knew that he wasn’t in his right mind. He’d always liked Sang-woo, but he’d never thought of him like this, and he certainly never thought that Sang-woo felt this way towards him. His mind wandered to all of the times that Sang-woo had wrapped his arms around his waist when they biked home from school, all of the times that they’d hugged each other, and all of the sleepovers that they’d had in each of their beds. Had Sang-woo felt this way towards him this whole time?

“Porn isn’t good enough. Can you get me off just this one time?”

Gi-hun sighed and relaxed back against his pillows, tracing a finger over the hem of his boxers. Sang-woo was starkly independent and reserved, so how could Gi-hun turn him down when he asked for something like this so vulnerably? Sang-woo was at Gi-hun’s mercy now, and he enjoyed the power trip, so Gi-hun put on one of his sweeter voices that he used when talking to girls, and let go of his inhibitions.

“Alright, fine. Just this one time. Tell me how it feels when you touch yourself.”

“It feels– God, Gi-hun, it feels–”

Gi-hun’s cock twitched in his boxers. “You wish it was me, don’t you? That’s why you called me, isn’t it?”

Sang-woo moaned without trying to hide it. Gi-hun reached a hand and wrapped it around himself, lazily pumping at the sound of the noises that Sang-woo was making for him.

“Need you so bad, hyung. Been thinking about you for months, about your mouth and your– fuck–”

“My what? Sang-woo, tell me.”

“Your dick,” he murmured, twisting his hand as he worked it up his shaft. He was steadily approaching his orgasm, and he knew that he wouldn’t last much longer, especially with how Gi-hun was talking to him now.

Gi-hun pulled himself out of his boxers and quietly increased the pace of his strokes. “Tell me what you want, Sang-woo-ah. What you need. Can you tell me?”

“I wanna– I wanna be fucked like one of your little girlfriends.” He paused and then let out a poorly-stifled moan as he stroked himself with increasing vigor, desperately trying to reach his orgasm. “Fuck, Gi-hun, I’m so close—“

Gi-hun groaned at his confession, suddenly unable to deny his attraction towards the idea of fucking his best friend. He could imagine Sang-woo’s head buried in the bedsheets while he was fucked, his moans muffled by the mattress as Gi-hun thrusted into him over and over again. Sang-woo wasn’t attracted to anybody, but the fact that he was willing to give up everything to put out for him, of all people, was unbelievably sexy to him.

Right now, Sun-hee didn’t exist. The other girls that lusted after him didn’t exist. The only people in the world that existed were him and Sang-woo, two best friends that were privately getting off to each other over the phone. Gi-hun didn’t know whether Sang-woo would remember any of this, or how it would affect their friendship on a day by day basis, but he promised himself that he wouldn’t ever let Sang-woo feel shameful about it. He was drunk, after all, and if Sang-woo didn’t remember, then Gi-hun would.

Gi-hun would remember the sweet noises that fell from Sang-woo’s mouth at the sound of his voice, and he would remember how Sang-woo had pleaded to be pushed closer and closer to the edge, knowing that Gi-hun was the only person that could make him cum.

Gi-hun felt his own orgasm building much faster than Sang-woo’s had. He wondered how long Sang-woo had been touching himself before he called him, and if he preferred to stroke himself at a teasing pace, edging himself a few times before he came. He wished that he could see what Sang-woo looked like now, just like how Sang-woo wished that he could see him.

Finally, after a few moments of biting his lip, Gi-hun spoke once more.

“If I was there, Sang-woo, I’d fuck you so good that you’d cum untouched. You’d be screaming my name so loud that you’d wake the neighbors… I’d take such good care of you, baby. Go ahead and cum for me, okay? Let me hear you.”

No force on Earth could’ve kept Sang-woo from cumming, and he bit out a curse as he did so, watching as his cum leaked all over his hand and abdomen. He’d never come this intensely before, not even from edging himself for thirty minutes while he watched his favorite porn video. As he milked his orgasm, he wondered how much better it would feel if Gi-hun was actually inside of him, tightly gripping his hips and nipping at his back while he came, and he wondered what it would feel like to be on top, to take Gi-hun and feel his body pulling him in as he kissed his neck and left marks to show everyone who he belonged to.

He relaxed against the pillow, catching his breath, and gasped out, “That was the best orgasm I’ve ever had.”

Gi-hun was on edge from the sounds that Sang-woo had made while he came. He reached over to his nightstand, grabbed a few tissues, and let himself go, biting down on his lip again in an attempt to keep himself quiet.

“Shit,” Gi-hun whispered, tucking himself back into his boxers. He stood up to throw the soiled tissues away, and when he returned back to his phone, the call was still active. He briefly wondered if Sang-woo knew that he’d been touching himself too, or if he’d been quiet enough to make him think that he was just helping him out.

“Sang-woo?”

“Hm?” Sang-woo had sloppily cleaned himself up before laying back in bed, staring at the television and debating whether or not to play video games.

“Make sure you get some sleep. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“Oh, yeah– okay. Enjoy your date tomorrow, hyung.” 

At that, Gi-hun hung up the phone. His date was technically today, since it was past midnight, but how could he let himself forget? He’d been crushing on Sun-hee for two months, and right when he made a move, Sang-woo had to call him and fuck with his head? Luckily, although he could think about it when he got off sometimes, he never had to mention what had happened between them ever again. He lay back down beneath his comforter, took a deep breath, and looked up at the ceiling until he fell asleep.

After hearing Gi-hun’s advice, Sang-woo pulled a blanket over himself, realized how tired he really was, and closed his eyes to put an end to his long night.

*****

It turned out that drinking two bottles of soju was not enough to prevent someone from remembering things, although it did make for a splitting headache the next morning.

Sang-woo surprisingly didn’t throw up, even though he hadn’t eaten much prior to drinking the night before. He’d always been able to handle his alcohol physically, but mentally– well, Sang-woo was aware that he laughed more than usual when drunk, but he tended to retain most of his senses regardless.

He went to the kitchen to pull some ibuprofen from the cabinet for his headache, and forced himself to eat a banana so as to not upset his stomach. When he returned upstairs, he brushed his teeth, combed his hair, and made his bed, although he noticed that he hadn’t plugged his phone in the night before. It was one of his pet peeves to wake up with a nearly dead cell phone, and he grudgingly plugged it in before opening his laptop to check whether or not he had more homework to do.

The porn tab from the night before was still pulled up on the screen. It started playing embarrassingly loudly, which made him curse and hurriedly close out the tab in the hopes that his mother hadn’t heard what he’d been listening to. He realized that he hadn’t only imagined watching porn the night before, but there was something else pricking at his mind. He only faintly remembered it, something having to do with his cell phone and why it wasn’t plugged in when he went to sleep.

Was he watching porn on his phone too? After unlocking it, he pulled up the internet, but there were no porn tabs in his history. Maybe he’d had an intense wet dream? His boxers weren’t soiled, so that couldn’t be right. When he finally assumed that he’d gotten off to the shitty porn video on his laptop after all, a text from Gi-hun popped up onto his phone.

From: Gi-hun
To: Sang-woo

Just wanted to make sure that you’re okay. You must’ve drank a lot last night.

Sang-woo dropped his phone onto the mattress like it burned him. All of the memories flooded back to him at once, figuratively knocking him to the ground, and his face burned with shame and embarrassment.

He remembered exactly what had happened, what he’d said, what he’d done… Sang-woo was mortified. How could he ever show his face in front of Gi-hun again? He imagined Gi-hun forbidding him from ever riding his bike with him on their way to and from school, for ever being able to call him his friend, or for being able to spend the night at his house. Sang-woo grabbed at his chest, suddenly unable to breathe as his heart pounded beneath his palm. He’d ruined everything with a single phone call. There was no way that he could ever speak to Gi-hun after last night, especially not in reference to what had happened. He closed the notification on his phone and laid back on top of his mattress, placing his hands over his face and cringing as he remembered his poor judgement and impulsive actions.

Did he really have to call on the day of Gi-hun’s date, too? Sang-woo wished that he would receive some sort of karmic punishment for what he’d done, but he quickly decided that perhaps the pounding in his skull and his newfound self-hatred were enough to make atonement.

He spent the next few hours with his head buried in his textbooks, once again trying to fill his mind with useless information to distract himself from his shameful feelings.

Sang-woo turned to a page in his science textbook that discussed alcohol, and he read every single detail as he mentally promised to never drink again. Knowing in greater detail that alcohol primarily affected the brain by lowering inhibitions, impairing judgement, senses, and cognition– no wonder he’d made such a God-awful decision on a whim with a hand in his boxers.

Damn teenage hormones, he thought. I’m a fucking idiot.

The door to his bedroom opened in the middle of the afternoon, and Gi-hun walked in with a little less confidence than usual. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, like he was nervous to approach Sang-woo further. He was dressed quite nicely, in a button-up with a nice jacket and dark jeans, and Sang-woo knew without a doubt that he’d been getting ready to take Sun-hee out on their date.

At the sight of him, Sang-woo’s mouth went completely dry, his heart drummed in his ribcage, and he stood up from the chair in front of his desk. Was Gi-hun going to yell at him? Or swing at him? Or simply confront him and explain why they couldn’t be friends anymore?

Gi-hun’s expression was tense when he crossed his arms. Sang-woo didn’t think it was a good look on him, since he preferred to see Gi-hun when he was happy, but he couldn’t think of a single reason why Gi-hun would smile at him at that moment.

“You didn’t answer my text.”

Sang-woo swallowed, but it was painful due to the aridness of his throat. “I was sick.”

Gi-hun sighed. “You never drink alone, so I was worried for you. Can you just tell me if you’re alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“Can you stop speaking in such short sentences? You’re pissing me off. I’m trying to show concern for you as a friend. Can you let me do that?”

Sang-woo crossed his own arms. “Why are you confronting me like I’m an alcoholic in need of an intervention? I drank alone one time because I had a shitty day. And trust me, I don’t plan on doing it again.”

“Okay, well, what happened? Why was your day shitty?” Gi-hun asked, walking over and sitting on the end of Sang-woo’s bed like he was intending to stay.

How was Sang-woo supposed to answer his question? The only bad thing that had happened yesterday was that Gi-hun had asked out Sun-hee in front of him, but he couldn’t tell him that.

“Sang-woo?”

“I failed a test,” he lied.

“Bullshit. You would’ve been bitching about that all day yesterday if that was true.” He paused for a moment and glanced at Sang-woo’s bookshelf. “You seemed upset at lunch yesterday, though.”

“What are you trying to get me to confess?”

Gi-hun’s eyes flicked back up to Sang-woo’s own. “Nothing, Sang-woo. I just want to understand what’s going on with you.”

“You mean you want to know why I called?”

“Yeah.”

“I was drunk and not thinking straight. That’s why. I also don’t have plenty of people lining up to be fucked by me, you know.”

“So you chose me?” Gi-hun cocked his head to the side slightly, desperately trying to understand Sang-woo’s take on the situation.

“I’m not going to continue having this conversation with you. I was embarrassed enough without you coming in here and asking me a million questions.” Sang-woo removed his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose to ward off his returning headache.

“Don’t be embarrassed.”

“What?”

“I said, don’t be embarrassed. It’s fine, Sang-woo. You brought that up, not me. I was completely fine with ignoring it, but I don’t want you to think that we can’t be friends anymore, so I’ll reassure you if I have to. I liked it,” he shrugged. “It was weird at first, but I didn’t hate it. You’re actually kind of sexy.”

Sang-woo blushed bright red. “Kind of sexy,” he repeated. How insulting was that? “I think you should leave.”

“You weren’t the only one who got off, you know.”

Sang-woo completely turned away from him and closed his eyes as he rested his hands on the desk. “What are you trying to do to me, Gi-hun?”

“To give you what you want.”

“I’m not just another hole for you to stick your dick in. I didn’t call you because you’re the only attractive person on the planet. I called you because I have feelings for you. Don’t you have a date to get to anyways?”

“Yeah, I do, but come on. You know that’s not fair. If I’d known that you felt this way about me sooner, then maybe–”

“Go and fuck her,” Sang-woo sighed, closing his textbook and turning around to face him. “Forget this ever happened. I know that I will.”

“For someone so smart, you can be so stupid sometimes.” Gi-hun stepped down from the bed and closed the distance between them. He traced two fingers under Sang-woo’s jaw and watched as his eyes softened at the contact. “I’ve always liked you, Sang-woo. I just never thought about you sexually because you’re so closed off about those things. After all of these years, you had no idea?”

Sang-woo exasperatedly grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away from his face. “Stop. Get out, Gi-hun.”

Gi-hun looked at him dejectedly, and Sang-woo wondered if his feelings were actually hurt, or if he was just not used to being denied what he wanted.

“Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be. Go on your date. I still want us to be friends, but right now, you need to leave. Please.”

“What if I called you?” Gi-hun asked suddenly, and a chill went down Sang-woo’s spine.

Before he could respond, Gi-hun leaned in close to his ear, brushing his lips against it. “If I called you and asked you to help me cum, would you do it?”

Unconsciously, Sang-woo’s tongue parted from his mouth to lick his lips. He wanted to say yes, but the problem with doing so would be that it would counter every single thing that he’d been arguing throughout their conversation thus far. Sang-woo was trying to bury his feelings and sexual attraction for Gi-hun in the same hole that he’d dug before, but it was no longer there. Once they were out in the open, how could he ever really hide them again? Gi-hun wasn’t going to let it go now that he knew, but Sang-woo wouldn’t let himself be taken advantage of.

“Over the phone or in person?” Sang-woo asked confidently, turning his head to look Gi-hun in the eye. Their noses bumped into each other, and he knew that Gi-hun was smiling with delight.

“You tell me.”

A loud alarm went off on Gi-hun’s phone, scaring them apart and ruining the intimacy of their moment together. He stepped back from Sang-woo, pulled his phone out, and hurriedly silenced it. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “I wasn’t expecting to be here this long.”

“That’s alright. Let me know how your date goes.”

“Sang-woo,” Gi-hun met his gaze and shook his head incredulously. “You think after all of this, I still want to go on my date?”

“I want you to go because you have real feelings for her. I’m sorry for confusing you by calling last night, but I still think it’s best if we forget what happened. I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

Truthfully, although Sang-woo had been agonizing over what had happened during their phone call all morning, he no longer wanted to forget it. How was he supposed to move on now that he knew that Gi-hun reciprocated his feelings and had found pleasure in listening to him get off over the phone? Sang-woo was far from stupid, and he knew that Gi-hun’s intentions with him were largely driven by a mixture of curiosity and sexual confusion. He knew better than to let himself be led on by such unfounded desires, even if he wanted Gi-hun all to himself anyways.

Over the phone, Sang-woo had said that he wanted to be fucked, but the longer he looked at Gi-hun in his bedroom, the more he realized that the opposite was more appealing. He wanted to fuck the smugness off of his face, to knock him off of his high pedestal and show him exactly where the real power lay in their friendship. Sang-woo wouldn’t beg Gi-hun to let him cum. If this was what Gi-hun truly wanted, then he would have to be the one to call and beg for it.

He wondered if, regardless of his words, Gi-hun would still think about him even while he was on his date, daydreaming about his mouth and the moans that had spilled from it the night before. He would think about how Sang-woo had described his orgasm as the best he’d ever had, and he would imagine ways to make him cum even harder in person.

Sang-woo was satisfied with his thoughts, and even more pleased with the way that he’d been able to turn things away from himself. He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at Gi-hun, who was staring at his phone screen as if he was considering something. “Are you going?”

Gi-hun’s facial expression was hesitant, nervous. “I guess so,” he mumbled, and Sang-woo couldn’t help but crack a smile, even as the familiar burn of jealousy began in his stomach.

His smile was not one of happiness. It was one of pride, one that depicted how his ego had swollen from Gi-hun’s confessions and willingness to stay, and Gi-hun looked thoroughly startled by it. At that moment, Sang-woo knew that he’d won the game that he’d started between them.

Gi-hun opened his mouth to say something else, but closed it as he grew flustered from Sang-woo’s twisted grin. Suddenly, the inch that Sang-woo had on him was far too great of a height difference, and the intimidation was enough to make him leave.

When Gi-hun reached the door, Sang-woo settled back onto his bed. “Have fun,” he called out, and Gi-hun turned back to glance at him with pink cheeks before finally walking out and closing the door behind him.

Sang-woo knew without a doubt that Gi-hun would call him soon— all he had to do was wait for it.

*****

Gi-hun was late for his date with Sun-hee.

When he arrived at the movie theater, she was standing adjacent to the ticket booth and glancing intensely at her phone. Gi-hun knew that she was waiting to hear from him, but he’d forgotten to text or call her due to how his mind was still reeling with everything that had happened to him in the past day. He approached her with an apologetic smile on his face, and she greeted him with a smile of her own, unable to stay angry with him for long.

“Don’t make a habit of it,” she chided playfully, and he took her hand as they stood in line to buy the movie tickets.

Gi-hun knew that his charisma was lacking throughout their date. Usually when he took a girl to the movies, he would pull out all the stops, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and waiting for the proper cue to kiss her, but with Sun-hee, he sat a little more rigidly than usual.

It wasn’t her fault. She was still the same beautiful, kind, and intelligent girl that he’d been crushing on for two months, but he couldn’t let go of the unresolved sexual tension that was building between him and Sang-woo. In twenty four hours, Sang-woo had completely stolen his attention. It boiled his blood, although he was rarely angry, and he promised himself that he would never give Sang-woo the satisfaction of knowing that he was still thinking about him in that way by calling first.

The only reason that he’d asked if Sang-woo would come over to help him cum was to gauge his reaction. To tease him, almost, but instead of giving Gi-hun the flustered reaction that he’d been expecting, Sang-woo had asked that damned question that immediately sent an intense heat between his legs.

Over the phone or in person?

He had no intention of bootycalling Sang-woo, but the way that he had continually brushed off their phone call like it was nothing and pushed him to go on his date without resolving the issue left an emptiness in his gut. They weren’t finished yet, and mentally, Gi-hun knew that if Sang-woo really wanted it, then he would fuck him a hundred times. Sang-woo would have to approach him first, though, because Gi-hun could have any girl from school in his bed at any moment. He didn’t really need Sang-woo as a source of sexual pleasure when he had so many other options.

Gi-hun was a team player. He’d always shown incredible sportsmanship in the face of defeat, but he had a major secret, and he masked it well: he was a terrible sore loser. The reason that no one ever knew that about him was because he never lost, and the fact that Sang-woo somehow prided himself on the delusion that he had Gi-hun wrapped around his finger sounded like a loss to him. Quite the opposite was true, actually– Sang-woo had been the one to call him initially, begging to be fucked like one of his girlfriends. If anyone was losing the game that had begun between them, it was Sang-woo.

There was no doubt in Gi-hun’s mind that he’d end his night by taking Sun-hee to bed. She was giving him all of the usual cues that he received from girls on his dates, feeling him up and placing his hand on her upper thigh so that he could move it up her skirt. He’d kissed her in the movie theater with the same fervor that he would’ve given to Sang-woo if they’d kissed in his bedroom, even though he tried to convince himself that he wasn’t thinking about him.

Aside from making out with her during the movie, he could hardly pay attention to it anyways. Gi-hun’s pride had taken a major blow, and he would be damned if he would ignore it. While the two of them were at dinner, they carried a steady conversation although his mind was elsewhere, and when she finally whispered in his ear asking him to fuck her, he couldn’t get her to his bedroom quickly enough.

Though he was excited to rid himself of his pants, he tried to take everything at his usual pace, buttering her up with sweet, slow kisses and using his tongue to lick trails over her body as he gently rubbed her through her panties. Gi-hun knew that foreplay with a girl was completely different than it was with a guy, but he wondered if Sang-woo would still appreciate gentleness like this, or if he would want it rough and messy.

Girls tended to like sex with Gi-hun because he took it slow, but he could feed into one’s kinks if he needed to. He knew that Sang-woo wouldn’t really have any kinks since he was still a virgin, but he really seemed to enjoy the way that Gi-hun had spoken to him over the phone. What else was Sang-woo secretly into?

He pulled Sun-hee’s panties down and started fingering her, completely oblivious to how wet she was for him as he moved two digits in and out of her with ease. He’d done this with girls so often that he almost believed that it was second nature for him. They always loved it, so sometimes he’d find himself zoning out at this part, but he tried his best to finger them well enough that they’d beg for his cock sooner.

He wished that Sang-woo would call him for something like this. His feelings for Sang-woo were real, since he’d always possessed a soft spot for him in his heart, but if they couldn’t be together romantically, then they could at least explore each other sexually. It wouldn’t hurt anyone if they fucked while they were both technically single.

“Oppa, can you go slower? It kind of hurts.”

“Sorry,” Gi-hun murmured, kissing her and slowing the movement of his fingers. “Better, baby?”

She nodded with a sigh and took him in hand to work up his erection.

Sun-hee deserved better than this. She deserved someone that truly wanted to take their time with her, and if Gi-hun had fucked her yesterday, he would’ve been that person. He mentally cursed Sang-woo for the millionth time that night, and when she was finally ready for him, he quickly slid on a condom and eased himself in.

He asked if she was alright, something girls always found charming, linked his arms under hers, buried his head in her neck, and started thrusting. It took a while for his orgasm to start building in his gut, even though she was moaning and scratching his back profusely, and it wasn’t until he imagined Sang-woo beneath him that his climax hit him like a train. He shuddered as he came into the condom, and Sun-hee praised him as she brushed the sweaty pieces of hair from his face and kissed him with tongue.

They lay together in the bed for a while, even though Gi-hun felt quite guilty that his heart wasn’t beating for her like it should be. He’d waited for this moment for two months, and now that it had come and gone, he’d completely taken it for granted and imagined someone else. His best friend, at that.

Thankful that his mother wasn’t there to see them, Gi-hun escorted her outside after an hour or so and walked her home. When they reached her front door, Gi-hun leaned down to kiss her, and when they pulled away, she gave him a wide smile.

“I had a great time tonight, Gi-hun. We should do this again sometime.”

“Me too,” he smiled, though it lacked its usual charm. “I’ll text you.” He kissed her one more time. “Have a good night, Sun-hee.”

When Gi-hun got home, he felt the strange urge to smash something, but he couldn’t find anything to break. Sang-woo had not left his mind once the entire night, and his internal anguish grew even more once he realized that Sang-woo had been right about his assumptions.

Gi-hun wouldn’t tell him about what had happened tonight with Sun-hee, but he’d definitely lost the battle over his pride. Even though Gi-hun knew that he could have anyone that he wanted, he didn’t want just anybody. He wanted Sang-woo, and it made him ill to think about how he was losing their game even though he’d tried to deny it all night.

Was Sang-woo facing a similar internal battle? Gi-hun sincerely doubted it, because he knew how stubborn Sang-woo could be, but he refused to give in and call just yet. He doubted that he would see Sang-woo tomorrow, since it was a Sunday, but he decided that he would gauge how Sang-woo was feeling over the next few days at school.

As Gi-hun lay in bed to go to sleep, he continued to mentally list all of the ways that he could make Sang-woo call him first. Maybe he could get him to crack, somehow, with innocent flirting at lunchtime or a calculated touch on the thigh or lower back. Gi-hun was a master at playing this game with girls, and he reasoned that seducing a guy couldn’t be that much different.

He promised himself at that very moment that Sang-woo would not win their game.

*****

Gi-hun pulled up outside of Sang-woo’s house with his bike on Monday morning and flashed Sang-woo his brightest smile when he saw him come outside.

“Morning,” he hummed, almost too cheerfully. Sang-woo only grunted in response before sitting behind him on the bike seat and sliding his arms around his waist like usual.

Gi-hun had never noticed how good this felt, to have such strong arms wrapped around his body like that. It felt safe and warm, and he felt himself leaning into the touch a little more as he pedaled the two of them to school, thinking of something to say.

When they dismounted, Sang-woo thanked him and started brushing his fingers through his own hair to fix it. Gi-hun stepped forwards to offer to do it for him, but before he could, a female voice called his name from across the courtyard.

The two boys glanced in the direction of the sound, and to Gi-hun’s surprise, Sang-woo smirked when they saw Sun-hee waving and walking towards them.

“Your date went well then, I’m guessing?” Sang-woo asked, glancing at Gi-hun.

“Of course it did. Doesn’t mean I had a good time, though,” Gi-hun gruffed, meeting his eyes. His opportunity to say something flirty was gone, leaving only annoyance in its wake.

Sun-hee reached them, and Sang-woo jealously looked between her and Gi-hun for a few moments even though his expression was calm. He excused himself, and Gi-hun tried to think of a reason for him to stay, but it was too late. Cursing under his breath, he spoke to Sun-hee until it was time for their first class, and he quickly kissed her cheek before walking away. What kind of shitty timing was that? He would have to try again later.

Gi-hun didn’t see Sang-woo again until lunchtime, and he was still clueless about how to interact with him. How do you flirt with other guys without acting like a girl? He doubted that Sang-woo would be very receptive to verbal flirtations, even though he liked the way that Gi-hun had spoken to him over the phone, but it was a start.

When Sang-woo sat down next to him in the cafeteria and placed a textbook on the table, Gi-hun frowned at it.

“You should put that away, Sang-woo. Let’s talk or something.”

Sang-woo blinked at him. “Talk? Or something?”

Gi-hun cracked a small smile at him. “Depends on what something is.”

Shit, that was terrible!

Gi-hun’s smile faltered but he didn’t turn away. Visibly cringing, Sang-woo pushed the textbook aside and pulled his lunchbox out of his backpack to open it. When he picked up his pair of chopsticks, he noticed that Gi-hun was still looking at him.

“Are you going to keep staring at me or are you going to eat?”

“Sorry,” Gi-hun shook his head. “I have trouble looking away from pretty things.”

That was even worse.

Sang-woo nearly choked on the piece of kimbap that he’d placed in his mouth. He coughed to clear his throat, and when he swallowed, it looked painful. “What are you doing, hyung?”

“Picking you up.”

“You’re telling me that you flirt that badly, and girls from this school line up to go on dates with you? You’re lucky you’re good looking.”

Gi-hun huffed. How could Sang-woo flirt with him and insult him in the same sentence so seamlessly?

Using pickup lines on girls was… different. Easier. You could compliment the smallest thing on a girl and she would think about it all day, but Sang-woo didn’t care about compliments that were unrelated to his intelligence. Maybe he should save the verbal flirtations for the bedroom. That is, if they ever made it to one.

One of their friends turned to face Gi-hun. “How was your date with Sun-hee?”

“Good,” Gi-hun sighed, sick of talking about it. “We’ll probably go out again.”

“Did you fuck her?”

Gi-hun nodded as his cheeks flushed, and his friends burst into excited chatter. “Dude,” one of them said. “You’ve gotta tell us everything.”

“Later.” Gi-hun waved his hand and glanced at Sang-woo, who was quiet and had stopped eating his food. Maybe jealousy was the best way to get his attention, since he seemed so bothered by it. “She’s hot as shit though.”

Unprovoked, Gi-hun hid one of his hands under the table and placed it on Sang-woo’s thigh, just above his knee, as if to reassure him. He squeezed it lightly, and Sang-woo nonchalantly looked at him to silently ask what he was doing. Gi-hun slid it higher, and his pulse raced even while he continued to talk with his other friends like nothing else was going on.

Sang-woo sat as still as a statue, and when Gi-hun’s hand reached the middle of his thigh, he pulled it off and shook his head.

The two of them didn’t speak again until their bike ride home. They’d both been invited to play sports after school with their other friends, but Sang-woo didn’t want to go because he had a test to study for. Gi-hun thought about refusing so that he could spend more time with him, but decided against it. Besides, maybe playing sports would help clear his head from the mess that had accumulated within it over the past few days.

*****

Playing sports did not clear his head. 

Weirdly enough, Gi-hun found himself missing his best friend by the time he returned to his bedroom. He knew that he’d taken Sun-hee’s presence for granted when they went out on their date, but had he been taking Sang-woo’s presence for granted this entire time?

Gi-hun knew that he’d always been a good friend to Sang-woo, but he considered the possibility that he should’ve allocated more time out of his day to him, especially now that they knew how they felt about each other.

Maintaining a close friendship, trying to move forwards with semi-romantic feelings, and exploring a sexual dynamic all with the same person was quite a difficult balance to maintain. He couldn’t let himself be deterred, however. Gi-hun had set a goal for himself, and he intended to achieve it, even though things weren’t looking too good for him.

An hour after he’d come home, Gi-hun stood in the shower with a hand wrapped around his erection, thinking about Sang-woo. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to stop thinking about him, even though it had only been a few days since their phone call.

Sang-woo wasn’t going to ask him to come over– that much was clear. He’d already waited this long for Gi-hun’s attention, so it was obvious that he would have no trouble waiting even longer. Gi-hun knew that his attempts at flirting had failed entirely, but he blamed it on his nervousness and inexperience with men. Sang-woo, however, was a whole different breed of man to him. He was reserved, strong, and thoroughly masculine, and Gi-hun wanted to undo him entirely. He wanted to fuck Sang-woo the way that he’d begged to be, but better.

Just the idea of breaking down Sang-woo’s walls and reducing him to a begging, moaning mess was sexier to Gi-hun than being able to fuck the most beautiful girl in the world.

Gi-hun knew that there was someone with a big heart buried beneath Sang-woo’s heavily guarded facade. He hadn’t found a way to get to that side of him yet, but the fact that Sang-woo had called him at all when drunk meant that he was willing to reveal it, given the chance.

He stopped stroking himself.

This grapple for power was stupid. Why couldn’t he just reach out and ask for what he wanted? There was no shame unless Sang-woo said no, right?

Fuck everything that I promised to myself. Calling first doesn’t mean anything anyways. There’s no shame unless he says no, he repeated to himself.

He finished his shower and dressed himself in a t-shirt and a pair of boxers before relaxing against the pillows on his bed. Gi-hun picked up his phone, pressed the call button next to Sang-woo’s name, and raised it to his ear. When he heard the click, he swore his heart stopped, but he opened his mouth and spoke anyway.

“Sang-woo, do you want to come over?”

*****

When Gi-hun finally called him, Sang-woo couldn't say that he was surprised. 

Unlike him, Gi-hun had never been a very patient person, because he usually never had to wait for what he wanted. Although he’d been anticipating this moment for a while, Sang-woo wouldn’t have minded waiting a little longer if Gi-hun had actually been able to stand his ground.

Without the soju in his bloodstream and a mind free of insufferable loneliness, Sang-woo would have probably never called him, simply content with waiting now that he knew how Gi-hun felt about him.

The fact that Gi-hun had reached out so soon pleased him greatly, however, and all he’d uttered was a simple ‘okay’ before hanging up the phone and leaving his house at 10 o’clock at night.

Regardless of how cringeworthy Gi-hun’s flirting had been in the cafeteria, their initial interactions were far from awkward. Gi-hun was in his element in the privacy of his bedroom; when Sang-woo opened the door to it and stepped inside, the older of the two closed the distance between them and pressed him against it.

This would be their first kiss. Specifically, Sang-woo’s first kiss. Should they have approached it more romantically?

Gi-hun pinned Sang-woo’s wrists against the door and slotted a leg between his thighs. Perhaps he was moving a little too quickly, but he’d been thinking about this nonstop for what he felt was far too long. His heart quivered in his chest as he watched Sang-woo’s facial expression in the dark room. He looked calm, but his eyes had a challenging glint in them, almost as if he didn’t believe that Gi-hun could take control of him.

To Sang-woo’s surprise, Gi-hun slotted their lips together hungrily, messily, as if they would be forced to separate at any moment. Sang-woo’s lips weren’t delicate and pigmented with makeup like the girls he’d kissed before. They were rough yet smooth at the same time, meeting his own with the same energy and seemingly trying to overtake him in a battle of dominance.

He tightened his grip on Sang-woo’s wrists, took his lower lip between his teeth, and tugged on it before letting go and gauging his reaction. Sang-woo’s cheeks were pinker, his breaths were shallower, and Gi-hun felt his cock hardening against his thigh. 

It was Gi-hun’s turn to give him a prideful smile. He shifted his thigh so that it pressed more firmly against Sang-woo’s growing erection. “Oh, you liked that, didn’t you?” 

Sang-woo inhaled through his teeth. His pupils were blown and dark now, having lost their previous cockiness, and Gi-hun leaned his head into the crook of his neck and started licking at the skin below his ear. Raising his lips, he brushed them against it like he’d done in Sang-woo’s bedroom. “Do you want it rough or gentle, baby? Tell me.”

“Who says you’re on top?” Sang-woo asked, turning his head away, although his voice was shaky.

“This is my bedroom,” Gi-hun reminded him, replacing his tongue on Sang-woo’s neck. He licked a trail up to the base of his jaw, and then kissed him once. “Tell me what you want.”

Sang-woo rested his head back against the door, barely breathing in Gi-hun’s hold. “Show me how badly you want to fuck me.”

Gi-hun searched his eyes, his mind swimming in a pool of lust and unrestrained frustration, pulled back, and removed his own shirt. Sang-woo, with newly freed wrists, reached out to trace the lines of his chest.

Sang-woo understood even more clearly now why he was considered the heartthrob of Ssangmun-dong, though he would never tell Gi-hun that. He was about to make a comment regarding Gi-hun’s urgency, but Gi-hun leaned close to his ear once more. “Undress yourself and get on the bed.”

With that, he stepped back and removed his leg from between Sang-woo’s thighs, leaving him cold and rubbing against nothing. He sat on the edge of the bed invitingly, though he was still wearing his boxers.

Sang-woo, though slightly embarrassed at the words, took off his glasses and placed them on the desk. He then removed his shirt, feeling Gi-hun’s eyes on him, and slid down the sweatpants that he’d been wearing for bed.

“Keep going,” Gi-hun told him, but his voice lacked confidence even if he was trying to act like he had experience in this area. Truthfully, his mind was reeling at how different Sang-woo’s body was from a female’s, with harsher lines, a broader frame, and not to mention the lack of breasts. Saliva accumulated in his mouth at the anticipation of kissing that skin, of abusing a nipple, and feeling Sang-woo’s abs contract under his touch.

When Sang-woo finally removed his boxers and stepped out of them, Gi-hun let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Having second thoughts?” Sang-woo asked.

Gi-hun shook his head. “Come here.”

Sang-woo walked towards him, and Gi-hun pulled him onto his lap so that he was straddling him. He ran his hands up Sang-woo’s sides and chest and Sang-woo shivered from the cold fingertips that brushed against his nipple.

Usually, if Gi-hun was with a female, he’d have her grind on him, or he’d try to finger her from this angle while he kissed her. After considering his options, Gi-hun knew what he was going to do next. 

He raised a hand to Sang-woo’s mouth. “Spit.”

Sang-woo looked at him hesitantly, but complied, and Gi-hun wrapped the hand around his erection and began to stroke him the way he liked to stroke himself. Leaning forwards, he pressed his lips against Sang-woo’s torso, licking and delicately pulling at a nipple with his teeth as he rested a hand on the small of Sang-woo’s back.

His strokes were moderately paced, so Sang-woo believed that Gi-hun had chosen to go the ‘gentle’ route, replicating how he behaved with his girlfriends when he took them to bed. Sang-woo had asked for this over the phone, after all, and it reassured him somewhat to know that his original assumptions over how Gi-hun behaved in bed were completely true.

After a particularly jarring stroke, Sang-woo moaned and pushed Gi-hun’s head away from his chest so that they could kiss again. The original urgency that they’d met each other with was completely gone, replaced with the urge to please and be pleased.

“Feel good, baby?” Gi-hun murmured against his mouth, lowering his hand to squeeze Sang-woo’s ass instead.

“Yeah,” Sang-woo sighed, meeting Gi-hun’s tongue with his own when it found its way into his mouth. “Lean against the pillows.”

He stood up so that Gi-hun could move, and once he was settled, Sang-woo crawled between his legs and hovered over Gi-hun’s face. Kissing him once, he began running his tongue down the length of Gi-hun’s chest, gently nipping at the skin before sliding his fingers around the hem of Gi-hun’s boxers and pulling them down and off.

Sang-woo positioned his head between Gi-hun’s legs, held up his erection, and pressed a kiss to the tip before wrapping his mouth around it.

Gi-hun was no stranger to receiving blowjobs, but seeing Sang-woo’s lips wrapped around his cock was something completely different. Sang-woo had always been a quick study, so Gi-hun wondered if he’d been watching porn specifically in preparation for this, sticking a finger into his mouth to assess his own gag reflex and ability to swallow around him like he was doing now.

He shuddered when Sang-woo took over half of his length into his mouth and held his hips down firmly on the bed. Girls didn’t usually use this kind of force with him when they gave him blowjobs, and for the first time that night, Gi-hun realized that he wouldn’t mind if Sang-woo fucked him instead. He wondered what it felt like to be handled that way, to be at the complete mercy of someone else, especially someone like Sang-woo.

Sang-woo would be rough. He’d ask Gi-hun to beg for it, to beg to be touched while he was fucked so that he could cum; he’d leave dark marks on Gi-hun’s skin while he thrusted into him— purple hickeys on his neck and hand-shaped bruises from gripping his hips so tightly. Would Sang-woo praise him while he fucked him, or did he prefer to degrade? Would he call him ‘baby’ like Gi-hun had been calling him this whole time?

“Fuck, Sang-woo.” Gi-hun tangled his hands in Sang-woo’s hair as his lips formed a tight seal around his shaft, sucking and pulling off of the tip with an audible pop. “Switch with me.”

Sang-woo moved into Gi-hun’s position onto the bed, laying nearly flat on his back, and Gi-hun dug through the drawer of his nightstand to pull out an unused bottle of lube and a condom.

“You bought that?” Sang-woo asked, gesturing to the lube.

“The day after our phone call,” Gi-hun told him, breaking the seal and pouring a small amount onto two of his fingers. “Spread your legs. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

Gi-hun didn’t know if he would actually hurt Sang-woo or not, but he wanted to show Sang-woo that it was worth doing this with him again. This couldn’t be the only time.

Settling between his legs, Gi-hun wrapped an arm around one of Sang-woo’s thighs to pull it closer to his face, then he started pressing kisses to the skin to encourage him to relax as he slowly traced a lubricated finger over his hole. When he finally slipped the tip of his finger in, Sang-woo was extremely tight and incredibly warm. 

Sang-woo let out a small noise and lightly gripped the bedsheets when Gi-hun started moving his fingertip in and out slowly, as if he was frightened to go faster.

“How does that feel?”

“Weird,” Sang-woo confessed, and Gi-hun slid more of his finger in, repeating the same motion.

“Tell me what feels good,” he encouraged him, pressing another kiss to his inner thigh.

“Add another one.”

Gi-hun complied, and the second finger joined the first with only a little bit of resistance. “You take my fingers so well, baby.” 

He angled his fingers upwards slightly like he usually did with girls, and Sang-woo let out a gasp. “Keep doing that.”

Gi-hun repeated the movement, and Sang-woo fully relaxed his head against the pillow and squeezed his eyes closed. “Hyung, that feels–”

“Tell me.”

“Unbelievable,” Sang-woo finished. “Keep going. Please.”

Gi-hun’s cock twitched against where it was pressed on bed at Sang-woo’s plea. He continued to aim for that spot inside of Sang-woo hoping to hear him beg and cry for more— to finally be allowed to cum.

Sang-woo’s knuckles grew white as he gripped the sheets tighter. “Hyung.”

“Hm?”

“Add another one. I can take–” His words were cut off by a moan when Gi-hun wasted no time inserting a third finger.

“The way you’re opening up for me, Sang-woo, I can’t believe–” Gi-hun swallowed. He spat in his free hand and wrapped it around Sang-woo’s cock. “I wanna watch you cum from being fingered like this.”

He pressed his fingers against the sensitive area inside of Sang-woo to remember its location and resumed moving them in and out of him. Soon enough, Sang-woo’s resolve had completely melted away. His chest was heaving, a few pieces of hair were stuck to his face, and his cheeks had broken into the most beautiful blush that Gi-hun had ever seen. He committed the sight to memory before placing his mouth on Sang-woo’s cock for the first time.

Sang-woo’s hands flew up to Gi-hun’s hair. “Holy shit,” he cursed, and he watched as Gi-hun went down on him with his fingers buried deep in his ass. “Gi-hun, I’m not gonna last, I’m–”

Gi-hun pulled off of his cock. “Let go, baby. It’s okay. Let me see you.”

After a few more thrusts by Gi-hun’s fingers, Sang-woo’s vision went completely white. He let out a groan as he involuntarily fucked up into Gi-hun’s mouth, his fingers gripping his hair so tightly that Gi-hun winced and wondered if Sang-woo had pulled any of it out. Sang-woo came onto his tongue, unable to hold himself back, and although Gi-hun’s initial reaction was one of shock, he hurriedly swallowed it so as to not let the taste linger.

Sang-woo’s body went lax, and Gi-hun removed his fingers from his ass before sitting up between his legs and leaning over to kiss him. Sang-woo could taste himself on Gi-hun’s tongue, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, especially with how intensely his body was still tingling from his climax.

“Fuck me,” Sang-woo begged. “Do it, hyung.”

Gi-hun was all but trembling with anticipation as he opened the condom, slid it on, and squeezed more lube from the bottle onto his palm. He lined himself up with Sang-woo’s hole, and pressed in, all his patience having left him when he watched Sang-woo orgasm so intensely from his mouth and fingers. Needing to chase a similar high, he pulled Sang-woo’s legs around his waist, leaned down to connect their lips, and started thrusting.

“My God, Sang-woo…” Gi-hun moaned, breaking the kiss to bite at his neck. “You’re so–”

He lost his train of thought and failed to finish his sentence as Sang-woo’s hands reached up to claw at his back. Gi-hun moved his mouth lower to Sang-woo’s collarbone and started abusing the skin, nipping with the intention of leaving a mark as he fucked into him with abandon.

This didn’t compare to fucking Sun-hee or any of his other female classmates. This was a whole new level of intimacy; he was taking his relationship with his best friend to the next level, and he knew that neither of them would ever forget this. Giving him a hickey would provide him with tangible evidence of their hookup, and Gi-hun was obsessed with the power that came from knowing that he’d been the one to leave it on such perfect, unmarred skin like Sang-woo’s own.

Gi-hun pulled back to admire his handiwork, sitting up almost completely straight on his knees as he continued to fuck into him, and looked down to watch as his cock disappeared into Sang-woo with every thrust. It was an unbelievably intoxicating sight, and the realization of what he was doing hit him like a train: he was fucking Cho Sang-woo.

Quiet Cho Sang-woo, who hardly spoke to anyone except his mother and teachers, who skipped out on plans with his friends to study for a test that was a week away, who ignored every girl that had ever looked in his direction. When Gi-hun had called him, Sang-woo had come over without a moment’s hesitation. A person that wanted nothing and loved no one loved him; a person that fucked no one wanted to fuck and be fucked by him.

He cursed quietly and placed his hand on Sang-woo’s hips as he continued to watch the movement between them like it was porn. Sang-woo’s eyes were tightly closed, and his fingers were tangled in the bedsheets once more as his back arched off of the mattress.

How could Gi-hun ever fuck a girl again after seeing this?

Gi-hun wasn’t fucking Sang-woo like ‘one of his little girlfriends’. He was fucking him so much better than that, with so much more care and gentleness in the placement of his hands and the timing of his thrusts. Gi-hun leaned back down to kiss Sang-woo again, and he felt a smile break out onto his face when they broke apart to take a breath.

Sang-woo’s eyes opened and met his own, and to Gi-hun’s surprise, he smiled too, just for a moment.

When Gi-hun finally came, he couldn’t control the praise that fell from his mouth about Sang-woo’s body, about his tightness and how well he’d taken him, and how much he enjoyed fucking him like this. It was arguably one of the best orgasms that he’d ever had, but he didn’t tell Sang-woo that.

Sang-woo had been trying to catch his breath when Gi-hun pulled out of him, pinching the condom and tying it off before dropping it into the trash can by his desk. 

“Let’s do that again sometime,” Gi-hun grinned, thoroughly impressed with both of their performances, redressing himself and watching as Sang-woo picked his clothes off of the floor.

When Sang-woo was ready to leave, he crossed the room and stood in front of Gi-hun. He pressed a kiss to his mouth, gently rested a hand on his neck, and leaned close to his ear.

“Next time, you’re coming to me.”

Gi-hun’s eyes widened at the realization of what he meant, and Sang-woo’s hand dropped from his neck. He turned to leave, and when the door closed behind him, he bit his lip in thought and traveled to the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror.

It turned out that Sang-woo had actually marked him when he was kissing his neck, even when Gi-hun didn’t think that he’d done it hard enough. There was a small hickey blossoming just above Gi-hun’s collarbone, in the same exact location that he’d left one on him. He scoffed, but traced it with his fingertip, unable to deny the hilarity of the situation.

A grin spread across his face, and he let out a laugh in front of no one but himself as he thought about what had just happened. He’d called first, and Sang-woo hadn’t said no. He’d called first, yet he still didn’t feel like he’d suffered a loss. 

Maybe, he realized, this was more than just a game between them after all.

*****

Gi-hun didn’t know why he’d agreed to go on another date with Sun-hee. 

His feelings for her had disappeared embarrassingly quickly, especially after what had happened with Sang-woo a few days before, but she was insistent, and Gi-hun couldn’t find it within himself to say no. He and Sang-woo weren’t dating, and they definitely weren’t exclusive, even though Gi-hun knew that he wouldn’t try to fuck anyone else.

What if this arrangement of theirs ended up not working out and Gi-hun was left both single and friendless? In order to avoid the risk of having everything turn into nothing, he would keep Sun-hee close and Sang-woo closer.

They were discussing the details of where they’d go that night, perhaps to a simple dinner, and one of Sun-hee’s friends joined their conversation.

She was beautiful, almost as much as Sun-hee, with dark, shoulder-length hair and an eye-catching smile similar to her friend’s. Sun-hee excitedly introduced her to Gi-hun as her friend who was interested in going on a double date with them.

“A double date with who?” Gi-hun asked, feeling his heart beat a little faster. Certainly not…

“Your friend, Sang-woo. Remember? We talked about this last week.” Sun-hee beamed, taking Gi-hun’s hand in her own. “He never texted, but we found him at lunchtime and he agreed to come out with us tonight. Isn’t that great?”

Sun-hee’s friend turned to her. “He’s really cute, but he seems picky. Do you really think he’d like me?”

“Oh yeah,” Gi-hun started, even though he wasn’t the person that had been spoken to. “He’s– he’s picky. But, um, don’t worry. I’m sure everything will be just fine.”

“Oh, good. Thanks,” she said, though a frown had begun to form on her features.

Gi-hun couldn’t leave the conversation soon enough. When his classes finally ended and he was able to bring his bike over to the light post, he seethed as he waited for his best friend. To his surprise, Sang-woo was walking alongside the girl he was going out with that night and he seemed to actually be listening to her speak. Not even Gi-hun could hold Sang-woo’s attention when he tried to talk to him like that, and he felt his blood boiling with jealousy.

When Sang-woo and the girl finally reached him, he told her, “See you tonight,” and watched as she left, disappearing back into the crowd of students that were leaving the school.

Sang-woo didn’t even have a moment to breathe before Gi-hun verbally attacked him. “Sang-woo, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Going on a date,” Sang-woo told him. “When I took down this girl’s number a week ago, I believe you said ‘there you go’ and patted me on the back.”

“I didn’t think that you would actually agree to something like this.”

“I didn’t really agree. Sun-hee and that girl all but harassed me until I said yes.”

Gi-hun felt some of his anger dissipate from knowing that Sang-woo hadn’t willingly chosen to go on the date to spite him or make him jealous. Still, he couldn’t shake his envy. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

“A blind person would think that she’s pretty, Gi-hun. I haven’t even laid a finger on this girl and you’re acting jealous even though you’ve fucked Sun-hee and told our lunch table about it?”

“I’m not jealous,” Gi-hun scoffed. “I’m just trying to figure out if you like her since you don’t exactly have a track record of being attracted to women.”

“Funny,” Sang-woo said humorlessly. “I can handle one date. Besides, what do you know about my attraction to women?”

Nothing, actually. For all I know, he could actually be the pickiest bisexual man on Earth.

“Get on the bike,” Gi-hun said dismissively, sitting down and patting the rack behind him.

The ride home was tense. Sun-hee had coordinated the details of their date and texted Gi-hun that he and Sang-woo should meet them at the restaurant at 6:30 PM. When Gi-hun relayed the message to Sang-woo after he dropped him off in front of his house, all he did was nod in response before going inside.

What an arrogant asshole.

Gi-hun never took very long to get ready for his dates. Usually, he would take a shower, pop a mint into his mouth, apply deodorant and cologne, get dressed, and leave the house. Today, he found himself staring at the clothes in his closet a bit longer than usual, deciding that he wanted to impress while they were out on their date. But who was he trying to impress?

The answer was obvious, but he still picked out a jacket that Sun-hee had complimented one day at school and coordinated the rest of his outfit with it. If a girl liked these clothes on him, maybe Sang-woo would too.

He brushed his hair with his fingers since he didn’t own a proper comb and completed the rest of his ‘getting ready’ process with ease, pushing a small mint around his mouth with his tongue as stepped into the living room to wait for Sang-woo to arrive.

*****

This was technically Sang-woo’s first date, and he had absolutely no interest in going.

There was nothing wrong with the girl, per se, but all of his attraction lay solely in one person, and he didn’t think that was going to change after having one dinner with her. Even though Sang-woo wasn’t the textbook definition of a nice person, he still had enough empathy not to stand anybody up.

Knowing that Gi-hun would be jealous watching him give his attention to someone else would make this night just a little more tolerable though.

Since he’d never gone out on a date before, he didn’t really know how to prepare beyond exercising his normal routine of getting ready for the day: shower, hygiene in every other sense, getting dressed… What else were you supposed to do to go see another person out in public?

He put on a button-up that hid his hickey well and a pair of pants that were nice enough for a date, but not nice enough to scream ‘businessman’. Looking at himself in the mirror, he neatened up his hair and made the last minute decision to remove his glasses.

Sang-woo was near-sighted, but his vision wasn’t terrible, and he wouldn’t suffer too badly if he kept his glasses at home while he went out. He knew that he was more attractive without them anyways, not that it particularly mattered for him, but he’d get more of a rise out of Gi-hun that way.

He set them on his nightstand and left his house at 6 PM, knowing that by the time that he met up with Gi-hun, they would have no choice but to start walking to the restaurant to be on time.

When Gi-hun opened his front door to see Sang-woo standing outside, he looked him up and down once before grinning at him. “You look good, Sang-woo-ah. Where are your glasses?”

“Didn’t need them,” Sang-woo said, stepping aside so Gi-hun could lock the door behind him. The two of them started walking down the street to a restaurant that was fortunately not too far from Gi-hun’s house, and they arrived just in time to see Sun-hee and her friend standing out front.

“You made it!” Sun-hee exclaimed, pulling Gi-hun into a hug as if she expected otherwise.

Sang-woo deflected his gaze to his date, who shyly smiled at him. He returned it with a fake smile of his own as she began to talk to him.

Soon enough, he was sitting in a booth next to Gi-hun with the two girls across from them. He buried his head in his menu, trying to avoid being included in their conversation, but he was dragged into it anyways. Sun-hee and her friend were thoroughly amused by Gi-hun’s humor, even if Sang-woo found himself rolling his eyes every time Gi-hun cracked another stupid joke while telling a story.

When his date tried to talk to him one on one, he indulged her and genuinely tried to listen to what she had to say, even if he was far from interested. Sang-woo saw Gi-hun glance at him whenever he actually laughed at something that she said, but he would always look away before Sang-woo could meet his eyes.

It warmed his heart somewhat to know that Gi-hun genuinely cared about him enough to feel jealous like this, but it also made him feel guilty. He didn’t have to apologize for his actions though, considering how jealous Gi-hun had made him throughout the many years of their friendship. It was only fair that he learned how jealousy felt from someone else’s point of view, even if it was only for one night.

When their food arrived, Gi-hun took Sang-woo’s left hand under the table and placed it onto his leg. Sang-woo looked at him questioningly, and Gi-hun rubbed Sang-woo’s hand on his thigh over his pants like he wanted the reassurance of his touch.

They ate that way, with Sang-woo’s hand soothingly moving up and down Gi-hun’s thigh, although it never moved high enough to be considered inappropriate. 

When he was done with his food, Sang-woo excused himself to go to the bathroom. Gi-hun remained at the table for a minute or two, entertaining the girls with casual conversation although his thigh felt cold without Sang-woo’s hand on it. When he began to grow antsy, he went to the bathroom as well and discovered that it was completely empty except for Sang-woo, who was washing his hands at the sink.

“Having fun?” Gi-hun asked, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall as he watched Sang-woo turn off the faucet and grab a paper towel.

“It’s not as bad as I expected it to be,” Sang-woo shrugged, balling up the paper towel and throwing it away. “Are you going to use the bathroom, or–?”

“No." He shook his head. “I came in here for you.”

With that, he took a few steps forward and gently slotted their lips together, fisting a hand in Sang-woo’s collar. As Sang-woo melted into him, he wrapped his arms around Gi-hun’s waist and kissed him with fervor, moving them so that Gi-hun was pressed back up against the wall.

Sang-woo introduced his tongue, and Gi-hun sighed against his mouth, heat pooling between his legs at the memory of what had transpired between them only a few days before. After a moment, Sang-woo began trailing kisses along his neck, then gently nipped at his earlobe.

“You know,” he murmured, his voice intoxicatingly sweet. “That’s quite ballsy of you to chase after me when you’ve got a beautiful girl waiting for you at the table.”

“I’m not interested in her,” Gi-hun responded, biting his lower lip at the feeling of Sang-woo’s breath on his neck.

Sang-woo placed a hand under Gi-hun’s jaw, holding his face in place while he pressed one more kiss to his pink lips and pulled back so that only their noses were brushing.

“Tell her that,” Sang-woo said. “And I’ll give you whatever you want.”

He untangled Gi-hun’s hand from his collar and turned away to fix his shirt in the mirror. Gi-hun was so stunned by what had just happened that he could hardly speak, and when he finally swallowed and opened his mouth to say something, Sang-woo exited the bathroom and reentered the dining room.

He blinked at his reflection in the mirror and ran a hand through his hair, deciding to wait another minute before rejoining the three of them at their table.

Tell her that.

Tell her that he wasn’t interested? Did that mean Sang-woo wanted him all to himself? Did that mean he wanted to be exclusive and put a label on what they had? Did that mean he wanted to try for a relationship?

A relationship with Cho Sang-woo. Gi-hun had imagined it a few times, since he’d always had an innocent crush on him that he never knew what to do with, but knowing that it was something that he could actually have was completely different. Just the idea of dating Sang-woo made him even happier than when Sun-hee had accepted his invitation to go out or when he won a game and earned the praise of his classmates.

The two of them had already begun to explore the sexual desires that had existed between them, so it couldn’t hurt for them to explore their romantic ones too.

But how was he supposed to let her down? Gi-hun had never been very good at this part in his relationships, even though he was almost never the one who was broken up with, and he found it almost embarrassing to cut things off between them so early on in their talking stage.

Maybe he could walk Sun-hee home and do it that night? Or send her a text? Or should he wait until they saw each other at school again? And what was he supposed to say when she asked him why?

I had a huge crush on you for two months, but then my best friend called me while he was jacking off and I realized that I’m more interested in him than I am in you.

How mortifying of a confession would that be? Perhaps he could say that he thought he wanted to start dating again but realized that he wasn’t ready. Gi-hun decided that his response needed to be specific yet vague enough so that she wouldn’t beg him for further answers.

He devised a plan in his head to do it that night, and finally stepped out of the bathroom.

*****

When he returned to their table, Sang-woo was standing next to his date, and Sun-hee was leaning against the booth waiting for him. She stood up as she saw him approach and met him halfway, placing a hand on his wrist.

“So, Gi-hun, did you want to continue our date elsewhere like last time?” She asked, lowering her voice and glancing around them.

“Not tonight,” he said, placing a hand on top of her own. “I’m kind of tired. Is it okay if I just walk you home?”

Disappointment flashed across her face for a moment, but it was quickly replaced with a kind smile. She nodded, and he took her hand to leave the restaurant behind the rest of their party. Gi-hun looked at Sang-woo, who was saying goodbye to his date with his hands in his pockets, and they met each other’s eyes when he turned away from her.

“Oppa.” Sun-hee nudged him in order to get his attention, though she didn’t seem to notice what he’d been looking at. Gi-hun quickly redirected his gaze to the street in front of him and started walking with her in the opposite direction of where Sang-woo was standing.

How should he approach this? Should he start talking now or wait until they’re standing outside of her front door? While Gi-hun lost himself in his thoughts, Sun-hee quickly grew uncomfortable with the silence and squeezed his hand. Guilt settled at the bottom of his stomach like a rock at her gentle reassurance, and he opened his mouth to speak.

“Sun-hee, can I talk to you about something?”

“Anything,” she responded simply, watching his expression as they walked side by side down the street.

“I like you. I really do. I wanted to ask you out for two months before our first date, but I waited because–”

“I made you nervous.”

That’s true, but it won’t help me to tell you that in the long run.

“You did, but more than anything it’s because I didn’t know if I was ready to date again,” Gi-hun lied. “I genuinely enjoyed these two dates with you, but I don’t think I’m ready after all.”

“So you don’t want to go out anymore?” Sun-hee asked, removing her hand from his grasp. Before Gi-hun could answer her, she sighed. “I don’t know if it’s because you’re still worked up over your ex or what, but do you realize how unfair this all was to me?”

“It was unfair. And I’m sorry for that, Sun-hee. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted, and I shouldn’t have dragged you along for that.”

She shook her head and stopped walking. “I wish I could be more angry with you, Gi-hun, but I can’t. I like you too much for that. I just– I can’t help but wonder if I did something wrong?”

He stopped and turned to face her. “No, you didn’t. I did.”

“At least you apologized for it, and you’re still walking me home,” she shrugged, resuming her steps. “I figured that something was up at dinner. You were in the bathroom for a long time.”

They walked in silence for another minute or so, and then she added, “I don’t think Sang-woo enjoyed the date either. It’s sad, because he’s really not a bad looking guy, but he spends so much time alone. I didn’t just suggest that we go on a double date just for fun. I thought everyone could benefit.”

Gi-hun suddenly felt like an even bigger asshole, and he wondered how Sang-woo would feel knowing that he’d been invited on the double date out of pity. If Gi-hun had known, he would’ve discouraged Sang-woo from going, but then what would have happened?

Would Gi-hun have ended his night by fucking Sun-hee again in spite of their game? Or would he have dumped her sooner to work on growing the newfound aspects of his relationship with Sang-woo? Would he have handled this situation with Sun-hee as amicably as he was doing right now?

Maybe Sang-woo already knew that he’d been invited out of pity. Maybe he already knew that his loneliness was solely the product of his self-isolation, and not of people’s lack of willingness to communicate with him. But did he know that he was pitied by others for the way he behaved more than he was envied or loved?

Gi-hun knew that he was guilty of pitying his best friend too. Sang-woo had always been so ambiguous about what he wanted in his life once he attained the success he’d been working towards, never putting forth any effort in defining it. Gi-hun had endlessly tried to set him up with girls, introduce him to new people, and include him in social events, but Sang-woo had never shown interest in any of those things.

“It’s like you want to be alone forever,” Gi-hun had sighed during one of their arguments, his words like pinpricks in the sensitive muscle of Sang-woo’s heart.

Sang-woo hadn’t said anything, just closed his eyes and turned away, and Gi-hun hadn’t known what his actions had meant.

But now he did. 

Sang-woo had always known what he wanted, and he’d been unable to say it out of the fear of judgement by others. He’d never wanted to be alone at all.

All he ever wanted was to be with him.

Gi-hun’s heart weighed in his chest at the realization of how much he really meant to Sang-woo, and he knew without a doubt that although he’d been the best friend to him that he could, he hadn’t valued Sang-woo nearly as much as he’d deserved.

“You were trying to do something nice. I’m sure he appreciated it,” Gi-hun said after a few moments of silence, and no other words were exchanged between them until they reached Sun-hee’s front door.

“Thanks, Gi-hun, for this,” she gestured between them casually, although her face had finally begun to reflect her hurt feelings. “I hope I’ll keep seeing you around at school.”

“Me too,” Gi-hun told her disheartenedly, watching how her eyes grew glassy beneath the moon.

She offered him a sad smile, then turned to unlock her door. When she stepped inside, she turned around to wave before closing the door behind her.

When Gi-hun blinked, a single tear fell from his eye, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand before walking home.

*****

Sang-woo always knew that he had an obsessive personality.

In some ways, his obsessiveness was useful, allowing him to focus and persevere in an environment full of distractions that would otherwise pull him away from the goals that he’d set for himself. The psychological gratification that he received from acing a test and distinguishing himself from his classmates fueled his addiction to success, only increasing his tolerance and reducing his satisfaction as time went on.

He was never addicted to tangible things. Sang-woo rarely sought solace through alcohol or the pleasant lightness of a buzz from nicotine, instead focusing on things that he could chase instead.

Throughout the years of his late childhood and adolescence, Sang-woo had never stopped chasing success. He never stopped chasing perfectionism, and he never stopped chasing Gi-hun, his only true friend and the one person he’d always believed that he could never have.

Gi-hun’s lack of reciprocation for his feelings had turned an innocent crush into an unhealthy infatuation, one that pulled him apart at the seams and burned him from the inside out with jealousy. It plagued him with an emptiness, a space to be filled, one that kept him awake at night with longing and hopelessness, and some nights, Sang-woo swore that he wanted Gi-hun so badly that it could’ve killed him.

He hadn’t known that everything wouldn’t change with a single phone call. He hadn’t known that Gi-hun was open to experimenting with him, biting down on his lower lip in his bedroom as he touched himself at the thought of his mouth and hands. He hadn’t known that Gi-hun was interested in men, let alone him.

But fuck, did it feel good to reach two highs from a successful chase.

Gi-hun wasn’t committed to him or anyone else. Everyone felt his love, though few were lucky enough to experience it in the bedroom, and Sang-woo’s pride had swollen in knowing that Gi-hun’s mind had been wiped clean from anyone other than him. Their roles had finally been reversed, and Gi-hun was now neatly wrapped around Sang-woo’s finger, experiencing the same jealous burn and painful throbbing in his chest whenever his attention was focused on someone else. Finally, he would learn what it felt like to be obsessed with someone just as much as they were obsessed with him.

When Gi-hun had followed Sang-woo to the restaurant’s bathroom to kiss him, Sang-woo realized that he had him in his entirety. His best friend had succumbed to him completely, and he would now do anything for him. There, in the bathroom of all places, in seeing how Gi-hun had sought him out so willingly, Sang-woo realized that he’d developed a brand new obsession.

He was obsessed with having Gi-hun chase him.

Sang-woo remembered how Gi-hun’s breath had hitched when he’d whispered in his ear to make himself available, that he’d give him anything he wanted. He couldn’t forget how Gi-hun had sighed against his mouth in relief from finally being able to kiss him, and how he’d craved the simple contact of a hand rubbing up and down his thigh while they ate dinner.

Without a doubt, both of them knew that Gi-hun had been the one to lose their game. Now, Sang-woo held all of the power that had been previously divided between them, and he intended to use it to feed both of their addictions and bring them even closer together.

After all, once he’d finally stolen a taste of what he wanted, he knew that he would never be able to let go of it ever again.

Two hours had gone by since the double date had ended, and Sang-woo was sitting at his desk in front of his laptop, typing away and working on homework assignments that were due the following week. Although his feelings were changing and taking on new forms, Sang-woo knew that his work ethic never would. This time, however, he wasn’t completing his homework early to maintain his role as a star student; he was doing it to distract himself from the fact that Gi-hun hadn’t reached out to him after he told him to cut things off with Sun-hee at the restaurant.

Maybe that hadn’t been what Gi-hun had wanted at all. Maybe, his pride had grown so large that he thought that he could have them both, or he’d finally realized the absurdness of their situation and walked away.

Sang-woo considered the opposite, that Gi-hun had done what he’d told him to do. That was a much sweeter version of the story, one that Sang-woo’s cockiness preferred to believe was true due to his insistence in the bathroom. Gi-hun’s heart had always been too large to fit in the cage of his chest, and as much as Sang-woo wanted to believe that Gi-hun had followed his instructions without hesitation, he knew that couldn’t have been the case.

There was no way on Earth that Gi-hun could resent him for this, for attempting to stake his claim on someone that was begging to be with him. But he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d upset him somehow with his ultimatum. Had Sang-woo moved too quickly? Did his words scare Gi-hun off, or was Gi-hun obsessing over them, repeating the phrases over and over in his head and searching for meaning? Did Gi-hun have any intention of moving things beyond where they were? Was he interested in exploring the feelings that they’d accumulated for each other over the course of their friendship?

Most importantly, when it came to Sang-woo, was Gi-hun thinking with his dick or his head?

He glanced at his phone one more time, and the screen was still black. The sight shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did, because his phone was usually devoid of notifications anyway, but worry still settled heavily in his gut.

Oh God, Sang-woo thought, his heart plummeting in his chest. What if he hasn’t reached out because he’s fucking her?

*****

Contrary to what Sang-woo had begun to believe, Gi-hun wasn’t fucking Sun-hee. It was inappropriate, he felt, to fuck anyone at all after what had happened that night.

Cutting things off with a girl that he’d genuinely grown to genuinely like while learning more about his best friend in the process was far from easy. Even though he’d already chosen between them, hurting the feelings of such a beautiful and kind girl and seeing how gracefully she’d accepted made him feel heartless, selfish.

Gi-hun didn’t use people. He didn’t drag them along with him just to keep them available; yet, when Sang-woo had been introduced into the picture, he’d done just that. There was no real blame to be divided between them, but Gi-hun felt that he deserved all of it. 

He wondered what Sun-hee had done after she’d closed the door to her house behind her, and he wondered what Sang-woo was doing. Would he be waiting for him? Did he expect something from Gi-hun that same night?

Gi-hun had too much to think about. He was still reeling over the idea that he could be the target of his best friend’s emotional fixations, and, more than anything, he felt guilty that he hadn’t noticed it sooner.

While he knew that he didn’t owe Sang-woo anything, he still wanted to give him everything.

Just not tonight.

*****

A day passed, and the two of them had still not seen or spoken to each other.

Sang-woo was waiting. He was no stranger to waiting for things that he wanted, and yet he found his patience wearing thin. The radio silence between them was guaranteed to come to an end once the two of them crossed paths to ride together to school on Monday morning, so he knew that reaching out to Gi-hun was out of the question. 

He spent the beginning of his Sunday night feeling lonely, although that was a rare phenomenon for him. Sang-woo never missed Gi-hun, because he knew that they would always see each other again, but right now, that was the best word to describe how he felt towards him.

He missed him. He missed feeling the gratification of seeing how Gi-hun was growing more fond of him emotionally, and he missed the touches that they’d recently begun to exchange. He missed his lips, and with them, his perfect smile that set something alight in his chest whenever he’d been lucky enough to be the recipient of it.

It was pathetic. Sang-woo knew it was, and as much as he wanted to sleep just to rid his mind of such thoughts, he was far from tired enough to do so. He sat at his desk like he’d done the previous night, but this time, he was poised over a psychology textbook, reading pages about human attraction and what influenced how people chose their partners. Admiration of facial symmetry, familiarity, and a rush of hormones– attraction was completely synthetic, only driven by having a certain amount of a chemical in a specific part of the brain at any given time. 

It made no sense to him as to why chemicals moved from one place to another whenever a person looked at someone that they loved, but regardless, Sang-woo felt the physiological effects of it when the door to his bedroom slowly opened and the very person that he’d been waiting to see stepped into the room.

His pupils dilated even more in the darkness whose only illumination came from a small lamp on his desk. His heart began to race, he grew nauseous, and his muscles tensed with so much anticipation that he could hardly move beyond turning his head to gaze at him in the doorway.

You’re here, he wanted to say. He tried to calm his beating heart and looked back down at his textbook. “I didn’t ask you to come over,” he said instead, testing how Gi-hun would react if he belittled the arrangement that had grown to exist between them.

Gi-hun moved to stand by Sang-woo’s dresser, watching the side of his best friend’s face as he pretended to read a page from his book. He placed his hands in the pockets of his jacket and took a deep breath. “I did what you asked,” he started, and watched as Sang-woo froze in place, his movements statue-still although his eyes still scanned the page. “Besides, we’re friends. You don’t have to call to have me come over.”

“Is that what we are?” Sang-woo asked, closing his textbook and turning to meet his eyes. “Friends?”

“I know that you want to be more than that. I do too.”

“Why didn’t you reach out to me sooner?”

“I needed to think,” Gi-hun confessed, taking a few steps toward him. “This is a huge adjustment for me. It’s not as easy as I originally thought it would be.”

“Fucking a guy?”

“Fucking you. Liking you. Understanding how you felt about me all this time.”

Sang-woo finally stood up from his chair and pushed it back in under his desk. His hands gripped the top edge of the chair cushion as he considered Gi-hun’s words. “Does it scare you? How I feel?”

“No,” Gi-hun swallowed, though he was losing the courage to move any closer. “I just wish that you’d told me sooner. I wouldn’t have put you through hell trying to set you up with–”

“It’s okay.”

“But, all of the girls that I’ve–” Gi-hun made an abstract gesture with his hand. “Over the years, you just listened, and you never said anything about… I’m sorry, Sang-woo. I should have— I would have—“

“Kissed me?”

“Maybe, yeah.”

Even though he’d been trying to act aloof to make himself look more desirable, Sang-woo knew that Gi-hun had never really been chasing him. 

He had him the entire time.

Sangwoo turned to face him fully. “You really want me that badly?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Show me,” Sang-woo exhaled, removing his glasses and setting them on his desk. The light from the lamp reflected off of his pupils as his eyes met Gi-hun’s one more time— a challenging glint.

“Sang-woo,” Gi-hun murmured, finally crossing the room and standing directly in front of him. He wrapped his arms around Sang-woo’s neck and tilted his head so that their lips could fit together. They melted against each other, their kisses beginning chaste and ending with the introduction of tongue. This was the kiss that they’d deserved this entire time— how Sang-woo should’ve remembered his first. He placed his hands on Gi-hun’s waist, gently caressing up and down the curves of his sides through his shirt.

Gi-hun moved to kiss the side of his mouth, then across his jawline towards his ear. Sang-woo‘s lips parted at the loss, and Gi-hun felt him shiver against him where they stood. Unwrapping his arms from his neck, Gi-hun placed his hands on top of Sang-woo’s and removed them from his waist before sinking down to his knees.

He looked up then, his eyes dark and pupils as wide as Sang-woo had ever seen them, and reached to unbutton his jeans. Sang-woo took hold of his wrist as he returned his gaze, unblinking.

“Hyung,” he started, his voice quivering. “This is what you want?”

Gi-hun took Sang-woo’s other hand and placed it under his jaw. Sang-woo’s breath hitched as he lifted up Gi-hun’s chin, admiring the pure vulnerability on his face; he was surrendering to him, yielding all control as a result of losing their game. Gi-hun had a million things to prove, and he would start right here, finding himself in a position that he’d never been in before, with eye contact so sharp that it could’ve killed him and a hand that had traveled up from his jaw to stroke his cheek like he was as fragile as glass.

He nodded.

Sang-woo’s thumb reached his lips and traced them, sighing when they parted to take it into his mouth. Gi-hun sucked on the finger for a moment, coating it in saliva and slowly licking at it with his tongue. Sang-woo’s grip on Gi-hun’s wrist tightened before he let go entirely, and Gi-hun resumed undoing his jeans, pulling them down to Sang-woo’s ankles and watching as he stepped out of them. Gi-hun leaned back on his knees to remove his own shirt, and Sang-woo did the same.

Reaching forwards, Gi-hun outlined the shaft of Sang-woo’s length through his boxers, which quickly hardened beneath his fingertips. Sang-woo slipped the boxers down to his ankles, and Gi-hun took him in hand before leaning closer. He circled the tip onto his lips once before opening them like he’d done with Sang-woo’s finger, and redirected his gaze to his cock as he slowly took half of the length into his mouth.

Sang-woo sighed at the warmth that now surrounded him, the soft suction of a swallowing throat as Gi-hun tried to pull him in deeper. His hand curled in the hair at the back of Gi-hun’s neck, resting rather than tugging, and Gi-hun met his eyes once more as he pulled back and went down on him all over again, beginning a steady pace and pushing his limit as he did so. Sang-woo admired Gi-hun from this angle, lips swelling and pinkening by the moment from taking his cock like this, his eyes glassy and threatening to spill over.

On one pass, Gi-hun quickly pulled off and coughed, a tear involuntarily falling from his eye from his gag reflex, and Sang-woo wiped it away with his thumb.

“It’s okay. Let me take care of you,” Sang-woo told him, moving his hand to brush the hair away from his face. “Stand up.”

Gi-hun did as he was told, and Sang-woo pressed a hand to his cheek and kissed him.

“I told you that I’d give you anything you want,” Sang-woo whispered, reaching between them to unbutton and unzip Gi-hun’s pants. He kissed him again, and a thin string of saliva connected their mouths as he pulled back. “So tell me what you want me to do.”

“Do whatever you want to me,” Gi-hun murmured, his eyes half-lidded. “Everything that you’ve ever imagined doing to me when you touch yourself.”

Sang-woo’s pulse raced and he smiled against Gi-hun’s mouth, sliding his hand into his boxers and stroking him teasingly. “If we did everything that I’ve ever wanted to do,” he started, rubbing his thumb over the tip, “we’d be here for days, hyung.”

“Please,” Gi-hun groaned, leaning his head back to bare his neck. Sang-woo kissed the burning skin and traced his tongue over the shell of Gi-hun’s ear.

“I’ve always wanted to be the first guy to fuck Seong Gi-hun,” he hummed. “And now that I have you, I’m going to fuck you so good that you’ll never look at another girl again.”

Gi-hun turned his head to face him with wide eyes and red cheeks, his expression incredulous. He couldn’t speak.

“You want me to be rough with you. That’s why you got on your knees, isn’t it?”

Gi-hun swallowed, his Adam’s apple jumping with the movement of his throat as Sang-woo continued to stroke him, increasing his pace just slightly. “Sang-woo,” he sighed, barely audible, as his cock twitched once in Sang-woo’s grasp.

“I know, baby, I know. You want me to mark you up and call you names, don’t you?” Sang-woo asked him, relishing in the sound of the intoxicating moan that had escaped Gi-hun’s mouth. “You’ve thought about this a lot, huh?”

“More than you know,” Gi-hun confessed. “Please, Sang-woo, I can’t—“

“Get on the bed and wait for me.”

Sang-woo withdrew his hand from Gi-hun’s boxers and walked over to his nightstand. With a pounding heart, Gi-hun dropped his pants and boxers to the floor and stepped out of them before settling against the pillows on Sang-woo’s bed.

As Sang-woo cracked the seal on a new bottle of lube, Gi-hun noticed that he was holding the corner of a wrapped condom between his teeth.

“You bought that for me?” Gi-hun asked, pointing to the lube.

Sang-woo pulled off the seal, looked at Gi-hun, and smiled with the condom wrapper still reflecting gold between his teeth. He reached up a hand and pulled it out before approaching him.

“You bought one for me,” Sang-woo countered, tossing the condom and bottle of lube next to Gi-hun on the bed. He climbed onto the mattress, positioning himself between Gi-hun’s legs and pulling them over his hips. “Look at you,” he murmured, reaching out to trace a hand onto his chest and brushing a hardening nipple with his fingertips. “I could fuck you just like this, baby.”

He placed a hand on Gi-hun’s neck with light pressure, and leaned forwards over his torso to nip at his collarbone, licking and abusing the unmarred skin, painting red and purple on a blank canvas. The hickey that he’d left behind from their first time together had almost completely faded, and Sang-woo pulled the skin between his teeth to watch it reblossom right before his eyes. The hand that he’d placed on Gi-hun’s neck traveled lower to tease his opposite nipple while Sang-woo continued to mark him, biting down on Gi-hun’s neck so hard that his teeth left indents in their wake.

“Fuck,” Gi-hun cried, reaching down to touch himself while Sang-woo soothed his neck with long licks of his tongue. Sang-woo pulled Gi-hun’s hand off of himself when he heard a poorly-stifled moan, holding his wrist in a tight grip.

“Don’t do that,” he lectured, his voice stern. Sang-woo was always serious, but Gi-hun had never seen him like this, with completely black eyes and a newfound dominance to his tone. He nodded his head, and the grip around his wrist relaxed.

Sang-woo lowered himself back down onto Gi-hun’s chest, but this time, he caught a nipple between his teeth instead of skin. He pulled on it for a moment before sucking it into his mouth and resuming rubbing the opposite one with his thumb. Gi-hun let out a low whine as he shuddered, the feeling of electricity quickly shooting down to his groin as Sang-woo continued to nip at his chest, painful red marks appearing every time his mouth moved to a new location.

No girl had ever touched Gi-hun’s nipples like this, let alone licked or bit at them the way that Sang-woo was doing now, and the stimulation was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. His fingers scrabbled for purchase and found themselves tangled in Sang-woo’s hair, pulling him closer to his chest as his sensitivity only continued to increase. Moans and uncensored praise freely fell from Gi-hun’s mouth, though his erection was starting to ache from the neglect and his growing arousal. Beads of precum began to drip onto his abdomen, and he shifted his hips upwards in a desperate attempt to seek out relief through friction against Sang-woo’s body.

Gi-hun looked down at Sang-woo as he moved his head and hovered his mouth over the other nipple.

“You’re so eager, baby. No one’s ever done this to you before, huh?”

No one’s ever done this to you either, his mind supplied, but he bit his lip and shook his head instead of saying it. He briefly imagined Sang-woo watching porn, stroking himself to the sight of two men in the same position as them and studying their techniques. He imagined Sang-woo sitting in class with his chin propped up on his hand, daydreaming about doing those same things to him, about the sounds that he would make and the feeling of Gi-hun writhing beneath him.

Gi-hun’s gut twisted with jealousy at the idea of him watching other men, but he quickly forgot about it once Sang-woo began to abuse his other nipple, repeating what he’d done to the first. This time, he was rougher with his teeth, and the unintelligible gasps and moans that escaped Gi-hun’s mouth increased in frequency. This was quickly growing to be too much– he didn’t know how much more he’d be able to handle. He carded his fingers through Sang-woo’s hair and tugged at the strands when the stimulation made his dick twitch painfully between them.

“Mmm, Sang-woo,” he groaned, his voice shaky and broken. “Please touch me, I can’t–”

Sang-woo stopped nipping at his chest to lean up and kiss him, pulling at his lower lip and grinding their hips together. The friction that he’d been craving this entire time made his eyes roll back, though Sang-woo didn’t indulge him for very long. Gi-hun let out a cry at the loss as Sang-woo sat straight up and gazed over the expanse of skin that had been tainted by his mouth. The corners of his lips turned up into an unsettling smile at the thought of Gi-hun seeing the marks in their darkest form after the two of them had finished. Something twisted within him found pride in knowing that they’d be impossible to hide and that everyone would wonder the identity of the person that had done that to him.

At the same time, he wondered if Gi-hun would readily reveal that information to their friends, and he wondered how he’d react to the entire school knowing what they’d done. He could see the hurt on Sun-hee’s face, the shocked expressions that he’d receive in the hallway, people passing their judgement when it wasn’t called for. Sang-woo had always wanted to humble Gi-hun for the sake of their relationship, but he couldn’t ruin his social standing like this.

Even though his possessiveness had overtaken him and Gi-hun had asked for it, he still began to feel guilty. He ran a hand over the marks that began at his neck and littered his collarbone and chest, feeling the warm skin against his fingertips.

“Hope you have a turtleneck,” he warned, unable to stop himself from breaking character.

Gi-hun looked confused for a moment, then his face softened. “It’s okay, Sang-woo. It’s you.”

Sang-woo’s heart ached as he leaned down to kiss him again, his confidence returning as Gi-hun introduced his tongue into it. He should’ve known that Gi-hun would never take his vulnerability for weakness– he was too kind for that. As they kissed, Sang-woo’s mind repeated the words over and over again like a broken record.

I love you. I love you. I love you, I–

The words were true, but he couldn’t say them. Maybe it was too early for Gi-hun to love Sang-woo, but Sang-woo had felt this way for years; memories of the two of them on repeat in his obsessed mind, the phantom heartbreak and jealous burn in his chest when Gi-hun talked about a girl in front of him, the sleepless nights watching his ceiling and wanting him so badly that he felt like it would kill him.

He’d been lucky enough to not scare Gi-hun to death when he called him in the middle of the night with two bottles of soju in his system and a hand wrapped around himself in his boxers– he couldn’t force such sentiment this early.

After another minute of making out, he moved and repositioned himself so his head was between Gi-hun’s legs. Tender kisses were pressed onto the inside of his upper thighs, and Sang-woo placed his hands on Gi-hun’s hips.

“Are you clean?” Sang-woo asked, meeting Gi-hun’s eyes.

“Yeah, I showered before… I’m clean. What are you going to do?”

“Hand me a pillow.”

Gi-hun picked up a pillow that was next to him, and Sang-woo took it from his grasp.

“Lift up your hips,” Sang-woo told him, and when Gi-hun complied, he slid the pillow under his hips to elevate them.

“What are you– Oh my God!” Gi-hun exclaimed, his hands flying to Sang-woo’s hair. Sang-woo had started licking careful circles around his hole and the surrounding skin, and it caught Gi-hun so off guard that his eyes widened and his chest heaved for a moment as he tried to understand what was going on. Never in his entire life would he have guessed that Sang-woo would have ever wanted to do this to him, let alone actually do it. 

The sensation was odd, but Gi-hun found it to be unbelievable, especially when Sang-woo’s tongue lightly pressed against his entrance over and over again without breaching him. Precum relentlessly dripped onto his stomach from the careful stimulation, and he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be fingered or fucked when something this simple already felt so good. Gi-hun sighed out Sang-woo’s name when he licked him with a flattened tongue and pulsed it against his hole before continuing to tease him open.

Gi-hun was well-versed in sex, but he never knew that people actually fucked each other with their tongues like this. When Sang-woo had started to do it, and his tongue was actually slipping in and out of Gi-hun’s hole, he let out an embarrassingly loud moan. Fortunately, Gi-hun had noticed that the house was empty on his way inside, so no one would be able to hear him. Even so, he slapped a hand over his own mouth and squeezed his eyes shut from the humiliation of making such a feminine noise.

Sang-woo linked his arms under Gi-hun’s legs, pulling him closer to his mouth and lifting his hips up even more as he continued to thrust his tongue in him without abandon.

“Sang-woo– Oh shit, oh my God–” he cried, his legs all but on top of Sang-woo’s shoulders as his hips were raised off of the pillow.

Gi-hun had never eaten a girl out this hungrily before, with this much fervor like he’d die without the taste of her, but it was clear that Sang-woo had been thinking about this for a long time. A tongue could only go so deep, however, and Gi-hun was quickly growing tolerant of the sensation. He needed more.

“Your fingers– Use your fingers, please…” he gasped with broken speech. He let go of Sang-woo’s hair and gripped the sheets with white knuckles.

“Fuck, Gi-hun,” Sang-woo groaned when he pulled back and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He reached for the lube that he’d thrown on the mattress and messily squirted it onto one of his fingers. “You’re so fucking hot…”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Sang-woo inserted his finger into Gi-hun’s hole and started moving it in and out of him at a slower pace. He kissed Gi-hun’s inner thigh as he did so, biting and leaving yet another impression of his teeth as Gi-hun opened up for him.

Maybe Sang-woo was right after all, even though he hadn’t fucked him yet. How could Gi-hun go back to fucking girls when he’d discovered so many new things about fucking men? Were there girls that would rim and finger him as passionately as Sang-woo was doing now?

His cheeks flushed bright red at the thought of a girl like Sun-hee going down on him like that. Even though Gi-hun knew that he’d already lost, he still couldn’t believe he was finding himself on the bottom, feeling like one of the girls he’d taken to bed.

I’m a fucking pillow princess, Gi-hun realized with horror. He hadn’t kissed Sang-woo’s neck, or laid a hand on his cock; he was laying in the same spot on the bed, letting himself be used and shamefully loving every second of it. He knew that it wouldn’t be that way forever, though, since he was already making his own list of everything he wanted to do to Sang-woo after today. He promised himself that it would be an endless cycle of back and forth, to take and give pleasure equally– although, to be quite honest, Gi-hun was preferring this dynamic so far.

Sang-woo was taller, with broader shoulders and bigger arms, and Gi-hun loved the flame that burned in his eyes at seeing him succumb to his touch and the words that unwound him with every syllable. He was everything that Gi-hun thought he would be.

Sang-woo inserted a second finger, and he began scissoring them to spread him open more effectively, wasting no time before adding a third.

“I’m ready, Sang-woo, please…” Gi-hun sobbed, throwing the rest of his pride out of the window. His knuckles ached from gripping the sheets, his cock throbbed with neglect, and all he wanted was to feel him, to feel the love and desire that had been accumulating over the years to lead them to this very moment.

Removing his fingers, Sang-woo picked up the condom that he’d set on the bed and moved back from Gi-hun to put it on.

“Get on your knees.”

Swallowing heavily, Gi-hun flipped over onto his knees and hid his face in the pillow. All he could hear was the opening of the condom wrapper and the pounding of the blood in his ears before the mattress creaked once more under Sang-woo’s weight. A pair of firm hands rested on his hips to steady them, and then Sang-woo used one to trace the curve of Gi-hun’s ass and squeeze it.

His confidence was quickly faltering again as he lined himself up with Gi-hun’s hole and pressed against it, feeling himself being pulled in as Gi-hun bore down on him. Gi-hun cursed, and Sang-woo knew that he was gritting his teeth– he knew how it felt to be fucked for the first time. 

Sang-woo groaned when he bottomed out, and Gi-hun whimpered into the pillow as he pulled back and then forwards again, acclimating himself to the tightness that surrounded his cock. He couldn’t believe that he had made it this far– he had been fucked by Gi-hun and now he was the one fucking him.

He was the only one that had seen him this way, and Sang-woo hoped that no one else ever would. As he established a steady pace, Gi-hun became a moaning mess beneath him and had begun to arch his back as he cursed into the bedsheets, gripping them just as tightly as Sang-woo was gripping his hips.

The way that Gi-hun opened up for him, the delicate curve of his back as he was fucked on his knees, and the lewdness of the noises he was making… It was undeniable that Gi-hun, plain and simple, was meant to be on the bottom. Sang-woo wondered if Gi-hun was enjoying it enough for his previous statement to be true, that he would never fuck another girl again; he wondered if he was giving Gi-hun enough, if he needed more than just a hand on his cock to finish from this.

Had Sang-woo already met his expectations, even though this was the first time he’d fucked anyone? His research, combined with the fantasies that he’d developed over the years, were quite extensive, although he hadn’t laid a hand on anybody in the process. How could he, when the only person he wanted to touch like this looked so beautiful when they were taking him, covered with newly-darkening hickeys and a blush that had spread to every square inch of his skin? Could he have fucked someone else in preparation for this?

No, he decided. Fucking Gi-hun as his first made it all the more special for him, and even though Sang-woo would never say it, Gi-hun already knew.

Sang-woo spat in his hand and leaned forwards over Gi-hun’s back, linking an arm under his and pulling their bodies flush together so that Gi-hun’s face was no longer buried in the pillow. He splayed his dry hand on Gi-hun’s chest to keep him steady while he continued to fuck into him, and with the other took a hold of Gi-hun’s cock. Sobbing at the contact that he’d previously been deprived of, Gi-hun quickly placed his hand on top of Sang-woo’s, feeling so overcome with stimulation that he knew he wouldn’t last. Sang-woo’s strokes eventually began to match the pace of his thrusts, and he began to whisper praise in Gi-hun’s ear about how good he felt and how he wanted him to cry out his name when he finally let himself go.

Sang-woo was quickly approaching his orgasm too, not having enough experience to prolong his stamina, and when Gi-hun’s moans suddenly heightened in pitch after a few more thrusts and movements of his hand, he knew that it was over.

“Sang-woo, I’m gonna— I’m—“

Gi-hun trembled in Sang-woo’s hold while he came uncontrollably onto their hands, some of it dripping onto the bedsheets below him. The air filled up with curses and unintelligible noises as Gi-hun sobbed through his orgasm, and Sang-woo found himself cumming into the condom from the way that Gi-hun’s muscles had clenched around him.

This climax was incomparable to the one he had the night of their phone call— it was so much more satisfying, and his senses were so heightened that he could feel the pleasure in every nerve fiber of his being; the unrelenting rushes of dopamine and endorphins in all of the right places.

When Sang-woo released his hold on Gi-hun and pulled himself out, Gi-hun collapsed forwards onto the bed.

“Oh my fucking God,” he choked out, his voice all but gone as he tried to catch his breath. “Sang-woo, you—“

He swallowed, and Sang-woo paused where he stood, meeting his eyes even as he pinched the used condom between his fingertips.

“I’m sorry for ever saying that you were ‘kinda sexy’, Sang-woo. You’re unbelievably fucking sexy. Are you sure you weren’t lying about being a virgin before?” Gi-hun continued, suddenly full of post-coital energy as he tried to sit himself up against the pillows.

“No, I wasn’t,” Sang-woo told him, tying the condom and walking over to the small trash can by his desk to throw it away. “But I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“Enjoyed? I think you single-handedly helped me through my gay awakening. Or bisexual awakening. Who cares? I haven’t felt this good after sex in a long time,” Gi-hun rambled, but then he cartoonishly froze and placed a hand over his mouth. “Oh my God, what time is it? Did your mom come home while we were—?”

“It’s only 8:30, hyung. She’ll be home in about an hour or so, which is good for us, since you’re more vocal than a girl in a straight porn video.” Sang-woo couldn’t help but grin as Gi-hun blushed all over again, but after a moment of thinking, his expression melted back into seriousness. “Don’t let her see your neck, though. She’ll have a heart attack.”

“Is it actually that bad?”

When Sang-woo didn’t respond, Gi-hun stood up from the bed and walked to Sang-woo’s bathroom, flicking on the light before standing in front of the mirror.

Sang-woo squeezed his eyes shut as he waited for the—

“Holy shit!”

That.

“I look like I was attacked by fifty fucking vampires!”

“I did not give you fifty hickeys, hyung,” Sang-woo called from the bedroom, picking his clothes up off of the floor.

“Well, it sure looks like it! When you told me to wear a turtleneck, I thought maybe you’d given me a couple, but—“

“Are you upset?” Sang-woo’s guilt quickly returned.

Gi-hun sighed, reentered the bedroom, and shook his head. “No. I meant what I said, that it’s okay because it’s you, but—“ he started laughing incredulously, so hard that it broke up his speech. “This is unbelievable. You’re like a monster, and you left teeth marks on me! Teeth!”

Sang-woo cracked a shy smile at him, but he was still uncertain as to whether Gi-hun was upset with him or not. Gi-hun must’ve seen right through him, because he soon stopped laughing.

“Sang-woo, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. If you want to leave before my mother comes home, I’d understand.”

“I don’t want to leave. Can I spend the night with you?” Gi-hun asked, a frown spreading across his features. “Like you said over the phone, it’s been a long time.”

“But I don’t have a turtleneck for you to–”

“Enough about the turtleneck! I have one. I’ll leave early in the morning to go put it on before school, okay? Why are you so worried about people seeing my neck?”

“I’m just worried about what people are going to say to you. And what you’ll say to them,” Sang-woo confessed. “Like Sun-hee, and the group we sit with at lunch.”

Gi-hun shook his head and crossed the distance, taking Sang-woo’s hand. “It’ll be alright. We can keep our relationship on the down-low for now, and we’ll figure out what we’re comfortable sharing later, okay?”

“Our relationship?”

“Sang-woo. I think it’s pretty fair to consider us dating after this, don’t you think?”

Sang-woo’s lips parted in surprise, and Gi-hun smiled from ear to ear when the grip on his hand tightened.

“I would kiss you,” Gi-hun chuckled, “but I think you need to brush your teeth first.”

“Asshole,” Sang-woo murmured, blushing and tearing his hand from Gi-hun’s to walk past him to the bathroom.

“You wanna talk about assholes, Sang-woo-ah?”

“Shut the fuck up and get in the shower.”

Sang-woo brushed his teeth while Gi-hun waited for the water to warm up, crossing his arms and fondly watching his boyfriend in the mirror. Gi-hun stepped into the small shower first, brushing his newly wet hair back with his hands, and Sang-woo joined him when he was finished, wrapping his arms around his waist and pulling him in for a kiss. They kissed a few times beneath the water before Sang-woo pulled back and smoothed a hand over the hickeys on Gi-hun’s neck.

“You know, I read that massaging hickeys makes them fade faster,” he said, lightly rubbing his thumb over one of them.

“Oh yeah? Is that what you were reading in that textbook of yours before I came over?”

“No.” Sang-woo brought up his other hand from Gi-hun’s waist to rub at another hickey.

“You’re always studying something. Tell me what it was,” Gi-hun teased. “Since you’re my boyfriend now, I have even more of a right to make fun of you for being a nerd.”

“Psychology. Attraction.”

“You were researching attraction? Jesus, Sang-woo,” Gi-hun laughed. “Do you have a test coming up or do you just like me so much that you want to know the science behind it?”

“Both,” Sang-woo sighed, leaning in to kiss him again as he moved his hands to massage different hickeys on Gi-hun’s neck.

After staying in the shower for much longer than necessary, the two of them stepped out and dried off before dressing in clean clothes to sleep in. Much to Gi-hun’s embarrassment, Sang-woo scrubbed the wet spot on his bed from their session so that they could lay on unsoiled sheets. When the front door finally opened, he greeted his mother and asked her if Gi-hun could stay the night, and when she said yes, Sang-woo locked his bedroom door behind him with a smile.

Since it was still too early to go to sleep, and they didn’t have any alcohol or cigarettes on hand, the two of them turned on a TV show and reclined next to each other on the bed. Gi-hun leaned his head on Sang-woo’s shoulder and linked their arms as they talked over it, relishing in each other’s presence as their fingertips brushed between them.

It had been so long since they carried on a conversation like this for hours, one about simple subjects that only mattered to them. Gi-hun didn’t mention girls that he was interested in, because there weren’t any, and Sang-woo was more receptive to what he had to say. When Gi-hun had finally grown tired and began to fall asleep on Sang-woo’s shoulder, Sang-woo helped reposition him comfortably under the covers and brushed the hair out of his face.

“Goodnight,” he murmured. I love you, he thought to add, but didn’t, as he turned to face away from him. Sang-woo turned off the television with the remote and closed his eyes, feeling sleep readily overtaking him after his long weekend.

Before he finally slipped into his dreams, he wished the feeling that Gi-hun had created within him would never go away.

*****

When Sang-woo’s alarm woke him up the next morning, he was alone in his room. He wondered if Gi-hun had run into his mother on the way out of the house, but he doubted it– Gi-hun could be quiet when he needed to be, and it was likely that he had no trouble getting home and slipping into his bedroom without arousing suspicion from anyone.

After getting ready for school, Sang-woo stepped outside to wait for Gi-hun to arrive with his bike. The time that Gi-hun would usually be there to take him to school passed by five minutes, and Sang-woo began to grow increasingly worried by the second.

What if something happened to him on the way home this morning, or on the way back to Sang-woo’s house? What if his mother had noticed his neck and he was being punished for it somehow?

Sang-woo stared at his phone screen and considered calling him, but before he could do so, Gi-hun pulled up on his bike sporting a black, long-sleeved turtleneck beneath the shirt of his school uniform. His mouth went dry and his heart began to race at the sight of him, utterly impressed both by how good he looked and how well the hickeys on the neck had been hidden by the shirt. At least now he knew that nothing bad had happened as a result of his actions.

“Morning,” Gi-hun beamed, his eyes sparkling with the light from the rising sun. “Ready to go?”

Sang-woo sighed light-heartedly before settling onto the back of the bike and resting his arms in their normal position around Gi-hun’s waist. “You look good,” he told him. “Really good.”

Gi-hun teasingly thanked him before pedaling them to school. Today, the two boys cherished their time together on Gi-hun’s bike more than they ever had before; the soft, yet reassuring pressure of Sang-woo’s arms around him so intimately, the knowledge that they’d broken through a barrier and that these moments were now so much more valuable than they used to be.

They weren’t just two best friends riding on a bike together to school anymore– so many things were yet to change between them. Their relationship would extend far beyond impromptu hookups in the middle of the night and would continue to grow as the the two of them learned to love each other in an entirely new way.

Gi-hun wouldn’t hand out his number so freely or speak to girls that he didn’t know as often; he wouldn’t talk about them in conversation, especially not at his lunch table, and he would always make sure to communicate with Sang-woo as an equal in his conversations with others rather than to just include him as an afterthought. They wouldn’t be the sun and his lingering shadow anymore, silent and always following behind. 

Now, they would be the sun and his moon.

*****

A few weeks later, Gi-hun bought three bottles of soju from a classmate’s older brother after school and hid them under his pillows so his mother wouldn’t see them if she came into his room. Although Gi-hun usually liked to drink on weekend nights for no purpose other than to have fun, he had something else in mind for tonight.

After he’d eaten dinner and the sky had been painted black, he sat up on his bed and laid the bottles out in front of him. Gi-hun hated being alone, especially when he was drunk, but he knew well that he would never actually have to be alone again, not when the person he loved was only one call away.

Pulling out his cellphone, he selected Sang-woo’s contact and dialed his number. After all, there was nothing wrong with calling to get what you wanted, right?

A new game had begun ever since the day that Gi-hun had put a label on their relationship. While there was no shame in losing this one, the implications were immense, and both Gi-hun and Sang-woo tried to avoid the topic out of fear of scaring away the other, even if it was all they wanted to hear. Maybe tonight would be the night, if Sang-woo’s lips could be loosened enough by the alcohol that Gi-hun had bought for them to share.

When Sang-woo arrived at Gi-hun’s house, they each downed a bottle of soju within an hour and shared the third bottle at a slower pace. Their favorite show played on the television, but neither of them were really paying attention to it. Gi-hun closed the distance between them by climbing onto Sang-woo’s lap and kissing him with his arms wrapped around his neck. 

When he pulled back, Sang-woo placed his hands on Gi-hun’s waist and looked into his eyes like he’d hung the stars in the sky. His cheeks were pink and his pupils were wide, and Gi-hun knew what he wanted to say, the words on the tip of his tongue but held back only by fear, even if Gi-hun wanted to say the same.

“Say it,” Gi-hun whispered, kissing him again. “I do too.”

Sang-woo traced a hand over the fading hickeys on Gi-hun’s neck and searched his eyes for insincerity. “You do?” he asked, his voice quiet, unsure.

“Yeah,” Gi-hun murmured, brushing their lips together chastely once more. He didn’t think that he would ever get enough of this, enough of him.

Sang-woo closed his eyes and leaned into their kiss, and once they separated to breathe, he whispered the words between them, clear as day.

“I love you, Gi-hun.”

And this time, Sang-woo had lost their game.