Work Text:
Hongjoong is still at least a little bit drunk when he wakes up.
He knows he must be because his head isn’t sharp with a hangover and dehydration so much as just weightless and empty, and he’d certainly still been drunk when he’d fallen asleep and that could only have been a few hours ago.
White morning light paints the white-panelled room he’s in bright beyond the cautious crease of his eyelids, airy and pleasant drifting through large windows which don’t have the curtains drawn. Still too early for the sunlight to turn gold.
There’s an alarm going off, he realises long seconds later. A phone buzzing muffled beneath some pillow or another, turning louder and more insistent as it remains ignored.
Hongjoong breathes a reluctant sigh, tucks his face back against the warm span of soft-skinned shoulders his cheek is resting on, slips his arm further around an even warmer, even softer stomach and wonders if he can go back to sleep.
The alarm immediately turns harsher and louder, piercing through the gentle morning, and Hongjoong grimaces when his fuzzy, distant mind recognises it as the sound of dogs barking. The most insistent and unpleasant sound to wake up to, probably, but at least it seems to do the trick when the body Hongjoong is pressed against shifts and startles, his back flexing against Hongjoong’s sleep-soft cheek when he rolls and pats around beneath every single pillow on the bed before he finds the phone, swiping the alarm away before he slumps back down with a quiet, sleep-rough groan that Hongjoong feels all the way in his fingertips and toes.
Eyes closed, basking in this warmth. The guy doesn’t tell him to fuck off or anything, and seems perfectly content to let Hongjoong cling to him like a limpet while he rolls back onto his side, his warm back exposed like a sunrock for Hongjoong to press himself into.
He isn’t like this, really. He really isn’t like this with anyone he actually knows, because somehow clinginess begets the expectation of affection and Hongjoong doesn’t have all that much affection to give. He doesn’t often have the energy to go out of his way to be patient and nice, and if that means he has to forego his deservedness of cuddling his friends then so be it.
But this soft warm back doesn’t belong to any of his friends; Hongjoong doesn’t even remember the name of the man it belongs to, and the chances of them ever seeing each other again after this are, regretfully, quite low.
Hongjoong has to take a moment, gentle morning-music spilling quietly from the phone now without disturbing the restfulness of the early hour, to figure out why exactly he thinks it’s so regretful. He runs his mind over his own skin, trying to think about what he remembers, what exactly is giving him this gentle feeling of bone-deep relaxation and peace.
Lights off in the dark, distant streetlight ambient through these same windows, curtains that have probably never been drawn. Skin, skin, skin. Warm and bare and smooth, the long stretches and lines of bodies completely uninterrupted. Hongjoong lying on his back at the foot of the bed, he recalls, his leg in the air, fumbling with the tight laces of the docs he should have taken off at the door but hadn’t quite had the balance to manage without falling.
Bright, sharp laughter, he remembers, buoyant and crisp, as the tricky boots had been pulled off his feet for him.
He’d been lying face-down on the bed, he thinks, hands clenched in a pillow and bare legs straddling his back, an arm wound around his waist to angle his hips up, a wet tongue fucking him open while he’d muffled breathy whines into the sheets.
Where is he, exactly? Does this guy drive? Can he take Hongjoong home? Is there a train station, at least, nearby?
He remembers an uber. He remembers a hand carding through his hair in the back of that uber, tugging just firmly enough to tilt Hongjoong’s head back, to let himself get pressed back into the leather for a deep, open-mouthed kiss, his own hand pressed between spread legs, fingers cupping the soft weight of balls, the heel of his hand grinding down on the stiffening shape of a half-hard cock.
A dim lounge room lit with a quiet, warm yellow lamp. They’d just talked, he thinks. For ages. Hands on thighs, unhurried kisses lingered and exchanged.
Are you hungry?
I meal-prepped some soup before I went out, if you want some I can warm it up.
Forested paths and winding streets, twisting and turning in a rabbit warren of houses built into some hidden hilly suburb of Seoul. He'd looked out the window of the car, dimly recognised some intersection or cluster of shops and said, oh, this is the neighbourhood my friend just moved to.
Hand in his hair, openmouthed kisses, Hongjoong ended up with many far more interesting things to think about than how close this guy might live to Seonghwa.
Hongjoong had come with his knees pressed to the mattress by his head, a cock thick and hard feeling like it was guts-deep inside him just about breaking his spine in two, his hands desperately curled into thick black hair, lips and teeth and tongue on his neck so relentless and so much that his legs had shaken and his voice had forgotten the silence of two o'clock in the morning, and shamefully, humiliatingly, he’d spilled over his own chest untouched to something stupid and depraved like I kinda wanna fuck you pregnant, baby. Kinda wanna keep you forever.
Strong hands pinning his wrists to the bed, lips against the black ink carved into the thin, sensitive skin beneath his arm.
No one like you?
No one like me.
A fascinated, eager reverence in his darkness-blurred expression. You're right about that, he'd said, and kissed down the line of Hongjoong’s throat. Large hands brushing down his sides, curled gently around the gentle curve of Hongjoong’s ribs. There's no one like you in the world.
It's all just drunken sex talk. No matter how good a lay it was, some random guy from a club isn't going to fall in love with him.
That's fine. That's good, actually. At best, Hongjoong was just getting his dick wet. Filling that part of himself that starts to think that he might want to date when he goes too long without getting laid. He doesn't want to date and he knows it. He was just lucky enough to find the right stranger in the right club, who would would fuck him so well that his legs still feel weak in the morning, the type that leaves him feeling silly and infatuated, who would give him what he needed to fall asleep sticky with sex and sweat curled into the warmth of someone else's skin, enjoying the feeling of pretending to be in love.
This is the best he could have asked for from a one night stand, and exactly what he'd given up on hoping for in clubs and bars. Drunk sex never lives up to its expectations – except, apparently, for the rare times it does.
He thinks he kind of recognises the song that's playing from the phone, but he's half asleep and half drunk and can't think of the title or band. He hums along to the melody a little, lazy and muffled into the warm skin between lax shoulders, dozing to the feeling of fingertips drifting absently over the back of Hongjoong’s hand – briefly leaving when he needs to type something into his phone, then tracing without thought over Hongjoong’s skin again.
It's comfortable, both of them half awake and no good mornings yet to disturb the plainness of it all, no words to wake Hongjoong up from his willingness to stay.
He traces his fingers over a soft stomach, breathes in the gentle musk of it. Skin and sleep and soft sheets. Hongjoong can feel the subtlety of him tensing his thighs in little jolts to each melodic beat of whatever song is playing, his fingers rolling staccato taps across the back of Hongjoong’s hand. He wonders if he's going to get any morning sex out of this, figures he really wouldn't mind it and then immediately decides the tone of this guy's wakefulness and distraction isn't pointing them down the path of more.
Hongjoong could probably change that by moving his hand down his naked torso and touching him first, but he's melting too pleasantly into this easy morning to really want to bother.
Where exactly are they? Somewhere near where Seonghwa lives. Hongjoong has no idea – it's been a few weeks since Seonghwa moved, and Hongjoong still hasn’t had time to go see his new place. He could go now, maybe? Considering he's in the area.
Oh, but. Well, no, Hongjoong had been half-planning to visit this weekend but Seonghwa is visiting his family, so he'd taken the day off to go out and get drunk and laid instead. Not a bad result all told, but he is still kind of drunk and he does still have no idea how to get home, and Seonghwa isn't here for Hongjoong to stumble into his house and pass out on his couch for a few more blissful hours until the hangover really catches him.
He's somewhere between dozing off and falling asleep for real, he thinks, when the body he's pressed against shifts, turns just slightly onto his back so that the guy can peer over his shoulder at Hongjoong and poke a finger against his arm, his other hand still folded warm over the arm Hongjoong has draped across his soft waist.
"Hey," he says, plain and nonchalant and firmly awake, "it's six thirty. I gotta go to work."
Fucking alright then. Cool. Who the hell gets absolutely wasted at a club and brings someone home to fuck knowing they gotta be up for work at six in the morning?
"Okay," Hongjoong mutters surly with sleep against his skin, pressing his eyes resolutely closed and making no move to get up.
A long stretch of silence filled with gentle upbeat music before the guy firmly emphasises, "I'm going to work," with this admittedly quite charming – fuck – amusement in his placid, unaffected voice. As though the whole world is a pleasant joke and Hongjoong’s reluctance to move is almost worth a laugh.
"Yeah?" Hongjoong returns, blasé. "You mentioned."
A little huff, somewhere between amused and exasperated, shakes through his body pressed against Hongjoong’s. "Are you gonna get up?" he pushes, gently nudging his shoulder against Hongjoong.
It's so fucking early and he's so tired and still drunk, and he'd been perfectly happy staying exactly where he is pressed comfortably warm against this stranger's back without any words needing to be said.
Somehow, at some point, words always need to be said.
Hongjoong gives a quiet grumble and groan and burrows himself further into the space between this man's back and the pillows on his bed, his arm squeezing tighter around his waist, reluctant to move and determined to put off the need to speak for as long as he can get away with it.
The amused little snort it earns him somehow, with no intention on Hongjoong’s part, makes him think vividly of a pot of soup heating on the stovetop, his arms wound around a firm, straight waist and the sound of surprise Hongjoong had made when he'd taste-tested a little spoonful. It's the same snort that had shaken through the same body, and suddenly Hongjoong wants desperately to taste the soup again. It had been really fucking good – he remembers that much.
"I get it," that same voice rumbles amusement through the back Hongjoong has his cheek pressed to, "you're cute. But I'm not gonna go to work and leave a stranger in my house, so you gotta get up."
Right. Because soup (and sex) aside they are emphatically strangers – and by all likelihood will remain so.
Knowing that doesn’t stop Hongjoong from grumbling and whining while the guy pushes up and crawls over Hongjoong to get out of bed, and he doesn’t kiss Hongjoong when he does it because they're mostly sober now and it's over and there's nothing to kiss about.
Hongjoong sighs and flops himself out on the messy blankets feeling grimy from sleeping in club-and-sex sweat and the hangover that is blooming slowly through his body and limbs. The way his head is turned on the pillow is kind of bruising his bitch of a snug piercing, but it's been behaving well lately so he's willing to risk some inflammation for the sake of staying exactly where he is, his heavy eyes creased in narrow slivers to watch the guy stand up and stretch his arms over his head, phone still in his hand, with a thick, weary groan.
He's hot.
Like, really fucking hot.
Strobe-lit clubs do everyone favours, but this guy doesn’t need it at all. His bedroom is well-lit in the morning light and Hongjoong drowsily watches him while he digs through a laundry basket for clean underwear and pants, tossing them onto the end of the bed while he finds socks and a shirt, and then starts getting dressed.
Good one, Hongjoong, he dazedly thinks to himself while he eyes up his man's physique – long legs, strong thighs, straight waist and this slight hint of definition under a soft stomach, all smooth gold skin that he carelessly covers up as he gets dressed. You did good. Nice job.
When he douses himself in antiperspirant Hongjoong groans and rolls over to stuff his face in the pillows, asthma catching in his throat, and he thinks, well, nobody's perfect.
Freshly dressed and freshly unshowered, the guy steps out of his room with the door left ajar and Hongjoong hears the crisp sounds of him washing dishes in the kitchen for several short minutes – cleaning up what must have remained of their adventure into midnight soup. Hongjoong twists and pulls the blanket up over his head with a sigh, breathing in the smell of the sheets and trying to pick out what is laundry detergent, what is shampoo sitting soft against pillow covers, what is the scent of this man's body when he comes here to sleep, what part of it is the smell of the sex they had.
He can't pick it all out though; this bed simply smells wholly human, lived-in and warm, and it's not that Hongjoong thinks there's a place for him in it. It's just that he doesn't want to leave its comfort just yet.
He wonders how far away Seonghwa's house is, and wonders whether his roommate might be home and willing to let Hongjoong in, and let him pass out on the couch for a few hours until Seonghwa comes back. He comes home today, right? Later, though. Late afternoon.
Hongjoong could definitely stand to sleep until late afternoon, but now he's thinking about Seonghwa's roommate. Hongjoong hasn't met him – proxy of never being to Seonghwa's new house – but he's heard a bit about him, on the phone and when they catch up for lunch.
Seonghwa has been so eager to talk about him the past few weeks, as though all of his attention seems to revolve around how funny this new guy is, how sweet, how considerate, how clear-spoken and easygoing with setting and respecting boundaries. He's energetic and outgoing but he knows how to settle and keep his peace – he's a dancer, actually, at KQ. Same as San, that's how he and Seonghwa met. You'd like him, Hongjoong, he's just the right side of fun, but smart enough to know when to be quiet and gentle and calm.
It's been just this side of too long for Hongjoong to wave it off as a mere new-person thing, and he's pretty sure with the weeks-long persistence of Seonghwa's chatter about him, the attention has slipped sweetly into an affection, a quiet attraction, and Hongjoong is happy for him – if perhaps a little cautious of the ingenuity behind Seonghwa wanting to date someone he just signed a twelve-month lease with. If things were to go bad, they would go very very bad.
But if it goes well, then who is Hongjoong but an overcautious grinch set on holding Seonghwa back from his happiness?
In the end they're different people, and Hongjoong never takes reckless chances with people who have any likelihood at all of popping back into his life after he limps out in the morning. Seonghwa is absolutely more than free, of course, to make whatever bad decisions he likes.
And, hey, it's not like Hongjoong is a saint. Here he is, grumbling and groaning and hiding in a stranger's bed in god knows where, all because he did the stupid thing and went to a club and got absolutely wasted and came home with a guy who cooked him soup and fucked him senseless with the best sex Hongjoong has had in recent memory, and now he's kind of a little bit besotted. Purely on accident.
The sex was intentional, but the soup? Phenomenal. Unprecedented. Giving him weird gross little feelings that make him want to burrow into these blankets and disappear forever because getting laid was meant to cure his stupid brain from wanting a relationship, not make him attach to some random guy who just wanted the exact same unspoken rules of a one night stand that Hongjoong did.
He knows he's never coming back here, which is exactly why he's so stupidly stubbornly determined to stay in bed for as long as he can get away with. It's stupid, but he doesn't want to just…walk out and never think about it again. (It's one of those nights he's going to think about for the rest of his life, probably, by which all other one night stands will be compared to. He's aware.)
Where is his phone, anyway? Maybe he should message Seonghwa, even if it's just to ask him how the fuck to get home from whatever neighbourhood he lives in.
Ah – shit. And there it is again. Do you need to charge your phone? No it's okay mine will be fine, you might need yours to get home in the morning. What cord do you need? I have an adaptor. Fuck fuck fuck. This guy just…
What, he's hot, he fucks, he cooks, he cleans? But he has to go right ahead and be thoughtful too? Considerate, even? Fucking christ. Hongjoong kind of almost wants to cry with a miserable sort of frustration while he reaches out to unplug his fully-charged phone from the adaptor, never mind the scatter of torn condom foils. This is so fucking stupid. He needs this guy to walk right back into the bedroom and sweep Hongjoong off his feet, kiss him right on his fucking mouth and marry him immediately.
Hongjoong can hear the hush of him sweeping out in the lounge room, and then the hallway. Who the fuck cleans the house at six o'clock in the morning? Any minute now, he'll walk in and declare his undying love and Hongjoong will realise he's being stupid and turn him down. This guy didn't even shower before getting dressed for work, remember that? A whole can of deodorant doesn’t make up for it!
He throws himself back under the blankets as the door nudges open, then peeks out when he feels something being tossed onto the bed. Hongjoong’s bag, his shirt, and the guy's jacket from last night, all of them left forgotten on the couch after the soup, and after the warm and genuine (if drunken) conversations they'd had over the steaming bowls had been forsaken for Hongjoong’s hand on his waist, lips on lips and bodies pressed together for the simple pleasure of being close enough to touch.
He sighs, slumps back into the pillows, eyes pressed closed in defeat. He's being stupid and sulky and needy, and there's no place for that in a one night stand. He doesn't even remember this guy's name, or even if he got it in the first place.
"Why are you still in bed?"
Hongjoong scrunches up his nose. Some marriage proposal. "Why are you cleaning at six in the morning," he counters, his voice gravelled from sleep and strain and disuse and dehydration – all the lovely, charming things that come from a night like the one he just had.
"My roommate is coming home today," he says as though Hongjoong actually expected an honest answer, bending down to sweep the pile of dirt into a dustpan, "and I let things get messy while he was gone. I don't want him coming back to an anxiety attack if he sees it dirty, or some guy in his house," he emphasises, a pointed look at Hongjoong.
Hongjoong huffs, and sits up when he leaves to empty the dustpan.
It's the first time that he actually bothers to look properly at the room without the distraction of its owner taking his attention. It seems just slightly disordered and bare, as though he's only recently moved in and hasn't had much time to set up more than his bed and a desk.
If he's just moved, he probably doesn't want to piss off his new housemate so soon.
This is the same neighbourhood that Seonghwa just moved to, too. Funny if they were neighbours. There must be a good market here right now. Hongjoong isn't planning on moving any time soon, but it's something to keep in mind.
He's still sitting and blinking bleary around the well-lit room when the guy comes back again, taking a bag and an ID lanyard with a fob from the messy desk and gesturing impatiently for Hongjoong to get up and put some clothes on.
Hongjoong is staring at the lanyard.
It's swinging from his hand, flashing his photo on one side and the company logo on the other.
Hongjoong swallows nervously, several things suddenly making too much sense and realisation creeping in on him about ten hours too late.
He works at KQ… He just moved to Seonghwa's new neighbourhood… His roommate is away right now, and hates mess…
Numbly, a quiet horror chilling whatever is left of his drunkenness right out of his system and leaving only the hangover behind, Hongjoong asks, "Do you know Park Seonghwa?"
He tilts his head a little, arches a brow. "Small world," he says, plain and mostly uninterested, and gestures again for Hongjoong to get up. He hasn't realised yet.
Oh…oh no. No, no, oh god oh no Hongjoong is…the worst friend in the world, maybe? Oh, god. He's staring at this guy – Wooyoung, his name stuck in Hongjoong’s head for how many times Seonghwa has sighed over him.
"I'm Hongjoong," he says, stiff and plain, and hopes that gets the message across.
Wooyoung kind of blinks and Hongjoong sees the realisation fall through him, sees the weight settle into his heels even though he doesn't visibly react and his composure stays plain and nonchalant. They both know that both of them know that there has been a terrible mistake.
Wooyoung opens his mouth and then pinches his tongue between his teeth, a furrow between his brows. "Okay," he says, coiling the lanyard tensely in his hand, "well. I gotta go to work," he says again, but there's something slightly more casual about his tone, slightly more familiar than the polite amusement with which he'd said those words before. He's so ready to understand that he and Hongjoong know each other, even if only peripherally, and accept what that means. "You can do what you want," he says, "but it'd probably be best if you weren't naked in my bed when he comes back."
So.
So, like.
Okay so Hongjoong agrees, emphatically, with what Wooyoung is saying. But he's also kind of maybe a bit pissed off inside the sanctity of his brain that he was so much closer than he ever imagined to having a bed in Seonghwa's house that he could sleep in until his hangover disappeared. So painfully close, in fact, that the opportunity devoured itself into an ouroboros of regrets.
"Yeah," Hongjoong forces a weak laugh all the same, still unsure of what or how much Wooyoung actually knows. "Probably."
Seonghwa isn't the type to confess, at all, ever. No matter what Hongjoong was spinning in his mind just before he's the furthest thing from reckless, and the last thing he'd do would be compromise his own living situation immediately after signing a twelve-month lease. But, well. He can be…very transparent, and Wooyoung seems very perceptive.
Wooyoung also seems very much the type to keep things as smooth and easy as possible between himself and Seonghwa – messy on his own, but still cleaning the house at six in the morning so that Seonghwa won't come home to it untidy. He probably doesn't want to introduce an element of conflict. Which is to say, he probably doesn't want to introduce Seonghwa to the idea that he left for two days and, while he was gone, Wooyoung took the opportunity to sleep with his best friend. And made him soup. Drunk at two in the morning. The best fucking soup Hongjoong has ever had in his life.
Hongjoong doesn’t really have much ground to hold the not-showering-before-work thing against Wooyoung for how quickly he rushes to find his clothes and pull them on, jumping to fit back into his torn jeans and spraying himself – sparsely – with Wooyoung’s deodorant to hide the drunk-club-sex-sweat-morning-after smell before he picks up the mock-satin button up back over his head. Good look for a walk of shame.
"Here," Wooyoung says, shaking a clean tee out of the same washing basket and tossing it into Hongjoong’s startled hands. "You've got," he gestures vaguely at his own chest and Hongjoong glances down at himself, then across to the wide mirrors fronting the built-in dresser doors.
(Look.
He remembers having his chest pressed flat to the bed, wrists pinned behind his back and his hips arched up for Wooyoung to fuck him, one hand holding Hongjoong’s arms at the small of his back and the other carding through his hair to make him turn his head and see their reflections in the dark.
Look at that, baby. You look pretty good with a cock inside you.)
He swallows, eyes averted, and pulls the shirt on over his head. Wooyoung is right; there's a smattering of kiss-bitten bruises below his collarbones, purple and red and vibrantly fresh, and the loose, low neckline of the shirt he came here in would do nothing to hide them.
It's not exactly Hongjoong’s style – a Billie Eilish print that seems oddly familiar for a long moment that he can't really place before it hits him.
"Isn't this San’s?" he asks, tucking it into the waistband of his jeans.
Wooyoung glances at him, confused, before his eyes dart down to the shirt and understanding breaks across his nearly unbearably handsome face with a bright smile, the crack of a sunlight laugh. "Oh," he says, "no. He likes it, so he steals it a lot."
Hongjoong arches a brow, bends over to fish his dirty socks from the floor before Wooyoung pinches them from between his fingers, tosses them near Hongjoong’s shirt on the bed and hands him a balled-up pair of clean ones. Hongjoong has to think for a moment about whether he'd prefer to wear his own dirty socks or someone else's clean ones, but in the end the ones Wooyoung gave him are softer and fresher and newer, and it won't matter all that much once they're inside his docs.
"So this is your 'sorry about the walk of shame, here's a clean shirt' shirt," he says.
Wooyoung pauses and gives him a vaguely startled, vaguely unreadable sort of look. "I don't really know what you're trying to say," he says at last, closed-off and clean in a way that, to Hongjoong, reads as ambivalence bordering on offence. "San is one of my closest friends. I'd lend him any shirt if he needed it."
No comment on whether or not Wooyoung sleeps with San, which might have made it an easy call to say that yes, he does, but actually…? It kind of doesn't tell Hongjoong anything at all. Like Wooyoung is less averse to someone even wrongly assuming he'd sleep with a friend than he is to having any judgement drawn upon him if he did. They don't know each other well – or at all, really – and they're certainly not close enough to have no need to pull back the curtain to bare the sentiment behind otherwise casual words.
Is that what you think of me, Wooyoung is asking him now. Say it clearly. Tell me what you think of me.
"Sorry," Hongjoong mutters, bent over his knees to lace his shoes. "It was a joke," he admits, pulling them military-tight to squeeze his feet.
A contemplative beat of silence, and then Hongjoong’s stiff apology is accepted with the snort of a laugh. "I have different shirts," he says.
"This one's fine," Hongjoong says, standing and brushing his hands off on his thighs. They kind of ache with a dull weakness that is absolutely going to burn his hamstrings and glutes tomorrow, but like. Worth it, probably. "I'll get it back to you. Or San, if I see him first."
Wooyoung, bouncing the keys in his palm and guiding him towards the door, doesn’t elaborate on whether or not he sleeps with San. It's none of Hongjoong’s business. If Hongjoong is the far end of the spectrum that never sleeps with anyone who has any chance of knowing someone he knows – bar Wooyoung, apparently, and entirely by accident – then it's none of Hongjoong’s business whether Wooyoung sits on the opposite end of that spectrum where he might have no problem at all with blurring the lines between platonic and sexual and has no concerns about how it might impact or change his friendships.
The small apartment has clear notes of furniture that Hongjoong is deeply familiar with as belonging to Seonghwa, now that he’s sober and actually knows to look for it. The bookcase showing colour-coded spines of paperbacks and hard copy DVDs bookended with complex lego figurines, now with the addition of a multitude of mismatched kpop albums. The pretty blue-and-white throw blanket Yeosang bought him as a housewarming gift – which Hongjoong had been cuddling up against Wooyoung beneath for probably an hour without even realising.
There’s even the fucking bottle of Haku gin on the side table filled with water and the clotted roots of a well-growing goldilocks pothos that Hongjoong gave him, bottle and all, and Hongjoong never even fucking looked at it.
Ultimately, though, the house is spotless when Hongjoong walks through – dishes drying in the rack, all the benches and the coffee table wiped down, the cushions set neatly on the couch, the floors swept clean.
Seonghwa will be happy to come home to this.
It warms him, in a complex sort of way. Wooyoung will be a good housemate for Seonghwa to have.
Hongjoong wonders if they would ever sleep together.
Seonghwa wouldnt compromise his living situation, but Wooyoung doesn’t seem like the sort of person who is compromised by sex.
But then, Seonghwa isn’t really the sort for one night stands and friends with benefits. He’s a bit too into devotion and love for all of that and Hongjoong finds himself wondering, rubbing his palms over his well-fucked jelly thighs as Wooyoung locks the door, whether the two of them would be any good in a relationship.
Wooyoung is thoughtful and considerate and nice, but maybe he plays a bit too hard to be someone Seonghwa could settle down with. In…many senses of the word. All in all, Hongjoong is feeling kind of maybe terribly guilty that he visited Seonghwa’s new house first to sleep with his roommate, and not to see Seonghwa.
“Um,” Hongjoong says when Wooyoung tucks the keys into his pocket and trots down the stairs onto the street.
“Um,” Wooyoung copies him, tossing an amused little glance carelessly over his shoulder.
“So,” Hongjoong ignores him, jogging to fall into step by his side and wincing when his legs threaten to waver, “this is kind of sensitive,” he says.
“You’re telling me,” Wooyoung mocks, derisive.
“So…” Hongjoong trails out.
“Yeah,” Wooyoung agrees, neither of them needing more elaboration.
Yep. Lock and key. This never fucking happened.
Which in its own way is just such a damn shame, because if there’s someone who Hongjoong wishes he could sleep with more than once he just wishes that it could have been anyone but his best friend’s new roommate and crush.
This sucks, but even if it only just had to suck it would probably be fine. Unfortunately Hongjoong is ostensibly following Wooyoung towards some sort of train station or bus stop that might take him back to his house, and it doesn’t just suck but it’s also awkward and tense. This is the worst, probably. Hongjoong wishes he’d never crawled out of that warm and comfortable bed at all.
He probably could have just let Wooyoung go to work and limped out to the couch and slept until Seonghwa came home and given him an ambiguous ‘surprise!’ without actually elaborating on how Hongjoong ended up there at all. It would be better than this. It sucks and it’s awkward and it’s tense, and Hongjoong is chided with a pitiful humiliation that he’s trudging a couple of steps behind Wooyoung, thighs burning and embarrassingly short of breath after walking three minutes up the slightest slope in the world even though he knows it’s mostly just because he’s been vertical for all of five minutes and is still decidedly hungover, and his body is in picket line protest from being tossed around like a ragdoll all night.
This could emphatically be considered Wooyoung’s fault actually but Wooyoung, career dancer, is walking up this two-degree incline at seven in the morning as though he is Apollo proudly bearing the sun over the cusp of the horizon. He carries himself with the ease of someone who knows he is loved by the world.
Hongjoong hates him.
And then there’s stairs.
Oh, god, there’s stairs.
Like, maybe ten steps all told, but still. Fuck this. Fuck this in its entirety, Hongjoong should have called an uber from out the front of Wooyoung’s house and then he never would have had to go through any of this and he could be perfectly at peace eyes closed feeling vaguely carsick ignoring any attempts at small talk that are thrown his way.
Instead he’s here. Watching Wooyoung jog up those stupid fucking stairs like it’s nothing, Hongjoong’s thighs already feeling numb and weak and on the verge of giving out after the first three.
Wooyoung waits at the top, looking down on him. Prick.
“Seriously,” Wooyoung says when Hongjoong is five steps from the top, “you’re a mess.”
Hongjoong stops completely, his hand on the bannister, and stares at Wooyoung with a harsh and sudden indignation. “Do not,” he snaps, heated. “Do not fucking speak to me about my ability to climb stairs right now.”
Wooyoung arches a brow, his sharp eyes darting to map Hongjoong’s progress before flicking back to his face. “I’m absolutely not talking about the stairs,” he says, “but we can put a pin in that, if you like.”
“Oh,” Hongjoong huffs, bitter and defensive this time and forcing himself up the last of the steps, “so it’s fine for you to go and fuck strangers from a club, but it’s a bad choice when I make it?” If it’s messy, they are in this mess together. Wooyoung should take some damn responsibility.
“No,” Wooyoung narrows his eyes in something dangerously akin to a glare, “you’re completely missing the point. Seriously,” he says, falling all too easily into step beside Hongjoong when he tries to dramatically brush past, “Seonghwa is a good guy, what’s wrong with him?”
Wait, what? What is Wooyoung talking about, suddenly?
“You have a wonderful friend who’s been in love with you for years, and you’re out getting drunk and going home with strangers? What is your problem?"
Hongjoong stops again right there on the sidewalk, turning away from where they'd been walking directly into the headache-inducing glare of the sun to turn his pained, confused grimace at Wooyoung, a hand shading his eyes. "What the fuck are you talking about?" he says, and just now catches the earnestly perplexed frown between Wooyoung’s brows. He's serious? "No," Hongjoong says, holding up a hand and shaking his head, emphatic. "No, wait. No you got it wrong," he says, less offended now that it's clear there has been a misunderstanding somewhere. "It's not me," he says, intent on clearing this up. "Seonghwa has been infatuated with you since you met," he states.
Wooyoung stares at him, baffled. It's a good look on his usually-smug face. "No, but…" he says, doubtful but insistent. "No, he always talks about how great you are and how you practically grew up together and you're so reliable and hardworking and smart and shit." Something about the way he wrinkles his stupidly perfect, handsome nose somehow conveys very clearly that he might not inherently disbelieve it but he certainly hasn't seen Hongjoong be any of those things. He has an almost startlingly apt control of his expressions, and uses his face and his body to communicate just as much as his voice. Wooyoung is, ultimately, a frustratingly clear and layered person and Hongjoong, even more frustratingly, wants to spend several hours just watching him. "There’s no way he isn't in love with you," is Wooyoung’s ending statement.
Hongjoong remains baffled, and at a little bit of a loss. "But," he says, gesturing helplessly – nearly clumsily compared to the clear and communicative ease with which Wooyoung uses his body – "you're the hot thoughtful funny roommate he's always going on about?"
There they stand, the two of them, at a little bit of a loss. No one is scolding anyone anymore, and they're both just. Confused.
Until realisation, much as it has several times today, dawns on Hongjoong far, far later than it should have. An, "Oh my god," slips out of his mouth before he can help it, before he can clap a hand over it and turn on his heel to stare directly into the blinding sunlight. "Oh no," he mumbles behind his hand. "Oh my god."
"What," Wooyoung snaps, impatient and crisp. "Spit it out."
Hongjoong groans, rubbing his hands up his cheeks to press them into his eyes for some relief and mutters, "He was setting us up."
Like, every time Seonghwa insisted Hongjoong would like Wooyoung. He'd thought Seonghwa had meant Hongjoong would approve of him, not… Oh, god. This is…so fucking humiliating. In so many ways, and in exactly none of the ways that he likes to be humiliated. God.
Wooyoung stands there for a moment, utterly dumbfounded. "You're joking," he states, bland.
Hongjoong doesn’t really know if he's about to laugh or cry, but he knows he absolutely definitely can't look Wooyoung in the eye when he intones, "Unfortunately I don't think I am," with something like a desperate scream strangling in his throat. Fucking Seonghwa. Fucking… Seonghwa!
Wooyoung plants his hands on his hips and tilts his head back with a hoarse, defeated groan and insists, "You're joking!" in a long, drawn-out sound like a whine. "I thought I was gonna die!" he exclaims, dragging his hands through his hair now and turning helplessly on the spot. "I thought Seonghwa hyung was gonna kill me, and you're telling me he wanted this?" He points a condemning finger at Hongjoong.
"Maybe not this exact scenario," Hongjoong mutters, sour, folding his arms over the shirt Wooyoung had lent him, "but you don't have to sound so mad about it."
"I'm not mad, I'm just," Wooyoung throws his long arms out, dramatic and frustrated. "Like, fuck! I thought you'd committed some evil witchcraft and cursed me with your dick! I thought my life was gonna fall apart from sleeping with you and I'd take the secret to my grave until the guilt killed me, cause like." He's nearly frantic now, manic with tension and relief and more tension built on top, pacing anxiously down the path while Hongjoong trails along with his hands tucked in his pockets and his eyebrows slightly raised, watching Wooyoung work himself up. "Like," Wooyoung continues unhampered, "I don't give a fuck if you're my roommate's best friend, you know? But if he was in love with you? I'm not trying to be an asshole. And I thought that's why you were acting all weird, because you knew. But you thought he was in love with me? So I'm thinking I gotta break my lease and change my name and maybe leave the country, and you're like, holy fuck I just slept with my best friend’s crush, and he's like. Yeah I think these two fucking idiots would be perfect for each other."
Hongjoong gives him several seconds to breathe. "Are you good?" he asks.
"Yes," Wooyoung sullenly deflates, stopping again to brace his hands against his knees, his head dropped down between his shoulders. "Yeah. I just spent the last ten minutes watching my life flash before my eyes. I'm great."
"Okay, well," Hongjoong says, "once you decide you're telling the truth, I need to ask a very important question that will determine whether or not he was right about us getting along."
"And what's that," Wooyoung peers up at him, just this slight sardonic edge to his tone.
"How petty are you?" Hongjoong asks, plain and nondescript.
"Depends," Wooyoung says.
"On what?"
"The weather," he shrugs, pushing himself upright. "The time of day. What I had for breakfast."
"And considering we didn't make time for breakfast…" Hongjoong draws out.
"Very," Wooyoung answers him.
"So, how's this," Hongjoong proposes, continuing to walk along the path with Wooyoung trailing along behind him this time. "We don't want him to be right, but more than that we don't want him to win."
"Who says I don't want him to be right," Wooyoung says.
Hongjoong has to absolutely not process what he means by that and brush right over it if he wants to get home anytime today. Instead of processing it, he critically eyes Wooyoung up. "After I cursed you with my evil witchcraft dick?" he counters.
Wooyoung shrugs it off entirely too plainly. "Imagine if you did though," he reasons. Some reason.
"Dicknosis aside," Hongjoong rolls his eyes, "I think the best way to make him pleasantly and affectionately eat shit would be to give him more bragging rights than he knows what to do with."
"I'm not a criminal mastermind," Wooyoung informs him.
Hongjoong gives him a look. "How thin are your apartment walls," he says.
Wooyoung raises his head, his round lips parted with a little oh of understanding. "I see," he says, "I get you. I'm following. So you want to have sex with me again."
"That's not what I said," Hongjoong snaps.
"That's absolutely what you said," Wooyoung counters, a sharp grin overtaking his face. "Sure, I can do that," he shrugs like it's nothing. "I'll get you to give him the worst ASMR experience of his life, easy."
"Easy?" Hongjoong repeats, incensed.
"Touchy," Wooyoung scolds him. "I'm not saying you're easy, I'm saying you're loud."
"You can't go ten seconds without running your mouth," Hongjoong snaps, "but I'm loud?"
Wooyoung places his hands on Hongjoong’s shoulders, steering him heavily towards the bus stop at the corner. "I heard what I heard, baby. Facts shouldn't be up for discussion."
"Don't 'baby' me," Hongjoong seethes, wrenching himself out of Wooyoung’s hands to pin him with he most ruinous glare he can muster. "And stop talking down. I'm older than you, brat."
Wooyoung arches a brow, completely unaffected. "Cool," he says, nonchalant. "I've always wanted to do unspeakable things to someone I should be calling 'hyung'."
Hongjoong narrows his eyes. "You're incorrigible."
"Big words," Wooyoung says, a sharp grin tugging his full, lovely lips. Shut up. Clearly he doesn't even know what it means. "Seriously, hyung, you're far too tense," he says, poking a finger unnecessarily hard against Hongjoong’s shoulder. "You know what you like and I know what you like, and this prickly insecure sort of thing is very bad for the little empath that lives inside my brain. I haven't given you a reason not to trust me yet."
"Unfortunate for the little empath in your brain," Hongjoong bites back, shrugging him away, "you'll find I'm very prickly and very insecure," he glares directly at Wooyoung, "and that isn't going to change."
Wooyoung tilts his head a little, looking at him. Not with any particular expression in his eyes. Just looking, plain and simple and clear. Hongjoong, somehow, feels remarkably bare beneath it and sets his stubborn jaw against the urge to turn his face away or fold his arms over his chest again. Maybe being an empath is the stupidest thing Hongjoong has ever heard, but he doesn't doubt that Wooyoung could make a very quick and clean assessment of anyone from their body language alone. He doesn't want to give anything away.
In doing so, he thinks he gives some of himself away.
"Okay," Wooyoung says, and for the first time in a while he's speaking plainly and without affectation, certain without being too firm, the same permissive and sure tone with which he'd told Hongjoong to get out of bed. Somehow, this relief from playful pretence immediately soothes the hackles Hongjoong hadn’t even fully realised were standing on end. "You're a bit fun to tease, Hongjoong hyung, but there's a time and a place and all that. I think I was being a bit overfamiliar," he says, and offers a short, genuine bow on the slight dip of his shoulders. "Sorry."
Hongjoong blinks at him, startled, and finds there's little need left for the defensiveness that had kept him stiff and upright just moments before. He tucks his arms around his chest, averts his eyes. "Yeah, well," he mutters, unconvincing and slightly off-balance. He didn't expect sincerity from Wooyoung, and he doesn’t entirely know what to do with it.
"I think," Wooyoung says, "Seonghwa hyung is kind of planning to have a dinner tomorrow night, and I think he wants to invite you and introduce us," he says. "If you want, we can meet properly and talk a bit more before you decide if you want to go ahead with proving him right, and all that."
What the fuck. It's like he flips a switch – thoughtful and considerate, playful silly high-energy Wooyoung who knows exactly when to settle down and stay calm. Seonghwa really was right. Why the fuck did Seonghwa have to be right?
"Yeah," Hongjoong mutters, peering out along the road to see if any buses are coming as a means to avoid Wooyoung’s eye. "Cool. That's– yeah," he says.
"Hyung," Wooyoung says beside him, still firm and permissive, "I mess around a lot, but really…"
When Hongjoong cuts a glance back at him, he finds Wooyoung’s eyes drawing with a quiet appreciation over his waist, his ass, his thighs bared by the rips in his jeans.
Mess around, in every sense of the meaning.
Wooyoung catches him looking with a grin, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth and just this side of a playful glint in his eyes. "You're hot," he says, simple and sure.
Again, Hongjoong finds himself at a loss for words.
"Not always in a sexy way," Wooyoung says, gesturing vaguely and precisely up and down Hongjoong’s body. "You have a really cool line, and your style is really unique, and you have this feeling of, like, you don't care what you look like cause you know you look good. It's really attractive," he says, straight up plain and honest in a way that Hongjoong doesn't really know how to respond to. "I think you'd be a really interesting person to be friends with," he shrugs, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Anything else is up to you."
"Well that's horrible," Hongjoong mutters, letting his expression sour dramatically. Wooyoung looks so sweetly, genuinely startled. "Now if I ever wanted to sleep with you again I'd have to admit it out loud with my words," he scowls.
Wooyoung doesn’t miss a beat before he throws his head back, a laugh bursting sharp and clear from his throat like the bright drops of water that catch the sun when a rock shatters the calm of a pool. Or like if Elmo dressed up as a witch for a particularly unnerving Halloween Special that for sure would have traumatised Hongjoong as a kid.
It's unreasonably warming, and it makes Hongjoong smile. Stupid.
"Well, hey," Wooyoung tells him. "Your mouth, sure. Words might not be necessary."
Hongjoong punches him in the shoulder. It's a pretty solid hit, but Wooyoung just sways into it and laughs it off.
"Seriously," Wooyoung shrugs, his hands tucked in his pockets and a sheepish, charming grin on his face, "whether you just wanna get back at Seonghwa hyung, or no real reason at all, I promise it's better when I'm sober."
Hongjoong clicks his teeth and averts his eyes, looking away down the street for the bus again with an embarrassed blush heating his ears. "Better isn't really the problem," he mutters, shifting his weight with his still-floppy legs.
"And here we circle back to your ability to climb stairs," Wooyoung laughs at him. "Full honesty, I'm really glad to meet you hyung. Maybe things went a bit backwards from what Seonghwa hyung expected, but that wasn’t so bad either.”
Hongjoong scoffs. Wasn’t so bad. “Don’t mince words, Wooyoung-ssi,” he articulates, still staring down the road.
“So what should I say, then?” Wooyoung asks, and Hongjoong pretends he doesn’t feel the hand Wooyoung places at the small of his back, his palm burning hot, and pretends that he doesn’t react at all when Wooyoung takes a half-step closer and dips his head just a little, his breath fanning warm beneath Hongjoong’s ear when he says, his voice fine with the dust that catches sunmotes in the afternoon, “I hope two days is long enough for you to stop limping, hyung. I don’t want to have to hold back while putting on a show.”
Hongjoong steadily, firmly empties all the air from his lungs before he draws in another breath. "You don't know the first thing about me," he says, pleasantly surprised by how his voice holds.
"Sure I do," Wooyoung says, normal again, his voice a sweetly ambiguous timbre that is impossible to describe as either high or low. It is rosewood grain under Hongjoong’s hands, or the resonant, textural delicacy in tracing the cursive sound holes of a violin with the pad of his fingertip. "You're a maple tree."
Hongjoong blinks, startled into glancing at him. "A what, sorry?"
"A maple tree," Wooyoung repeats, accompanied by a sure little nod. "Really pretty and impressive, and reliable, you know. Deep roots, you don't get shaken easily," he says, "but you're also very flashy and grand, you know? People look at you like wow," he articulates, comically spreading his hands. "And then you get a bit closer and kind of pick at the bark, and it's really hard and weathered and resiliant, and has these deep interesting cracks and creases all through it, and you could spend your whole life learning about them. But it's all still just kind of a shell, see, cause the best part is when you crack it open and the sap comes out. Did you know Canada makes over seventy million kilograms of maple syrup every year?"
Hongjoong stares at him. "Why would I know that," he says.
"I don't know," Wooyoung shrugs. "Maybe you're really into syrup."
"Are you really into syrup?" Hongjoong hedges, not entirely sure what the fuck Wooyoung is talking about anymore.
"On pancakes, obviously," he rolls his eyes, "and sometimes French toast. But it has this really strong flavour that I can't always get behind." He pauses for a moment, his head tilted in some sort of realisation. "That isn't a metaphor. About you, I mean. I'm talking about maple syrup now. Like, for eating. As food."
His hand is still resting at the small of Hongjoong’s back.
He gives Wooyoung a baffled, searching look. "What the fuck are you talking about?" he asks.
"Do you like sweet breakfasts, or savoury?" Wooyoung asks.
"I don't eat breakfast," Hongjoong says.
"See, I know that about you now," Wooyoung says, "and I also kinda know that's probably less a preference and more to do with whether you can be bothered, which means you probably prefer sweet breakfasts, because that's a lot more effort than toast."
"You talk so much," Hongjoong marvels, not quite able to keep up and mostly too appalled at this point to try.
"What I'm saying is, there's this neat cafe near where I get off," Wooyoung gestures down the road, and Hongjoong’s gaze follows his hand to where a bus is arduously rounding the corner, "and I'm really in the mood for some French toast and an americano."
Hongjoong stares back at him, speechless.
Wooyoung shrugs, tugging a wallet out of his pocket for the bus pass. "My shout," he says.
Hongjoong keeps staring as Wooyoung raises a hand to hail the driver, and keeps staring as the bus pulls up to the stop beside them.
Wooyoung looks at him as the doors swing open, hissing on hydraulic hinges. "Free breakfast," he shrugs and steps into the bus, calling out a bright greeting to the driver.
Hongjoong hesitates for half a moment, the bus only willing to wait a few seconds for him to make up his puzzled mind, before that headache jabs sharp against his brain and he fumbles for his wallet, tugging his pass out and lurching past the closing doors.
Wooyoung is too fast-paced and mutable for Hongjoong to fully even wrap his head around this early in the morning and so easefully adaptive that it's hard for Hongjoong to pin down the sort of person he actually is beyond the bright, shifting veneer of his conversation, but Hongjoong, at the very least – with the feeling that this is more a cession to defeat than he'd like to admit – could really fucking do with a coffee.