Something Good Can Work [Suho/Kai/Sehun]
Something Good Can Work
Suho/Kai/Sehun
NC-17; 4,480 words
He’s always been less than smooth, but he tries.
a/n: written for kanintallrik at runandgun! :)
He finds Sehun about five minutes after Statistics 119 with a horse mask shoved over his head. It’s unnerving for two reasons:
1) Jongin can recognize him without a face
2) he has a horse head for a face
But Jongin supposes that Sehun’s lanky build will always be a giveaway; that and the matching wristbands they’ve been wearing since junior high. Sehun is fiddling with it. Jongin assumes that he wouldn’t have known it was him otherwise. Maybe he would have stared for even longer, trying to figure out who would even wear that around campus for fuck’s sake, were they asking to get shoved into the fountain?
Jongin has come to Sehun’s rescue before. The Glitter Episode is Jongin’s favorite. It had still been embarrassing but only regarded a tiara and some sparkles from the art department in high school. Sehun’s been a target for harmless bullying dealt out by mutual friends or classmates. Harmless pranks.
“Jongin is that you?” a familiar voice echoes from beneath the cage of a mask he’s trapped in.
He lifts it away from Sehun’s head as a response, watching him gasp for air; clean, cooler air. Doesn’t smell like chemicals or gross old rubber anymore. Sehun wipes sweat away from his forehead on the back of his long sleeve shirt. He looks just as bewildered as he had as a horse. “Thanks.”
“What happened to you?” Jongin settles the mask underneath his arm.
“Joonmyun-hyung let his Shakespeare class have me.”
“Sehun, you need to be careful. Hyung isn’t the Hyung we know when he’s with his thespians.”
“Thespi-what?” Sehun’s eyebrows raise in confusion.
Jongin deadpans. “His people.”
“Okay . . .”
“I was making a joke. Even if it’s true. Just,” Jongin sighs. “I’m gonna bring this back to the theater department. Go wait for me at Java’s, I’ll buy you something.”
Sehun is never the sort to turn down free coffee-free anything. Cheapskate kinda kid, letting Jongin pay for his meals now and then. He never argues when Jongin offers, like others will. No, no, it’s alright, they’ll say, even though they’ll relent sooner or later. Jongin doesn’t get that sort of fight with Sehun and he supposes it’s the level of comfort they’ve reached over the years. A disturbing amount of comfort. Once upon a time when they were little Sehun would hide behind trees and try to make himself small because he was afraid Jongin would kick sand into his eyes like the other schoolchildren.
Now Jongin comes to his rescue.
--
Sometimes he pulls a shitty rescue, though, and Joonmyun isn’t helping much. Joonmyun is especially unhelpful this time, letting Jongin kiss him senseless in the closet where he and the other thespians keep their masks and miscellaneous props. Joonmyun kisses him like he kissed that girl in last semester’s play, only it isn’t staged, so Jongin supposes this comparison he’s drawn in his mind is invalid. Jongin can’t even remember the name of it or what happened during the near two hours of it. He remembers that during intermission Sehun kept bugging him about the candy being sold at concessions, and so he’d let up and paid up, Sehun’s fingers curling around his wrist.
Fuck, he’s in too deep with the both of them, his own fingers tugging Joonmyun’s hair by the roots, tipping his head back. Didn’t he say something about meeting Sehun somewhere and doing something? Maybe. Joonmyun’s thigh parts his legs, nestling in between and pressing against his crotch and it’s then that Jongin pulls away, his hand still caught up in his hyung’s hair. Loosely, though, like an afterthought. “Shit, I have to go.”
“What?” Joonmyun grunts, hands pulling back from Jongin’s hoodie where they’d curled into fabric, and pulled. The sound of the A/C buzzes lightly in between them, coming from the tiny vent overhead. Jongin stares. Joonmyun’s hands have dropped to his sides.
Saying the wrong thing could mean another go at it, and maybe they’d lose the clothes next time, as well. The closet door doesn’t have a lock but they’ve shoved a stool underneath the handle. Joonmyun had remembered to do that much before they started their frantic grabbing. Too horny for their own good.
“Bye, hyung,” he says, breathless. “I’ll see you later.” The dramatic exit is difficult to do when he yanks the chair away from the door, smacking himself in the leg in the process.
He’s always been less than smooth, but he tries.
--
Sehun is easy to spot again, leaning his head on his fist as he stares into the distance, phone settled in the empty space in front of him at the little circular table. “What do you want?” Jongin asks, setting his backpack down in the chair across from Sehun’s.
He blinks a few times. “Is it windy outside?”
Hair. He’s talking about Jongin’s messy hair.
“I ran here,” he says. “Professor Hwang was pretty ticked about the missing mask so he lectured me for a bit but no big deal, really.”
“Sorry,” Sehun twists his mouth to the side. Jongin ignores the way the lie makes him feel. It’s a little too exciting, really.
“I didn’t get in any trouble. If anything, pretty sure Hyung is gonna get an earful on Monday.”
Sehun laughs. He just wants hot chocolate. Whipped cream, too. They always put sprinkles on it no matter who asks, as long as there’s whipped cream. Sehun’s fingers tap against the wood table; Jongin listens to it fade as he walks to the counter. Third in line. The rush happens around three, usually, and can last sometimes until seven, depending on exams and papers. Jongin orders from Baekhyun today, who’s smiling a little bit too smug for Jongin’s liking. Baekhyun’s eyes flicker over to Sehun and Jongin remembers that Baekhyun is in Joonmyun’s Shakespeare class.
“Why a horse, though?” Jongin asks, accepting his change.
Baekhyun almost drops a coin onto the counter, another wave of giggles hitting him as he tries to keep his cool. It sounds a bit reminiscent of a horse neighing to Jongin. “We’re doing Midsummer Night’s Dream in a few weeks.”
“I thought it was supposed to be a donkey head, though.”
Baekhyun shrugs. “No donkeys in the mask closet.”
Jongin waits until Zitao, the exchange kid who works here, hands him his organic brew, medium size, and Sehun’s hot chocolate. “Fair enough,” he says to Baekhyun, nodding a thank you at Zitao before returning to his table where Sehun is busy texting.
“Joonmyun-hyung is coming,” Sehun says.
He doesn’t know why he almost misses his chair on the way to sitting. “Oh is he?”
So he drags another chair over. Someone once told him that everything is better than threes. It was probably Joonmyun.
--
It’s not really a big deal, and it shouldn’t be. So there, it isn’t, Jongin tells himself. The gears in his mind shift, classmates come and go, Sehun sleeps in his bed and drinks his orange juice and sometimes his roommate’s aloe drinks when things get mislabeled. Joonmyun comes and goes, they run up and down the halls screaming and sometimes a little bit drunk but their RA never gets sick of them, they go to Joonmyun’s house, they do things that three best friends do and other times they don’t. Jongin never gets sick of letting someone crash on top of him with clumsy limbs and a goofy smile. It’s Joonmyun more often than he would like to admit.
It’s no big deal that sometimes Joonmyun sleeps over and gives his roommate a reason to flee to someone else’s room. Except there are time when Jongin thinks that Joonmyun must have bewitched him; behind that innocent smile there’s an actor. A theater major concealing his inner side. Joonmyun practices his future art on Jongin, pulling innocent faces except for when Jongin has him pressed against a wall, or flattened into his mattress.
He imagines Joonmyun putting a spell on him, voodoo witchcraft, all that stuff that no one really believes but Jongin sometimes pictures Joonmyun standing over a boiling pot, spitting into it, slitting his wrist open to let the blood flow it. He’d grin, catlike and proud of himself as the red mixes in and turns black.
Jongin admits that his imagination takes off way too easily, but silly thoughts like this have turned into outstanding marks in his short story class this semester. He always changes Joonmyun’s name, and Sehun’s. Because Sehun is another story.
--
He tells stories about a bony looking kid, somehow with enough muscle on him to make him look like he isn’t going to topple over. He looks like he needs a nap, even when he’s bouncing up and down. He gets pushed over a lot, pinched and laughed at. They wanted reactions, they wanted him to cry or smile or fight back but he would keep his head down until Jongin cut through the line of kids and dragged him away.
That kid Sehun would never let on that he needed Jongin all those years ago. It’s easy to deny it, because they hardly still talk to anyone from elementary school except for each other. Sandbox days are gone. Now here come the days where Sehun sleeps in Jongin’s boxers and drools all over his pillow, and Jongin tries not to think about the smooth expanse of Sehun’s back that he wants to touch while he jerks off in the shower.
Play it safe; keep pretending. Pretend you’re Joonmyun-hyung and you’re on your way to being an actor.
--
Joonmyun is could easily be named ‘the theater stud.’ He styles his hair every morning; sometimes he even wears his glasses to be slightly fashionable, wears button up shirts and well-fitting pants and anything else that makes him look damn good, and he always gets a main role. The girls love him and the boys love him, and the girls wonder if Joonmyun wants to love the boys back. His reputation carried over nicely from high school, with a few rumors of swapping spit with various schoolmates in closets at cast parties. Not all of them had been true, but high school kids liked to whisper. So did college kids. Jongin could refute most of them easily. In high school he was almost everywhere Joonmyun was.
But Jongin was always a lead dancer, until he got sick of theater and watching awkward teen elbows bump into each other because they couldn’t properly execute jazz squares. High school productions were never quite Jongin’s thing. Joonmyun always made it his thing, whatever he did. He pulls smiles and people call him an angel, but Jongin has seen more sides to him than anyone else without it being an act, to win a role, to be better than the others.
Joonmyun usually smiles when Sehun is around, or when Jongin takes his shirt off. Not so angelic, then.
The truth is, though, that Joonmyun doesn’t act around the two of them. There is never anyone around to impress when it’s just the three of them. Jongin and Sehun aren’t callbacks. Some people say he’s two-faced. They whisper things behind his back and when Jongin hears, they don’t expect him to do anything about it. Sehun glares, but he’s never particularly threatening until he stands, and looms. Sehun is particularly good at looming. They make honest attempts at protecting each other. They are three people who love each other more than any of them would ever admit.
--
Today, Joonmyun’s hair is a disaster. The red isn’t a problem. In fact, Jongin quite likes it. He fixates on that, because it’s the only good thing. Other than that-
“You look like a poodle,” Sehun says it first.
Jongin flops onto Joonmyun’s couch. He sputters when Joonmyun’s eyes fall on him, blaming. “He said it!”
“Do I really?” Joonmyun groans, tugging at one of his new wavy locks.
“What happened to your head anyway?” asks Sehun, sitting beside Jongin. He folds his knees up to his chin and makes enough room for three, though he’s already pretty compact.
“Well I dyed it.”
Jongin’s arm curls around Sehun’s shoulders. “And?”
“The chorus girls brought out the curling iron during break . . .”
Sehun snorts, head falling back against Jongin’s arm. “Say no more,” the youngest remarks. He learned how chorus girls can be when it comes to hair-especially boys’ hair. Whether the victim is willing or semi-willing is secondary to them.
“Is it gonna come out?” Jongin voices his concern. “Ever?”
“Right now,” Joonmyun groans. “Watch TV or something, I’m washing this out.”
Sehun reaches over Jongin’s lap for the remote. “Gladly.”
--
He wakes up in the middle of a nightmare he can’t even remember, but it might have involved Joonmyun as a witch-pointy hat fitted over awful, blood red curls. Jongin clutches at his chest and feels the space next to him shift as Sehun stirs, sleepy eyes more tired than usual and blinking furiously. He wipes the sweat from Jongin’s forehead for him and falls back lightly against a shared pillow, hand left behind to linger on Jongin’s chest as he flattens himself to his bed again.
But then he realizes that it’s not his bed, nor is it any bed. Then he recalls last night, falling asleep with Sehun’s face tucked into his neck on a few blankets on Joonmyun’s floor. The three of them were always too much for Joonmyun’s small mattress.
Sehun has already drifted back to sleep, quickly slipping back into his own dreams that must be less fearful. His face is relaxed, the outline of his nose pressing into the pillow they’ve both been sleeping on for the past who knows how many hours. Jongin doesn’t remember falling asleep, and he knows they didn’t drink. Sehun rolls over, face twitching in his sleep, pink lips parting slightly. The moon filtering in through Joonmyun’s window gives Jongin enough light to see; it lights his path as he rests his hand against Sehun’s flat stomach, caressing fabric.
Somewhere between rolling over and falling asleep again, Jongin tries kissing Sehun. Lightly, with more feeling than what Sehun can give back while drifting off to sleep. He wonders if Sehun even notices; if Sehun even cares. He tries not to press, and he hates how it hurts to pull away.
Morning brings a confirmation along with it. Sehun is blissfully unaware, pulling on his sneakers at the front door with his bag hanging off his thin shoulder. Joonmyun doesn’t have class until two today, but Sehun needs to be in his lecture hall in twenty minutes and Jongin knows he’s missing his first class right now. Sehun looks like a large child, tying shoelaces and grabbing the toast Jongin hands him with his teeth. “Bye,” he says through crumbs that are starting to fall into the folds of his polo shirt.
Nothing in his eyes suggests that he’d been awake last night. Jongin smiles anyway, telling himself that he should be relieved, that he doesn’t need to complicate things any more. It’s already getting to be too much; he can keep Sehun out of it, but he doesn’t know if he can keep it up for much longer.
The front door to Joonmyun’s apartment shuts, and Jongin stands there, barefoot on hardwood before plodding back into the kitchen where Joonmyun has a hoodie zipped up, no shirt underneath, hair messy from sleep. His jeans are hanging low without a belt-too skinny for his own good. And Jongin can see skin. He licks his lips.
Well, he’s missing his first class anyway.
--
Jongin fits in the middle, the little spaces in between Joonmyun and Sehun. It’s true that things are best done in threes. At times.
Without the third side, there’s a gaping hole and a shape that doesn’t really have a form. He thinks that maybe one day he will wake up with both of them by his side, Sehun cutting off the circulation in his arm and Joonmyun pulling them both closer. This sort of lifestyle is meant for them, but perhaps he’s the only one who knows it, for now. Maybe he’ll have to keep it that way. He’s afraid of ruining what they have now, no matter how hard the tension hits when he has to reign it all in as Sehun angers him with a lip bite or Joonmyun smiles a little bit too wide. Jongin is just a little too afraid of cutting off two legs of the triangle. But fears can be erased.
--
The thespians got to him again. There’s remnants of glitter and stage makeup on Sehun’s face when Jongin finds him bent over the bathroom sink just outside the main performance hall on campus. As soon as he’d gotten Sehun’s text he’d jumped up from his little corner of the research library and sprinted right over. Help it had said.
Sehun’s fringe is hanging in front of his pleading eyes. Help. Jongin can’t help but smile, grabbing a few sheets of paper towels from the dispenser. He turns the faucet off for him and lifts Sehun’s face by his chin so their eyes meet while he dabs at a glob of stage makeup clinging to his cheekbones.
“Why are you such an easy target?” Jongin chuckles.
“I don’t know.” Sehun mumbles his answer, eyes aimlessly scanning Jongin’s face. “I guess I’ve always been that way.”
“Maybe it’s just their strange way of showing affection.” He picks pieces of glitter out of Sehun’s slightly damp hair. “Joonmyun’s, at least.”
“He wasn’t there.”
Jongin pauses, fingers smoothing down the sides of Sehun’s hair for him, paper towels poised in his other hand to wipe away excess tap water. “Why were you there then?”
“I was looking for him.”
“Oh.”
“I wanted to talk to him,” Sehun mumbles. His eyes are downcast, as his hands play with the hem of Jongin’s t-shirt.
“Did you text him? Call?”
“He didn’t answer me,” Sehun says. “Figured he was either in rehearsal or class. Or with you.”
Jongin nods, swiping glitter away from a space near Sehun’s earlobe. “They got you pretty good, didn’t they?”
“I guess.”
“Are you okay?”
“Do you like Joonmyun-hyung, Jongin?”
“Like him? I-” it clicks. “Oh. You know.”
“I know.”
Jongin leans around Sehun to toss the used paper towel into the trash bin. “How do you know?”
“Hyung isn’t good at keeping secrets from me, like you are.” Sehun rests slightly against the counter, eyes never leaving Jongin’s face. “So I know.” Easily picked on, but clever. The look in his eyes tells Jongin that he’d known something before Joonmyun had even opened his mouth and surrendered the details of their stupid little non-affair affair.
“So I’m good at it?” he tries to let his lips melt into a smirk, but it only half works.
Sehun gives a single laugh. “Infuriatingly good. Also,” he pauses. “Did you kiss me last night too?”
Jongin notes the eyebrow raise. Sehun is pretty infuriating, too. He takes on the kind of tone people only use when they already know the answer. So Jongin doesn’t answer. He grabs, pulling Sehun toward him by the collar until they’re flush against each other and Sehun is clutching at his sides, mouth opening up to him.
“Is that a yes?” Sehun grunts as Jongin pushes him into one of the stalls. He pushes the door closed and leans against it before leaning his head back and letting Jongin’s teeth graze his skin, gently. He doesn’t notice the hands tugging his hair until they leave, and Jongin is standing back, frozen. The creaking of the bathroom door as it swings open permeates their sudden silence as Sehun bites back a curse at the lack of Jongin’s tongue in his mouth.
Steps, sneakers squeaking against bathroom tiles, the stall next to theirs opening and Jongin suddenly puts his hand over Sehun’s mouth. He takes his revenge, revenge for Sehun being infuriating, letting his fingers brush past the front of Sehun’s mouth. Retaliation comes with a quick bite, teeth barely sinking into one of Jongin’s fingers.
When the bathroom’s other occupant leaves, Jongin grips Sehun’s hip with one hand and kisses him so hard he whimpers, before slipping out the door and grabbing the bag he’d kicked underneath the sink. He leaves that memory with Sehun, along with the need to jerk off before his next class starts, and hopes that Sehun takes it as an invitation to make things just a little more complicated.
--
They try kissing in front of Sehun, over a table covered with a pizza box and soju bottles and assorted chocolates they had picked up at the convenience store on the way over. It was Sehun’s idea, nudging Jongin with an elbow as they sit side by side, Joonmyun across from them with his styled hair and leftover eyeliner from a dress rehearsal. There’s a wide grin on Joonmyun’s face that dissolves into a flustered downward look, cheeks pink even without the stage makeup from earlier.
Joonmyun follows anyway, like he’s taking stage directions and he lets Jongin’s lips press fully against his own, too tentatively at first compared to what they’re used to. Joonmyun steadies himself with his hands on the spaces where the table isn’t covered with food and drink, and Jongin’s hand moves to the back of his neck, pulling him closer and deeper.
“Satisfied?” Jongin eyes Sehun when they’ve broken away from each other.
“For now.”
“Brat,” he snickers.
Minutes later, he’s done joking around. Sehun pulls Jongin down on top of him, arms heavy around his neck as Joonmyun watches the two of them, legs crossed on his bed. The top button of his jeans is unbuttoned already, and Jongin is busy working Sehun out of his own pants. He supposes he’s fucked up the triangle, but only in a way that makes it much stronger. There are more perks as well, like when Joonmyun kneels next to them on the floor and unzips Jongin’s jeans for him.
Jongin is tugging Sehun’s pants down just as he feels a hand slip past the elastic waistband of his boxers, and he shudders, nearly collapsing on top of Sehun and the only thing that reminds him of Sehun’s existence is the somewhat pathetic whimper than crawls out of Sehun’s throat. Joonmyun laughs and kisses the back of Jongin’s neck as he strokes him, his own erection clothed and pressing into the curve of Jongin’s ass not-so-accidentally. Jongin tries to focus, nipping at Sehun’s hip bones and sucking little marks on his inner thighs once Jongin has slid his pants down all the way.
The thoughts of whether or not this is getting too complicated or not slip away as Joonmyun starts to slip a cold finger inside of him without warning. He knows where this is going and he arches in anticipation, freeing Sehun’s dick from his underwear, and very slowly taking him in. This situation is familiar. Maybe only a week ago he’d done this for Joonmyun. The idea that Sehun probably knows about that passes through his mind, until Joonmyun curls his fingers inside him and Jongin pushes himself back, Sehun falling out of his mouth. He forgets what he’s supposed to do with his tongue and his mouth and he thinks maybe doing this all together was a bad idea until he holds his breath to keep from panting, and holds Sehun’s hard cock in his hand. He breathes again, slowly and bites his lip as he gives Sehun’s cock, earning a sharp cry. He whimpers as Jongin’s thumb strokes the tip, smearing precome.
Jongin watches through blurred vision as Sehun’s eyes shut tight and he gasps from the feeling of Jongin’s fingers working him into complete submission. He notes Sehun’s white knuckles digging into the blanket beneath them just as Joonmyun starts pushing inside, stretching him open. Doing this seemed almost like a mistake to Jongin, until he realized how good it feels, to give and receive like this, to be fitted into the middle of two people, body opened up and shared.
“Please,” Sehun whispers, hands frantically clutching at Jongin’s hair. He doesn’t mind the pulling, he decides as he closes his mouth around the head of Sehun’s cock once more, humming as Joonmyun thrusts inside him and his hands grip his hips. Joonmyun is a different person when they have sex; his eyes do not curl into smiles, and his body is quick, entering Jongin with hard snaps and sometimes the bed shakes, but today he’s taking it slow.
Sehun comes just as Jongin starts to feel dizzy, unaware of himself or how close he is to his own orgasm until Sehun is releasing into his mouth. Uttering curses, Sehun arches his back, and then he slumps, eyes closed and breathing heavy. Jongin lurches forward as Joonmyun presses him down and quickens his pace, gasps falling from his mouth as he licks up the bitter taste Sehun left behind on his lips. His arms are shaking from the weight of keeping himself up, cheek beginning to press into Sehun’s thigh.
He breathes hot against Sehun’s skin and mindlessly digs his fingers in as well, looking for something to grab as he’s brought dangerously close to an orgasm. And then he snaps, head hanging low and eyes screwed shut as he feels himself release into Joonmyun’s hand. Joonmyun lets out a strangled sound, between a cry and a grunt as he comes.
They all fall against each other, Jongin letting Sehun curl his arms around him as Joonmyun flops on the other side, thin layer of sweat making his body glow. Jongin touches his chest and trails his fingers across the rising and falling muscles. He aches, but in a pleasant way; blissed out, Jongin rolls his head against Joonmyun’s shoulder and starts to feel the evenness of Sehun’s breath. He always falls asleep too quickly.
“I like you both,” Jongin mutters, Sehun snoring against his chest. “More than I should.”
“There’s nothing wrong with sharing,” Joonmyun suggests, fingers threading through Jongin’s hair. Jongin supposes Joonmyun has learned how to break away from being the jealous type. Hearts are easy to break backstage, when you’re busy watching everyone furiously change out of their costumes and spending nights unwinding together. Everyone falls in love, and everyone gets hurt. Not Joonmyun, who after wrapping his hand around Jongin’s dick can still lean down and kiss a sleeping Sehun on the forehead, rough palm trailing down the younger boy’s arm. There is still love here, with an absence of jealousy or hurt.
Jongin’s eyelids flutter and Joonmyun swoops in to kiss him again. “Good,” is all he can say, to a grinning face in front of him.
Very good.
//
- thank you for reading!
- (hides because I can't write porn but it still took this route somehow)
Suho/Kai/Sehun
NC-17; 4,480 words
He’s always been less than smooth, but he tries.
a/n: written for kanintallrik at runandgun! :)
He finds Sehun about five minutes after Statistics 119 with a horse mask shoved over his head. It’s unnerving for two reasons:
1) Jongin can recognize him without a face
2) he has a horse head for a face
But Jongin supposes that Sehun’s lanky build will always be a giveaway; that and the matching wristbands they’ve been wearing since junior high. Sehun is fiddling with it. Jongin assumes that he wouldn’t have known it was him otherwise. Maybe he would have stared for even longer, trying to figure out who would even wear that around campus for fuck’s sake, were they asking to get shoved into the fountain?
Jongin has come to Sehun’s rescue before. The Glitter Episode is Jongin’s favorite. It had still been embarrassing but only regarded a tiara and some sparkles from the art department in high school. Sehun’s been a target for harmless bullying dealt out by mutual friends or classmates. Harmless pranks.
“Jongin is that you?” a familiar voice echoes from beneath the cage of a mask he’s trapped in.
He lifts it away from Sehun’s head as a response, watching him gasp for air; clean, cooler air. Doesn’t smell like chemicals or gross old rubber anymore. Sehun wipes sweat away from his forehead on the back of his long sleeve shirt. He looks just as bewildered as he had as a horse. “Thanks.”
“What happened to you?” Jongin settles the mask underneath his arm.
“Joonmyun-hyung let his Shakespeare class have me.”
“Sehun, you need to be careful. Hyung isn’t the Hyung we know when he’s with his thespians.”
“Thespi-what?” Sehun’s eyebrows raise in confusion.
Jongin deadpans. “His people.”
“Okay . . .”
“I was making a joke. Even if it’s true. Just,” Jongin sighs. “I’m gonna bring this back to the theater department. Go wait for me at Java’s, I’ll buy you something.”
Sehun is never the sort to turn down free coffee-free anything. Cheapskate kinda kid, letting Jongin pay for his meals now and then. He never argues when Jongin offers, like others will. No, no, it’s alright, they’ll say, even though they’ll relent sooner or later. Jongin doesn’t get that sort of fight with Sehun and he supposes it’s the level of comfort they’ve reached over the years. A disturbing amount of comfort. Once upon a time when they were little Sehun would hide behind trees and try to make himself small because he was afraid Jongin would kick sand into his eyes like the other schoolchildren.
Now Jongin comes to his rescue.
--
Sometimes he pulls a shitty rescue, though, and Joonmyun isn’t helping much. Joonmyun is especially unhelpful this time, letting Jongin kiss him senseless in the closet where he and the other thespians keep their masks and miscellaneous props. Joonmyun kisses him like he kissed that girl in last semester’s play, only it isn’t staged, so Jongin supposes this comparison he’s drawn in his mind is invalid. Jongin can’t even remember the name of it or what happened during the near two hours of it. He remembers that during intermission Sehun kept bugging him about the candy being sold at concessions, and so he’d let up and paid up, Sehun’s fingers curling around his wrist.
Fuck, he’s in too deep with the both of them, his own fingers tugging Joonmyun’s hair by the roots, tipping his head back. Didn’t he say something about meeting Sehun somewhere and doing something? Maybe. Joonmyun’s thigh parts his legs, nestling in between and pressing against his crotch and it’s then that Jongin pulls away, his hand still caught up in his hyung’s hair. Loosely, though, like an afterthought. “Shit, I have to go.”
“What?” Joonmyun grunts, hands pulling back from Jongin’s hoodie where they’d curled into fabric, and pulled. The sound of the A/C buzzes lightly in between them, coming from the tiny vent overhead. Jongin stares. Joonmyun’s hands have dropped to his sides.
Saying the wrong thing could mean another go at it, and maybe they’d lose the clothes next time, as well. The closet door doesn’t have a lock but they’ve shoved a stool underneath the handle. Joonmyun had remembered to do that much before they started their frantic grabbing. Too horny for their own good.
“Bye, hyung,” he says, breathless. “I’ll see you later.” The dramatic exit is difficult to do when he yanks the chair away from the door, smacking himself in the leg in the process.
He’s always been less than smooth, but he tries.
--
Sehun is easy to spot again, leaning his head on his fist as he stares into the distance, phone settled in the empty space in front of him at the little circular table. “What do you want?” Jongin asks, setting his backpack down in the chair across from Sehun’s.
He blinks a few times. “Is it windy outside?”
Hair. He’s talking about Jongin’s messy hair.
“I ran here,” he says. “Professor Hwang was pretty ticked about the missing mask so he lectured me for a bit but no big deal, really.”
“Sorry,” Sehun twists his mouth to the side. Jongin ignores the way the lie makes him feel. It’s a little too exciting, really.
“I didn’t get in any trouble. If anything, pretty sure Hyung is gonna get an earful on Monday.”
Sehun laughs. He just wants hot chocolate. Whipped cream, too. They always put sprinkles on it no matter who asks, as long as there’s whipped cream. Sehun’s fingers tap against the wood table; Jongin listens to it fade as he walks to the counter. Third in line. The rush happens around three, usually, and can last sometimes until seven, depending on exams and papers. Jongin orders from Baekhyun today, who’s smiling a little bit too smug for Jongin’s liking. Baekhyun’s eyes flicker over to Sehun and Jongin remembers that Baekhyun is in Joonmyun’s Shakespeare class.
“Why a horse, though?” Jongin asks, accepting his change.
Baekhyun almost drops a coin onto the counter, another wave of giggles hitting him as he tries to keep his cool. It sounds a bit reminiscent of a horse neighing to Jongin. “We’re doing Midsummer Night’s Dream in a few weeks.”
“I thought it was supposed to be a donkey head, though.”
Baekhyun shrugs. “No donkeys in the mask closet.”
Jongin waits until Zitao, the exchange kid who works here, hands him his organic brew, medium size, and Sehun’s hot chocolate. “Fair enough,” he says to Baekhyun, nodding a thank you at Zitao before returning to his table where Sehun is busy texting.
“Joonmyun-hyung is coming,” Sehun says.
He doesn’t know why he almost misses his chair on the way to sitting. “Oh is he?”
So he drags another chair over. Someone once told him that everything is better than threes. It was probably Joonmyun.
--
It’s not really a big deal, and it shouldn’t be. So there, it isn’t, Jongin tells himself. The gears in his mind shift, classmates come and go, Sehun sleeps in his bed and drinks his orange juice and sometimes his roommate’s aloe drinks when things get mislabeled. Joonmyun comes and goes, they run up and down the halls screaming and sometimes a little bit drunk but their RA never gets sick of them, they go to Joonmyun’s house, they do things that three best friends do and other times they don’t. Jongin never gets sick of letting someone crash on top of him with clumsy limbs and a goofy smile. It’s Joonmyun more often than he would like to admit.
It’s no big deal that sometimes Joonmyun sleeps over and gives his roommate a reason to flee to someone else’s room. Except there are time when Jongin thinks that Joonmyun must have bewitched him; behind that innocent smile there’s an actor. A theater major concealing his inner side. Joonmyun practices his future art on Jongin, pulling innocent faces except for when Jongin has him pressed against a wall, or flattened into his mattress.
He imagines Joonmyun putting a spell on him, voodoo witchcraft, all that stuff that no one really believes but Jongin sometimes pictures Joonmyun standing over a boiling pot, spitting into it, slitting his wrist open to let the blood flow it. He’d grin, catlike and proud of himself as the red mixes in and turns black.
Jongin admits that his imagination takes off way too easily, but silly thoughts like this have turned into outstanding marks in his short story class this semester. He always changes Joonmyun’s name, and Sehun’s. Because Sehun is another story.
--
He tells stories about a bony looking kid, somehow with enough muscle on him to make him look like he isn’t going to topple over. He looks like he needs a nap, even when he’s bouncing up and down. He gets pushed over a lot, pinched and laughed at. They wanted reactions, they wanted him to cry or smile or fight back but he would keep his head down until Jongin cut through the line of kids and dragged him away.
That kid Sehun would never let on that he needed Jongin all those years ago. It’s easy to deny it, because they hardly still talk to anyone from elementary school except for each other. Sandbox days are gone. Now here come the days where Sehun sleeps in Jongin’s boxers and drools all over his pillow, and Jongin tries not to think about the smooth expanse of Sehun’s back that he wants to touch while he jerks off in the shower.
Play it safe; keep pretending. Pretend you’re Joonmyun-hyung and you’re on your way to being an actor.
--
Joonmyun is could easily be named ‘the theater stud.’ He styles his hair every morning; sometimes he even wears his glasses to be slightly fashionable, wears button up shirts and well-fitting pants and anything else that makes him look damn good, and he always gets a main role. The girls love him and the boys love him, and the girls wonder if Joonmyun wants to love the boys back. His reputation carried over nicely from high school, with a few rumors of swapping spit with various schoolmates in closets at cast parties. Not all of them had been true, but high school kids liked to whisper. So did college kids. Jongin could refute most of them easily. In high school he was almost everywhere Joonmyun was.
But Jongin was always a lead dancer, until he got sick of theater and watching awkward teen elbows bump into each other because they couldn’t properly execute jazz squares. High school productions were never quite Jongin’s thing. Joonmyun always made it his thing, whatever he did. He pulls smiles and people call him an angel, but Jongin has seen more sides to him than anyone else without it being an act, to win a role, to be better than the others.
Joonmyun usually smiles when Sehun is around, or when Jongin takes his shirt off. Not so angelic, then.
The truth is, though, that Joonmyun doesn’t act around the two of them. There is never anyone around to impress when it’s just the three of them. Jongin and Sehun aren’t callbacks. Some people say he’s two-faced. They whisper things behind his back and when Jongin hears, they don’t expect him to do anything about it. Sehun glares, but he’s never particularly threatening until he stands, and looms. Sehun is particularly good at looming. They make honest attempts at protecting each other. They are three people who love each other more than any of them would ever admit.
--
Today, Joonmyun’s hair is a disaster. The red isn’t a problem. In fact, Jongin quite likes it. He fixates on that, because it’s the only good thing. Other than that-
“You look like a poodle,” Sehun says it first.
Jongin flops onto Joonmyun’s couch. He sputters when Joonmyun’s eyes fall on him, blaming. “He said it!”
“Do I really?” Joonmyun groans, tugging at one of his new wavy locks.
“What happened to your head anyway?” asks Sehun, sitting beside Jongin. He folds his knees up to his chin and makes enough room for three, though he’s already pretty compact.
“Well I dyed it.”
Jongin’s arm curls around Sehun’s shoulders. “And?”
“The chorus girls brought out the curling iron during break . . .”
Sehun snorts, head falling back against Jongin’s arm. “Say no more,” the youngest remarks. He learned how chorus girls can be when it comes to hair-especially boys’ hair. Whether the victim is willing or semi-willing is secondary to them.
“Is it gonna come out?” Jongin voices his concern. “Ever?”
“Right now,” Joonmyun groans. “Watch TV or something, I’m washing this out.”
Sehun reaches over Jongin’s lap for the remote. “Gladly.”
--
He wakes up in the middle of a nightmare he can’t even remember, but it might have involved Joonmyun as a witch-pointy hat fitted over awful, blood red curls. Jongin clutches at his chest and feels the space next to him shift as Sehun stirs, sleepy eyes more tired than usual and blinking furiously. He wipes the sweat from Jongin’s forehead for him and falls back lightly against a shared pillow, hand left behind to linger on Jongin’s chest as he flattens himself to his bed again.
But then he realizes that it’s not his bed, nor is it any bed. Then he recalls last night, falling asleep with Sehun’s face tucked into his neck on a few blankets on Joonmyun’s floor. The three of them were always too much for Joonmyun’s small mattress.
Sehun has already drifted back to sleep, quickly slipping back into his own dreams that must be less fearful. His face is relaxed, the outline of his nose pressing into the pillow they’ve both been sleeping on for the past who knows how many hours. Jongin doesn’t remember falling asleep, and he knows they didn’t drink. Sehun rolls over, face twitching in his sleep, pink lips parting slightly. The moon filtering in through Joonmyun’s window gives Jongin enough light to see; it lights his path as he rests his hand against Sehun’s flat stomach, caressing fabric.
Somewhere between rolling over and falling asleep again, Jongin tries kissing Sehun. Lightly, with more feeling than what Sehun can give back while drifting off to sleep. He wonders if Sehun even notices; if Sehun even cares. He tries not to press, and he hates how it hurts to pull away.
Morning brings a confirmation along with it. Sehun is blissfully unaware, pulling on his sneakers at the front door with his bag hanging off his thin shoulder. Joonmyun doesn’t have class until two today, but Sehun needs to be in his lecture hall in twenty minutes and Jongin knows he’s missing his first class right now. Sehun looks like a large child, tying shoelaces and grabbing the toast Jongin hands him with his teeth. “Bye,” he says through crumbs that are starting to fall into the folds of his polo shirt.
Nothing in his eyes suggests that he’d been awake last night. Jongin smiles anyway, telling himself that he should be relieved, that he doesn’t need to complicate things any more. It’s already getting to be too much; he can keep Sehun out of it, but he doesn’t know if he can keep it up for much longer.
The front door to Joonmyun’s apartment shuts, and Jongin stands there, barefoot on hardwood before plodding back into the kitchen where Joonmyun has a hoodie zipped up, no shirt underneath, hair messy from sleep. His jeans are hanging low without a belt-too skinny for his own good. And Jongin can see skin. He licks his lips.
Well, he’s missing his first class anyway.
--
Jongin fits in the middle, the little spaces in between Joonmyun and Sehun. It’s true that things are best done in threes. At times.
Without the third side, there’s a gaping hole and a shape that doesn’t really have a form. He thinks that maybe one day he will wake up with both of them by his side, Sehun cutting off the circulation in his arm and Joonmyun pulling them both closer. This sort of lifestyle is meant for them, but perhaps he’s the only one who knows it, for now. Maybe he’ll have to keep it that way. He’s afraid of ruining what they have now, no matter how hard the tension hits when he has to reign it all in as Sehun angers him with a lip bite or Joonmyun smiles a little bit too wide. Jongin is just a little too afraid of cutting off two legs of the triangle. But fears can be erased.
--
The thespians got to him again. There’s remnants of glitter and stage makeup on Sehun’s face when Jongin finds him bent over the bathroom sink just outside the main performance hall on campus. As soon as he’d gotten Sehun’s text he’d jumped up from his little corner of the research library and sprinted right over. Help it had said.
Sehun’s fringe is hanging in front of his pleading eyes. Help. Jongin can’t help but smile, grabbing a few sheets of paper towels from the dispenser. He turns the faucet off for him and lifts Sehun’s face by his chin so their eyes meet while he dabs at a glob of stage makeup clinging to his cheekbones.
“Why are you such an easy target?” Jongin chuckles.
“I don’t know.” Sehun mumbles his answer, eyes aimlessly scanning Jongin’s face. “I guess I’ve always been that way.”
“Maybe it’s just their strange way of showing affection.” He picks pieces of glitter out of Sehun’s slightly damp hair. “Joonmyun’s, at least.”
“He wasn’t there.”
Jongin pauses, fingers smoothing down the sides of Sehun’s hair for him, paper towels poised in his other hand to wipe away excess tap water. “Why were you there then?”
“I was looking for him.”
“Oh.”
“I wanted to talk to him,” Sehun mumbles. His eyes are downcast, as his hands play with the hem of Jongin’s t-shirt.
“Did you text him? Call?”
“He didn’t answer me,” Sehun says. “Figured he was either in rehearsal or class. Or with you.”
Jongin nods, swiping glitter away from a space near Sehun’s earlobe. “They got you pretty good, didn’t they?”
“I guess.”
“Are you okay?”
“Do you like Joonmyun-hyung, Jongin?”
“Like him? I-” it clicks. “Oh. You know.”
“I know.”
Jongin leans around Sehun to toss the used paper towel into the trash bin. “How do you know?”
“Hyung isn’t good at keeping secrets from me, like you are.” Sehun rests slightly against the counter, eyes never leaving Jongin’s face. “So I know.” Easily picked on, but clever. The look in his eyes tells Jongin that he’d known something before Joonmyun had even opened his mouth and surrendered the details of their stupid little non-affair affair.
“So I’m good at it?” he tries to let his lips melt into a smirk, but it only half works.
Sehun gives a single laugh. “Infuriatingly good. Also,” he pauses. “Did you kiss me last night too?”
Jongin notes the eyebrow raise. Sehun is pretty infuriating, too. He takes on the kind of tone people only use when they already know the answer. So Jongin doesn’t answer. He grabs, pulling Sehun toward him by the collar until they’re flush against each other and Sehun is clutching at his sides, mouth opening up to him.
“Is that a yes?” Sehun grunts as Jongin pushes him into one of the stalls. He pushes the door closed and leans against it before leaning his head back and letting Jongin’s teeth graze his skin, gently. He doesn’t notice the hands tugging his hair until they leave, and Jongin is standing back, frozen. The creaking of the bathroom door as it swings open permeates their sudden silence as Sehun bites back a curse at the lack of Jongin’s tongue in his mouth.
Steps, sneakers squeaking against bathroom tiles, the stall next to theirs opening and Jongin suddenly puts his hand over Sehun’s mouth. He takes his revenge, revenge for Sehun being infuriating, letting his fingers brush past the front of Sehun’s mouth. Retaliation comes with a quick bite, teeth barely sinking into one of Jongin’s fingers.
When the bathroom’s other occupant leaves, Jongin grips Sehun’s hip with one hand and kisses him so hard he whimpers, before slipping out the door and grabbing the bag he’d kicked underneath the sink. He leaves that memory with Sehun, along with the need to jerk off before his next class starts, and hopes that Sehun takes it as an invitation to make things just a little more complicated.
--
They try kissing in front of Sehun, over a table covered with a pizza box and soju bottles and assorted chocolates they had picked up at the convenience store on the way over. It was Sehun’s idea, nudging Jongin with an elbow as they sit side by side, Joonmyun across from them with his styled hair and leftover eyeliner from a dress rehearsal. There’s a wide grin on Joonmyun’s face that dissolves into a flustered downward look, cheeks pink even without the stage makeup from earlier.
Joonmyun follows anyway, like he’s taking stage directions and he lets Jongin’s lips press fully against his own, too tentatively at first compared to what they’re used to. Joonmyun steadies himself with his hands on the spaces where the table isn’t covered with food and drink, and Jongin’s hand moves to the back of his neck, pulling him closer and deeper.
“Satisfied?” Jongin eyes Sehun when they’ve broken away from each other.
“For now.”
“Brat,” he snickers.
Minutes later, he’s done joking around. Sehun pulls Jongin down on top of him, arms heavy around his neck as Joonmyun watches the two of them, legs crossed on his bed. The top button of his jeans is unbuttoned already, and Jongin is busy working Sehun out of his own pants. He supposes he’s fucked up the triangle, but only in a way that makes it much stronger. There are more perks as well, like when Joonmyun kneels next to them on the floor and unzips Jongin’s jeans for him.
Jongin is tugging Sehun’s pants down just as he feels a hand slip past the elastic waistband of his boxers, and he shudders, nearly collapsing on top of Sehun and the only thing that reminds him of Sehun’s existence is the somewhat pathetic whimper than crawls out of Sehun’s throat. Joonmyun laughs and kisses the back of Jongin’s neck as he strokes him, his own erection clothed and pressing into the curve of Jongin’s ass not-so-accidentally. Jongin tries to focus, nipping at Sehun’s hip bones and sucking little marks on his inner thighs once Jongin has slid his pants down all the way.
The thoughts of whether or not this is getting too complicated or not slip away as Joonmyun starts to slip a cold finger inside of him without warning. He knows where this is going and he arches in anticipation, freeing Sehun’s dick from his underwear, and very slowly taking him in. This situation is familiar. Maybe only a week ago he’d done this for Joonmyun. The idea that Sehun probably knows about that passes through his mind, until Joonmyun curls his fingers inside him and Jongin pushes himself back, Sehun falling out of his mouth. He forgets what he’s supposed to do with his tongue and his mouth and he thinks maybe doing this all together was a bad idea until he holds his breath to keep from panting, and holds Sehun’s hard cock in his hand. He breathes again, slowly and bites his lip as he gives Sehun’s cock, earning a sharp cry. He whimpers as Jongin’s thumb strokes the tip, smearing precome.
Jongin watches through blurred vision as Sehun’s eyes shut tight and he gasps from the feeling of Jongin’s fingers working him into complete submission. He notes Sehun’s white knuckles digging into the blanket beneath them just as Joonmyun starts pushing inside, stretching him open. Doing this seemed almost like a mistake to Jongin, until he realized how good it feels, to give and receive like this, to be fitted into the middle of two people, body opened up and shared.
“Please,” Sehun whispers, hands frantically clutching at Jongin’s hair. He doesn’t mind the pulling, he decides as he closes his mouth around the head of Sehun’s cock once more, humming as Joonmyun thrusts inside him and his hands grip his hips. Joonmyun is a different person when they have sex; his eyes do not curl into smiles, and his body is quick, entering Jongin with hard snaps and sometimes the bed shakes, but today he’s taking it slow.
Sehun comes just as Jongin starts to feel dizzy, unaware of himself or how close he is to his own orgasm until Sehun is releasing into his mouth. Uttering curses, Sehun arches his back, and then he slumps, eyes closed and breathing heavy. Jongin lurches forward as Joonmyun presses him down and quickens his pace, gasps falling from his mouth as he licks up the bitter taste Sehun left behind on his lips. His arms are shaking from the weight of keeping himself up, cheek beginning to press into Sehun’s thigh.
He breathes hot against Sehun’s skin and mindlessly digs his fingers in as well, looking for something to grab as he’s brought dangerously close to an orgasm. And then he snaps, head hanging low and eyes screwed shut as he feels himself release into Joonmyun’s hand. Joonmyun lets out a strangled sound, between a cry and a grunt as he comes.
They all fall against each other, Jongin letting Sehun curl his arms around him as Joonmyun flops on the other side, thin layer of sweat making his body glow. Jongin touches his chest and trails his fingers across the rising and falling muscles. He aches, but in a pleasant way; blissed out, Jongin rolls his head against Joonmyun’s shoulder and starts to feel the evenness of Sehun’s breath. He always falls asleep too quickly.
“I like you both,” Jongin mutters, Sehun snoring against his chest. “More than I should.”
“There’s nothing wrong with sharing,” Joonmyun suggests, fingers threading through Jongin’s hair. Jongin supposes Joonmyun has learned how to break away from being the jealous type. Hearts are easy to break backstage, when you’re busy watching everyone furiously change out of their costumes and spending nights unwinding together. Everyone falls in love, and everyone gets hurt. Not Joonmyun, who after wrapping his hand around Jongin’s dick can still lean down and kiss a sleeping Sehun on the forehead, rough palm trailing down the younger boy’s arm. There is still love here, with an absence of jealousy or hurt.
Jongin’s eyelids flutter and Joonmyun swoops in to kiss him again. “Good,” is all he can say, to a grinning face in front of him.
Very good.
//
- thank you for reading!
- (hides because I can't write porn but it still took this route somehow)