[school 2013] i come to you in pieces
Title: i come to you in pieces
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 2830
Spoilers: Through episode 15
Warnings: dubcon, underage sex, a lot of seriously bad sexual choices
Summary: Heungsoo doesn't really expect to find another Go Namsoon, but somehow he can't stop himself from looking. (aka four times heungsoo doesn't fuck namsoon, and one time he does. endgame: Heungsoo/Namsoon)
i come to you in pieces
1.
The first person Heungsoo fucks is a boy called Cha Dongwoo. He's a tall kid, way too tall for his uniform, bits of skin peeking out between the bottom of his shirtsleeves and the bone of his wrists--and he's thin and lean and looks a little bit like Namsoon if it's dark enough. Heungsoo beats the crap out of him in an alleyway, kicks at his ribs and smashes his heel against Dongwoo's kneecap until Dongwoo's begging for forgiveness, voice soft and eyes wide, blood slithering out of the corner of his mouth.
Heungsoo drags him up against the wall and pins him there. "You're sorry?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. You can be jjang."
Dongwoo looks a bit like Namsoon but doesn't talk like him at all, doesn't pout cutely or ask to bum a cigarette off of Heungsoo, just stands there limply, shivering in the cool summer's night air. So Heungsoo scowls and leans forward and mashes his lips against Dongwoo's, more a continuation of their fight than a kiss, and slides hands down Dongwoo's torso, quickly scrabbling at his pants
At first Dongwoo just stands there, entirely unresponsive. And then he pulls back, panting, and Heungsoo tastes blood on his lips.
"Let's go to my house," he whispers brokenly, "my mom's never home."
Heungsoo digs fingers deep into Dongwoo's skin and doesn't trust himself to speak, so he just nods.
Dongwoo's house is dark and quiet and they fuck in the hallway, Heungsoo grabbing at Dongwoo's clothes and peeling them off his skin layer by layer. Dongwoo leans on Heungsoo until Heungsoo's leg buckles, until they're sprawled on the floor and Dongwoo is straddling Heungsoo's body, cock rubbing roughly against Heungsoo's belly, fingers stroking at Heungsoo's face.
They're both hard, but Dongwoo is also bruised and bloody, and it's so easy to pretend he's Namsoon like that, so easy to brush a hand against Dongwoo's cheek and say, "are you ready?" and almost mean it kindly. So easy to rock up into Dongwoo's body and slide him a little further down until their cocks are hot against each other, until Heungsoo can grab at Dongwoo's wrist and direct him to take them both of them in his hand, until Heungsoo feels Dongwoo shake around him and oblige, palm rough, strokes almost violent. And it's so easy for Heungsoo to close his eyes and whisper, "you bastard," when he comes in long, heavy spurts, body tense and stomach tight.
It takes Dongwoo another moment, but soon enough they're both done, spent, Dongwoo curling up against him like Namsoon used to, both long and lithe and so fucking different, so fucking similar that it hurts.
"You can be jjang," Dongwoo says again softly, mouth sucking hickeys into Heungsoo's side, "especially if I can be yours."
The words discomfort Heungsoo. They're wrong, all wrong. Namsoon would have said, "I'm hungry, I'm tired, go get me something to change into." Namsoon wouldn't have said anything. Namsoon would never let anyone take the position of jjang away from him. Not when Heungsoo had given it to him. Not when it had meant so much that Namsoon had been willing to throw away a friendship over it.
Suddenly, Heungsoo feels trapped by this big, empty house, by the unclean dishes in the kitchen, by the disorganized mess of shoes next to the door.
"Move," he just says, pushing at Dongwoo with his clean hand. Dongwoo rolls over easily, watching Heungsoo with half-lidded eyes and a lazy, self-satisfied smirk. Heungsoo grabs at his clothes roughly.
"You can stay. Mom doesn't come home until morning. We can walk to school together."
"No," Heungsoo says. "I don't think so."
Dongwoo props himself up on an elbow. "Tomorrow then? This was--"
"No," Heungsoo repeats. "Never again." When he's dressed, he grabs his shoes, bag, and throws open the front door. Dongwoo stares at him, still naked on the floor, cuts littered all over his body, He looks nothing like Namsoon in the light. Nothing at all.
He slams the door shut behind him.
Dongwoo never mentions it. Heungsoo doesn't care. He lets Dongwoo's lackeys rearrange themselves around him, the new jjang of their iljeen. He lets Dongwoo simmer until he explodes in a bathroom, smashing his fist into glass. He lets Dongwoo fuck himself up until he drops out of school, and then spends the rest of the year sleeping through lessons numbly.
At graduation, he finds a note stuffed into his backpack. You called me Go Namsoon, you stupid shit.
It's unsigned, but Heungsoo's not an idiot.
2.
The second notch in Heungsoo's bedpost is, surprisingly, a girl. She's not very pretty, but she's there at the police station when he's admitted for his first serious offense, when he beats a middle-schooler until the kid can barely breathe. She asks him why he did it, whether he was going to settle, why his father isn't picking up his goddamned phone, and when he looks up he sees that she's yelling because she's scared of him. And he wants her to be scared of him.
He's not sure how they end up in an interrogation room with the cameras off, but he asks her before he touches. He says, "can I?" and she nods and then he says it again, "can I can I can I?" with his hands outstretched and she stares at him, at the blood in his shirt and the dirt on his hands, and she says, "yes."
She doesn't have a condom on her, so instead she squeezes her thighs shut around Heungsoo's cock and teaches him to fuck into her like that. It feels good--it feels amazing, and her arms around him are warm and soft and nothing at all like Namsoon. They're the arms his sister has, the arms his mother had before she got sick, before her arms became long things Heungsoo has to fold into her lap so she she isn't uncomfortable. And somewhere between the third and fiftieth jerk between her thighs, Heungsoo starts crying and shaking and she's kissing his neck and saying, "it's okay" when it isn't okay at all.
He comes between her legs, and then backs up into a chair, body limp and muscles languid. She cleans herself off with a tissue and winces when she pulls her trousers back up.
"Why did you do it?' she asks, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. "Why isn't anyone answering the phone at your house?"
"They're at the hospital."
Her voice isn't soft, not like Namsoon's would have been. "Park Heungsoo."
"Yes, ma'am."
She sighs. And for a second, Heungsoo looks up and thinks she might be pretty. Just a little bit. "I'll let you off this one time, yeah? But not again. Never again. If you do something like this and you're caught--"
"I won't," Heungsoo says, meaning I won't get caught. Namsoon would never have let Heungsoo slide like this. No such thing as a sliding scale, he once said, sucking at a lollipop jovially on their way back from a fairly nasty fight. You can't let anyone tell you that. You fuck up once, and, Namsoon had flung the candy out of his mouth and smashed it with his heel, bam. You're fucked. People will step all over you, take advantage of you. You can't ever show a moment's weakness.
Heungsoo has rolled his eyes. The fuck do you know, shrimp?
And Namsoon had shrugged, face dark. Too much.
She doesn't let him off a second time. But Heungsoo hadn't expected her to. And when Heungsoo's mother dies, they move to Seoul.
3.
The third time Heungsoo fucks someone, it's an accident. He's drunk, really drunk, and he's fighting with a boy who was crying about his parents a few minutes ago, saying that his dad was a drunk who never came home and Heungsoo's fist had seized and he'd started punching the kid hysterically, breathless, fists bombarding the kid's shoulders and chest with heavy hits, one after another after another. And then the crying had stopped and Heungsoo had stepped back and waiting for the smile, the recognition, the beginning of everything. This is the gang, Heungsoo had said to Go Namsoon, this is your family.
The boy doesn't say anything. But Heungsoo is drunk enough not to mind, so he moves forward and isn't sure whether the kid is saying, "stop" or "don't stop" but he's rutting against Heungsoo's body and this time Heungsoo leans back and lets someone else push his pants down and take Heungsoo into his mouth and suck until Heungsoo can't feel his body anymore.
"Don't hurt me," the kid says after, which burns shame into Heungsoo's stomach. He watches the boy run off and then he rolls over and throws up into the grass and wonders whether Namsoon would have been like that, don't hurt me anymore. Stop hurting me. You brought me into the gang, this is your fault, you made me into this.
The world spins violently, and Heungsoo wonders whether he can take it back, all of it, whether he could wake up tomorrow morning at the beginning of the beginning and walk right past the desk of the scrawny little bastard in row 9-3 of class 1-5 and not say, My name is Park Heungsoo and you are extremely tall.
Heungsoo falls asleep with his fly open in the middle of the park and wakes up with regret thick in his mouth and a strange, homeless man staring at him. he buttons up, excuses himself, and walks home dejectedly. His sister cries and hits him and then directs him to take a shower.
The water burns and Heungsoo thinks that he deserves it.
He has to repeat freshman year of high school because he's missed too many days. His sister forbids him from picking fights with kids from other schools, threatening to take them back to the that town where that shitty kid Go Namsoon had been, "because then--at least then I wasn't scared you wouldn't come home in the morning."
"I'll always come home," Heungsoo promises, fingers twisted tight behind his back. He doesn't remind her that Go Namsoon is the reason they moved, the reason his cleats haven't seen daylight in two years, the reason he fucks people until he can't think straight.
She stares at him angrily, eyes rimmed with red. "No more fights," she says.
After the third transfer, she whirls around and says, "and no more fights in school either."
Heungsoo takes the textbooks out of her hand. "I made you skip history. You like history."
"I think I'm going to have to drop out of college--we don't have the money for that. So it doesn't matter what subjects I like."
"Noona--"
She whirls around, and Heungsoo steps back. "You can cry," she says, tears pricking at her eyes. "You can cry and scream and break things. That's okay. But you can get over it. Soccer wasn't everything. Mom wasn't everything."
Heungsoo feels something in his chest crack.
"You can cry," she continues, "but you can't fuck yourself up. I won't let you--I won't let him do this to you."
She doesn't look like Namsoon, but she sounds like him--angry and helpless and never saying what she means. He steps forward. "I'm okay," he lies, patting her hair gently. "I love you."
"I don't want to hear that," she chokes, sobbing into his shoulder, tears dampening his sweater. "I want to hear that you're sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"You're not sorry. Liar."
It's such a Go Namsoon thing to say. Heungsoo laughs and then laughs and then realizes he's crying too. "Yeah," he says. "I'm sorry."
It's the last transfer they'll allow him, the school district warns, handing him an envelope full of papers. He nods, bows, and vows to do better this time, flipping through the materials in the bag, noting the address of his new high school. Victory, he murmurs, tracing the name of the institution. Victory.
It has a nice ring to it.
4.
Jongho is a surprise. He comes to Heungsoo after the fight, face still smashed up and broken, pride still cracked. They're the last ones in the classroom, but Heungsoo is sure Jihoon and Yikyung are loitering outside, feet kicking against the gravel. He's equally as sure that Namsoon is with them, waiting, pathetically, to follow Heungsoo home.
"How do you want me to do this?" Jongho asks, shoving his fists into his pocket. "On my knees?"
Heungsoo stares at him. "What?"
"I don't--I don't want you to put it in, if that. If I have to I'll let you." Jongho takes a deep breath. "Fucking get it over with, asshole."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Heungsoo shoves a book into his backpack and zips it shut. "Get out of here."
"You can fuck me. Isn't that what you do? I'll get in line behind you. Behind--behind the tsunami."
Heungsoo feels rage boil over. Jongho looks nothing like Namsoon. Namsoon doesn't even look like Namsoon--he looks dead and quiet and broken, even after he'd beaten Jongho to shreds, even after blood had splashed across his face and a wildness had crept back into his eyes. "That's not me," he says. "I thought you'd figured that out."
"But he's scared of you. So you're the one I have to get in line behind." Jongho moves forward and scowls, getting to his knees with a pained squint of his eyes and brushing his hair out of his face. "Just let me--"
Heungsoo smashes his fists into his desk and gets up, barely breathing. "That's fine. That's enough. You're in line."
"Huh?"
But Heungsoo doesn't want to explain himself, so he stalks past Jongho, slams the classroom door open, and slides his bag over his back. He tries not to remember the handful of people he's fucked up, tries not to remember calling each and every one of them Go Namsoon. He tries not to remember the shame burning in his stomach when he'd seen Namsoon take Jongho's punches, sprawled on the ground with his hair matted to his face. He tries not to remember that it's been three years, that it feels like it's been three hundred. That it might as well have been three days, for all the space that stands between them.
Someone snags at his uniform jacket. "Hey," Namsoon whispers. "Can I carry that?" He points at Heungsoo's bag like it's the heaviest burden in the world, like it's all Heungsoo's carrying.
Heungsoo's ears burn.
5.
Namsoon is last. Namsoon's mouth is warm against his, hands soft and desperate and horribly slow. "Hurry," Heungsoo keeps saying, toeing off his socks and shivering into the cold of Namsoon's empty house. "Hurry."
It's been three years, it's been three hundred years, and every time Namsoon touches a part of Heungsoo's body it burns away the thousands of hands that haven't been his, the thousands of kisses Heungsoo had shared with someone else. Namsoon is everything Heungsoo imagines, and somehow deeper, more complex, a sea of softness and defined muscle and prominent bone. Namsoon slides his way down Heungsoo's stomach, sucking gently at the skin and nipping at Heungsoo's thighs, laughing when Heungsoo's hands tangle in Namsoon's hair helplessly. "Hurry, you bastard," he growls, toes curling. "You've taken enough time."
Namsoon freezes. "I'm sorry," he says, fingers brushing against Heungsoo's knee. And Heungsoo breathes, feels pain sweep across his chest, and hisses. "I'm sorry you couldn't find someone better than me."
Heungsoo isn't sure whether the pain is physical or emotional, or an odd mixture of both. He pulls Namsoon up until Namsoon is facing him, until he can see red-rimmed eyes and long lashes and high cheekbones. Until he can feel Namsoon shake. "There couldn't have been anyone but you."
"I'm sorry," Namsoon says. "For everything."
But it's been too long for those apologies to take back the mornings Heungsoo's woken up dazed and tired and broken. There's too much to say, too little space for any of it, and the air between them is still brittle and terrifying. So Heungsoo leans in and brushes his lips against Namsoon's and feels sparks flood his nerves. Namsoon would kiss me back, he thinks abstractly.
Namsoon opens his mouths, catches Heungsoo's lips between his, and sucks gently. "I'm sorry," he breathes. "I'm sorry I fucked you up. I'll make it right, Heungsoo-yah."
The diminutive unravels him. It takes him back to the soccer field, to nights spent crowing over stolen ramen, to bike races across town. Suddenly they're fourteen again. Suddenly the world is simple--black and white, no shades of grey. Suddenly Heungsoo feels whole again.
"You didn't fuck anything up," he tells the broken little boy he'd always wanted to save. I'm sorry for giving you the gang. I'm sorry for making you into the jjang. I'm sorry for making you love me. "We fucked up together. That's why we're friends. That's why you can't be sorry."
"Together," Namsoon breathes, mouth hot against Heungsoo's neck. "Are we together?"
It's the most absurd conversation. They're both naked, both hard, both licking at each other, fingers touching and petting and scratching. And yet--Namsoon's eyes are red and Heungsoo thinks he might be crying, thinks they might both be crying.
It's the perfect coda to three years of unanswered questions. It's the perfect beginning of something else--something a lot scarier than losing a fight. Something a lot more important than soccer.
"Together," Heungsoo decides. "Together."
Author's Note: LOL OK I TRIED TO WRITE SMTG IN THE THEME OF ~THE MORNING AFTER~ GIFS GOING AROUND TUMBLR AND THEN THIS HAPPENED SO IDEK MAN this is how i spent my lunch break &&& i basically forced the lovely chriss to speedread it to check for obvious typos but like any errata are mine bc i can't type or english & i'm an idiot
title yanked from this song aka the soundtrack to my fav school 2013 mv ever
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 2830
Spoilers: Through episode 15
Warnings: dubcon, underage sex, a lot of seriously bad sexual choices
Summary: Heungsoo doesn't really expect to find another Go Namsoon, but somehow he can't stop himself from looking. (aka four times heungsoo doesn't fuck namsoon, and one time he does. endgame: Heungsoo/Namsoon)
i come to you in pieces
1.
The first person Heungsoo fucks is a boy called Cha Dongwoo. He's a tall kid, way too tall for his uniform, bits of skin peeking out between the bottom of his shirtsleeves and the bone of his wrists--and he's thin and lean and looks a little bit like Namsoon if it's dark enough. Heungsoo beats the crap out of him in an alleyway, kicks at his ribs and smashes his heel against Dongwoo's kneecap until Dongwoo's begging for forgiveness, voice soft and eyes wide, blood slithering out of the corner of his mouth.
Heungsoo drags him up against the wall and pins him there. "You're sorry?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. You can be jjang."
Dongwoo looks a bit like Namsoon but doesn't talk like him at all, doesn't pout cutely or ask to bum a cigarette off of Heungsoo, just stands there limply, shivering in the cool summer's night air. So Heungsoo scowls and leans forward and mashes his lips against Dongwoo's, more a continuation of their fight than a kiss, and slides hands down Dongwoo's torso, quickly scrabbling at his pants
At first Dongwoo just stands there, entirely unresponsive. And then he pulls back, panting, and Heungsoo tastes blood on his lips.
"Let's go to my house," he whispers brokenly, "my mom's never home."
Heungsoo digs fingers deep into Dongwoo's skin and doesn't trust himself to speak, so he just nods.
Dongwoo's house is dark and quiet and they fuck in the hallway, Heungsoo grabbing at Dongwoo's clothes and peeling them off his skin layer by layer. Dongwoo leans on Heungsoo until Heungsoo's leg buckles, until they're sprawled on the floor and Dongwoo is straddling Heungsoo's body, cock rubbing roughly against Heungsoo's belly, fingers stroking at Heungsoo's face.
They're both hard, but Dongwoo is also bruised and bloody, and it's so easy to pretend he's Namsoon like that, so easy to brush a hand against Dongwoo's cheek and say, "are you ready?" and almost mean it kindly. So easy to rock up into Dongwoo's body and slide him a little further down until their cocks are hot against each other, until Heungsoo can grab at Dongwoo's wrist and direct him to take them both of them in his hand, until Heungsoo feels Dongwoo shake around him and oblige, palm rough, strokes almost violent. And it's so easy for Heungsoo to close his eyes and whisper, "you bastard," when he comes in long, heavy spurts, body tense and stomach tight.
It takes Dongwoo another moment, but soon enough they're both done, spent, Dongwoo curling up against him like Namsoon used to, both long and lithe and so fucking different, so fucking similar that it hurts.
"You can be jjang," Dongwoo says again softly, mouth sucking hickeys into Heungsoo's side, "especially if I can be yours."
The words discomfort Heungsoo. They're wrong, all wrong. Namsoon would have said, "I'm hungry, I'm tired, go get me something to change into." Namsoon wouldn't have said anything. Namsoon would never let anyone take the position of jjang away from him. Not when Heungsoo had given it to him. Not when it had meant so much that Namsoon had been willing to throw away a friendship over it.
Suddenly, Heungsoo feels trapped by this big, empty house, by the unclean dishes in the kitchen, by the disorganized mess of shoes next to the door.
"Move," he just says, pushing at Dongwoo with his clean hand. Dongwoo rolls over easily, watching Heungsoo with half-lidded eyes and a lazy, self-satisfied smirk. Heungsoo grabs at his clothes roughly.
"You can stay. Mom doesn't come home until morning. We can walk to school together."
"No," Heungsoo says. "I don't think so."
Dongwoo props himself up on an elbow. "Tomorrow then? This was--"
"No," Heungsoo repeats. "Never again." When he's dressed, he grabs his shoes, bag, and throws open the front door. Dongwoo stares at him, still naked on the floor, cuts littered all over his body, He looks nothing like Namsoon in the light. Nothing at all.
He slams the door shut behind him.
Dongwoo never mentions it. Heungsoo doesn't care. He lets Dongwoo's lackeys rearrange themselves around him, the new jjang of their iljeen. He lets Dongwoo simmer until he explodes in a bathroom, smashing his fist into glass. He lets Dongwoo fuck himself up until he drops out of school, and then spends the rest of the year sleeping through lessons numbly.
At graduation, he finds a note stuffed into his backpack. You called me Go Namsoon, you stupid shit.
It's unsigned, but Heungsoo's not an idiot.
2.
The second notch in Heungsoo's bedpost is, surprisingly, a girl. She's not very pretty, but she's there at the police station when he's admitted for his first serious offense, when he beats a middle-schooler until the kid can barely breathe. She asks him why he did it, whether he was going to settle, why his father isn't picking up his goddamned phone, and when he looks up he sees that she's yelling because she's scared of him. And he wants her to be scared of him.
He's not sure how they end up in an interrogation room with the cameras off, but he asks her before he touches. He says, "can I?" and she nods and then he says it again, "can I can I can I?" with his hands outstretched and she stares at him, at the blood in his shirt and the dirt on his hands, and she says, "yes."
She doesn't have a condom on her, so instead she squeezes her thighs shut around Heungsoo's cock and teaches him to fuck into her like that. It feels good--it feels amazing, and her arms around him are warm and soft and nothing at all like Namsoon. They're the arms his sister has, the arms his mother had before she got sick, before her arms became long things Heungsoo has to fold into her lap so she she isn't uncomfortable. And somewhere between the third and fiftieth jerk between her thighs, Heungsoo starts crying and shaking and she's kissing his neck and saying, "it's okay" when it isn't okay at all.
He comes between her legs, and then backs up into a chair, body limp and muscles languid. She cleans herself off with a tissue and winces when she pulls her trousers back up.
"Why did you do it?' she asks, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. "Why isn't anyone answering the phone at your house?"
"They're at the hospital."
Her voice isn't soft, not like Namsoon's would have been. "Park Heungsoo."
"Yes, ma'am."
She sighs. And for a second, Heungsoo looks up and thinks she might be pretty. Just a little bit. "I'll let you off this one time, yeah? But not again. Never again. If you do something like this and you're caught--"
"I won't," Heungsoo says, meaning I won't get caught. Namsoon would never have let Heungsoo slide like this. No such thing as a sliding scale, he once said, sucking at a lollipop jovially on their way back from a fairly nasty fight. You can't let anyone tell you that. You fuck up once, and, Namsoon had flung the candy out of his mouth and smashed it with his heel, bam. You're fucked. People will step all over you, take advantage of you. You can't ever show a moment's weakness.
Heungsoo has rolled his eyes. The fuck do you know, shrimp?
And Namsoon had shrugged, face dark. Too much.
She doesn't let him off a second time. But Heungsoo hadn't expected her to. And when Heungsoo's mother dies, they move to Seoul.
3.
The third time Heungsoo fucks someone, it's an accident. He's drunk, really drunk, and he's fighting with a boy who was crying about his parents a few minutes ago, saying that his dad was a drunk who never came home and Heungsoo's fist had seized and he'd started punching the kid hysterically, breathless, fists bombarding the kid's shoulders and chest with heavy hits, one after another after another. And then the crying had stopped and Heungsoo had stepped back and waiting for the smile, the recognition, the beginning of everything. This is the gang, Heungsoo had said to Go Namsoon, this is your family.
The boy doesn't say anything. But Heungsoo is drunk enough not to mind, so he moves forward and isn't sure whether the kid is saying, "stop" or "don't stop" but he's rutting against Heungsoo's body and this time Heungsoo leans back and lets someone else push his pants down and take Heungsoo into his mouth and suck until Heungsoo can't feel his body anymore.
"Don't hurt me," the kid says after, which burns shame into Heungsoo's stomach. He watches the boy run off and then he rolls over and throws up into the grass and wonders whether Namsoon would have been like that, don't hurt me anymore. Stop hurting me. You brought me into the gang, this is your fault, you made me into this.
The world spins violently, and Heungsoo wonders whether he can take it back, all of it, whether he could wake up tomorrow morning at the beginning of the beginning and walk right past the desk of the scrawny little bastard in row 9-3 of class 1-5 and not say, My name is Park Heungsoo and you are extremely tall.
Heungsoo falls asleep with his fly open in the middle of the park and wakes up with regret thick in his mouth and a strange, homeless man staring at him. he buttons up, excuses himself, and walks home dejectedly. His sister cries and hits him and then directs him to take a shower.
The water burns and Heungsoo thinks that he deserves it.
He has to repeat freshman year of high school because he's missed too many days. His sister forbids him from picking fights with kids from other schools, threatening to take them back to the that town where that shitty kid Go Namsoon had been, "because then--at least then I wasn't scared you wouldn't come home in the morning."
"I'll always come home," Heungsoo promises, fingers twisted tight behind his back. He doesn't remind her that Go Namsoon is the reason they moved, the reason his cleats haven't seen daylight in two years, the reason he fucks people until he can't think straight.
She stares at him angrily, eyes rimmed with red. "No more fights," she says.
After the third transfer, she whirls around and says, "and no more fights in school either."
Heungsoo takes the textbooks out of her hand. "I made you skip history. You like history."
"I think I'm going to have to drop out of college--we don't have the money for that. So it doesn't matter what subjects I like."
"Noona--"
She whirls around, and Heungsoo steps back. "You can cry," she says, tears pricking at her eyes. "You can cry and scream and break things. That's okay. But you can get over it. Soccer wasn't everything. Mom wasn't everything."
Heungsoo feels something in his chest crack.
"You can cry," she continues, "but you can't fuck yourself up. I won't let you--I won't let him do this to you."
She doesn't look like Namsoon, but she sounds like him--angry and helpless and never saying what she means. He steps forward. "I'm okay," he lies, patting her hair gently. "I love you."
"I don't want to hear that," she chokes, sobbing into his shoulder, tears dampening his sweater. "I want to hear that you're sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"You're not sorry. Liar."
It's such a Go Namsoon thing to say. Heungsoo laughs and then laughs and then realizes he's crying too. "Yeah," he says. "I'm sorry."
It's the last transfer they'll allow him, the school district warns, handing him an envelope full of papers. He nods, bows, and vows to do better this time, flipping through the materials in the bag, noting the address of his new high school. Victory, he murmurs, tracing the name of the institution. Victory.
It has a nice ring to it.
4.
Jongho is a surprise. He comes to Heungsoo after the fight, face still smashed up and broken, pride still cracked. They're the last ones in the classroom, but Heungsoo is sure Jihoon and Yikyung are loitering outside, feet kicking against the gravel. He's equally as sure that Namsoon is with them, waiting, pathetically, to follow Heungsoo home.
"How do you want me to do this?" Jongho asks, shoving his fists into his pocket. "On my knees?"
Heungsoo stares at him. "What?"
"I don't--I don't want you to put it in, if that. If I have to I'll let you." Jongho takes a deep breath. "Fucking get it over with, asshole."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Heungsoo shoves a book into his backpack and zips it shut. "Get out of here."
"You can fuck me. Isn't that what you do? I'll get in line behind you. Behind--behind the tsunami."
Heungsoo feels rage boil over. Jongho looks nothing like Namsoon. Namsoon doesn't even look like Namsoon--he looks dead and quiet and broken, even after he'd beaten Jongho to shreds, even after blood had splashed across his face and a wildness had crept back into his eyes. "That's not me," he says. "I thought you'd figured that out."
"But he's scared of you. So you're the one I have to get in line behind." Jongho moves forward and scowls, getting to his knees with a pained squint of his eyes and brushing his hair out of his face. "Just let me--"
Heungsoo smashes his fists into his desk and gets up, barely breathing. "That's fine. That's enough. You're in line."
"Huh?"
But Heungsoo doesn't want to explain himself, so he stalks past Jongho, slams the classroom door open, and slides his bag over his back. He tries not to remember the handful of people he's fucked up, tries not to remember calling each and every one of them Go Namsoon. He tries not to remember the shame burning in his stomach when he'd seen Namsoon take Jongho's punches, sprawled on the ground with his hair matted to his face. He tries not to remember that it's been three years, that it feels like it's been three hundred. That it might as well have been three days, for all the space that stands between them.
Someone snags at his uniform jacket. "Hey," Namsoon whispers. "Can I carry that?" He points at Heungsoo's bag like it's the heaviest burden in the world, like it's all Heungsoo's carrying.
Heungsoo's ears burn.
5.
Namsoon is last. Namsoon's mouth is warm against his, hands soft and desperate and horribly slow. "Hurry," Heungsoo keeps saying, toeing off his socks and shivering into the cold of Namsoon's empty house. "Hurry."
It's been three years, it's been three hundred years, and every time Namsoon touches a part of Heungsoo's body it burns away the thousands of hands that haven't been his, the thousands of kisses Heungsoo had shared with someone else. Namsoon is everything Heungsoo imagines, and somehow deeper, more complex, a sea of softness and defined muscle and prominent bone. Namsoon slides his way down Heungsoo's stomach, sucking gently at the skin and nipping at Heungsoo's thighs, laughing when Heungsoo's hands tangle in Namsoon's hair helplessly. "Hurry, you bastard," he growls, toes curling. "You've taken enough time."
Namsoon freezes. "I'm sorry," he says, fingers brushing against Heungsoo's knee. And Heungsoo breathes, feels pain sweep across his chest, and hisses. "I'm sorry you couldn't find someone better than me."
Heungsoo isn't sure whether the pain is physical or emotional, or an odd mixture of both. He pulls Namsoon up until Namsoon is facing him, until he can see red-rimmed eyes and long lashes and high cheekbones. Until he can feel Namsoon shake. "There couldn't have been anyone but you."
"I'm sorry," Namsoon says. "For everything."
But it's been too long for those apologies to take back the mornings Heungsoo's woken up dazed and tired and broken. There's too much to say, too little space for any of it, and the air between them is still brittle and terrifying. So Heungsoo leans in and brushes his lips against Namsoon's and feels sparks flood his nerves. Namsoon would kiss me back, he thinks abstractly.
Namsoon opens his mouths, catches Heungsoo's lips between his, and sucks gently. "I'm sorry," he breathes. "I'm sorry I fucked you up. I'll make it right, Heungsoo-yah."
The diminutive unravels him. It takes him back to the soccer field, to nights spent crowing over stolen ramen, to bike races across town. Suddenly they're fourteen again. Suddenly the world is simple--black and white, no shades of grey. Suddenly Heungsoo feels whole again.
"You didn't fuck anything up," he tells the broken little boy he'd always wanted to save. I'm sorry for giving you the gang. I'm sorry for making you into the jjang. I'm sorry for making you love me. "We fucked up together. That's why we're friends. That's why you can't be sorry."
"Together," Namsoon breathes, mouth hot against Heungsoo's neck. "Are we together?"
It's the most absurd conversation. They're both naked, both hard, both licking at each other, fingers touching and petting and scratching. And yet--Namsoon's eyes are red and Heungsoo thinks he might be crying, thinks they might both be crying.
It's the perfect coda to three years of unanswered questions. It's the perfect beginning of something else--something a lot scarier than losing a fight. Something a lot more important than soccer.
"Together," Heungsoo decides. "Together."
Author's Note: LOL OK I TRIED TO WRITE SMTG IN THE THEME OF ~THE MORNING AFTER~ GIFS GOING AROUND TUMBLR AND THEN THIS HAPPENED SO IDEK MAN this is how i spent my lunch break &&& i basically forced the lovely chriss to speedread it to check for obvious typos but like any errata are mine bc i can't type or english & i'm an idiot
title yanked from this song aka the soundtrack to my fav school 2013 mv ever