#136: Look At My Heart, It’s Burning Like This
Title: Look At My Heart, It’s Burning Like This
Pairing(s): xiukai, side!chansoo
Rating: nc-17
Length: 8.7k
Warning(s): [Please click to open.]drunken antics, very intense romantic pining
Summary: And Jongin hates how words are hard to come by always, but especially whenever Minseok is concerned.
Author's Note: set in america so the drinking age is 21, also the exo's ages have been shuffled a bit, title from this song (rip, queens)
Today-Jongdae had promised the first thing in the morning while climbing into Jongin’s bed, sitting at the foot of it then deciding better and straddling his lap, staying frustratingly steady no matter how much Jongin squirmed in protest-today is all about Jongin.
It’s his day as their beautiful birthday boy, which is why they’d treated him to a hearty breakfast of buttermilk pancakes, orange juice, bacon, sausage, and eggs-lumberjack portions, too for a growing boy, why they’d insisted on an even larger lunch at the pasta place near campus, why they had even eschewed tradition for his sake-forsaken their heritage and indulged Jongin’s taste, deciding on wings versus their local Korean restaurant, praising him afterwards for his preferences. This place was cheaper, closer to campus, played better music, had a better overall vibe, and honestly better food, too.
And it’s why now, in the aftermath of unforgivable, festive gluttony, their bellies unpleasantly full and movements post-dinner-sluggish, they-Jongdae, Joonmyun, Sehun, Kyungsoo, Chanyeol, Baekhyun, Minseok-are at Jongdae’s apartment. And it’s why Jongdae and Chanyeol are shuffling loudly in their dorm room kitchenette, preparing drinks for further birthday festivities, Jongdae loudly narrating as he wonders aloud about what drink will be the absolute best for Jongin’s first. Virginities are important, delicate things and should be taken only after great care, greater attention to detail.
And that-their insistence on making this Jongin’s perfect day-is why Jongin-their special birthday boy-is waiting, red-faced and tense, fidgeting nervously, alternately bopping intermittently to the Spotify party mix Chanyeol is blasting from his speaker system. Jongin is seated on the floor with his legs crossed in front of him, fingers twisted in the heather gray shag carpet, waiting, waiting, waiting, staring forlornly in Jongdae’s general direction because he’s scared to look elsewhere, anywhere riskier.
But movement catches the corner of his eye, Minseok gesturing emphatically as he urges Jongdae faster-they don’t have all night, and Jongin makes the mistake, as always. Looks the least safe place to look, as always.
And oh, it’s honestly criminal how utterly attractive Minseok looks splayed out comfortably across Jongdae’s neon-green bean bag chair. He’s wearing a powder-blue cable-knit sweater, dark-washed jeans, and his hair is staticky from the material of his sweater, the rub of his socks on the carpet, his cheeks flushed with laughter. As always he’s the most painfully captivating thing that Jongin has ever seen.
Jongin’s the birthday boy, and fuck, he wants-him. Always, always wants him. Never ever knows how to go about getting him. Because Jongin hates how words are hard to come by always, but especially whenever Minseok is concerned. Hates hates hates how badly he wants him and how unable he is to express it.
Talking would be easier, Jongin thinks if Minseok wasn't so breathtaking, wasn't so unsettlingly gorgeous and warm and perfect. Breathing might be easier, too. But neither is the case, and it doesn’t matter that it’s his day, doesn’t matter that Minseok is here to celebrate him, too, doesn’t matter that he’s close enough for Jongin to reach out and touch if he dares. It doesn’t matter because it's too much, and Jongin can't. And Minseok continues to fucking ruin him without even meaning or wanting to. And Jongin is immobilized-as always-with want.
The beanbag chair that Minseok is lounging on, it’s Jongin’s favorite seat. He’d even helped Jongdae pick it out a year and a half ago when he’d first moved into this apartment, piping in with advice on the best material, size, color before they’d settled on this one. It’s Jongin’s favorite and probably owed to him for being the birthday boy, but Minseok belongs there, Jongin decides, curling his denimed knees to his chest, trying to watching him discreetly from the corner of his eye. Minseok deserves it, deserves all the best things, even $18.99 beanbag chairs from Target. Deserves them just by virtue of being so kind and gentle and handsome and perfect. And Jongin, if given the chance, he’d try so fucking hard to give Minseok everything he deserves.
Mid-Minseok-inspired-rhapsody, Jongin is interrupted by Jongdae, who pads back into the room, flourishing a red solo cup with the widest, most indulgent grin.
“You can't even taste the alcohol,” Jongdae insists. “Only really the love.” His grin widens impossibly when Jongin takes the offered cup. "It'll be a good first drink," he assures.
Jongin's first because it's his day, and they’re all watching him because it's his day.
In the kitchenette, Chanyeol is still loudly bumbling around for the tumbler, because he’s serious about his craft and he’ll need more than love to guarantee his drinks are up to standard.
“Hardly any alcohol,” Jongdae presses when Jongin hesitates with the rim of the cup at his mouth. And Jongin doesn't correct him even though he can fucking smell it, and he already pretty much hates it. He needs to-he’s not a kid. And it's his special day.
The first gulp burns, in his nose and all the way down his throat, and he sputters heavily to recover.
Jongdae cackles, even as he soothes a hand up and down his spine. He curls around him when Jongin grumbles, cooing softly, fondly patronizing.
“Baby’s bit off more than he can chew,” he announces and laughs again, nuzzling his sharp chin in Jongin’s throat, setting the cup down by Jongin’s feet as Jongin attempts to squirm out of his hold. “Didn’t know it’d be so intense, your first time.” His laughter this time is softer, incredibly affectionate.
Nearby, Minseok laughs, too, and Jongin grimaces before groping clumsily for the cup, squeezing so tight that the plastic protests and some sloshes onto the carpet. He's swallowing again, trying-failing to school his impression into something smoother.
Chanyeol screams about their drinks being ready now as Jongin coughs discreetly into the sleeve of his sweater. And the focus at least is no longer on him.
But it still isn't fair.
Today, it’s supposed to be about him, celebrating him. And he isn’t supposed to feel small and young and bumbling, isn’t supposed to be utterly floored by Minseok’s unbearable beauty. But Jongin is-small and young and bumbling. And Minseok is so fucking handsome and breathless from laughter and flushed from the cold or the alcohol. He ruffles his dark hair as he adjusts himself on the beanbag chair, and Jongin chokes on his breath. He sips long and luxurious from his own solo cup, and overcome, Jongin takes another deep drag, chokes again. Jongdae laughs again. Grimacing, Jongin downs it all in one go.
Jongdae laughs, makes some proud, impressed comment as he totters off to refill his cup. More alcohol this time, he assures. Jongin has to get drunk-really fucking drunk, his hyungs and Sehun command it.
“With me,” Sehun decides, taking the cup that Chanyeol offers him. He still isn’t allowed to drink-not legally; his 21st birthday isn’t for another 3 months, but nobody stops him. And he has that gleam in his eyes like when he's kicking ass at Mario Kart or beating Jongin at Skeeball or bluffing his way through shitty Poker hands, like he’s got something to prove, even though he’s the youngest and even though today is supposed to be about Jongin.
“Stronger,” Sehun declares, draining the cup in one go. “Shots. Get me the fucking shot glasses, hyung.”
Sehun grabs the bottle, though as Chanyeol stumbles over, cheering. Soju-we can’t ignore our heritage completely, Chanyeol insists. All showmanship and over the top smirks, Sehun drinks straight from the bottle, takes deep drags, his pink lips curling obscenely around the green glass, Sehun making this obscene, low, whining sound with every swallow. And fuck, if Sehun was into men, if Jongin wasn’t his best friend, fuck if he just-. But as it is, he just looks beautiful and charming and carefree, everything Jongin wants of himself for tonight.
Sehun finishes it after four gulps, wipes his lips with the back of his sweater, the friction making them look extra swollen, extra pink.
And then Baekhyun is tottering with shot glasses, filling them with another half-opened bottle of soju. And Sehun is taking his first shot.
Sehun looks even more beautiful and charming and carefree as he puckers his lips and knits his brows and smiles around the shot, and Jongin copies his pose after a beat, tips his head back as he swallows past the bitter, bitter taste, forcing himself not to gag or grimace, but smirk, too, as he pulls it away.
Jongdae, Chanyeol, Baekhyun cheer. Joonmyun, Kyungsoo laugh. Minseok smiles at him.
And Jongin matches Sehun shot for shot. Through every painfully sharp, bitter gulp, tingling and warm and increasingly weightless, time blurring, colors dancing, body hot hot hot.
They stumble onto their university’s Safe Ride “drunk bus” some indeterminate amount of time later when Baekhyun decides they’re good and fucked up.
Jongin pinwheels as he ascends the bus stairs, has to balance himself on the metal railing, and the driver-a teacher’s assistant in one of his Biology classes-squints at him in recognition before allowing him on. Sehun chuckles as he plops down beside him on one of the hard metal seats, impassive and unaffected save for the flush in his throat and the jitter in his long leg as the others shuffle in behind him. Kyungsoo lands on his right, smiles at him softly. His eyes are too bright-too much alcohol-and he reaches out to pat Jongin’s cheek, thank him softly for being born and for being such a good dongsaeng.
Minseok sits down across from Jongin, leans heavily against Chanyeol's side. He’s so fucking slight against him, small, small like he'd be if he was leaning on Jongin, but achingly handsome, achingly flushed. The pleasant thrum in Jongin’s skin raises to a fevered, pulsing loud loud loud throb at Minseok’s crooked grin.
It's Jongin's night night night.He can make the most of it.
It’s only three stops to their nightclub-The Envy. It’s the best, best of the four they have in town because it has cheaper drinks, a big dance floor, a stripper pole, doesn’t play old country or disco like the ones that are closer.
They shiver in the long line outside the venue, drivers licenses-state ID in Baekhyun's case because he never learned to drive-clutched in their wind-bitten fingers. Jongin is near Minseok again, but Chanyeol is talking about how much he missed the grilled cheese sandwiches in their mess hall-a topic that Jongin is passionate about, too-and it's at least something he can endure. At least until he builds up the courage.
They pass the time in impassioned tipsy-whispers, and Joonmyun gets Jongin's cover with an indulgent smile as he hands over three crisp 10s.
Beside him, Sehun charms Joonmyun into paying for him, too, laughing at the thick, permanent marker X they draw on his arm, already flushed with intoxication, laughing too as they stumble inside. He tugs Jongin forward insistently towards the packed dance floor, has him knocking against the bar. He urges Baekhyun and Jongdae forward, too. Elbows looping around Baekhyun’s shoulders, he grinds against him, swaying as his hips drop to the beat. He twists an arm back to tug Jongdae closer, too, rocking his ass back on Jongdae's thigh.
Sehun doesn't even-Baekhyun doesn't even, Jongdae does kind of-but Jongin does-really, really does, and he wants Minseok to do, too.
And Jongin just watches.
His other hyungs buys him a drink at the bar. Then several there after, and Jongin chases the pleasant, pleasant dizziness of intoxication, swaying and laughing as he’s inundated with warmth and want and a wonderful sense of weightless. He feels beautiful and bright and loved and perfect and breathless. Feels like he deserves the whole world for it, too.
His skin thrums with the most pleasant, dizzyingly soft and persistent tingle, and soon, his limbs feel looser, lips, too. And when Minseok smiles at him, Jongin doesn’t feel like he's dying, feels instead so painfully alive, like that smile could be his to keep.
Words come easy now, so do actions, and Jongin is asking Minseok to dance, looping his arms around his waist, losing himself in the heat and thrum and the magic of his night-his night.
Cast stark, ethereal white in the strobe light’s periodic sweeping grazes, with the shadows dancing harsh and gorgeous across his face, Minseok looks unapproachable, something too perfect to bear. And yet, Jongin is approaching, Jongin is learning to bear it, drinking and swaying and curling into the hands that hold him, embracing the sweet, sweet abandon of intoxication, the carefree weightless of it as he tangles himself around the person he most wants-has most wanted for so, so long.
Jongin has to curl forward into him, close the painful, awful distance between their bodies. He’s bursting bright in all the places their bodies meet, and pressed this close, he can feel the subtle, filthy way of Minseok's sinful hips, the lazy, heady thrum of his pulse, smell the sharp musk of his aftershave, feel the soft, warmth of his skin. He’s breathless and drunk, drunker yet on the heady, dark desire for more, drunkest on the reciprocity of Minseok's arms around his waist, Minseok's thigh between his own.
The pleasant sort of blackness teasing at the edges of his sight, pulses and grows and grows and grows, and they press closer, closer, closer-the only people in this dancefloor, the only people in this whole word, Jongin and his love.
Jongin sways and grinds and charms through four, five, six songs, late, late late into the night-his night, his to claim. And Baekhyun and Jongdae leave together, first. Sehun charms Joonmyun into taking him to Carls Jr and then home. And Kyungsoo and Chanyeol leave shortly after-the last, to Chanyeol's apartment, probably to drunkenly fuck.
And all-too-soon it’s just them-just Minseok and Jongin, just as he’s always wanted.
And bright and beautiful and loved and perfect and breathless as he feels, Jongin needs a moment.
Stumbling into the tiny, filthy bathroom, Jongin blinks at himself in the dingy, water-streaked mirror, wipes at it with his tingly fingers. His eyelashes feel too heavy, his eyes too glassy, his lips too swollen, look it, too honestly, but maybe-maybe this will be what Minseok wants. Maybe, Jongin tells himself, maybe he can finally cut away at all his imperfections and become the kind of man Minseok wants back.
It's his night after all.
Jongin races clumsily back to the dance floor, a magnet drawn to his Minseok pole. And he shivers with anticipation as Minseok smiles at him and pulls him close, arms loose but so warm and steady around his waist. “Feeling okay, birthday boy?” he teases, and Jongin nods shakily. Their foreheads bump as Jongin lurches forward-closer, closer, closer, skin skin skin, and Minseok laughs. It’s the brightest thing that Jongin has ever heard, twinkling and beautiful and so painfully captivating. Jongin wants to taste it with his mouth, have it seared or stamped or tattooed into his skin.
It’s his day. His night, too. And he’ll at least for tonight, seize what he wants, keep it between his clenched fingers before the clock strikes midnight and everything disappears.
But “I’ll take you home,” Minseok’s saying, and it’s okay that it’s wrong. Okay, that he probably doesn’t mean it that way. Okay because his arm is steadying around Jongin’s waist, and his eyes soft. And it’s Jongin’s night.
He loses pieces of his memory on the way home. Loses also his grace. His resolve. His control. His coat, his shoes, too. And as Minseok guides him onto the couch, smiling, laughing, he loses the ability to keep the contents of his stomach down. Loses all his dignity. Loses all his bright, beautiful, bursting pride.
Curled over Minseok’s toilet, Jongin feels small and ugly and nauseous and stupid and helpless and filthy and wrong. Knows knows knows he’s irrevocably fucked this up and hates himself for it.
And of course, it figures he’d fuck this up, too. He fucks everything up. And he realizes as he groans into the collar of his own shirt, that he’s crying and that he’s utterly helpless to stop it.
And Minseok looks so small like this, stooping over him to comfort him as heaves, sobs, chokes. Small and slight, his shoulders sharp, knees knobby beneath his clothes, fingers warm and tiny against his back, his shoulder, the nape of his neck. He’s so small-his tiny, beautiful hyung-and he’s gorgeous and comforting, whispering softly through Jongin’s next round of teary heaving.
Everything is hazy and swirly and scary, but Minseok's solid and he’s here, petting his hair back, telling him it’s okay, even though it isn’t. Even though Jongin’s throwing up again, sobbing as he rests his head against the toilet bowl.
And fuck, Minseok’s hands are so warm. They feel so nice on his skin, and Minseok should never stop touching him. Should hold him even when he’s not busy throwing up.
“It was your first time,” Minseok whispers besides him, his thumb kneading into the nape of Jongin's neck. “You shouldn’t have drunk so much. It was your first time.”
“But Sehun-” He chokes. His voice sounds thick and shaky and weak, and he's not drunk enough to not hate himself for it.
Minseok will never want him like this, will he? He just-fucks everything up.
“It wasn’t Sehun’s first time," Minseok says simply, softly, soothingly, and he presses even closer, like he can't smell the stale alcohol and vomit on him, like he doesn't care. But Minseok is so clean and neat and perfect. He has to mind, Jongin thinks. Has to hate him for this. Dirtying his spotless bathroom, crying into his toilet like the lovesick, stupid, stupid, stupid kid he really is.
Minseok squeezes besides him on the blue bath mat, managing even in the limited space-really so, so small, the most delicately shaped, fragile and beautiful hyung. In his periphery through tear-matted eyelashes, he can make out the soft curve of his cheek, the line of his concerned eyebrows, the gorgeous angle of his soft eyes. His beauty is staggering.
“Jongin,” he says. “It’s okay.” And his voice is raspy with sleepiness and probably intoxication, but fond beneath it, and it makes him feel warm and loved and appreciated and reckless and stupid with want.
He’s so stupid. This is so stupid. He’s fucked up. This is so fucked up.
“I love you, hyung,” he says, and Minseok smiles at him, terribly affectionate and indulgent.
“I love you, too,” he says, but he says it wrong. Says the way he says it to Kyungsoo or Sehun or Chanyeol or Joonmyun or Jongdae or even Baekhyun on the rare occasion, and it’s the ugliest, sharpest, cruelest thing Jongin’s ever heard, a hollowed out confession, a shadow of what he wants and needs. And everything is awful once more.
“No, hyung,” he insists, chest tight, breathing ragged. And Jongin wishes he had the words to describe how beautiful and perfect Minseok is to Jongin, how awed and overcome Jongin feels every time his hyung smiles at him, speaks to him, touches him. But he settles for stumbling over his confession again. “No, hyung,” he repeats. “I love you. I love you.”
Minseok tenses, and Jongin really, really, really hates himself.
“Jongin,” Minseok says, his small, soothing fingers sifting through his hair, ghosting over his scalp, and Jongin shivers and arches into the touch even as his heart shatters right then and there, right in half.
Nausea and dread and self-loathing crawl up his throat, and he lurches forward, forehead colliding with porcelain. He sobs before retching again. And oh, he hates himself-hates himself even more.
“Is this why you don’t love me?” he accuses, maybe whimpers. “Is it because I can’t-can’t-? Even though Sehun can? Is that-?” He heaves again, so violently that his forehead crashes against the toilet lid. And he whimpers helplessly in pain or mortification or the distinct, crushing despair of a broken heart. All his emotions are mixed up and his stomach hurts and his eyes sting and the buzz of intoxication isn’t sharp enough to drown this out because his hyung-his tiny, perfect, handsome, kind, kind hyung loves him but not in the way Jongin yearns.
Jongin sobs his way through another shuddery, violent dry heave, and Minseok is still touching him-caring for him because he's the hyung and he loves him in that way, at least. That not enough way, at least.
“It is, right? It is?” He can hear the pitched desperation in his own voice, how grating and awful and ugly it sounds. And he can hate himself. Oh, he can hate himself to the point of sobbing.
“Jongin,” Minseok says again.
"I love you," Jongin confesses once more, into toilet. "I love you so much, and I'm sorry."
“We’ll talk in the morning,” Minseok says, by way of response. And Jongin's aching heart splinters into smaller, more jagged pieces. “In the morning,” Minseok says. But he stays by his side as the color swirl-harsh, jarring, ugly where they'd once been beautiful, vibrant, warm.
Jongin wakes up feeling like he’s dying. Head pounding, throat parched, limbs leaden, bones and teeth thrumming with a dull, persistent ache.
The alcohol, he assumes, it’s punishing him. These are the consequences of last night’s debauchery.
He attempts to lift his head, finds it hurts even more when he moves.
But as he shifts, in the bed- Minseok hyung's bed, Minseok hyung had given him his bed-he notices that he isn't wearing the clothes he'd been wearing last night, but a soft pair of tight gray sweats, a distressed concert shirt. Notices also the glass of water, blistered tylenol capsules on the nightstand. He traces the embossed turtles on the cub with his thumbnail, and there's warmth suffusing through his entire body, his hyung taking care of him, his hyung being kind and soft with him. It swells within him, a brief indulgent moment of utter bliss proceeded immediately with white hot mortification.
It comes in blurry snatches of incoherent, entangled half-formed memories, jumbled sensations.
Minseok's hands on his hips, Minseok's laughter in his ear, McDonald's chicken nuggets, giggled sips of orange soda, how Jongin had fallen on his ass and laughed as he'd kicked off his shoes in the entry way, how clumsy and breathless they'd both pinwheeled onto the couch, how the air had whooshed out of his lungs when Minseok had collapses beside him and then onto him, whispering to ask if he was really okay. Then the soothing coolness of porcelain against his cheek, a desperate, wanting I love you, hyung.
Minseok’s clothes are too small. His bed, too. And Jongin feels overgrown and clumsy and foreign and wrong and ugly again. Let me take you home, Minseok had whispered last night, and he had-taken him home and taken him in and taken care of him, though Jongin didn’t belong-doesn’t belong. Doesn’t deserve this or him. And it was stupid of him to think that he could. Even for a night.
But oh God. The worst of it, Jongin decides, biting back a desperate groan, the worst of it is yet to come.
Shuffling clumsily out of that too-small, too-neat, too-perfect bed, he braces himself for impact.
Minseok is already up when Jongin steps out of his room. Messy-haired and sleep-crumpled, he's barefoot on his couch, eating oatmeal, dressed in a similar pair of ratty sweats, a novelty t-shirt that he'd gotten in Hong Kong that time when the seniors had gone for their school trip, that time that he'd brought back mooncakes for Jongin and Jongin had...fucked up and made a comment about not wanting to get fat. And God, he's always gorgeous. And God, it's not the least bit fair.
He shouldn’t be looking this beautiful when he’s about to break his heart.
"I have frozen waffles and toast, too," he offers, with a sleepy smile as he scoots on the couch to make room for Jongin. He’s watching children’s cartoons and a chubby pig fumbles on screen to steal back her ice cream cone. Jongin feels sick, twists his fingers into the drawstrings of Minseok's pants as he hesitates in the doorway, dreading. ”I have a spare tooth brush if you want to brush your teeth."
And oh, it’s like it never happened. They’re going to act like Jongin never fucked everything up. And oh, that almost makes it worse.
Jongin frowns, twists his fingers into his borrowed shirt now-Minseok’s shirt, and Minseok sets down his spoon and his bowl, picks up his coffee mug, takes a slow, slow sip before speaking again. Jongin can see, though, in spite of his smile that he’s nervous, his fingers trembling around the mug’s handle. "Am I too loud?" he tries, voice softer, quieter."Did you take the medicine?"
Jongin nods, but still-still, still-
"Last night," he starts, and Minseok's smile twists into something less beautiful, more tired, uncomfortable, almost scared. He swallows, sets his mug down. His fingers are tense against the table, drumming restlessly.
“It’s okay,” he reassures him hastily. “I’ve already cleaned it up. We should have done a better job of taking care of you. We-we let it get too far, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“No,” Jongin says, maybe louder than he means to be, maybe rawer than he means to be. “No, no, what I said.”
And it’s more apparent now, Minseok’s discomfort. His shoulders tense, his lip catches between his teeth, and he swallows twice, taps his fingers before speaking. “Jongin, I know you don’t know…because it was your first time. But we all says things...when we're drunk. All say things we don’t mean.”
And Jongin didn’t know it could hurt more, this awful attempt at apparent kindness.
“Please don’t do that, hyung,” he says, and Minseok swallows again-hard, but doesn’t speak, and Jongin has always sucked with words. He fucking hates them. But he’s not drunk now, not bold now, just heavy with dumb, destructive desire, reckless, raw romanticism. “If you’re gonna-gonna reject me, do it properly. I meant what I said.”
“Jongin,” Minseok says, softly, slowly, hesitantly, like he’s scared of making Jongin cry again or scared of scaring him, like Jongin’s a kid and he has to handle him with extra care, and fuck, he hates this.
“You said we’d talk about it,” he says, and Minseok nods, ruffles his hair, swallows. He even wears distress beautifully. “Did you mean that?”
“Yes, but I just&mdash” he says, after a tense beat, sighs. “It's a lot to process. And ...honestly, I think that I was hoping you’d say-hoping you’d say it was you being drunk.”
“Okay,” Jongin says. Even though it really fucking isn’t, and he feels like his heart is being torn into tiny, ugly, ugly pieces-again. It’s enough of an answer. “Thank you for taking care of me last night. I’ll drop off your clothes later.”
He tugs on his shoes, his discarded coat.
He makes it all the way home before collapsing and crying and crying and crying.
Theirs is a small, boring as fuck college town. Only a single movie theater, three club, four grocery store kind of deal. Jongin used to count it as a blessing, how often he'd bump into Minseok-just by chance, just by good fortune, just by virtue of having a major held in the same building. Now, counts it as a curse, an awful reminder.
It's a small college town, smaller campus, and Jongin makes a valiant effort to avoid him, his sharp eyes, his bright laugh, his gorgeous smile-at least for the time being, while he nurses his wounds, his bruised pride, sorts the pieces of his splintered heart.
He does as much as he can, none-too-subtle as he picks up his half-eaten tuna club and races out of the cafeteria, keeps his head down and rushes past Minseok in the hall, declines invitations for Ultimate Frisbee, Denny's runs, arcade dates from the group to avoid seeing him that way, too.
And Jongin is thankful for study dates, weekday lunches with his other hyungs, for the opportunity to wingman for Sehun so long as it means he's being useful and wanted and loved-even if it's not Minseok and even if it's not in the shameful, vulnerable, needy, needy way he craves.
But it hurts and it festers and it comes back to haunt him over and over again. The hurt, the mortification, the self-loathing in a lather-rinse-repeat cycle of self-flagellation.
“You honestly,” Kyungsoo starts, cradling Jongin’s head on his lap, speaking more to the television-the toothpaste commercial blaring on the screen-that Jongin, speaking in that soft, faraway he does whenever he’s speaking about Jongin, his emotions. “You honestly fucked it up, you know.”
Jongin groans-long and pained. He knows. He really fucking knows.
“But he’s impossible not to love,” Jongin argues into Kyungsoo’s knees, and Kyungsoo pets along his scalp, over the nape of his neck, a soothing counterpoint to his sharp words.
"And yet," Kyungsoo quips, tugging softly at Jongin's earlobe. "I somehow manage."
"Hyung," he grumbles even as he burrows further into his lap, and Kyungsoo laughs, sifting softly through his hair. "You’re not being fair. You’re in love with someone that loves you back. You don’t know what it’s like.”
Kyungsoo hums in thoughtful acknowledgement. "I am."
"And it fucking hurts, you know," Jongin confesses into Kyungsoo's denimed knee. "I thought-I thought it was worse having him as a friend and having to settle for that. But it’s painful now, just how-we’re not even that." He sighs forlornly. "I fucked it up. He even-he even tried to get me to take it back, but I just didn't want to pretend anymore. I just wanted so desperately for him to know."
Kyungsoo doesn't speak for a long while, just soothes him with more tender touches.
"I'm proud of you," he finally says. His thumb drags tenderly along his scalp, and goosebumps blossom on Jongin’s skin. He quells a shudder, nuzzles more firmly into Kyungsoo’s thigh. The material of Kyungsoo’s jeans scrapes against his cheek. “It took a lot of idiotic courage to do that, I know. And I'm glad you were honest.”
“But I ruined things,” Jongin reminds him, and Kyungsoo hums in agreement as he traces his thumb along the shell of Jongin’s ear.
“So fix them.”
That night, after studying for Bio, going over research paper edits, rewarding himself with two hours of inane cake baking shows, Jongin pulls put his phone with great conviction and stares at Minseok's name on his contact list. He hasn't changed the picture since last Thanksgiving. He's holding his 3 year old nice, his entire face crinkled in the prettiest, brightest laugh, and she's tugging on his cheek, face dimpled with laughter, too. Jongin drags his thumb absently down the soft skin, opening the chat option in the process.
He closes the app after staring for three or four beats.
It's better, he thinks, to let this die of natural causes then to break into smaller, sharper no's. It's better to accept a firm enough rejection. There's no reason to drag it out.
Minseok had hoped it was a question of too much alcohol, too much sentimentality, a passing thing that Jongin could comparmentalize and will away, and maybe it’s best to do just that.
Maybe after 4 years of trying, he’ll finally get it right.
That weekend, he cancels on laser tag, the movies, and breakfast.
He tries to get out of Art Walk, too. But Art Walk, it’s tradition, Joonmyun reminds him via Kakaotalk message. It’s a tradition, and it’s sacred.
And Jongin, in spite of his best efforts to nurse his wounded heart, he’s still loath to violate tradition.
At 4:00 PM on Sunday afternoon, outside Chanyeol's apartment, as per sacred tradition, they crowd into Chanyeol's bright blue, worn down family van, two per seat, save for Kyungsoo-Chanyeol’s queen-who doesn’t need the extra leg room, honestly, but has special boyfriend privileges because he performs the boyfriend duties of loving Chanyeol and kissing him and touching him.
Jongin lacking any sort of boyfriend privileges is squeezed into the first row, and because fate is cruel, squeezed next to a very, very tense Minseok.
And he knows they all know, but nobody mentions it. And Jongin isn’t sure whether he’s grateful or upset by that fact.
Chanyeol pats the steering wheel fondly as he sings along to the song playing on the radio, and Jongin curls his legs to his chest, wills himself small, trying his best to avoid Minseok’s body, his gaze, his words, too. His skin still tingles painfully every time they touch.
He focuses squarely ahead, watches as Kyungsoo holds Chanyeol’s hand at the red light, rubbing his thumb in aimless patterns along the skin. And a ball of resentment drops in Jongin’s stomach, but he wills it away.
Sehun hums along, too. Jongin eventually joins.
They park outside the Korean restaurant-a for later-then weave through the streets, accepting slices of cheese, salami, little dixie cups of grape juice and apple cider as they stroll through the displays. Pottery, metalware, jewelry, water color, sculpture-all beautiful honestly, one of their best traditions. And Jongin is, as usual, hyperaware of Minseok’s presence as he drinks in all the art, only now the sight is cut with an acute sense of despair and hurt. Minseok, he’s painfully handsome, even more painfully not his.
They go to the Korean restaurant afterwards, eight squeezed into two tables, huddled over steaming dishes and tiny bowls of rice.
Squeezed next to Sehun, Baekhyun, across from Minseok, Jongin spies the bright green soju bottles in their fridge and feels sick and sad and stupid-remembers so vividly he has to swallow more gulps of water to keep from groaning or flushing or slamming his head against the varnished wooden table.
He reaches for food to distract himself, and their-Minseok’s and Jongin’s-chopsticks bump, click. Jongin jerks back, staring at the gyeran jjim as it swells with steam. His fingers tremble on the slightest bit as he gropes for his spoon instead. He scoops a spoonful of it into his mouth even though it's too hot.
He’s silent, broody, but he’s helpless to stop it, mustering only enough energy to hum at the appropriate times in the table’s animated discussion about that movie that Jongin totally missed out on, an upcoming concert 3 hours south of their campus.
Minseok, by the looks of it, is also miserable, at least.
“Hey, Jongin,” Minseok says, bouncing on the balls of his feet as they wait-alone, by Chanyeol’s van-for the others to finish paying. His shoulders are tense, eyebrows knit, and he’s nervous, too. This is awful for him, too. And there are faint bruises beneath his eyes, the haggard lines of fatigue-his last semester-painted across his features. But even then, cast golden in the flickering streetlamp’s light, he still looks too perfect to bear. Jongin thinks, a little deliriously, that he’ll always be floored by his beauty, will always want him, shakes his head to clear that thought away as Minseok repeats his name. “About last week, I-I didn’t handle that well. And I don’t like how weird things are between us.”
Jongin shoves his hand into his pockets, but nods for him to continue.
“We never-” He sighs heavily, and it’s cold enough for it to billow white and winding from between his lips. “Can we talk about what happened? Not now-but later? Talk?”
Jongin nods again. Near the entrance, the others are already shuffling towards the car.
Minseok smiles, and Jongin’s heart skips.
Minseok is beside him, half on him once again on the ride back. His head hangs heavy with exhaustion, and like a child, he starts to doze as they drive over the winding roads. His bobs drowsily before going completely lax against Jongin’s side. Warm and slight and soft and perfect, and it’s pleasantly hard to breathe, but Jongin somehow manages.
You drooled on me, he wants to joke, afterwards, while rousing him awake. Wants to at least have the option to fuck things up and inadvertently offend him. But he can't. At least not for the time being.
Minseok texts him that night, to ask if he’s free Friday.
They schedule it for after Jongin’s last class, his 5:30 Humanities lecture. Jongin sets his phone down, angsts, buries his face in his pillow to scream for a bit, gets back to typing up his lab report.
They go to a local burger joint-Minseok’s treat, but not because it’s a date, Jongin already knows, just because Minseok is the hyung. There’s music-top 40’s hits-echoing softly across the wall, the tinkle of laughter, the ambient idle chatter of other guests, the clink of their waitress delivering their burgers, but between them, it’s silent. And it’s still awkward-the silence between them, pregnant with meaning, residual conflict, unresolved feelings.
Across from him, fingers idly playing with the paper edges of his place mat, Minseok is so achingly close, but feels so, so, so far away.
And as per usual, it’s hard to speak, hard to breathe-right. But Jongin makes a valiant effort after taking three, long, nervous sips from his Coke.
“Hyung,” Jongin breathes, drumming his fingers restlessly against the tabletop. “I just-Please don’t…Please don’t pretend. Please don’t be awkward with me, but also please don’t pretend.”
Minseok exhales heavily, takes a slow sip of his own drink, lips still pursed as he shovels plaintively at the fries on his plate. And Jongin watches his throat work. Beneath the table, his own fingers clench and unclench into his jeans. They’re his heartbreaker jeans, and he knows it was probably stupid to try. But this is all that Jongin has at this point. And he’s helpless to stop himself at this point.
“I know,” he says. A pause. “I’m sorry.”
Jongin picks up a fry, swirls it into ketchup, speaking to it in lieu of looking up and confronting Minseok’s awful, beautiful eyes.
“Good.”
Minseok laughs-tight and hot, forced. “I don't want things to be awkward either, you know, Jongin. You’re one of my favorite dongsaengs.” He sips from his straw again, the drag long and pensive, more a nervous tick than thirst. “I’ve just-you know, I've never really thought of you that way. And I think it kind of scared me. And I didn’t want things to change between us, but I also-I’m sorry.”
“I meant it-What I said. I-you didn’t give me the chance to repeat myself or explain myself, but I meant it. When I said I loved you. I do love you.”
He swirls, keeps keeps keeps swirling until the fry is soggy, and he realizes that Minseok is watching it, too. The awareness of it prickles across the nape of his neck.
“You don’t have to want me back-I, I know that, but I still want you. And I don’t want to pretend anymore. And I don’t-don’t want you to pretend either. It hurt me when you did. It made me feel like my feelings didn’t-didn’t matter.”
He chances a glance upwards. Minseok is biting his lower lip.
“You make it really hard sometimes,” he decides, after a beat, nose crinkling. “You’re so blunt sometimes, but so guarded other times. I never know if you mean it when you…” I meant it. I was drunk, but I meant it. He shakes his head. “Can you just let me-?” He sighs, lifts a fry of his own, swirling it, too. “It was-is a lot to process,” he says. “It’s kinda intimidating, too. I would have to love you? I’d be so behind in terms of-And you know I would need to-It’s not just about feelings either. I’m graduating next semester. I’m leaving the city. Probably leaving the state. ”
Jongin nods, and Minseok exhales slowly, shakily, the sound almost wet and so unnervingly vulnerable. He wears vulnerability well, too, as he raises his palms in a gesture of defeat, or supplication.
“I won’t be here," he concludes. "And you will," he finishes.
Minseok meets his eyes, and they're very soft, too beautiful.
Devastating desire trickles down his spine.
“That’s something to think about, too,” he adds. Like loving Minseok is a rational, logical thing, a matter of pros and cons.
“I don’t love you because you’re here,” Jongin says. “Don’t love you because it’s the right choice. I love you because-because you’re you.” And Minseok nods, bites back a small, shaky smile, leans slightly forward, voice hushed.
“But that’s still-if you want to pursue something, if you want to try-that’s something to consider, too.”
And a weak, twisted little flame of hope flickers in his heart.
“Hyung, are you-?”
“I don’t know still if I’ll get there, but I think-It’s not the same, but I think…” He chews on his lower lip, lifts his burger to chew on that instead.
Jongin eats his burger, too.
The tension, in the aftermath, is different. Hotter, heavier, but not unpleasant.
And for the second time in two weeks, Jongin is in Minseok’s apartment, dizzy with the debilitating desire for more more more.
“You’re shaking,” Minseok says as he leads him inside, and he’s holding Jongin’s hands in his, trying to cradle though his are so much smaller. But that only makes the shaking worse. Jongin just fucking wants.
“I love you,” he says, and Minseok smiles-a small, shy, soft thing, squeezes his hands now.
“I know,” he says. “And I-I like you.”
The words make something fragile and beautiful and overwhelming swell in Jongin’s chest, and a smile tugs at his lips, too. He squeezes Minseok’s hands back.
“Can I kiss you?” Jongin asks, and Minseok nods slowly reaches forward to cradle his cheek, rubbing his thumb into the bone as he eases him forward.
Their lips meet, and Jongin sighs into it, trembles into it, parts his lips and presses forward to lose himself more fully in it.
He feels nearly ready to implode from the crushing vastness of his love, settles instead for kissing him back, kissing the fuck out of him, turning it into something hard and deep and desperate and intense as he can manage. Minseok moans into his mouth, in surprise or in want, too, but kisses back just as hard and deep and desperate and tense.
Minseok’s still cradling his face, and his other hand glides down his body, fanning across his lower back and curling to urge him even closer. That feels like being cradled, too, Jongin bending further in response, clutching desperately at his sides to stay upright.
“Hyung,” he whimpers, and Minseok moans into his mouth, but tempers the ferocity, cupping his cheek and sighing into the kiss. He pecks his bottom lip, strains further to reach his nose, his cheekbone as he pulls away.
Jongin’s heart is beating so painfully fast in his chest. And Jongin feels too big and too bumbling and so fucking warm.
“Jongin,” he breathes. “Like kissing you,” he confesses into his chin, repeats into the corner of his mouth. Soft and sweet and wet.
There’s the barest scrape of teeth, and Jongin whimpers against his mouth, maybe quakes.
“Hyung, please, more,” he gasps, mortified in the next second, but placated when Minseok groans into his mouth, his small beautiful hands spasming around his thighs.
“How much more?” he asks, pulling away to gauge.
And he looks breathtaking, breathless, breathing heavily through his bitten red red lips, his eyes all liquid and hot and beautiful-Jesus, he’s beautiful.
“Touch me,” he urges, terrified almost immediately afterward of the results, being too bold, wanting too much.
I’ve fucked up again, he thinks, but Minseok does, gliding lower to squeeze his ass once, then once more. Fuck. His thumb, meanwhile, drags softly over his bare skin where his sweater has ridden up, and oh, oh.
“Your hands,” Jongin groans. “They’re so small”
Minseok laughs. “They are,” he agrees into Jongin’s collarbone, but he’s still touching him, his skin soft and smooth, movements slow but intentional. Goosebumps prickle in their wake.
“I like the way they feel on me.” Jongin presses back, and Minseok squeezes tight, his lips curling into a smile against Jongin’s goose-bumped skin.
“I like having them on you,” Minseok confesses with a slow, soft kiss. “I like how big you are,” he continues. “Your body. Your hands. Your lips.” His voice drops, a rasp that sends tingles down Jongin’s spine. “Your ass.“ A soft, curling, too-brief caress, looping around his ass, his hip before ghosting downward. ”This.”
Jongin isn’t even hard, but it makes his body jerk and overheat. His fingers itch to explore that, too.
Let me, he thinks, please. Just let me, hyung.
Minseok noses at Jongin's collarbone as he swivels his hips just so, the ridge of his halfhard cock a heated promise of all the dark, dark things that Jongin has imagined in his weaker, more shameful moments.
“This isn’t small,” Jongin says, and Minseok snorts out another laugh, swiveling again, grinding forward again. Harder now, more insistent now. He cups his face as he kisses him once, twice, squarely on the mouth.
“Not soft, either,” he adds, groaning when Jongin drops his waist, matches his dirty, dirty grind.
“I wanna-wanna suck you off.”
Minseok’s groan is richer, darker.
“I know it’s really soon, but I still want to, hyung. Fuck, I want to.” He nuzzles into the hand cradling his cheekbone, and Minseok’s thumb trembles as it drags over Jongin’s bottom lip, lingering.
“So soft,” he says, awed, pressing again just hard enough for Jongin’s lips to part.
Quelling a shiver of pleasure, Jongin kisses Minseok’s thumb, slow and wet, as he watches Minseok watch his mouth.
“Please,” he whispers against the skin, and Minseok shudders but nods.
And then Jongin is dropping to his knees.
"Your mouth. It’s so-” He breaks off in a long hiss, curling forward when Jongin pushes his shirt up to kiss along his stomach, fumbles with his belt, his pants, his boxers.
“Tell me,” Jongin pleads, and Minseok’s fingers stutter around his cheekbone.
His voice is so gorgeously strained, the syllables frayed and reedy and hot.
“It’s-it's the prettiest mouth I’ve ever seen. These lips, fuck-made to be fucked."
Jongin shivers at the filthy compliment.
“You’re so breathtaking.”
“Again,” he pleads, parting his lips, letting them drag over the engorged head, swirling his tongue experimentally on the retreat.
Minseok curses softly, thighs flexing as he jerks again.
And Jongin suckles just to watch the sharp way the muscles ripple, taste the bitter heat of the precome beading on the slit. He moans at the silky smooth texture of the velvety head, the way his cock ripples and pulses along his the seam of his mouth, loving the musk of it and the way it sits heavy on his tongue. Heavy as the weight of Minseok’s eyes on his, Minseok’s fingers in his hair.
“Jongin,” he says, and Jongin feels it in his chest.
Jongin hums in pleasure, and Minseok’s throbs in his mouth.
Minseok groans, quakes, touches him again, small fingers kneading into the nape of his neck, thumb dragging tenderly, shakily up his throat as Jongin swallows as heavily as he can.
Fingers firmly anchored on his waist, Jongin takes as much of Minseok as he can, groaning at the heady musk that settles on the back of his throat as he gags around him, and he wants to able to taste Minseok for days. Behind his teeth, on the roof of his mouth, on the tip of his tongue. He wants to remember that Minseok wanted him back.
“Yes,” he hisses. “Yes”
His knees, jaw, lips, heart ache in the most pleasant gratifying way and Jesus, he loves him. He loves him.
And fuck, he needs needs needs Minseok to come. Needs to know that he wanted him in this way, if only for this once. Urgent, fervent, desperate, desperate, desperate, Jongin hollows his cheeks as hard as he can, bobs as fast as deep as he can, gagging, moaning, needing, needing, needing.
He looks beautiful even in that-especially in that, elegant as his entire body pitches forward with the force of his orgasm, and Jongin swallows all traces of it with a ruined groan, feels the ruin in his lips, along his tongue, in his knees and trembling fingers, too.
Sleepy and sated and so fucking soft and beautiful, and his fingers curl tightly through Jongin’s hair as he slides down down down the wall, into Jongin's arm. Painfully small, painfully handsome, he clings to Jongin through the comedown, all labored breathing and tiny tremors. He crinkles his nose as Jongin drops messy pecks along his cheekbones, eyelids, nose, chin, throat.
"Come here," Minseok says, but he presses him into the wall instead, slides gracelessly down Jongin's body. And Jongin is so, so, so in love with him, in love too with the warmth of his skin as he noses along his waist, drops kisses to his bare stomach, in love with the grounding solidity of his small, wandering hands.
He keeps them there after peeling down Jongin's heartbreaker jeans, his tight boxers. And he's still so beautiful, so captivating, looks almost too cute to be doing this. Jongin almost says it, chokes on it instead. But it’s probably for the best. Jongin would die if he stopped, feels like he’s dying already at the first teasing brush of Minseok’s tongue along his shaft.
Minseok is fast, efficient, and Jongin too wound up, too desperate, too dizzy with pleasure, for it be anything drawn out.
Five bobs in and he's whining about being close, six and he's trembling, seven and and and it's too much.
Jongin’s entire body seizes sharply with pleasure, and he collapses in a boneless, breathless, helpless heap on the floor. And Minseok is still there with him, criminally handsome and gorgeously breathless and unnervingly soft as he soothes him through the comedown.
It’s like being drunk, Jongin thinks, that same full-bodied pleasant buzz tingling through all of his limbs, like a warm suffusing embrace of comfort and contentment.But there’s no aching, awful comedown, no nausea, no self-loathing, no ugly, broken feelings-at least not yet.
And Minseok is still holding him.
“I like you-really like you, you know,” Minseok whispers, threading his fingers through Jongin’s hair. The soft, tender brush of the pads of his fingers has Jongin shivering weakly in pleasure, has his heart clenching weakly with love love love.
Pairing(s): xiukai, side!chansoo
Rating: nc-17
Length: 8.7k
Warning(s): [Please click to open.]drunken antics, very intense romantic pining
Summary: And Jongin hates how words are hard to come by always, but especially whenever Minseok is concerned.
Author's Note: set in america so the drinking age is 21, also the exo's ages have been shuffled a bit, title from this song (rip, queens)
Today-Jongdae had promised the first thing in the morning while climbing into Jongin’s bed, sitting at the foot of it then deciding better and straddling his lap, staying frustratingly steady no matter how much Jongin squirmed in protest-today is all about Jongin.
It’s his day as their beautiful birthday boy, which is why they’d treated him to a hearty breakfast of buttermilk pancakes, orange juice, bacon, sausage, and eggs-lumberjack portions, too for a growing boy, why they’d insisted on an even larger lunch at the pasta place near campus, why they had even eschewed tradition for his sake-forsaken their heritage and indulged Jongin’s taste, deciding on wings versus their local Korean restaurant, praising him afterwards for his preferences. This place was cheaper, closer to campus, played better music, had a better overall vibe, and honestly better food, too.
And it’s why now, in the aftermath of unforgivable, festive gluttony, their bellies unpleasantly full and movements post-dinner-sluggish, they-Jongdae, Joonmyun, Sehun, Kyungsoo, Chanyeol, Baekhyun, Minseok-are at Jongdae’s apartment. And it’s why Jongdae and Chanyeol are shuffling loudly in their dorm room kitchenette, preparing drinks for further birthday festivities, Jongdae loudly narrating as he wonders aloud about what drink will be the absolute best for Jongin’s first. Virginities are important, delicate things and should be taken only after great care, greater attention to detail.
And that-their insistence on making this Jongin’s perfect day-is why Jongin-their special birthday boy-is waiting, red-faced and tense, fidgeting nervously, alternately bopping intermittently to the Spotify party mix Chanyeol is blasting from his speaker system. Jongin is seated on the floor with his legs crossed in front of him, fingers twisted in the heather gray shag carpet, waiting, waiting, waiting, staring forlornly in Jongdae’s general direction because he’s scared to look elsewhere, anywhere riskier.
But movement catches the corner of his eye, Minseok gesturing emphatically as he urges Jongdae faster-they don’t have all night, and Jongin makes the mistake, as always. Looks the least safe place to look, as always.
And oh, it’s honestly criminal how utterly attractive Minseok looks splayed out comfortably across Jongdae’s neon-green bean bag chair. He’s wearing a powder-blue cable-knit sweater, dark-washed jeans, and his hair is staticky from the material of his sweater, the rub of his socks on the carpet, his cheeks flushed with laughter. As always he’s the most painfully captivating thing that Jongin has ever seen.
Jongin’s the birthday boy, and fuck, he wants-him. Always, always wants him. Never ever knows how to go about getting him. Because Jongin hates how words are hard to come by always, but especially whenever Minseok is concerned. Hates hates hates how badly he wants him and how unable he is to express it.
Talking would be easier, Jongin thinks if Minseok wasn't so breathtaking, wasn't so unsettlingly gorgeous and warm and perfect. Breathing might be easier, too. But neither is the case, and it doesn’t matter that it’s his day, doesn’t matter that Minseok is here to celebrate him, too, doesn’t matter that he’s close enough for Jongin to reach out and touch if he dares. It doesn’t matter because it's too much, and Jongin can't. And Minseok continues to fucking ruin him without even meaning or wanting to. And Jongin is immobilized-as always-with want.
The beanbag chair that Minseok is lounging on, it’s Jongin’s favorite seat. He’d even helped Jongdae pick it out a year and a half ago when he’d first moved into this apartment, piping in with advice on the best material, size, color before they’d settled on this one. It’s Jongin’s favorite and probably owed to him for being the birthday boy, but Minseok belongs there, Jongin decides, curling his denimed knees to his chest, trying to watching him discreetly from the corner of his eye. Minseok deserves it, deserves all the best things, even $18.99 beanbag chairs from Target. Deserves them just by virtue of being so kind and gentle and handsome and perfect. And Jongin, if given the chance, he’d try so fucking hard to give Minseok everything he deserves.
Mid-Minseok-inspired-rhapsody, Jongin is interrupted by Jongdae, who pads back into the room, flourishing a red solo cup with the widest, most indulgent grin.
“You can't even taste the alcohol,” Jongdae insists. “Only really the love.” His grin widens impossibly when Jongin takes the offered cup. "It'll be a good first drink," he assures.
Jongin's first because it's his day, and they’re all watching him because it's his day.
In the kitchenette, Chanyeol is still loudly bumbling around for the tumbler, because he’s serious about his craft and he’ll need more than love to guarantee his drinks are up to standard.
“Hardly any alcohol,” Jongdae presses when Jongin hesitates with the rim of the cup at his mouth. And Jongin doesn't correct him even though he can fucking smell it, and he already pretty much hates it. He needs to-he’s not a kid. And it's his special day.
The first gulp burns, in his nose and all the way down his throat, and he sputters heavily to recover.
Jongdae cackles, even as he soothes a hand up and down his spine. He curls around him when Jongin grumbles, cooing softly, fondly patronizing.
“Baby’s bit off more than he can chew,” he announces and laughs again, nuzzling his sharp chin in Jongin’s throat, setting the cup down by Jongin’s feet as Jongin attempts to squirm out of his hold. “Didn’t know it’d be so intense, your first time.” His laughter this time is softer, incredibly affectionate.
Nearby, Minseok laughs, too, and Jongin grimaces before groping clumsily for the cup, squeezing so tight that the plastic protests and some sloshes onto the carpet. He's swallowing again, trying-failing to school his impression into something smoother.
Chanyeol screams about their drinks being ready now as Jongin coughs discreetly into the sleeve of his sweater. And the focus at least is no longer on him.
But it still isn't fair.
Today, it’s supposed to be about him, celebrating him. And he isn’t supposed to feel small and young and bumbling, isn’t supposed to be utterly floored by Minseok’s unbearable beauty. But Jongin is-small and young and bumbling. And Minseok is so fucking handsome and breathless from laughter and flushed from the cold or the alcohol. He ruffles his dark hair as he adjusts himself on the beanbag chair, and Jongin chokes on his breath. He sips long and luxurious from his own solo cup, and overcome, Jongin takes another deep drag, chokes again. Jongdae laughs again. Grimacing, Jongin downs it all in one go.
Jongdae laughs, makes some proud, impressed comment as he totters off to refill his cup. More alcohol this time, he assures. Jongin has to get drunk-really fucking drunk, his hyungs and Sehun command it.
“With me,” Sehun decides, taking the cup that Chanyeol offers him. He still isn’t allowed to drink-not legally; his 21st birthday isn’t for another 3 months, but nobody stops him. And he has that gleam in his eyes like when he's kicking ass at Mario Kart or beating Jongin at Skeeball or bluffing his way through shitty Poker hands, like he’s got something to prove, even though he’s the youngest and even though today is supposed to be about Jongin.
“Stronger,” Sehun declares, draining the cup in one go. “Shots. Get me the fucking shot glasses, hyung.”
Sehun grabs the bottle, though as Chanyeol stumbles over, cheering. Soju-we can’t ignore our heritage completely, Chanyeol insists. All showmanship and over the top smirks, Sehun drinks straight from the bottle, takes deep drags, his pink lips curling obscenely around the green glass, Sehun making this obscene, low, whining sound with every swallow. And fuck, if Sehun was into men, if Jongin wasn’t his best friend, fuck if he just-. But as it is, he just looks beautiful and charming and carefree, everything Jongin wants of himself for tonight.
Sehun finishes it after four gulps, wipes his lips with the back of his sweater, the friction making them look extra swollen, extra pink.
And then Baekhyun is tottering with shot glasses, filling them with another half-opened bottle of soju. And Sehun is taking his first shot.
Sehun looks even more beautiful and charming and carefree as he puckers his lips and knits his brows and smiles around the shot, and Jongin copies his pose after a beat, tips his head back as he swallows past the bitter, bitter taste, forcing himself not to gag or grimace, but smirk, too, as he pulls it away.
Jongdae, Chanyeol, Baekhyun cheer. Joonmyun, Kyungsoo laugh. Minseok smiles at him.
And Jongin matches Sehun shot for shot. Through every painfully sharp, bitter gulp, tingling and warm and increasingly weightless, time blurring, colors dancing, body hot hot hot.
They stumble onto their university’s Safe Ride “drunk bus” some indeterminate amount of time later when Baekhyun decides they’re good and fucked up.
Jongin pinwheels as he ascends the bus stairs, has to balance himself on the metal railing, and the driver-a teacher’s assistant in one of his Biology classes-squints at him in recognition before allowing him on. Sehun chuckles as he plops down beside him on one of the hard metal seats, impassive and unaffected save for the flush in his throat and the jitter in his long leg as the others shuffle in behind him. Kyungsoo lands on his right, smiles at him softly. His eyes are too bright-too much alcohol-and he reaches out to pat Jongin’s cheek, thank him softly for being born and for being such a good dongsaeng.
Minseok sits down across from Jongin, leans heavily against Chanyeol's side. He’s so fucking slight against him, small, small like he'd be if he was leaning on Jongin, but achingly handsome, achingly flushed. The pleasant thrum in Jongin’s skin raises to a fevered, pulsing loud loud loud throb at Minseok’s crooked grin.
It's Jongin's night night night.He can make the most of it.
It’s only three stops to their nightclub-The Envy. It’s the best, best of the four they have in town because it has cheaper drinks, a big dance floor, a stripper pole, doesn’t play old country or disco like the ones that are closer.
They shiver in the long line outside the venue, drivers licenses-state ID in Baekhyun's case because he never learned to drive-clutched in their wind-bitten fingers. Jongin is near Minseok again, but Chanyeol is talking about how much he missed the grilled cheese sandwiches in their mess hall-a topic that Jongin is passionate about, too-and it's at least something he can endure. At least until he builds up the courage.
They pass the time in impassioned tipsy-whispers, and Joonmyun gets Jongin's cover with an indulgent smile as he hands over three crisp 10s.
Beside him, Sehun charms Joonmyun into paying for him, too, laughing at the thick, permanent marker X they draw on his arm, already flushed with intoxication, laughing too as they stumble inside. He tugs Jongin forward insistently towards the packed dance floor, has him knocking against the bar. He urges Baekhyun and Jongdae forward, too. Elbows looping around Baekhyun’s shoulders, he grinds against him, swaying as his hips drop to the beat. He twists an arm back to tug Jongdae closer, too, rocking his ass back on Jongdae's thigh.
Sehun doesn't even-Baekhyun doesn't even, Jongdae does kind of-but Jongin does-really, really does, and he wants Minseok to do, too.
And Jongin just watches.
His other hyungs buys him a drink at the bar. Then several there after, and Jongin chases the pleasant, pleasant dizziness of intoxication, swaying and laughing as he’s inundated with warmth and want and a wonderful sense of weightless. He feels beautiful and bright and loved and perfect and breathless. Feels like he deserves the whole world for it, too.
His skin thrums with the most pleasant, dizzyingly soft and persistent tingle, and soon, his limbs feel looser, lips, too. And when Minseok smiles at him, Jongin doesn’t feel like he's dying, feels instead so painfully alive, like that smile could be his to keep.
Words come easy now, so do actions, and Jongin is asking Minseok to dance, looping his arms around his waist, losing himself in the heat and thrum and the magic of his night-his night.
Cast stark, ethereal white in the strobe light’s periodic sweeping grazes, with the shadows dancing harsh and gorgeous across his face, Minseok looks unapproachable, something too perfect to bear. And yet, Jongin is approaching, Jongin is learning to bear it, drinking and swaying and curling into the hands that hold him, embracing the sweet, sweet abandon of intoxication, the carefree weightless of it as he tangles himself around the person he most wants-has most wanted for so, so long.
Jongin has to curl forward into him, close the painful, awful distance between their bodies. He’s bursting bright in all the places their bodies meet, and pressed this close, he can feel the subtle, filthy way of Minseok's sinful hips, the lazy, heady thrum of his pulse, smell the sharp musk of his aftershave, feel the soft, warmth of his skin. He’s breathless and drunk, drunker yet on the heady, dark desire for more, drunkest on the reciprocity of Minseok's arms around his waist, Minseok's thigh between his own.
The pleasant sort of blackness teasing at the edges of his sight, pulses and grows and grows and grows, and they press closer, closer, closer-the only people in this dancefloor, the only people in this whole word, Jongin and his love.
Jongin sways and grinds and charms through four, five, six songs, late, late late into the night-his night, his to claim. And Baekhyun and Jongdae leave together, first. Sehun charms Joonmyun into taking him to Carls Jr and then home. And Kyungsoo and Chanyeol leave shortly after-the last, to Chanyeol's apartment, probably to drunkenly fuck.
And all-too-soon it’s just them-just Minseok and Jongin, just as he’s always wanted.
And bright and beautiful and loved and perfect and breathless as he feels, Jongin needs a moment.
Stumbling into the tiny, filthy bathroom, Jongin blinks at himself in the dingy, water-streaked mirror, wipes at it with his tingly fingers. His eyelashes feel too heavy, his eyes too glassy, his lips too swollen, look it, too honestly, but maybe-maybe this will be what Minseok wants. Maybe, Jongin tells himself, maybe he can finally cut away at all his imperfections and become the kind of man Minseok wants back.
It's his night after all.
Jongin races clumsily back to the dance floor, a magnet drawn to his Minseok pole. And he shivers with anticipation as Minseok smiles at him and pulls him close, arms loose but so warm and steady around his waist. “Feeling okay, birthday boy?” he teases, and Jongin nods shakily. Their foreheads bump as Jongin lurches forward-closer, closer, closer, skin skin skin, and Minseok laughs. It’s the brightest thing that Jongin has ever heard, twinkling and beautiful and so painfully captivating. Jongin wants to taste it with his mouth, have it seared or stamped or tattooed into his skin.
It’s his day. His night, too. And he’ll at least for tonight, seize what he wants, keep it between his clenched fingers before the clock strikes midnight and everything disappears.
But “I’ll take you home,” Minseok’s saying, and it’s okay that it’s wrong. Okay, that he probably doesn’t mean it that way. Okay because his arm is steadying around Jongin’s waist, and his eyes soft. And it’s Jongin’s night.
He loses pieces of his memory on the way home. Loses also his grace. His resolve. His control. His coat, his shoes, too. And as Minseok guides him onto the couch, smiling, laughing, he loses the ability to keep the contents of his stomach down. Loses all his dignity. Loses all his bright, beautiful, bursting pride.
Curled over Minseok’s toilet, Jongin feels small and ugly and nauseous and stupid and helpless and filthy and wrong. Knows knows knows he’s irrevocably fucked this up and hates himself for it.
And of course, it figures he’d fuck this up, too. He fucks everything up. And he realizes as he groans into the collar of his own shirt, that he’s crying and that he’s utterly helpless to stop it.
And Minseok looks so small like this, stooping over him to comfort him as heaves, sobs, chokes. Small and slight, his shoulders sharp, knees knobby beneath his clothes, fingers warm and tiny against his back, his shoulder, the nape of his neck. He’s so small-his tiny, beautiful hyung-and he’s gorgeous and comforting, whispering softly through Jongin’s next round of teary heaving.
Everything is hazy and swirly and scary, but Minseok's solid and he’s here, petting his hair back, telling him it’s okay, even though it isn’t. Even though Jongin’s throwing up again, sobbing as he rests his head against the toilet bowl.
And fuck, Minseok’s hands are so warm. They feel so nice on his skin, and Minseok should never stop touching him. Should hold him even when he’s not busy throwing up.
“It was your first time,” Minseok whispers besides him, his thumb kneading into the nape of Jongin's neck. “You shouldn’t have drunk so much. It was your first time.”
“But Sehun-” He chokes. His voice sounds thick and shaky and weak, and he's not drunk enough to not hate himself for it.
Minseok will never want him like this, will he? He just-fucks everything up.
“It wasn’t Sehun’s first time," Minseok says simply, softly, soothingly, and he presses even closer, like he can't smell the stale alcohol and vomit on him, like he doesn't care. But Minseok is so clean and neat and perfect. He has to mind, Jongin thinks. Has to hate him for this. Dirtying his spotless bathroom, crying into his toilet like the lovesick, stupid, stupid, stupid kid he really is.
Minseok squeezes besides him on the blue bath mat, managing even in the limited space-really so, so small, the most delicately shaped, fragile and beautiful hyung. In his periphery through tear-matted eyelashes, he can make out the soft curve of his cheek, the line of his concerned eyebrows, the gorgeous angle of his soft eyes. His beauty is staggering.
“Jongin,” he says. “It’s okay.” And his voice is raspy with sleepiness and probably intoxication, but fond beneath it, and it makes him feel warm and loved and appreciated and reckless and stupid with want.
He’s so stupid. This is so stupid. He’s fucked up. This is so fucked up.
“I love you, hyung,” he says, and Minseok smiles at him, terribly affectionate and indulgent.
“I love you, too,” he says, but he says it wrong. Says the way he says it to Kyungsoo or Sehun or Chanyeol or Joonmyun or Jongdae or even Baekhyun on the rare occasion, and it’s the ugliest, sharpest, cruelest thing Jongin’s ever heard, a hollowed out confession, a shadow of what he wants and needs. And everything is awful once more.
“No, hyung,” he insists, chest tight, breathing ragged. And Jongin wishes he had the words to describe how beautiful and perfect Minseok is to Jongin, how awed and overcome Jongin feels every time his hyung smiles at him, speaks to him, touches him. But he settles for stumbling over his confession again. “No, hyung,” he repeats. “I love you. I love you.”
Minseok tenses, and Jongin really, really, really hates himself.
“Jongin,” Minseok says, his small, soothing fingers sifting through his hair, ghosting over his scalp, and Jongin shivers and arches into the touch even as his heart shatters right then and there, right in half.
Nausea and dread and self-loathing crawl up his throat, and he lurches forward, forehead colliding with porcelain. He sobs before retching again. And oh, he hates himself-hates himself even more.
“Is this why you don’t love me?” he accuses, maybe whimpers. “Is it because I can’t-can’t-? Even though Sehun can? Is that-?” He heaves again, so violently that his forehead crashes against the toilet lid. And he whimpers helplessly in pain or mortification or the distinct, crushing despair of a broken heart. All his emotions are mixed up and his stomach hurts and his eyes sting and the buzz of intoxication isn’t sharp enough to drown this out because his hyung-his tiny, perfect, handsome, kind, kind hyung loves him but not in the way Jongin yearns.
Jongin sobs his way through another shuddery, violent dry heave, and Minseok is still touching him-caring for him because he's the hyung and he loves him in that way, at least. That not enough way, at least.
“It is, right? It is?” He can hear the pitched desperation in his own voice, how grating and awful and ugly it sounds. And he can hate himself. Oh, he can hate himself to the point of sobbing.
“Jongin,” Minseok says again.
"I love you," Jongin confesses once more, into toilet. "I love you so much, and I'm sorry."
“We’ll talk in the morning,” Minseok says, by way of response. And Jongin's aching heart splinters into smaller, more jagged pieces. “In the morning,” Minseok says. But he stays by his side as the color swirl-harsh, jarring, ugly where they'd once been beautiful, vibrant, warm.
Jongin wakes up feeling like he’s dying. Head pounding, throat parched, limbs leaden, bones and teeth thrumming with a dull, persistent ache.
The alcohol, he assumes, it’s punishing him. These are the consequences of last night’s debauchery.
He attempts to lift his head, finds it hurts even more when he moves.
But as he shifts, in the bed- Minseok hyung's bed, Minseok hyung had given him his bed-he notices that he isn't wearing the clothes he'd been wearing last night, but a soft pair of tight gray sweats, a distressed concert shirt. Notices also the glass of water, blistered tylenol capsules on the nightstand. He traces the embossed turtles on the cub with his thumbnail, and there's warmth suffusing through his entire body, his hyung taking care of him, his hyung being kind and soft with him. It swells within him, a brief indulgent moment of utter bliss proceeded immediately with white hot mortification.
It comes in blurry snatches of incoherent, entangled half-formed memories, jumbled sensations.
Minseok's hands on his hips, Minseok's laughter in his ear, McDonald's chicken nuggets, giggled sips of orange soda, how Jongin had fallen on his ass and laughed as he'd kicked off his shoes in the entry way, how clumsy and breathless they'd both pinwheeled onto the couch, how the air had whooshed out of his lungs when Minseok had collapses beside him and then onto him, whispering to ask if he was really okay. Then the soothing coolness of porcelain against his cheek, a desperate, wanting I love you, hyung.
Minseok’s clothes are too small. His bed, too. And Jongin feels overgrown and clumsy and foreign and wrong and ugly again. Let me take you home, Minseok had whispered last night, and he had-taken him home and taken him in and taken care of him, though Jongin didn’t belong-doesn’t belong. Doesn’t deserve this or him. And it was stupid of him to think that he could. Even for a night.
But oh God. The worst of it, Jongin decides, biting back a desperate groan, the worst of it is yet to come.
Shuffling clumsily out of that too-small, too-neat, too-perfect bed, he braces himself for impact.
Minseok is already up when Jongin steps out of his room. Messy-haired and sleep-crumpled, he's barefoot on his couch, eating oatmeal, dressed in a similar pair of ratty sweats, a novelty t-shirt that he'd gotten in Hong Kong that time when the seniors had gone for their school trip, that time that he'd brought back mooncakes for Jongin and Jongin had...fucked up and made a comment about not wanting to get fat. And God, he's always gorgeous. And God, it's not the least bit fair.
He shouldn’t be looking this beautiful when he’s about to break his heart.
"I have frozen waffles and toast, too," he offers, with a sleepy smile as he scoots on the couch to make room for Jongin. He’s watching children’s cartoons and a chubby pig fumbles on screen to steal back her ice cream cone. Jongin feels sick, twists his fingers into the drawstrings of Minseok's pants as he hesitates in the doorway, dreading. ”I have a spare tooth brush if you want to brush your teeth."
And oh, it’s like it never happened. They’re going to act like Jongin never fucked everything up. And oh, that almost makes it worse.
Jongin frowns, twists his fingers into his borrowed shirt now-Minseok’s shirt, and Minseok sets down his spoon and his bowl, picks up his coffee mug, takes a slow, slow sip before speaking again. Jongin can see, though, in spite of his smile that he’s nervous, his fingers trembling around the mug’s handle. "Am I too loud?" he tries, voice softer, quieter."Did you take the medicine?"
Jongin nods, but still-still, still-
"Last night," he starts, and Minseok's smile twists into something less beautiful, more tired, uncomfortable, almost scared. He swallows, sets his mug down. His fingers are tense against the table, drumming restlessly.
“It’s okay,” he reassures him hastily. “I’ve already cleaned it up. We should have done a better job of taking care of you. We-we let it get too far, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“No,” Jongin says, maybe louder than he means to be, maybe rawer than he means to be. “No, no, what I said.”
And it’s more apparent now, Minseok’s discomfort. His shoulders tense, his lip catches between his teeth, and he swallows twice, taps his fingers before speaking. “Jongin, I know you don’t know…because it was your first time. But we all says things...when we're drunk. All say things we don’t mean.”
And Jongin didn’t know it could hurt more, this awful attempt at apparent kindness.
“Please don’t do that, hyung,” he says, and Minseok swallows again-hard, but doesn’t speak, and Jongin has always sucked with words. He fucking hates them. But he’s not drunk now, not bold now, just heavy with dumb, destructive desire, reckless, raw romanticism. “If you’re gonna-gonna reject me, do it properly. I meant what I said.”
“Jongin,” Minseok says, softly, slowly, hesitantly, like he’s scared of making Jongin cry again or scared of scaring him, like Jongin’s a kid and he has to handle him with extra care, and fuck, he hates this.
“You said we’d talk about it,” he says, and Minseok nods, ruffles his hair, swallows. He even wears distress beautifully. “Did you mean that?”
“Yes, but I just&mdash” he says, after a tense beat, sighs. “It's a lot to process. And ...honestly, I think that I was hoping you’d say-hoping you’d say it was you being drunk.”
“Okay,” Jongin says. Even though it really fucking isn’t, and he feels like his heart is being torn into tiny, ugly, ugly pieces-again. It’s enough of an answer. “Thank you for taking care of me last night. I’ll drop off your clothes later.”
He tugs on his shoes, his discarded coat.
He makes it all the way home before collapsing and crying and crying and crying.
Theirs is a small, boring as fuck college town. Only a single movie theater, three club, four grocery store kind of deal. Jongin used to count it as a blessing, how often he'd bump into Minseok-just by chance, just by good fortune, just by virtue of having a major held in the same building. Now, counts it as a curse, an awful reminder.
It's a small college town, smaller campus, and Jongin makes a valiant effort to avoid him, his sharp eyes, his bright laugh, his gorgeous smile-at least for the time being, while he nurses his wounds, his bruised pride, sorts the pieces of his splintered heart.
He does as much as he can, none-too-subtle as he picks up his half-eaten tuna club and races out of the cafeteria, keeps his head down and rushes past Minseok in the hall, declines invitations for Ultimate Frisbee, Denny's runs, arcade dates from the group to avoid seeing him that way, too.
And Jongin is thankful for study dates, weekday lunches with his other hyungs, for the opportunity to wingman for Sehun so long as it means he's being useful and wanted and loved-even if it's not Minseok and even if it's not in the shameful, vulnerable, needy, needy way he craves.
But it hurts and it festers and it comes back to haunt him over and over again. The hurt, the mortification, the self-loathing in a lather-rinse-repeat cycle of self-flagellation.
“You honestly,” Kyungsoo starts, cradling Jongin’s head on his lap, speaking more to the television-the toothpaste commercial blaring on the screen-that Jongin, speaking in that soft, faraway he does whenever he’s speaking about Jongin, his emotions. “You honestly fucked it up, you know.”
Jongin groans-long and pained. He knows. He really fucking knows.
“But he’s impossible not to love,” Jongin argues into Kyungsoo’s knees, and Kyungsoo pets along his scalp, over the nape of his neck, a soothing counterpoint to his sharp words.
"And yet," Kyungsoo quips, tugging softly at Jongin's earlobe. "I somehow manage."
"Hyung," he grumbles even as he burrows further into his lap, and Kyungsoo laughs, sifting softly through his hair. "You’re not being fair. You’re in love with someone that loves you back. You don’t know what it’s like.”
Kyungsoo hums in thoughtful acknowledgement. "I am."
"And it fucking hurts, you know," Jongin confesses into Kyungsoo's denimed knee. "I thought-I thought it was worse having him as a friend and having to settle for that. But it’s painful now, just how-we’re not even that." He sighs forlornly. "I fucked it up. He even-he even tried to get me to take it back, but I just didn't want to pretend anymore. I just wanted so desperately for him to know."
Kyungsoo doesn't speak for a long while, just soothes him with more tender touches.
"I'm proud of you," he finally says. His thumb drags tenderly along his scalp, and goosebumps blossom on Jongin’s skin. He quells a shudder, nuzzles more firmly into Kyungsoo’s thigh. The material of Kyungsoo’s jeans scrapes against his cheek. “It took a lot of idiotic courage to do that, I know. And I'm glad you were honest.”
“But I ruined things,” Jongin reminds him, and Kyungsoo hums in agreement as he traces his thumb along the shell of Jongin’s ear.
“So fix them.”
That night, after studying for Bio, going over research paper edits, rewarding himself with two hours of inane cake baking shows, Jongin pulls put his phone with great conviction and stares at Minseok's name on his contact list. He hasn't changed the picture since last Thanksgiving. He's holding his 3 year old nice, his entire face crinkled in the prettiest, brightest laugh, and she's tugging on his cheek, face dimpled with laughter, too. Jongin drags his thumb absently down the soft skin, opening the chat option in the process.
He closes the app after staring for three or four beats.
It's better, he thinks, to let this die of natural causes then to break into smaller, sharper no's. It's better to accept a firm enough rejection. There's no reason to drag it out.
Minseok had hoped it was a question of too much alcohol, too much sentimentality, a passing thing that Jongin could comparmentalize and will away, and maybe it’s best to do just that.
Maybe after 4 years of trying, he’ll finally get it right.
That weekend, he cancels on laser tag, the movies, and breakfast.
He tries to get out of Art Walk, too. But Art Walk, it’s tradition, Joonmyun reminds him via Kakaotalk message. It’s a tradition, and it’s sacred.
And Jongin, in spite of his best efforts to nurse his wounded heart, he’s still loath to violate tradition.
At 4:00 PM on Sunday afternoon, outside Chanyeol's apartment, as per sacred tradition, they crowd into Chanyeol's bright blue, worn down family van, two per seat, save for Kyungsoo-Chanyeol’s queen-who doesn’t need the extra leg room, honestly, but has special boyfriend privileges because he performs the boyfriend duties of loving Chanyeol and kissing him and touching him.
Jongin lacking any sort of boyfriend privileges is squeezed into the first row, and because fate is cruel, squeezed next to a very, very tense Minseok.
And he knows they all know, but nobody mentions it. And Jongin isn’t sure whether he’s grateful or upset by that fact.
Chanyeol pats the steering wheel fondly as he sings along to the song playing on the radio, and Jongin curls his legs to his chest, wills himself small, trying his best to avoid Minseok’s body, his gaze, his words, too. His skin still tingles painfully every time they touch.
He focuses squarely ahead, watches as Kyungsoo holds Chanyeol’s hand at the red light, rubbing his thumb in aimless patterns along the skin. And a ball of resentment drops in Jongin’s stomach, but he wills it away.
Sehun hums along, too. Jongin eventually joins.
They park outside the Korean restaurant-a for later-then weave through the streets, accepting slices of cheese, salami, little dixie cups of grape juice and apple cider as they stroll through the displays. Pottery, metalware, jewelry, water color, sculpture-all beautiful honestly, one of their best traditions. And Jongin is, as usual, hyperaware of Minseok’s presence as he drinks in all the art, only now the sight is cut with an acute sense of despair and hurt. Minseok, he’s painfully handsome, even more painfully not his.
They go to the Korean restaurant afterwards, eight squeezed into two tables, huddled over steaming dishes and tiny bowls of rice.
Squeezed next to Sehun, Baekhyun, across from Minseok, Jongin spies the bright green soju bottles in their fridge and feels sick and sad and stupid-remembers so vividly he has to swallow more gulps of water to keep from groaning or flushing or slamming his head against the varnished wooden table.
He reaches for food to distract himself, and their-Minseok’s and Jongin’s-chopsticks bump, click. Jongin jerks back, staring at the gyeran jjim as it swells with steam. His fingers tremble on the slightest bit as he gropes for his spoon instead. He scoops a spoonful of it into his mouth even though it's too hot.
He’s silent, broody, but he’s helpless to stop it, mustering only enough energy to hum at the appropriate times in the table’s animated discussion about that movie that Jongin totally missed out on, an upcoming concert 3 hours south of their campus.
Minseok, by the looks of it, is also miserable, at least.
“Hey, Jongin,” Minseok says, bouncing on the balls of his feet as they wait-alone, by Chanyeol’s van-for the others to finish paying. His shoulders are tense, eyebrows knit, and he’s nervous, too. This is awful for him, too. And there are faint bruises beneath his eyes, the haggard lines of fatigue-his last semester-painted across his features. But even then, cast golden in the flickering streetlamp’s light, he still looks too perfect to bear. Jongin thinks, a little deliriously, that he’ll always be floored by his beauty, will always want him, shakes his head to clear that thought away as Minseok repeats his name. “About last week, I-I didn’t handle that well. And I don’t like how weird things are between us.”
Jongin shoves his hand into his pockets, but nods for him to continue.
“We never-” He sighs heavily, and it’s cold enough for it to billow white and winding from between his lips. “Can we talk about what happened? Not now-but later? Talk?”
Jongin nods again. Near the entrance, the others are already shuffling towards the car.
Minseok smiles, and Jongin’s heart skips.
Minseok is beside him, half on him once again on the ride back. His head hangs heavy with exhaustion, and like a child, he starts to doze as they drive over the winding roads. His bobs drowsily before going completely lax against Jongin’s side. Warm and slight and soft and perfect, and it’s pleasantly hard to breathe, but Jongin somehow manages.
You drooled on me, he wants to joke, afterwards, while rousing him awake. Wants to at least have the option to fuck things up and inadvertently offend him. But he can't. At least not for the time being.
Minseok texts him that night, to ask if he’s free Friday.
They schedule it for after Jongin’s last class, his 5:30 Humanities lecture. Jongin sets his phone down, angsts, buries his face in his pillow to scream for a bit, gets back to typing up his lab report.
They go to a local burger joint-Minseok’s treat, but not because it’s a date, Jongin already knows, just because Minseok is the hyung. There’s music-top 40’s hits-echoing softly across the wall, the tinkle of laughter, the ambient idle chatter of other guests, the clink of their waitress delivering their burgers, but between them, it’s silent. And it’s still awkward-the silence between them, pregnant with meaning, residual conflict, unresolved feelings.
Across from him, fingers idly playing with the paper edges of his place mat, Minseok is so achingly close, but feels so, so, so far away.
And as per usual, it’s hard to speak, hard to breathe-right. But Jongin makes a valiant effort after taking three, long, nervous sips from his Coke.
“Hyung,” Jongin breathes, drumming his fingers restlessly against the tabletop. “I just-Please don’t…Please don’t pretend. Please don’t be awkward with me, but also please don’t pretend.”
Minseok exhales heavily, takes a slow sip of his own drink, lips still pursed as he shovels plaintively at the fries on his plate. And Jongin watches his throat work. Beneath the table, his own fingers clench and unclench into his jeans. They’re his heartbreaker jeans, and he knows it was probably stupid to try. But this is all that Jongin has at this point. And he’s helpless to stop himself at this point.
“I know,” he says. A pause. “I’m sorry.”
Jongin picks up a fry, swirls it into ketchup, speaking to it in lieu of looking up and confronting Minseok’s awful, beautiful eyes.
“Good.”
Minseok laughs-tight and hot, forced. “I don't want things to be awkward either, you know, Jongin. You’re one of my favorite dongsaengs.” He sips from his straw again, the drag long and pensive, more a nervous tick than thirst. “I’ve just-you know, I've never really thought of you that way. And I think it kind of scared me. And I didn’t want things to change between us, but I also-I’m sorry.”
“I meant it-What I said. I-you didn’t give me the chance to repeat myself or explain myself, but I meant it. When I said I loved you. I do love you.”
He swirls, keeps keeps keeps swirling until the fry is soggy, and he realizes that Minseok is watching it, too. The awareness of it prickles across the nape of his neck.
“You don’t have to want me back-I, I know that, but I still want you. And I don’t want to pretend anymore. And I don’t-don’t want you to pretend either. It hurt me when you did. It made me feel like my feelings didn’t-didn’t matter.”
He chances a glance upwards. Minseok is biting his lower lip.
“You make it really hard sometimes,” he decides, after a beat, nose crinkling. “You’re so blunt sometimes, but so guarded other times. I never know if you mean it when you…” I meant it. I was drunk, but I meant it. He shakes his head. “Can you just let me-?” He sighs, lifts a fry of his own, swirling it, too. “It was-is a lot to process,” he says. “It’s kinda intimidating, too. I would have to love you? I’d be so behind in terms of-And you know I would need to-It’s not just about feelings either. I’m graduating next semester. I’m leaving the city. Probably leaving the state. ”
Jongin nods, and Minseok exhales slowly, shakily, the sound almost wet and so unnervingly vulnerable. He wears vulnerability well, too, as he raises his palms in a gesture of defeat, or supplication.
“I won’t be here," he concludes. "And you will," he finishes.
Minseok meets his eyes, and they're very soft, too beautiful.
Devastating desire trickles down his spine.
“That’s something to think about, too,” he adds. Like loving Minseok is a rational, logical thing, a matter of pros and cons.
“I don’t love you because you’re here,” Jongin says. “Don’t love you because it’s the right choice. I love you because-because you’re you.” And Minseok nods, bites back a small, shaky smile, leans slightly forward, voice hushed.
“But that’s still-if you want to pursue something, if you want to try-that’s something to consider, too.”
And a weak, twisted little flame of hope flickers in his heart.
“Hyung, are you-?”
“I don’t know still if I’ll get there, but I think-It’s not the same, but I think…” He chews on his lower lip, lifts his burger to chew on that instead.
Jongin eats his burger, too.
The tension, in the aftermath, is different. Hotter, heavier, but not unpleasant.
And for the second time in two weeks, Jongin is in Minseok’s apartment, dizzy with the debilitating desire for more more more.
“You’re shaking,” Minseok says as he leads him inside, and he’s holding Jongin’s hands in his, trying to cradle though his are so much smaller. But that only makes the shaking worse. Jongin just fucking wants.
“I love you,” he says, and Minseok smiles-a small, shy, soft thing, squeezes his hands now.
“I know,” he says. “And I-I like you.”
The words make something fragile and beautiful and overwhelming swell in Jongin’s chest, and a smile tugs at his lips, too. He squeezes Minseok’s hands back.
“Can I kiss you?” Jongin asks, and Minseok nods slowly reaches forward to cradle his cheek, rubbing his thumb into the bone as he eases him forward.
Their lips meet, and Jongin sighs into it, trembles into it, parts his lips and presses forward to lose himself more fully in it.
He feels nearly ready to implode from the crushing vastness of his love, settles instead for kissing him back, kissing the fuck out of him, turning it into something hard and deep and desperate and intense as he can manage. Minseok moans into his mouth, in surprise or in want, too, but kisses back just as hard and deep and desperate and tense.
Minseok’s still cradling his face, and his other hand glides down his body, fanning across his lower back and curling to urge him even closer. That feels like being cradled, too, Jongin bending further in response, clutching desperately at his sides to stay upright.
“Hyung,” he whimpers, and Minseok moans into his mouth, but tempers the ferocity, cupping his cheek and sighing into the kiss. He pecks his bottom lip, strains further to reach his nose, his cheekbone as he pulls away.
Jongin’s heart is beating so painfully fast in his chest. And Jongin feels too big and too bumbling and so fucking warm.
“Jongin,” he breathes. “Like kissing you,” he confesses into his chin, repeats into the corner of his mouth. Soft and sweet and wet.
There’s the barest scrape of teeth, and Jongin whimpers against his mouth, maybe quakes.
“Hyung, please, more,” he gasps, mortified in the next second, but placated when Minseok groans into his mouth, his small beautiful hands spasming around his thighs.
“How much more?” he asks, pulling away to gauge.
And he looks breathtaking, breathless, breathing heavily through his bitten red red lips, his eyes all liquid and hot and beautiful-Jesus, he’s beautiful.
“Touch me,” he urges, terrified almost immediately afterward of the results, being too bold, wanting too much.
I’ve fucked up again, he thinks, but Minseok does, gliding lower to squeeze his ass once, then once more. Fuck. His thumb, meanwhile, drags softly over his bare skin where his sweater has ridden up, and oh, oh.
“Your hands,” Jongin groans. “They’re so small”
Minseok laughs. “They are,” he agrees into Jongin’s collarbone, but he’s still touching him, his skin soft and smooth, movements slow but intentional. Goosebumps prickle in their wake.
“I like the way they feel on me.” Jongin presses back, and Minseok squeezes tight, his lips curling into a smile against Jongin’s goose-bumped skin.
“I like having them on you,” Minseok confesses with a slow, soft kiss. “I like how big you are,” he continues. “Your body. Your hands. Your lips.” His voice drops, a rasp that sends tingles down Jongin’s spine. “Your ass.“ A soft, curling, too-brief caress, looping around his ass, his hip before ghosting downward. ”This.”
Jongin isn’t even hard, but it makes his body jerk and overheat. His fingers itch to explore that, too.
Let me, he thinks, please. Just let me, hyung.
Minseok noses at Jongin's collarbone as he swivels his hips just so, the ridge of his halfhard cock a heated promise of all the dark, dark things that Jongin has imagined in his weaker, more shameful moments.
“This isn’t small,” Jongin says, and Minseok snorts out another laugh, swiveling again, grinding forward again. Harder now, more insistent now. He cups his face as he kisses him once, twice, squarely on the mouth.
“Not soft, either,” he adds, groaning when Jongin drops his waist, matches his dirty, dirty grind.
“I wanna-wanna suck you off.”
Minseok’s groan is richer, darker.
“I know it’s really soon, but I still want to, hyung. Fuck, I want to.” He nuzzles into the hand cradling his cheekbone, and Minseok’s thumb trembles as it drags over Jongin’s bottom lip, lingering.
“So soft,” he says, awed, pressing again just hard enough for Jongin’s lips to part.
Quelling a shiver of pleasure, Jongin kisses Minseok’s thumb, slow and wet, as he watches Minseok watch his mouth.
“Please,” he whispers against the skin, and Minseok shudders but nods.
And then Jongin is dropping to his knees.
"Your mouth. It’s so-” He breaks off in a long hiss, curling forward when Jongin pushes his shirt up to kiss along his stomach, fumbles with his belt, his pants, his boxers.
“Tell me,” Jongin pleads, and Minseok’s fingers stutter around his cheekbone.
His voice is so gorgeously strained, the syllables frayed and reedy and hot.
“It’s-it's the prettiest mouth I’ve ever seen. These lips, fuck-made to be fucked."
Jongin shivers at the filthy compliment.
“You’re so breathtaking.”
“Again,” he pleads, parting his lips, letting them drag over the engorged head, swirling his tongue experimentally on the retreat.
Minseok curses softly, thighs flexing as he jerks again.
And Jongin suckles just to watch the sharp way the muscles ripple, taste the bitter heat of the precome beading on the slit. He moans at the silky smooth texture of the velvety head, the way his cock ripples and pulses along his the seam of his mouth, loving the musk of it and the way it sits heavy on his tongue. Heavy as the weight of Minseok’s eyes on his, Minseok’s fingers in his hair.
“Jongin,” he says, and Jongin feels it in his chest.
Jongin hums in pleasure, and Minseok’s throbs in his mouth.
Minseok groans, quakes, touches him again, small fingers kneading into the nape of his neck, thumb dragging tenderly, shakily up his throat as Jongin swallows as heavily as he can.
Fingers firmly anchored on his waist, Jongin takes as much of Minseok as he can, groaning at the heady musk that settles on the back of his throat as he gags around him, and he wants to able to taste Minseok for days. Behind his teeth, on the roof of his mouth, on the tip of his tongue. He wants to remember that Minseok wanted him back.
“Yes,” he hisses. “Yes”
His knees, jaw, lips, heart ache in the most pleasant gratifying way and Jesus, he loves him. He loves him.
And fuck, he needs needs needs Minseok to come. Needs to know that he wanted him in this way, if only for this once. Urgent, fervent, desperate, desperate, desperate, Jongin hollows his cheeks as hard as he can, bobs as fast as deep as he can, gagging, moaning, needing, needing, needing.
He looks beautiful even in that-especially in that, elegant as his entire body pitches forward with the force of his orgasm, and Jongin swallows all traces of it with a ruined groan, feels the ruin in his lips, along his tongue, in his knees and trembling fingers, too.
Sleepy and sated and so fucking soft and beautiful, and his fingers curl tightly through Jongin’s hair as he slides down down down the wall, into Jongin's arm. Painfully small, painfully handsome, he clings to Jongin through the comedown, all labored breathing and tiny tremors. He crinkles his nose as Jongin drops messy pecks along his cheekbones, eyelids, nose, chin, throat.
"Come here," Minseok says, but he presses him into the wall instead, slides gracelessly down Jongin's body. And Jongin is so, so, so in love with him, in love too with the warmth of his skin as he noses along his waist, drops kisses to his bare stomach, in love with the grounding solidity of his small, wandering hands.
He keeps them there after peeling down Jongin's heartbreaker jeans, his tight boxers. And he's still so beautiful, so captivating, looks almost too cute to be doing this. Jongin almost says it, chokes on it instead. But it’s probably for the best. Jongin would die if he stopped, feels like he’s dying already at the first teasing brush of Minseok’s tongue along his shaft.
Minseok is fast, efficient, and Jongin too wound up, too desperate, too dizzy with pleasure, for it be anything drawn out.
Five bobs in and he's whining about being close, six and he's trembling, seven and and and it's too much.
Jongin’s entire body seizes sharply with pleasure, and he collapses in a boneless, breathless, helpless heap on the floor. And Minseok is still there with him, criminally handsome and gorgeously breathless and unnervingly soft as he soothes him through the comedown.
It’s like being drunk, Jongin thinks, that same full-bodied pleasant buzz tingling through all of his limbs, like a warm suffusing embrace of comfort and contentment.But there’s no aching, awful comedown, no nausea, no self-loathing, no ugly, broken feelings-at least not yet.
And Minseok is still holding him.
“I like you-really like you, you know,” Minseok whispers, threading his fingers through Jongin’s hair. The soft, tender brush of the pads of his fingers has Jongin shivering weakly in pleasure, has his heart clenching weakly with love love love.