Goo Yong Ha/Moon Jae Shin (Sungkyunkwan Scandal) - Two Thirds
I've been pondering a lot whether I should post this or not.
(You know, the usual embarrassment, the fear that it's not good enough, and the fact that I don't know of many people on my friendlist who would even be interested in this. Not to mention that when a story is set in a different cultural background, the risk of making a fool of oneself is somewhat higher.)
After fussing about it for a while, my conclusion was "Screw it, I will post it all the same. If my boyfriend liked it, someone else might too."
So here it is.
Dedicated to nerjav and cellophane_ria.
Sungkyunkwan Scandal
Title: Two Thirds
Spoilers: up to ep.08
Summary: Set during or after the events in episode 08. Yong Ha is good at guessing things, but there is always something missing.
Pairing: Goo Yong Ha/Moon Jae Shin
Word count: ~3000
Rating: PG-something
Warning: To be honest, I don't think this really counts as dub-con, but I'll warn just in case.
The animated gifs are nerjav 's work:
The porch in the East wing was not the most comfortable place to sit at night. The cooling wood certainly couldn’t rival the soft pillows at the courtesans’ place. Nor the pillows in his room, for that matter, but Yong Ha felt that he had paced there enough for one day.
He changed position again, letting his feet sway down freely, and then he snapped his fan close.
The candles were still lit in some rooms, drawing shadowed silhouettes on the doors, and there were noises coming outside.
The sounds of a table being dragged on the mat, whispers, snoring, quiet laugher. It was easy to string them together into a comprehensible story. In the room to his left, two students were arguing over their point reduction; Yong Ha made a mental note, as one can never know when a little disgraceful story involving mud and superiors would come handy.
In the room to his right, one student was sighing over a girl he had met in town (Yong Ha made another mental note).
The room he was interested in, the second middle room, was too quiet for Yong Ha to make a note on anything. However someone must have been awake, as the light was still on.
And Yong Ha would go closer, if he didn’t think that it would seem too obvious that he was setting an ambush if he happened to stand by the door.
It was slightly unnerving, knowing that there was something fishy, but not being able to come to the bottom of it.
If anything, Yong Ha was proud that it took him one look to assess any situation. At any given time and wherever he was, he knew at least two thirds of what was going on.
One third was plain to see even for the simplest minds, as it didn’t go past the face value of things people said or did.
One third consisted mostly of secrets people hoped nobody noticed, but Yong Ha always did. How could he not? They were still rather obvious, once you looked at the gap between words and actions, or the tiny gestures people carelessly undressed their own hearts with. Some of those secrets things Yong Ha kept for himself, as that was in every regard the best thing to do. In other cases he used his knowledge little by little to stir things up a bit, as that was in every regard the most fun thing to do.
The last third was a mixture of impressions and perfectly plausible reasoning, but plagued by suspicious contrary evidence and doubts about the unknown. It was driving Yong Ha crazy.
For example, though both his mind and body were telling him that Kim Yoon Shik was secretly a woman, he could never prove it. Each meticulously crafted plan to do so had failed. Likewise, Jae Shin must have known that she was a woman too, but Yong Ha could not get the confession out of him.
Not that Yong Ha would want to prevent Jae Shin from taking an interest in women; it was amusing, given that Jae Shin couldn’t approach any female without hiccupping, and Yong Ha could tease him in hundred different ways.
Yong Ha opened his fan again and tilted his head.
It was difficult to determine what annoyed him more. Not being able to confirm his suspicions about Kim Yoon Shik, Jae Shin refusing to tell him what he had truly seen, or the wide-eyed and confused look Jae Shin had when… He must have seen her bathe back then. That’s the only possible explanation.
Yong Ha smiled to himself, fanning his face. It wasn’t hot, but the gesture made it easier to think.
Who knows, perhaps that was the first time Jae Shin had seen a naked woman. Yes, with hiccups and such, which woman would tolerate him? No wonder Jae Shin began to act strangely whenever Kim Yoon Shik was around.
Others may not have noticed any difference, because to most people who encountered him, Jae Shin seemed like a crazy horse on any given day, but Yong Ha knew his friend well enough to imagine what was going on inside his head. Well, imagine at least two thirds of it.
Precisely because there was still one third missing, and Yong Ha’s speculation were beginning to run in circles after a while, it was the expression on Jae Shin’s face that intrigued him the most. Or probably “bother” him the most, for he felt yet stronger the need to touch that face and make Jae Shin look elsewhere, possibly at Yong Ha himself.
“Is it jealousy after all?” Yong Ha hit his thigh with the fan. “Could it be?”
He decided that he didn’t want to delve into that tonight. There was nothing new to be discovered anyway.
Thinking about Jae Shin would make him only more puzzled, as it always had. He’d grow restless trying to solve that puzzle, and perhaps he’d break another fan.
Looking down at his hand, which was opening and closing the fan at great speed, Yong Ha thought that perhaps it was happening already.
He bid his mind to focus on something else, anything else, before he’d get to the annoying sensation of dissatisfaction. His arms would long to touch warm skin, Jae Shin’s skin in more ways than he normally cared to admit. It was a mystery to him why Jae Shin and not someone else. After all, Moon Jae Shin wasn’t the only one who was fun to tease, and there were both men and women with more delicate complexion and more agreeable character. Nevertheless, his heart drifted to Geol Oh, Crazy Horse, as they named Jae Shin.
It was a reason best left to mystery, since whenever he tried to answer this question for himself, he had felt helpless and confused. And “helpless and confused” went completely against Yong Ha’s notion of himself.
He looked around.
The lights were extinguished in all rooms now, and Yong Ha thought that there were better ways he could have wasted his time.
Slowly, he got up and stretched his limbs. At least there was no witness to the fact that Yong Ha made a fool of himself sometimes.
Then one door opened, and someone stormed out as if running for his dear life.
Finally, thought Yong Ha.
Jae Shin leant on a column with his left hand, apparently breathless, while his right hand clutched at his chest first and then went to cover his mouth. As usual, his sloppily tied clothes left his chest bare, and his skin was gleaming orange and blue in the light of the lanterns. Under his disheveled hair, Jae Shin’s eyes were shut together tightly.
It was almost a perfect reprise from a few days ago, and like then, Jae Shin didn’t notice he wasn’t alone.
Yong Ha pursed his lips in amusement.
With hushed steps, he approached Jae Shin’s bent figure.
His lips moved close to Jae Shin’s ears.
“Did it happen again?” Yong Ha whispered, touching a tuft of dark hair with the edge of his mouth.
Jae Shin jumped up, startled, and Yong Ha moved away quickly to avoid being accidentally (or deliberately) hit.
“Stop doing that,” Jae Shin said.
In response, Yong Ha waved his hand and put on one of his most innocent smiles. Then he sat down and waited for Jae Shin to sit as well.
“Did it happen again?” He repeated as Jae Shin took a seat by the pillar.
“Happened what?” said Jae Shin.
“The hiccups.”
Jae Shin’s answer was a silent roll of eyes.
“You can tell me.” Yong Ha drew closer.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Despite those words, Jae Shin’s hand covered his mouth and immediately fell down.
He was too easy to read sometimes.
“Really?” Yong Ha stretched out his hand and put his fan under Jae Shin’s chin.
Jae Shin looked at him with defiance, and maybe a bit of fear, if Yong Ha was a good judge of such affairs.
All Yong Ha had to do was slightly lift Jae Shin’s chin and wait until Jae Shin started to squirm. It didn’t take long; he didn’t dare use his hands to cover his mouth and hiccups now, thus he squeezed his lips and swallowed down.
“Why would I hiccup in first place?” Jae Shin said at last.
“Because,” said Yong Ha said, drawing the tip of his fan down Jae Shin’s throat in lazy half circles, “Because you’ve been together with Kim Yoon Shik.”
The fan caressed Jae Shin’s thorax.
“You always hiccup in front of girls. And we both know Kim Yoon Shik is a woman,” Yong Ha continued.
Jae Shin’s hand pushed the fan away right as it was about to touch his left nipple. As if he were swatting away a mosquito.
“Ah,” said Yong Ha. His voice sounded too disappointed even to himself.
Jae Shin paid no attention to that and instead pulled his tunic over his torso. “There you go at it again. As you know, we’re in Sungkyunkwan; there are no women here.”
“Hm.” Yong Ha came closer and lowered his head. He sniffed the air around Jae Shin. “Have you been drinking again?”
He received only a “tsk” in response, as Jae Shin turned his face away.
“Have you?” Insisted Yong Ha, putting his fan down. He placed one hand on Jae Shin’s cheek. It was warm, or perhaps Yong Ha’s hands were cold, and there was something intoxicating about the way it slid under fingers, and the way Jae Shin tried to look the other side without meeting Yong Ha’s eyes.
Then the way his lips were trembling with shallow breaths.
Without removing his hand, Yong Ha closed the distance between his mouth and Jae Shin’s. Jae Shin pulled back slightly.
His breath did not smell of alcohol, however. Strange. Yong Ha lowered his head until his nose touched the fabric of Jae Shin’s clothes and sniffed.
“Strange,” he said, grimacing. “Have you been bathing in it instead of drinking?”
At the word “bathing,” Jae Shin hiccupped at last. To cover it, he started to cough. Really, sometimes Geol Oh was far too easy to understand.
Yong Ha shook his head and smiled. His palm was still resting on Jae Shin’s left cheek, and now was a good moment to do something with it. He brushed his thumb toward Jae Shin’s lips. Soft and slightly dry, they yielded under Yong Ha’s careful inspection. The other fingers followed slowly.
“About Kim Yoon Shik,” he said at the same time as distraction.
Moon Jae Shin let out another stifled hiccup. It seemed to work - Jae Shin kept opening and closing his mouth almost as a fish out of water, but apparently it didn’t cross his mind yet to push Yong Ha’s fingers away.
“It’s against the rule for women to attend the university,” Yong Ha said. “It’s unthinkable that a woman could be able to deceive everyone and become a scholar. Someone would notice the very first day. We should discard that thought altogether. What do you say, Moon Jae Shin?”
Moon Jae Shin merely gulped and nodded. The wary look on his face blended into an alluring vulnerability, and Yong Ha almost plunged forward.
Instead, he bit his lips and smiled. “Somebody did notice, though. And no matter what you and I do, somebody else is going to notice as well. It’s only a matter of time. The truth is Kim Yoon Shik’s secret will be exposed.”
Moon Jae Shin moved abruptly, grasped Yong Ha’s hand and glared at him. That wasn’t the expression of a drunken man at all. How interesting.
And Yong Ha couldn’t tell if that was because he had mentioned Kim Yoon Shik’s unmasking or because his index finger had slipped past Jae Shin’s lips and had touched the teeth.
Still, Jae Shin said nothing. Didn’t throw him off the porch, didn’t hit him.
Yong Ha could watch for a long time, the stiffened muscles and the flaring nostrils of the man in front of him. He ignored the tight grip around his forearm.
“It’s the truth,” he said as uncaringly as he could, before leaning forward, to the side of Jae Shing’s face. “You cannot hide it.”
Whether he was talking about Kim Yoon Shik’s secret or his own desires was a question beyond his comprehension already.
There he stood, a breath away from Jae Shin, the tiniest distance that kept him from crossing the line he had sworn that he never, ever would.
Jae Shin glanced at him. He was about to get up and shove Yong Ha away. This much Yong Ha knew; it was part of those two thirds of happenings that Yong Ha was able to follow and predict.
He didn’t want to let go yet, however. Not yet.
In one single moment, the invisible wall broke with the slightest graze of a pair of lips against another.
Jae Shin froze, while his gaze fluttered about Yong Ha’s face as if it had appeared in front of him for the first time.
Like a criminal trespassing on a land that wasn’t his, Yong Ha searched for Jae Shin’s mouth again.
He tugged at Jae Shin’s lower lip and let it free with a smack. Jae Shin’s legs were in the way of his knees, so Yong Ha wrestled his way through and landed a kiss on Jae Shin’s chin. Then the corner of the mouth, and full on the lips.
Torment, the brief contacts were akin to torment, as sharp sparks between soft flesh, enticing Yong Ha to steal more.
Soon the surrounding, the voices and sounds sank into nothingness. Yong Ha forgot about caution.
He was only vaguely aware of Jae Shin’s hand clutch his knee and gripping higher. Jae Shin tried to say something but managed only to mutter something incomprehensible. As he moved his lips to speak, they bumped into Yong Ha’s, each time with more fervor and less hesitating, until his words resembled greedy kisses.
And Yong Ha’s right arm, Jae Shin Must have let go of it, since it was now free and roaming about Jae Shin’s chest. Beneath Yong Ha’s fingers, there was a pliant body, which responded to every caress. In a flash Yong Ha understood that this is what he had been craving for so long. What he denied himself even in his thoughts. What he now had.
Without thinking, he moved his hand past Jae Shin’s belly and down the hem of the trousers. Jae Shin gasped and sprung up, shoving Yong Ha off in the process.
The next moment Yong Ha lay ungracefully sprawled on the porch, and Moon Jae Shin was standing several paces away.
Yong Ha lifted his back, surprised. The reality - cold breeze, several doors of students’ rooms on his left - had shaken him abruptly from his daze. Somebody could have seen them, not to mention that Jae Shin... What would Jae Shin do?
It seemed that Jae Shin didn’t know where to look or which way to turn. “Wh…” Jae Shin said and turned away again. “Wh… what were you doing?” It came out bewildered and bashful more than angry.
Yong Ha didn’t respond right away, and Jae Shin glimpsed at him again.
Even in the half-dark, Jae Shin’s face was a clear mixture of embarrassment and confusion. A perfect mixture.
Yong Ha chuckled at himself and took a few more moments to think. What to answer?
“I was trying to see if you were really drunk.” He smiled, but he realized that he must have looked like an idiot.
Jae Shin let out an exasperated sigh, or groan to be more precise, and it seemed that he would kick Yong Ha from the porch and show him with his fist why he was called Crazy Horse. Yet then he shot another angry look and stormed inside his room with the roughly same speed he had run out of it before.
Yong Ha tilted his head and covered his mouth. His limbs were still afire, a sweet pain still churning in his guts.
He moved to pick his fan.
What had he done? What had they done? His mind echoed the silence of the sky and trees in front of the porch.
It was all right, however.
He tapped the fan on his lips.
Wasn’t life more fun if you stirred it up a bit? It would be all right.
Let Geol Oh mull over it. At least now he’d have something beside Kim Yoon Shik to think about. A man can deny himself what he covets only for so long, before both his body and his mind cave and follow his heart. No one knew that better than Goo Yong Ha. Moon Jae Shin would learn too, eventually.
Yong Ha lay down again.
And the next day, when Yong Ha would try to casually put his arm across Jae Shin’s shoulder, no doubt Jae Shin would push him away with even more vehemence than usual. Yet the moment before that, while Yong Ha’s fingers would still be winded round Moon Jae Shin’s shoulder, Jae Shin’s eyes might lose their focus and flicker away, and his lips might curl with embarrassment.
The expression on his face… Yong Ha was looking forward to that.
THE END
Sequel: Assumptions
(You know, the usual embarrassment, the fear that it's not good enough, and the fact that I don't know of many people on my friendlist who would even be interested in this. Not to mention that when a story is set in a different cultural background, the risk of making a fool of oneself is somewhat higher.)
After fussing about it for a while, my conclusion was "Screw it, I will post it all the same. If my boyfriend liked it, someone else might too."
So here it is.
Dedicated to nerjav and cellophane_ria.
Sungkyunkwan Scandal
Title: Two Thirds
Spoilers: up to ep.08
Summary: Set during or after the events in episode 08. Yong Ha is good at guessing things, but there is always something missing.
Pairing: Goo Yong Ha/Moon Jae Shin
Word count: ~3000
Rating: PG-something
Warning: To be honest, I don't think this really counts as dub-con, but I'll warn just in case.
The animated gifs are nerjav 's work:
The porch in the East wing was not the most comfortable place to sit at night. The cooling wood certainly couldn’t rival the soft pillows at the courtesans’ place. Nor the pillows in his room, for that matter, but Yong Ha felt that he had paced there enough for one day.
He changed position again, letting his feet sway down freely, and then he snapped his fan close.
The candles were still lit in some rooms, drawing shadowed silhouettes on the doors, and there were noises coming outside.
The sounds of a table being dragged on the mat, whispers, snoring, quiet laugher. It was easy to string them together into a comprehensible story. In the room to his left, two students were arguing over their point reduction; Yong Ha made a mental note, as one can never know when a little disgraceful story involving mud and superiors would come handy.
In the room to his right, one student was sighing over a girl he had met in town (Yong Ha made another mental note).
The room he was interested in, the second middle room, was too quiet for Yong Ha to make a note on anything. However someone must have been awake, as the light was still on.
And Yong Ha would go closer, if he didn’t think that it would seem too obvious that he was setting an ambush if he happened to stand by the door.
It was slightly unnerving, knowing that there was something fishy, but not being able to come to the bottom of it.
If anything, Yong Ha was proud that it took him one look to assess any situation. At any given time and wherever he was, he knew at least two thirds of what was going on.
One third was plain to see even for the simplest minds, as it didn’t go past the face value of things people said or did.
One third consisted mostly of secrets people hoped nobody noticed, but Yong Ha always did. How could he not? They were still rather obvious, once you looked at the gap between words and actions, or the tiny gestures people carelessly undressed their own hearts with. Some of those secrets things Yong Ha kept for himself, as that was in every regard the best thing to do. In other cases he used his knowledge little by little to stir things up a bit, as that was in every regard the most fun thing to do.
The last third was a mixture of impressions and perfectly plausible reasoning, but plagued by suspicious contrary evidence and doubts about the unknown. It was driving Yong Ha crazy.
For example, though both his mind and body were telling him that Kim Yoon Shik was secretly a woman, he could never prove it. Each meticulously crafted plan to do so had failed. Likewise, Jae Shin must have known that she was a woman too, but Yong Ha could not get the confession out of him.
Not that Yong Ha would want to prevent Jae Shin from taking an interest in women; it was amusing, given that Jae Shin couldn’t approach any female without hiccupping, and Yong Ha could tease him in hundred different ways.
Yong Ha opened his fan again and tilted his head.
It was difficult to determine what annoyed him more. Not being able to confirm his suspicions about Kim Yoon Shik, Jae Shin refusing to tell him what he had truly seen, or the wide-eyed and confused look Jae Shin had when… He must have seen her bathe back then. That’s the only possible explanation.
Yong Ha smiled to himself, fanning his face. It wasn’t hot, but the gesture made it easier to think.
Who knows, perhaps that was the first time Jae Shin had seen a naked woman. Yes, with hiccups and such, which woman would tolerate him? No wonder Jae Shin began to act strangely whenever Kim Yoon Shik was around.
Others may not have noticed any difference, because to most people who encountered him, Jae Shin seemed like a crazy horse on any given day, but Yong Ha knew his friend well enough to imagine what was going on inside his head. Well, imagine at least two thirds of it.
Precisely because there was still one third missing, and Yong Ha’s speculation were beginning to run in circles after a while, it was the expression on Jae Shin’s face that intrigued him the most. Or probably “bother” him the most, for he felt yet stronger the need to touch that face and make Jae Shin look elsewhere, possibly at Yong Ha himself.
“Is it jealousy after all?” Yong Ha hit his thigh with the fan. “Could it be?”
He decided that he didn’t want to delve into that tonight. There was nothing new to be discovered anyway.
Thinking about Jae Shin would make him only more puzzled, as it always had. He’d grow restless trying to solve that puzzle, and perhaps he’d break another fan.
Looking down at his hand, which was opening and closing the fan at great speed, Yong Ha thought that perhaps it was happening already.
He bid his mind to focus on something else, anything else, before he’d get to the annoying sensation of dissatisfaction. His arms would long to touch warm skin, Jae Shin’s skin in more ways than he normally cared to admit. It was a mystery to him why Jae Shin and not someone else. After all, Moon Jae Shin wasn’t the only one who was fun to tease, and there were both men and women with more delicate complexion and more agreeable character. Nevertheless, his heart drifted to Geol Oh, Crazy Horse, as they named Jae Shin.
It was a reason best left to mystery, since whenever he tried to answer this question for himself, he had felt helpless and confused. And “helpless and confused” went completely against Yong Ha’s notion of himself.
He looked around.
The lights were extinguished in all rooms now, and Yong Ha thought that there were better ways he could have wasted his time.
Slowly, he got up and stretched his limbs. At least there was no witness to the fact that Yong Ha made a fool of himself sometimes.
Then one door opened, and someone stormed out as if running for his dear life.
Finally, thought Yong Ha.
Jae Shin leant on a column with his left hand, apparently breathless, while his right hand clutched at his chest first and then went to cover his mouth. As usual, his sloppily tied clothes left his chest bare, and his skin was gleaming orange and blue in the light of the lanterns. Under his disheveled hair, Jae Shin’s eyes were shut together tightly.
It was almost a perfect reprise from a few days ago, and like then, Jae Shin didn’t notice he wasn’t alone.
Yong Ha pursed his lips in amusement.
With hushed steps, he approached Jae Shin’s bent figure.
His lips moved close to Jae Shin’s ears.
“Did it happen again?” Yong Ha whispered, touching a tuft of dark hair with the edge of his mouth.
Jae Shin jumped up, startled, and Yong Ha moved away quickly to avoid being accidentally (or deliberately) hit.
“Stop doing that,” Jae Shin said.
In response, Yong Ha waved his hand and put on one of his most innocent smiles. Then he sat down and waited for Jae Shin to sit as well.
“Did it happen again?” He repeated as Jae Shin took a seat by the pillar.
“Happened what?” said Jae Shin.
“The hiccups.”
Jae Shin’s answer was a silent roll of eyes.
“You can tell me.” Yong Ha drew closer.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Despite those words, Jae Shin’s hand covered his mouth and immediately fell down.
He was too easy to read sometimes.
“Really?” Yong Ha stretched out his hand and put his fan under Jae Shin’s chin.
Jae Shin looked at him with defiance, and maybe a bit of fear, if Yong Ha was a good judge of such affairs.
All Yong Ha had to do was slightly lift Jae Shin’s chin and wait until Jae Shin started to squirm. It didn’t take long; he didn’t dare use his hands to cover his mouth and hiccups now, thus he squeezed his lips and swallowed down.
“Why would I hiccup in first place?” Jae Shin said at last.
“Because,” said Yong Ha said, drawing the tip of his fan down Jae Shin’s throat in lazy half circles, “Because you’ve been together with Kim Yoon Shik.”
The fan caressed Jae Shin’s thorax.
“You always hiccup in front of girls. And we both know Kim Yoon Shik is a woman,” Yong Ha continued.
Jae Shin’s hand pushed the fan away right as it was about to touch his left nipple. As if he were swatting away a mosquito.
“Ah,” said Yong Ha. His voice sounded too disappointed even to himself.
Jae Shin paid no attention to that and instead pulled his tunic over his torso. “There you go at it again. As you know, we’re in Sungkyunkwan; there are no women here.”
“Hm.” Yong Ha came closer and lowered his head. He sniffed the air around Jae Shin. “Have you been drinking again?”
He received only a “tsk” in response, as Jae Shin turned his face away.
“Have you?” Insisted Yong Ha, putting his fan down. He placed one hand on Jae Shin’s cheek. It was warm, or perhaps Yong Ha’s hands were cold, and there was something intoxicating about the way it slid under fingers, and the way Jae Shin tried to look the other side without meeting Yong Ha’s eyes.
Then the way his lips were trembling with shallow breaths.
Without removing his hand, Yong Ha closed the distance between his mouth and Jae Shin’s. Jae Shin pulled back slightly.
His breath did not smell of alcohol, however. Strange. Yong Ha lowered his head until his nose touched the fabric of Jae Shin’s clothes and sniffed.
“Strange,” he said, grimacing. “Have you been bathing in it instead of drinking?”
At the word “bathing,” Jae Shin hiccupped at last. To cover it, he started to cough. Really, sometimes Geol Oh was far too easy to understand.
Yong Ha shook his head and smiled. His palm was still resting on Jae Shin’s left cheek, and now was a good moment to do something with it. He brushed his thumb toward Jae Shin’s lips. Soft and slightly dry, they yielded under Yong Ha’s careful inspection. The other fingers followed slowly.
“About Kim Yoon Shik,” he said at the same time as distraction.
Moon Jae Shin let out another stifled hiccup. It seemed to work - Jae Shin kept opening and closing his mouth almost as a fish out of water, but apparently it didn’t cross his mind yet to push Yong Ha’s fingers away.
“It’s against the rule for women to attend the university,” Yong Ha said. “It’s unthinkable that a woman could be able to deceive everyone and become a scholar. Someone would notice the very first day. We should discard that thought altogether. What do you say, Moon Jae Shin?”
Moon Jae Shin merely gulped and nodded. The wary look on his face blended into an alluring vulnerability, and Yong Ha almost plunged forward.
Instead, he bit his lips and smiled. “Somebody did notice, though. And no matter what you and I do, somebody else is going to notice as well. It’s only a matter of time. The truth is Kim Yoon Shik’s secret will be exposed.”
Moon Jae Shin moved abruptly, grasped Yong Ha’s hand and glared at him. That wasn’t the expression of a drunken man at all. How interesting.
And Yong Ha couldn’t tell if that was because he had mentioned Kim Yoon Shik’s unmasking or because his index finger had slipped past Jae Shin’s lips and had touched the teeth.
Still, Jae Shin said nothing. Didn’t throw him off the porch, didn’t hit him.
Yong Ha could watch for a long time, the stiffened muscles and the flaring nostrils of the man in front of him. He ignored the tight grip around his forearm.
“It’s the truth,” he said as uncaringly as he could, before leaning forward, to the side of Jae Shing’s face. “You cannot hide it.”
Whether he was talking about Kim Yoon Shik’s secret or his own desires was a question beyond his comprehension already.
There he stood, a breath away from Jae Shin, the tiniest distance that kept him from crossing the line he had sworn that he never, ever would.
Jae Shin glanced at him. He was about to get up and shove Yong Ha away. This much Yong Ha knew; it was part of those two thirds of happenings that Yong Ha was able to follow and predict.
He didn’t want to let go yet, however. Not yet.
In one single moment, the invisible wall broke with the slightest graze of a pair of lips against another.
Jae Shin froze, while his gaze fluttered about Yong Ha’s face as if it had appeared in front of him for the first time.
Like a criminal trespassing on a land that wasn’t his, Yong Ha searched for Jae Shin’s mouth again.
He tugged at Jae Shin’s lower lip and let it free with a smack. Jae Shin’s legs were in the way of his knees, so Yong Ha wrestled his way through and landed a kiss on Jae Shin’s chin. Then the corner of the mouth, and full on the lips.
Torment, the brief contacts were akin to torment, as sharp sparks between soft flesh, enticing Yong Ha to steal more.
Soon the surrounding, the voices and sounds sank into nothingness. Yong Ha forgot about caution.
He was only vaguely aware of Jae Shin’s hand clutch his knee and gripping higher. Jae Shin tried to say something but managed only to mutter something incomprehensible. As he moved his lips to speak, they bumped into Yong Ha’s, each time with more fervor and less hesitating, until his words resembled greedy kisses.
And Yong Ha’s right arm, Jae Shin Must have let go of it, since it was now free and roaming about Jae Shin’s chest. Beneath Yong Ha’s fingers, there was a pliant body, which responded to every caress. In a flash Yong Ha understood that this is what he had been craving for so long. What he denied himself even in his thoughts. What he now had.
Without thinking, he moved his hand past Jae Shin’s belly and down the hem of the trousers. Jae Shin gasped and sprung up, shoving Yong Ha off in the process.
The next moment Yong Ha lay ungracefully sprawled on the porch, and Moon Jae Shin was standing several paces away.
Yong Ha lifted his back, surprised. The reality - cold breeze, several doors of students’ rooms on his left - had shaken him abruptly from his daze. Somebody could have seen them, not to mention that Jae Shin... What would Jae Shin do?
It seemed that Jae Shin didn’t know where to look or which way to turn. “Wh…” Jae Shin said and turned away again. “Wh… what were you doing?” It came out bewildered and bashful more than angry.
Yong Ha didn’t respond right away, and Jae Shin glimpsed at him again.
Even in the half-dark, Jae Shin’s face was a clear mixture of embarrassment and confusion. A perfect mixture.
Yong Ha chuckled at himself and took a few more moments to think. What to answer?
“I was trying to see if you were really drunk.” He smiled, but he realized that he must have looked like an idiot.
Jae Shin let out an exasperated sigh, or groan to be more precise, and it seemed that he would kick Yong Ha from the porch and show him with his fist why he was called Crazy Horse. Yet then he shot another angry look and stormed inside his room with the roughly same speed he had run out of it before.
Yong Ha tilted his head and covered his mouth. His limbs were still afire, a sweet pain still churning in his guts.
He moved to pick his fan.
What had he done? What had they done? His mind echoed the silence of the sky and trees in front of the porch.
It was all right, however.
He tapped the fan on his lips.
Wasn’t life more fun if you stirred it up a bit? It would be all right.
Let Geol Oh mull over it. At least now he’d have something beside Kim Yoon Shik to think about. A man can deny himself what he covets only for so long, before both his body and his mind cave and follow his heart. No one knew that better than Goo Yong Ha. Moon Jae Shin would learn too, eventually.
Yong Ha lay down again.
And the next day, when Yong Ha would try to casually put his arm across Jae Shin’s shoulder, no doubt Jae Shin would push him away with even more vehemence than usual. Yet the moment before that, while Yong Ha’s fingers would still be winded round Moon Jae Shin’s shoulder, Jae Shin’s eyes might lose their focus and flicker away, and his lips might curl with embarrassment.
The expression on his face… Yong Ha was looking forward to that.
THE END
Sequel: Assumptions