Call Me Oppa (9/?)
Title: Call Me Oppa (9/?)
Pairing: Onew/Taemin
Length: 4,699w (35,144 total)
Summary: "Some people are just unlucky."
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 |
Chapter 7 | Chapter 8
C H A P T E R 9
Jinki's phone buzzed against his thigh, and then buzzed again - two text messages in quick succession. The third vibrated in his hands before he had time to flip the cover open. All of them were from Taemin:
hyung are you home?
key isn't answering his phone
idk what to do
Jinki stared at the last message for a moment before thumbing a reply, the only thing he could think of: what's wrong?
The reply came more than two minutes later, littered with typos: cn you cme over? brign a hat.
A hat? Jinki frowned at the text for a moment, trying to glean any other possible meaning, but nothing else made sense. A hat. Okay. Jinki dug around in his room for something Taemin would wear, and found an old black beanie in one of his drawers. He tucked it into his backpack and went downstairs. His mother was sitting at the kitchen island, sipping a glass of wine. The television wasn't on. It was eerie seeing her doing nothing but sitting in silence.
"Uh, I'm going over to a friend's," Jinki said. "Can I borrow the car?"
His mother finished off her glass. "Stop at the store on your way home," she said. "We're out of milk."
Jink caught the keys that she tossed him without question. She didn't ask where he was going that he needed to drive. He could be going to the noraebang on a weekday to get piss drunk before work, and what did she care? She didn't.
Jinki twisted the key ring onto his thumb, shaking the keys like music as he jogged to the car. Another text message vibrated against his thigh: key's still not answering. will u be here soon?
Jinki frowned at his phone. Be there in 5.
The front door opened slowly, and-
"Oh, holy shit."
Jinki covered his mouth, but the cuss had already slipped out. His eyes felt like they would pop out of his skull. He swallowed, and tried not to sound as shell-shocked as he probably looked. "Taemin-ah... what happened to your hair?"
Taemin sniffled and beckoned for Jinki to come inside. There were no cars in the driveway, so unless Taesun was upstairs, Taemin was home alone. He was in his pajamas, rolled-up plaid flannel and a tee-shirt, and he looked like he'd spent the better part of the morning crying. His eyes were red, cheeks puffy. There was a deep red mark on one side of his face. It looked like- rug burn?
But the shock came from Taemin's hair. Or the lack of it. It looked like someone had taken dull scissors and hacked, haphazardly, until it was short enough to leave the nape of his neck exposed. There were longer strands near his temples, chopped at a weird angle, some parts left long and some cut short. It looked like the kind of haircut a little girl would give a Barbie doll for a 'makeover'.
"What happened?" Jinki asked again.
Taemin rubbed his arms like he was cold, and shook his head; not ready to talk yet. He stepped over the mess of shoes by the door - they were usually so neatly stacked - and went to the stairs. He sat down heavily on the bottom step. There was one sneaker separated from the pack, sitting on the threshold between the foyer and the kitchen.
“Did you bring a hat?” Taemin asked. His voice sounded rough, scratchy.
Jinki pulled the beanie out of his backpack and tossed it over. Taemin tugged it on right away, hiding the mess of his hair. He hugged his knees to his chest and took in a shaky breath. It was impossible to watch - he looked like he’d burst into tears at any moment. “Do you want to talk about it?” Jinki asked.
Taemin laughed - not a ha ha kind of laugh, but the kind of laugh that someone gives when they’re at wit’s end, when they have to laugh or they’re going to cry or scream or burst into hysterics. He pulled at the sides of the beanie, tugging it over his ears, and then brushed furiously at the nape of his neck, swiping away hair clippings. “Not really,” he said. He laughed again, hmmf hmmf, bitter as salt. “I need to go into town. Get a... proper haircut.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Jinki wasn’t great at talking about bad things, but tasks he could do. Give him a job, something to fix, and he would get it done and then some. Taemin went upstairs to get dressed, and Jinki organized the shoes while he waited, stacking them in neat pairs by the door.
Taemin came back with all of his hair underneath the beanie, the long parts clipped back. He looked like a cancer patient with the beanie pulled over his ears, bald and bony, his eyes swollen and red.
“I know a place in town,” Jinki said, and reached for Taemin’s hand.
Taemin looked strange with short hair - still pretty, but it framed his face differently, made his cheeks look fuller, like he’d aged backwards overnight. He looked like a middle-schooler.
Jinki didn’t say that, because Taemin was already miserable about how young he looked most of the time. “You look...” Jinki tried, stalling for time, a word that Taemin would like without lying. “Cute. It’s cute.”
Taemin scoffed. He tossed his head and the gesture was completely different without the weight of long hair behind it; more of a nervous tic than unconscious flirting. “I look ten.”
They were sitting inside a fast-food joint, sucking on sodas and watching people pass the windows. Taemin was cramped into his chair, all of his limbs curled against his torso. He rested his chin in the dip between his knees, and held his soda with an arm curled around his thigh. He was trying to become as small as possible, like a hedgehog curling into a ball at the first sign of danger.
Shrugging further into the depths of his sweater, Taemin chewed on his straw until the top was a mangled mess, and when he tried to take a sip air whistled out instead of pop. “My dad cut it,” he said, voice bone-dry. “He thought it was getting too long. Said I looked like a girl. Like...” He swallowed heavily.
Taemin was looking over Jinki’s shoulder, not at his face. His eyes followed the arc of something, a bird taking flight maybe, and he gave a shuddering sigh, tugging his legs closer to his chest. “Actually, I don’t- I don’t think I want to talk about this right now.”
Jinki sighed. Did Taemin think he had the energy to coax these things out of him? He had homework due tomorrow morning. Things to do. “Okay,” Jinki said. He closed his eyes on the sight of Taemin fidgeting, worrying at his lip. “Don’t worry about it.”
There was a loud shout from the other end of the dining room, and then Taemin was enveloped in the arms of a near-hysterical Key.
"Taeminnie, Taeminnie, oh fuck, Taemin, I'm so sorry! I was with Changmin and I had my phone off and oh god, I'm so sorry. It'll never happen again!"
Taemin wrestled his way out of the hug. He had a look on his face like he was annoyed by the affection, but Jinki could tell he was grateful. Key ran his hands through Taemin's hair, mussing it, making it fall differently over his eyes. "It doesn't look so bad," he said.
Taemin grunted.
"Wanna come with me to the studio?" Key asked. "Might make you feel better to sweat it out."
"Jinki's here," Taemin said, shaking his head.
Key blinked. "He can come, can't he?"
There was a long silence as Taemin and Key conversed solely through meaningful stares. Key crossed his arms. "You haven't said anything?"
"Kibum-hyung, please."
"Taemin. You have to tell him."
"Tell me what?" Jinki looked at Taemin, who had his nose buried in the collar of his coat, and then at Key. "Tell me what?"
Taemin stood up. "I have to go to the bathroom."
Key didn't look pleased, but let him go. He slumped into the seat where Taemin had been, and drummed his fingers on the table. "Pabo," he muttered.
"Why can't I come to the studio?" Jinki wondered. He had never seen Taemin dance. It was a strange oversight - for something that was so important to Taemin, Jinki had never so much as seen him groove to a backbeat. "Is he embarrassed?"
Key shrugged. "Do I look like a mind reader? How should I know?"
"You know Taemin," Jinki said, a little bit accusatory. Key caught the implied superlative - you know Taemin better - and smiled sympathetically.
"Look," he said. "I don't know how to explain this, because if Taemin hasn't already told you, then it's not my place to do it. The studio is his space, you know? Dance is something really personal for him. He's not Lee Taemin at dance practice. He's this whole other creature."
Jinki frowned. He couldn't say that he understood.
When Taemin came back, he sat down next to Jinki and smiled through his teeth, that wide-open everything is fine smile, and dropped the subject like a rock.
The explanation didn't come out until days later, on the couch in Jinki's living room after his mother had gone to bed. Taemin was curled up against Jinki's side, half-watching the action movie on the screen. Towards the middle - when the hero was driving a car at full-speed through a series of explosions - Jinki thought that Taemin had fallen asleep; his breathing evened out, and his eyelashes were fluttering against Jinki's arm.
And then he made a soft sound, a quiet sniffle, turning his face further towards the crook of Jinki's arm. His shoulders jumped and shook. He swallowed several times in quick succession, like he was trying not to puke. Jinki looked away from the screen - it was still jarring to see Taemin with his hair like that, the nape of his neck weirdly naked.
The crying happened slowly, just shaky breaths at first, stuttering in-and-out, whistling through his teeth, and then the first sob cracked through, senselessly violent. Taemin burrowed further, until his head was pressed against the small of Jinki's back. He had his hands over his face as he gave in and sobbed. It wasn't that loud - what will I tell Eomma if she comes down? - but the way that Taemin was shaking seemed to rock the whole couch.
Jinki put his arms around Taemin's middle and hauled him upright, coaxing him to sit on top of Jinki instead of trying to occupy the space behind him. Taemin refused to look up - not that Jinki minded; it wasn't the best look on Taemin, swimming eyes and dripping nose. He snuffled wetly against the crook of Jinki's shoulder, and managed to gain a modicum of composure by following Jinki's whispered instructions: breathe slow, calm down, in through the nose, out through the mouth, calm and slow.
When Taemin caught his breath, Jinki thumbed the moisture off his eyes and said, "Okay, talk to me."
His voice soft and strange, Taemin whispered, "Jinki-hyung, I... want to be a girl. I should be one, but that's not- I mean, I know I'm not, but..." There was an awful crack to his voice, a note of near agony.
Jinki forced himself not to react to that statement. "Is that what Key wanted you to tell me?"
Taemin sniffed. "Yeah. I've always been like this, I just. I- please don't hate me."
Jinki couldn't say he entirely understood. Did that mean Taemin wanted to be a girl - like, surgery? Or just dress like one? All the same: "I don't hate you, Taemin. Nothing would make me hate you."
Barely whispering, Taemin told the story. He got home after dance practice and went into his room to find the place in shambles, everything torn apart, littered all over the floor. His father had found his underwear in the laundry, his panties, and shredded Taemin’s bedroom looking for everything else; all of Taemin’s girls’ clothing, his pilfered makeup and nail varnish, the jewellery that he wore underneath his sleeves at school. It was all in a garbage bag at the bottom of the stairs, trash for the curb.
And then he had demanded to know if Taemin was wearing panties under his jeans. Had grabbed onto Taemin’s belt loops and yanked him down the stairs - there were rug burns on his face, on his back, from the carpet - and then, and then...
Taemin faltered there. There was an obvious gap: his father tugged him down the stairs, shouting about underwear - “you need to man up”, Taemin quoted bitterly - and then jumped to his father taking him into the kitchen, and sobbing on the floor as his father hacked at his hair with kitchen scissors.
Taemin’s breathing was steady. He stared at the floor, eyes gone dry.
“It doesn’t look so bad,” Jinki said, carding his fingers through Taemin’s hair. “It kind of suits you.”
Taemin laughed at that, bitter, mirthless laughter. He didn’t stop for a long time, not for another entire car chase on the screen, and then he simply fell quiet and pensive. He curled up into a ball on the other side of the couch with his feet against Jinki's thighs, awake but still and silent.
There was a nurse sitting next to the bed when Jinki got there, and he immediately thought the worst. Complications. Pneumonia. Imminent death. His hands were shaking as he closed the door.
The nurse looked up from her crossword and smiled brightly. Deep red hairclip today, shaped like a rose. "Good morning, Jinki-yah! I was just keeping your father company on my break."
Deep breaths. Jinki tried to calm his racing heart. He forced a smile, and when the nurse excused herself he let out all of his air in one big breath, a sigh of relief that felt like losing ten pounds. "Well, fuck."
His father was reclined on the bed, sheets tucked neatly under his armpits. His stubble was getting really long, longer than Jinki had ever seen it. Soon it'd be a beard. Jinki took the seat where the nurse had been sitting and rested his chin on the side of the bed.
"I should ask about giving you a shave," he said. "How hard can it be? It's not like you'll move around too much. Or at all."
Without the stubble, Jinki's father probably wouldn't look so sick. Might look a bit better. He was definitely going to mention it to the nurse this time; he always forgot.
"You haven't missed much," Jinki went on. "Mom's starting to go back to work now. A little bit. Uncle Kyeochul is still kinda scared to come see you, but Taemin says that's probably normal. Speaking of... well. I guess I have a girlfriend."
It wasn't a lie; not really.
His father grunted. It looked like his eyelids fluttered for a moment, as though he was about to open them. Jinki didn't hold his breath - the nurses had warned him about things like this, these little signs. If he did happen to open his eyes, there was a big chance he wouldn't recognize Jinki. Might not know his own name, let alone his son's.
"She's really pretty," Jinki went on. "Maybe I'll bring her one day so that you can meet her." He considered for a moment. "I mean, you'd have to get a shave first. First impressions and all that."
No answer. Never was.
That nurse had the right idea. Maybe next week Jinki would bring a crossword.
Jinki liked nights like this, Saturdays when his mother went to bed early, and behind the relative safety of his closed door he could lay in the same bed with Taemin, limbs tangled together, sharing the same breath. Jinki listened for the catch in Taemin's breathing as he traced lines up his slender forearms, tickling his skin.
Taemin gasped when Jinki slipped a hand under his shirt to caress the valley between his hipbone and belly. “Hyung,” he hissed, “why are your hands so cold?”
Jinki chuckled against Taemin’s neck, and tucked his hands between Taemin’s thighs to warm them up. He not-quite-accidentally let his hand brush higher than it should have, just to hear Taemin shudder out a sigh.
“Hyung?” Taemin whispered, and Jinki turned his head so that his ear almost touched Taemin’s lips. “Hyung, can I ask you a question?”
“Hm?” Jinki made an affirmative sound low in his throat. Usually, he would have teased Taemin, you just asked me one, pabo, but he didn’t want to ruin the peace of the moment, the openness between them.
Taemin fidgeted, fighting for words, and stop-started a few times before he found a voice for his question. “Hyung, what’s the thing you want to do the most, um, to me?”
“Like, sexually?”
Taemin nodded slowly, and Jinki fought the urge to laugh - Taemin was being serious, and it was rare for him to bring up something like this. If he thought that Jinki was laughing at him, he might clam up and never bring it up again. They had fooled around since that one time, sure; making out, wandering hands. Taemin had even sucked Jinki off once, although Jinki came more from looking at Taemin, all nervous and blushing, completely unaware of how sexy he was, than from Taemin’s enthusiastic mouth.
Jinki knew exactly what he wanted to do to Taemin most. He'd been fantasizing about it for ages: fucking him into the mattress, so hard that his pretty eyes filled up with tears - but Jinki feigned embarrassment, covering his eyes with his sleeve. He gave what he hoped sounded like a nervous chuckle. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, um.” Taemin was impossibly adorable when he was nervous. He chewed his lip, and fidgeted with the hem of his sweater. “I don’t know- I was just... just wondering.”
“Usually people ask things like that because they want to share their answer,” Jinki said.
“Oh! But I don’t- I mean, I haven’t thought...” Taemin was caught and he knew it. He tried to hide his reddening face under the blanket, and when Jinki wouldn’t let him - just pulled him closer - Taemin squawked out an indignant, “Hyung!”
“Tell me what you want me to do to you,” Jinki whispered. He spoke from low in his chest, so that Taemin felt more than heard the words. Taemin shuddered and pressed his face into Jinki’s armpit.
“S’embarrassing,” he mumbled. “You first.”
“Nu-uh, you brought it up.”
Taemin burrowed further. “Iwannacallyouoppa.”
“What?”
Taemin lifted his face so that he wasn’t muffled by Jinki’s shirt. His eyes were squeezed shut, afraid to see the expression on Jinki’s face. “I wanna call you oppa instead of hyung.”
“Like... all the time?”
Jinki flashed back to the party where he had first kissed Taemin, and that brief peek of floral print in his pants before Taemin shied away, gasping, and refastened his jeans. That underwear hadn’t made a reappearance since that night - Taemin's father had thrown them out, anyway - but Jinki quickly filled in the mental image: Taemin in his flowery pink panties and a pleated skirt, slouching knee-highs and an untucked blouse, bending over and begging, oppa, oh oppa, please, I wanna feel you inside me. Taemin had to notice the boner suddenly pressing against his thigh.
“I don’t know,” Taemin whispered, mortified. “Maybe?”
Taemin straddling Jinki’s lap, skirt blossomed around his thighs, whining all high-pitched as he lowered his hips to Jinki’s lap, “Oppa, you’re so big...”
Taemin misinterpreted Jinki’s silence and started pulling away. He looked like he was about to cry. “I’m- oh, I’m sorry; that’s so weird. I... shit! Jinki-hyung, forget it. Don’t- mmf!”
Jinki shut him up with a hand over his mouth. He pulled Taemin into a bone-crushing hug, making sure that Taemin could feel his erection pressed between their legs. “Wanna hear mine?” He rasped.
Hesitantly, Taemin nodded.
“I want to fuck you,” Jinki said, forcing his voice to come steady, unashamed. “And I want you to wear a skirt and call me oppa while I do it.”
Taemin’s breath caught in the back of his throat. Jinki couldn’t see his face, but he could imagine the expression he had: wide eyes, lips parted in disbelief. He tensed for a brief moment - too much? too fast? - but then he pressed against Jinki in all the right ways and Jinki could feel that Taemin was hard. Taemin whimpered as his cock rubbed against Jinki’s leg, friction-hot.
“Oppa,” he whispered, testing the word.
Jinki couldn’t breathe. It was insanely hot, that word coming from Taemin’s lips. He looked like a girl, sometimes he acted like a girl, but it was so forbidden for him to use that word. It carried connotations that hyung didn’t have. To be a girl’s oppa required more closeness than a hyung; it implied that she looked to her oppa for protection, attention, affection.
“Turn around,” Jinki whispered. He felt Taemin tense, and then said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to fuck you right now. Just turn around.”
After a pause, Taemin did as he was asked. He rolled onto his side, facing away from Jinki. After a moment of fumbling, Jinki had both of their pants down to their knees. Jinki pulled Taemin's hips back until they were spooning, his erection pressed firmly against the crack of Taemin’s ass. “Say it,” he whispered into the shell of Taemin’s ear. “I wanna hear you call me oppa.”
Taemin shuddered, bending his head toward his shoulder as though Jinki's breath tickled. “Oppa,” he said, more sure this time. “Jinki-oppa, touch me.”
Jinki ran his free hand, the one that wasn’t pinned, over Taemin’s chest. He pinched his nipples in his fingers, twisting them until Taemin arched with a quiet, “ah!” His butt pressed against Jinki’s groin, and every arch and twitch made an unbearable friction on Jinki’s cock.
“Press your legs together,” Jinki instructed, rather pointlessly, since Taemin’s legs were already together, but Taemin tensed his thighs, seeming to get the point, sliding one leg over the other.
Jinki pushed forward until his cock slipped between Taemin’s thighs, breathing out harshly at the press of Taemin’s skin around him. Taemin was skinny enough to have a gap between his legs, but with one over the other there was barely a centimeter of space for Jinki to squeeze into. Taemin breathed out between his teeth as the head of Jinki’s cock brushed against his balls.
Jinki pulled back and spit quietly into the palm of his hand. There was too much friction, and he needed slide. He rubbed his spit over the head of his cock and then pushed between Taemin’s thighs again. This time he slid easily. He added more spit, until he could thrust between Taemin’s legs and it made a wet sound every time. He’d been holding onto Taemin’s hip, but slowly he reached around to his lower belly. His wrist bumped into Taemin’s cock, and Taemin jumped, sucking in his stomach, but he didn’t pull away.
“Can I touch you here, Minnie? Can I touch your clit?” Jinki asked. He let his hand slip a little lower to illustrate his point, and Taemin gasped. Very slowly, he nodded his head.
“Oppa,” he groaned, as Jinki closed his fist around the base of Taemin’s cock. Jinki didn’t start pumping right away, waiting for Taemin to tense or whisper stop, to give some kind of indication that he wasn’t ready. Taemin didn’t really like his cock touched in general, but for some reason this seemed to be okay.
“Oppa, oppa, please,” Taemin whispered. He turned his head, begging to be kissed. Jinki rested his weight on one elbow and leaned down to catch Taemin’s lips. He kissed back, biting at Jinki’s tongue, arching desperately. Jinki hardly had to move; Taemin rocked back-and-forth, pushing into the ring of Jinki’s hand, and then back against Jinki’s crotch, Jinki’s cock pressed tightly between his thighs. His eyes were squeezed shut. He panted through his lips in great heaving breaths, like he’d run a marathon.
“Taeminnie,” Jinki whispered.
“Oppa, don’t... call me something else. Don’t call me Taemin. It's Taeyeon. Call me Taeyeon.”
Taemin looked so far away, his chest heaving, hips moving of their own accord. He didn’t open his eyes once, like he was trying hard to imagine being somewhere else. Or someone else.
“Taeyeon,” Jinki hummed. It was weird how easy it was to say, how natural it sounded for Taemin to answer to that.
Taemin groaned low in his throat, and squeezed his legs together even tighter. He grabbed Jinki’s hand - at first Jinki thought to make him stop - and guided him to work it faster. Taemin spit into his fingers and then rubbed them over the head of his cock, making it easier for Jinki’s hand to slide quickly. Taemin moaned and whispered, “Fuck, oppa...”
“Such a dirty mouth for such a pretty girl,” Jinki muttered. He didn’t say it any louder than a mumble, low in his chest. He felt stupid making dirty talk, but Taemin squirmed and moaned. He loved it. He was begging for more. The muscles in his thighs kept tensing and easing, and Jinki started thrusting, and every brush of his cock that just missed his hole made Taemin shudder and whine, his voice catching as he begged for more, oppa, oppa, please, harder.
Taemin came first. He bit down on his lip, and then tensed, turning to bury his face in the pillow as he cried out. His hips bucked, and then he was coming all over Jinki’s hand, still flying over his length. His come leaked out, slicking up Jinki’s hand even more as it dripped between his fingers and added to the spit already lubing up Taemin’s length.
“Oppa, stop- ah, too much.” Taemin was trying to pull away from Jinki’s hand, grinding his hips back so that Jinki’s cock went further between his thighs. He whimpered.
Jinki guided Taemin to lift one knee, temporarily relieving the pressure around his erection. He wiped the spit and come over his cock, sticky wet, and then pressed Taemin’s legs together again. Taemin made a soft, girlish sound - somewhere between a whine and a sigh. He wiggled his butt in Jinki’s lap, an encouragement to go on.
Jinki groaned as Taemin’s thighs closed around his cock. It would only take a slight adjustment for him to change angles and push inside of Taemin’s hole. There was probably enough slickness, enough come and spit and sweat to allow him to slip inside with hardly any resistance. But Taemin started moving his feet, rubbing up and down his calves so that his thighs brushed together, the friction becoming almost painfully tight around Jinki’s cock before sliding loose, tightening again, sliding loose.
“Tae... Taeyeon, I’m gonna come,” he whispered. He drooled a little in Taemin’s hair, but Taemin didn’t seem to mind. He nodded and shifted his hips around more, until Jinki grabbed onto his hipbones to still him - hold on, too fast! His orgasm crashed over him like a wave, unfurling from low in his belly and then rising, rising...
He bit down on his tongue when he came, a pain he barely felt in light of the ohmygodholyfuck rushing through him as he shot between Taemin’s legs. He kept thrusting, sliding the head of his cock through his come, slick and wet. He was shaking - he’d never came so hard in his life.
Taemin twisted around to face Jinki, wincing at the stickiness between his thighs. Jinki reached over to the nightstand for a tissue, and then helped Taemin wipe up the mess. “That was...” Jinki started, but couldn’t think of a word to describe the intensity. “That was... wow.”
“Yeah,” Taemin said. He was smiling. “Wow.”
back | next
wynnetimate's master list.
Pairing: Onew/Taemin
Length: 4,699w (35,144 total)
Summary: "Some people are just unlucky."
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 |
Chapter 7 | Chapter 8
C H A P T E R 9
Jinki's phone buzzed against his thigh, and then buzzed again - two text messages in quick succession. The third vibrated in his hands before he had time to flip the cover open. All of them were from Taemin:
hyung are you home?
key isn't answering his phone
idk what to do
Jinki stared at the last message for a moment before thumbing a reply, the only thing he could think of: what's wrong?
The reply came more than two minutes later, littered with typos: cn you cme over? brign a hat.
A hat? Jinki frowned at the text for a moment, trying to glean any other possible meaning, but nothing else made sense. A hat. Okay. Jinki dug around in his room for something Taemin would wear, and found an old black beanie in one of his drawers. He tucked it into his backpack and went downstairs. His mother was sitting at the kitchen island, sipping a glass of wine. The television wasn't on. It was eerie seeing her doing nothing but sitting in silence.
"Uh, I'm going over to a friend's," Jinki said. "Can I borrow the car?"
His mother finished off her glass. "Stop at the store on your way home," she said. "We're out of milk."
Jink caught the keys that she tossed him without question. She didn't ask where he was going that he needed to drive. He could be going to the noraebang on a weekday to get piss drunk before work, and what did she care? She didn't.
Jinki twisted the key ring onto his thumb, shaking the keys like music as he jogged to the car. Another text message vibrated against his thigh: key's still not answering. will u be here soon?
Jinki frowned at his phone. Be there in 5.
The front door opened slowly, and-
"Oh, holy shit."
Jinki covered his mouth, but the cuss had already slipped out. His eyes felt like they would pop out of his skull. He swallowed, and tried not to sound as shell-shocked as he probably looked. "Taemin-ah... what happened to your hair?"
Taemin sniffled and beckoned for Jinki to come inside. There were no cars in the driveway, so unless Taesun was upstairs, Taemin was home alone. He was in his pajamas, rolled-up plaid flannel and a tee-shirt, and he looked like he'd spent the better part of the morning crying. His eyes were red, cheeks puffy. There was a deep red mark on one side of his face. It looked like- rug burn?
But the shock came from Taemin's hair. Or the lack of it. It looked like someone had taken dull scissors and hacked, haphazardly, until it was short enough to leave the nape of his neck exposed. There were longer strands near his temples, chopped at a weird angle, some parts left long and some cut short. It looked like the kind of haircut a little girl would give a Barbie doll for a 'makeover'.
"What happened?" Jinki asked again.
Taemin rubbed his arms like he was cold, and shook his head; not ready to talk yet. He stepped over the mess of shoes by the door - they were usually so neatly stacked - and went to the stairs. He sat down heavily on the bottom step. There was one sneaker separated from the pack, sitting on the threshold between the foyer and the kitchen.
“Did you bring a hat?” Taemin asked. His voice sounded rough, scratchy.
Jinki pulled the beanie out of his backpack and tossed it over. Taemin tugged it on right away, hiding the mess of his hair. He hugged his knees to his chest and took in a shaky breath. It was impossible to watch - he looked like he’d burst into tears at any moment. “Do you want to talk about it?” Jinki asked.
Taemin laughed - not a ha ha kind of laugh, but the kind of laugh that someone gives when they’re at wit’s end, when they have to laugh or they’re going to cry or scream or burst into hysterics. He pulled at the sides of the beanie, tugging it over his ears, and then brushed furiously at the nape of his neck, swiping away hair clippings. “Not really,” he said. He laughed again, hmmf hmmf, bitter as salt. “I need to go into town. Get a... proper haircut.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Jinki wasn’t great at talking about bad things, but tasks he could do. Give him a job, something to fix, and he would get it done and then some. Taemin went upstairs to get dressed, and Jinki organized the shoes while he waited, stacking them in neat pairs by the door.
Taemin came back with all of his hair underneath the beanie, the long parts clipped back. He looked like a cancer patient with the beanie pulled over his ears, bald and bony, his eyes swollen and red.
“I know a place in town,” Jinki said, and reached for Taemin’s hand.
Taemin looked strange with short hair - still pretty, but it framed his face differently, made his cheeks look fuller, like he’d aged backwards overnight. He looked like a middle-schooler.
Jinki didn’t say that, because Taemin was already miserable about how young he looked most of the time. “You look...” Jinki tried, stalling for time, a word that Taemin would like without lying. “Cute. It’s cute.”
Taemin scoffed. He tossed his head and the gesture was completely different without the weight of long hair behind it; more of a nervous tic than unconscious flirting. “I look ten.”
They were sitting inside a fast-food joint, sucking on sodas and watching people pass the windows. Taemin was cramped into his chair, all of his limbs curled against his torso. He rested his chin in the dip between his knees, and held his soda with an arm curled around his thigh. He was trying to become as small as possible, like a hedgehog curling into a ball at the first sign of danger.
Shrugging further into the depths of his sweater, Taemin chewed on his straw until the top was a mangled mess, and when he tried to take a sip air whistled out instead of pop. “My dad cut it,” he said, voice bone-dry. “He thought it was getting too long. Said I looked like a girl. Like...” He swallowed heavily.
Taemin was looking over Jinki’s shoulder, not at his face. His eyes followed the arc of something, a bird taking flight maybe, and he gave a shuddering sigh, tugging his legs closer to his chest. “Actually, I don’t- I don’t think I want to talk about this right now.”
Jinki sighed. Did Taemin think he had the energy to coax these things out of him? He had homework due tomorrow morning. Things to do. “Okay,” Jinki said. He closed his eyes on the sight of Taemin fidgeting, worrying at his lip. “Don’t worry about it.”
There was a loud shout from the other end of the dining room, and then Taemin was enveloped in the arms of a near-hysterical Key.
"Taeminnie, Taeminnie, oh fuck, Taemin, I'm so sorry! I was with Changmin and I had my phone off and oh god, I'm so sorry. It'll never happen again!"
Taemin wrestled his way out of the hug. He had a look on his face like he was annoyed by the affection, but Jinki could tell he was grateful. Key ran his hands through Taemin's hair, mussing it, making it fall differently over his eyes. "It doesn't look so bad," he said.
Taemin grunted.
"Wanna come with me to the studio?" Key asked. "Might make you feel better to sweat it out."
"Jinki's here," Taemin said, shaking his head.
Key blinked. "He can come, can't he?"
There was a long silence as Taemin and Key conversed solely through meaningful stares. Key crossed his arms. "You haven't said anything?"
"Kibum-hyung, please."
"Taemin. You have to tell him."
"Tell me what?" Jinki looked at Taemin, who had his nose buried in the collar of his coat, and then at Key. "Tell me what?"
Taemin stood up. "I have to go to the bathroom."
Key didn't look pleased, but let him go. He slumped into the seat where Taemin had been, and drummed his fingers on the table. "Pabo," he muttered.
"Why can't I come to the studio?" Jinki wondered. He had never seen Taemin dance. It was a strange oversight - for something that was so important to Taemin, Jinki had never so much as seen him groove to a backbeat. "Is he embarrassed?"
Key shrugged. "Do I look like a mind reader? How should I know?"
"You know Taemin," Jinki said, a little bit accusatory. Key caught the implied superlative - you know Taemin better - and smiled sympathetically.
"Look," he said. "I don't know how to explain this, because if Taemin hasn't already told you, then it's not my place to do it. The studio is his space, you know? Dance is something really personal for him. He's not Lee Taemin at dance practice. He's this whole other creature."
Jinki frowned. He couldn't say that he understood.
When Taemin came back, he sat down next to Jinki and smiled through his teeth, that wide-open everything is fine smile, and dropped the subject like a rock.
The explanation didn't come out until days later, on the couch in Jinki's living room after his mother had gone to bed. Taemin was curled up against Jinki's side, half-watching the action movie on the screen. Towards the middle - when the hero was driving a car at full-speed through a series of explosions - Jinki thought that Taemin had fallen asleep; his breathing evened out, and his eyelashes were fluttering against Jinki's arm.
And then he made a soft sound, a quiet sniffle, turning his face further towards the crook of Jinki's arm. His shoulders jumped and shook. He swallowed several times in quick succession, like he was trying not to puke. Jinki looked away from the screen - it was still jarring to see Taemin with his hair like that, the nape of his neck weirdly naked.
The crying happened slowly, just shaky breaths at first, stuttering in-and-out, whistling through his teeth, and then the first sob cracked through, senselessly violent. Taemin burrowed further, until his head was pressed against the small of Jinki's back. He had his hands over his face as he gave in and sobbed. It wasn't that loud - what will I tell Eomma if she comes down? - but the way that Taemin was shaking seemed to rock the whole couch.
Jinki put his arms around Taemin's middle and hauled him upright, coaxing him to sit on top of Jinki instead of trying to occupy the space behind him. Taemin refused to look up - not that Jinki minded; it wasn't the best look on Taemin, swimming eyes and dripping nose. He snuffled wetly against the crook of Jinki's shoulder, and managed to gain a modicum of composure by following Jinki's whispered instructions: breathe slow, calm down, in through the nose, out through the mouth, calm and slow.
When Taemin caught his breath, Jinki thumbed the moisture off his eyes and said, "Okay, talk to me."
His voice soft and strange, Taemin whispered, "Jinki-hyung, I... want to be a girl. I should be one, but that's not- I mean, I know I'm not, but..." There was an awful crack to his voice, a note of near agony.
Jinki forced himself not to react to that statement. "Is that what Key wanted you to tell me?"
Taemin sniffed. "Yeah. I've always been like this, I just. I- please don't hate me."
Jinki couldn't say he entirely understood. Did that mean Taemin wanted to be a girl - like, surgery? Or just dress like one? All the same: "I don't hate you, Taemin. Nothing would make me hate you."
Barely whispering, Taemin told the story. He got home after dance practice and went into his room to find the place in shambles, everything torn apart, littered all over the floor. His father had found his underwear in the laundry, his panties, and shredded Taemin’s bedroom looking for everything else; all of Taemin’s girls’ clothing, his pilfered makeup and nail varnish, the jewellery that he wore underneath his sleeves at school. It was all in a garbage bag at the bottom of the stairs, trash for the curb.
And then he had demanded to know if Taemin was wearing panties under his jeans. Had grabbed onto Taemin’s belt loops and yanked him down the stairs - there were rug burns on his face, on his back, from the carpet - and then, and then...
Taemin faltered there. There was an obvious gap: his father tugged him down the stairs, shouting about underwear - “you need to man up”, Taemin quoted bitterly - and then jumped to his father taking him into the kitchen, and sobbing on the floor as his father hacked at his hair with kitchen scissors.
Taemin’s breathing was steady. He stared at the floor, eyes gone dry.
“It doesn’t look so bad,” Jinki said, carding his fingers through Taemin’s hair. “It kind of suits you.”
Taemin laughed at that, bitter, mirthless laughter. He didn’t stop for a long time, not for another entire car chase on the screen, and then he simply fell quiet and pensive. He curled up into a ball on the other side of the couch with his feet against Jinki's thighs, awake but still and silent.
There was a nurse sitting next to the bed when Jinki got there, and he immediately thought the worst. Complications. Pneumonia. Imminent death. His hands were shaking as he closed the door.
The nurse looked up from her crossword and smiled brightly. Deep red hairclip today, shaped like a rose. "Good morning, Jinki-yah! I was just keeping your father company on my break."
Deep breaths. Jinki tried to calm his racing heart. He forced a smile, and when the nurse excused herself he let out all of his air in one big breath, a sigh of relief that felt like losing ten pounds. "Well, fuck."
His father was reclined on the bed, sheets tucked neatly under his armpits. His stubble was getting really long, longer than Jinki had ever seen it. Soon it'd be a beard. Jinki took the seat where the nurse had been sitting and rested his chin on the side of the bed.
"I should ask about giving you a shave," he said. "How hard can it be? It's not like you'll move around too much. Or at all."
Without the stubble, Jinki's father probably wouldn't look so sick. Might look a bit better. He was definitely going to mention it to the nurse this time; he always forgot.
"You haven't missed much," Jinki went on. "Mom's starting to go back to work now. A little bit. Uncle Kyeochul is still kinda scared to come see you, but Taemin says that's probably normal. Speaking of... well. I guess I have a girlfriend."
It wasn't a lie; not really.
His father grunted. It looked like his eyelids fluttered for a moment, as though he was about to open them. Jinki didn't hold his breath - the nurses had warned him about things like this, these little signs. If he did happen to open his eyes, there was a big chance he wouldn't recognize Jinki. Might not know his own name, let alone his son's.
"She's really pretty," Jinki went on. "Maybe I'll bring her one day so that you can meet her." He considered for a moment. "I mean, you'd have to get a shave first. First impressions and all that."
No answer. Never was.
That nurse had the right idea. Maybe next week Jinki would bring a crossword.
Jinki liked nights like this, Saturdays when his mother went to bed early, and behind the relative safety of his closed door he could lay in the same bed with Taemin, limbs tangled together, sharing the same breath. Jinki listened for the catch in Taemin's breathing as he traced lines up his slender forearms, tickling his skin.
Taemin gasped when Jinki slipped a hand under his shirt to caress the valley between his hipbone and belly. “Hyung,” he hissed, “why are your hands so cold?”
Jinki chuckled against Taemin’s neck, and tucked his hands between Taemin’s thighs to warm them up. He not-quite-accidentally let his hand brush higher than it should have, just to hear Taemin shudder out a sigh.
“Hyung?” Taemin whispered, and Jinki turned his head so that his ear almost touched Taemin’s lips. “Hyung, can I ask you a question?”
“Hm?” Jinki made an affirmative sound low in his throat. Usually, he would have teased Taemin, you just asked me one, pabo, but he didn’t want to ruin the peace of the moment, the openness between them.
Taemin fidgeted, fighting for words, and stop-started a few times before he found a voice for his question. “Hyung, what’s the thing you want to do the most, um, to me?”
“Like, sexually?”
Taemin nodded slowly, and Jinki fought the urge to laugh - Taemin was being serious, and it was rare for him to bring up something like this. If he thought that Jinki was laughing at him, he might clam up and never bring it up again. They had fooled around since that one time, sure; making out, wandering hands. Taemin had even sucked Jinki off once, although Jinki came more from looking at Taemin, all nervous and blushing, completely unaware of how sexy he was, than from Taemin’s enthusiastic mouth.
Jinki knew exactly what he wanted to do to Taemin most. He'd been fantasizing about it for ages: fucking him into the mattress, so hard that his pretty eyes filled up with tears - but Jinki feigned embarrassment, covering his eyes with his sleeve. He gave what he hoped sounded like a nervous chuckle. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, um.” Taemin was impossibly adorable when he was nervous. He chewed his lip, and fidgeted with the hem of his sweater. “I don’t know- I was just... just wondering.”
“Usually people ask things like that because they want to share their answer,” Jinki said.
“Oh! But I don’t- I mean, I haven’t thought...” Taemin was caught and he knew it. He tried to hide his reddening face under the blanket, and when Jinki wouldn’t let him - just pulled him closer - Taemin squawked out an indignant, “Hyung!”
“Tell me what you want me to do to you,” Jinki whispered. He spoke from low in his chest, so that Taemin felt more than heard the words. Taemin shuddered and pressed his face into Jinki’s armpit.
“S’embarrassing,” he mumbled. “You first.”
“Nu-uh, you brought it up.”
Taemin burrowed further. “Iwannacallyouoppa.”
“What?”
Taemin lifted his face so that he wasn’t muffled by Jinki’s shirt. His eyes were squeezed shut, afraid to see the expression on Jinki’s face. “I wanna call you oppa instead of hyung.”
“Like... all the time?”
Jinki flashed back to the party where he had first kissed Taemin, and that brief peek of floral print in his pants before Taemin shied away, gasping, and refastened his jeans. That underwear hadn’t made a reappearance since that night - Taemin's father had thrown them out, anyway - but Jinki quickly filled in the mental image: Taemin in his flowery pink panties and a pleated skirt, slouching knee-highs and an untucked blouse, bending over and begging, oppa, oh oppa, please, I wanna feel you inside me. Taemin had to notice the boner suddenly pressing against his thigh.
“I don’t know,” Taemin whispered, mortified. “Maybe?”
Taemin straddling Jinki’s lap, skirt blossomed around his thighs, whining all high-pitched as he lowered his hips to Jinki’s lap, “Oppa, you’re so big...”
Taemin misinterpreted Jinki’s silence and started pulling away. He looked like he was about to cry. “I’m- oh, I’m sorry; that’s so weird. I... shit! Jinki-hyung, forget it. Don’t- mmf!”
Jinki shut him up with a hand over his mouth. He pulled Taemin into a bone-crushing hug, making sure that Taemin could feel his erection pressed between their legs. “Wanna hear mine?” He rasped.
Hesitantly, Taemin nodded.
“I want to fuck you,” Jinki said, forcing his voice to come steady, unashamed. “And I want you to wear a skirt and call me oppa while I do it.”
Taemin’s breath caught in the back of his throat. Jinki couldn’t see his face, but he could imagine the expression he had: wide eyes, lips parted in disbelief. He tensed for a brief moment - too much? too fast? - but then he pressed against Jinki in all the right ways and Jinki could feel that Taemin was hard. Taemin whimpered as his cock rubbed against Jinki’s leg, friction-hot.
“Oppa,” he whispered, testing the word.
Jinki couldn’t breathe. It was insanely hot, that word coming from Taemin’s lips. He looked like a girl, sometimes he acted like a girl, but it was so forbidden for him to use that word. It carried connotations that hyung didn’t have. To be a girl’s oppa required more closeness than a hyung; it implied that she looked to her oppa for protection, attention, affection.
“Turn around,” Jinki whispered. He felt Taemin tense, and then said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to fuck you right now. Just turn around.”
After a pause, Taemin did as he was asked. He rolled onto his side, facing away from Jinki. After a moment of fumbling, Jinki had both of their pants down to their knees. Jinki pulled Taemin's hips back until they were spooning, his erection pressed firmly against the crack of Taemin’s ass. “Say it,” he whispered into the shell of Taemin’s ear. “I wanna hear you call me oppa.”
Taemin shuddered, bending his head toward his shoulder as though Jinki's breath tickled. “Oppa,” he said, more sure this time. “Jinki-oppa, touch me.”
Jinki ran his free hand, the one that wasn’t pinned, over Taemin’s chest. He pinched his nipples in his fingers, twisting them until Taemin arched with a quiet, “ah!” His butt pressed against Jinki’s groin, and every arch and twitch made an unbearable friction on Jinki’s cock.
“Press your legs together,” Jinki instructed, rather pointlessly, since Taemin’s legs were already together, but Taemin tensed his thighs, seeming to get the point, sliding one leg over the other.
Jinki pushed forward until his cock slipped between Taemin’s thighs, breathing out harshly at the press of Taemin’s skin around him. Taemin was skinny enough to have a gap between his legs, but with one over the other there was barely a centimeter of space for Jinki to squeeze into. Taemin breathed out between his teeth as the head of Jinki’s cock brushed against his balls.
Jinki pulled back and spit quietly into the palm of his hand. There was too much friction, and he needed slide. He rubbed his spit over the head of his cock and then pushed between Taemin’s thighs again. This time he slid easily. He added more spit, until he could thrust between Taemin’s legs and it made a wet sound every time. He’d been holding onto Taemin’s hip, but slowly he reached around to his lower belly. His wrist bumped into Taemin’s cock, and Taemin jumped, sucking in his stomach, but he didn’t pull away.
“Can I touch you here, Minnie? Can I touch your clit?” Jinki asked. He let his hand slip a little lower to illustrate his point, and Taemin gasped. Very slowly, he nodded his head.
“Oppa,” he groaned, as Jinki closed his fist around the base of Taemin’s cock. Jinki didn’t start pumping right away, waiting for Taemin to tense or whisper stop, to give some kind of indication that he wasn’t ready. Taemin didn’t really like his cock touched in general, but for some reason this seemed to be okay.
“Oppa, oppa, please,” Taemin whispered. He turned his head, begging to be kissed. Jinki rested his weight on one elbow and leaned down to catch Taemin’s lips. He kissed back, biting at Jinki’s tongue, arching desperately. Jinki hardly had to move; Taemin rocked back-and-forth, pushing into the ring of Jinki’s hand, and then back against Jinki’s crotch, Jinki’s cock pressed tightly between his thighs. His eyes were squeezed shut. He panted through his lips in great heaving breaths, like he’d run a marathon.
“Taeminnie,” Jinki whispered.
“Oppa, don’t... call me something else. Don’t call me Taemin. It's Taeyeon. Call me Taeyeon.”
Taemin looked so far away, his chest heaving, hips moving of their own accord. He didn’t open his eyes once, like he was trying hard to imagine being somewhere else. Or someone else.
“Taeyeon,” Jinki hummed. It was weird how easy it was to say, how natural it sounded for Taemin to answer to that.
Taemin groaned low in his throat, and squeezed his legs together even tighter. He grabbed Jinki’s hand - at first Jinki thought to make him stop - and guided him to work it faster. Taemin spit into his fingers and then rubbed them over the head of his cock, making it easier for Jinki’s hand to slide quickly. Taemin moaned and whispered, “Fuck, oppa...”
“Such a dirty mouth for such a pretty girl,” Jinki muttered. He didn’t say it any louder than a mumble, low in his chest. He felt stupid making dirty talk, but Taemin squirmed and moaned. He loved it. He was begging for more. The muscles in his thighs kept tensing and easing, and Jinki started thrusting, and every brush of his cock that just missed his hole made Taemin shudder and whine, his voice catching as he begged for more, oppa, oppa, please, harder.
Taemin came first. He bit down on his lip, and then tensed, turning to bury his face in the pillow as he cried out. His hips bucked, and then he was coming all over Jinki’s hand, still flying over his length. His come leaked out, slicking up Jinki’s hand even more as it dripped between his fingers and added to the spit already lubing up Taemin’s length.
“Oppa, stop- ah, too much.” Taemin was trying to pull away from Jinki’s hand, grinding his hips back so that Jinki’s cock went further between his thighs. He whimpered.
Jinki guided Taemin to lift one knee, temporarily relieving the pressure around his erection. He wiped the spit and come over his cock, sticky wet, and then pressed Taemin’s legs together again. Taemin made a soft, girlish sound - somewhere between a whine and a sigh. He wiggled his butt in Jinki’s lap, an encouragement to go on.
Jinki groaned as Taemin’s thighs closed around his cock. It would only take a slight adjustment for him to change angles and push inside of Taemin’s hole. There was probably enough slickness, enough come and spit and sweat to allow him to slip inside with hardly any resistance. But Taemin started moving his feet, rubbing up and down his calves so that his thighs brushed together, the friction becoming almost painfully tight around Jinki’s cock before sliding loose, tightening again, sliding loose.
“Tae... Taeyeon, I’m gonna come,” he whispered. He drooled a little in Taemin’s hair, but Taemin didn’t seem to mind. He nodded and shifted his hips around more, until Jinki grabbed onto his hipbones to still him - hold on, too fast! His orgasm crashed over him like a wave, unfurling from low in his belly and then rising, rising...
He bit down on his tongue when he came, a pain he barely felt in light of the ohmygodholyfuck rushing through him as he shot between Taemin’s legs. He kept thrusting, sliding the head of his cock through his come, slick and wet. He was shaking - he’d never came so hard in his life.
Taemin twisted around to face Jinki, wincing at the stickiness between his thighs. Jinki reached over to the nightstand for a tissue, and then helped Taemin wipe up the mess. “That was...” Jinki started, but couldn’t think of a word to describe the intensity. “That was... wow.”
“Yeah,” Taemin said. He was smiling. “Wow.”
back | next
wynnetimate's master list.