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[ fic ] anticlimax

2014-08-16T08:23:05Z

B1A4 | baro/gongchan/cnu | PG | 2,500 w
warnings/notes: implied character death

the world does not end with a bang.
written for b1a4ss summer 2014

The world didn’t end in a single day, it took time to break and crumble. It took time for cities to flood, for the food supply to waste away, for things to explode and the dust to settle like cement in their lungs. It took time for people to die – it wouldn’t take that long, but still, it took time. It was happening and everyone knew it. Technology wouldn’t save anyone but it would prolong the process. And people continued to live, if it could be called that; they hid, locked themselves up in shelters, as if living another day in a metal box was some kind of victory, as if living one more day meant being saved.

The world didn’t end in a day; instead, it dragged on like a wasting illness.

The exact expiry date was a bit up in the air, maybe it would be tomorrow or a week from today, maybe it was yesterday. Maybe it was the day that the world collectively hit the point of no return, but who knew when that was. Frankly, Chansik didn’t care.

“Do we have everything?”

Dongwoo was going down a list, meticulous as always. And Sunwoo laughed, “Does it matter?”

Some things didn’t change, can’t change, and ultimately that was what would kill them all but Chansik was glad for this at least. He was glad for Dongwoo, he was glad for Sunwoo.

“Let’s just get going,” Chansik said as he loaded the last of their things into the car. It was going to be a long drive to nowhere. If the world was ending anyways there was no point in sitting around, might as well go somewhere.

“Let me drive!” Sunwoo shouted excitedly, waving his arm as if there was any way for Dongwoo to not see him.

“You don’t have a licence.”

“I don’t think we’ll get in trouble for it.”

They got going. There was nowhere they had to be, and they didn’t even have solid plans as to where they were going, but the clock was ticking and there wasn’t a minute to lose. They could die today, maybe a landslide or one of them could burst into flame, it could be anything and it could be today. Or tomorrow, or the day after, that kind of uncertainty could light a fire under anyone’s ass, even Dongwoo’s. He even let Sunwoo drive.

“It’s kind of like being on a roller coaster,” Chansik commented, jostling around in the back seat.

It wasn’t that Sunwoo was a bad driver, it was that the roads were ruined, and sometimes not there at all. It was impossible to tell if Sunwoo was a good driver or a horrible driver in these conditions.

“I hate roller coasters.”

“Like the part when you’re going up the slope, super slow and super noisy.”

“That’s the second worst part,” Dongwoo whined, clutching at the door. He was starting to look a little green in the face but they’d all begun to look a little bit ashy as of late, so maybe it was just that.

“Kungkungkung kungkungkung kung! Hyung, stop being a party pooper!” Sunwoo shouted over the noise of the car and the road; he laughed.

Dongwoo laughed too, flat and tired and maybe scared or bitter. “This is the worst party ever.”

“Hey,” Chansik protested, kicking the back of Dongwoo’s seat. They were driving along the coast, but the coast had moved. They were driving down the wrong side of the road because the right side was missing. There wasn’t a whole lot of silver lining and Chansik had always been more of a pessimist than an optimist.

He sighed. “At least we’re together.”

They switched seats around noon, halfway to China. It was taking longer than they expected, not that they had any set destination in mind or a schedule to keep – but they were heading in that general direction while avoiding areas that they couldn’t navigate through with the car. They only had the tank of gas they started with and a little extra, at this rate Chansik wondered if they’d even get to China.

Of course, it didn’t really matter.

They stopped, they peed, they ate a little and they rotated seats. Sunwoo sat in the back, legs thrown across the seats, head resting against the window.

“You’re going to fall off the seat.”

“Put your seatbelt on.”

“You’re going to fall off the seat,” Chansik insisted again, with a laugh. And of course, Sunwoo buckled his seatbelt but stretched and twisted it so that he could still sit the same way. Dongwoo rolled his eyes but let it drop, set it aside as a lost cause for now.

Not three minutes down the ‘road’ they hit something; it was already a good run actually. Near where the DMZ used to be the road had been made up of nothing but dipping holes in the ground and jagged mounds of debris they had to drive around. At least they had a good two minutes of flat road before the car tossed roughly and Sunwoo smacked his head against the back of Chansik’s seat as he fell off the seat.

“Told you.”

The sun started to set at 3 PM. Chansik wasn’t sure why, there weren’t news broadcasts or fearful articles anymore, it was just silent, but he supposed why wasn’t really important. Knowing why wouldn’t make a difference. The sky was painted in muddy violet hues with some reds peering through the clouds like gashes against the sky.

Dongwoo’s head was resting on one of Chansik’s shoulders and Sunwoo’s on the other.

It was only 3PM but the sun was setting and somehow, it felt like it’d been a long day. The three of them sat in the backseat of the car, side by side. They were parked at the end of the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, at the Dandong side. Today was the first time Chansik had traveled out of the country.

Driving across the bridge the water levels had risen so high that it was practically level with the bridge, sticky looking water lapped at the edges, it had become a concrete beach. They could have driven right into the water.

The sky was darkening, going from murky violets to dirty grays, melting together with the dark water, it swallowed the sun, swallowed everything until even the horizon seemed to vanish into nothing. It took a while but the three of them sat there by the water’s edge to watch until everything was dark.

“Watch the sunset in another country, check.”

It was a long list, one that they probably wouldn’t finish but it was one less thing left undone, one less thing to regret. There were a lot of things on that list that would not be completed, could not, but now wasn’t the time to think about it.

“What should we do tomorrow?” Dongwoo asked, sighed warm and soft against Chansik’s neck. He was relaxing finally, after being tense and nervous the whole day, leaning heavily against Chansik.

Sunwoo turned against Chansik, threw a hand over his waist, stretched across him and touched Dongwoo’s wrist. The world was so dark like this; it was cooling down fast outside, but nestled between Dongwoo and Sunwoo it wasn’t bad at all.

“Let’s go skinny dipping.”

There was a groan and a laugh on each side of Chansik, against his neck.

“We’ll discuss it tomorrow,” Dongwoo said reasonably as he spread their blankets over the three of them.

“Okay.” It was still early even though it was so dark but Chansik was tired. His entire body felt like an excess weight, his bones seemed to be trying to drag him down into the ground; there was something in his chest, sitting on his diaphragm like bricks. He set his hand on top of Sunwoo’s, turned his face to press his nose into Dongwoo’s hair.

“Tomorrow.”

It was early but he wanted to sleep now, the sooner he slept the sooner tomorrow would come.

Sunwoo woke them up the next day. The sky was dim and gray but that was as bright as it’d get.

“Come on, we’ve got things to do,” Sunwoo urged as he rubbed at his eyes blurrily with one hand and shoved at Chansik’s shoulder with his other. He reached over Chansik to pull at Dongwoo’s cheek and hid a cough with a laugh.

Dongwoo uncurled from Chansik’s side, squeezed his eyes shut tight before opening them forcefully. “I’m up, stop it,” he batted at Sunwoo’s hand. Chansik was still asleep, shoulders rising and falling in uneven breaths.

Dongwoo smiled fondly, thinly; he leaned down to blow at Chansik’s ear. “Chan-ah, wake up. Didn’t you want to go skinny dipping?”

His voice was raspy and rough, and it wasn’t from sleep.

Sunwoo laughed, coughed, felt little pebbles scrape up and down his throat. “So you’re on board now?”

“Anything to get him to wake up.”

Chansik woke up after some coaxing from Dongwoo, Sunwoo had gotten breakfast ready while Dongwoo poked and kissed Chansik awake. Jam and crackers and a bottle of water each, mostly Sunwoo had waited, leaning against the side of the car.

He kept the conversation going as much as he could while they ate, laughed every so often as he felt his throat tighten uncomfortably. The crackers were dry and it felt like something sharp and jagged was scraping its way down his throat every time he tried to swallow.

“I bet we could find a boat and take it out,” Sunwoo rambled, going on and on about their plans for the day.

“I don’t feel like drowning to death,” Dongwoo commented lightly as he tossed a carton of banana milk to him. Sunwoo caught it reflexively and stared at it.

What they had to live off of for however long was mostly whatever they had packed into their trunk. There could be things to salvage in the silent city but that was uncertain, all that they had for sure was everything that was in this car. Maybe it was only a matter of days or maybe it was more, some part of Sunwoo was still thinking that they had to conserve, had to keep living as long as possible even though he had decided to come with Chansik and Dongwoo.

Sunwoo fiddled with the straw.

“We don’t have anything to keep it refrigerated, might as well drink it before it goes bad,” Dongwoo told him, ruffling his hair as he got up to press a carton into Chansik’s hands.

They waded into the Yalu River just before noon. Daylight had been reduced to a narrow sliver of a few hours, late, late morning until early afternoon, that was all that left. So most of what they wanted to do they had to get it done early, besides Chansik got sleepy quickly and Sunwoo could only keep pretending for so long before his smile fell away without him noticing. And maybe even Dongwoo tired of being himself, the oldest, stable and steadfast.

The river didn’t really flow, just seemed to sway slightly back and forth, it was cold; Sunwoo’s teeth chattered, making his smile quiver with it. He jumped all the way in anyways. Dongwoo and Chansik splashed around in knee high water until Chansik dunked Dongwoo’s head into the water with a bright, clear laugh.

It was a great sound.

Sunwoo waded back to join Chansik. The two of them dragged Dongwoo out deeper, cackling and choking on water that was weirdly bitter.

Dongwoo kicked out at Sunwoo’s legs so that he slipped deeper into the water. Chansik was clutching his stomach in laughter. Sunwoo couldn’t help but to laugh, even if it meant snorting in water. Dongwoo caught him around the waist as he got up, swinging him right into Chansik so that all three of them fell with a crisp splash.

It felt good to really laugh. And it felt just as good when Chansik took one of their blankets to wrap all of them up together, the three of them naked and wet and shivering in one soggy blanket burrito.

All of them were somewhat restless, desperately trying to fill up these short daylight hours with something, anything. So Dongwoo decided to keep driving.

They started driving again after drying off, they didn’t drive for long and they didn’t drive far. There wasn’t much gas left and they had no idea where they were going. The road signs were written in Chinese and English, even when they could read the words it meant nothing. These really weren’t places any of them had considered visiting. But they kept going.

Sunwoo stared out the window as they drove, scratching at his neck and his stomach now and then. The road was both in better condition than the road that had led into Dandong, a bumpy ride but at least it wasn’t a rollercoaster. Chansik was sitting in the back seat now, forehead resting against the window, lolling and swaying with every bump. Sunwoo glanced back every so often, unsure if Chansik’s expression was restful or too thoughtful.

He stared back out the window, at the broken up forest that they were driving by, bit of coast and partially flooded city that was visible. That and Chansik’s face and the irregular rocking of the car, it almost made Sunwoo quiet. He wished he could turn on the radio, it was so quiet, too quiet.

He started to hum, a few songs that he sort of remembered melting together. He saw the corner of Dongwoo’s lips quirk up from the corner of his eye as he heard Chansik start to drum his fingers against the car door. Dongwoo joined in as well, whistling something of a harmony.

This was their soundtrack. It wasn’t particularly good but all of them started to nod along to it, each at a different rhythm but absolutely to the same song.

That night he thought he heard crickets, after the sunset, after Chansik had dozed off, half curled between Sunwoo and Dongwoo. They’d been sleeping like this for the past week, Dongwoo and Sunwoo on each side of Chansik as soon as he fell asleep while the two of them remained hopelessly awake.

Sunwoo couldn’t sleep, hadn’t been able to sleep much for most of the week and he was pretty sure it was the same for Dongwoo. Tonight it was the same.

“Hey.” Dongwoo’s voice was quiet but he wasn’t exactly whispering. Chansik didn’t wake easily after all.

“Don’t keep everything to yourself, okay?”

Sunwoo started to speak before breaking into a cough.

Dongwoo reached over Chansik, rested his hand against Sunwoo’s wrist. His hand was warm, his touch deliberately light. He curled his other arm around Chansik’s waist and blinked, stared at nothing because it was too dark to see anything.

“I won’t, hyung.”

But he didn’t say anything else.

He curled his other arm around Chansik’s waist and closed his eyes, because there was nothing to see.

Morning came, like it had the day before. Dongwoo woke up and Sunwoo was staring at him from across Chansik as if he hadn’t slept. It was still, more so than any other morning. Chansik’s hand was cold in his.

Dongwoo swallowed around the lump in his throat. He blinked hard, once, twice, as if he was having a hard time seeing Sunwoo.

“Should we keep driving?”

“Yeah, let’s.”

[ fic ] a little pain

2014-08-16T08:14:06Z

B1A4 | baro/gongchan, baro/cnu | PG | 1,750 w

being angry and hurt and a little bit crazy is a part of the healing process.
written for b1a4ss summer 2014

The sound of fat raindrops clattering against the window was noisy. It was raining hard outside, and since they were already inside there was no point in making plans to go out with that weather, never mind that there was barely anything in the fridge or the pantry. Sunwoo wasn’t very good at keeping his kitchen well stocked, they ended up making ramyeon and sharing the one egg he had left, passing the pot back and forth without even bothering with bowls as they sat in front of the television.

Dongwoo pushed the pot back over to him, mouth too full to talk at all. Sunwoo poked at his cheek with his damp chopstick, frowning as he looked into the pot. “You ate all the egg,” he accused.

Dongwoo chewed and kind of grinned at him, one cheek still puffed with food. “I thought you didn’t want it anymore.”

“Liar,” Sunwoo retorted before turning back to the pot, determined to finish the rest of the noodles in revenge. “You owe me an egg.” He didn’t need to look over to know Dongwoo was nodding in response.

A crack of thunder loud enough to make the windows shake startled him and made Dongwoo jump, their knees bumping together from the motion. It was raining harder and louder, the lights flickered and there was another growl of thunder and then gone. It was dark in the apartment except when the lightning brightened the room for a second.

“Flashlight?”

“Don’t remember where I put it.”

“Candles?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re kind of useless.”

They were sitting close enough together that Sunwoo could easily punch Dongwoo in the shoulder without worrying about missing. “Shut up, it’ll probably come back on in a few minutes.”

It didn’t.

The only light they had were the occasional flashes of lightning and a tiny led keychain. Dongwoo pointed it at ceiling and tried to write words with it, for lack of anything better to do. But it wasn’t suffocating, even when the apartment began to get a little stuffy.

Sunwoo flopped back onto the floor, stretched out lazily, comfortably. It made him sleepy.

“Remember that time it started pouring when we were taking the bus?”

Yeah, he remembered. They didn’t have an umbrella and the rain showed no signs of stopping. “We took the bus all the way to Incheon. We fell asleep. ”

It was the summer before last, and aside from the rain it was nothing like right now. There was no reason to be thinking about this, no reason to be thinking about Chansik. But he was and now he couldn’t stop. He could feel the bus shift and churn from the bumps on the road, even though it was almost two years ago. It didn’t make sense.

“Go away.”

Chansik laughed, probably.

“Rude.”

“What? Did I say something?”

The lights were still out and it was still raining, the downpour so heavy that it seemed like the window was going to break from the onslaught.

Dongwoo laughed, he was lying down as well, voice close to Sunwoo’s head. “Were you somewhere else again?”

“…I guess so.”

Dongwoo sighed, loud and heavy, like the wind and rain crashing against the window. Too loud, too close.

“…if the rain doesn’t stop do you mind if I just stay over for the night?”

It was stuffy and hot now, he wanted to open a window, he wanted to go look for a flashlight—he wanted to move, body suddenly restless.

Luckily for Sunwoo the lights blinked back on then. He sat up and stared at Dongwoo who was still lying on the floor, not a foot of space between them. It took Sunwoo a good few minutes to actually see him, as if his eyes were still adjusting from being in the dark, but he knew that wasn’t the problem.

“It’s still early, I’m sure it’ll stop.”

There was a coffee shop situated perfectly between where Sunwoo lived and where he worked that he never went to anymore. He always slowed down when he walked by, sometimes he stopped, and he tried to look past his reflection and the glare of sunlight that always hit him right in the eye, he tried to look inside as if he was always expecting to run into someone there. He used to go there every day.

“Like I was saying, even though you weren’t listening,” Junghwan took a breath, as if talking to Sunwoo was the most tedious thing. “I was thinking of trying that new coffee and dessert place on the weekend.”

“It’s Monday.”

Junghwan stared at him as if he expected Sunwoo to say more.

“Why are you already talking about the weekend?” He’d only managed to get through the weekend; he wasn’t ready to start thinking about it again already.

“Because Mondays suck, to normal people anyways,” He said it as if Sunwoo was some poor, stupid child that needed to be guided through the motions of daily life. “And I was hoping you’d come along, so I’m going to ask you now to reduce the chance of you making some half-assed excuse to not go.”

Sunwoo snorted. “So instead, now I have the rest of the week to come up with a whole-hearted excuse, thanks.”

He expected the crumpled tissue tossed at his head, sort of. He wasn’t expecting it to be damp.

“Just come, it’s supposed to be good. Jinyoung and Dongwoo are coming too.”

“I’ll,” he paused, as if wiping mayonnaise from his forehead kept him from talking. “I’ll think about it.”

“Since when did coffee and dessert take so much thought?”

He was thinking about it too much. “It was a coffee place with sandwiches, a totally different thing.”

But Sunwoo’s mind was more than happy to jump through a few hoops to lead him back here. Chansik grinned at him as he propped his chin in his hand. He always had a way of grinning that made it seem like he knew something Sunwoo didn’t. Or, at least, that he knew everything that Sunwoo was thinking.

“Yeah, it’s not the same at all, not that it matters.” Or, at least, that he knew everything that Sunwoo was thinking.

“You’re not going I guess, you always said it was weird for two guys to hang out in a sweets place.”

Maybe Sunwoo was starting to forget what Chansik actually sounded like, he was starting to sound weirdly autotuned in Sunwoo’s imagination, but that slight sarcastic tilt to his comment made Sunwoo believe it.

“It’s four guys, not two.”

Chansik laughed, sort of.

i think I left my hat at your place

The message blipped in some time after lunch break but Sunwoo didn’t respond to it until he got home. He couldn’t text at work (“When did you become that diligent?”) and it was hard to walk and text at the same time (“You’re not that clumsy.”)

He was staring at his phone when another text tumbled in.

are you coming this weekend? can you bring my hat if you do?

“Maybe you should just call it fate.”

He didn’t bother to look up, there wasn’t anyone else there.

“How is this fate in any way?”

He didn’t look up but he could still see Chansik shrug. “Any excuse to get you out of the house. This doesn’t suit you, you know.”

There was no point in glaring at a ghost that wasn’t really there, Sunwoo knew this. He wasn’t crazy.

“What do you care?”

It wasn’t normal, to see Chansik everywhere like this, to hear his voice and talk to him as if he were solid and present. He saw every detail of Chansik’s face, even more clearly than when he’d actually been there. He talked to Chansik more than ever, every day, and at any given hour, regardless of where he was.

“You know I care.”

He didn’t go.

“Food poisoning, really.” Junghwan’s voice was even more unimpressed over the phone than in person.

“Yep,” Sunwoo answered, voice shamelessly blank.

“You didn’t even try!”

Junghwan would probably get back at him for ‘not trying’ come Monday, but the one thing the weekend was good for was time away from his nosy, overly concerned friend. Sunwoo would worry about it on Monday. At least that was the plan until Jinyoung pried the phone away from Junghwan.

“You realise that was a bad excuse, right? Remember your migraine last week?”

Of course, Dongwoo had come over to check on him, it rained, he stayed the night and left his hat behind.

“You told Dongwoo.”

“Of course we did.” He could almost hear the grin in Jinyoung’s voice.

Chansik laughed, he clapped too because he was right about something. He’d made a bet with himself without Sunwoo noticing, even though he was a figment of Sunwoo’s imagination.

“Aren’t you just making excuses to be alone with him?”

“Shut up.”

He got a text message but he didn’t read it, it was hard to have two conversations at once, even harder to argue with a fragment of himself. Chansik laughed, each hard ha like a clatter of something dropped onto his floor boards.

“Why am I even still here? Like this, I mean.”

Chansik stopped laughing, he smiled at Sunwoo and Sunwoo looked right through him because he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there in a long time and if Sunwoo really missed him he could have contacted him. He would have, Sunwoo wasn’t that strong.

“I just…want to know that you hurt too.”

Chansik was always smiling in Sunwoo’s mind. There had been times Sunwoo had seen him down of course, but he couldn’t remember. He’d always been good at hiding it, always so good at seeming unaffected. Sunwoo wasn’t sure how much of this insanity was because he still had feelings for Chansik and how much of it was just him being desperately bitter. He wanted to know that he’d driven Chansik a little bit crazy too, he wanted to know that he’d hurt Chansik as much as he’d been hurt. It was only natural if he’d meant anything at all to him, right?

“It hurt,” he affirmed, smiling. And Sunwoo smiled a little too.

“Hi.” Sunwoo hadn’t had the chance to check his messages before Dongwoo got there, bags of takeout in hand.

“I brought Chinese since there was nothing in your house last time I was over.”

“…who brings someone with food poisoning Chinese takeout?”

Dongwoo laughed as he stepped out of his shoes and shoved one of the bags at Sunwoo.

“No one. But I brought apples too, just in case.”

Dongwoo walked in like it was natural, like he belonged. “Oh and also, an egg.”

[ fic ] saturday

2014-08-16T07:46:38Z

B1A4 | cnu/sandeul | PG | 1,500 w

a saturday spent together.
written for b1a4ss summer 2014

It starts at midnight with Junghwan clicking on a link and then another and another, hopping from one blog to another.

“For inspiration!” He shouts over to Dongwoo who is doing the dishes after letting them sit for five hours. They’d been playing a game of who could tolerate the dirty dishes longer and, of course, Dongwoo lost. They do this every weekend.

“You know what’s good for inspiration? A clean kitchen.”

He’s right about that, Junghwan looks up from his screen and beams at him. “Thanks, hyung. You’re doing such a good job.”

Dongwoo sighs and shakes his head with the barest hint of annoyance but smiles fondly. He’s almost done anyways, but it had to be said. Since it’s the weekend he wants to laze, to let someone else do the cleaning. Naturally, Junghwan is the same way. Besides, since they are at Dongwoo’s place this week, if they let the dishes sit until Monday he’ll end up washing them anyways.

Junghwan has his face two inches away from the computer screen when Dongwoo comes over after finishing up. He barely acknowledges Dongwoo when he rests himself against the arm of the chair.

“These look so good…”

“Yes,” Dongwoo answers tentatively as he eyes the never ending column of cupcake photos and corresponding recipes.

“Hyung.”

“No.”

“Let’s make cupcakes tomorrow.” He turns to Dongwoo and smiles, batting his eyes ridiculously as if it’ll make a difference.

And then it’s midnight, it’s Saturday; here is the weekend.

Dongwoo likes to bake, if he didn’t he would have to seriously rethink his career choice. He just prefers to leave it mostly at school, or to days when Junghwan isn’t over. He needs to focus when he’s baking and Junghwan is distracting. (Or maybe, it’s the other way around.)

They head to the supermarket after breakfast, after Junghwan has won him over with kimchi scrambled eggs and fresh rice that Dongwoo can never be bothered to make in the morning. He promises to make fried rice balls for him to bring to school on Monday to sweeten the deal.

“And you’ll clean the kitchen after we’re done?”

“I’ll clean the kitchen.”

Dongwoo never stood a chance. He smiles, slowly, it spreads like oil on a pan. So even though it looks a little bit smug Junghwan can’t find a good reason to not kiss him.

The supermarket is a short walk away. There are plenty of eggs and milk and flour at Dongwoo’s place but they’re missing a few things and Junghwan insists they need, raspberries and sour cream and chocolate hazelnut spread.

“What, why?”

“Because you have fresh bread at home.”

It’s impossible to go to the supermarket for one thing. Junghwan drops a few things into the basket as they make their way through. Since they’re here already, might as well browse and make the most of it. It makes sense and it saves Dongwoo a second trip to the supermarket during the week. The only problem is that Dongwoo had stupidly taken a basket instead of a cart. By the time they’re browsing through jams and spreads it’s almost overflowing.

They’d just barely made it through a quarter of the store and the basket is seriously weighing Dongwoo down. He sets it down next to Junghwan and shakes his wrist out a bit.

“I’ll go get a cart, just wait here.”

“No, I’m done! We can go home,” Junghwan stops him before he can take more than one step. He takes one of the handles and looks at Dongwoo expectantly until he takes the other one. They don’t even set the basket down as they’re waiting in line. (It’s close enough to holding hands.)

They make it back to the apartment after the supermarket and after grabbing food to eat in. They make it back inside after Junghwan hands Dongwoo his bags so he can search Dongwoo’s pockets for his keys. He’d squirmed and giggled through the (too) brief struggle, it’s amazing nothing spilled or dropped.

He wonders if it’s something worrying that a trip the supermarket and a few tickles and a belly full of warm food is all it takes for him to feel lazy. It doesn’t take anything more than that to make Dongwoo want to set all the things they bought aside, wrap his arms around Junghwan and lie around, Junghwan’s warm back against his chest.

But then it’s like this every weekend. (Every weekend Junghwan stays over.)

“Do we have to make them now?”

“You said we would.”

Dongwoo reaches out to tug at Junghwan’s cheeks. “I don’t feel inspired.”

“Then it’s a good thing we have a recipe.”

Junghwan wins, he always does (though Dongwoo supposes he never really, really loses).

He has his hair pushed back in a cloth headband that he’d stolen from his sister as he ties Junghwan’s apron for him, just because. Junghwan claps his hands together and pumps his fist, ready to jump right into things, crack eggs and whip everything together in no particular order. Dongwoo can’t really stand to watch him work with the wet ingredients.

“Wait,” Dongwoo commands, arranging Junghwan to stand aside and out of his way. He carefully measures out the dry ingredients, eases them carefully into separate containers, and lines them up, displayed so neatly Junghwan thinks he’s live in a cooking show.

“Sift it together,” Dongwoo tell him, before he moves away with everything else.

Junghwan is good at cooking, actual food; stuff not cakes and pastries, things that he can change impulsively and without consequence as he makes them. It’s his art, like splatters of bright colour on a canvas but his canvas is a plate and his paint is food. And maybe baking is like that too, but baking is also a science and Dongwoo is meticulous.

“I’m done,” Junghwan tells Dongwoo, drops his chin on Dongwoo’s shoulder and peeks around him. The electric mixer is whirring as Dongwoo cracks his eggs and measures out the sour cream and vanilla.

He turns just a little, enough to touch his lips to Junghwan’s nose. “Okay, now wait.”

It’s an easy recipe, so it’s fine if he’s a little distracted.

And Junghwan is too, distracted. He kisses Dongwoo with one eye fixed on the butter and sugar.

“Is it fluffy yet?”

“Wait.”

Bake at 175C for 20 minutes, the over light is on so that Junghwan can peer in periodically to watch the cupcakes rise from runny to cakey. Junghwan drops the bowls and dishes into the sink but keeps a spatula, alternating between licking it and trying to get Dongwoo to.

Dongwoo dodges the drippy spatula as he works on the frosting until Junghwan lands a raw batter kiss on his cheek, it’s sticky and it’s sweet.

The consistency of the frosting is about right and the cupcakes would be done in another five minutes; he’s been distracted long enough. He sets the bowl down and wipes his cheek and he smiles. Slow, like drizzling honey, it’s a little smug but Junghwan is grinning right back when Dongwoo pins him to the counter and kisses him properly.

It’s sticky and sweet. Dongwoo doesn’t really like uncooked batter but Junghwan’s lips are soft and warm so he puts up with it for now. It gets all over his lips and on his cheeks and chin. He pulls back before Junghwan can get it on his neck.

“Gross.”

“Are you calling me gross?”

“Yes,” Dongwoo tells him with a laugh, and that earns him a sharp nip at his jaw.

His arms are around Junghwan’s waist, and if the oven timer did not go off just then he would have slipped his fingers under the apron and under his shirt. He would have anyways if Junghwan didn’t have his mind on something else, something warm and soft and sweet.

“Oh! They’re ready.”

“Oven mitts, Junghwan.”

They need to cool before they can top them with frosting but Junghwan is happy with the little yellow cupcakes dotted with fat raspberries. They’re way too hot, Junghwan’s solution is to pass the cupcake from one hand to the other, almost juggling it while Dongwoo just quirks an eyebrow at him.

Dongwoo doesn’t tell him to wait.

Junghwan peels the paper down and takes a bite, almost hissing and probably burning his mouth a bit.

“So good, hyung.” His mouth is probably too full to form a longer sentence so he just goes for a group hug: him, Dongwoo, and the cupcake.

“I love you.”

Dongwoo laughs, gets his arms all the way around Junghwan again. “You love the cupcake.”

“No, hyung. I love you.”

It’s 4PM when they finish icing the cupcakes, Junghwan promptly picks one up to take a picture and pulls Dongwoo into it too before wandering off to slowly enjoy it on the couch.

He posts the photo on twitter and writes just two words underneath.

six months

Dongwoo drops his head into Junghwan’s lap and beams up at him.

“What’s for dinner?”

Junghwan smiles and feeds him a bite of cupcake without frosting. “Wait.”

[ fic ] touch to see

2014-02-26T05:48:10Z

B1A4 | cnu/gongchan, cnu/jinyoung, everyone/everyone | NC-17 | 2,200 w
warnings/notes: group sex, blindfolds

there are five of them but it's not really messy. and then it's just the two of them.

He’s here because of Jinyoung. Dongwoo has no idea who else is here, if he knows anyone else, with the blindfold on he’s not even sure how many people there are. He feels a hand on his naked shoulder, guiding him forward, lips hovering a breath away from his ear.

It’s Jinyoung.

“If it’s too much just say my name, we’ll stop.”

Dongwoo nods and says nothing because the altar does not speak. He hears the others talk in whispers over him every so often but their voices are too hushed and low for him to even count them. Jinyoung guides him to kneel and then there’s nothing for a moment.

He breathes in sharply, a little too loudly, when he feels someone touch him, light fingertips tracing his shoulders and then gliding down his back, a warm palm settling at the small of his back. There are lips against his clavicle and fingers drawing patterns on his stomach. Three pairs of hands and a warm wet mouth and then more; it’s definitely not just Jinyoung anymore.

He reaches out to steady himself against someone and grasps nothing but air until someone takes his hand in theirs, puts it on their shoulder.

It’s Jinyoung, maybe.

But there’s someone kissing his shoulder and someone sliding a hand between his thighs and a hand on his ass. There could be three people or there could be more, Dongwoo has no way of knowing, and even if he did he’d have no way of knowing which hand is Jinyoung, if any of them are.

Someone guides him to sit and then lies him down on his back. Dongwoo doesn’t quite lean all the way back, his head kind of hovering over someone’s lap, not until firm hands press him down by his shoulders. There’s a dick against his cheek and a pair of hands, the hands that pushed him down, sliding down his torso, shoulder to chest to stomach and then the sides of his hips.

Someone makes a sound, louder than the whispers, a deep rumbling hum and Dongwoo looks around even though he can’t see.

There’s a touch on his cheek, it trails down his jaw and subtly turns his head.

“Open.”

It’s Jinyoung, the one speaking to him, but there’s no way to know if it’s his dick barely touching Dongwoo’s parted lips.

He stops caring for a moment, closes his eyes behind the blindfold as he cradles the tip in his mouth. There’s a hand in his hair, light and not demanding at all, pushing it back and away from his face. There’s a mouth kissing his chest and a tongue licking the inside of his thigh.

For a moment there are no people but Dongwoo; it’s just him and faceless bodies, playing a game by himself. He imagines shadow hands touching him, holding him down, shadow mouths kissing him, eating him. And it’s surprisingly easy to sink into it. The sensations fold and layer over him, almost overwhelming but then someone shushes him gently when Dongwoo whimpers around the cock in his mouth and pulls him back before he can drown under it.

There are fingers flitting against his temple, light and barely there, like feathers. He opens his eyes and blinks against the blindfold even though he can’t see.

There are purpling bruises all along his collar and shoulders. Dongwoo touches each of them after he washes up, blinks at the mirror and counts them as he wonders if they’re from one person or two or three or four.

He wears a dress shirt buttoned all the way up the next day and he’ll probably have to stay covered up for the rest of the week.

“How are you feeling?”

Jinyoung’s hand drops heavily on Dongwoo’s shoulder and he jumps. He looks at Jinyoung and, surprisingly, it’s not awkward. He was expecting to feel embarrassed or unsure or something, but he doesn’t feel much of anything even though yesterday he’d laid himself out naked in front of Jinyoung and a bunch of strangers.

Dongwoo smiles at the concern and lightly pats Jinyoung’s hand on his shoulder. “I’m okay.”

“Would you be up for it again?”

He thinks about it for a moment. He thinks about sucking dicks, plural. He thinks about jerking someone off while someone else fucks his thighs and he has his face buried in still another person’s lap, trying his damnest not to moan. He’d been ridiculously messy afterwards, thighs slick and sticky. Someone, several someones, had come on him. On his face and in his hair, in his hand, on his chest, on his stomach and on his ass, he’d lost count of how many times. One person came in his mouth, fingers twitching in his hair, and he’d swallowed it. Dongwoo had licked his lips, tilted his head and opened his mouth to show them.

“Yeah. Sure.”

That’s all they say about it that day but Jinyoung texts him the time and place later.

They meet once a week and including him there are five of them, usually. Sometimes there are one or two more people but they’re not consistent and Dongwoo forgets their faces quickly. Usually it’s the five of them. They don’t do introductions but he learns their names eventually, and other things, through hushed whispers and warm skin.

It’s a different hotel each time and they do their business on fresh black sheets, one of them in the middle, the altar, blindfolded with a black scarf. It gives them structure. Even though there are five of them tangled together there’s a comforting sort of order to the whole event. It’s messy but at the same time it’s not. They don’t talk much beforehand and not at all after. They take their time, hours, and then everyone leaves quietly except whoever was their center, he gets to stay behind to clean himself up, rest after everything’s done if he feels like.

And except for Jinyoung they take turns, Dongwoo had his turn the first time so this week it’s someone else.

Three of them are naked, waiting. This is the most awkward part. Dongwoo still has his glasses on and he pushes at the frame. He glances up and one of them is staring at him, Dongwoo looks away quickly, removing his glasses as if that achieves more than making things a little blurry at the edges. Thankfully, Jinyoung never leaves them waiting long.

Jinyoung guides their altar in, naked and blindfolded, with an arm around his shoulder. Maybe it’s because he can’t see but Dongwoo feels free to look now. His eyes are covered so something’s missing but Dongwoo takes a moment to appreciate his softly curved face and full plump lips. He’s smiling, completely at ease as Jinyoung leads him onto the bed.

“Sit down by him,” someone whispers into Dongwoo’s ear, makes him jump a little. It’s the one that was looking at him before and he has his hands on Dongwoo’s shoulder, guiding him forward until he’s next to their altar’s head, reaches around him to drape Dongwoo’s still soft dick across his face.

Dongwoo presses a hand to his face and tries not to hide. Jinyoung laughs, quiet and soft, and the other one snorts. Dongwoo looks over his shoulder at the man behind him, his lips are curled in an amused grin.

Junghwan is the one they fuck that day. Everyone calls him Junghwannie in affectionate whispers, they squeeze and grab at him with firmness that borders on rough. He likes it like that, they assure Dongwoo. Chansik practically feeds Junghwan Dongwoo’s dick while Sunwoo pinches at his nipples and his waist and thighs until Junghwan is squeaking around Dongwoo’s cock. Jinyoung doesn’t shush him, no one does.

Junghwan is all throaty moans and wordless whines through it all, he squeals and he yelps. It would be completely pointless to try to quiet him. Dongwoo lies on his side, watching, as they're winding down. Chansik is half kissing Junghwan, half licking cum off his face. He pulls back when Jinyoung settles next to Junghwan, knees just barely touching Junghwan’s side.

Jinyoung jerks off with one hand and pets Junghwan’s hair and cheek with the other. Everyone else just watches along with Dongwoo. They watch as Jinyoung comes all over Junghwan’s sweaty, flushed skin and they're done.

It’s not what Dongwoo would have expected, if he’d let himself dwell on it enough to expect anything. Their group of five fits together in a surprisingly natural way. There are rules, yes, but it’s structured around them.

And even though, other than Jinyoung, they’re basically strangers to Dongwoo he grows fond of them, in a way; he gets to know them, in a way.

Like how Junghwan touches with his mouth more than with his hands, and he’s pretty sure Sunwoo is the one that jerks off into a fistful of his hair while Chansik is the one that runs his fingers through his hair even when it’s tangled and clumpy with sweat and semen. He knows little things about them that normal acquaintances would never learn. It’s far from conventional but Dongwoo likes it, there’s no point in questioning it.

The first time Dongwoo fucks Chansik he reaches up and out for his face, pushes his fingers through Dongwoo’s hair. Chansik is blindfolded so he can’t actually see, but he must know that it’s Dongwoo by the length of his hair. He’s near silent as Dongwoo eases his cock into him, fingers gripping at his hips, but when Dongwoo stops for a breath, for a beat – Chansik is grinning at him.

“Chansik asked for your number,” Jinyoung tells Dongwoo over lunch. They’re at a noodle place close to where they work, squeezed into a corner by the lunch hour rush.

“Is it okay if I give it to him?”

Dongwoo is a bit surprised because he isn’t sure how that would fit into their arrangement. He isn’t sure what ‘that’ exactly is, or rather what it would lead to. There is a lot of room for overthinking, but that’s what he does for a living, not for this.

He shrugs a bit and works to swallow a mouthful of noodles.

“Sure.”

Jinyoung is smiling at him when he glances over and Dongwoo feels sure that Jinyoung doesn’t ever have to wonder or overthink like Dongwoo does, he just knows.

“Hello.”

Dongwoo recognises the voice, though he can’t say it’s familiar. He’s only heard the voice speak to him in whispers and murmurs.

“Um. Hi.”

“It’s Chansik.”

He hasn’t been waiting for the call exactly but perhaps he should have been expecting it since he gave Jinyoung the okay to pass on his phone number to Chansik. But he wasn’t expecting it, not really, so he has no idea what might pass. He didn’t bother to wonder what Chansik might have wanted from him and for a few heartbeats he wishes he’d spent a little bit of time thinking about it.

“Hi?”

He already said that. On the other end Chansik laughs, hoarse and forced.

“Should I hang up?”

“No,” Dongwoo blurts out quickly at the suggestion, loud. “It’s fine. I mean there’s no reason to, really, you don’t have to. Um.” He breathes, and tries to recall how he usually holds conversations with people at work. He can’t remember at all.

“Do you have some time right now?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

It’s a little bit like the first time they met, or maybe it counts as the second.

Dongwoo invites Chansik to his apartment and he’s strangely surprised when Chansik shows up in front of his door in a coat and scarf and clothes. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other in clothes. This is the most awkward part.

He takes Chansik’s coat and scarf, underneath he’s wearing a gray sweater and dark jeans. It’s strange, but just for a moment, just for however long it takes them to figure out how to fit together without three other bodies with them.

They do it their way, doing everything they usually don’t when it’s five of them. It’s just the two of them so they strip each other in steps, as if to create a new ritual. Chansik presses his lips to Dongwoo’s skin after undoing each button, mouths at Dongwoo’s cock through his underwear as he unzips him.

And when they kiss they keep their eyes open. Dongwoo can feel Chansik’s eyelashes flutter against the bridge of his nose when he blinks.

They lie down on their sides, knees and feet touching. Chansik runs his hand through Dongwoo’s hair. His fingers flit against his temples, down his cheek and along his jaw, touch light and barely there, like feathers. And they watch each other. Dongwoo presses his hand against Chansik’s chest, rubs his thumb against the jut of his clavicle. He slides his hand down, tracing the definition of Chansik’s abdomen. He watches his hand move and he sees as much as he feels Chansik against his palm and his fingertips.

Dongwoo’s eyes are opened behind the blindfold, he’s leaning back against someone’s chest and someone else is licking his balls, another someone nipping at his neck.

And then there’s a hand brushing back his hair, pressing his warm soft palm against Dongwoo’s cheek. Dongwoo leans into the touch and reaches to touch his fingers to that hand. It’s Chansik.

[ fic ] b1a4 prompts/shorts

2014-02-07T23:55:53Z

restaurant!au | baro/cnu | PG-13 | 600 w

Sunwoo meets Dongwoo after he writes a half-hearted fluff review of Dongwoo’s restaurant.

“Jinyoung’s restaurant,” Dongwoo corrects on their first date. “I just help make sure things run smoothly.”

He ducks his head and smiles, a little crooked curve of distractingly pretty lips. Sunwoo feels like he won a prize without signing up for the contest. The review hadn’t been particularly good or thoughtful but Sunwoo is just briefly incredibly glad he wrote it, utterly useless in his portfolio as it is.

Dongwoo is sweet, the kind of sweet that’d usually put Sunwoo off. But there’s something about him, self-conscious and soft-spoken, a smile so honest that Sunwoo can’t help but to smile back.

And he’s a really hot guy that makes a killer kimchi spaghetti.

Sunwoo can be both incredibly picky about his dates and not picky at all but letting Dongwoo take him out had been a no brainer. He falls fast, for Dongwoo and the occasional lunch box that Dongwoo sends him. How was he supposed to know that Dongwoo, gentle Dongwoo with his slanted smile and squinty eyes, is fucking terrifying?

The first time Sunwoo sees Dongwoo in the kitchen he is paralyzed until Dongwoo moves him, a hand on each shoulder, shifting him to the side and out of the way. Sunwoo suspects that Dongwoo would have bodily lifted him if he had to.

It’s a small restaurant and the kitchen reflects that, with just Dongwoo, Jinyoung, and a kid that’s probably barely into his twenties working, but Dongwoo works it like a little tiny battleship.

He doesn’t yell exactly, in fact he’s mostly quiet, letting his hands do most of the talking. There are lots of sharp, fast gestures that the gopher kid chef seems to understand either by habit or survival instincts. Occasionally he barks out an order or five, talking way faster than Sunwoo thought he was capable of. And he takes all of two intense minutes to berate Jinyoung for not following the recipe.

“Dongwoo, it’s my recipe.”

“Yes, and you need to follow it to be consistent. Don’t fuck with me when we’re working.” Dongwoo makes a few gestures at the kid chef while still glaring at Jinyoung and then shoves the ruined dish at Sunwoo.

“Eat it,” he commands before going off to destroy the world.

Sunwoo eats in a corner, staying well out of the way. (It tastes fine.)

“Is he always like this?” Sunwoo asks Jinyoung after the biggest rush is over and Dongwoo kicks them both out.

“I mean when he’s in the kitchen, I know he’s not always like this.”

Jinyoung laughs as if Dongwoo hadn’t yelled at him not ten minutes ago. “You think that’s bad?”

Sunwoo can’t imagine worse, until today he’s never seen Dongwoo yell and they’ve been dating almost six months. He must look horrified because Jinyoung laughs again, pinching Sunwoo’s face in his somewhat inappropriately affectionate way.

“Dongwoo really isn’t that bad but if you’re comparing it to when he’s not working…”

“He’s like a different person.”

It’s kind of hot, in a weird way.

Sunwoo doesn’t even let Dongwoo change before he has him by the dick. He smells like sweat and oil and meat and garlic. It should be gross but somehow Sunwoo comes from jerking Dongwoo off and smelling his neck.

“You use too much garlic,” Sunwoo groans.

Dongwoo squeezes his neck and bites his ear, just hard enough to hurt a little.

“Shut up.”

Sunwoo has no real complaints, at least not until they move in together.

prompt: chandeul. going skiing, winter | G | 530 w

When Junghwan had suggested they go skiing he had not pictured himself with his face in the snow, legs stuck in an extremely awkward, and uncomfortable, position with Chansik cautiously perched next to him dusting the snow out of his hair.

But it was probably exactly what Chansik pictured.

“Are you okay?”

Junghwan needs a moment to get his face out of the snow. “Yeah. Help me with my skis.”

He lost count of how many times he fell after roughly an hour and they’ve been on the bunny slopes for two. Junghwan kicks his legs experimentally once Chansik helps him pop the skis off. Still working.

He props himself up by his arms first and then turns, he must look like a lump of dough being worked through flour, and he’s briefly thankful that they hadn’t asked anyone else to join them. He doesn’t need anyone other than Chansik seeing him like this and he doesn’t need Sunwoo stuffing snow down his shirt.

He heaves and groans when Chansik pulls him up, just a little bit in awe at how Chansik still manages to stay upright when Junghwan is pulling on him with the entire weight of his body plus some. He’s been doing that since they started though, so the awe has somewhat worn off.

“I think I’m ready for the real hills, at least the skiing part will last longer. So what if I can’t stop?”

Chansik laughs and drapes his arms around Junghwan’s shoulders. He clings, practically dangling off of Junghwan. It almost makes Junghwan fall again, he’s not sure if he’s tired or if it’s the extra five pounds on Chansik in the form of winter gear.

“Hyung,” Chansik whines deliberately. “I’m tired. Can we just go back to the hotel and try again tomorrow?”

He drops his head onto Junghwan’s shoulder and there is a shirt, sweater, scarf, and jacket between Chansik’s lips and his skin but Junghwan still feels it. He feels the ghost of the familiar sensation.

“You’re just saying that because you don’t want me to fall more today.”

“You are absolutely right.”

It took them twenty minutes to rent the equipment, ten minutes to get all suited up properly, and after that each up and down of the bunny slope took no more than two minutes plus another two to return to his upright position. Junghwan has probably fallen on his face more times today than he usually does in a week. Chansik probably has a point.

He feels, distantly, Chansik touch his cold nose to his cold cheek and little puffs of warm breath against cold numbed skin.

“We could sit by the fireplace with some hot chocolate. You can have my marshmallows.”

Chansik has a very good point.

“Just one more time!” Junghwan jerks away carefully before he can be seduced by the promise of warmth and sweets and Chansik. He tries not to think of warming up his cold hands on Chansik’s warm belly. But it’s a lot harder to face Chansik’s deliberately sad puppy gaze.

“I promise, just one more time. I’ll get it right and we can go in!”

“Fine, but I’m keeping my marshmallows.”

prompt: chandeul. blind date | G | 325 w

Junghwan is wearing a suit that doesn’t quite fit him right, topped with a fat double knotted tie. He fidgets as he presents himself to Chansik, picking at too long sleeves and wide lapels.

“…where is the date again?”

“The aquarium.”

Junghwan chews on the inside of his cheeks like he’s chewing gum. It’s so blindingly obvious that he has no idea how to present himself. So obvious that Chansik is quite sure his date will smell Junghwan’s nerves and desperation even if she closes her eyes. She’ll smell it more than the overpowering cologne.

It’s too bad that Chansik just doesn’t have the heart to tell Junghwan that he looks silly and smells like a douche.

“Maybe you should do a single knot instead.”

“Oh! That’s a good idea, probably.”

Junghwan fiddles with his tie, manages to unknot it and then stares at the two ends. He looks up at Chansik and then back at his tie and then back at Chansik.

“Please assist,” Junghwan asks, laughing at himself a little as Chansik steps up to take the ends of the tie from him.

Chansik knots the tie slowly, as if to teach but he knows Junghwan will ask him to again next time. Just like how he knows Junghwan will keep wearing hopelessly inappropriate suits to casual blind dates. Chansik tightens the knot and carefully folds the collar over it. He looks like a school boy even at twenty-two.

“Just relax and be yourself,” Chansik assures, lies, with a smile. “You’ll be fine.”

He won’t but for now Junghwan smiles, all teeth and gums. It will be horribly awkward, they will speed through the exhibits, and the date will end early. Then Junghwan will come home and watch old movies with Chansik, sitting next to him on their too wide couch.

It’s too bad Chansik likes it this way, but so does Junghwan. It’s really too bad that neither of them are ready to admit it.

[ fic ] tell me that you'll miss me

2014-01-17T07:20:41Z

B1A4 | cnu/sandeul | PG-13 | 3,500 w

dongwoo comes and goes. junghwan can't wait forever.

When they first meet Junghwan is nineteen.

They meet at the antique bookstore where Dongwoo works, the store smells eternally like some summery potpourri, even in the middle of fall, and its walls are dressed entirely in aged bookshelves. It’s sandwiched between a dangerously hip boutique and a frozen yogurt place, across the street there is a convenience store and before the traffic light a fast food place because there can never be too much convenience.

It’s a store that would seem terribly out of place if it weren’t in the process of being ‘discovered’ by the young and hip that have begun to hang out in the area now that the area has suddenly become cool.

“Wow, I can’t believe there’s really a store like this here,” Junghwan murmurs, almost drowned out by the metallic chime of the door’s hanging bell. Dongwoo doesn’t say anything, since he wasn’t meant to hear it, but he wants to tell him that the store was here before any of the other stuff. The store has been around longer than most of the people in the area can even remember, unchanging and always smelling of bergamot, honeysuckle, and vanilla.

Dongwoo expects Junghwan to peer around the corner and leave the store in a jangle but he steps around the shelves slowly, occasionally reaches out to touch the spine of an aged book carefully. He lingers, and when Dongwoo catches a glimpse of his expression he’s smiling.

“Have a good day,” Dongwoo calls out when Junghwan pulls the door open to leave, bells clattering, and he turns around to return the smile before leaving.

Junghwan visits the store again the following week. He’s wearing a bright yellow sweater that reminds Dongwoo of sunlight that trickles into the store around the window displays; but it’s almost 8PM and the sun has long since set so there’s no sunlight, only Junghwan. He catches Dongwoo’s gaze when he steps in and smiles sheepishly.

“I’m sorry, are you closing?”

“I close at eight…but you can stay a little longer if you’d like.”

It’s a weird place to be on a Friday night, Dongwoo thinks but somehow he ends up easing a collection of illustrated fairy tales off one of the shelves to show Junghwan. He dims the window lights and locks the door, but he lets Junghwan huddle over the book even when the clock strikes eight.

“It was printed in 1907,” Dongwoo tells him. Junghwan pulls his hands away at that, as if he thinks that touching it will make the book crumble into dust. Dongwoo laughs and turns the page for him.

“It looks so new, I had no idea.”

“I had to do some repairs when I got it but it was in pretty good condition overall.”

“You do repairs too?”

Dongwoo isn’t sure Junghwan is actually interested in book restoration but he talks anyways. Junghwan starts to carefully flip through the book again, fingertips hovering over the fine line drawings. Every so often he looks up to catch Dongwoo’s gaze to show he’s still listening, and Dongwoo pauses sometimes, caught in his stare.

“That’s amazing, I could never put all that time and patience into something like that.”

But he still listened to all that, Dongwoo thinks and it makes him smile. “I just like books.”

They talk for a long time. People rush past the shop window from somewhere to somewhere else and cars churn by, the city hums with the noise of too many things happening at once, but the two of them sit in the dim store and talk in quiet voices. Junghwan tells Dongwoo that he’s studying photography; he tells him that he wanted to come back to the store after his first visit because the store was so beautiful and stupidly that makes Dongwoo feel fluttery and happy.

“Isn’t it kind of old fashioned?” he asks, looking down as if to examining the book closely but really to hide his smile.

“No, it’s timeless is what it is.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Junghwan visits the store on Tuesday with two cups of coffee from the café around the corner, they’d just opened last week. He offers one cup to Dongwoo and he accepts it with a surprised ‘thank you.’

“You don’t mind, do you? Me visiting.”

Dongwoo thinks there’s no point in asking when they’d spent two hours talking after the store closed on Friday but still, it makes him smile. It’s starting to seem like Junghwan makes him smile.

“I don’t mind,” he answers, hiding behind the rim of his cup.

Somehow they tumble through fall and early winter. Before Dongwoo remembers to change the month on his calendar from October to November it’s already nearing Christmas.

Junghwan visits the store once or twice a week, usually with coffee or hot chocolate. Cozy visits once or twice weekly have stacked up into something more substantial; it’s mid-December when Junghwan asks Dongwoo about his Christmas plans.

“I don’t usually do anything.”

“Then do something with me, if nothing else we can just eat a lot or something and look at your books.”

“Not while you’re eating,” Dongwoo agrees easily with a teasing grin. “I don’t want you to drop bits of rice on my books.”

Dongwoo doesn’t have a lot of friends anymore, maybe that’s why he appreciates Junghwan’s company so much. Junghwan is incredibly easy to be with. For Dongwoo, who usually has a hard time keeping conversations afloat, Junghwan is happy to steer the conversation for him. He’ll ask Dongwoo light questions, sometimes they seem to come from nowhere, or just be completely on whim, but he never asks anything sensitive or personal.

“Are we doing presents? Because if we are I have no idea what you like. Other than books, and you have so many I wouldn’t know what book to get you.”

“You don’t have to get me anything.”

“But I want to. Tell me what you like.”

Dongwoo likes a lot of things, but mostly they’re not things to be requested or given. He likes it when a new bud sprouts from his old zebra plant, he likes the time of day as the sun is still setting and street lights are beginning to flicker on, he likes the way the store smells when Junghwan brings coffee even if he doesn’t like coffee.

“I like you.” He smiles cutely as Junghwan stares at him with saucer wide eyes.

He feels warm and alive, even though he knows this is usually the beginning of a downward stumble.

The second time Junghwan meets Dongwoo he is twenty-six.

They meet at a gallery; it’s the third day of a photography exhibit. Junghwan doesn’t need to be there but he’s excited about his first exhibit, even if there are only two of his pieces being shown. His name is printed so small on the postcard he’d had to circle and underline and highlight it to make sure his parents saw. But Dongwoo sees it and when he walks into the gallery there’s no chime, Junghwan just looks up and sees him.

There’s no way Junghwan could not recognise Dongwoo, because he looks the same except for his clothes and his glasses, and there’s no doubt that Dongwoo recognises him. Junghwan catches his gaze and Dongwoo has the nerve to smile, looking genuinely happy to see him.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder they say. Junghwan isn’t sure if it’s true but if it is then it’s absolutely unfair. Why should he be fond of some guy that walked out of his life without warning, as if he’d never been there?

The bookstore is still there, sandwiched between a yogurt place and a hair salon. Junghwan had visited the store after Seollal and Dongwoo hadn’t been there. He visited again the next day and then again the next week.

After that he stopped, he hadn’t visited again at all; but it had remained there, unchanging. Sometimes he peeked in when he walked by but this is the first time he’s really been back. He pushes the door open to the same metallic jingle and the same warm smell wraps around him like it hasn’t been six years since his last visit – and Dongwoo is there, like no time has passed.

Junghwan is pretty sure he should be angry but instead he feels strangely nervous seeing Dongwoo again after so long, it makes no sense. Why is he the one nervous when Dongwoo is the one that disappeared without a word. There’s a lot that Junghwan wants to say to him, he just has to figure out where to start.

Behind the counter Dongwoo looks totally at ease, he offers Junghwan a soft, slanted smile and his words are gone.

“I thought you wouldn’t come back,” Dongwoo says quietly.

Junghwan rolls his eyes, “I think that’s my line.”

“...I guess that’s true.” Dongwoo’s smile falls away but it’s not satisfying at all.

Dongwoo says nothing of where he went and what he did, instead he asks Junghwan about his life since they last met. It was like this back then too, Dongwoo rarely offering much about himself, instead he would let Junghwan talk and talk and talk. Once in a while he’d talk about one of his old books, as if the story of where it was printed was an appropriate stand in. It’d been kind of weird back then but now it’s annoying.

“Sorry,” Dongwoo ducks his head and mumbles.

“Well?” Junghwan insists; he isn’t willing to let it go for a second time.

“Cheongju, but I haven’t been back in a long time,” he finally answers, slow and soft.

“Why not?”

“…there’s no real reason to. I don’t have any relatives left there.” Dongwoo finally looks up at Junghwan and stares at him intently, as if he’d just told him something big and important. Maybe it is, after all it’s the only real thing Junghwan knows about Dongwoo other than his name and the location of his store.

Their second kiss comes six years after their first. Junghwan recalls that first one but it’s not like he can remember it with crystal like clarity, it’s been six years. All he remembers is that it was Christmas Eve and Dongwoo had pressed a light kiss to the corner of his lips and he’d stupidly turned to meet his lips fully.

Dongwoo is smiling a little when they pull apart, touching his lips lightly with his fingertips. “We were drinking hot chocolate last time too,” he tells Junghwan softly.

Junghwan looks down and away. Dongwoo is still leaning in, and maybe Junghwan can feel his breath on his skin. “I don’t remember.”

His mind doesn’t zoom in and focus in on that single, barely there moment six years ago. He’s twenty-six and Dongwoo had barely been a consistent part of his life for six months, why should that single brief memory be more significant than the thousands of other things he’s experienced?

Dongwoo kisses him again and murmurs his recollection of that kiss right onto Junghwan’s lips. He reminds Junghwan with every brush of their lips until he can remember what they were wearing, what the weather was like, and the homemade marshmallows that Dongwoo had gotten him as a present.

“You’re really horrible,” Junghwan tells Dongwoo. “I really liked you, and you just disappeared.”

He’d been so angry back then and he’s still angry, but he figures that’s because he still really likes Dongwoo.

Dongwoo looks at him and then down and away, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re so different every time I see you,” Dongwoo tells him, whispers into his bare shoulder. Under the blankets his body is warm but the tips of his fingers brushing across Junghwan’s cheek are cool.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, voice tight and a little defensive. He almost pulls away but somehow he ends up relaxing against Dongwoo instead. He noses at Junghwan’s shoulder, breath and lips ghosting over soft skin.

Being with Dongwoo is scary. The first time they’d met it hadn’t been scary; it’d been comfortable and easy even if Dongwoo had his quirks. But this time it’s different, their time together is scarred by the way he’d left so abruptly last time. He’d gone to China, Japan, Russia and then all the way to Spain, that’s what Dongwoo told him. He’d gone everywhere, drifting without any purpose.

It sounds like he never stays in one place long. He’s back now but Junghwan wonders if he’s months or days away from Dongwoo flitting off.

Dongwoo’s hand dips back under the covers, arms wrapping around Junghwan’s waist. He squirms a bit against Dongwoo, not liking the cold fingers on his warm stomach.

“You’re more amazing every time I see you, I feel like I’m falling in love with more and more of you every time.”

Junghwan can’t breathe for a few seconds; he struggles to turn in Dongwoo’s arms so that they’re face to face. His voice cracks when he finds it.

“Are you going to leave again now?”

Dongwoo blinks at Junghwan. His mouth falls open soundlessly before he shakes his head finally, but Junghwan doesn’t feel relieved at all.

“I want to stay,” he says as he touches his nose to Junghwan’s and closes his eyes.

Junghwan believes him because in spite of everything Dongwoo still feels perfectly genuine. He believes every word he says, every kiss and all his affection, even though he probably shouldn’t. Junghwan just closes his eyes and kisses Dongwoo. He knows he doesn’t know everything, or even much of anything, about Dongwoo but what he does know he knows with absolute certainty.

Junghwan kisses Dongwoo hard and deep because he wants to trust Dongwoo but he doesn’t think Dongwoo trusts him.

“If you disappear again I’ll never forgive you.”

The next time they see each other Junghwan is thirty.

Dongwoo didn’t disappear but he had to leave eventually and he’s gone for a little bit over two years. Junghwan told him that he wouldn’t wait and Dongwoo had smiled, told him that he deserved better. And then Junghwan had slapped him.

Dongwoo sent him postcards and letters wherever he went and Junghwan wrote back occasionally, but it’d been hard because the address changed every few months.

“You need to learn to use email, grandpa,” Junghwan tells him with a snort.

He’s maybe surprised to see him, probably surprised because Dongwoo had shown up without warning as usual. But all that shows of it is a crooked twitch of his smile; he signs Dongwoo’s copy of the book with flourish and neatly prints his new number under his signature. It’s hard to tell if he’s happy or irritated to see Dongwoo, probably a bit of both and a lot of other feelings too tangled to name.

Junghwan can’t say a whole lot to him, there’s an impressive line winding up to the table. It was probably cowardly of him to come see Junghwan like this but Dongwoo never claimed to be brave. He murmurs a thank you and steps away for the next person in line, he looks back at Junghwan but he’s not looking for Dongwoo anymore.

He watches as Junghwan talks and smiles and laughs; watches him sign every book with equal enthusiasm. It’s like looking in through a store window.

“You never change, do you?” Junghwan pushes his fingers through Dongwoo’s hair. It’s true, so true it stings. He pulls back a little and looks at Junghwan with his practiced smile.

“So we can pretend like no time has passed.”

Junghwan shoves him, pushes him against the bookshelf hard enough to make it shake. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Junghwan kisses him against the bookshelf in Dongwoo’s dimly lit store. It smells like summer in the middle of winter, they can hear the sound of the city rolling forward through the windows. It reminds Dongwoo of the first winter they knew each other. Some things never seem to change but their kisses have changed.

He’s half of the equation, so Dongwoo figures maybe he’s changed a little too. He has to, tries to, so that he might fit into Junghwan’s life.

For the next four years Dongwoo comes and goes eight times. He’s here for half the year and there the other half. He comes back for seven months and is gone for five. It goes on like that until he’s back again on Christmas Eve, wrapping a thick scarf around Junghwan’s neck.

Junghwan is staring at him as coolly as he can manage, thick lips curled into a frown. It reminds Dongwoo of last Christmas and the one before that. He’s tempted to kiss the frown away but knows better by now. He is most in love the first month that he’s back and Junghwan is most angry the first week.

Dongwoo counts and sections their time together and apart obsessively like a treasured pattern, like the careful stitches that make up the scarf wrapped around Junghwan’s neck.

“I missed you.”

Junghwan unwinds the scarf and holds it out. He pushes his fingers between the warm, fat knots. He pries at it, tugs and pulls at it. He gives the impression of trying to unpuzzle something, trying to undo something that’s glued together.

“I miss you,” he says finally. He looks at Dongwoo finally, lets Dongwoo look him in the eye.

Junghwan is still angry but he doesn’t know how to be cool about anything, that’s just not him. He burns when he’s angry. It’s perfect really, because Dongwoo is always a little bit cold. Junghwan’s hands on the side of his face are warm as they kiss, he pulls Dongwoo down, and his mouth is hot.

Dongwoo’s body goes from cool to warm to hot. These moments together between the two of them, hot and sticky under tangled bed covers, breathe life into him.

It’s okay that Junghwan is angry. He should be angry, Dongwoo thinks, because he knows he’s horrible. He’s well aware that he gives Junghwan nothing; his affection is as hollow as a drum. Dongwoo brushes the hair back from Junghwan’s face, cups his hand to his cheek. Dongwoo kisses him with parted lips, licks him and bites reddened marks down his neck – but it’s like trying to fill a cup with air.

Junghwan claws at his back, his fingers dig into Dongwoo’s shoulder with deliberate force, struggling to mark and bruise him. He comes all over Dongwoo’s stomach in messy spurts and falls back on top of him, gluing them together as he sighs into his ear.

“Stay,” Junghwan tells him as he comes back from showering.

Dongwoo peeks at him from behind the towel and clumps of wet hair. Junghwan is sitting in bed with the scarf in his hands, fiddling with the stitches again. He pries at the knots until his finger peeks through one of the little spaces in between.

“I mean. Stay the night. What’s the point in leaving, you’re just going to go back to the store.”

Dongwoo smiles and dives back into the bed, he curls his arms around Junghwan’s waist and hooks his fingers together. He presses his nose to Junghwan’s stomach, all soft and warm.

“How long are you staying this time?”

Dongwoo tenses as the camera flashes. He’s gotten better with cameras though he’s never liked them. Anything for Junghwan, or at least he tries. Dongwoo pulls his legs up and shifts his weight, angles his face to let Junghwan catch the line of his jaw. He bites his lip, coincidentally, and there’s another flash.

“Um.” He doesn’t know if he’s any better with questions now than he was eight years ago.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Junghwan finally says it. It’s the year he’s turning thirty-five, twenty minutes after midnight of that New Year’s Day.

He’s still flushed and warm under the covers but Dongwoo is pulling away, drawing cool finger tips back from where his hand had settled on his chest. He sits up and doesn’t say a word. He folds his hands together in his lap as if he’s hiding something under his fingers, holding back, always holding something back. Even as Junghwan tries to pull secrets out of Dongwoo it’s like he’s digging through a bottomless reserve.

But he doesn’t need to know more.

“…are you even going to try to change my mind?”

“Is that possible? Some things just can’t change.”

Junghwan wonders why either of them try, if either of them are really trying. He curls and turns his back to Dongwoo who’s so still he may as well be dead.

“I hate that about you.”

The snow melts, the weather goes from cold to warm until it’s burning – and then it cools down again. The next time Dongwoo leaves Junghwan doesn’t expect to see him ever again.

Christmas Eve comes and goes, Dongwoo doesn’t come back.

prompt: ...vampires
i'm sorry. just um. squint a bit, or don't since it doesn't have to read that way at all.
(there's more to the story but that's not going to go here.)

[ fic ] less is more

2014-01-14T23:57:40Z

B1A4 | baro/girl!cnu | R | 1,700 w
warnings/notes: genderswap

prompt: “i’m honestly considering asking her if i can eat her out, as a friend.” (gently suggests girl!cnu/anyone for this) written for fourcoldpaws

“I’m honestly considering asking her if I can eat her out. You know, just…as a friend.”

“…who do you think you’re talking to?” Junghwa looks at Sunwoo with narrowed eyes and a half sneer on her lips.

He should probably shut up.

“I’m just trying to figure out how to word it.” And it’s not like he can’t shut up, it’s just that even if he didn’t talk about it the problem would remain there. How does he go about asking Woori if he can eat her out, or finger her, or just touch her breasts and kiss her in a completely not romantic way?

She’s stretched out on the couch, legs thrown over the arm rest. He stares at her feet, how she points her toes and tilts her ankles. It’s safe unlike the miles of naked leg and thin tank top, long brown hair splayed across the couch cushion all pretty and artful as if deliberately arranged. And, of course, she’s not wearing a bra.

Sometimes Sunwoo wonders if he even registers as male to Woori, the most revealing thing she wears out is skinny jeans but every time Sunwoo gets home he gets an eyeful.

“Are you waiting for me to tell you I made food?” Woori asks without looking up from her book.

There’s a lump in his throat when he tries to talk to her sometimes, he suspects it’s one of his balls clawing its way up, trying to talk for him.

“Did you?”

“In the microwave.”

“I’m pretty sure she’ll get that it’s not romantic if you say it exactly like that. She might punch you though,” Chansik comments with a laugh.

He’s no help at all.

“And throw you out of the apartment,” Jinyoung adds helpfully. His friends are no help at all.

“She wouldn’t punch me,” Sunwoo interrupts before they can say more. “Not really anyways.”

Woori does punch him sometimes, in that friendly, affectionate way. It would be so much easier if there was some way to have sex with her in a purely friendly, affectionate way. Like how she punches him. It would be so much easier if there was some way to do it without changing anything, without changing them. Roommates, best friends, the one person he can talk to about anything.

Except this.

They never talked about it, that one time they kissed, a little more than kissed.

What was he supposed to say? He’d been a little bit drunk and, as far as he knows, she hadn’t been drunk at all. They’d kissed, him leaning heavily on her and pushing her against her bedroom door. She’d brushed his hands away when he tried to grope his way into her pants, and he’d whined. He’d cooed ‘noona’ at her until she laughed and pressed kisses down the side of his face.

He remembers her grinning at him as she wedged her knee between his legs, pressed her thigh against his crotch.

“That’s all you get.”

They never talked about it the next day. He kept waiting for it to come up, day after day for the next few weeks, and it never did. If it made anything awkward it was on his end only, so what could Sunwoo say?

“Are you desperate or something? Or just plain crazy?” Junghwa asks as she smacks him with a magazine without restraint.

“Ow!”

It’s an unfair question. Sunwoo hasn’t been in a relationship for more than half a year but he’s not desperate. And he’s not crazy. What’s so weird about finding Woori attractive?

Junghwa drops the magazine into his lap and plops into the chair across the table. She orders a coffee and a way overpriced slice of cake, largely because Sunwoo is paying.

“I just. Need to get it out of my system.”

She snorts and speaks to him slowly as if she thinks he’s the stupidest person she’s ever spoken to. “Not. How. It works.”

The coffee and cake comes then; Sunwoo doesn’t dare to say anymore, not when Junghwa has a very hot drink in her hand. He watches Junghwa blow at the foamy top of her drink. Woori has hers with a sprinkle of chocolate; maybe he’ll bring her back a drink.

“Why don’t you just ask her out?”

“That,” Sunwoo makes a face, he wrinkles his nose and his lips pull into an exaggerated frown. “That’s just not how I see her.”

He sees Woori every day, except sometimes when one of them is working overtime. He sees her when she wakes up in the morning, eyes open barely a slit and hair like a lion’s mane. He sees her when she’s fresh out of the shower, face pink from the steam, droplets of water clinging to her skin. He sees her when she’s stressed beyond belief and eating leftovers right out of the fridge without reheating it.

But mostly he sees her smile, he sees her laugh, he sees her through her half opened bedroom door murmuring goodnight.

“Wait.”

“Yeah?” She rests her head against the door frame, waiting for him to continue. She smiles too, and maybe he’s imagining things but he thinks she knows.

“I was thinking,” he starts and flops.

“That’s new.”

“Shut up. I was thinking about. You know that,” Sunwoo takes a breath and tries not to choke.

“Remember when we’d just started sharing this place? That night when –”

“It was a good night,” she finishes for him. Woori steps out around her door, closing it behind her. “You know you’ve been talking to our mutual friends about…things you want to do with me.”

“Uh.”

“So, naturally, I’ve been hearing about it.”

She grins wrly at him. She waits, gives him enough time to think ‘oh crap’ before stepping across their narrow hallway and kissing him. “If you go around talking to our friends about what you want to do with my vagina again, I’m going to punch you. And kick you out of the apartment.”

“I didn’t know how to ask you!”

“Well you don’t, or if you really have to ask you…ask nicely,” Woori says as she peels her panties off and plops herself on his bed. Sunwoo’s brain isn’t really working, for extremely good reasons like bare legs and butt, the soft curve of her stomach and her hips.

She gives him an expectant look as she settles herself on his bed, leaning back against the headboard, knees bent, legs spread a bit. Really, spread just enough to accommodate him. It makes his throat go dry and his head spin, so he’s quiet as he awkwardly settles himself between her legs. He can’t look away, his gaze lingering at the space between her belly button and her groin.

He clears his throat twice. “So what? Like…you want me to say please?”

She pinches his nose lightly, smiles all lopsided and sweet. “I’d appreciate that.”

“Please.” He closes his eyes as she runs a hand through his hair, his voice cracks and it takes him a second. “Please, noona.”

It’s strange, how his stomach stops churning at the sound of her laugh.

“Don’t you think you have your answer already?”

He runs his hands down her thighs to her knees, her skin a little bit cool but so smooth under his palm. He worries a little that his hand feels like sandpaper on her but Woori puts her hands over his until his fingers find the soft skin of her inner thighs.

Sunwoo raises his gaze to look at her face. Her face is just slightly flushed but she doesn’t look away. They don’t kiss but Sunwoo touches his lips to her knee and moves up, each touch light and barely there. He has her legs on either side of him and neither of them are cool anymore. He can feel the warmth radiating from her body; he’s so close that she most certainly feels him hovering.

“So?” Woori whispers, her hand settling in Sunwoo’s hair again. She twirls her fingers, lips quirking at the edges. “Are you just going to stare and breathe all over me?”

He rests a hand against her stomach; he feels how her abdomen clenches and relaxes, just like his.

“I’ve never done this for a girl before.”

She huffs, it’s barely a laugh, “Yeah, I kind of guessed that.” She knocks at his head lightly with the side of her knee. “Come on. Or don’t and let me put my underwear back on.”

Sunwoo slides his hand from her stomach back to her thighs, watches and feels the way his fingers dip into her skin. She pushes his hair back from his face, thumb rubbing circles at his brow.

He stops hovering.

He eats her out. He licks her, sucks on her clit while he fucks her with his fingers, he traces her opening with his tongue – he’s not sure he’s any good at all. But he hears her moans, her hips jerk in little staccatos, and he gives her a squeeze. He feels her pulling at his hair and the way her body clenches around his fingers; all he can do is try to memorise this moment. It’s not like they’re going to do this again.

He waits for her to come down from her high, for her to open her eyes and look at him. He squeezes at her thigh and kisses at her stomach until Woori tugs on his ears and looks down at him with a sated smile.

“Hi.”

Sunwoo’s so hard he’s surprised he didn’t come just from getting her off. He’s way past being too proud to beg, he’s been past that point since before they started. “Woori.”

She cradles his face in her hands and shifts so that she can lean in to kiss the tip of his nose. Her hands guide him up, arranges the two of them so that they’re both on their sides facing each other.

“Can I,” he starts to ask but she shushes him with a finger to his lips. Woori gives him her half-moon smile and Sunwoo’s mouth goes dry. She nudges her bare leg between his and kisses him before he can try to speak again.

“That's all you get.”

[ fic ] b1a4 au prompts

2014-01-14T23:20:46Z

prompt: chandeul, chansik is a prince | G | 365 w

The music filters through the walls and echoes through the cool stone walls as Chansik stumbles through the hidden passageways. The ones his great grandfather put in, probably. Chansik had never met the man but everyone has heard stories about how he snuck out to dance with peasant girls behind his wife’s back.

Not quite what Chansik is planning to do, but they are still useful. Dongwoo had caught his eyes as he snuck out but in spite of the way he rolled his eyes his smile had been permissive.

The passage is dark and not horribly wide but Chansik makes his way through and out with a laugh. It takes him out into the garden and he keeps running, past the fountains and beyond a couple of giant ornamental hedges, until the music is a bare whisper and the beautifully lit palace looks like an expensive toy.

And then there’s Junghwan, full sized, waiting for him.

Chansik throws his arms around him, still panting from the run. Junghwan’s arms naturally fit around Chansik’s waist; he thinks he can feel the warmth of Junghwan’s body even through the too thick, overly embroidered fabric of his clothes.

“Hyung,” he murmurs into his neck, nose pressing against his skin.

They kiss, light and chaste, back lit by the palace’s artificial twilight.

“I brought you some pastries,” Chansik tells Junghwan excitedly. He unwraps the pastries from the handkerchief he wrapped them in and presses it to Junghwan’s lips.

“You’re sure you don’t have to be there?” Junghwan asks, smiling. That’s the most important part, really.

“Just take a bite.”

Chansik knows how good the pastry is, fluffy buttery layers wrapped around rich, vanilla scented cream, but he’s still delighted by the almost moan and the way Junghwan’s eyes flutter for a second when he takes a bite. These are the only moments he looks forward to.

“I’m the prince,” he informs smugly. “I can be wherever I want to be.”

Junghwan grins as he licks his lips and reaches up to ruffle Chansik’s perfectly coiffed hair. It flops right back into place once he pulls his hand away.

“Don’t be a brat, you’re only here because I am.”

prompt: shinchan, alice in wonderland. | PG | 290 w

“Alice isn’t supposed to smoke The Caterpillar’s pipe,” he, Dongwoo, The Caterpillar, informs sagely and not at all soberly. ‘Alice’ has his lips wrapped around Dongwoo's pipe. Plump lips, pink lips, lips that look like a little wrinkled rose.

Dongwoo slips a little as he leans in, staring, over-sized mushrooms do not make the most stable of perches.

“Yeah well, shouldn’t the Caterpillar be a caterpillar?” ‘Alice’ retorts, not very Alice-like at all, not his voice, not his words. His hoodie is as blue as Alice’s dress would be and it moves, flows like the ebbing sea. But he’s still not Alice.

“No, The Caterpillar,” Dongwoo corrects, reaching out sluggishly to try to retrieve his pipe. Not-Alice dances out of the way and grins at him, corners of his eyes crinkling. Dongwoo slips a bit more, and has to catch himself by grabbing at the edge of the cap, fingers digging into the gills.

“The Caterpillar,” he mimics and takes another sip from the pipe, Dongwoo’s pipe.

“Yes.”

There are lights, bright and florescent, behind his eyelids. He blinks and it glitters, he blinks faster and it’s like not-Alice is sparkling. He blows a cloud of smoke into Dongwoo’s face and steps so close that Dongwoo can smell him even through the haze.

“You didn’t answer. Shouldn’t the Caterpillar be a caterpillar?”

“No, The Caterpillar.”

“Right, The Caterpillar. So?”

Dongwoo pushes at his uselessly round glasses, up two millimeters and then they slide down one. He pushes them up again.

“I am who I am. But you,” Dongwoo takes a breath, staring at the wrinkled rose lips wrapped around his pipe. “You’re not Alice.”

Not-Alice laughs and there are bells strung underneath. “I am Alice, but you can also call me Chansik.”

prompt: shinchan, boarding school | PG-13 | 340 w

Dongwoo throws the covers over their heads and, more importantly, over his reading light with a muttered ‘crap.’ He tenses and listens for the footsteps outside his room to fade, breathing needlessly heavy for the amount of lying around he’s been doing all evening.

Chansik is lying half on him and he cackles right into Dongwoo’s ear, not quiet at all.

“Paranoid much?”

Dongwoo isn’t usually this jumpy, but usually his reading light is used to study after lights out, not to light up glossy pages of cleavage and shiny skin. It's warm with the blankets over their heads, their weighted breaths not helping at all, but for some reason it makes Dongwoo shiver.

“You’re too loud,” he hisses at Chansik, tries and fails to glare at him because Chansik’s face is too close to his ear still and Dongwoo can’t actually shoot him any kind of look.

“You worry too much, they never check your room.”

It’s true. It makes Dongwoo’s room the best place to keep things that they’re not supposed to, like lukewarm cans of beer, basketballs, and apparently porn.

“Besides,” Chansik whispers, voice hushed not for Dongwoo’s sake, lips feathering against the shell of his ear. “You’re graduating this year; shouldn’t this be the year for you to break rules? “

“Chan-ah.”

“Hm?”

“Is that…?”

Chansik laughs, loud again. Dongwoo tenses, almost expecting to feel Chansik chomp at his earlobe or something.

“Yeah,” he blows into Dongwoo’s ear and makes his shoulders jump. “That’s my dick on your leg,” he concludes with a giggle.

It's stiff and hot against Dongwoo's bare leg, he should know better than to wear just boxers when Chansik rolls into bed with him. It crosses Dongwoo’s mind to smack him for this, all of it. But Chansik’s hand glides up the side of his leg, touch warm and certain, and Dongwoo is blinking at pictures of ample cleavage dressed in lace and sweat. He has no words. He just answers with a low groan as he grasps for Chansik’s hand.

[ fic ] good run

2014-01-01T21:29:18Z

B1A4 | cnu/jinyoung, ot5 friendship, (side) gongchan/sandeul | PG-13 | 3,000 w

there was life before kaiju and jaegers but sometimes it's hard to remember, and sometimes those memories seem more like dreams. pacific rim!au
written for b1a4ss 2013

“You skipped the post battle photographs and interviews, huh?”

There’s always a weird glow in the labs, Dongwoo isn’t sure if it’s the lighting or the Kaiju parts or both. He taps at the glass of a particularly large container with a chunk of Kaiju carcass floating in it. It’s bizarre to see them in neatly packed pieces like that when hours ago he’d been ripping one of these behemoths apart.

“I’m not really good at that part.”

It’s always quiet after the thing falls, so quiet. They always stand still for a moment, listening for nothing, still connected. It’s the only time Dongwoo feels at ease.

“You’re crazy, the other pilots love it. It was your third kill, you guys aren’t rookies anymore.”

Dongwoo sighs and swivels to face Sunwoo. “I don’t feel that great about smashing the university in the process.”

By the time Chansik and Dongwoo had arrived the Kaiju had already made it to the city, it’d been a fast one. They managed to lead it back out into the water but not without some damage to the city. It’s never without damage. They fight, fight for their lives; they grapple with nightmarish dinosaurs and take a chunk of the city with them. Their so called ‘win’ earns them a few weeks of peace before another monster shows up to tear apart another corner of their world.

“You’re thinking too much, I know you’re thinking too much, you’re making that face,” Sunwoo tells him, speaking quickly before Dongwoo can remove the look on his face. He plops a small cylinder with a Kaiju eye drifting in it in front of Dongwoo. “I know what you’re thinking. I bet we’d be Drift compatible.”

Dongwoo snorts. “Maybe, too bad you bruise like a peach and have no stamina.”

Sunwoo spins back to his work, waving Dongwoo away casually with one hand. “Too bad? Thank god, the last thing I want is to be stuck in a giant metal mammoth fighting alien dinosaurs. Now go, I have to get back to work, we’ll probably be getting new samples soon.”

He sighs and gets up to leave, squinting at Sunwoo one more time before hurrying out. The sight of Sunwoo elbow deep in luminescent monster guts should be unnerving or sickening , anything but normal – but that’s exactly what it is. This is their reality regardless of whatever they may have once dreamt of but Sunwoo looks so content with his work that Dongwoo has to wonder if maybe he is living his dream.

“Is Dongwoo here?” Jinyoung wanders into the labs half an hour after Dongwoo has drifted out. The milking machine is churning noisily. He hopes it’s just them clearing out backlog and not new material because Jinyoung does not want to be in the labs while their best and brightest scientists scramble around brains running way too fast for their bodies to follow.

Sunwoo scurries past him, cradling a glowing cylinder in his arms like a baby.

“Gone already, check his room.”

It’s how they are, never quite in sync, one of them trailing behind the other. But they always catch up to each other in the end; Jinyoung supposes that’s what matters out of all the tiny things that would matter if the world weren’t crazy and upside down.

Jinyoung pauses in his turn. “How is he?”

“Thinking too much. You know how he is, why bother asking?”

He does, but he likes to hear it from someone else sometimes. Their lives are far from what they used to be but he still knows Dongwoo. Jinyoung grins thinly at Sunwoo.

“All right, I’ll check his room. Try not to have too much fun with your new babies.”

“They’re not babies, they’re samples,” Sunwoo huffs, words completely at odds with how he absently strokes the thing he’s holding in his arms.

All the pilots are assigned identical rooms to begin with, all metal and plastic and glowing displays that never dim completely. Dongwoo and Chansik’s room is the same but unlike everyone else’s; as far as Jinyoung knows, Dongwoo is the only one that insists on growing plants in their room. He has three little potted plants sitting under plant lights in a corner of their small room. Jinyoung wonders how he and Chansik don’t knock them over when rushing out on assignment. One time Jinyoung knocked the one with the little yellow flowers over while rolling out of Dongwoo’s bunk. He hadn’t even been in a hurry.

“Hi,” Jinyoung chimes as he peers into Dongwoo and Chansik’s shared room. Dongwoo tends to leave his door unlocked when he comes back from assignment. Jinyoung wonders if he does it for him, if it’s an invitation. Sometimes he thinks about asking, coming in with a wider smile and teasingly asking, ‘did you miss me?’

Dongwoo looks up and smiles at him, as if he expected him. He’s crouching by the plants already, fingers dusted with soil, checking if they need water probably. Jinyoung smiles in return, crouching next to Dongwoo.

Jinyoung has already heard about the damage to the city. There’ve been no reports of fatalities or injuries, thanks to early evacuation, and they’d managed to turn the fight back to the water quickly. But they made a dent. Dongwoo will be thinking about it for weeks, until the next attack rolls along, and maybe longer.

He rests his head on Dongwoo’s shoulder as Dongwoo dusts his hands off. It’s uncomfortable, crouching and leaning, it leaves him balanced awkwardly on the balls of his feet but he has to touch Dongwoo because it’ll be a while before he’s ready to say much.

“Tired?” Jinyoung asks, and Dongwoo nods in response.

It’s doesn’t come naturally to Jinyoung at all. He has to try to follow Dongwoo’s pace while he’s used to it being the other way around. In school it had always been that way, Dongwoo a half step behind him with an easy smile on his face. Everything had been easy then. But they’re not in school anymore and it’s become a little easier to believe what’s happening every day; he blinks awake and he knows he’s far from home, he knows that monsters exist.

The alarm sounds at 4 AM and Jinyoung is up and alert in ten blinks. Fighting monsters has changed him in ways he’d never considered; or rather, none of them ever considered how fighting monsters could change them. He’d never been much of a morning person before.

“I’m up,” he tells Junghwan before he can ask, climbing out of his bunk smoothly and straightening his clothes.

“It looks like it’s headed for the Korean Peninsula,” Junghwan answers without being asked, voice thick with sleep but words clear.

There are eight Korean Rangers stationed at Nagasaki and there’s an unwritten agreement that they get to handle the Kaiju that head for Korea. The attacks aren’t common, Japan almost acts as a wall between the breach and Korea, but the only reason they’re stationed here is so that they can defend their home, even if it means being so far from it.

“Let’s get going then; it’s been a while since we’ve been back.” Their bodies move before they even have time to consciously think about what they should be doing. Jinyoung steps on Junghwan’s spare boots and kicks them aside without pausing or stumbling. It’s a far cry from the high schoolers they were once upon a time.

Dongwoo and Chansik meet them in the corridor when they step out, hair messy but eyes alert.

“Come back soon,” Chansik says with a curve at his lips, he looks at Jinyoung and then past him, holding Junghwan’s gaze. Jinyoung grins as he catches Dongwoo’s hand in his and gives him a firm squeeze.

“We’ll make it quick.”

Busan is about a half hour away by air, Seoul an hour. Usually the Kaiju doesn’t get anywhere close to land before they intercept, not anymore. They’ve learned; it’s hardly a comfort.

“Where are they going to drop?” Dongwoo asks, head resting on Chansik’s shoulder. Chansik is turning an empty glass cylinder his hand while Dongwoo taps a pen against the desk noisily.

“Why are you two here?” Sunwoo snaps before Chansik can reply. He’s always irritable when they’re like this, waiting; it leaves all of them a little off balance. Dongwoo straightens up and shrugs helplessly, there’s nothing they can do from here when only Jinyoung and Junghwan were launched.

“Because we’re not supposed to hover around the command center,” he answers dryly.

It’s strange to think that a Category II is nothing to be worried over, that there should be no cause for concern because they’ve seen bigger, more toxic, ones. It’s been over a year since the last time a Category II Kaiju attacked, they’ve become accustomed to Category III Kaiju while worrying about the appearance of the ever larger Category IV Kaiju. So now this ‘small’ monster should be a walk in the park.

But they’re all on edge.

“Don’t you think it’s strange?” Chansik asks, setting the cylinder down with a soft clack. Sunwoo snatches it the moment it touches the table.

“Sunwoo?” Dongwoo prompts, he starts twirling the pen in his hand restlessly.

“So you wanted my expert opinion,” Sunwoo says, mimicking the way he usually preens at the attention and falling a bit flat. It’s never quite quiet in the labs or anywhere in the Shatterdome, something’s always buzzing or cranking or clattering but the three of them are silent for a moment. Dongwoo drops the pen.

“Yeah,” Sunwoo says, swallowing around the word. “It’s kind of strange, but you know what? Stranger things have happened.” Like Kaiju and Jaegers and them piloting Jaegers to fight Kaiju, but all of that has long since become ordinary. This new ordinary is kind of awful and every reason to worry.

Chansik and Dongwoo get up at the same time, even pushing in their chairs at the same time.

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to present a logical argument and if that doesn’t work we’re going to beg.” Chansik grins, voice tight but even.

They’re twenty minutes behind but their Jaeger is lighter and it’s better to get there late than to risk regretting never going. It’s been a while since they’ve been home together.

Junghwan remembers the first time a Kaiju attacked Korea, he’s pretty sure they all do. It had hit Seoul, of course, and up until that point the whole bizarre Kaiju war had seemed worlds away, unreal.

Junghwan remembers the first time a Kaiju attacked Busan. He’d been at school when the alarm to evacuate had sounded. He’d been huddled together with his classmates, packed tighter than the subway during rush hour and it’d been unexpectedly quiet. By then the Nagasaki Shatterdome had been in service for almost a year and the Russian one for more than two, the Kaiju never made it to land.

So, it’d been quietly terrifying but they’d survived.

“I hope it’s a quiet day.”

He feels Jinyoung as much as he hears him. “We have some time until it gets here, it’ll be fine if we just wait.”

It turns out to be a quiet day thanks to Dongwoo and Chansik. It was far from an easy victory, but nobody died. They’re credited and praised for their foresight when the Kaiju shed its gooey second skin and revealed itself to be a very compact Category III. The four of them managed to take the monster down, the Kaiju never reached land.

“Yeah, we almost didn’t either,” Dongwoo says, talking over the news broadcast they’re listening to from the infirmary. It’s not funny at all but Chansik laughs, still giddy from the adrenaline. He’s stroking Junghwan’s bangs with a still shaking hand, Junghwan is asleep.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Sunwoo says. He’s waiting around for when they fish out the jelly Category II layer from the sea to get to work.

“Says the one that wasn’t there,” Chansik retorts with a sharp smile.

“You’re all so charming when you’re in pain.”

“I’m not in pain, I can’t feel anything.” Dongwoo sniffs unhappily and gingerly shifts to accommodate Jinyoung’s head on his shoulder.

Junghwan is knocked out, Jinyoung can’t move any of his fingers, Dongwoo fractured his collar bone and some other things, and they are all numb on pain killers. They’re in pieces and this is the worst they’ve ever taken since they became Rangers but it’s more surprising that it didn’t happen sooner. Sunwoo’s right, it wasn’t that bad. It’s more surprising that they all made it back. They’re in pieces but this fits in with the normal that has monsters that rise from the sea, it makes sense in a world where they’re piloting giant robots. Who would be surprised to die in a world like that?

They hear about Gypsy Danger’s half defeat, and it comes as a surprise. They’re surprised that it had taken down the Kaiju on its own even after losing one pilot, they’re surprised one of the pilots survived, and they’re a little surprised about the mangled victory all around. It’s not the first time a Kaiju has taken a Jaeger down with it, but they’ve been lulled to believe that they’re better now than years ago.

The whole world is shocked and scared for a few weeks before they forget.

And then the next Kaiju attack reminds them, the next attack takes down two Rangers and it doesn’t stop. They lose five Rangers in six months, they should be scared.

“They’re talking about building a wall,” Dongwoo murmurs from the top bunk.

Chansik snorts in response, mostly quiet in the bunk below him. They don’t talk much when they’re alone, there’s no real need to when they’ve been in and out of each other’s head so many times over the last few years.

It’s a stupid idea.

“If it works we could go home.”

They haven’t been home in so long, not really, except on assignment. Dongwoo thinks that he and Chansik probably feel the homesickness most acutely but he knows he’s biased because even right now it’s like he can feel Chansik’s feelings echoing inside him. With everyone else he can only guess at what they feel, but he knows Chansik feels the same ache because they share it.

So he knows Chansik knows that he doesn’t mean what he says.

Even if it were possible to build an unbreakable wall, where would it leave them? Building a wall to hide behind indefinitely is the stupidest, most pathetic idea he’s ever heard of, and yet he can see the appeal. That’s how far the world has fallen.

“We can dream,” is all that Chansik says in response and in ten minutes they do. Chansik falls asleep first and the sound of his deep, even breaths lulls Dongwoo to sleep moments later.

“Remember how we talked about moving to Seoul together?” Jinyoung runs his fingers through Dongwoo’s hair, it’s gotten longer and he talks about cutting it but Jinyoung likes it like this. He twists a strand around his finger and tugs lightly, making Dongwoo open his eyes to look up at him.

“Yeah.” It seems like forever ago that the two of them were in high school. They used to stay at school so late, because school was all there’d been to life. Jinyoung was in the student council and Dongwoo would wait for him after the meetings so that they could lock themselves up in the music room. And they dreamed there.

That was before any Kaiju attacked Korea, the closest attack had been Tokyo, so it still felt like there was more to life than Kaiju and Jaegers. It’s hard to believe that was almost five years ago.

“Do you still want to go?”

Dongwoo presses his cheek to the inside of Jinyoung’s thigh, his fingers curl around Jinyoung’s knee.

“Together?” Dongwoo asks, lips brushing against skin and Jinyoung has to press his lips tightly closed.

“Mmhm.”

“I’d like that.” His fingers are etching patterns up Jinyoung’s leg, touch so light it almost tickles. “Channie and Junghwan too. And Sunwoo. We could all go together.”

Jinyoung feels too old to go back to school and Dongwoo probably feels the same, but Chansik could. Junghwan wanted to be a singer, so Jinyoung imagines him singing in a small, dimly lit bar. He imagines Dongwoo playing the piano while he plays the guitar, even though his fingers can’t move the same way they used to anymore. Sunwoo would be there too, probably drinking to celebrate the fact that he’s actually old enough to, unlike when he first left Korea.

It’s a nice, quiet dream.

The feeling of Dongwoo’s tongue on him wakes him up but Jinyoung can’t complain. It’s just a dream, so Dongwoo – warm, solid, real Dongwoo – is much better than a paper thin dream.

“They’re talking about shutting this place down.”

Nagasaki was the last Shatterdome to be built and, it seems, will be the first one to be shut down.

Jinyoung glances over at Junghwan; he looks the way Jinyoung feels, blank.

“There’s still Russia, or Tokyo.” He feels brittle and tired suddenly, the combination makes him feel like he’s about to snap in half. Those are their options, the more ideal ones that keep them close enough to continue protecting their home.

There’s no moving anywhere to make dreams a reality because there’s no point, not when the world can still crumble around them and bury their dreams in the next week or the next heartbeat.

“Does that mean I have to learn to speak Russian?”

Jinyoung manages a tight smile. “We did okay here, I’m sure we’ll figure it out wherever we get stationed.”

He ruffles Junghwan’s hair and forces his smile wider. It’s not a genuine smile but it’s not empty, it’s a promise. “Wherever it is, we’ll go together.”

As long as they walk out of each fight alive, they’ll go together.

[ 50 b1a4 challenge ] wandering hands

2013-12-27T04:02:32Z

she's amazing | prompt: wandering hands | girl!gongchan/sandeul | PG-13 | 825 w
warning/notes: genderswap & crossdressing

junghwan and channie explore some things (each other & themselves).

“Does it feel tight?” Jugnhwan asks, whispers really. If he’s quiet maybe it won’t be as obvious, maybe Channie won’t even hear him.

“Does what feel tight?” She’s reaching back behind her to unhook her bra and Junghwan should really be more focused on that. It’s going to be the first time he sees her naked breasts and he should really be concentrating on just that. Instead, he’s sweating; his eyes are glued to her chest, yes, watching the way the garment loosens and falls forward a little, unlatched.

Channie has really nice breasts. He’s felt them through her clothes before, and he’s always known that they’re amazing and soft and perfectly shaped, but he’s fixating hard on the way the delicate lace looks against Channie’s skin. His eyes follow the shape of her bra instead of the shape of her body, he wonders how the straps feel clutching at her shoulders, he wonders how stiff the underwire feels against her skin.

Junghwan swallows, audible in the silence of his bedroom.

He wonders how it’d feel to wear it.

“Your bra, does it feel tight?”

Channie laughs as she shrugs it off. “No, definitely not now.”

She holds out her arms to him and he goes to her and wow. Her skin is smooth and soft on his fingertips and then against his lips. She tosses her bra onto his desk and his gaze only lingers on it for a few seconds.

“So. Do you want me to keep my bra on? Or do you want me to wear different styles? Or…”

She trails off for a moment, talking to him from where she has her head rested in his lap. Channie is slim so Junghwan’s lap makes a better pillow. They trade places sometimes, to be fair, but they fall into this position more naturally.

“Or…do you want to try it on?”

He’s a little bit nervous but this isn’t nearly as bad as the first time she saw him naked.

“Maybe. I mean, yeah. I guess I do. Is that weird?”

“You’re weird, but I like you so I don’t care.”

It takes some preparation. Junghwan isn’t particularly broad but Channie is slender. He snaps himself four times with her bra before she turns him around and figures that it just doesn’t fit him after snapping him a fifth time.

At first Junghwan thinks that failed attempt is the end of it but Channie surprises him a week later.

“You really don’t mind, do you?” There’s a hint of awe in his voice as he turns the bra around in his hands. It’s lacy and padded and what on earth are they going to do with it after they’re done? It’s obviously not cheap and it’s not Channie’s size.

“I thought about it,” she says slowly, rummaging through her bag and fishing out a cute flowing top and a skirt with an elastic waistband.

Oh.

“I couldn’t think of a reason I should mind.”

He squeezes the padded cup with his fingers and smiles; “It’s really soft.”

“Does it feel tight, oppa?”

Junghwan squirms a little, Channie’s fingers trail light and soft against his skin. Her hand dances under the flowy shirt he’s wearing and she hooks a finger under the band of the bra.

“A bit.” He takes a breath and it almost feels like the bra is squeezing him when he inhales. He kind of likes it, the compression, but he wonders how he’d feel if he had to wear it all the time. It’s a bit tight. How does she wear it all day?

She slides her hands down, out from under the shirt, not stopping until her thumbs are rubbing at his bare thighs. And he remembers, he wants to do that too; he wants to touch her, he wants to unbutton her shirt and kiss the space between her breasts. There’s something about touching each other while they’re both dressed like this, billowing fabrics and cute skirts, lacy underthings underneath.

It’s soothing.

“You look better in that skirt than I do.”

Junghwan snorts, leaning in to press a kiss to the tip of her nose. “Thank you,” he says, voice mockingly smug. It makes her laugh. He has no idea what he wants out of this, no idea where he wants this situation to go – so he figures it must be just as confusing for Channie, if not more confusing. He was the one that started this, kind of.

Channie slides her arms around his waist, suddenly cups his butt and tugs him flush against her. It makes Junghwan yelp before he laughs at the way she waggles her eyebrows at him.

“You know, we can do it just like we usually do.”

Junghwan ends up pushed against his closet as they kiss, her hands sneaking under her skirt that he’s wearing. Her blouse is hanging open around her and he kisses down her neck. It’s not soothing anymore, it’s just amazing.

changeful @ 2013-12-13T14:31:00

2013-12-13T19:31:19Z

END OF YEAR FEEDBACK MEME
my thread here

[ fic ] b1a4 tumblr prompts/shorts

2013-11-04T18:48:04Z

like everything & unlike anything | baro/gongchan | PG | 725 w

No one told him that kissing a bandmate is like being stung by a wasp. Or rather, waiting and anticipating a kiss from a bandmate is like waiting to be stung by a wasp. It hovers and buzzes, and he can’t run, so he stares it down and wonders how something so much smaller can be so intimidating.

Except Chansik is taller than him.

He has Sunwoo backed to a wall and he hovers, three centimeter (or more) height difference making it feel like Chansik is looming over him. It casts shadows in Chansik eyes that make him look like a totally different person. Sunwoo’s throat is dry and tight and he really needs to swallow – but he feels paralyzed as if moving will send them tumbling into each other.

He barely breathes, stare fixed on Chansik’s lips, and he can’t run.

This is all his fault.

It’s like how people say your life flashes in front of your eyes before you die except it’s not his life, it’s the past few months, and he’s not dying, he’s about to be kissed.

He should never have suggested the practice kissing scenario for the musical but it had seemed like a good idea at the time. It makes fun of his whole lap kiss issue and Chansik’s first kiss thing. The fans will love it, he’d been sure and time has proven him right.

But Chansik, always Chansik, takes things a step further than they expect.

Let’s kiss for real, for the final performance.

And like an unthinking idiot he’d agreed. If only someone had told him kissing (waiting to be kissed) their youngest would be like staring down a snake, ready to bite.

The first kiss is light. Chansik leans in and Sunwoo stares, going a little bit cross eyed trying to follow the approach of Chansik’s lips. He twitches, like his body is urging him to move forward, to quickly close the shrinking space. His mind’s racing and thinking thoughts like, the sooner this is over –

It’s light and soft and Sunwoo’s eyes fall close automatically when he feels Chansik’s lips on his.

Really? It’s your first kiss.

The second kiss is heavy. Chansik pulls back and Sunwoo breathes, he can smell the hairspray holding Chansik’s hair in place, he can smell the faint salt of his sweat. Sunwoo is not ready for the second kiss.

He spends the first quarter second staring blankly as Chansik’s lips moves against his, so certain and firm that it makes his head spin. Sunwoo, on the other hand, is clumsy and slow. It’s been months since his last kiss and that had been a peck, nothing like this, nothing like Chansik’s soft wet lips parting against his. He can’t think very well but thinking that Chansik is a good kisser requires no effort, it’s just that the thought throws Sunwoo off while he clumsily reciprocates.

It’s like learning a new language and Sunwoo’s getting it all wrong but Chansik is fluent. (How is he fluent?) Sunwoo finally closes his eyes again when he feels Chansik’s tongue slide along his lips; without thinking he parts his lips while Chansik tilts his head just so to deepen the kiss.

Then you better make it count.

The third kiss is not a kiss. Chansik licks his lips and he’s still hovering, still so close that the tip of his tongue catches against Sunwoo’s upper lip. Sunwoo is afraid to move, he’s pretty sure his heart is beating fast enough and loud enough to shake the walls.

Chansik rests his forehead against his. For a moment they close their eyes and count their breaths that rise and fall in time.

They’ll kiss on stage, for real, and everyone will see. It won’t be Chansik’s first kiss but it will be at the same time, people will stop bringing up that he’s never kissed and they’ll be able to move on. (Maybe instead they’ll be asked about the stage kiss but that doesn’t matter, yet.) Sunwoo wonders if maybe Chansik was sick of it, and that’s why he’d suggested the real kiss.

But then Chansik laughs. He’s rubbing his lower lip lightly with two fingers when he pulls back and he’s smiling so wide that the corners of his eyes crease.

“Hyung, do you really think that was my first kiss?”

prompt: shindeul + happy halloween video | G | 335 w

"Trick or Treat!"

Junghwan’s voice chimes loudly as he jumps out at him, arms spread out and the sucker in his mouth making one cheek round and puffy. Dongwoo’s smile spreads slow, like chocolate melting. He might have been startled if Junghwan hadn’t made too much noise from behind the closet door but he just smiles.

He tugs at the lollipop stick hanging out of the corner of Junghwan’s mouth. “You already have one.”

Junghwan pouts, eyes still bright, if he didn’t still have the candy in his mouth Dongwoo would kiss his candy stained lips. He tugs on the stick a little harder and doesn’t feel sorry for it at all.

“Not the point, hyung. And if you don’t give me a treat, I’ll…” Junghwan trails off, lips quirking into a grin again.

“You’ll…?”

“I’ll tickle you!” Junghan’s fingers are on Dongwoo’s neck before he finishes his sentence. It makes Dongwoo squeal sharply, shuffling past Junghwan to get away from skittering fingers. They stumble through the room, falling into Dongwoo’s bed together when he catches Junghwan around his waist.

Junghwan’s fingers slow but don’t stop, teasing Dongwoo’s sensitive neck. Dongwoo’s laugh shakes them both as he scrunches his shoulders up to try to hide, twisting and making his turtle face to get away from Junghwan’s fingers. They’re both breathing a little harder when Dongwoo finally grabs Junghwan’s wrists to put a stop to the assault.

“Okay, okay. I’ll give you a treat.” He only lets go of Junghwan after he’s sure his fingers aren’t going to squirm back to the crook of his neck (and even when he does one hand settles at Junghwan’s waist anyways, because he can). “Here.”

Junghwan half sits up, holding up a cupped hand for Dongwoo to deposit his offering in. It’s plastic and light and not edible.

“I can’t eat this,” he tells Dongwoo with a half joking frown and Dongwoo finally pulls the candy out of his mouth.

“You shouldn’t have so much sugar before bed.”

prompt: cnu/gongchan - hands | PG | 615 w

Chansik likes how Dongwoo’s hands feel on him, whether it’s the feeling of his broad palm on the small of his back or soft fingertips brushing along the base of his neck. Sometimes when they’re alone he’ll trace the shell of Chansik’s ear with his index finger, tug on his earlobe lightly with a smile. It’s a confusing smile, sweet and warm, because it’s Dongwoo, but Chansik can never quite figure out what it means. Even when Dongwoo’s thumbs rub at his hips or when he presses his whole hand, warm and firm, against his waist that’s as far as it goes. For all the intent that Chansik feels in the heat and weight of Dongwoo’s hand it never goes further.

They’re alone and Dongwoo smiles his confusing smile and runs his hand along Chansik’s shoulder.

“Hyung.” Chansik catches Dongwoo by the wrist and urges him, pulls him, to sit on the bed next to him.

His smile melts away and he purses his lips in question but doesn’t say anything. Chansik smiles, he’s not sure if he hopes that it’s as confusing to Dongwoo as it is to him or if he hopes that his intent is crystal clear.

Chansik straddles Dongwoo’s thighs, he tilts his head and he thinks he can see a faint quiver in Dongwoo’s jaw from how he’s clenching his teeth. Relax, he wants to say, it’s just me, it’s just us – but he’s not sure what is just about them.

“Hyung,” he says again and trails his fingers along Dongwoo’s jaw and under his chin. Dongwoo breathes in sharply and swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, Chansik feels it under his fingers.

Dongwoo’s hands are clenched in the bed sheets; he’s not touching Chansik. This isn’t unexplored territory, not at all, but even after all this time it doesn’t feel familiar. Dongwoo is breathing hard, tense and nervous, as Chansik strokes the back of his hand and pries his fist loose. He brings Dongwoo’s hand up and kisses the back of his hand. Dongwoo’s fingers curl, almost like he wants to pull away but he doesn’t.

His hand is soft except for slight callouses at his fingertips; he’s been playing guitar more often lately and there are little dips forming where he presses down on the strings. Chansik laps at the fingertips, just to feel them one more way. He’s tempted to take a finger into his mouth and suck on it. He’d like to really taste Dongwoo’s skin, but he’s also a bit worried about scaring him off, scaring them both off, so he just holds Dongwoo’s hand. He’s straining against his pants, he doesn’t need to look to know that it’s the same for Dongwoo. They’re both burning up, he feels it from their interlaced fingers.

“Channie.” Dongwoo’s voice cracks when he speaks, his gaze is skittish when he looks up at him. There’s a question in there but he doesn’t manage to ask more than Chansik’s name.

Chansik shakes his head, teeth scraping against Dongwoo’s knuckles. He lets Dongwoo’s hand drop and wraps his arms around his shoulders instead. It feels just as good as Dongwoo’s hands resting on his waist and just as confusing. He’s not sure what Dongwoo wants and Chansik isn’t sure he knows what he wants either.

“Channie,” Dongwoo says again, voice more steady after a few long minutes and hot has cooled to warm. “Can I kiss you?”

Dongwoo’s smile is still confusing but Chansik finds that knowing isn’t that important, for now anyways. They press their lips together lightly; their lips are a little bit dry and a little bit cold but Chansik likes how this feels too.

prompt: cnu/gongchan - eyebrows | G | 100 w

Sometimes all it takes is a quirk of an eyebrow. They’ll look at each other from opposite sides of the van, or across the room, or even across the stage. Chansik looks over, catching Dongwoo’s gaze and there it is – a quirk of an eyebrow paired with that crooked grin.

Chansik returns the look, biting back a laugh.

“Hey,” Dongwoo says sweetly from one end of the couch.

“Hey,” Chansik returns with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“Hey,” Sunwoo says from between the two of them, glares at one then the other. “Do you mind? Just get a room already.”

[ 50 B1A4 challenge ] history

2013-10-07T05:28:33Z

when time stands still | prompt: history | cnu/jinyoung | PG | 1,715 w

dongwoo lives in his own world, his own time.

“Think of it like an hourglass,” Dongwoo explains, hands held out as if that might help him demonstrate. It doesn’t. They’re chatting over the murmur of a movie that they’ve forgotten about, a few empty beer bottles pepper the otherwise neat coffee table in front of them. He’s tipsy but not quite drunk, it gives him the extra momentum he needs to launch into the explanation. He only ever tries this when he’s at least a little bit tipsy.

Jinyoung is looking at him, gaze a little bit blurry from the alcohol but still intensely focused. Or maybe he’s intensely confused since Dongwoo kind of changed the topic abruptly. He does that sometimes, he has a tendency to pick up new strands of conversation, drop them, and pick them up again later; sometimes days later. It’s a side effect of his ability, condition, his concept of time and chronology is a bit warped. He thinks he’s already said something but he really hasn’t, or he said it a few days ago, or he did and hit rewind without quite realising it.

Dongwoo lives half in his head and the other half isn’t always all there, a lot of the times minutes behind, or days ahead. Jinyoung tries to follow, but sometimes he can’t make sense of Dongwoo; so he’d asked him to explain, two days ago.

Or maybe he hasn’t asked him yet and Dongwoo is ahead of himself again, it’s hard to tell when he’s had a bit too much to drink.

“Like an hourglass,” he says again, as if it might help to clarify. Jinyoung says nothing in return, but Dongwoo tries not to be discouraged. His mouth is dry and sticky so he reaches for another bottle. It’s not a good idea, and the last bottle hadn’t been a good idea either.

“There’s only so much sand in an hourglass,” he continues and finds Jinyoung blinking at him in utter confusion, eyes clear and sharp.

“What?”

Dongwoo looks in his hand and realises he’s holding a half full bottle of beer. He looks at the coffee table, there are no bottles – and he realises he’s not even a little bit tipsy. “Oh, crap.”

Jinyoung is not the first person Dongwoo has tried to explain it to, his ability, his condition. He recalls trying to explain to Sunwoo, his university roommate, after a couple of cans of beer. “See, I can’t go backwards indefinitely because I can't go back to a time I've never experienced. So no, I can’t go back and stop the war from happening.”

Sunwoo looks at Dongwoo and Dongwoo is pretty sure that he doesn’t believe any of it. He grasps at the air, fingers clenching around nothing; it’s hard to explain and the way Sunwoo is staring isn’t exactly encouraging.

“Okay, but you could have probably stopped me from breaking my leg that time.”

Dongwoo winces at the flippant comment, he looks down at his hand and plays with the beer can tab. Because Sunwoo broke his leg after Dongwoo went back to stop him from breaking his arm. He feels guilty all over again, and he wishes he’d never started this conversation.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

When he looks up Sunwoo is walking into their dorm with a six pack of beer in each hand.

“Sorry for what?” Sunwoo looks at him quizzically and Dongwoo just shakes his head.

“Nothing, never mind.”

It’s not like Dongwoo relives specific events and moments, not exactly. He might experience April 11, 2011, three or four times but it’s never the exact same day. You can tip an hourglass back and forth but the individual grains of sand will never fall and land in the exact same position.

The fourth time Dongwoo meets Jinyoung he feels like an utter creep. Even though it’s technically the first time Jinyoung is meeting him Dongwoo already knows his name, birthdate, phone number, and university major. He knows how Jinyoung likes his coffee and that he tends to bite his lip without realising it. It’s almost like he’s a stalker – but he’s not – because to Dongwoo he’s already known Jinyoung for months and just failed to ask him out on a date. That’s why he’s here again.

It’s spring but moments before Dongwoo had been sweating from sweltering summer heat.

“There’s foam in that.”

Jinyoung likes his coffee without foam. Jinyoung is staring at him in utter confusion and he doesn’t even know Dongwoo’s name.

“You asked for no foam,” he continues. “But there’s…there’s foam in it.”

He feels like a complete weirdo. Thankfully he’s mostly used to that feeling so, this time, time does not stutter and roll back. And, of course, he’s right; there’s foam in the coffee. For some reason the most inconsequential details always remain the same.

The worst thing about this condition is that it’s not always something he does consciously. In fact, usually, it’s completely involuntary. Dongwoo is self-conscious by nature, has always been. He feels the sting of embarrassment too acutely, it makes him shrink away, and before he knows it he’s two beats behind everyone and minutes or hours or days behind what he last remembers. And it’s not just embarrassment that triggers it. Guilt and anxiety are just as likely to hit the switch; and, unfortunately, Dongwoo is just as vulnerable to those feelings as he is to embarrassment. It’s almost like a defense mechanism, except Dongwoo is pretty sure it’s the most useless and annoying one ever.

He lived through the first day of middle school three times. He broke up with his first girlfriend twice. One time, after a particularly bad panic attack, during his first year of university and his first month in Seoul he rolled time back almost an entire year.

It’s through that unfortunate incident that Dongwoo learned that he could push time forward, if he gets desperate enough. But the aftermath from that one time was pretty ridiculously confusing, so he’s never managed a second time.

Chansik is the only person that knows about Dongwoo’s problem. He’s tried to explain it to a number of people but he never quite gets through the explanation before he accidentally folds time backwards. And, frankly, even if he got through the explanation he’s written and rewritten a hundred times, he doubts most people would believe him.

He doesn’t actually try to explain it to Chansik. He’s known Chansik since they were both children and, because he’s the older of the two, Chansik trusts Dongwoo without question, without doubt.

They’re walking back from school on a rainy day, each with their own umbrella. Chansik’s umbrella is green, with eyes that stick up the top and an unnerving smile, like a frog. Dongwoo is trailing behind again, three steps behind. He catches up quickly and his umbrella bumps against Chansik’s. Dongwoo pulls the both of them back, two, three steps, just as a car drives by and sends a wave of muddy water crashing at their feet.

“Woah!” Chansik looks at the water ebbing at the toe of his boots and then turns to stare at Dongwoo. They’re both thankfully dry, so they won’t have to worry about being scolded by their parents for not being careful.

“We got really wet last time,” he explains, without really explaining anything. Chansik nods, wide eyed, and breaks into a grin.

“Thanks, hyung!” They’re children, so it’s not really necessary to make sense in the way adults are expected to. Dongwoo never actually explains it to Chansik but he understands, and he doesn’t doubt.

“What would you do if you could change the past?” Dongwoo asks, maybe out of the blue. Jinyoung looks up from the menu to look at him. They’ve been dating for two months, Dongwoo feels like he’s known Jinyoung forever though from how many times he’s tripped up.

Before meeting Jinyoung he’d been pretty stable. At the age of twenty-three he’d finally mastered the art of caring less, a lot less. So the accidents had been limited to short snatches of time, seconds or minutes, that happened when he was startled or a little bit drunk.

And then he met Jinyoung.

With Jinyoung it’s like the first day of school all over again, or the first day at work, or when he’s standing on stage at a singing competition, so tense that he knows his next note is going to crack. He should hate that feeling but in spite of everything, how his heart races, how hot his face gets, how he just wants to melt into the ground after blurting out a bad joke – in spite of all of that he’s never been happier.

Love is a combination of happiness and anxiety for Dongwoo. He feels like he’s been in love with Jinyoung forever.

Jinyoung looks at him intently. With anyone else it’d just be a fluff question, something to keep the conversation going on an awkward date. But Jinyoung takes him seriously because Dongwoo asked seriously. Jinyoung takes Dongwoo seriously the same way he laughs at Dongwoo’s bad jokes, and the way he leans into his tentative goodbye hug.

Dongwoo can feel his face getting warm from the silence and the attention, from the realisation that Jinyoung probably likes him just as much as Dongwoo does. It makes his heart flutter. Jinyoung makes his heart flutter.

“I don’t know,” Jinyoung answers finally. “What would you do?”

Dongwoo laughs lightly, nervous for no reason other than the fact that Jinyoung is barely an arm’s length away from him. “Probably nothing.”

If he goes back now, he might not have this moment ever again. Jinyoung won’t remember how he smiles at Dongwoo’s awkwardness, won’t remember how their legs brush under the table. He doesn’t want to lose anymore seconds or minutes he’s spent with Jinyoung.

“Me too, I think. If I tried to change anything I might not end up where I am now…and I like where I am.”

His heart is trying to climb up his throat but Dongwoo manages to reach across the table and set his hand over Jinyoung’s. He stares at the water rings on the table and at their hands. “I like where I am too.”

It's all in his head but, in that moment, it feels like time is standing still.

[ 50 B1A4 challenge ] tonight & dragon

2013-10-02T22:33:48Z

only one | prompt: tonight | baro/jinyoung | PG | 545 w

There is something magical about meeting a stranger and pretending to be in love with them on a weekend trip. It turns what would be a meaningless meeting into something more, makes the weekend seem unforgettable even if he knows it’s not true. By Monday morning he'll forget but, for now, Jinyoung believes it. That’s what the weekend is for. Jinyoung lets himself believe, lets himself live in the fantasy until Monday when he has to take the train back to his real life and all the bullshit that comes with it.

To be honest he doesn’t have time for a real relationship. He spends his week days, real days unlike this weekend long daydream, working until late into the evening or too early into the morning. He eats his meals alone, too tired to go out even when his friends invite him for a drink. He doesn’t mind working hard for what he has, but the reality is that it doesn’t leave him room to involve more people in his life.

He doesn’t mind, but it gets a little lonely. And when every song he ever writes is about loneliness and isolation it gets a little bit old. A little romance is good for inspiration, just a taste of it so that the sense of longing doesn’t fade.

Baro has a wicked grin and a smart mouth to match. He’s shameless, but (or maybe because of that) walking and talking with him feels like the most fun Jinyoung has had in months, maybe years. Baro only knows Jinyoung by his given name and Jinyoung is pretty sure Baro isn’t his real name. But that doesn’t really matter, if anything it makes it feel more dreamlike, more fantastical even if they’re just walking along the beach back towards the hotel. It’s Sunday night and his whirlwind romance is coming to an end. And, like every time before, he’s reluctant to see it end.

They’re not holding hands but their arms brush occasionally as they walk, swinging by their sides. Every brush of skin to skin makes a smile twitch at Jinyoung’s lips.

It’s Sunday night and tomorrow morning he’ll be heading back home by train, bright and early, so he better make the most of this. When they're in the hotel Jinyoung pulls Baro close to him by his belt loops right in front of the elevator. He kisses him there because it doesn’t matter when no one will recognise him.

“You’re coming up with me,” he promises with a smile. Baro smirks, leans in and kisses Jinyoung deep, with lips and tongue and teeth. He catches Jinyoung’s bottom lip between his and hums thoughtfully.

“Guess that means you’re leaving tomorrow.” Jinyoung can’t tell if Baro's disappointed, he’s far too distracted by the way the words brush against his lips. But he hopes that Baro is, because otherwise Jinyoung will be the only disappointed, even if it’s only for a few hours or minutes.

“In the morning, but we’ve got the night.”

In the elevator Baro takes Jinyoung’s hand, laces their fingers together, and it makes Jinyoung’s heart race even more than the kiss. He loves this rush, it keeps him alive. When Baro pushes him against the door of his hotel room he forgets about tomorrow. He forgets about work and weekends, about real life and fantasy; because for now there is only tonight.

2024 | prompt: dragon | baro/gongchan | G | 900 w

It’s less than an hour from midnight when Sunwoo shows up at his door with snacks and drinks and noisemakers. He grins widely at Chansik and pushes his way in with old familiarity.

“I knew you’d be home.”

“I had no idea you were even in the country,” he says as he closes the door behind Sunwoo and nudges a pair of slippers in his direction that he probably won’t bother to use. It’s been a while since they’ve seen each other, though he always sort of knows what’s going on in Sunwoo’s life if only because Sunwoo likes to keep the world up to date, friends, fans, and strangers alike.

He’s busy; they all are with something or other. Dongwoo is the one that Chansik sees the most often, Jinyoung is the hardest to get a hold of, Junghwan calls the most frequently, and Sunwoo just comes and goes whenever he has time, whenever he feels like. More than once Sunwoo has shown up at his doorstep while Chansik wasn’t even in the country, so he has to wonder a bit how Sunwoo can say that he knew he’d be home with such certainty.

“I just got back from Japan yesterday.” No matter how much time passes Sunwoo always feels the same. He’s changed, they all have, but no matter what little details change over time he feels the same to Chansik, just like how he easily walks in and makes himself at home as if no time has passed whether it’s been weeks or months or years since they’ve last seen each other.

Chansik smiles, automatically and fondly, as Sunwoo sets his things down and plops onto the couch. He beckons for Chansik when he takes too long to join and turns on the TV to one of the year end shows. Which one doesn’t matter, they’re all the same sorts of things, just some background music for them while Sunwoo talks and talks and asks questions. It’s been almost two months this time, so there will be quite a bit of talking.

Sunwoo starts his first (of several) bottle of soju, takes a noisy gulp and sighs. Chansik still doesn’t drink.

“Remember those shows? They were kind of fun, crazy, but fun.” He sounds a bit wistful.

“I remember,” Chansik leaves it at that. How could he forget, really? He’d never been very fond of end of the year activities; they’d always been the most tiring, especially when they just barely finished promoting a song. It was also when he missed home the most acutely back then, when home was still Suncheon rather than Seoul. But there are other things he misses now.

They haven’t officially disbanded but it’s been years since they’ve all performed together, even longer since they released anything as B1A4. Things happen, solo work, multiple drama and movie roles, enlistment, marriage; life happened. It’s been years since they’ve all lived together, played together, fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion together; Chansik misses it all, the good and the bad.

“It’s been so long since we’ve done that greeting.” Sunwoo raises his hand lazily in a mock salute, like they used to, and Chansik thinks how ridiculous it would look if they did it now. But he smiles and mimics the motion. It’s good to know he’s not the only one that misses it; they all have their own thing going on but Chansik likes to think they’re still a part of each other, like before.

“Let’s fly.” His hand drops heavily and rests on the couch, Chansik doesn’t expect Sunwoo to drop his hand over his.

“Have you seen the others recently?”

The conversation melts comfortably into the usual, comparing notes on how everyone’s doing, talking about what they’ve been doing in the gap between this meeting and the last. Sunwoo does most of the talking, voice low and subdued, between gulps of soju; his fingers fit themselves between Chansik’s with the same old familiarity, like how he barges into Chansik’s apartment.

“Shouldn’t you have some gig tonight, some party or something?” Chansik asks finally, he wonders how Sunwoo makes time for this, for him. They’re all busy with their own things but Jinyoung and Sunwoo are the busiest.

“I wanted to be here instead,” Sunwoo answers with a shrug, and it’s like no time has passed. Chansik feels a satisfying flutter in his chest at the words. He’s glad that Sunwoo’s good at getting what he wants.

They hear the distant boom of fireworks, quiet compared to the cheers from the TV. His phone chatters and vibrates, well wishes for the New Year tumbling in. For now Chansik ignores it and drops his head on Sunwoo’s shoulder, silent for the first seconds, minutes of the year.

“Let’s take a picture,” Sunwoo says, digging his phone out from his pocket. Chansik has half a mind to protest because he doesn’t really want to share this moment on twitter and instagram and wherever else Sunwoo decides to post it. Sunwoo shifts closer so that they’re both squished in the frame and Chansik’s lips curve into a practiced smile. He keeps his head settled on Sunwoo’s shoulder as he watches him type out a message.

this is it, 2024… this is going to be the year!

“The year for what?” He asks quietly, strangely excited and nervous, anticipating the answer.

“The year we come back as B1A4.”

note: 2024 is the year of the dragon.
( & then within the next 10 minutes cnu, jinyoung, and sandeul all tweet back 'let's fly' & there is twitter snarking and everyone misses each other and jinyoung has so many songs set aside for them & they have an epic comeback. basically i couldn't make this longer because it'd become a band fic. )

[ fic ] you're so stupid (in love)

2013-10-02T01:14:40Z

B1A4 | baro/cnu, baro/gongchan, cnu/gongchan, ot3 | PG-13 | 1,490 w

chansik feels restless watching dongwoo and sunwoo's mating dance.
written for this prompt at kprompts

Chansik first meets Dongwoo after listening to Sunwoo, his roommate, talk about him for weeks.

Sunwoo met Dongwoo last month and, from what Chansik can tell, Dongwoo has taken over every waking thought that Sunwoo has possessed since then. It had been amusing at first, a bit annoying as the first week passed, and then a bit of a cause for concern. It can’t be healthy to be that absorbed in someone.

“But he’s just so – ” Sunwoo stops, possibly because he’s used to being told to shut up before can go on to list Dongwoo’s various charms. Chansik looks at him expectantly instead, single eyebrow quirked. He just wants to know if the laundry list of sparkling qualities has changed at all since last week.

“He’s so cute,” Sunwoo breathes, practically gushing. It’s kind of anticlimactic.

The first time Sunwoo had gone over the list he’d included everything; his sense of humour, adorable eye smile, soothing voice – everything – right down to his pretty fingers. Maybe he’s cooling down, Chansik dares to hope, even if he’s still going on about this guy with the same stupid look on his face like the week before.

“You know when someone is so cute you just want to push them down and fuck them until they cry? Not bad crying but like, you know.”

“…no, I really don’t.”

Chansik is pretty sure no one can be as perfect as the Shin Dongwoo that Sunwoo describes. He sounds like a perfectly bizarre combination of that young teacher everyone has a crush on, the best friend a guy could ever have, and a pretty fairy tale princess.

Then he meets Dongwoo – and the first thing that hits Chansik is the mental image of Sunwoo fucking him until he cries. Chansik really hates Sunwoo sometimes. It takes him a moment to blink away the inappropriate image, but once he does he’s struck by the endearingly self-conscious smile, the warm handshake, and the way a strand of hair slips from behind his ear when he bows his head.

So no, Shin Dongwoo isn’t perfect, but Chansik can kind of see where Sunwoo is coming from.

Sunwoo makes it very hard to not stare at Dongwoo. He’s told Chansik way too much, way crossed the line of over-sharing. Chansik finds his eyes automatically drifting to Dongwoo, making note of every little thing.

Like how he sneaks looks at Sunwoo.

Or how he smiles and laughs whenever Sunwoo does, regardless of why.

Or how he bites his lip when his hand bumps against Sunwoo’s.

Chansik notices all of this while beating them both at cards. It proves to him that Sunwoo is indeed stupid to not notice something so obvious. Then again it’s not like Sunwoo is subtle about his attraction either so, Chansik concludes, they must both be pretty stupid. Or maybe they’re just completely and utterly blinded by their (very mutual) infatuation.

He’s not really sure what to do. He’s not sure he should do something, but they’re both impossibly dense and watching the two of them go at it with their shy, secret glances, watching them laugh obnoxiously at each other’s lame jokes, and all the jumpy ‘accidental’ touches – it’s pretty nauseating. Chansik isn’t sure he can take weeks or months of them dancing around each other in his apartment.

But at least they’re not fucking in his apartment, so maybe he should just leave it. (He doesn’t.)

“I think he wants to fuck you until you cry too,” Chansik tells Sunwoo in an even voice after Dongwoo leaves. Sunwoo holds up a finger and shushes him violently, as if Dongwoo might hear him through doors and floors and elevators.

Dongwoo hangs out with Sunwoo once or twice a week and Chansik is dragged along because Sunwoo apparently loses his balls when faced with his epic crush. He seems to think he’ll give himself away if the two of them are alone, unfortunately Dongwoo has yet to catch on since he’s busy nursing his own ridiculous crush.

But Chansik actually doesn’t complain, he enjoys hanging out with them in spite of the situation. It gets to a point that Chansik starts to think of Dongwoo as his friend as much as he thinks of him as Sunwoo’s. He likes Dongwoo enough that they even go grab drinks together (because Sunwoo is busy).

“So…do you think he’s on a date today?” Dongwoo asks, voice too quiet to be normal, as he fiddles with his straw.

Chansik shrugs. “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

To be honest it gets a bit awkward sometimes, even when Sunwoo isn’t here the conversation naturally flows towards him. It makes Chansik feel like the third wheel, even when it’s just the two of them. It’s exactly the same when he’s with Sunwoo.

Dongwoo chews at the inside of his cheek and stares at his hands; Chansik can’t help but notice, of course.

“Probably not,” he adds on, not at all desperate to smooth the furrow between Dongwoo’s brows. “I mean he…he’d probably tell me if he were.”

“That’s true.” Dongwoo smiles gently, hopefully, face lighting up. It’s like Chansik’s face has developed an annoying muscle twitch, he smiles back automatically.

Maybe he has a little bit of a thing for Dongwoo as well, but it’s practically microscopic compared to Sunwoo’s thing. And if he has some dirty thoughts about Dongwoo he blames them mostly on Sunwoo.

(He does feel a little bit guilty, lusting after his friend, lusting after his friend’s crush. But imagining things never hurt anyone; so Chansik just closes his eyes and imagines Dongwoo gnawing on his lower lip as Sunwoo pounds into him, all enthusiasm and no rhythm.)

Sometimes Sunwoo sits around and stares at his phone for minutes, pokes at the screen every time it dims and keeps staring. It’s stupid, he looks stupid.

“Are you going to call him?”

Sunwoo jumps, almost drops his phone as he snaps his gaze to Chansik.

“Why do you assume it’s him? Maybe I’m just thinking about calling my mom,” Sunwoo says with a frown, as if offended. (But they don’t need to clarify who they mean by ‘him’ because their conversations only go one way lately. Or maybe it’s been like this for some time. Chansik isn’t sure if it’s all Sunwoo’s fault at this point.)

“You should tell him that you like him.”

Dongwoo sputters but, thankfully, doesn’t spray tea all over Chansik’s face. He should probably have waited until he’d swallowed.

“What? Who?” Dongwoo asks desperately, eyes suddenly as wide as they’ll open.

Chansik gives him a look because, really, who else could they be talking about. But Dongwoo is every bit as stupid as Sunwoo. It’s been months and they haven’t gotten anywhere at all, it leaves Chansik feeling restless just watching them.

“You like Sunwoo,” Chansik says flatly. Dongwoo tenses in response, he looks around frantically even though they both know there’s no way Sunwoo would be here. Dongwoo looks at everything but Chansik, but at least he doesn’t deny it.

He doesn’t tell Sunwoo though, no one ever takes Chansik’s advice. What he does is talk at Chansik about how great Sunwoo is, as if it’s breaking news. But at least Dongwoo doesn’t share graphic fantasies. (Unfortunately that means Chansik has no one to blame but himself when he ends up imagining Dongwoo pushing his dick down Sunwoo’s throat, apologising in a flustered stutter when Sunwoo chokes a little.)

“Why do you want me to tell him so badly? I’m perfectly okay with how things are right now.”

How things are involves Chansik watching the two of them peek at each other through their eyelashes. It involves Sunwoo and Dongwoo both talking about each other to Chansik so much that he should be charging them by the hour. It involves Chansik’s every waking thought being swallowed up by Sunwoo or Dongwoo – it’s driving him insane. He’s doing this for their sake and for his own too.

“Because it’s ridiculous. He likes you, I know he likes you. He told me.”

Sunwoo looks caught between being terrified and elated. Chansik wants to shake him or drag him by the wrist to Dongwoo and throw him into his arms.

“Did he really?” Sunwoo asks, voice uncharacteristically quiet and small. It takes another few seconds for a creepily sweet smile to break across his features.

“He did.” (Chansik smiles too, like it’s only natural.)

And from that point it’s out of his hands.

Chansik thinks maybe they really are hopeless when nothing changes after a week. But another week after that he comes home to them making out on the couch, Sunwoo mostly in Dongwoo’s lap. He’s about to backtrack the fuck out of there when Sunwoo peeks at him with one eye and beckons him over with the hand that’s not tangled in Dongwoo’s hair.

Chansik walks over to join them, because he’s not stupid.

[ fic ] until my heart cools off a little more

2013-10-01T22:22:24Z

INFINITE | l/woohyun, l focus | R | 2,834 w
warning: dysfunctional relationship, dub-con

he tells himself a story, a story of how he pieces woohyun’s heart back together, turns tears into smiles that are even brighter.
remix of It's My Heart That's Not Working by equalises for kpop_ficmix

He notices it one day, the new earring that Woohyun rarely changes, the way his smile is simply different. For a while none of the others notice, but Myungsoo does, because that’s how he is, always watching. (Watching is easier sometimes, it gives him a chance to just look in rather than force him to fumble through words and actions. Besides, what can he even say when Woohyun doesn’t say anything?)

He watches as Woohyun types out a text, smiling like a fool, while the other members are bustling about getting ready. He sees the way Woohyun fiddles with that earring like he’s imagining someone else’s touch. Woohyun looks up, catches him watching – he bites down on his lips, bites back a smile, as if he knows that Myungsoo has figured it out. And then he gives up and just grins, lets his joy spread through his features, sharing his story wordlessly.

For a while it’s their secret, and it’s kind of nice like that.

(It’s not their secret for long, with the way they live it’s impossible for anything to remain secret for long. Eventually everyone else notices, first Sungkyu, then Dongwoo, and one after another they figure it out. Myungsoo wonders if they all figured it out because of the new slant to Woohyun’s smile, warmer and happier.

Myungsoo takes a picture, because he figures this won’t last. It’s probably a cruel thought but he thinks it’s inevitable, with the way they live, because they trade away so much for this chance to live their dream – how could anything else stand in the face of that?

It’s a painful thought, and from there something grows, without him ever meaning for it to.)

Myungsoo spends a lot of time in the controlled environment of his mind. It’s the only thing he can control when the life he lives moves like a whirlwind. A photo shoot one day, a recording the next, a fansign with way too many people and too many voices screaming for him, for Infinite – and then practice in between all of that. It’s what he dreamt of years and years ago (it feels like forever) and he doesn’t regret it. That’s why he pulls back, so that he can keep his head above it all, so that he can breathe. It’s the only way he knows how to keep up with this life that gives so much but drains everything else from their lives.

He snaps a picture of Woohyun, startles him into laughing. It’s not a particularly good shot and Woohyun whines at him to delete it, but Myungsoo keeps it, to keep track of the few quiet moments they have. Besides, even if it isn’t a particularly good shot, the current Woohyun has a smile that has a colour different from everyone else. He’s glowing. (He wonders if he’s jealous – but no, that’s not it at all.)

He finds himself wondering about this new person in Woohyun’s life. Woohyun leaves their dorm quietly in the evening and comes back late (Myungsoo listens for it even though he’s tired and their schedule starts early tomorrow). Woohyun practically glitters in spite of the lack of sleep and the others tease him for it (Sungkyu and Sungyeol more than the rest). It’s like this new love coats Woohyun in a protective sheen of happiness that wards away exhaustion, wards away all the worries of the world.

Myungsoo wordlessly fixes Woohyun’s collar for him, adjusting it to obscure the faint bruise on his neck, and his gaze fixates on the colour that rises to Woohyun’s cheeks as he laughs.

He figures, it’s fine that this person will inevitably break Woohyun’s heart as long as he’s happy right now. It’s not as if anyone is ever guaranteed happiness in a relationship, their odds are just worse than the average person’s, but that’s not any reason they shouldn’t even try. Besides if (when) this ends they’ll be here for Woohyun. He’ll be here for Woohyun.

So Myungsoo takes a picture and tries not to think too far ahead, tries not to think of how it’ll end.

It’s not as if he’s hoping, he’s only being realistic. This can’t last, because they’re idols, because the life they lead won't allow this to last.

(But he tells himself that and in the next thought he tells himself a story, a story of how he pieces Woohyun’s heart back together, turns tears into smiles that are even brighter. He’s not sure when it started but by the time he notices it's already too late. He watches, not quite with anticipation, and tries to comfort himself with the heavy guilt that matches his infatuation.

Cluelessly, Woohyun continues to smile, bright and blinding.)

It lasts almost three months.

There are cracks in Woohyun’s smile. Myungsoo notices first, because Woohyun looks tired. (The others don’t because they’re all tired, but Myunsoo knows because it’s been months since he’s seen Woohyun look like this. Exhausted, drained, like his heart is a rock sinking into the dark sea. Myungsoo can see the extra weight bearing down on his shoulders. He knows because he feels it too.)

He looks at the photos he took of Woohyun’s smile and wonders if it’s ending already. He wonders, irrationally, if it’s his fault for thinking that it would inevitably end right from the start.

Isn’t this too soon?

It begins to show in other places, those thin, barely there cracks begin to grow. Myungsoo thinks that under pressure Woohyun might begin to chip and fracture until he just shatters.

His smile slips.

They’re beginning to record for their new song, beginning to prepare for their comeback. Sungkyu tells Woohyun that he needs to focus. He tells Woohyun that he can’t let his personal life affect his work – Myungsoo winces, Woohyun does as well.

He can barely watch (but he does anyways), it’s hard to see how Woohyun shrinks away, so unlike himself. It makes him want to hug Woohyun, to shield him from everything. He almost does after their practice but Sungkyu beats him to it. Woohyun leans into the hug for a moment before pulling away, smiling.

Myungsoo thinks that maybe if he takes a picture of this, of Woohyun’s strained, tight smile, then maybe this won’t last long either.

Woohyun leaves their dorm quietly in the evening and Myungsoo waits. He comes back late, the smell of alcohol and smoke clinging to his clothes. He looks exhausted, dazed but too awake at the same time. He looks at Myungsoo like he’s expecting him to morph into another person (like he’s hoping for it).

“Welcome back,” Myungsoo says lamely. At least it brings Woohyun back, makes Woohyun see him instead of whoever he’s yearning for.

Woohyun smiles a shaky smile and wobbles, legs just as unsteady. “Aw, you waited for me.”

The laugh that follows is weak and sad, Woohyun sways and Myungsoo just barely manages to catch him around the waist. Myungsoo has never been good at words, but he thinks words wouldn’t help anyways so he tries not to think about that. Instead he thinks he wants to hug Woohyun, he wants to wrap him up and protect him from the pain of his broken love. (Or maybe he wants to protect himself from the pain of watching Woohyun’s heart break.)

“It’s late, I was worried.”

Woohyun is gripping at his arm, tight and desperate.

“It is, isn’t it? Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you," he's laughing again, it's really a terrible sound.

Myungsoo can feel Woohyun’s tears more than he can see them (the lights are off because everyone else is asleep already, it’s as close as they can get to being alone). His voice shakes, Myungsoo can feel how tense Woohyun is in his arms, as if he’s trying to desperately pull into himself. He thinks that if Woohyun stays like this he’ll really break apart, crumble into dust right there in his arms.

(Myungsoo realises now that the story he told himself was stupid. Because he really doesn’t know how to start putting that heart back together, how to turn these tears into smiles that are even brighter.)

He holds Woohyun tighter against him and presses his face against Woohyun’s neck.

“Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry.” (His voice is also shaking.)

Myungsoo kisses Woohyun, he can taste the alcohol on his lips, and he realises Woohyun is drunk enough to kiss back.

During the day Woohyun manages to maintain his smile even though the edges are strained. Sometimes he catches Myungsoo’s gaze and Myungsoo thinks he wants to say something but he just presses his lips into a thin line and looks away. Myungsoo doesn’t try to bring it up, because he did it for Woohyun, so he doesn’t push him. (Besides, what can he say when Woohyun doesn’t say anything?)

Myungsoo thinks he’s not just watching anymore. He prefers to be the one watching, if he only watches he can’t get caught fumbling. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s fumbling or because his body is exhausted, he trips over his own leg three times during practice and makes so many missteps that Sungkyu exhausts himself yelling at him and Dongwoo has to pull Sungkyu outside to cool off.

Myungsoo stares at the floor, trying to remove himself just for a few seconds to find his center and finds that he can’t.

Sungyeol’s hand lands heavily on his shoulder, he’s trying to ask Myungsoo what’s going on but he’s not listening. He looks around the studio until he finds Woohyun. Their eyes meet for a second before Woohyun breaks the eye contact, looking away.

It isn’t something that happens only once. It’s not every night but it happens again and again. Woohyun leaves their dorm quietly and when he comes back Myungsoo is waiting. They never say anything (any words that Myungsoo manages to form never make it past his throat, he’s stuck and it hurts), Woohyun just pulls Myungsoo against him and presses their lips together. Myungsoo can taste the sharp sting of alcohol again but he kisses back anyways (he wonders what Woohyun’s lips would taste like without that overpowering flavour).

Woohyun’s fingers are clumsy and cold against his skin but Myungsoo doesn’t mind. He figures that it doesn’t matter as long as this is what Woohyun wants. (And maybe Myungsoo likes it anyways, loves it. It pairs well with the guilt of having kissed Woohyun first when he shouldn’t have.)

Myungsoo struggles to keep them both quiet, muffles Woohyun’s moans with lips, swallows the sound even though he desperately wants to hear it. He wants to slow down, to touch Woohyun slowly and gently – but Woohyun’s rushing, hands already fumbling with Myungsoo’s sweatpants. Myungsoo lets him, because what right does he have to ask for anything else when he’s messed up so badly with this.

They end up sinking into the couch, Woohyun on top, pants and underwear pushed down just far enough to be out of the way. It doesn’t last long, Woohyun’s drunk and Myungsoo is sensitive. He bites down on Woohyun’s neck when he comes, leaves a mark where someone else did once (he wonders if he can overwrite the memory this way).

After Woohyun falls asleep Myungsoo cleans them both up as best as he can, pulls Woohyun’s underwear back up but strips him of his pants before carrying him to bed.

What he wants is to curl up against Woohyun, he wants to hold him while he sleeps and be there when he wakes up. Instead he does the same thing every time, he pulls the blankets up to Woohyun’s chin and shuffles out of the room. He falls asleep by himself after cleaning up so that no one will find out what happened (and Woohyun can pretend it never happened, if that’s what he wants).

Eventually Woohyun stops leaving the dorm in the evening; Myungsoo is still waiting, but he doesn’t know what for. (His smiles are less strained, instead it’s Myungsoo’s smiles that become tight.)

Myungsoo reads over the music and lyrics of their new title track a hundred times, he keeps the vocal guide on loop and hears their voices sing over it.

Because it’s my heart that’s not working, I can’t let you go like this.

He likes it.

Someone pulls out his ear bud and sits so close that their shoulders are pressed together. Myungsoo jumps, somehow he’d failed to notice Woohyun approaching him.

“What are you thinking?”

His throat feels dry and tight, like he’s swallowed a mouthful of flour and he’s choking. (What can he say? It has nothing to do with what Woohyun does and doesn’t say, Myungsoo realises, to begin with he’s never known what to say.)

He gnaws at his lip for a moment and tries to focus on the lyrics and notes written on the paper. He’d been so focused before but now he’s scattered, distracted by the warmth of Woohyun’s shoulder pressed to his.

“I, I think this song suits us.”

Woohyun smiles, a little sad but no longer fractured. “It kind of does, doesn’t it?”

This time Woohyun isn’t drunk. He quietly sits on the edge of Myungsoo’s bed after everyone else has gone to sleep and places a hand on Myungsoo’s shoulder. He’s awake already, having been waiting for something (though he’s not sure what). Myungsoo’s heart is thundering in his chest, like it’s trying to break free of his body, it’s so loud he irrationally worries it’ll wake the others. Woohyun leans over him and presses a kiss to his temple and he swallows (too loudly). His hand is shaking as he reaches to pull Woohyun closer, to guide their lips to meet.

Woohyun doesn’t tastes like much of anything, a hint of mint from his toothpaste and that’s all.

They’re careful, quiet, moving slowly because the sound of the blankets shifting or bed frame creaking might wake someone else up. Myungsoo is thankful for that, they move so slowly that he can feel every shift of their bodies like a lingering touch. They move against each other, like the clocks have slowed and stopped. (Or so Myungsoo stupidly thinks, he hopes that it means this will never end, that they can just stay there in the dark forever, tangled together.) At some point his hand stop shaking; he smooths his hand down Woohyun’s chest and abdomen as Woohyun runs a hand up his side, so slowly, and they kiss the same way, slow and gentle, like they’re breathing in each other.

It’s the only time they’ve been fully naked against each other. Myungsoo lays himself out, arms and legs spread. In a whisper he asks Woohyun to lie on top of him, to spread out the same way. He wants to feel their skin touch from their cheeks and forehead down to the tips of his toes. It’s not possible, but Woohyun does anyways and it comes close to giving Myungsoo the feeling he’s looking for when he feels Woohyun’s smile against his cheek, when Woohyun reaches for his hand and laces their fingers together.

After that everything seems to happen too fast, they’re moving slowly but every second passed feels like something slipping out of his grasp. Myungsoo wants to hold on to the feeling of Woohyun surrounding him so completely but he knows it’s impossible. He pleads desperately for Woohyun to go slower, whispers it into his shoulder.

“I don’t think I can go any slower.” Myungsoo thinks he hears and feels a hint of a laugh in that, feels it against his neck as Woohyun places a wet kiss there. He’s right, there’s no way to go any slower, no way to stop time from moving forward. Since he can’t hold on to anything else he clings to Woohyun, tightens his legs around Woohyun’s waist and claws at his shoulder as he comes. Woohyun kisses him, swallows the sound of Myungsoo moaning his name.

Woohyun falls asleep afterwards and Myungsoo watches him sleep. They’re curled up together under Myungsoo’s blanket, still naked. Carefully, slowly, he traces the shape of Woohyun’s body with his hands, just wanting to touch.

There are a lot of things he wants that was never written in the story. He wants to fall asleep with Woohyun and wake up with him. He wants to kiss him secretly and openly. He wants to tell Woohyun that he loves him. (He almost did, earlier, when Woohyun kissed him, sated and lazy. But Woohyun said ‘thank you’ – and Myungsoo realised he couldn’t.)

Myungsoo just touches Woohyun, just holds him, and he’s happy for a heartbeat before understanding sets in. He reaches blindly for his phone, one arm still wrapped around Woohyun’s waist. Myungsoo brushes his fingers through Woohyun’s fringe and he thinks he’s smiling even though he can’t match words to what he feels.

He takes a picture, because this won’t last either.

(That was the last time they kissed.)

[ fic ] sail away (for a year, for a day)

2013-08-31T04:19:38Z

B1A4 | cnu/gongchan | PG-13 | 1,620 w

chansik will never get used to dongwoo. ship breaking yard au.
written for this prompt at kprompts ...the title is inspired by the owl and the pussycat, the fic is not >>

“She must have been so pretty,” Dongwoo says, voice full of awe as he stares up at the battered bow of their next project. He says this about every ghost ship they’ve ever taken apart. He says this before they pry, smash, and burn them down into unrecognisable pieces to be reshaped into something new, something pretty.

That’s not a part of their job though. They just take the old ships apart because they’re no longer profitable. Chansik watches Dongwoo stretch his arms up, as if he wants to touch the bow with his fingertips. He always looks a bit sad, it makes Chansik wonder what he’s doing working in a ship breaking yard but Dongwoo’s been at it longer than Chansik has, so he figures he has his reasons.

“Are we starting on it tomorrow?” Chansik asks, even though he knows the answer, just to get Dongwoo to look away from the boat and at him instead.

“Probably, it’s no good just letting her sit here. It’d be a waste of space.”

Chansik isn’t sure what he hears in Dongwoo’s voice can really be called bitterness but it’s close enough. He wonders why Dongwoo isn’t doing something else, designing and building things rather than taking them apart when it so obviously hurts him to see these boats stripped bare. (Because he can’t is definitely the answer, but Chansik doesn’t like it so he prefers to wonder.)

He walks over to Dongwoo and takes him by the wrist, pulling him away so that they can go home.

They’ve been living together for six months, because cheap rent split between two is even cheaper. It’s far away enough from work that Chansik can pretend he doesn’t still smell the stink of steel and oil and deadly chemicals when they’re home, but close enough that if Dongwoo decides he needs five more minute they still manage to make it on time more often than not. It is far from perfect.

It is so far from perfect that it’s not even on the periphery of any of the futures Chansik dreamt up for himself, once upon a time.

He feels like the sun has permanently branded him, left marks along every inch of exposed skin. He’s been working long enough that he no longer feels tender or sore, doesn’t feel burnt when his skin is on fire. That in itself is kind of terrifying; he wonders where those sensations and feelings went. It’s like there’s a layer of grime over his heart to match his steel crusted second skin. It leaves everything muffled, leaves Chansik living his life through a dirty filter.

“Hey,” Dongwoo’s voice jerks him out of his daze. “Come on, let’s shower.”

They’ve been showering together almost as long as they’ve been living together. It saves time and it saves water, but more than that Chansik feels at ease when he sees Dongwoo wash it all off.

It’s a feat that should be impossible. When Chansik looks at himself, or at any of the other yard workers, it looks like a permanent shell. Whenever he looks at them he feels sure none of them will ever look anything but grey and dirty, like the oily sea. But Dongwoo comes along and he comes out clean.

Chansik helps Dongwoo scrub his back; he scrubs so hard he leaves the skin red and warm. But Dongwoo comes out and he’s not just clean, he’s glowing, hair clinging to his neck and water running down his chest. Chansik doesn’t even care (or notice) that the puddles at their feet are grey and murky.

Chansik used to think it was ridiculously hot and impossibly exhausting to work along the shore in 40 °C weather. Somewhere along the way it became normal. In the same way scrapes and burns and the terrifying stutter of an old rope have all become normal for Chansik. His breath catches and his heart races sometimes but he no longer bothers to acknowledge the instinctive fear that comes with it. If it’s just a scrape he’s relieved, and he tells himself it doesn’t even hurt anymore.

He doesn’t know how Dongwoo does it without the same level of necessary numbness. When they’re working together Dongwoo always stops, pulls Chansik aside to check his scrapes and check his burns. He pulls Chansik aside and puts both hands on Chansik’s shoulders until he stops shaking. Dongwoo looks at all the cuts and burns like he’s the one hurting from them. Chansik comes out of each near fall and Dongwoo is more breathless than he is.

“Are you really okay?” he asks, his voice is muffled by the mask he’s wearing but Chansik can tell his voice is tight and scratchy.

“Don’t worry, I’m used to it,” he tells Dongwoo, smiling wide enough to make the corners of his eyes crease, to show Dongwoo. (But Dongwoo looks at him and his eyes are sadder than when he looks at the skeleton of a freshly broken ship.)

The walls of their unit are incredibly thin. It’s generous to even call them walls when they’re more like boards that just extend from the floor to the ceiling. He can hear a lot through the walls. Even when he’s shut away in his own tiny room he can hear Dongwoo. He can hear him walking and coughing without effort. If he strains Chansik is sure he’d be able to hear Dongwoo shift in his bed or even breathe. It bothers him.

Chansik twists his bed sheets in his hands, straining to listen but trying not to at the same time.

Dongwoo’s voice is muffled but Chansik assumes it’s heavy and thick. When Dongwoo groans low, voice rumbling, Chansik’s breath catches and he imagines Dongwoo on the other side of the wall shuddering the way his voice shakes. Chansik bites down on his lip, so as to not make a peep, because if he can hear Dongwoo then Dongwoo could hear him too, if he were to listen.

Chansik is sure Dongwoo’s not listening though, what with the way he’s grunting and groaning. He must be moving around because he suddenly bangs something against the wall between them. But still, Chansik bites down on his lip.

It takes all of Chansik’s willpower to not press his ear against their wall. He tangles his hands up in his blanket so that he can’t give in to the temptation to slide his hand into his shorts.

Dongwoo falls quiet eventually, asleep maybe, and Chansik just waits for his heart to quiet. Chansik’s heart is pounding, his breathing is uneven – and it’s the only time Chansik really feels like he’s burning.

There are accidents regularly, more than daily. Sometimes they’re small, sometimes they’re big, and sometimes they’d be catastrophic if only their lives were actually worth anything.

Chansik is careful but being careful only does so much when equipment is old and broken down, even more than the boats they’re tearing apart. Really, it’s twenty percent caution and eighty percent luck.

Dongwoo is careful but Chansik knows that’ll never be enough.

He’s gotten used to a lot of things but Chansik can’t contain the feeling of anxiety when Dongwoo isn’t working close to him. He’s waiting for something to drop, for someone to fall, for something to explode and hoping that when it happens Dongwoo has come back to his place next to him.

Something falls.

Chansik drops his things and runs, because he’s used to a lot of things but Dongwoo is the only thing he’s not used to. Dongwoo is the only good thing in his life and if he loses him then everything will just be grey and ugly, covered in a thick film of dirty oil. The thought leaves his heart thundering, makes him so anxious he feels like he’s going to throw up.

(And then he stands in front of Dongwoo, both hands on his shoulders, just waiting for the shaking to stop – and he realises maybe it’s the same for Dongwoo.)

Chansik wonders if they could take one of those ghost ships and sail away. Or even just the scraps of those once pretty ships, anything really, as long as it floats and is big enough for two. They could sail away, drift until the water becomes clear and blue like it should be.

It’s stupid and impossible but the thought makes him smile. Dongwoo sees it and he smiles back, without wondering about the reason behind it.

This life is so far from perfect. They’re dirty and exhausted, the sea that swallows up all the waste and junk will never be clean, and tomorrow either of them might die in a barely tragic accident. The water running down their bodies trickles into the drain grey and murky. But Chansik is used to it; so he’s not miserable, not even close.

He figures, as long as he never gets used to Dongwoo he’s fine. Dongwoo who imagines all the ghost ships before they died. Dongwoo who feels all the aches and pains that Chansik can’t. Dongwoo who glows, even if it’s just in Chansik’s eyes. He’ll never get used to any of that. (And for Dongwoo it’s the same.)

He runs a hand through Dongwoo’s hair, pushes it back from his face. The world around them is dirty and toxic but they’re not.

“We’re wasting water,” Dongwoo says with a smile that might be shy.

“One day out of 365,” he retorts with a grin. Chansik doesn’t give him the chance to say more. He pushes his lips against Dongwoo’s, and even though he can taste metal he doesn’t care. All he cares is that Dongwoo is smiling, he can feel it against his lips.

[ 50 B1A4 challenge ] energy

2013-08-27T05:05:45Z

when the lights go out | prompt: energy | gongchan/sandeul | PG | 1,445 w

chansik and sandeul pass time during a blackout.

So much for movie night. The lights had flickered and died, taking everything with it, thirty minutes into the movie. Unfortunately it’d been a thriller; the timing had been so perfect that Chansik had jumped, startled and creeped out enough that he hadn’t even thought to complain when Junghwan squeezed his arm way too tight and screamed, loud and shrill, way too close to his ear.

His ears are still ringing a bit.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Junghwan whispers intensely, gazing at Chansik through the deceptively romantic haze of dancing candlelight. Chansik doesn’t answer, he’s still rummaging the drawers for more candles – really it’s a miracle they found three.

“I don’t think I have any more candles, I don’t even know where those came from.”

“And no flashlight.”

Junghwan did not really stock his house for emergency situations; it’s just not something that occurs to him naturally.

“Well, hopefully the power comes back before these candles burn out.”

The box says they’re six hour candles – so Junghwan isn’t worried. It’s only been ten minutes, so it’s not hard to remain optimistic.

“So, what can we do in the dark for a few hours?” By candlelight, Junghwan’s wide grin looks kind of crazy, and just a little bit slasher. The eyebrow waggle, like caterpillars hopping haltingly on his face, and the shifting light and shadow that dances with it – it saves him from looking truly creepy.

So Chansik just rolls his eyes and hopes that restoring power will be a matter of minutes rather than hours.

It is not a matter of minutes. Their eyes adjust to the dark but there’s no adjusting to the stifling heat. It’s hot and sticky and Junghwan starts complaining within twenty minutes of the blackout. Chansik doesn’t complain but he can feel the dampness collecting on his back. He tugs at the neck of his shirt wordlessly.

They open the windows but there isn’t even the faintest breeze, just humid, stagnant air that seems to ripple into the apartment in sluggish waves. The view beyond the window is completely dark, the lights are gone but the stars are still completely blocked out by wall after wall of high rise buildings.

Junghwan lives on the fourteenth floor and the buildings around him all seem to be even taller. Chansik sticks his head out the window and tries to look up into the sky, he sees nothing. Junghwan is looking out into the blackness as well, quietly, something that’s somewhat rare with him.

Chansik thinks he’s never seen the city so dark, and while the charm of sparkling city lights has already faded, he can’t help but miss it right now. It’s just so dark and feels so empty.

Junghwan leans in behind Chansik. He can feel Junghwan breathing against his ear, warm and slightly uncomfortable.

“Do you think there are ghosts out there?”

Chansik laughs, “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

And now Chansik is thinking about it too, instead of about how vast and dark and lonely his once glittering city really is.

Junghwan remembers that there’s ice cream in the freezer a little bit late, but not too late. It’s begun to melt into a sticky mess but once they dig pass the goopy top layer, underneath is soft and creamy and cool. They eat it straight from the carton, because what’s the point of bowls if they have to finish it anyways?

They’re stripped down to undershirts and boxers, because it’s too hot to care, spoons in their hands and a quickly vanishing tub of ice cream between them. Chansik is regretting his last two spoonfuls of half melted ice cream somewhat but Junghwan decides that now is a good time to bring out his still semi-cold beers.

“That can’t be a good idea,” Chansik says, squinting at him. The deep shadows that dance under his eyes add an unnecessarily dramatic effect, foreshadowing. Ultimately, Chansik just sighs when Junghwan opens a can and gulps it down way too fast.

“You’re going to get a stomach ache,” he warns once more, Junghwan doesn’t even slow down.

Chansik is, of course, right. Three beers later Junghwan’s face is toasty and he’s feeling faintly nauseous. He lies on the floor shirt pushed up to expose his stomach; the gurgling is audible and kind of gross. He groans.

“I don’t get it. I’m okay with beer floats,” he whines, setting his head in Chansik’s lap.

“Beer floats aren’t usually made with half a pint of ice cream and almost a litre of beer.” He rubs Junghwan’s bare stomach absently, just slow, soothing circles, like it’s the most natural thing. Junghwan reaches for Chansik’s hands and plays with his fingers, his stomach is still churning but for now he stops complaining.

They find four packs of cards, unopened, in Junghwan’s apartment. Chansik isn’t sure why he has so many brand new playing cards sitting around his apartment but not a single working flashlight or even spare batteries. At least it gives them something to do, the blackout is lasting longer than either of them imagined it’d last and the only thing that’s keeping Junghwan from thrashing around in boredom is Chansik.

“Okay, time to do something else,” Junghwan declares, dropping his cards into a pile. “I’m tired of losing.”

Junghwan frowns but when Chansik laughs he has to struggle to keep his mouth stiff and twisted. It’s absolutely not the evening they’d planned but in spite of the suffocating heat, his still gurgling stomach, and lack of cable and internet – Junghwan finds that he doesn’t really mind.

What he does mind is losing six games in a row, sometimes Chansik has no sense.

The candles burn out after four hours and a handful of minutes, leaving them completely in the dark.

“Liars,” Junghwan says sourly, Chansik is a bit annoyed too but keeps his mouth shut still. It’s not as if they know for sure that the power will be back in two more hours, so there’s no sense in whining. Chansik is somewhat glad for Junghwan’s complaining though.

“I should get my money back.”

“You don’t even know where they came from; you didn’t even buy them yourself.”

“I’ll call the manufacturer!”

It’s pretty ridiculous, considering it’s three candles but Chansik doesn’t really care. It’s nice to hear Junghwan talk, nice to hear how close he is to him since Chansik can’t actually see how close they are. He hears Junghwan shift and stumble, hears the spoons they used earlier clatter against the floor.

“What are you doing?” Chansik asks before a flash of bluish light from his phone illuminates Junghwan’s face.

“Looking for this,” Junghwan smiles and settles himself next to Chansik again. The glow dims after fifteen seconds and goes out after thirty. Chansik counts and Junghwan just taps the screen again each time it goes to sleep, twice, thrice until Chansik finally laughs again.

“Your battery’s going to run out if you keep doing that,” Chansik says, taking the phone from Junghwan and setting it aside. And it’s dark again but it’s not like he doesn’t know Junghwan is still there beside him, with or without the light.

Junghwan drops his hand on top of Chansik’s and he’s a little startled, Junghwan’s hand feels heavy and sweaty and warm. Maybe he was half hoping and half expecting the gesture, he turns his hand and laces their fingers together, bites his lip when no one can see.

“I’m okay, you know.”

“I know, but I don’t like the dark,” Junghwan says and Chansik just shakes his head because it’s been the same all night, from the start it had all been about Chansik. They planned to spend Saturday night in to watch movies together because Junghwan was worried that he might feel lonely, being alone in the city. So Junghwan picked up random strands of conversation to distract him because Junghwan knows Chansik thinks too much when it's quiet. So they ate ice cream because he knew Chansik was hot, played games together to try to make him laugh. Junghwan worries about Chansik, so he tries to take care of him by making Chansik take care of him in the most straightforward way, he complains when he knows Chansik won't.

Chansik squeezes Junghwan’s hand, his hand is probably uncomfortably warm but Junghwan won’t let go. As much as Junghwan worries Chansik is fine – perfect. Because it's impossible to be anything but when they're together like this, side by side, hand in hand.

The lights flicker back to life, the sudden brightness would have been blinding. Chansik barely notices because his eyes are closed and he’s pressing his lips to Junghwan’s.

[ fic ] free to be you & me

2013-08-24T18:28:34Z

B1A4 | baro/cnu | NC-17 | 1,006 w

it's naked time. uh, continued from this sort of.
brb, melting into the ground.

It isn’t the first time, and won’t be the last (at least Dongwoo hopes not), but it’s still something that’s somewhat new to their routine. Or rather, their relationship, whatever it should be called now. Dongwoo isn’t too particular about labels though, what he has with Sunwoo is comfortable and pleasant and refreshingly uncomplicated. It’s ten times easier than sneaking around to date in secret and about a hundred times more fun.

Sunwoo is sitting on a towel (because, Dongwoo figures, everyone would appreciate them not getting their naked butts and balls and dicks all over shared furniture) and Dongwoo is sitting on his lap. It’s not the most comfortable, not with how he has to bend and hunch down to kiss Sunwoo but it’s perfect when Sunwoo slides his lips down Dongwoo’s neck and he can sit up again, arch forward blindly and cling to Sunwoo’s shoulders.

(Everyone would probably also appreciate them not making out on shared furniture, but in the time that they’ve lived together they’ve all learned some valuable lessons about sharing living space. Compromise is necessary and ignorance is bliss, if they don’t see something happen with their own eyes it’s best to just believe that nothing ever happens.

It’s just the two of them now, so they make out on the couch and later they’ll try not to grin too obviously when Jinyoung sits down on the same spot.)

Dongwoo groans as Sunwoo slides a hand up his back, fingers rubbing where his neck meets his shoulders. He all but melts against Sunwoo as the latter laughs, breath gusting over the wet trail he’d left against Dongwoo’s neck.

It’s amazing how their naked make out sessions manage to end at this (usually), a few deep kisses, heated touches, and awkward laughter. Most of the time Dongwoo would pull away now, but he doesn’t this time and Sunwoo doesn’t let go either.

Sunwoo sets a hand on Dongwoo’s leg and somehow he manages not to shudder when Sunwoo starts to rub circles with his thumb. His hand slides higher.

“Um,” Dongwoo mumbles. Sunwoo’s hand is moving too close to Dongwoo’s crotch for him to really think clearly so it takes him a moment to say anything more than that, “Everyone sits on this couch.” Making out (naked or otherwise) on shared furniture is one thing, having sex on shared furniture is hugely different, probably. But he does want more and he doesn’t want Sunwoo to think of it as a rejection so he hunches again, leans down to press kisses to Sunwoo’s cheek. Sunwoo turns to meet him.

“I don’t really care,” he mutters, laughing a little against Dongwoo’s lips – and Dongwoo thinks maybe he can afford to care a little less for now. He slides his tongue between Sunwoo’s lips, presses Sunwoo back into the couch, and leans into him. (He can just justify it with those same rules; if no one else sees, it didn't happen. So, as long as it’s just the two of them, they’re free to do as they like.)

Dongwoo slides his hand down Sunwoo’s chest and lower, traces the outline of his abs with his fingertips, as he presses kisses down the side of Sunwoo’s nose. He shifts and his cock bumps against Sunwoo’s. It makes Sunwoo toss his head back, groaning low and loud.

“Is this okay?” he asks, voice surprisingly steady, and slides his thumb up along the side of Sunwoo’s neck while his other hand palms at Sunwoo’s cock. Sunwoo is hot in his hand and Dongwoo’s thoughts are racing, thinking about everything that could come out of this, everything that he wants. (He thinks about the times he’s in the shower alone. Sometimes he sucks on his own fingers and imagines it’s Sunwoo in his mouth, other times he fingers himself – still other times he just jerks himself off desperately, thinking of nothing but Sunwoo, Sunwoo, Sunwoo – and he realises he wants everything.

It’s probably not as uncomplicated as they pretend it is but Dongwoo figures that right now, it really is simple. It’s a race to orgasm.)

“Don’t even ask,” Sunwoo moans, hips jerking up and jostling Dongwoo. And he laughs, but it doesn’t last because Sunwoo’s hand slips between their bodies and he has to focus on not tugging on Sunwoo’s dick too hard, focus on keeping his hand moving rather than just moaning into a mouthful of Sunwoo’s hair.

Sunwoo’s places his hand on Dongwoo and they move together in a halting rhythm. Every time Sunwoo bucks his hips it makes Dongwoo stumble, lips and nose bumping clumsily against Sunwoo’s cheek and temple, and he licks at the small beads of sweat forming there. They’re completely focused on each other but completely distracted by each other at the same time.

“Hyung,” Sunwoo moans, Dongwoo can feel it as much as he can hear it but he still wants to feel it more, feel it against his skin, against his lips.

“Kiss me,” Dongwoo demands, presses his lips to Sunwoo’s temple as he speaks before pulling back and staring at him. And Sunwoo does, kiss him, until they’re both breathless (their hands still for a moment, distracted by each other’s tongue and lips and breath).

They’re all tangled up, wrists crossing, jerking into each other, and when they come they spill all over each other. Dongwoo drags his fingers up the inside of Sunwoo’s wrist and he ends up touching himself a little, fingers flitting over Sunwoo’s hand that’s still squeezing at his softening dick. Sunwoo’s head is bowed, staring at their hands. Dongwoo blows at the tufts of Sunwoo’s hair that’s tickling his nose and wraps his arm tightly around Sunwoo’s shoulder.

“I like you.” It’s easy to say because they’re not staring each other down, quietly and seriously. “You’re so perfect,” he continues – and really, what he means is probably not 'like.' But this is okay for now, because this isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

“Me too, I like you too.”

[ fic ] relative to you 1/3

2013-08-21T05:48:23Z

B1A4 | baro/cnu | PG | 3,369 w

points of similarity are not the only way to relate to someone. highschool!au
originally written for this prompt at kprompts and then expanded into a multipart thing for my own amusement.

The only reason Sunwoo agrees to be tutored is because the other option involves getting kicked off the basketball team (and repeating the grade probably, but that part barely registers). He has no idea why Dongwoo agreed to tutor him.

Sunwoo knows he’s not a good student (it’s impossible to not know that) and he hasn’t exactly been friendly or even polite to Dongwoo. Shin Dongwoo is a year above him and consistently ranks within the top five of his grade, he wears glasses with thick rims, and looks like just the kind of guy that Sunwoo expects to look down on him. Sunwoo talks to him without honourifics, his words are blunt and deliberately rude.

“Don’t talk to me when you see me in the halls, or in the dining hall, or you know. Anywhere outside of here,” he punctuates with a sharp jab of his finger. He wants to get this out of the way before anything else.

Dongwoo just smiles and shrugs, “Okay.”

Dongwoo doesn’t show any outward sign of annoyance. There’s no eye rolling, frowning or even a slight furrow of the brows. He just pulls out his notebooks and sits down in one of the chairs.

Sunwoo doesn’t get it, but it doesn’t matter as long as Dongwoo sticks to his word.

“I told you not to talk to me outside of this room.” Those are the first word Sunwoo says their next session.

Dongwoo does frown then, looking up at Sunwoo from his seat with a confused expression. “When did I do that?”

“You waved at me.”

Book smarts clearly don’t translate well into common sense. Understanding dawns on Dongwoo’s face, slowly. “Ah, so I should act as if I don’t know you at all,” he nods and, again, smiles. Sunwoo has to wonder if he’s laughing at him.

“Yes, wasn’t that obvious?”

“You should speak more clearly, but I get it. Now sit down so we can get started.”

Sunwoo tenses when he notices Dongwoo walk into the gymnasium during practice. He thinks, for a moment, maybe this is Dongwoo’s way of getting back at him for being a general ass towards him. But then the older boy doesn’t so much as glance over, just walks over to the coach, bowing and smiling. Sunwoo watches him out of the corner of his eye while Dongwoo only looks at the coach, speaking to him for a few minutes before leaving.

What surprises him is that he’s not the only one that notices Dongwoo come and go. After he leaves several of the others on the team murmur noisily amoung themselves.

“What was that about?”

“What’s he doing here?”

In spite of himself Sunwoo is curious. “What’s the big deal about that guy?”

It is, apparently, a hot topic.

Sunwoo brings up the topic in the change room, listening curiously as people chime in one after another. The third years are the loudest, since they were the ones that were on the team when Dongwoo was. He was good, really good apparently, more than a few comment that if he were still on the team he’d probably be captain.

Sunwoo has a hard time imagining it. He doesn’t know Dongwoo well but he can’t imagine that well-mannered, eerily patient guy in a competitive sport. He imagines Dongwoo bowing and handing the ball carefully to the opposing team with both hands, he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

“Why’d he stop, if he was so good?”

“Injury,” someone answers flatly. Sunwoo’s surprised to see that it’s a first year that answers, a tall, skinny kid. He looks uncomfortable when one of the third years speaks up again, frowning deeply and turning away. “He tried to play again after that,” there are a few scattered chuckles.

“Man, it was sad.” It doesn’t stop there, but by that point Sunwoo is only half paying attention. He doesn’t really care, it had just been passing curiosity and at this point they’re not talking about anything interesting anymore. (Or maybe, just a little, he’s not really comfortable with everyone in the change room trash talking one guy, even if Sunwoo has had similar thoughts himself.)

“Hey, you’re not focusing.”

Sunwoo shoves Dongwoo’s notes away with a grunt and a roll of his eyes. It’s raining outside and he’s had a pounding headache since before practice. The exertion had only made it worse but there’s no way he’s going to complain about it, especially not to Dongwoo.

“Stop messing around. You know what’s at risk.”

Dongwoo’s only one year older than him but right now he’s making Sunwoo feel like a kid. It pisses him off.

He should probably be more thankful. Dongwoo has been no less than perfectly accommodating, staying late after his classes are long finished in order to meet Sunwoo for their tutoring sessions. He’s a good teacher, carefully explains each point even when Sunwoo refuses to acknowledge that he’s confused. He’s patient, even when Sunwoo is deliberately difficult. And in spite of all the attitude Sunwoo’s given him, Dongwoo has never once talked down to him.

It’s annoying though. He hates how perfect Dongwoo seems, it makes him feel like a small person, like he’s an act of charity (after all, what could Dongwoo possibly gain from putting up with him like this).

He doesn’t need charity from anyone, least of all from some guy who only studies because he can’t play anymore.

“I’m messing around? Maybe the problem is that you’re not very good at this, it’s like you’re talking just to hear your own voice.” Sunwoo watches the way Dongwoo’s lips thin and his eyes narrow, he wonders if he’s finally exhausted Dongwoo’s seemingly endless patience.

For a long moment Dongwoo says nothing.

“Maybe I’m not good at this, but I’m all that you’re going to get. If I don’t tutor you, no one else will. So you can either stop dicking around and make the most of this, or you can try to raise your marks by yourself, fail, and get kicked off the team. Either way, stop wasting my time.”

His voice is so even and unaffected, as if he’s just stating obvious facts. Sunwoo can feel a burn rising from his neck to his face, he’s angry and he’s embarrassed. (Because he’s aware of how right Dongwoo is.)

“You think I’m an idiot, don’t you? Are you having fun looking down on me? If it’s such a waste of time then why the hell are you doing this anyways?”

It’s something he’s wondered since day one.

“Because,” Dongwoo says, Sunwoo half thinks he’ll just stop there. His lips are pressed together tightly and his eyebrow twitches slightly but eventually he continues. “You’ll get kicked off the team,” Dongwoo drops his gaze to the notebook in front of him and bites his bottom lip. Sunwoo’s thankful, he feels too ashamed to look Dongwoo in the eye.

He wordlessly pulls the abandoned notebook back closer and rubs at his temples. It’s hard to focus on the words but Sunwoo tries at least.

The rain is noisy and distracting, as is the clock. He’s not sure how many minutes pass and he’s still on the same page, it feels like the ticking of the clock is chipping away at his sanity.

Dongwoo sighs and Sunwoo finally looks up to see him sliding a packet of painkillers and his water bottle across the table.

“…you just carry that around in your bag?”

“I get headaches sometimes, from the change in air pressure.”

Sunwoo can’t quite bring himself to say thank you. Again, he feels like a kid with how Dongwoo manages to work things out without Sunwoo saying anything. He feels like he’s being taken care of – but he bites back anything impulsively cruel and untrue before he can form words. He takes the bottle and the pills while staring at his hands.

“You could have just said something, you know. Do you want to meet tomorrow instead? Your test is on Monday so I don’t want to miss a session.”

Sunwoo thinks he’s going red, but not in anger or humiliation this time.

“I’m fine.”

He manages a C for the test, it’s nothing outstanding but it’s a distinct improvement. Sunwoo feels kind of stupid that he feels proud of it, so he stuffs the results in his bag and forgets about it until Dongwoo texts him.

how did you do?

He’s tempted to ignore the message and he does for most of the day, but it’s in the back of his mind. It’s not until he’s in the change room getting ready for practice that it starts to bother him.

Because, that word had felt so heavy for some reason. You’ll get kicked off the team, Sunwoo wants to tell himself that he’s reading too much into it. That’s the reason he’s getting tutored, Dongwoo had just been reminding him of it. But he doesn’t think he imagined the tightness in Dongwoo’s voice, as if trying to pull something back, trying not to say too much. There was more he could have said, maybe wanted to say.

Because it was a stupid reason to get kicked off the team when he was able to play, unlike Dongwoo who couldn’t anymore.

He hurriedly texts Dongwoo back, barely making it to practice on time, and when he checks his phone after practice a message is waiting for him.

congratulations! you did well ^^

Their next session, Wednesday, Dongwoo thrusts a can of grape soda at Sunwoo and ruffles his hair. He accepts the soda but bats at the hand in his hair away and gives Dongwoo a weird look.

(But, strangely, he appreciates the gesture. It’s the first time in a long time that he’s been praised for something other than his athletics, even if the actual grade is nothing to brag about.)

“If you do better your next test I’ll treat you to tteokbokki.”

Sunwoo rolls his eyes but he’s a teenager, he’s not going to turn down the prospect of free food.

He doesn’t raise his grade for his next test, but Dongwoo takes him out anyways, telling him that he’s already improved. Sunwoo thinks it’s weird but, again, he’s a teenager and free food is free food.

He glances around the street stall they’re hovering around, keeping an eye open for anyone else he might know. He’s not too keen on his friends or team mates finding out that he’s being tutored by Dongwoo. (It makes him feel stupid.) And this is even weirder because it’s not tutoring, this is just them hanging out. There’s no reason for a guy like him to hang out with a guy like Dongwoo.

He remembers the shit they said about Dongwoo, maybe he didn’t like what they said, maybe he didn’t agree with what they said – but what if they transfer what they think of Dongwoo onto him? He doesn’t care enough to say anything when the gossiping starts and he doesn’t care enough to risk his reputation. (It makes him feel uncomfortable, but he’s not sure that the discomfort is because he doesn’t want to be seen with Dongwoo.)

Sunwoo makes a face and shifts restlessly.

Dongwoo ruffles his hair and grins wryly, “You won’t run into anyone here, it’s too out of the way.”

(Something in Sunwoo prickles at that comment, he’s not sure what. Why does Dongwoo always have to notice the things that Sunwoo doesn’t want him to?)

“As if I care,” he brushes Dongwoo’s hand away.

“Oh? So then it’s fine if I talk to you when we’re at school?”

“Don’t,” Sunwoo blurts out, a little bit too urgently. (Again, it prickles and he’s not sure why.)

Dongwoo laughs, and hands him his plate of tteokbokki. “I won’t.”

(Sunwoo tries to listen deeper, but unlike Dongwoo he’s not good at listening beyond the words that are there, so he has no idea what Dongwoo is thinking. Is he annoyed with Sunwoo? Is he hurt by Sunwoo’s insistence that they act as if they don’t know each other? Or maybe he doesn’t want to be seen with the idiot kid on the basketball team, the same way Sunwoo doesn’t want to be associated with nerd with the annoyingly wide smile.

He has no idea.)

Dongwoo slings his arm around Sunwoo’s shoulder and gives him a shake. “Hey, come on, eat up! Isn’t food that you don’t have to pay for the best tasting?”

“It’s good,” Sunwoo mutters around a mouthful of tteok (and he doesn’t shake Dongwoo’s arm off).

“Hey, we’re going to the arcade, are you coming?” Sunwoo’s just changing back into his school uniform, his group of semi-friends (they’re more friends because they’re on the same team than for any other reason) are crowded together, ready to bolt. Free time is precious, and no one wants to waste even a second of it.

“No, I’m good,” Sunwoo answers as he packs with a similar sense of urgency. He expects them to shrug and head off without him but when he looks up from buttoning his shirt he’s being stared down.

“What’s up with you lately, we barely see you outside of school.”

He’s meeting Dongwoo today for his thrice weekly tutoring session, that’s what, but he can’t exactly say that. (It occurs to Sunwoo that a few weeks ago he wouldn’t have thought too much of ditching Dongwoo just to keep up appearances with his group. But whether it’s due to a newly sprouted sense of responsibility or something else all together – the thought of ditching Dongwoo is unappealing.)

He shrugs, “I have plans.”

“Ooooh?”

Sunwoo blinks at them, not too sure what the oohing is about. He’s staring at five shit eating grins and he has no idea why.

“You’ve got a girl, haven’t you?”

Sunwoo snorts, he can’t help it but at least he manages to not outright laugh. He shakes his head and grins (which probably doesn’t help his case). “I really don’t.”

Predictably they don’t believe him but if they want to think Sunwoo has a girlfriend that doesn’t hurt him. So he just pushes his way past them and hurries off to meet Dongwoo. It’s not like he’s all that eager to study but Dongwoo never leaves until he’s convinced they’ve covered everything they need to cover, so the sooner they start the sooner they finish. (And maybe, just maybe, Dongwoo kind of makes the whole studying thing more tolerable.)

“They let you keep your hair long,” Sunwoo comments, seemingly out of nowhere, in the middle of one of their tutoring session.

Dongwoo looks like the model student, his uniform is always neat, shirt tucked and buttoned all the way to the top, and the glasses help with that impression. But he wears his hair long, heavy fringe falling into his eyes when he bows his head to read a book, it’s out of place. (It looks right on him though, good.)

Sunwoo wears his hair dark and short, because he’d been forced to dye it black early on in the school year. (Also with threats, because that seems to be the only way adults know how to make Sunwoo do anything and the basketball team is the perfect hostage.)

Dongwoo fingers the tips of his hair (it’s long enough to just graze his shoulders) with a dull, clueless look. He’s always like that; it takes Dongwoo a moment to consider what is being said and what he wants to say in response. It’s the opposite of how Sunwoo responds. At first it had been incredibly annoying to deal with, but now he just waits.

“No one’s ever said anything to me about it,” Dongwoo says after a moment. Sunwoo wants to say, that’s the point, but he figures Dongwoo will get it after another second.

He does, and a bit more.

“Ah, that’s right,” Dongwoo continues, as if suddenly remembering something. “Your hair was blonde before, wasn’t it?”

It was and Sunwoo thinks maybe he should whine about the double standards, just because Dongwoo gets good grades and stays out of trouble, he gets to walk around looking like a playboy. (Except not really, maybe he would if his smile wasn’t ridiculously wide and warm, too genuine to play anyone.) But Sunwoo is more focused on the fact that Dongwoo had noticed him before he started tutoring him. It makes him feel weirdly pleased, so he can’t be bothered to whine.

Dongwoo reaches across the table and ruffles Sunwoo’s hair, he doesn’t bother to bat the hand away anymore. “It looks good like this too!”

At some point Sunwoo admits to himself that Dongwoo isn’t so bad. (He’s probably known this for some time, maybe the whole time, but admitting it is different.) Actually, if Sunwoo is completely honest, he’d say that he rather likes Dongwoo.

Being around Dongwoo is easy, soothing even. It seems like he never judges Sunwoo for anything, he assumes as little as possible and instead just watches and listens so that he can try to actually understand Sunwoo. It’s new to Sunwoo. Dongwoo is the only one that doesn’t simply cast him into a role. Teachers expect him to be an annoying troublemaker, his friends and team mates expect him to be competitive and kind of harmlessly jerkish, people look at him and they immediately expect the same sort of thing.

It’s not that they’re wrong, but that’s not all Sunwoo is. Dongwoo is the only one that Sunwoo has ever known that so easily and naturally allows him to just be. Sunwoo sees everything as a competition, he speaks without thinking a lot of the times, and sometimes he whines until even Dongwoo has to sigh in exasperation. But there’s more than that.

“I want carp bread,” Sunwoo drops his head on Dongwoo’s shoulder (he’s not sure when these gestures became so easy). Dongwoo tutors Sunwoo three times a week and, sometimes, after that Dongwoo feeds Sunwoo, because Sunwoo is eternally hungry (and he doesn’t quite want to go home yet, because he’d like to talk to Dongwoo about things that aren’t chemistry or history or anything else school related).

“So I should buy it for you again?” Dongwoo asks with a laugh, but he doesn’t say no and Sunwoo latches on to that.

“Hyuung,” Sunwoo whines, pushing his lips into a pout. He only does this in front of Dongwoo, because he’s the only one that Sunwoo is sure would never hold it against him and his image.

Dongwoo rolls his eyes but grins, “All right, since you called me hyung.”

He cheers as Dongwoo slings his arm around Sunwoo’s shoulders and squeezes. (To be honest Sunwoo enjoys that as much as he enjoys the free food.) “I want three,” he says eagerly and ignores the way his heart stutters when Dongwoo’s arm slips from his shoulder.

“Two,” Dongwoo returns with a smile, looking back, hand on the door handle.

He walks out first and Sunwoo counts to twenty before he follows, there’s half a soccer field of space between them as they leave the school. It's become their habit, Sunwoo doesn't know how it became their habit but it has and he hates it (himself) a little. Dongwoo doesn’t look back while Sunwoo stares straight ahead, eyes almost burning holes into Dongwoo’s back. He runs to catch up with Dongwoo when the school is several blocks behind them.

“Three!” Sunwoo wants to link their arms or tackle Dongwoo or something, but he doesn’t dare to. (It feels cheap when he’s the one that hangs back every time, the first time and every time after that.)

Dongwoo just smiles and pinches Sunwoo’s cheek, “I’ll get you five if you make a B on your next test.”

(Dongwoo just accepts it as he does all the other shit that comes with Sunwoo. His attitude, his impatience, his whining, Dongwoo accepts it and never looks down on him for any of it. Sunwoo quietly judges himself, hates that he's ashamed of Dongwoo, who is probably the kindest person he knows.

It makes Sunwoo realise that he’s a coward, but he doesn’t know how to change it.)

[ 50 B1A4 challenge ] road trip & rain

2013-08-19T22:55:35Z

the places we could go | prompt: road trip | gongchan/sandeul | G | 522 w

Chansik’s world is narrow, it’s too tight and way too small for him. He looks off into the horizon sometimes, squints and tries to see beyond where the road thins and vanishes, he imagines that he can almost see the skyscrapers not so far away, cutting into the clouds.

It’s not that Chansik hates his home town, far from it, there are a lot of things he likes, a lot of things he loves, right where he is. And it’s not like Chansik is particularly ambitious either, he doesn’t have wide reaching goals that can’t be contained in his peaceful, quiet suburbs or anything. So he can’t really explain why his house, the neighbourhood, all feels so small and narrow to him. He wants to sprint down the road, push past that unbroken skyline and find something.

He’s not sure what that something is though.

“It’s great,” Junghwan tells Chansik excitedly from where he’s sprawled on Chansik’s bed. Junghwan is a year older than him and he’s lived in the house next door before Chansik moved in (so basically forever in Chansik’s mind) until he moved to the city last year, to chase his dreams. It was kind of amazing in Chansik’s eyes, because who does that? Who moves away from everything they’ve ever known and loved for a faint hope of something more?

That’s what Chansik thinks, but he knows Junghwan’s thoughts are way different, Junghwan believes. He genuinely trusts that hard work and sheer passion can take him anywhere. To simply call that amazing seems insufficient, but Chansik has no other word for it.

Chansik has dreams too, nothing huge and imposing, but there are things he wants to do that he only talks about with Junghwan and also things that he doesn't tell anyone at all. (Sometimes, when Chansik is staring into the distance, squinting to see past the skyline, he imagines that he can see Junghwan glittering on stage, just like Junghwan dreams. And he wants to follow that image, because it’s so much more than amazing, it’s meant to be.)

“You should come visit me, we can go…” Junghwan trails off and frowns in thought, like there are too many options and he doesn’t know what he wants to do first. “It’ll be fun,” he finishes and smiles widely, leaving details up in the air and to Chansik’s imagination. Chansik can’t help but smile back.

“Okay.”

He means it, and he means more than what he says. Chansik lives steadfastly and diligently but if it's with Junghwan he wants to run with him, to follow him just to see what Junghwan will do, what Junghwan will become, and how. (He doesn't tell Junghwan, not in words, but he tries to say it in the way he hugs his friend and the way he lingers reluctantly at 'goodbye.')

After Junghwan has left Chansik looks up maps of the city roads and of the public transport. It looks like multicoloured yarn all tangled up, everything intersecting with everything else. It gives him the impression that they could go anywhere together and he doesn't know where they should go first.

when it rains | prompt: rain | baro/gongchan | PG | 975 w

It does not rain the day they break up.

There’s a heavy wetness hanging in the air and it’s been there for days, weighing down the whole city and coating it in dirty, smoggy film. Kind of like that sense of impending dread Sunwoo’s been feeling for a while, for the past few days, weeks, months.

“I’d…like it if we could still be friends,” Chansik says, staring at Sunwoo, tilting his head to try to catch his gaze when Sunwoo looks away.

“Seriously?”

To be honest, Sunwoo isn’t the most gracious of exes. He’s the kind of guy who gets kind of bitter and kind of angry (and more than kind of depressed, but that’s what the bitterness and anger are there for, to cover it up). He’s the kind of guy that almost genuinely hopes that his exes go on to live miserable lives. Almost.

Chansik presses his lips into a tight line and it kind of hurts to see that expression on his face. “I guess…I guess that means you’d rather…”

“Yeah.”

Sunwoo leaves without finishing his coffee, he leaves first so that he can try to believe that he’s the one walking away instead of the other way around.

It does not rain the next day, when Sunwoo goes through his old emails and text messages and twitter, and anything else he can think of, to delete every shared message and every mention of Chansik.

He accidentally breaks the sort of matching mugs he’d painted for them and thinks good, serves you right. (It doesn’t really make sense but Sunwoo’s not really good at break ups. What pathetic human being is good at break ups? Sunwoo wishes he could be a bit better at this though. He wishes he could stop caring and just let it all roll off his back, that way he wouldn’t feel like the loser that just got dumped.)

It does not rain the next day either, when Sunwoo trips on a raised chunk of sidewalk and he begins to feel irrationally spiteful. He snaps at Junghwan when he comes over to play videogames and Junghwan doesn’t snap back.

Sunwoo figures his misery must be etched on his forehead if Junghwan is going easy on him. It makes him realise that he feels more pathetic with each passing day. He only barely manages to not scream when Junghwan pats his shoulder all awkward and well meaning.

The heavy wetness is blown away and the nasty damp warmth lets up a bit. Sunwoo gives up on rain. He also gives up on going out for a bit because it really is etched on his forehead, all his misery and bitterness. Besides he really needs to stop snapping at his friends if he doesn’t want to be single and friendless.

He lies around and tries to think where it went wrong – but there isn’t really anything. Not unless he’s supposed to count just being himself as wrong. It’s not like they ended things from an explosive fight. Sunwoo had seen it coming, their relationship trailing off into an ending, like a car running out of gas with all the pings and subtle warning lights.

He should have dumped Chansik first. (Except he’d been hoping that they’d go a little further, a little longer, a day, a week, a month.)

Of course it rains after Sunwoo gives up on waiting for it and after he stops carrying an umbrella with him. He’s at a convenience store two blocks from his place and the sky decides that now is a good time to dump on him.

“Fuck you,” Sunwoo says to no one in particular and Chansik laughs.

Of course the day it rains he runs into Chansik. Chansik lives two blocks in the opposite direction from the convenience store, and they have more than a few mutual friends, so running into him had been a matter of when rather than if. Still, it just had to be today.

He looks perfectly chic and there isn’t a hint of misery or bitterness on his forehead. If not for Sunwoo’s ridiculous sense of pride he’d run, torrential downpour be damned.

Chansik glances down at Sunwoo’s hands, looking, checking, before he offers. “Walk together?”

“We’re not even going the same way.”

“How would you know?”

(Sharing an umbrella with someone he doesn’t want to touch is hard. Sunwoo’s shoulder and side are soaked by the time they make it back to his place and he wonders why they bothered. He kind of hates the world, but he's totally unsurprised when he realises he doesn’t hate Chansik at all.)

Some days it rains and some days it doesn’t. Sometimes the dampness hangs in the air for days and makes Sunwoo irritable and sweaty. He thinks of Chansik a lot some days and not at all others. (It’s not related at all but Sunwoo likes to pretend it works as parallels, the same way he likes to romanticise things but with more angst and less sparkles and rose petals.)

Eventually, he figures Chansik had to dump him because Sunwoo doesn’t think he ever would have. Not even if the relationship started to choke them both to death.

He’s not thankful exactly but he’s not as angry anymore, sort of.

It takes days, and weeks, and months – but eventually the misery and bitterness erase themselves from his forehead. And eventually they can both hang out with their mutual friends at the same time without storm clouds gathering in Sunwoo’s head. And eventually – a day, a week, a month later – they can even hang out alone, just the two of them.

“Were you ever sad when we broke up?”

“Of course,” the sound of Chansik beating him ridiculously at Tekken is loud but Sunwoo manages to hear him over it.

“But I was looking forward to being friends again.”

50 B1A4 fic challenge

2013-08-19T18:38:06Z

original challenge started 130819 progress 8 / 50 completed xx

001. history ; cnu/jinyoung
002. pink ; jinyoung/sandeul
003. goodnight ; cnu/gongchan
004. lick ; jinyoung/baro
005. pillow ; jinyoung/gongchan
006. vampires ; cnu/sandeul
007. crash ; sandeul/baro
008. cold ; cnu/baro
009. wandering hands ; sandeul/gongchan
010. insanity ; baro/gongchan
011. remedy ; jinyoung/baro
012. blind date ; cnu/jinyoung
013. cat ; jinyoung/sandeul
014. criminal ; cnu/baro
015. attention ; jinyoung/gongchan
016. airplane ; cnu/sandeul
017. rocket ; sandeul/baro
018. fool ; cnu/jinyoung
019. sprout ; sandeul/gongchan
020. knockout ; cnu/gongchan
021. dragon ; baro/gongchan
022. dancing ; cnu/sandeul
023. police ; cnu/gongchan
024. office ; jinyoung/sandeul
025. stars ; jinyoung/baro

026. road trip ; sandeul/gongchan
027. text message ; cnu/baro
028. movie ; jinyoung/gongchan
029. glasses ; sandeul/baro
030. rain ; baro/gongchan
031. energy ; sandeul/gongchan
032. tonight ; jinyoung/baro
033. capture ; cnu/jinyoung
034. party ; baro/gongchan
035. reckless ; jinyoung/sandeul
036. foreigner ; cnu/baro
037. sculpture ; jinyoung/gongchan
038. dirty ; cnu/sandeul
039. cowboy ; sandeul/baro
040. doctor ; cnu/gongchan
041. lust ; cnu/cnu
042. melody ; jinyoung/jinyoung
043. ownership ; sandeul/sandeul
044. target ; baro/baro
045. stutter ; gongchan/gongchan
046. icecream ; *wc
047. alone ; *wc
048. lovesick ; *wc
049. just a game ; *wc
050. determine ; *wc

[ fic ] life in love (and lust)

2013-08-08T04:19:38Z

B1A4 | baro/cnu | PG-13 | 651 w

sunwoo's horny. or sunwoo's in love. or both, probably both.
I had to post this before I deleted it to erase the shame.

“Get out,” Dongwoo hisses, the moment Sunwoo ducks behind the curtain. It would be much more effective if Sunwoo didn’t know that Dongwoo is hissing around his lopsided grin (he doesn’t need to see it to know).

The stall is small, a tight fit for the two of them, and it’s the perfect excuse for Sunwoo to press his body against Dongwoo’s back. Not that he ever needs an excuse, not when it’s just the two of them in changing stalls and hidden corners. He props his chin on Dongwoo’s shoulder and slides both hands up Dongwoo’s thighs. Sunwoo has to bite his lip to hold back a groan just from that touch while Dongwoo squirms half-heartedly.

He wishes there were a mirror in the changing stall so that he can properly appreciate Dongwoo’s legs, but touching is better than looking so Sunwoo tells himself to be satisfied for now. He fingers the edge of the too short shorts that Dongwoo’s wearing and presses himself more firmly against Dongwoo’s back.

“Please let me fuck your thighs,” he mumbles, voice low and deep and embarrassingly eager. Dongwoo gives in – to his urge to laugh, not to Sunwoo’s request. He can feel Dongwoo’s laugh rumble through his frame, it makes his heart swell a bit, makes him want to hug the older man and sway around together like morons. But his dick is a bit more demanding than his heart at the moment.

Dongwoo places his hands over Sunwoo’s and drags them up and holds them at his waist. “You need to calm down and step out before someone comes looking for us.”

Sunwoo hears the smile in Dongwoo’s voice and again – he wishes there were a mirror in the stall. He’s not getting what he wants, he knows this, but he can’t resist the urge to push a little more, even if the chance of Dongwoo throwing professionalism out the window to indulge him is slim to none.

“Hyuuung,” Sunwoo whines as he grinds slowly against Dongwoo’s ass.

“Hey, stop that! I need to get changed.”

“I know,” he agrees, stilling but keeps holding Dongwoo close. “Into more shorts, it’s really not fair.” He keeps complaining now just to hear Dongwoo laugh again, feel it again, because he knows he can only steal a few more minutes. (He knew to begin with and even though sometimes those few minutes, seconds, are worse than nothing at all, Sunwoo just can’t resist.)

“Do you want the shorts instead? You’d have to shave, probably clog the drain with your leg hair.”

“You’re so romantic, hyung.”

Dongwoo snorts and turns against Sunwoo (and he almost shudders at the feeling of Dongwoo shifting against him, imagining what it feels like when he does the same when they’re naked.)

“So are you. It makes me swoon when you sneak up on me to tell me you want to fuck my thighs,” Dongwoo says, lips quirked into a smirk, and he runs his thumb along Sunwoo’s neck before teasingly wrapping his fingers around his throat and squeezing lightly.

This does not help him calm down at all. Sunwoo whines pathetically, it earns him a chaste kiss, or rather, a laugh against his lips.

Dongwoo smacks Sunwoo’s ass lightly and pushes him out of the stall, “Get out before you ruin the clothes.”

He clings to the curtains and sticks his head back in and puts all his effort into pouting as pathetically as he knows how, “Later?”

Dongwoo rolls his eyes and gives him a sideways look as he’s taking off his shorts (it’s really unfair) and smiles and Sunwoo can tell he’s holding back another laugh.

“Maybe.”

He could have said ‘yes’, he could have said ‘no’, but Dongwoo goes with ‘maybe’ and that’s really the worst answer. It leaves Sunwoo to think about it through all the rest of the photoshoot (and the rest of the day).

[ fic ] born to be free

2013-07-19T17:51:53Z

B1A4 | baro/cnu | PG | 868 w

sometimes dongwoo walks around the dorm naked, sunwoo is used to it. now with a porntastic bonus

It happens more often during the summer, for obvious reasons.

They’re all somewhat used to it by now, as much as they can be, and it’s not really awkward or anything – but they’ve learned to notice the signs that lead up to it. Sunwoo and Junghwan have a check list.

It usually starts with Dongwoo tugging at the neck of his shirt and just plucking at it like it’s clinging too tight even if it’s a loose shirt. He rubs at his neck and arms, more so on particularly warm and humid days.

It’s warm and humid today. The heat is sticky and heavy, the kind that clings to the skin even after Sunwoo closes the windows and turns the air conditioning on – and Dongwoo is rubbing his neck, brows furrowed and lips pursed. Sunwoo glances up from his notebook briefly, more out of habit than curiosity.

Really, they’re all used to it. Even if any of the others were in the dorm right now none of them would say anything about it, maybe trade a few amused looks at most.

Dongwoo paces by, his discomfort progressing like it normally does. According to the check list, it happens in four stages. He thumbs at the waistband of his pants, and though his shirt is covering it, Sunwoo knows that Dongwoo is prying at the elastic of his underwear with his thumb, gliding along the shadow of his hip bones. Sunwoo doesn’t even need to look to know.

He watches the way the thin fabric shifts as Dongwoo fidgets.

Sunwoo kind of wonders why Dongwoo bothers with all of the stages. They’ve been living together for years, and while this particular quirk is pretty obvious and in your face, it’s not like they don’t all have their own weird thing.

He walks by again, shirt hitching up as he rubs his hand across his stomach. Sunwoo snickers and Dongwoo looks over.

“Just take it off already.” If Sunwoo doesn’t say that stage three can sometimes last upwards of an hour, and then Dongwoo would just pace the dorm, touching and rubbing himself. (And, of course, it’s not really awkward because they’re both used to it, even if Dongwoo answers with a bit of a slanted grin that’s somewhere between embarrassed and amused.)

His shirt goes first. Dongwoo doesn’t just strip out of everything and dump it on the bed or something; he pulls off his shirt, folds it, and sets it aside for later. The process is neat and careful, almost to the point of being comical. And just because he’s used to it doesn’t mean that Sunwoo doesn’t watch – stare, really. Dongwoo’s back is turned to him as he sets his folded shirt down, used to it or not it’s just hard to ignore. He watches the way the muscles of Dongwoo’s back move, stares at the boney jut of his shoulder blades.

His pants and underwear come off together and he bends (more like leans, but it has the same effect) as he sets them aside as well. There it is, stage four. It’s kind of impossible to ignore, isn’t it? Sunwoo can’t help that he’s grinning and blinking rapidly when Dongwoo turns around. He’s trying to not laugh, that’s all.

Once he’s naked Dongwoo is completely unashamed. It’s a bit of a contrast to how awkward, even shy, Dongwoo still comes across at times even after two years of idol life. Then again, he has plenty to be proud of (inches, really).

Dongwoo laughs, his hand going up to rub at the back of his neck, fingering the ends of his hair. His other hand is on his hip, no hiding anything at all. “You still have to stare every time?”

“Not like it bothers you,” Sunwoo answers, eyes flicking up finally.

Dongwoo stretches, makes a pleased humming sound in the back of his throat as he does, and he’s basically on display for a few long seconds. Sunwoo sees everything, it’s not the first time and it won’t be the last time but still, it makes him pause. Dongwoo’s not heavily built, he’s too thin to be really defined, but damn if he isn’t nice to look at. And because Dongwoo really doesn’t care, Sunwoo feels free to check him out as much as he likes.

He admires the wide shoulders that Dongwoo’s so proud of, his narrow waist, and startlingly smooth body. Dongwoo’s nipples are hard because of the air conditioning; Sunwoo finds it funny in a weird way, if he weren’t busy checking him out he’d probably laugh.

“Too cold,” Sunwoo asks, his voices ends up deeper and rougher than he intended. He had meant to sound teasing, laughing, but Dongwoo is the one that laughs instead.

He shakes his head and grins, slanted, but a different slant. He rubs one hand down the side of his thigh and the other against his hip but Sunwoo’s eyes flick back up to his face almost immediately, focusing on that slanted grin.

“Perfect, actually. You should join me.”

It’s not awkward, not really. It’s not even the first time (and it won’t be the last), Sunwoo grins and wonders if this counts as stage five.

[ drabbles ]

2013-07-13T15:24:15Z

SHE'S WOW | g | 100 w each

just dumping them here as they pop up. all the minkyu love.

His parents lie because the truth is ugly and needs to be hidden; it’s something he’s grown up with and Minkyu thinks, maybe one day he ought to try it. It looks miserable but it must be fun somehow, because they keep doing it without any intention of stopping.

Minkyu tells the truth because people won’t believe him anyways, so he says whatever he wants, never bothers to mince or filter his words and just does whatever he wants.

They are all hiding something, Minkyu too. It’s just that he’s hidden it so well, even he can’t find it anymore.

Sometimes she wonders how she fell in love with Gong Minkyu. Usually at night as she’s falling asleep, wondering how many days, how many hours she has left.

And then she figures, she’s desperate, that’s why.

Nanhee wants to love before she dies; she wants to be loved stupidly, passionately before she dies. So she settles for the overgrown kid that doesn’t know when to quit, the idiot that never thinks of what he’s doing beyond the fact that he’s doing it for her.

She figures she’s desperate and Minkyu is convenient but – she loves him nonetheless, only that matters.