Chapter Text
The number one strength of Jin Cheung-Woo is that he cannot let go.
The trait must be embedded into the gristle of his bones, the very fabric of his DNA, the strands spelling out stubborn, determined bastard that pours out of him in sweat and blood. It’s not about grudges- that’s different. It’s the subject of payback, and he did not get to where he is in the organisation today, off the back of rumours of previous allegiances and betrayals, in any less a way. Jin will chase every lead, every scrap of intel, the money, the marks, and every single cocky asshole who seeks to disrespect him thinking it won’t mean a thing. They said attaining to the role of heir couldn’t be done, not with his history. But he’s the man who got a title carved in his back when the whispers continued and no, he couldn’t allow that to pass by without consequence. It was a matter of integrity, of personal pride for the future of Shinhai- even when that future is a murdering piece of filth like him-
He must be in control. Never hand over the reins to anyone else. Never let anyone carry him. No one can take the hit that’s meant for him. No one at all-
“-let go.” The voice is soft against his neck, startlingly clear under the roar of the showerhead. “You’re not that heavy. You’re fine, I won’t let you fall-”
The water is lukewarm, the air in the shower tepid instead of steamy. Jin set that deliberately before calling the part-timer over, not wanting to waste time pissing around with the temperature dials with the risk of a running commentary in a bathroom that is completely alien to them. But now there’s no explanation for the sheer amount of heat that floods Jin’s blood, the sudden hitch in his breath. His cock twitches painfully against his stomach as the stimulation kicks, impatient, wet hair poking needles into his temples. He tries to swallow in a gulp of air to speak, but the face that’s buried into his shoulder suddenly pulls back. Startling green eyes bore into his face, agonisingly bright, chips of signal light, heralding intention. Telling Jin what to do.
“Let go.” The voice mumbles again, fluttering arousal in his ear, “Hold on tight…”
Jin is pressed flat against the shower wall, barely missing the vicious imprint of the taps into his back. One leg is wrapped around his lover’s hip, pressing hard against firm muscle and bone, whilst the other leg fights valiantly to keep its foot still flat on the tiled floor, holding his weight. The muscle in his calf twitches from the strain, distracted and flailing. The instinct is to lift it, especially when the hand wrapped around his thigh is trying to push it upwards, to join the other leg. To let go. No-
Matthew cradles Jin closer under the falling water, his gaze boring into him, deep inside. It’s near agony on Jin’s ass at this angle, with one leg still trying to stay standing, and his hips scream at the awkward twist of his spine. It would be so easy to release his remaining foot. There’s barely any stress left on it now, falling into those big, tight hands that pinch at wet skin, who secure him into place. It’s like Jin weighs nothing. All that time being spent at whatever construction site the part-timer is working at is paying off. Jin feels the bulk of a swelling, solid body all around him, protective and affectionate. Obsessively holding on to him, like he’s moulding him in his own image, and fuck, Jin has never felt so hot in his life. His balls tighten and strain with the pressure and pleasure of his building orgasm. Every nerve he has is on fire, singeing, smouldering frissons of touch as his cock aches and screams and begs for attention from the body of the other. His mind demands he lift his own god damn leg. He needs Matthew to hold him and rail him with his back right against the fucking wall, looking right into those eyes the entire time as he works to climax. He wants to see it, wants to taste the feeling through his blood, sucking at Matthew’s mouth. He’s never quite been fucked like this before. He wants to let go- no-
“But I’m not fine-”
This is not how any of this works. This isn’t what Jin does. He doesn’t know what kind of sappy porn his giant virgin has been watching lately, but this isn’t like the movies. Sex is not about some bullshit connection apart from that which is just flesh in flesh, slapping against each other, scoring fixes. And that’s what Jin needs, the moment of that time where he doesn’t have to think or crave. Not this. In a quick burst of strength he’ll probably regret later, Jin hoists his hips upwards and unhooks his leg, feeling Matthew slide out of him in a streak of white-hot fire that turns his knees weak even with both feet back on the floor. But Jin grits his teeth, turns away from that gaze that’s scoring into his own, shoving away the signals his own frustrated body gives him and from the beautiful face of Matthew Raynor.
He needs to remember how the man is just his supplier. And that’s what Jin is too in turn: part of their transaction. He’s forgotten of late that he is the model, the maker of the terms that were set out in his contract made in what felt like an eternity ago. He decides he doesn’t hear the wistful sigh under the water falling into his eyes, as he impatiently huffs with his face up against the shower wall. Sure enough, Matthew is pressed against his back, still muttering sweet, fanatical things. And once again, Jin’s stupid body can’t help but shiver, whimpering, arching back for more skin against his own as teeth scrape at dug in scars.
He's in so much trouble. He should have kept the plaid-clad psycho’s hands tied behind his back from the beginning. Shouldn’t have ever let him ever see how broken he is, and then let him hold him back together again and again. Jin feels how he is losing control, even right now as he’s getting fucked within an inch of his life, still wishing he had those arms holding him up. He must snatch it back. He has to let Matthew go. For both of their sakes.
Problem is, Jin can’t let go. It’s his weakness. So, in that instance, he has to attempt the next best thing. Set the stage, right after he’s once more taken exactly what he wants. What he needs:
“You don’t really like me. It’s all in your head.”
He’s completely fucked out again. Jin wonders where in the hell does his guy get all his energy from. He doesn’t do drugs and barely eats and wears his body down to the stubs. Working those stupid jobs and living in a dark, damp abyss, yet when he has Jin under his hands, he’s a positively endless machine, barely out of breath minutes after they’ve both come against each other over and over. But Jin remembers being that relentless at his age. Living like a live wire in similarly uninhabitable dens, stretched to a razor’s edge by the demands of Brandon Lee, and look at all the good that did him. Matthew doesn’t have to live like that now. Not if Jin pushed against it. But it’s not about that anymore, is it?
Jin continues to suck on this fourth cigarette (or is it his fifth? Sixth? Fuck knows), fully nervy, eyes darting at the bathroom door. The part-timer is pottering about on the other side. Doing God knows what. He went straight there after Jin dealt the last devastating blow of his words, and damn it all, Jin wants to know what the hell it is he’s up to. Hopefully nothing desperate or drastic. Thought’s flicker, annoyingly frightened, telling Jin that Matthew is in there getting his stuff together, preparing to leave him-
-which is stupid, because that’s what Jin wants him to do. That’s why he gave that sour little speech, lined with props. He needed to stomp all over Matthew’s feelings, to show him the true reality of what he was literally fucking with: the knife, the pills, the filth in Jin’s look, the way he rubbed his groin with lewd coldness in his tone as he brought the reality of their relationship to the basics of simple payment with dick for art. Some of it must have sunk in. There was a look in that sweet face that told Jin it had, and when Matthew turned on his heel, he fully expected the sculptor to walk out. It was what he wanted: I leave you, now it’s your turn to leave me. And perhaps that’s what Matthew is still planning to do from behind the bathroom door. Maybe Jin is right- no, he knows he is- Matthew is just high on sex, high on this feeling, high on the effect of someone actually giving him the time of day for what is probably the first time in his life. Now as soon as Jin is out of his sight, he’ll grow up a bit and then go suck off someone else with his newfound experience. Which is what Jin intends-
He feels the abrupt and slamming onslaught of a headache. The type that makes him buckle and shake, and he clenches his spare hand to fist at the sheets as what feels like an ice pick cleaves at the side of his head, turning the lines of the bathroom doors wavy and unfocused. His cigarette is at the filter, and he angrily stubs it out in the tray beside the bed. He doesn’t want to light another, not when he knows he’ll click open his case and risk once again folding at the sight of those pills who tell him they can take the symptoms away. It’s desperate behaviour, and that disgusts him. He massages his head with his fingers, waiting for the pain to pass, as it should do. Although it’s not all that fantastic that he’s suffering so soon after sex. He had tonight planned to avoid this-
“Is that withdrawal symptoms?”
Jin lifts his head, the lines and shapes all around aligning back into place. God damn it, he didn’t even hear Matthew come back in. And he’s not dressed to go. He hasn’t changed at all. Jin feels his headache scowl deepen even further at the sight of still bare and beautiful torso, focusing on his sculpted shoulders, the skin lit by the soft lamps by the bed and throwing round shadows all around. For all of that brilliant artist’s mind Jin’s seen in his drawings, his constant deep perception of the emotional state that is his sex partner with unwanted feelings, the kid’s dumber than a bag of hammers for still being here after everything he should know. Well, Jin can’t help him anymore. It’s just that Raynor’s got the psychological complexity of a fucking rock, like he’s a potat-
Jin’s head sparks again, punching him in the cranium at full whack. It’s too late to strangle the hiss that’s out between his lips, knuckles needling at his forehead. He hears the swift thuds of bare feet rushing towards him, clambering across the bed to get to his side, and true enough there are warm fingers thumbing at his forehead, pulling his own away. Matthew never has any sense of self-pride about him, even after all the times he’s ridden Jin into oblivion, tearing him to ribbons. He’s still ready to serve at a moment’s notice in an eager apology, submissive in his dominant care, even when he has Jin completely under him. It’s always been sexy as shit-
“Jin?”
Those warm fingers keep searching, delicately creeping along his brow. Like it’s the first time Matthew’s ever touched him again, only it’s definitely pushing the pain away. The pads of those fingers suddenly settle against indented skin, tracing a line. They feel for the pencil-thin scar above Jin’s eye, but then the hand stiffens without warning, like it’s found something sharp. Matthew sucks in a stuttering breath, and there’s something about the timid noise that makes Jin instantly furious, snapping his eyes open. Why is the kid pawing at him like this? He slaps the hand away.
“Raynor,” Jin hears himself snarl at the man hovering close to him in between beats of a renewed warring head, “can you settle down so I can get some fucking sleep already?”
He expects Matthew to cower. But instead, the part-timer merely lifts his head, eyes flickering to Jin’s before rising back up to gape shamelessly at the scar.
“Do you…” He swallows, “Do you remember how you got that one?”
For a second Jin can only stare. But he then turns away, glaring at his own hands. The absolute balls of this man to ask such a question. It’s like they’re back at square one, and he’s asking about the cuts on his back. Further proof tonight that Jin’s let the asshole get far too close, too liberal with what he thinks he’s entitled to know, kicking off the armour Jin’s spent years putting into place. He’s become so obsessed with the subject of Jin’s memories, acting like he’s all high and mighty- are there memories you want to recover- well, hell, does anyone wanna do that? And no, for the record, Jin doesn’t remember fully how he got the scar, and that’s a good thing. He’s a gangster, it’s part of the territory, and that’s what the drugs he used to take are fucking for.
He could slip a pill down his throat, and it’s like throwing a dart at a spinning wheel, playing chance with whatever memory is still breathing that Jin can choke the life out of into forgetting. All that’s left of that night he got the cut above his eyebrow now is the flash of rotten nails lurching out of the dark to claw back at his face in a futile fight for life. Then there’s the scant recollection of the way Jin had grabbed that thin, ugly, papery hand that used to roam all over him. He barely understands that he started to fold it in half until he heard the crunch of bones cracking under the pressure, laughing at the shrill shriek of the director of the orphanage in his ears, the satisfaction rolling in his chest-
That’s all there is though. And really, that’s all he needs. Jin knows in context for that chewed up memory that he wanted to beat that Father to death for years. Years and years and fucking years. Although now he hasn’t a clue now on why that moment was chosen. What finally made him snap that night. The full recollection got swallowed into a deep hole when he first started using, and he’s not sorry to see it still remains that way in his head. If he has to think about it, then the old lecherous bitch had probably only done something minor that day, hit some part of Jin he shouldn’t have, and that’s why he broke. The whole incident itself meant nothing. Continues to mean nothing. Jin learnt some better control after that night, after he left that hellhole of a ‘home’ and started taking the pills. When he had another man to service-
But that’s all well and truly done. Buried history. And in this present those parts of Jin shouldn’t matter to Matthew Raynor, of all people. What Jin does with his memories is his own prerogative. Besides, he can’t think on why the brat should possibly care, apart from the issue of his precious feelings which they’ve battled against all night. Jin brings his gaze back to him, looking at the way he leans over him on all fours, eyes boring into his skin, deeply expectant. His fingers linger, aching to touch. It makes Jin snort, deviously smug. He’s more than happy to let the part-timer down again. That’s been the whole theme of today, after all.
“Of course I remember how I got my own scars.” He bites back, lying through his teeth, “But like I said, once upon a time ago, the story behind any of them is none of your damn business. And now we’re going to sleep.”
He expects the look of disappointment, sure. But then Matthew looks Jin up and down in a way that takes a moment to recognise as abject scrutiny, like he’s being hauled up to the top office, made to explain his recent chicanery to the old hag. Somehow Matthew knows for definite that Jin is lying, but that observation is deeply unnerving. All of a sudden Jin wants to understand why the kid knows that. How- how-
But then Matthew shrugs out of nowhere, twisting his shoulders away. “I thought…” He mumbles, eyes now roving over Jin’s body, “But I thought you said you weren’t going to let me sleep tonight.”
Jin cocks an eyebrow at the clumsy change in tack. It’s a random attempt to distract, and it fails to hit the mark miserably. It’s the man’s bad habit raising its head, the desperate desire to say everything’s fine to Jin’s face, although it’s clear his curiosity lingers. But Jin knows to let it pass. He shouldn’t give a single shit what Raynor thinks or wants, and it’s the kid’s own stupid, idealistic expectations that keep fucking him over and letting him down. Yes, the gangster is a liar, he can’t be anything else.
Before Jin really knows it himself, he sees his own hand sneaking around to the back of Matthew’s neck, pushing forward to yank his face close to his own. The reaction is instant, and Jin feels with his other hand pressed up against Matthew’s sternum the held breath that’s in his chest, seeing in double vision the mouth parting for a response.
“I say a lot of things, part-timer.” Jin breathes against his face, watching those eyes flutter open, twin sets of green but in the low light it looks as if the shine has been kicked out of them. Angry and sad. Good, Jin thinks. Now the guy gets it. He’s figured it out. About time.
I’m always talking shit. I’m all muck and full of bullshit, spewing it out everywhere, poison at the well. Now go away. Your dumb illusion of me was about hiding how desperately sad and broken you are. Take it up and smash it to smithereens. Like it’s a statue gone wrong. A pedestal without foundations, rotting plaster underneath the carved surface.
Let go, Matthew Raynor, if you know what’s good for you.
Yet those eyes narrow instead of pulling away, and there’s a thumb at Jin’s cheek, silky and tender. There’s nothing Jin can do. Exhaustion laces acid in his muscles and his body screams for sleep so it can prepare for the aches and pains that will wreck him like a little bitch tomorrow morning, but the heart skips, the body beginning to feel lighter than air. His eyes close and he plunges straight into the sensation of that caress. He wants Matthew. He wants him so bad it hurts, to kiss him absolutely stupid. But it’s strange, his cock cannot take anymore, and it’s not arousal singing in his stomach, pooling upwards instead of down, racing along his pulse. His senses keen for the simplicity that is just touch, smelling sex and the sweat of his man, all sweet and addicting, swallowing in his mouth. Jin wants to hold him, to have that gorgeous body envelope and block out the world around between damp sheets, wrapped about him tighter than gift paper.
But god damn it- no. He’s done with Raynor’s fantasies already. It’s over. And so are the lavish boasts of an epic night with dinner and clothes and sex induced insomnia. Kissing only leads to fucking in his book, and Jin knows they’re done for the night. He cannot kiss this man. He opens his eyes and grips those fingers that rest on his clammy face to prise them off, flinging them away into the abyss where they belong. Matthew flinches at the move, the thump of his own hand against the sheets. His long-held breath pours out of him in a gasp, shocked, scrabbling in tangles of the bed.
“J-Jin, I-”
Jin is so sick of hearing the man say his name like that. Mewling like a cat. It’s doing nothing for his resolve. He pushes against Matthew’s chest.
“Just shut up and get your head down already.”
Jin turns away, lying on his side to face the window, away from him. The bed is a soaking wreck and he’s now on the wrong side of freezing cold, but he’ll cut his own dick off before he admits that, burying his thumping head into the pillows and forcing himself to stop shivering. He is knackered despite all of the adrenaline of this current drama, and sleep picks at his throat in a total rush. He drowsily hears the part-timer slowly slide himself down the bed, and thinks it’s about time this all ended, drifting off. There’s a warm arm coiling around Jin’s middle, an iron bar of heat locking him in, but Jin doesn’t move it. Doesn’t acknowledge it either before the threat of nightmares pick him for scraps of his mentality. He tells himself there’s nothing in that hold. Matthew is clutching for the sheer sake of it, because that’s what he does. Always so clingy. Damn him.
Jin hates how he never wakes up first. Raynor always beats him to it, spare the one time Jin found him in the studio and he was literally too sick to even lift his head. Somehow there’s something about that long, thick body next to him that makes Jin sleep like the dead, breathing in hypersomnia, dwelling in the peaceful, steady presence. At least, Jin hopes it’s that anyway, and he’s not getting old. Like Brandon Lee. Jesus Christ. No. Please god-
Either way, it’s a close one this morning. He comes back to earth after a surprising sleep with no dreams, trying to sit up in bed with a sore back, and he sees Matthew right by the front door to the hotel room, gently pulling on his jacket so to make no noise at all. Clearly, the little bastard intended to not get caught sneaking out. He gives himself away with his brow knitting together when he sees Jin looking at him, a split flash of nerves lining his face. But then the expression hardens, aloof and pithy, setting his jaw. Matthew cocks his head.
“Finally up?”
Prick.
Jin deserves it though.
And he continues to deserve it as the psycho sets the traps for him that morning. All Jin does is run right into them like the idiot he is, trying to reel the artist back in with talk about food and lifts to school and lighting up that little punk whose picking on his piece of ass. Matthew plays at the nasty submissive in turn, all hurt feelings and echoed words, but instead of letting the guy go Jin finds himself pulling on clothes without a thought, rushing after those long strides that sweep through the elevator and into the hotel lobby. Obviously panicking.
Fuck- fuck, don’t go, you piece of shit-
Jin’s more rational mind is going ballistic, hollering at himself to stop. He’s thirty-four, for god’s sake. The next head of Shinhai and the unholy terror of the underworld. But he’s rushing after his lover like a desperate teenager caught saying the wrong thing to his sweetheart. Pathetic. And hazardous. He’s singularly undoing every thread of damage he wove so carefully after their last fuck, and he looks like a simpering pillock doing so. He ruled out giving the phone the second those fatal words about love and liking had begun to slip out of Matthew’s mouth, but here he is, handing it right over to him, talking crap about Matthew calling him when he feels like it- if- if he want’s-
Jin would like very much for the part-timer to call an end to the charade there and then. Throw the phone into the gutter, stamp it under his foot. That would be better. And then Jin could give Matthew some shit-eating smile and tell him what a good boy he is, severing them for good. But that act wouldn’t make Matthew who he is. The man Jin’s become obsessed with. He’s to blame for his own behaviour, for falling like a fool every time he comes into contact with that unabashedly raw and powerfully quiet energy, radiating cool desire through hot skin that busts apart on top of Jin, driving him crazy and filling him up. Instead of snubbing the phone, Raynor asks for a kiss, and that’s when Jin understands how much this man knows what he really craves. He can pull it out from him in that ridiculous accent, all innocently upfront and without a smudge of effort.
Jin cannot refuse him. He does not know how, because he’s wanted nothing but that clumsy soft mouth and the body melting against him since before he fell asleep, seeking the security of never wanting to pull away and dying from lack of air. His hand goes back to Matthew’s neck and his body twitches at the feel of the soft hair at the nape, calling forth the same twisting sensation in his gut that doesn’t make him horny but dangerously something different. Something new.
“You shouldn’t be so nice to me. It’ll only go to my head.”
Jin feels sick watching him walk away. Which is absurd. This is what he wanted. The disparity of the part-timer leaving him after all of the times before. But for some reason it fucking sucks to actually see it.
Those who abandon you will never return-
Where are they from, those words? Jin doesn’t know, but they can fuck right off. He doesn’t want to accept that he’s put himself in this position. Of where he’s the one now waiting on the tenterhook. It’s wrong. It’s laughable. It’s not who he is. Matthew turns the corner out of sight and he now ceases to exist, and it’s commendable to think Jin’s done so much damage in such a short space of time that he’ll never come back. He won’t call him. He won’t. Jin should have asked him to smile again before he left-
Let go, Jin. Let go, you stupid sonofabitch.
The rest of the day is spent in the office, and it’s an absolute ball-ache. Somewhat literally. His body still clings to the remains of last night’s shattering orgasms, and Jin cannot stop replaying certain moments over and over. Yet there are other ridiculous interposes of memory, spurned on from the part-timer’s insipid curiosity and shameless questioning after Jin tried to tear him into pieces. Now Jin continually remembers his fist going into the director’s face instead, and it threatens another headache as he tries to block it out. He has no idea why of all times now that hellhole of an orphanage wants to hook its fingers back in Jin’s head, one after the other, but he needs it to stop. He’s gonna have to call that quack of a doctor sometime this week and ask if reoccurring flashbacks are going to be a side-effect of this godforsaken withdrawal. Damn Jahwa and her monthly doping tests. No one else gives a toss about how high he is apart from her. Why does it ever matter to her- he does his job, doesn’t he?
But pushing away the recollections of his crap childhood is effortless. He’s done that before. The way his daydreaming swings back to Matthew Raynor slamming him in the shower is not so easy to resist. Really, Jin doesn’t want to force last night away so soon- the first part of it was good. Better than good. Matthew carved him up, shattered him from the inside with the pain mediated with the most insane amount of pleasure. But the problem is Jin’s fitchered mind cannot just stop there. It can’t make Matthew mere mute in a porno, a slab of sex and flesh that fucked him and left it at that. Jin’s idiotic brain lasers in on the tenderness of his hands, the way he lifted him up and moaned his name through a wet mouth. It’s about what he said afterwards with Jin underneath him, the pure innocence of his truest desire, which was for a rotten gangster who used him.
“Jin, I think I… I lo-”
Jin must take some accountability for whatever version of him Raynor made in his head. His stupid self did try to woo him, in essence, and he knows that now. He’s spoiled entitled fuckbuddies before, but it was different with the part-timer. He never demanded sugar but Jin still bought him nice clothes and dinner and booked the second most expensive suite he could get his hands on without prompting- and who the hell did he think he was for that? He took the whole damn thing too far. It wasn’t about just finding the chance to be submissive in bed; if Jin put some effort to search more thoroughly for a suitable sex partner instead of picking up fellow junkies in bars, then he could do that. But Matthew was more. He embraced and adored him. Poured his heart out into a wine glass for Jin to drink, and it only made Jin the more thirsty for it, seeking to be overwhelmed, to feel things he never thought was capable of.
Luckily, Jin has caught the issue before it’s had time to become a real problem. Before it snares him. He knows what he said last night hit home. Matthew’s stare this morning was dead-eyed. Frozen instead of cold. It means no more dick for Jin, although he didn’t have to be such a sweet bitch about letting Matthew down the way he has. He could have roughed him up, kicked him out of the room, played him even more for outrageous demands. Instead, Jin gave him the putrid truth and a phone with the choice he knows the kid will never make. But oh well. It’s the cold turkey method, and it works. Jin’s cut it off, all the expectations. Killed them dead, and Matthew’s not robust enough to take it for what it is. Jin will putter it down to an unfortunate dalliance, and a warning to one’s self to stay away from college students. Especially artists. Over-emotional things that they are.
There’s work to do. The annex is having the foundations dug up today. An aside from fuckbuddy dilemmas, his blood fizzles on expectant instinct that talks about hitting the jackpot. Jin knows for a fact that today will be the day he digs up his treasure, and the land he’s spent way too much time on will finally reveal her secrets. He does mindless work, waits with clenched thumbs. Chews aspirin and tries to sit in a way that doesn’t make his spine and hips whinge from the pressure. And if he’s checking his phone every five minutes, then that’s very much a Him Problem.
“Sir, it seems they’ve run into a problem on site. And, well… it might be best to check it yourself.”
Yep, there’s always work to do.