Chapter Text
It starts like this: a look exchanged in a bar he went to alone. Trying to forget something, trying to remember something else. A wry smile, a hand on the small of his back.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
When has Jisung ever said no to that?
A quick drive back to campus–oh, he’s a student here, too. Maybe they have classes together. Maybe that’s why he looked familiar. Or maybe everyone looks familiar after a couple cocktails.
His roommate isn’t home. They can be loud and they are.
“This stays between us, okay? I’m just…experimenting.”
Jisung has been someone’s secret before. He doesn’t know if it’s good or bad this time, but it’s something. And this guy isn’t being cruel. He knows cruel and he knows kind and the smile he’s given after he agrees to secrecy is not bad.
Maybe that’s the booze talking, but he’d much rather the booze control the conversation than for it to be left up to him. Pretty boys have a way of making Jisung stupid.
Nearly a year later, he has the same secret fingers down his secret throat, wrapping up a quick fuck that feels like a promise or like a romance–not that he’d know anything about that. But he’s seen movies. Love can’t be much different than movies.
If not for the fingers reaching for the back of his tongue, Jisung would be speaking. He likes to vocalize it: his secret lover’s secret name.
Faster, Kyungho. Harder, Kyungho. Slower. Deeper. Like you mean it, Kyungho. Like you love me, like you need me.
He feels the pair of hips stutter behind him, thrusts slowing and rhythm broken as his partner finishes. Jisung wraps a hand around himself and strokes himself to completion as Kyungho rides out his own high.
“Good?” Kyungho asks, pulling out and making quick work of tying and tossing the condom.
“Always,” Jisung mutters, trying to keep his own release cupped in his hand. Kyungho hates it when they get the sheets messy. He’d hate it even more now since Kyungho’s washer and dryer aren’t hooked up yet.
He looks around for a tissue, a towel, but Kyungho’s bedroom is still largely in boxes. He only moved in today–a nice, one-bedroom apartment near enough to campus that it’s convenient, but not so close that only students live here. It feels mature–the kind of place grown-ups with grown-up money rent. The kind of place a couple might share.
He wipes his hand on his own torso–it’s gross, but they’ll shower in a few. Maybe even together.
“Lay down with me?” he asks, wanting a bit of affection before returning to campus. He only moved in today as well, his dorm room left cramped with the bags he dropped off in a hurry before making his way to Kyungho’s new place. If Jeongin got to the dorm before Jisung returned, he’d give him hell for leaving it in such a state.
“I actually have somewhere to be…” Kyungho hedges, crossing his arms as he surveys Jisung reclined on his bed. There’s a sparkle in his eye, like he could be convinced.
“Yes, you do,” Jisung smirks. “Right here in my arms.”
“Cheesy,” Kyungho laughs as he searches the floor for his shirt and quickly pulls it over his head. Underwear next.
“Just five minutes of cuddling, then I’ll help you unpack the kitchen,” Jisung offers. He flashes his most charming smile, knowing Kyungho can’t resist.
“I just said I have somewhere to be, babe.” Kyungho looks at his wrist, but finding no watch rolls his eyes and searches for his phone, discarded along with his pants some time ago.
“Oh,” Jisung says, wondering if it’s time to start practicing his charming smile in the mirror again. His heart does a little somersault, though, at the term of endearment. Babe. “Well, let me get cleaned up. Then we can go.”
“We?”
“Yeah, I mean…” Jisung trails off, regretting the hardening goo he wiped on his stomach earlier. “I figure, if you’re leaving and I’m leaving, you could give me a ride? Maybe?”
“Jisung,” Kyungho sighs. He tugs on his pants, but leaves them unzipped and unbuttoned. “What’s gotten into you today?” He approaches the bed, looming over Jisung with an eyebrow quirked. He leans down, encapsulating Jisung between his arms, forcing him to lean back further onto the bed.
“Besides you?” Jisung asks, feeling a new wave of arousal creeping down his throat. He reaches for Kyungho’s pants and begins to tug them down. He left them undone for a reason, didn’t he?
“Baby,” Kyungho hisses. His eyes flutter shut and he makes minimal effort to stop Jisung. Pants now down to his thighs, Jisung starts to mouth at Kyungho’s clothed cock, starts to feel it harden, starts to dig his nails into hip bones with still lingering indents–crescents showing proof of this exact thing happening just moments before.
A phone buzzes–Kyungho’s, probably–and then it’s over. Kyungho adjusts himself and pulls his pants back up, making sure to button them this time. “I have to go,” Kyungho mutters, jerking away from Jisung just as he cranes his neck upward for a kiss.
Kyungho finishes dressing himself and waits impatiently for Jisung to do the same.
“Who’s so important that you can’t keep them waiting the amount of time it’ll take me to shower?” Jisung asks, pulling his T-shirt over the now crusted cum on his stomach.
“You don’t know them,” Kyungho shrugs. He motions for Jisung to hurry up, jangling his car keys.
It’s true–Jisung doesn’t know them. Doesn’t know anyone in Kyungho’s life. Despite attending the same school, Jisung never sees Kyungho around, and Kyungho has never bothered to introduce Jisung to anyone he knows. They’re a secret, after all.
“I can’t believe you’re making me walk back to my dorm like this,” Jisung mutters. It’s been a while since they’ve seen each other, summer break making it more challenging to find alone time, what with both of them living at home. His legs are wobbly, his ass is sore…It’s not a far walk, only about ten to fifteen minutes, but still.
“I’ll make it up to you later,” Kyungho says, smacking Jisung’s ass on the way out the door.
Jisung startles at the contact–he can never predict when Kyungho is going to do something like that. Something like flirting, something like feeling. He tries to return the favor, but Kyungho is speed-walking toward the garage. Late, probably. Jisung took too long, probably. He’s never been particularly good at getting out of Kyungho’s hair.
It’s mid-August and it’s hot when Jisung steps outside. The walk to campus is an easy one, but he’ll be sweaty by the time he’s back at his dorm. And still covered in his own release.
He checks his phone. No response from Jeongin about what time he’s getting to campus. Normally it would annoy Jisung not to know these things, but at this moment he’s taking it as a sign that Jeongin is running late. Fingers crossed, at least. Hopefully, this means he’ll have enough time to wash the affair off his skin before the younger boy shows up.
・・・
It’s not like they haven’t done this before, but move-in day never fails to creep up on them at the last minute anyway. It’s exciting and stressful like too much caffeine and not enough oxygen.
Hyunjin and Felix began dorming together last year in the same residency hall in which they find themselves now. The layout hasn’t changed–a short entryway leading into a tiny communal space, big enough for the bathroom sink and mirror and not much else. The bathroom door to the left, the bedroom door straight ahead. The bedroom is small but good enough. Mostly. There’s space for two beds (of course), two desks, two dressers, and the world’s miniest mini-fridge. The closet is shared, and that is where we find ourselves in a bit of trouble.
“I’m just saying,” Hyunjin rolls his eyes, blowing a tuft of hair out of his face. “If you cleaned out your closet last spring like you said you were going to, we’d have enough room.”
“Are you joking?” Felix says, doing his best to shimmy another hanged hoodie into the closet. “Most of this is your stuff anyway!”
“Yeah,” Hyunjin shrugs, “but I actually wear all my clothes. You wear the same three shirts every week.”
“Do not,” Felix huffs. He continues to wrestle with the closet as Hyunjin sits on his bed, pulling yet more clothing out of his suitcases. He scans the room, knowing that the dressers will help with, but not solve their space issue.
“How about this,” Hyunjin says, standing and walking over to Felix’s bed on the other side of the room where an unsettling amount of computer and gaming equipment lay unceremoniously, unpacked but yet unhoused. “You give me more closet space and I’ll give you more desk space.”
“What do you mean?” Felix asks, releasing his hold on the hanged clothes and watching with despair as at least a dozen articles tumble to the ground.
“Your rig is huge, dude. It’s going to take up your entire desk and then some.” Hyunjin picks up Felix’s keyboard and starts waving it around. “I’ll let you use my desk, too. We can push them together into a super-desk. That way you’ll have enough room for your nerd shit, and I’ll have enough room for my clothes.”
“Where are you going to do homework, though?” Felix asks.
Hyunjin shrugs. “I don’t know. Where are you going to keep your shirts? These are problems for another time.”
“Deal,” Felix grins, always happy to be convinced of an ill-advised plan.
A quick rearrangement of furniture later reveals yet another problem to consider–and not for another time. For right now.
With the desks pushed together on Felix’s side of the room, there’s no space for his bed. Which means…
“We can totally stack these on top of each other,” Hyunjin says, patting his bedpost. “They let you loft them for a reason.”
“Bunk beds…” Felix muses, tapping his chin. “Who gets top bunk?”
“All you, baby,” Hyunjin grins. The top bunk may seem alluring, but Hyunjin knows himself. As a dancer, he is all grace and poise and elegance. But offstage, Hyunjin finds himself tripping over nothing far more than he’d like.
A top bunk would make a middle-of-the-night bathroom trip an expedition akin to scaling Everest. Dangerous. Near impossible. Hyunjin would either break his neck trying to climb down or piss himself trying to hold it all night.
So, Felix can have the top bunk. His excited hops at the prospect tell Hyunjin that yes, for many reasons, this is the best decision.
Lifting one bed on top of the other all by themselves, however, is perhaps not the best decision.
“Just a little higher,” Felix groans, his face red with exertion as he and Hyunjin simultaneously regret how little time they spent at the gym over summer.
“We should’ve waited to do this until Chan and Changbin could come over,” Hyunjin wheezes, managing to lift the bed higher against all odds.
“No way,” Felix says. “We’re strong and independent. We don’t need them.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Just when they feel like giving up, the boys slide the top bunk into place. They lock the legs down, ensuring that it won’t fall in the middle of the night, leaving Felix both bunk bed-less and best-friendless.
“Told you we could do it,” Felix grins as he reaches into one of his boxes and produces a dry-erase board and a few markers.
“What’s that for?” Hyunjin asks, his arms feeling like jelly. Never in his life has he wished more for Changbin’s presence. The guy may be short, but what he lacks in height he makes up for in muscle. Despite Felix’s attempts at independence, Hyunjin–who makes up in height for what he lacks in muscle–will never balk at the idea of letting a strong, hot man do labor for him.
“I figured we could hang it on our door–let people leave us messages or something.”
It’s such a stereotypical college thing to do–something more suited for freshmen than juniors, but Hyunjin would be lying if he said he wasn’t excited at the prospect of coming home to a message on his door every now and then.
They open their front door together, inspecting the wood for the perfect place to attach their whiteboard.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” a voice says from across the hall.
They turn to find the devil’s spawn himself standing there, hands on hips. His hair is wet–freshly showered, if Hyunjin had to guess–and the shorts he’s wearing let Hyunjin know that not everybody spent their summer avoiding the gym.
Fuck him for that.
“Han,” Hyunjin says, voice cold. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” he says, gesturing to the room a mere six feet away from their own. There’s a dry-erase board attached to his door, proudly announcing in bubble letters that this dorm does indeed belong to Jisung and Jeongin.
“This has to be a mistake,” Hyunjin says. “I’m calling the RA–there’s no way we’re neighbors.”
“RA’s aren’t in charge of room assignments, dumbass,” Han rolls his eyes.
“Cool whiteboard,” Felix interjects, always the peacekeeper. “We were just about to–”
“Actually, it’s pretty lame,” Hyunjin interrupts. “I can’t imagine you have any friends who would leave you messages. Might as well take it down.”
“You’re delusional,” Han says, narrowing his eyes. “We have, like, a million friends in common .”
“Is Jeongin in there?” Felix asks, his brightest let’s be civil smile plastered across his face.
“No,” Han replies, furrowing his brow. “I haven’t seen him yet. And his stuff isn’t here, so I assume he’s running late.”
“Must be,” Felix nods. “He’s got a long commute from Busan. Maybe they hit traffic?”
“Maybe,” Han shrugs.
“Well,” Hyunjin interjects, voice too loud. “Always a pleasure catching up with you, Han, but Lix and I are busy. Please stop bothering us.”
Before Han can say another word, Hyunjin tugs Felix back into their room and slams the door.
“I can’t believe he’s right across from us,” Hyunjin mutters, folding his arms over his chest. He’s not usually one to throw tantrums, but sometimes they must be thrown.
“I can’t believe you insulted his whiteboard,” Felix whines. “Now we can’t put ours up without looking like total assholes.”
He grabs their forlorn whiteboard from its resting place atop the bathroom counter, pouting at it as if the board itself will offer any comfort.
“Whatever,” Hyunjin says. “If we put ours up, he’d just accuse us of copying him. Why don’t we hang it up in our room and use it for, like, keeping track of homework or something?”
“Fine…” Felix pouts, his shoulders slumped as he returns to their shared bedroom.
Hyunjin finds himself smirking at his best friend’s exaggerated disappointment. And they call him the dramatic one. All he has to do is offer to play a game or two with Felix after dinner and he’ll forget all about their dry-erase disaster.
The other disaster, though…the one living across the hall? That’ll be much harder to remedy. It’s too late to change rooms, Hyunjin knows that much. With any luck, his schedule will be completely different from Han’s and they’ll never have another chance encounter. If Hyunjin has to see that round, annoying face every time he leaves for class, he’ll go insane. Or drop out. Maybe both.
・・・
It’s a little embarrassing, he thinks, dorming for the first time as a junior. Students at this point in their studies are typically apartment hunting. Or at the very least, they’ve dormed for their freshmen and sophomore years, making them on-campus housing experts.
Seungmin feels entirely backward, having lived his first two years off campus and only now starting to dorm. He knows it’s not true, but he feels like everyone is staring at him as he drags his luggage down the hall, continuously checking his dorm assignment to ensure he doesn’t get lost.
He comes to a stop at the room he’ll be calling home for the next year, nervous energy tickling his fingertips. His roommate must have already moved in, seeing as a whiteboard hangs on their door.
Jisung and Jeongin, it reads in crudely drawn bubble letters. Little hearts and stars and other such doodles litter the board, and Seungmin wonders not for the first time if he’s in the right place. Surely there’s a mistake–he’s only supposed to have one roommate, not two. And his move-in letter only mentioned a Jisung…who is Jeongin?
He slides his student ID into the lock and hears it mechanically click open. It wouldn’t do that if he didn’t live here. A relief, he supposes.
He shoulders the door open to find an array of items already scattered across what he assumes to be a shared bathroom countertop. Hopefully, his roommate isn’t as much of a slob as the mess suggests.
With a whoosh and a bang, the bedroom door swings open to reveal a short, round-faced boy. He jumps through the entrance with arms spread wide and a huge, open-mouthed smile stretching across his face.
“Jeongin!” he shouts, nearly colliding with Seungmin before pulling back at the last second. “Oh. You’re not Jeongin.” The boy narrows his eyes at Seungmin, scanning him from head to toe.
“Um–” Seungmin begins, the tips of his ears prickling with static-like anxiety.
“How’d you get in here?” the boy–his roommate?–asks. He takes a step back from Seungmin, placing his hands on his hips.
“With my ID?” Seungmin responds, more like a question than a statement.
“...No, but like…” the other stutters, seemingly just as lost as Seungmin is. “This isn’t your room. Your ID shouldn’t open my door.”
Seungmin adjusts the strap of his duffle bag still hanging from his shoulder. He stares at the person in front of him and recognizes him from a few of his music lectures. He’s pretty quiet in class–always either half asleep or dicking around on his phone–and yet he never fails to answer any question thrown his way by professors suspecting the same inattention as Seungmin.
“You’re Jisung, right?” Seungmin asks. If Seungmin is Seungmin, and Jeongin from the whiteboard isn’t here, then by process of elimination he must be speaking to Jisung. “We’re roommates.”
“No–I mean, yes. I’m Jisung,” he replies, his agitation at the situation growing increasingly apparent. “But we’re not roommates. My roommate is Jeongin.”
Seungmin sets his bag down. It seems like they’ll be at this for a while and though he doesn’t have a ton of stuff, it’s getting heavy just standing there.
“Here,” Seungmin says, pulling out his phone. He swipes away the notification indicating his several missed calls and voicemails. “This is my move-in confirmation. Look.”
He shows Jisung the email he received from the room and board department confirming that this dorm is indeed his and his roommate is indeed Han Jisung.
Jisung takes the phone gingerly, reading the email once, twice, thrice over, mumbling the words under his breath each time.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he says, handing the phone back to Seungmin. He looks at him with eyes nearly as round as his face. “I signed up to dorm with my friend Jeongin. We had to get special permission and everything since he’s only a sophomore. It was a huge hassle.”
“Maybe they changed their minds?” Seungmin shrugs. He’s not particularly familiar with the inner workings of the room and board department, but if they’re like any other given student service division, their reliability is dubious at best. “Maybe they’re sending him to live with someone his age after all?”
Jisung pulls out his own phone then, scrolling until he finds what he’s looking for. His eyes start scanning the screen and Seungmin knows he’s reading something. A text from Jeongin, maybe? Hopefully, he can shed some light on the situation, whoever he is.
“Dude,” he says finally, meeting Seungmin’s eyes. “I got a new move-in confirmation email a few days ago. I didn’t see it until just now, but look–” he shoves his phone in Seungmin’s face. Seungmin leans back a little, adjusting his glasses and squinting at the screen.
There’s his name, plain and simple. Roommate: Kim Seungmin.
“Damn,” Jisung sighs, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “Sorry for the shitty first impression. I swear I’m not usually this much of a dick. I was just confused.”
“No worries,” Seungmin says, offering a tight smile. “I get it.”
If he’s honest, Seungmin would be annoyed in Jisung’s place, too. Especially since he and Jeongin went through a lot of trouble to secure a room together in the first place.
It’s odd, he thinks, that they’d put in the effort to subvert dorming rules to live with each other. Doesn’t Jisung have friends his own age willing to live with him? Or are the two of them dating and that’s why they wanted to live together despite being different ages? That would certainly explain Jisung’s confusion and disappointment. Maybe the room and board department revoked their right to room together after learning of their relationship status? Or maybe Jeongin plans to dump Jisung and this is his first step.
“Need help with your stuff?” Jisung says, his cheery voice cutting through Seungmin’s thought process.
Before he can say no, Jisung grabs his duffle bag and motions for Seungmin to follow him into their shared room. Seungmin grabs his only other bag–a suitcase with wheels, thankfully–and obeys.
“Sorry about the mess,” Jisung apologizes. “I’m still getting my stuff situated.”
The room is covered in Jisung’s things. Both of the beds are swimming in his clothes, the desks equally as covered in equipment Seungmin doesn’t understand, and not to mention the wide array of instruments dotting the floor.
Loud. Messy. A little abrasive. Seungmin says a silent prayer that all of Jisung’s personality quirks can be reasoned with. Or avoided altogether.
Jisung plops Seungmin’s duffle bag onto his bed, right on top of a stack of hoodies and T-shirts.
“I wouldn’t have spread out like this if I knew I’d be moving in with a stranger,” he says, giving Seungmin a sheepish smile.
“It’s fine,” Seungmin shrugs. It’s not fine per se, but as long as it isn’t always this messy he can get over it.
“Where’s the rest of your stuff?” Jisung asks, bouncing on the tips of his toes in anticipation. “They have carts we can use in the lobby so we can grab everything all in one trip.”
“Um,” Seungmin says, his grip on the suitcase handle tightening. “This is everything.”
“Oh!” Jisung says, far too loud. “Okay, sick.” He grabs armfuls of clothes off of Seungmin’s bed and begins dumping them on his side of the room–some landing on top of his dresser, some landing on the floor.
Seungmin cracks his jaw, telling himself it won’t always be like this. They’ll unpack and clean up and everything will be fine. So, that’s what he does. He unzips his duffle bag and begins pulling out sweaters and socks and the like.
Despite the obvious flaws, Jisung seems nice. A lot more talkative in a one-on-one setting. Seungmin wonders if he recognizes him from class, too.
“So, are you new here?” Jisung asks from behind a pile of clothing. “Transfer student?”
Ah. Guess not.
“No,” Seungmin says. “I was just living off campus until this year.”
“What’s your major?”
“Music.”
“Dude, me too!” Jisung practically shouts. He’s by Seungmin’s side in an instant, gazing up at him with wide eyes and an even wider grin. “I’m doing the production concentration. Why haven’t I seen you in any of my classes?”
“I don’t know,” Seungmin shrugs. It would have been nice to be noticed, but then of course he would have to do something noticeable for that. “I’ve seen you, though,” he adds, but not unkindly.
“Oh…” Jisung trails off, guilty teeth worrying at his bottom lip. “Damn, sorry dude. I guess I don’t pay attention.”
“That’s okay,” Seungmin says, allowing the corners of his lips to turn up into something of a smile, something of a grimace. “Not everyone is memorable. Especially in those morning lectures.”
“Yeah, but you remembered me,” Jisung pouts, but only for a second. His expression changes–a smirk, an eyebrow raised. “Wait a second–you’re saying I’m memorable?” He brings his thumb and forefinger up to his chin and waggles his eyebrows at Seungmin. If this is his attempt at flirting, Seungmin understands why Jeongin is dumping him.
Seungmin pulls out a pair of big, noise-canceling headphones and slips them over his ears. They aren’t plugged into anything, but still he motions to them and mouths, sorry, I can’t hear you.
Jisung laughs and pushes Seungmin’s shoulder. He mouths something in return, but Seungmin is either terrible at reading lips or it’s entirely gibberish. He’d put money on the latter.
Unpacking goes smoothly in that Seungmin takes about an hour to situate his things and Jisung may never be done with the task but seems content to live in his chaos.
“Do you want to get something to eat?” Jisung asks from atop his bed that’s still covered in a mountain of clothing, somehow.
It’s 3 pm–too late for lunch, too early for dinner–but Seungmin acquiesces for the sake of making friends. Or at least for the sake of not making enemies.
On their way out, Jisung grabs the marker magnetically stuck to his whiteboard. He erases Jeongin’s name and writes in big bubble letters, Seungmin.
Seungmin is grateful for the gesture, but he notices the look on Jisung’s face as he makes the correction. Maybe his brow is wrinkled because he’s focused on getting the bubble lettering perfect, but Seungmin thinks he sees something else there. Something like worry. Something like hurt.
A vibration in his pocket tears Seungmin’s focus away from the whiteboard.
Incoming Call.
He lets it ring.