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The first time Wooyoung notices it—really notices it—is during group movie night.
He’s not totally sure when it had happened, but by this point, it had more or less become company policy to set several hours aside every Saturday night for the group to use for mandatory ‘team-building’ purposes. What this really meant (unofficially, at least) was that the team of eight had a gracious three-hour window to absolutely fuck off and do whatever they’d wanted, whether that be engaging in some vital R&R, catching up on personal chores and obligations, or—as intended—actually engaging in some type group activity.
Jongho—their youngest—tended to spend their team-building window holed up in his dorm for some much-needed introvert-recharging-time, as he preferred to call it. And sure—that was all well and good; but to Wooyoung, it was also kind of a pain in the ass, because Jongho was his roommate. Yeosang, too. The three of them lived together in that stuffy little dorm room practically stacked on top of one another like building blocks, so whenever Jongho went into his weekly three-hour hibernation, Wooyoung and Yeosang were both forcibly exiled from the premises as consequence.
Annoying. But fortunately, Wooyoung was born a loud and proud extrovert—and thus, was never the type to require all that much alone time.
So every week when another Saturday evening inevitably rolled around and Jongho barricaded himself inside of their room doing God knows what, Yeosang usually went off on a jog around the neighborhood, or tucked himself into the corner of the kitchen to try to read a book for once, or even just napped on the floor in the common area—because Mingi had this godawful habit of falling asleep on the only couch in their entire little shoebox of an apartment.
Wooyoung, though, wasn’t ever all that picky with how he’d choose to spend his three hours of sweet, sweet freedom. Sometimes, he’d use it as an opportunity to bother Yunho or Hongjoong just a little extra, or to try out cooking a new recipe with Seonghwa—a well-received usage of time according to the others, because they’d earn a delicious meal by association—or, if he was feeling particularly motivated and energized, he’d tag along with Yeosang on one of those jogs even though he hated running. More times than not, though, he’d just spend a good portion of it with San—sprawled out on the floor of his shared room with Yunho—talking in circles about the events of that week, of what they’d really like to eat for dinner soon, of how totally fucking sore they were feeling thanks to dance practice running late the night prior.
Yeah. Spending time with San was probably Wooyoung’s most favorite way to blow through his three-hour freedom window, because San had very quickly become his best friend—and being around his best friend was easy.
But, other times—when the stars and planets above aligned just right—the entire group of eight banded together to use their Saturday night as KQ had originally advised them to: to spend some fucking leisure time together, outside of the context of idol work, practice, and the preparation for promotions for their upcoming debut.
Tonight—a copacetic evening in early April—was one of those nights.
Wooyoung’s got one of his legs thrown over Yeosang’s lap while he leans his head up against San’s scraggly little shoulder. Hongjoong’s squished like a sardine to Yeosang’s left. The remaining four members of the group get creative—Seonghwa leans up against the side of the couch nearby San, Jongho pulls in a rickety chair from the kitchen, and Yunho and Mingi opt for sprawling out on the living room floor starfish-style.
The lights are off. The TV’s on. A pleasant breeze drifts through the space from the window across the way, which Seonghwa had insisted on cracking open to get some fresh air circulating around the cramped, over-occupied room.
It’s nice like this—to be together as a team in such a carefree, unbothered way. No pressure, no cameras. With a clicking hint of petulance, Wooyoung wonders why the eight of them don’t make more of an effort to use their free time like this more often. Whatever. An hour in, and the movie’s fucking boring—which in Wooyoung’s opinion, kind of throws a wet blanket over the whole situation; over the tranquil bonfire of coziness they’ve pieced together as a group in the living room. It’s an action flick, which on paper should be exciting, but the genre’s never really been Wooyoung’s style. Too over the top and showy. But in a bracketed battle of rock paper scissors, Mingi had come out on top—so he’d earned the honors of picking that evening’s film.
Wooyoung fidgets a little, finding it challenging to stay still, which earns him a flick in the temple from Yeosang. “Young-ah,” he hisses quietly. “If you’re gonna keep squirming, just sit on the floor.”
“Fuck off,” Wooyoung bites back innocuously. He shifts again, sighing lightly. A building explodes in the movie, and Wooyoung remains stone-faced, wholly unimpressed. The CGI sucks. Bo-o-o-oring. He sighs again, then nuzzles his head further past San’s shoulder and a bit closer into his neck, instead, where it’s a little less bony and a little more comfortable.
Wooyoung’s in a state of half-consciousness when he first hears it—or feels it, rather. From how closely he’s snuggled up at his best friend’s side, it’d be impossible not to. San’s body is…shaking. Softly. It’s barely detectable, and Wooyoung certainly wouldn’t have noticed it at all if he hadn’t been pressed right up against the other. He blinks his eyes open, turning subtly to catch a glimpse of San’s expression.
And—oh! San’s crying. Like, a lot. Somehow, though, he’s doing it completely silently, so it doesn’t seem as though anyone else has noticed it yet. The bright, glaring light from the TV illuminates his expression, casting watery shadows across the planes of his face. His brows are drawn together, his eyes wide and sodden, his mouth pulled up to one side as if he’s biting the inside of his cheek to muffle the noise that’s knocking on the inside of his teeth like some kind of unwelcome visitor. Wooyoung thinks he kind of looks like a sad little kitten that’s been left out in a rainstorm overnight.
Huh.
Wooyoung glances back over towards the TV screen, then back over at San’s blotchy face, then quirks an eyebrow in complete and utter bewilderment, because this shitty movie definitely wasn’t meant to be a tear-jerker, or anything. In fact, the scene currently playing out on screen is depicting the protagonist—the hero—hugging some girl that he’d saved from another stupid exploding building, or something. Nothing special. So, Wooyoung’s not all that sure why San’s getting so emotional—face going all puffy and watery and red in response to it.
The protagonist kisses the girl on the cheek, and San involuntarily breaks his careful silence with an especially wet-sounding sniff. Seonghwa clocks it immediately and glances up from his place near him on the floor, then pulls a face when he realizes that San’s, like, crying his poor fucking heart out.
“Sannie, what th—are you alright?” Seonghwa asks urgently, voice hushed. As San tries to quickly wipe away some of the wet, salty evidence from his face, Wooyoung notices a few more sets of inquisitive eyes turn to look in their general direction.
“I—yeah,” San stutters out. He sniffles again, just as wet. “Sorry. This scene is just…like…so touching.”
Wooyoung totally doesn’t get it, because it’s totally not touching; not to him, at least. He watches on in rapt fascination as San’s eyes well up with a fresh slew of tears right as the girl in the movie kisses the protagonist back—on the lips, this time.
“S-sorry,” San chokes out, then abruptly stands. Wooyoung’s head thuds against the cushions, right where he’d been leaning against San’s body just moments before. “I, um—ugh. I need a tissue.”
“Dude, are you okay?” comes Yunho’s apprehensive voice from the floor—but San’s already excused himself to the bathroom to presumably go take some deep fucking breaths or something.
Weird. In all the time that Wooyoung had known the other—around a year or so, now—he could always tell that San was very…in touch with his emotions. Despite being so reserved most of the time, it never deterred him from expressing himself if he felt sad about something, or disappointed, or frustrated. Even when San was happy, he showed it clearly, those ostentatious dimples of his poking handsomely into his cheeks as he smiled and jabbed on and on and on about whatever it was that had gotten him so excited. Despite having spent the better part of the past two years in Seoul, San was still a country boy through and through; his heart still soft, never having had the need to harden necessarily in response to the frostiness of growing up in a city as Wooyoung had.
But—wow. That was a lot of crying for one shitty movie. It was a lot of crying in general, and Wooyoung realizes then, with a jolt, that somehow, he’d never seen the other break down quite like that before. Wooyoung shifts up into a seated position. Offhandedly, he notices that his face feels a little warm for a reason he can’t quite place.
Alright, noted, he thinks to himself. Choi San is a total fucking crybaby.
The following month, sometime around mid-May, the company flies the eight of them out to Los Angeles. It’s everyone’s first time in America—so that’s daunting—but, overall, the excitement about the trip tips the scale and outweighs everyone’s flurry of anxiety surrounding it.
Wooyoung’s real excited. It’s not only going to be his first time in America, but also his first time on a flight this long. It’ll be twelve entire hours up in the air—which, in his head, translates to twelve whole hours of free time before they’re all inevitably put to work like little fucking pack mules for the next month.
Not that he’s complaining, or anything.
Their debut date was no longer an abstract concept, but rather, it was very rapidly transforming into something tangible, real. Looming right there in the imminent future, only a bit less than half a year down the line. It’s May right now, but Wooyoung knows how this works. He’ll blink his eyes and suddenly wake up in October, on stage, making his idol debut with the other seven of his teammates—and that’s when his life will truly start to change.
Really exciting. The sunny nerves bubble ticklishly in his belly as they all roll into Incheon International Airport, check their luggage, and make their way through security without a hitch.
“Excited?” Wooyoung asks San, nudging him with his shoulder. They’re sitting side by side at their terminal, waiting to board.
“Uh-huh,” San nods, but the look on his face says otherwise. He looks a little spacey. Disquieted. He purses his lips and shifts his mouth from side to side, in a way that Wooyoung’s come to recognize as one of San’s many nervous habits. He squeezes that little dog plushie—the one he’d insisted on bringing along—tighter to his chest. Its cartoonish face bulges woefully under San’s iron grip.
Wooyoung frowns. “You seem nervous,” he says, lowering his voice a little. San hums in response, tension wavering.
“Just a bit,” he admits quietly. “I’ll…be fine.”
But San doesn’t look fine. In fact, he kind of looks like he’s about to burst into a fit of tears, or, like, vomit, or something—so Wooyoung decides to jump into action before anything that catastrophic can possibly happen. “You wanna sit next to me on the plane?” he asks breezily, leaning forward an inch. “I bet Hongjoong-hyung wouldn’t mind switching with you. Or, actually—I could just switch with Jongho, I guess.”
San frowns, considering the offer for a few moments. A shallow nod. “Yeah, alright,” he concedes softly, adjusting the cap sitting atop his head. “Sorry. I guess I’m a nervous flyer, or something.”
Wooyoung snickers, patting him on the shoulder. “It’s fine, Sannie,” he huffs out, mildly entertained. More than that, though, he’s relieved—because San no longer looks close to tears. Good, he thinks, feeling his heart begin to calm. Thank fucking God. With one last reassuring pat to San’s shoulder, he clears his throat, then excuses himself to go inform Jongho of this new seating arrangement situation.
Jongho, as expected, doesn’t really give two shits where he sits as long as he’s got his headphones and a neck pillow. Forty-five minutes later, the eight of them—along with a handful of staff members and managers—easily board the plane. San gets the window seat, Wooyoung takes the middle, and Seonghwa sits in the aisle seat of their row.
“Wanna squeeze my hand when we take off?” Wooyoung asks cheekily, only half serious. But then San squeaks out a yes, please…! in such a mousy little voice, and Wooyoung doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’d only been joking.
It’s not a big deal, anyways—holding San’s hand. Physical affection between the members was normal. Totally normal. In any case, Wooyoung himself was one of the main culprits when it came to excessive skinship out of the eight of them. So, as the plane rumbles to life and starts rolling down the airport runway, he struggles to place why his anxiety spikes when he wraps his palm around San’s clammy, slightly smaller one. They begin their rocky ascent, and San squeezes hard enough to snap bones.
Wooyoung blames his racing heart on the take-off nerves.
Their first week in Los Angeles passes by in a flash. They’re busy—like, really busy—working like dogs to perfect their new choreography, make steady progress on the lyrics of their first official song as a cohesive group, and, of course, content filming.
So-o-o-o much content filming; but such is the life of an idol, even a pre-debut one. It’s a bit taxing and burdensome at times, sure—but thankfully, Wooyoung’s always been pretty comfortable in front of a camera lens.
It’s Saturday, and the weather’s perfect again—thank you, Southern California! Having mercy on their poor, weary souls, a few managers who’d come along for the trip announce over breakfast that today would be the group’s first official free day to do as they pleased. Everyone perks up at the magnificent sound of that. Wooyoung in particular had been absolutely itching to explore the area more, because the only locations they’d really been able to frequent thus far were their home accommodation, the dance studio, and the recording booth. Wooyoung really wanted to see the city and get a true taste of what American culture—Californian culture—was like.
Wooyoung’s up to his elbows in sudsy soap bubbles, having been exiled into post-breakfast dish duty, when San pokes him lightly in the shoulder. “You wanna come with me and try to find something really delicious for lunch, later on?” he asks, all wide-eyed and hopeful. A tick of hesitation. “I don’t wanna go alone,” he adds meekly, at a slightly lower volume.
Wooyoung feels his mouth wobble up into a goofy smile because San’s just so cute without even trying to be. Sometimes, he can’t believe that Jongho’s their maknae, not him.
I don’t wanna go alone.
San’s quiet admission rings sweetly in Wooyoung’s ears, and he finds it kind of funny, because San would never end up having to go alone even if Wooyoung turns down his invitation. One of the other six would surely tag along in his place, but—that wasn’t the point, really. San wanted Wooyoung to join him. His first choice; his best friend.
“Yeah,” Wooyoung says with a sideways grin, turning off the sink faucet as he finishes up washing that last dish. “Course I’ll come with you.”
The ‘delicious lunch’ in question ends up being a couple of burgers from In-N-Out, because duh—they’re in fucking Los Angeles. The company’s paying for their food expenses for the entire trip, too, so on top of their burger combos, they also order two extra-large shakes. Wooyoung gets chocolate, and San, obviously, gets strawberry. Typical.
“I’ve never eaten something so greasy in my entire life,” San muses as he swallows down the final bite of his cheeseburger. Loudly, he slurps at his strawberry shake. “Ugh. That was awesome.”
Awesome, indeed. Wooyoung shovels a handful of fries into his mouth and makes a happy little noise of approval, all singsongy and jubilant. “So good,” he agrees, grinning close-mouthed as he finishes chewing.
With a successful American lunch of pure garbage under their belts to provide them with some much-needed energy and sustenance, the duo soon finds themselves on a bustling, commercial street in downtown LA. There are people everywhere, and the afternoon sun’s beating down relentlessly, so Wooyoung shoulders off the light jacket he’d brought along with him for the day. It’s getting hot.
“You got room for this in your bag?” Wooyoung asks, gesturing towards the black tote San had hanging loosely over the crook of his left elbow. Besides his wallet and his cellphone, the only other thing taking up a majority of space in the bag was that fucking Shiba Inu plushie. For some reason, San just could not bear to part with that thing. Whatever. It was kind of cute, honestly—how attached San was to the doll, how he apparently used it as some sort of comfort item.
“Uh,” San says, glancing down at his bag. “Yeah, I think so. I can fit it underneath Shiber.”
Right. Shiber. The thing had a name.
As they continue walking down the lively sidewalk, San shrugs the tote off his arm. Then, right as he starts to pull the plushie—Shiber—out of it to make room for Wooyoung’s jacket, he bumps directly into a sturdy metal trash can bolted into the cement of the sidewalk. With a startled little ah! sound, San stumbles, drops the plushie, and falls forward onto his right knee. He lands rather roughly.
Wooyoung snaps his head towards the sound of San’s groan. “Ah—fuck, are you alright?” Hastily, he crouches down next to San, who’s cradling his knee with two shaky hands.
“Hurts,” San bumbles out, and that’s when Wooyoung notices that San’s eyes are welling up dangerously quickly with tears. Shit. He snatches Shiber from where he’d fallen on the pavement and stuffs him back in the tote before some random passerby accidentally steps on him and really makes San start to cry.
“It’s okay,” Wooyoung murmurs, scooting a little closer. “Can I see?”
With a whiny groan, San hesitantly pulls his hands away from his knee to reveal a bloody scrape. Wooyoung frowns as he inspects the wound. It doesn’t look too bad, but the way San’s reacting has him more concerned than the physical issue does. Things feel real urgent, suddenly—because San’s bottom lip is starting to quiver in a way that makes Wooyoung’s heart rate catapult upwards into triple-digits, and it’s…cute. In this moment, Wooyoung thinks that San looks undeniably cute as he slumps there lamely on the sidewalk, shoulders hunched inwards in an obvious showing of humiliation, face all flushed and eyes threatening to spill the wobbly feeling in a way that leaves no room for misunderstanding. And that’s, like, not a normal type of thing to be thinking or feeling about a friend, a teammate. About San. With a beat of hesitation, he tucks it all away.
Wooyoung snaps his head up to scan the immediate area, searching for some sort of shop or store or anywhere that might be likely to have a restroom that they’d let them use, and hopefully a first aid kit, too. Across the street and just past the nearest intersection, he spots a cheery-looking cafe, the entrance overdecorated with colorful flowers and winding vines and fairy lights. That should work.
“Come on,” Wooyoung says, turning back towards San. Fuck—he’s actually starting to cry now, face all swollen and red, mouth trembling. Wooyoung feels his heart thump precariously against the inside of his chest, because as much as he doesn’t want to see his friend hurting, maybe he actually kind of does, because the sight of his face covered in tears is just so fucking—
“There’s a, uh—a cafe across the street,” Wooyoung blurts out, cutting off his own train of thought again. He coughs roughly to clear his throat. “Maybe they have a bathroom. We gotta clean the cut so it doesn’t get, uh, infected.”
San squints his eyes shut—causing two huge globs of tears to roll down his cheeks, shit!—and then nods. “Okay,” he agrees, all warbled and wet. Wooyoung stands first, slings the tote and his jacket over his right shoulder, then extends his free hand down to San. His heart pounds hard enough to ache, and he really doesn't want to keep thinking about why it’s been doing that so often in San’s company these days.
Wooyoung leads the way, practically dragging San by the wrist across the road and down the street. With a small huff, he pulls the door to the cafe open and ushers San inside. There’s a bored-looking girl with bright pink hair manning the front counter, but she’s clearly too busy scrolling on her cellphone to bother to check on who’s just walked into the shop. Even better. Wooyoung won’t have to explain the situation in broken English, then. With one more quick glance around the cafe, he spots a door at the back that must be the restroom, and without further delay, pulls a very weepy San towards it.
He pushes open the door, shoves San inside, and locks it—and that’s when San really lets the tears flow without restraint. “S-sorry,” he babbles out wetly, leaning up against the wall. “I’m—ugh, it just really hurts, and I’m, like, really embarrassed right now, and—”
“Breathe,” Wooyoung advises nervously. He makes quick work of tugging some paper towels out from the dispenser, lathering them up with lukewarm, soapy water, then squatting down in front of San to come eye-to-eye with his bloodied right knee. “I’m gonna clean it off, alright? It’s okay.”
“Ah—!”
This is fucking torture, Wooyoung thinks with a grimace as he begins cleaning the wound. Because something about the pathetic little sound that San had just choked out—the shrill, whiny lilt of it—makes Wooyoung’s stomach do a triple-fucking-backflip. He clears his throat, does his utmost best to just ignore the feeling, and continues onwards.
“Sorry, Sannie,” Wooyoung murmurs, gently wiping away the dirt and the blood. “I know it hurts.”
San just lets another sad, little squeak tremble past his lips in response, and Wooyoung suddenly really wishes for a tall glass of ice-cold water. Or, maybe, something stronger. Yeah—definitely something stronger.
“Okay, I—yeah, that should do it,” Wooyoung breathes out a moment later, inspecting his work. “All clean.”
He glances upwards at San then, to be met once again with his tear-streaked face and pouty, swollen, pink lips. The realization hits Wooyoung like a tight-palmed smack to the face for the umpteenth time in the past five fucking minutes—and this time, he doesn’t have enough time to shut down the thought before it blares loudly in his head like a radio announcement at maximum volume: San looks so cute like this, all bleary-eyed and pathetic and pretty.
“Thanks, Young-ah,” San murmurs, still looking so fucking dejected. His small, wobbly voice arouses another twinge of interest, of excitement inside of Wooyoung’s belly. He tries to stamp out the embers starting to catch and spark there, but it’s as if he’s a solitary firefighter holding up a flimsy plastic water gun in the face of a fully-fledged wildfire.
This is so fucked. San fell, San got hurt, and so Wooyoung absolutely cannot be thinking or feeling anything so strange right now about it. It’s too taboo, too weird, too fucking wrong. San’s his teammate and his friend—nothing more, nothing less—and so, as if he’s pulling his own teeth, Wooyoung tucks away these awful, new discoveries of his into the back of his mind to hopefully catch cobwebs and be forgotten about for all of eternity.
“Duh,” Wooyoung huffs out, laughing awkwardly. “I’ll…I’ll always be here for you.” He clears his throat, stands back up, and tosses the dirty paper towel in the waste bin. “For whatever you need. You know that, right?”
With a small fist, San rubs at his cheeks in a feeble attempt to wipe away the remnants of the tears. “I know,” he murmurs, appearing a little bashful.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Wooyoung blurts out, because he really can’t take this much longer. “Uh—do you, um, wanna rinse off your face?”
San hums. As he leans over the sink to wash the rest of the tears away, Wooyoung takes a step back, watching on subtly. He notices then, with a twinge of absolute horror, that he’s disappointed—disappointed to see San’s face turn back to normal as he straightens back up from the sink, for those cute pink blotches to fade away from his cheeks, for the wateriness in his eyes to recede inwards like the sea at low tide, for everything to…dry up. He flits his eyes away from San’s reflection in the bathroom mirror with a shuddery breath, because this realization is somehow even worse than the first one.
Seriously. So fucked up.
Mid-May bleeds into mid-June before Wooyoung has the chance to even breathe. During their last week in Los Angeles, the team had finalized their choreography, finished recording their first single, and—most excitingly, in Wooyoung’s opinion—finished filming their first-ever music video. They’d poured their hearts into the project, and so, to celebrate their hard work and their final night in America, the staff treats the entire group to as much takeout as the rest of their budget allows.
Tomorrow, they’d fly back home to Korea.
It was kind of bittersweet. Wooyoung had come to really like America—Los Angeles, at least—but, at the same time, he also really missed Seoul. American food was good and greasy and ridiculously portioned and all that, but there was only so much of it he could stomach. But, truthfully, it wasn’t a big deal to be returning home so soon. They’d be back here someday, sometime after they made their official debut as a solid group of eight, as soon as they began to carve out a real name for themselves in this cut-throat industry.
Wooyoung grins to himself as he fantasizes about it, snuggling deeper into the blankets. He’s careful not to wake Yunho or Hongjoong—each of them currently passed out to his left—but judging by the way they’re both snoring, it seems very unlikely that either of them might be startled awake by a bit of fidgeting. Yunho makes a noise with his nose that rivals the roar of a chainsaw slicing through a fucking tree trunk, and Wooyoung thinks that this, coupled with the unremitting buzz of his nervous energy, might make it near impossible for him to get any quality sleep tonight.
But then there’s another sound—something besides the noise of his teammate’s incessant snoring. It’s coming from directly above, on the second floor of the small accommodation, and it sounds like…sniffling? Whimpering? Wooyoung blinks, wide-awake now, focusing in on the sound.
Yeah, someone’s definitely crying up there. And out of the four members up there currently, Jongho never cried, Mingi and Yeosang both slept like the dead, and so that left…San.
Wooyoung shifts under the blankets, nervously listening in as San—because it had to be San—starts sniveling a little louder. He feels heat rise to his face, because he shouldn’t be hearing this right now, not when San obviously thought that everyone would be fast asleep by this hour. It’d been different the other times when San had cried in front of the group—in front of Wooyoung. Right now, though, Wooyoung feels like he’s intruding. But, at the same time, he can’t stop listening; can’t stop imagining what San’s face must look like right now, right up there above him, all red and puffy and streaked with tears and—
San chokes out an especially loud whine, so Wooyoung abruptly decides that he’s got to do something about this situation before he wakes up the entire fucking house. As he masterfully tucks away his fantasies, he slips out of bed and creeps lightly on his toes up the stairs to the second floor.
“San-ah,” Wooyoung hisses, eyes zeroing in on the shuddery form of his friend beneath the blankets. Realizing he’d been discovered, that trembly, vaguely San-shaped blob goes stock-still. Wooyoung frowns.
“It’s me,” he tries again, voice hushed. “Come here.”
San shifts from beneath his hiding spot, then pokes the top of his head out from the blankets. Even in the dark, Wooyoung can tell that his hair’s sticking up in about a thousand different directions. “Young-ah?”
“Yeah,” Wooyoung murmurs, mouth a little dry.
San hesitates for a few moments longer before finally deciding to crawl out of bed and approach the stairs, where Wooyoung had been quietly loitering. He doesn’t give San a chance to explain himself, opting to grab him gently by the wrist and tug him back downstairs and right out the front door.
“Sorry,” San sniffs out wetly as soon as Wooyoung shuts the door with a quiet click. “I woke you up.”
“I was already awake,” Wooyoung says with forced lightness, eyeing the other carefully. Yeah, just as expected. San’s face is totally wet, and he’s kind of disappointed that the front porch light is so dim and shitty, because he’d really like to get a better look at his expression right now, to soak up every sopping detail of it. Wooyoung roughly clears his throat then, and tells himself to fucking cut it out already.
“What happened?” he asks, trying real hard to focus on what really matters right now—on comforting his best friend instead of unrightfully lusting after him.
San pinches his brows together and shuts his eyes, then lets out a long, drawn-out sigh. “I know we’re going home tomorrow and all,” he starts, “but, well—I just really miss my family. My grandparents, in particular.” He pauses, fiddling with the sleeves of that little blue pajama top that he so loved wearing to bed these days. “Like, yeah, we’ll be back in Korea, but…we’re still gonna be so busy. I don’t know the next time I’ll be able to go back home—like, home, home. Namhae, home.” San frets and worries his bottom lip—all plush and pink and wet—between his teeth.
“I get it,” Wooyoung hums, reaching out to place a comforting hand on San’s shoulder. He opts for looking down at the ground instead of at San’s face, because those streaky tears were becoming terribly distracting. His heart pumps a little faster. “I miss my family, too,” he continues. “Especially Kyungminnie.” Recalling that his choice in career meant that he’d have to sacrifice watching his baby brother grow up helps momentarily distract him from his murky, confusing feelings, helps quell the heat. San’s expression wobbles again—Wooyoung can see it happen in his peripherals—and it makes his heart lurch like a boat at sea. Rough waters.
“I think I—” San starts, then cuts himself off with a shuddery inhalation of breath. Stupidly, Wooyoung finally drags his gaze back up, right in time for San to shoot him a look so pathetic and pitiable that it should make him want to cry himself. But it doesn’t. In fact, it actually makes Wooyoung’s face burn with a heat so strikingly hot that he suddenly finds himself changing his mind about his irritation regarding the dim front porch lights. He’d die if San could tell how red his face was right now.
“Young-ah,” San continues hesitantly, seemingly completely unaware of Wooyoung’s inner fucking turmoil. “Can I have a hug?”
“What?” Wooyoung scoffs out laughingly. “I—yeah, of course you can.”
So San lurches forward without delay, wrapping his arms snugly over the top of Wooyoung’s shoulders. They’re about the same height, so San’s got nowhere else to put his face besides right in the heated crook of Wooyoung’s neck, and fuck—Wooyoung feels it, feels San’s tears melt right into his skin like candle wax thanks to their close proximity.
Wooyoung gulps as he wraps his arms around San’s thin waist to return the hug, trying really hard to not make things weird—to just be normal, to be a good fucking friend.
“Sorry,” San repeats again, speaking the wet words directly into Wooyoung’s neck. Subtly, it causes him to shiver, and he prays to whatever God that might be listening that San won’t notice. “This is so…embarrassing.”
“No, no—it’s not,” Wooyoung rushes to say, rubbing soothing circles into San’s lower back. “Not embarrassing. It’s…it’s totally normal to be homesick. Especially for people like us.” For idols—pre-debut, or even ten years into their career.
“Guess so,” San murmurs into Wooyoung’s shoulder. “Sorry. I’m, like, crying all over you…”
Yeah, Wooyoung was very aware of that. It was practically all he could fucking perceive right now—the warm, salty wetness that San was imprinting into his feverish skin from his lashes and his lips. “It’s fine,” Wooyoung says, voice mildly strained. He winces internally at the sound of himself. “Don’t worry, Sannie.”
They stay like that a moment longer, all wrapped up in each other’s arms, and that’s when the nasty truth of it all truly begins to solidify itself in his heart, like a concrete brick plummeting downwards and smashing through a sheet of glass. Glaringly obvious, undeniable. I want to see him cry even more, Wooyoung thinks to himself, abjectly horrified by the clarity of his revelation. Holy shit. I, like, think it’s hot when he cries. What the fuck is my problem…? His cock offers a singular, weak twitch beneath his sweatpants, and ice-cold mortification surges throughout his entire body and into his extremities like a flood.
San pulls away with a loud sniffle, and Wooyoung’s actually really thankful for his divine timing right then, because things could’ve gotten very awkward, very quickly. “Thanks for being so nice,” San says, eyes all wet and gauzy. “And for being such a good friend.”
Wooyoung briefly fantasizes about killing himself, or something, as he subtly readjusts himself in his sweatpants in a way that he hopes just looks like he’s scratching at his thigh. Thanks for being so nice. Ugh. Wooyoung thinks that he’d really like to be mean suddenly, to see what it might take to bully a fresh slew of tears out of the other, to find out what might really make him shake and sob. Mentally, he beats himself over the head with a fucking baseball bat for having such disgusting, perverted thoughts about his poor, innocent teammate. His best friend. Because this was San—sweet, innocent San. San, who was standing there before him looking so small and sad and pathetic. San, who had just confided his personal feelings in Wooyoung, and then had sniveled all over his fucking neck like a leaky faucet.
Fuck.
“Don’t thank me,” Wooyoung huffs, pulling himself back to the present. “I’ll…I’ll always be there for you. You should know that by now.”
Meekly, San wraps his arms around his midsection and makes a small mhm sound. “I know,” he murmurs, and Wooyoung gets deja vu. “Can you sleep in my single with me?” San suddenly blurts out, eyes flitting up to meet the other’s gaze. “I just…I don’t wanna be alone right now.”
That feeling of deja vu intensifies itself by about sixty percent. Wooyoung’s so fucked.
“Course,” he says easily, even though internally he’s fucking screaming. Because when San looks at him like that, in a way that’s so sweet and pleading, Wooyoung doesn’t think that he could ever deny him of anything.
August. It’s sweltering hot in the dorms these days—even with their janky little AC window unit rattling and sputtering away on its highest setting—so Wooyoung invites San to come along with him to the little bakery down the street, because the AC in there actually works. That, plus Wooyoung could totally go for a treat right about now. They have a free hour before they’re due back in the studio for practice, so San, of course, pounces on the opportunity the moment that Wooyoung voices the idea.
“Whatcha gonna get?” San asks as they walk shoulder to shoulder down the sidewalk. He’d totally perked up the moment they’d stepped foot outside. Fresh air was fresh air in the grand scheme of things, despite the oppressive late-summer heatwave currently settled over Seoul like a blanket that had only been half dried.
Wooyoung hums and adjusts his cap. “Dunno,” he muses, drawing out the word. “Maybe…a blueberry lemon cookie? Or a slice of peach pie? Oh—yeah, wait. That sounds good. Pie.”
“I know what I’m getting,” San says proudly. His eyes glint in excitement, and he pulls that cute expression he always makes when he’s feeling real giddy about something. Wooyoung thinks it makes him look like a mischievous little kitten, gearing up to knock something off a countertop.
“Cake?” Wooyoung asks, quirking a brow.
“Strawberry cake,” San corrects, nudging him in the shoulder. And San just seems so happy about the prospect of getting his favorite sweet treat, so enthralled over something so small, and it’s adorable, cute, saccharine—and Wooyoung just absolutely wants to ruin it. His airy mood abruptly sours and percolates into something real acidic and nasty at the idea.
Shit. He’d thought he was over all of those weird feelings about San—because ever since they’d returned back home from their trip to Los Angeles, things had been pretty smooth sailing. San hadn’t had any more notable…breakdowns…and so Wooyoung hadn’t had to worry about keeping his fucked up urges in check.
God, there was seriously something wrong with his head. Briefly, he considers confiding in Hongjoong about it, then mentally shreds up the idea just as quickly as his brain had printed it out. That’d be more than mortifying. No way.
Maybe, Wooyoung just had to indulge himself, then—get it out of his system, or whatever it was people said to excuse and write off their own bad behavior. Test the waters. It wasn’t as if he’d never lightly teased San before, or something, because that fell under the umbrella of normal behavior amongst the members.
Totally normal. All in good fun.
“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Wooyoung says before he can stop himself. “They stopped making that cake, like, last month.”
San’s big, beaming smile drops like a lead weight and, horrifyingly, Wooyoung’s heart fucking soars. Hm. As it turns out, maybe Wooyoung could deny a few things from San, just for the thrill of it—at least for a little while.
“What?” San asks, brows threading together. His eyes go real wide, and his pretty, plump lips form into a pout. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” Wooyoung lies easily, shrugging his shoulders in an ambivalent type of way. He feels his heart beating like a fucking drum in his ears. “Thought you knew.”
San—poor, sweet San—huffs out a disgruntled little noise and hugs his arms around his midsection in disappointment. “I was really looking forward to it,” he murmurs, eyes trained down at his feet as they continue walking, just a little slower now.
Wooyoung has that vile thought again—how far would he have to push to make San cry? The vague concept floats around his head, and with each bump it makes against the gated constraints of the inside of his skull, the more addictive it becomes. Wooyoung wants more than anything in that moment to transform the thought from something abstract into something concrete and objective. He wants to know—no, needs to know how far he can push San until he breaks him, and—
San sniffles quietly, and the sad little sound thrusts Wooyoung out from his fantasies like a fish launching out of the water caught on the spike of a hook. Pricks of shame settle in then, along with the ugly weight of his guilt, and fuck. Wooyoung can’t do this.
“San, I—I’m kidding,” Wooyoung huffs out, slinging an arm around his shoulder. “Don’t…don’t cry.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah—fuck, relax.”
San’s expression shifts as quick as the rush of a shadow—from bleary-eyed dismay and into aggravated petulance—and even then, Wooyoung wants to cheer, because San’s face is still pink, all the same. God, he needs psychiatric help, or something.
“You’re such a dick, Young-ah,” San snaps, knocking his shoulder into Wooyoung’s a little roughly. Despite his words and irritation, he makes no effort to remove Wooyoung’s arm that’s still lazily slung around his shoulders. “That was so—ugh, like, mean! Don’t tease me about important matters.”
Fu-u-u-uck. San’s way too cute for his own good. To atone for his sins, Wooyoung holds open the door for him when they finally arrive at the bakery, and even pays for that dumb slice of strawberry cake. But, even in the freezing AC inside of the shop, Wooyoung still feels heat prickling at the back of his neck like a warning.
The sensation simmers there cruelly, like the ominous tick tick tick of a time-bomb.
September rolls around, and tensions are at an all-time high. Hongjoong—their poor, overworked little leader—is particularly on edge, alternating between sudden bursts of primal rage followed by hushed, regretful apologies. It’s not just him, though; everyone’s stressed, ready to jump down each other’s throats for so much as breathing the wrong way. Their debut stage on MNet is scheduled for next month—mid-October—and so there’s absolutely no time for fun or relaxation anymore. The company had even put an official halt on their three-hour freedom window on Saturdays, because they’re practically living at the dance studio instead of in the dorms, as of late. It’s fucking crunch time.
San stumbles and bumps into Wooyoung again. That was the thirteenth time in that past hour or so of practice, not that Wooyoung was keeping track, or anything. But San’s been fumbling this one, simple move in their choreography—a simple shift in formation during the second chorus of ‘Pirate King’—all fucking night.
A frustrated little whine rumbles out of the back of San’s throat as he catches his footing, and Wooyoung thinks that he really might fucking lose his shit any moment now, because fuck—San was getting so…visibly frustrated. Irate. Whiny. And it’s making Wooyoung want to fucking scream, because when San gets frustrated, he also starts looking like he might start to cry, and his face flushes into that pretty shade of pink that Wooyoung’s become so horribly infatuated with, and God, they seriously need to get this choreo down already, because their debut is next fucking month, and there’s just no time for this.
Patience dwindling in a quiet sort of way, Yunho rewinds the backing track. Again. Wooyoung feels the tension in his shoulders pinch and set and solidify like glue as he stomps back into formation. The music starts, and Wooyoung goes through the motions, and then San’s fucking bumping into him again, for the fourteenth agonizing time.
San groans, stomping his foot down as he fumbles the move. His face is really red now, flushed down past the neckline of his t-shirt, and he’s looking dangerously close to veering off into full freak-out mode. Wooyoung feels his skin prickle with white-hot anger and a searing burn of desire all at once, and it’s way too much. San, like this, is just way too much.
Wooyoung’s been holding his tongue all night, but there’s only so much he can take.
“San,” Wooyoung barks out, frustration seeping through his tone like the sharp bite of vinegar. Even Yunho—typically one of the best in the group at remaining composed under stress—huffs in mild annoyance as he pauses the backing track for the umpteenth time that evening. “You need to fucking focus.”
“I am focusing, Young-ah,” San snaps back, frown deepening. He looks even more embarrassed now that he’s been called out on his inadequacies, now that Wooyoung had done it in front of everyone. “I’m—ugh, I’m sorry, alright? I’m just tired.”
Wooyoung feels his temples throb, because that’s such a lame excuse. He’s tired, too—exhausted, really—and he’s also horny as hell, angry, confused. He’s feeling like he’s about ready to claw himself out of his own skin, because inside, everything feels too hot and humid and sticky and overwhelming. “We’re all fucking tired!” Wooyoung shouts then, completely losing his temper. San flinches like a small animal, startled by the sudden increase in volume.
“Wooyoung, don’t fucking yell at him like th—” Yeosang starts to object, but Wooyoung cuts him off with a sharp ahh-ta-ta sound.
“Fuck off,” he deadpans coldly, leveling his roommate with a piercing glare. “Please.” When Yeosang snaps his mouth shut with a twitch of tension at the hinge in his jaw, Wooyoung snaps his head back towards San. “We are all. Fucking. Tired,” he repeats slowly, emphasizing each word, sure to let each syllable snap off his tongue like the harsh crack of a riding crop. “It’s not an excuse to be lazy. You’ve been bumping into me at that one part, like, all fucking night.”
San pulls a face, shrinking back incrementally. A muddied mixture of indignation and hurt flash through his expression like a clap of lightning, contorting it into something even more pained than before. “Well, your moves could be a lot cleaner overall,” he snaps back brazenly, crossing his arms. “And…and your facial expressions need work, too.”
Wooyoung scoffs, throwing his hands up in exasperation, because San has never talked back like this to him before, not once. “Okay, well your everything needs work!” he bites back childishly.
San flinches again at the still rising volume of Wooyoung’s voice, at the grating sharpness of his tone. Like a spooked little animal, he seems to shrink in on himself. Then, his face goes even redder, like a fresh tomato on the vine just begging to be plucked. “You’re being mean,” San mutters out wetly, because, as Wooyoung had suspected for quite a while now, San’s an angry-crier. Wooyoung’s observed him with such measured focus for so long now that he knows San’s tells like he knows the back of his own hand. When that plush bottom lip of his starts to quiver, Wooyoung feels his heart cave in with a want so nauseatingly terrible that he physically has to clench his fists in a feeble attempt to deal with it, to ride it out. Wooyoung opens his mouth to crack back some useless retort, but the words just won’t come. His heart thuds calamitously from the frustration, the confusion, the shame. So, when Wooyoung proves that he’s got nothing left to say, San sniffles wetly, grabs his water bottle from the floor, and all but stomps out of the studio like a petulant little brat.
Wooyoung exhales real slow, real shaky. The door to the dance studio slams shut hard enough to rattle the mirrors, and that’s when Wooyoung feels his cock throb uselessly in his sweatpants. Fuck my stupid fucking life, he thinks to himself hopelessly. Seriously. Fuck my life. Because it’d really been some time since he’d last seen San start to cry like that—only this time, he’d been the one to cause the waterworks in the first place.
God, he was fucked. Wooyoung stalks over to the corner of the studio where he’d left his own water and guzzles down half of it, hoping the cold temperature might settle him down some. He faces the wall as he drinks, eyes screwed shut, because he really doesn’t need anyone noticing the semi he’s sporting right now. He thanks himself mentally for deciding to wear black sweatpants instead of some other lighter color, because at the very least, the dark fabric made everything a little less…conspicuous.
“Way too fucking harsh, dude,” Yeosang mutters bitterly as he approaches Wooyoung from the side. “You didn’t have to talk to him like that. Or talk to me, like that, for that matter. Get a grip.”
And Yeosang’s right—Wooyoung really needed to get a fucking grip. But, in some sort of twisted, sadistic way, he doesn’t totally regret it. He’d gotten to see San make that pretty face again, after all. Plus, being the cause of it is…
Wooyoung clears his throat. “Yeah,” he says gruffly. “Sorry.”
The remaining seven of them wait around for about five paltry minutes to see if San might return. When he doesn’t—of course he doesn’t—Hongjoong calls off the rest of practice with a short wave of his hand. “We’re all way too fucking overtired,” he huffs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just…go. We should rest. We need to rest.”
Feeling a miserable combination of pissed off, run-down, and diabolically horny, Wooyoung drags his sorry ass back to the dorms alongside Yeosang—who nags at him the entire way there to apologize to San, you fucking dick! Grumbling under his breath, Wooyoung promises that he will. Seonghwa, who’d been trailing right behind them, buzzes them in when they eventually arrive back at the apartment building. The three of them board the elevator together in a stuffy, uncomfortable silence. Suddenly, Wooyoung feels Seonghwa’s owlish gaze on him.
“What?” Wooyoung snaps, quirking a brow. Seonghwa hm’s lightly and averts his eyes, which only ticks Wooyoung off even more. “No, dude—what? Why are you looking at me funny?”
“I’m not, Young-ah,” Seonghwa hums irresolutely, leaning back against the elevator wall. He crosses his arms and stares up at the ceiling.
“Dude, yeah, you are,” Wooyoung insists.
Yeosang groans, exhausted by Wooyoung’s abrasive behavior. “Can you fucking relax already?” he gripes. The elevator chimes as they reach their floor, and the doors pull open. Seonghwa makes quick work of stepping out first.
“Listen,” he starts as he clicks down the hall, walking closer to the door of the apartment. “You just seem really…ugh, I dunno.” He tosses a look over his shoulder and makes a vague gesture with his hand. “Really pent up, I guess.” Wooyoung bristles at the comment, because that was putting it lightly.
“Like, you and San are tight,” Seonghwa continues with a shrug, turning around to walk backwards. He holds up his hand, twisting his middle finger around his index finger to emphasize his point. “Tight,” he says, thrusting his intertwined finger gesture in Wooyoung’s face. “Close. Like this.” He drops his hand to tug his key out from his back pocket. “I’ve just never seen you blow up on him like that, is what I’m trying to say.”
Wooyoung frowns, because now he actually feels a little guilty—how he should’ve felt from the very beginning, if he weren’t such a terrible, disgusting pervert. But…nope! He’d been too busy trying to mind control his dick to deflate instead of worrying about the fact that he probably had genuinely hurt San’s feelings, his best friend’s feelings. As Seonghwa clicks open the door and the three of them step inside, Wooyoung feels his jaw clench, because God—he’s seriously such a fucking freak.
The apartment opens up directly into the kitchen area, which is directly attached to the living room area, which is then directly attached to the skinny, long hallway that leads into the group’s three dorm rooms and their two tiny bathrooms. San’s already there, of course—and right as they stroll inside, San’s making his way into the kitchen. His face is all blotchy and pink, and Wooyoung feels his stomach lurch in equal parts guilt and arousal at the pitiable sight of him.
San locks eyes with him then, frowns in a shaky type of way, then quickly averts his gaze. He continues onwards to the fridge, and with a weighted huff, pulls it open. A brief stint of silence, then—
“God—really?” San shuts the fridge just as quickly as he’d opened it, then shoots Wooyoung an icy glare. Confused, Wooyoung freezes just as he’s about to finish toeing off his sneakers.
“You ate it, didn’t you?” San accuses, pouting.
Wooyoung makes a face. “Ate what?”
“My cake, Young-ah,” San huffs, all stuffy. “My strawberry cake. The slice that Yunho-hyung picked up for me yesterday. The one that I’d been saving to eat tonight.”
Wooyoung rolls his eyes. “I didn’t touch it,” he says—because really, he didn’t. “We’ve been together, like, all day, so when the fuck could I even have—” Wooyoung cuts himself off with a sharp inhalation of breath, a fresh twinge of irritation flickering to life inside of him. “Why are you accusing me?”
San seems excessively frustrated, all of a sudden—as if the lack of cake in his life right now was somehow the final straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. He whines, real high-pitched and fussy, and Seonghwa and Yeosang watch on in measured horror as San begins to throw something akin to a genuine adult temper tantrum. Stupidly, Wooyoung gapes.
“Because, you—ugh!” San squeezes his eyes shut as his face goes fully red. Fuck, is he about to start crying again? “You—you have such an issue with me, lately! That’s why! I—I dunno what I even did to you, Young-ah, but you’re being so…so mean.” He pauses, taking a huge, shuddering breath, before continuing his spiel.
“And—God, any time I…cry in front of you, you give me that weird look. Like, augh!” San points an accusatory finger directly at Wooyoung, and the gesture strikes him like a sword through the chest. “You’re doing it right now. Like, why the fuck are you looking at me like that?!”
Oh. Wooyoung feels that tension in his belly twist up and coil into something even stickier. “The fuck are you even—like what?” he spits, doing his utmost best to hide his humiliation with a finely crafted facade of outrage. Because he’s not all that mad anymore, suddenly. Rather, he’s horrified that apparently, San had noticed it—noticed something about Wooyoung’s strange fascination with his tears.
“Like you…like it, or something!” San fumes, rubbing at his watery eyes. “Like you think it’s funny.”
Wooyoung is stunned into silence by San’s juvenile outburst, by his explicit callout of Wooyoung’s strange behavior. San doesn’t give him the chance to respond, or to redeem himself, or anything, though—because soon thereafter, he’s stomping off towards one of the bathrooms. “I’m showering first!” he shouts, then slams the door.
Wooyoung seethes, and Seonghwa tuts. “See what I mean?” he says, raising an eyebrow. “You need to fix that. Immediately.”
San’s hogging the shower—the good shower—and Yunho’s in the other bathroom, hogging the shitty shower. Double whammy. Wooyoung paces back and forth in the common area of the apartment, willing the heat in the face to rescind, because fuck this shit! He’s, like, unbearably wound up right now.
Seeing San get so fired up like that—so angry and whiny and bitchy—had really stirred up something nasty in the depths of Wooyoung’s soul. Something real depraved and perverse. Ugh. His jaw clenches tight as a spring as he marches up through the kitchen, makes a rigid loop, and stalks right back around and into the living room.
“Dude, sit down,” Yeosang groans from where he’s sprawled out across the couch.
“I can’t,” Wooyoung gripes back. “Too much…ugh. Too much energy, I guess.”
Yeosang makes a face. “You look like you’re about to punch a fucking hole through the wall, man.”
“He’s been in there for, like, at least fifteen minutes, now,” Wooyoung muses, borderline hysterical, ignoring Yeosang’s comment. “He’s, like—he’s hiding from me. I’m going in there.”
Yeosang makes a throaty noise that falls somewhere between aggravation and exhaustion. “He obviously just needs to cool off, Young-ah,” he mutters, tracking Wooyoung’s pacing form with tired eyes. “Let him.”
Wooyoung ignores that, too, and abruptly decides to change pace. He heads right down the hall, past the shitty bathroom, and directly towards the good bathroom. He feels grateful when Yeosang’s presumably too tired to try and stop him beyond one more flimsy sto-o-o-op it, Young-ah.
Wooyoung halts abruptly in front of the bathroom door. He narrows his eyes, leans forward, and presses his ear against the glossy wood. The shower’s obviously running, and Wooyoung feels a fresh spark of irritation about the entire situation as he realizes that San’s totally using up all the hot water, and then—
There’s a noise.
San’s…crying in there? Yeah, he must be, because Wooyoung’s memorized the particular sound of San’s voice when he cries—the way he hiccups, gets all breathy, the way he whines when everything really gets to be too overwhelming. But the sound he’s hearing permeate past the incessant thrum of the shower water right now is a twinge different. It’s colored with slightly less pain, and slightly more…pleasure.
Wooyoung feels his throat go dry then, because then he really hears it—clear as fucking day. San’s not just crying in there, he’s fucking moaning.
Eight young guys all under one roof—so yeah, it was no surprise that most of them tended to couple their shower time alongside their jack off time. Living in such close quarters made things like catching quick glimpses of one another in varying states of undress pretty ordinary, too. Still, Wooyoung had never run into a situation quite like this, yet. There was an unspoken rule about things like this—keep it quick, and for the love of God, keep it quiet—and here was Choi fucking San breaking both of those rules in tandem.
Another moan. Breathier, this time. Wetter. A tick louder. He stands there, right outside the door for another agonizing thirty-seconds or so just deliberating about how the fuck to proceed. I should just walk away, the logical side of his brain tells him. Then, Wooyoung briefly considers plunging a kitchen knife into his belly and just killing himself, samurai-style, to save everyone the humiliation of what the other exceedingly non-logical side of his caveman brain is urging him to do.
Open the door, it whispers to him, the little devil. Open the door, get in there, and do something about this, already.
He shakes his head, physically. Wooyoung absolutely should not—could not—barge in on San like this. Besides, the door’s most certainly locked, right? But then San lets out another deplorable, whiny little sound, and Wooyoung feels his cock twitch for the second time that night. Fuck. He white-knuckles the doorknob, then with a sharp inhalation of breath, twists it open and slips inside the bathroom before he can try to talk himself out of it again. He notes, with a pang of disbelief, that San had left it unlocked after all.
“What th—”
“You’re being loud,” Wooyoung hisses, face all red as he locks eyes with San’s watery ones through the glass door of the shower. “And—and you left the fucking door unlocked, so I just, I—”
“Young-ah, get out!” San whisper-screams, brows knitted up together in anguished mortification. His expression, the way he’d just cried out Wooyoung’s name in such desperation—God, fucking everything about this psychotic situation right now makes Wooyoung’s skin burn with want. He drops his eyes then, almost automatically, and sees exactly what he’d thought he might.
San’s sporting a semi, and he’s got a loose fist wrapped around the base of it.
“It’s not—I’m not doing anythi—”
“Your fucking—your dick just twitched, San,” Wooyoung hisses out accusingly, dragging his frenzied gaze back up to San’s face. “And, like I just said, you’re being loud as fuck—like, I could hear you through the door—so honestly, you should be thanking me, right now…!”
San looks like he wants to dematerialize and melt straight through the shower floor to disappear and to never, ever be seen or heard from again. “Holy shit. Get out,” he groans desperately. “You’re…fuck, why are you giving me that look again…!”
Wooyoung feels a little crazed, suddenly. Borderline manic. He keeps his gaze sharp, pointed, and perfectly pinned to San’s face. “What look?”
San averts his eyes and groans again, unable to continue holding Wooyoung’s scrutinizing eye contact. Even under the rush of the shower water, Wooyoung can make out the fresh tears starting to form in San’s eyes, swelling precariously and threatening to overflow, and God—it’s delicious.
“Like you like this,” San hisses out, shifting to try to hide himself. It’s useless, though, because as things are right now, Wooyoung can see absolutely everything.
“You’re crying,” Wooyoung announces extraneously, ignoring the truth in San’s comment. “You’re crying and you’re—” Jacking off at the same damn time, Wooyoung finishes mentally, with a twinge of hysteria. You’re crying and you’ve got your hand wrapped around your dick and we’ve just had a big, stupid fight, so, like, holy shit…! Are those two things connected?
Is it wishful thinking to assume that you might be just as fucked up as I am?
“Why are you still in here?” San laments, losing his patience.
“Why are you crying?” Wooyoung shoots back in lieu of answering San’s very valid question. He lets his eyes drift back down lower again, back to where San still had a loose fist wrapped around his cock. “Keep going,” he murmurs suddenly, against his better judgement.
“What?”
“Never mind, I—” Wooyoung smacks himself internally. Fuck. He allows himself one sharp, steadying breath. “Are you crying because you’re angry with me?” Wooyoung asks next, pulling his eyes back up again to meet San’s bleary gaze. He speaks with haste, worried the words might disappear if he doesn’t spit them out fast enough. “Is it because I’ve been so shitty? Or is it because it feels go—”
“Young-ah—”
“Let me help,” Wooyoung blurts out. He feels his heart thud thud thud in his ears, because holy fuck, he probably shouldn’t have said any of that at all. But like a train propelling forward at full speed with the brakes cut loose, he just can’t stop himself once he’s started.
“I can—just let me help, Sannie,” Wooyoung tries again, face flushing. “I’ve told you before, right? I’m—uh, always here for you.”
Even like this, he adds mentally. Especially like this.
It’s absurd, because Wooyoung expects San to disapprove, to tell him to get the fuck out! again, or to even jump out from the shower to hit him, or something—but…he doesn’t do any of those things. “Are you being serious?” San suddenly asks instead after a few more moments of agonizing silence. His voice is quiet and unassertive and just barely detectable over the white noise of the shower.
“Yeah,” Wooyoung breathes out automatically, because he must’ve lost his mind to make such an offer in the first place. “I—I wanna.”
Wooyoung’s confession hangs heavy in the air, thick, just like the heatwave that had engulfed the entirety of Seoul that month prior in August. They eye each other warily, then, like two boxers at opposing corners of the ring. Waiting to see who might throw the first punch; whether it’d land, or whether it’d just be a feint.
“Okay.” San says that relenting word of affirmation so quietly that Wooyoung nearly misses it, thinks he might’ve imagined it with all the noise and static he’s currently got buzzing around in the inside of his skull.
“Okay?” Wooyoung repeats, hoping for an absolute, total, yes yes yes of a confirmation; a confirmation that San wanted this just as desperately as he did.
“Okay,” San whines, evidently embarrassed at the premise of having to repeat it twice. “You…can help.”
Oh. Holy fucking shit. Wooyoung feels his heart thud in the same type of way that a sandbag might hit the ground—heavy and sure and solid. Careful not to break that unwavering eye contact, he clicks the lock on the bathroom door with one hand and starts shucking off his sweaty practice clothes with the other. By the time Wooyoung tentatively steps into the shower to join him, San looks as though he’s really ready to start weeping again, and, shit—Wooyoung doesn’t know where to start, what other boundaries he might be able to scuff past and come out again with their friendship still in tact on the other side.
San’s small chest heaves as he sucks in a shuddered breath, eyes absolutely glued to Wooyoung’s, now—so maybe, it was a little too late for things like that already. For preserving their friendship and the platonic normalcy of it. For coming out of this one unscathed.
“San-ah,” he murmurs, taking a cautious step forward. The shower stream immediately falls over him, soaking his hair and his body, but the water’s hot, which only serves to rile him up further. “I wanna—ugh. Can I kiss you?”
Somehow, San’s face crumbles into something even more anguished and pathetic, utterly saturated in desperation. “Yeah,” he murmurs out, bottom lip wobbling, glistening especially prettily thanks to the water cascading down over the both of them. That’s all Wooyoung needs to hear before he’s squaring his shoulders, taking one last steadying breath, and surging forward to press his mouth hotly against San’s as if it’s belonged there the whole time.
San squeaks at first impact—cute—and when the sound causes his mouth to open a little wider inadvertently, Wooyoung pounces on the opportunity to deepen the kiss. To make it a little nastier, to turn up the heat and take it from a simmer to a hard, rolling boil. Wooyoung licks into San’s warm, wet mouth like he’s starved for it, because he really is, he supposes—because, suddenly, it hits him that it’d been months of him wanting this. Of wanting San just like this, whining and snivelling and squirming beneath his touch.
San kisses him back messily, as if he’s unconfident and not quite sure of what he’s doing. What he lacks in experience and skill, though, he makes up for tenfold in the effort category, because it’s obvious that San’s doing his utmost best to match the brutal pace that Wooyoung had set for them. San clings to Wooyoung’s bicep with one hand, groaning into his mouth when he curls their tongues together just right, and God, that’s good. The noise causes Wooyoung's brain to cloud over with a slew of hypothetical scenarios—of all the different ways he might be able to coax more of those salaciously breathy sounds past the threshold of San’s nervous mouth. Wooyoung had always been a fan of brain-teasers and puzzles, but this one was the most exciting challenge to date. What might be the best way to get San properly panting? How might Wooyoung have to lick into San’s mouth to get the other to squirm just right? Where should he touch San next to get the best view of the way his muscles twitch and jump under the pressure?
Breathily, San pulls away for air, but stays close enough to pant against Wooyoung’s mouth. “What the hell’s going on right now?” he chokes out, managing to sound so completely wrecked even though they hadn’t even done anything yet, not really.
“I—I dunno, I just—” Wooyoung hastily reaches down, knocks San’s hand away from his dick, and replaces it with his own, “—you’ve been making me fucking crazy.”
San’s brows thread together, and he chokes out a garbled groan as Wooyoung starts stroking him up and down real slow, making sure to squeeze slightly on each upstroke. The sound is absolutely filthy—a pathetic little half-sob—a noise that tie-dyes humiliation and shame and pleasure into one mouthwatering spiral of a masterpiece. San’s lips—slightly swollen now, Wooyoung notices with a touch of glee—start to quiver again.
“Knew it,” San gasps out, catching that plush bottom lip of his between his teeth as Wooyoung flicks his wrist just right. “You were—ah, looking at me like y-you wanted to—oh, fuck…!”
“Like I wanted to what, Sannie?” Wooyoung presses on breathlessly, nosing into the crook of San’s neck and nipping at the freckles littered across the trembling expanse of it. “What did I look like I wanted?”
“Looked like you wanted to, fuck—tear me apart, or something,” San admits with another tight gasp. His voice quivers and shakes and pitches up in that perfectly delectable way that Wooyoung’s able to recognize so well now.
“Are you crying again?” Wooyoung breathes, then pulls back a fraction to check if his assumption is correct. And it is—he can tell, even under the heavy stream of water raining over the two of them—because San’s cheeks are blooming with fresh blotches of pink, and he’s got a tremulous line of tension wrinkled between his brows, and he’s got that look in his eyes again.
“Feels good,” San whines, shoulders shaking as he cries—and shit, Wooyoung’s about to lose his fucking mind from how terribly this is all affecting him right now. He needs to see San’s face—see his tears—properly. Another step forward. Wooyoung pushes San up against the cold tile wall behind him, far enough away from the shower head so that the water can’t hit either of them anymore; can’t wash away the evidence of San’s breakdown.
Yeah. Wooyoung thinks that this is his favorite part about witnessing San weep. It’s watching as his eyes glaze over with moisture, as his lashes mesh together when everything goes real glassy. Then, like clockwork, that perilous basin of tears held right at the rim of his lower lids tips and spills and waterfalls downwards. It’s fucking irresistible. Fanatically addictive. Wooyoung thinks that he could watch those pretty tears cascade down San’s reddened cheeks forever and never get bored of it.
“Hogging up the bathroom like this just to get off,” Wooyoung murmurs, pressing his forehead up against San’s. He keeps up his pace below, never faltering once as he unravels San like a spool of thread. A tight-lipped kiss to the corner of his mouth, then an open-mouthed one to his cheek, so that he can relish in the taste of the salt. “What got you so riled up, huh?”
When San’s only response is a hiccup and a fresh roll of tears down his face, Wooyoung squeezes his fist around the base of San’s cock, just enough to sting. “Tell me,” he demands breathlessly.
“I—you,” San hisses, fingers twitching around Wooyoung’s shoulders. “You were being so fucking mean to me, and I—it made me feel so—”
“Tell me,” Wooyoung says again, firmer.
“I loved it,” San admits—and Wooyoung really likes the sound of that—so he rewards San by loosening his grip enough to start stroking him up and down in earnest again. I was fucking right, he muses internally, in slight disbelief. He’s just as fucked as me.
“Liked how it made me feel—ah, fuck, Young-ah,” San inhales sharply, the muscles in his belly jumping like they’d been nipped by a current of electricity. His eyes flutter shut, those alluring, wet lashes splaying prettily over the high slope of his cheekbones. “I like it, being—being embarrassed in front of you. Because of you.”
Jesus Christ. With his free hand, Wooyoung reaches upwards to ghost his fingertips across San’s nipples, tweaking the little buds until San’s absolutely writhing against him. San’s smaller body jerks with shockwaves of pleasure as he braces himself against the other, pawing pathetically at Wooyoung’s hand splayed over his chest now as if he’s not quite sure whether he wants to push the touch away or pull it in tighter. More soft, stuttered little breaths spill past San’s lips as Wooyoung continues stroking his cock at the same time.
“You’re so fucking pretty,” Wooyoung breathes out dazedly, as if he’s caught in a trance. San looks like he’s close now—sounds like it, too—and just the sight of him like this, a sniveling, pathetic mess right on the brink of ecstasy, could be enough to push him over the edge completely untouched.
“Young-ah, I’m—I’m gonna—”
But that’d be way too easy; so when Wooyoung abruptly tears away both of his hands, San completely crumbles. “No,” he chokes out, barely audible. Two more sopping pearls of tears slip down San’s face and drip off his chin, and Wooyoung feels his heart ignite rabidly in prideful satisfaction.
“Not yet,” Wooyoung murmurs flagrantly, waiting a moment before cautiously wrapping his palm around San’s aching cock again. One light tug. “Hold it.”
“I—I can’t,” San protests weakly, so Wooyoung rescinds his touch for a second time, just to show him that he’s serious. San gasps, blinks like he’s dizzy, and digs his fingertips roughly into the meatiest parts of Wooyoung’s arms as a lifeline. “Please,” he rasps out. His head thuds forward into the wetness of Wooyoung’s bare chest, and he buries his face into the feverish skin stretched there.
“Lift your head,” Wooyoung instructs gently, because he doesn’t want to miss even a second of how exquisite San’s expression looks on him right now. A beat of hesitation, then San obliges.
“I wanna—please, I wanna come,” San babbles breathily, chest shuddering with each jagged inhalation of breath that he gulps down. Wooyoung wishes that he could freeze time in place, then—to capture this moment with the click of a Polaroid’s flash—because, by the grace of God above, San somehow looks even more debauched than before.
“How badly?” Wooyoung breathes out the question like it’s a secret, like he shouldn’t be saying the words aloud. His breathy voice intermingles with San’s whinier one as the tight heat of his fist brings him right up to the edge again. “How badly do you want it?”
“Please, Young-ah, so bad…!” San’s entire body trembles as he tosses his head backwards, thudding roughly against the tile wall. “Let me—let me come,” he continues despairingly. “I wanna come, please, please—please let me come, Young-ah—!”
Wooyoung feels his breath catch in his throat, feels his own abandoned cock pulsate heavily between his thighs. The tip of San’s little pink tongue darts out to lick at his already dripping lips, and then he’s staring Wooyoung down with such a pathetic, pleading look, all bleary-eyed and gone and—
“Please,” San rasps out once more, and yeah. Maybe, in the grand scheme of it all, Wooyoung really couldn’t deny San of a single fucking thing—not when he looked at him like that, at least.
“Fuck,” Wooyoung hisses, caging San even tighter into the shower wall. His fist flies up and down San’s length roughly, exigently, and by the way that San absolutely keens at the feeling of the sensation, Wooyoung knows that he’s only moments away from toppling over the edge.
“Yes,” San pants wetly, fingers scrambling up towards Wooyoung’s shoulders to tug him in closer. “Yes, yes—please, thank you, feels good, Young-ah, I—”
“Gonna come?”
“Yeah, fuck—I’m—” San screws his eyes shut as his face contorts into an expression so unlike Wooyoung’s ever witnessed from him thus far—a look somehow so hopeless and ravaged and satiated all at once—and then San’s coming hard, spilling up over the top of Wooyoung’s searing fist and onto both of their tight lower bellies.
I wanna hear it again, is all Wooyoung can think as he watches, completely fixated, as those gorgeous tears cascade down San’s blotchy face. I wanna see this again. I wanna do this again, and again, and again.
Wooyoung strokes him through the tremulous aftershocks of his orgasm, incrementally slowing the pace of his hand as he watches San’s rate of respiration slowly drag back down to near-baseline. Hesitantly, Wooyoung pulls his touch away one last time, and San hisses at the loss of contact. He opens his mouth then, looking as if he wants to say something, but Wooyoung cuts him off with another kiss before he can get the words out. It’s a little sweeter than before, softer around the edges. Not quite so mean, anymore. Wooyoung squeezes his eyes shut as he threads all ten of his fingers through the locks of San’s dark, soaking hair and presses their lips together in a way that he hopes says I love you and I don’t want things to get weird now and I’m also really glad that this happened ‘cause apparently we both really needed it and, like, seriously man, I love you.
“You’re my best friend,” Wooyoung announces abruptly the moment he breaks the kiss, speaking the words directly against San’s wet mouth. “This doesn’t—this isn’t gonna change that, right?”
“What?” San asks dizzily, eyes a bit unfocused. Still in the process of coming back down to earth, apparently.
“You’re my best friend, and I love you,” Wooyoung repeats a little more firmly, lightly squishing San’s cheeks between his palms. “So, this isn’t gonna make anything weird,” a wavering moment of hesitation, “right?”
San blinks a few times in quick succession as Wooyoung presumably finally comes back into focus. “Oh,” he murmurs. “Right.”
Right.
“Ri-i-i-ight?” Wooyoung tries once more, drawing out the sound of the word, because he really needs a little more reassurance than San’s currently providing him with right now.
“Yeah, sorry,” San says softly, expression finally melting into something so wholly indulged and warm and satisfied. His eyes crinkle at the corners as he grins, lopsided and lazy. “Right. No. Nothing’s gotta be weird, Youngie.”
Right. At the easy-going sound of San’s tone, Wooyoung finally feels himself begin to relax again. A long hum rumbles up from the back of his throat as he slumps against San’s body in a half-hearted attempt at a hug. “I wanna do this again, though,” Wooyoung tacks on suddenly, kind of hopelessly, kind of quietly—but then he feels San’s body shake with amusement in a way that he hadn’t fully anticipated.
“Me too,” San huffs out laughingly. “That was, like, really good.” With gentle hands, he pushes Wooyoung off of him just enough to make room to press a shy kiss to the corner of his mouth. A chaste one. Wooyoung’s heart stutters like a pinwheel caught in the wind, then, because San’s really just too cute to handle.
“Seeing you cry makes me really hard for some reason,” Wooyoung announces bluntly, just for the sake of honesty and authenticity, or whatever. San huffs out another breathy type of half-laugh, eyes widening nominally at the crudeness of the statement.
“I—well, yeah,” San bumbles out, all doe-eyed and caught off guard. “Kind of put two and two together there. Yeah.”
“Yeah.” Another beat of silence.
“You’re my best friend,” San says then—abruptly—because somehow, he’d sensed that Wooyoung kind of needed to hear those words repeated back to him. Mimicking his gesture from just moments before, San reaches up to cup Wooyoung’s face between his palms. “I…I don’t feel weird,” he continues. A light squeeze. “This isn’t weird. Really. Nothing has to be weird about this, alright?”
Seriously. Too fucking cute for his own good.
“Not weird,” Wooyoung parrots, feeling the last of his nerves trickle out from his body and gurgle down the shower drain. He throws his arms around San’s small shoulders and squeezes him tightly into his chest. “You’re so fucking hot when you come,” he adds with a semi-pained sigh. “And, listen. Don’t cry around me in public, please. I think I’ll fucking die if I have to hold myself back again.”
Wooyoung can feel the way that San’s body shakes against his with laughter before he hears it, and he smiles because it’s finally setting in that, yeah—maybe everything was going to be just fine after all, despite completely annihilating the platonic barriers of their friendship. Because even after peeling back all the strange, sticky layers of their messy little situation, at the crux of it was San—just San. His teammate; his best fucking friend in the entire, stupid world.
“I’ll do my best,” San starts to giggle into Wooyoung’s shoulder, “but no promi—”
“San-ah!”
Mingi’s voice slices through the air from the other side of the door like the swing of a sword. Wooyoung physically startles, and San squeaks.
“Listen, Sannie,” Mingi continues, voice muffled slightly by both the barrier between them and the ongoing susurration of the shower. “It was me, okay? I ate your cake.”
San and Wooyoung exchange a brief, unimpressed look.
“I’m sorry, alright? It just looked—dude, it looked so enticing in there, and I just couldn’t help myself. So I’m sorry, but—like, you’ve really gotta get out of the shower, already. You can’t just barricade yourself in there ‘cause you’re mad, ‘cause we’re totally gonna run out of hot water at this rate, and that’s just gonna fucking blow for the rest of us, and—”
“I—yeah, I’m coming out in a minute!” San calls back, voice a little strained. “Sorry! Also, uh—don’t worry about the cake, it’s, um, it’s fine! I’m, like, totally over it!”
Mingi makes a light sound of approval and says something about how he promises that he’ll buy San a fresh slice tomorrow. The duo holds their breath for a few moments longer, until they’re completely sure that their teammate has walked off, out of earshot. San’s the first to exhale that breath.
“I wanted to get you off,” he pouts, turning back to face Wooyoung. “You didn’t get to come.”
Christ.
“Don’t just—fuck, don’t just say things like that,” Wooyoung chokes out, feeling heat rise to his face. The reaction only causes San to pout harder, and Wooyoung thinks that he might just die on the spot. “It’s okay—you can do it next time, alright? Mingi just, like, killed my hard-on.”
Next time. Wooyoung’s own words rattle inside his skull like the mechanical jabber of a pinball machine. With a petulant huff, San slouches against him, and Wooyoung catches him by the waist.
“Fine,” San murmurs, nosing into the warm juncture between Wooyoung’s neck and jaw. He places an exceedingly calculated and deliberate kiss there, open-mouthed and wet but still achingly soft. It’s like he’s sealing an envelope with a secret. “Next time.”
Wooyoung shivers. ‘Next time’ can’t come any quicker.