Chapter Text
Sue him, Seongje knows he’s a bit crazy.
Sure, there’s the acting aspect where he grins and laughs where he shouldn’t, indulges the masses. But he knows deep down that some of it is real.
He kind of is crazy.
So is Yeon Sieun, though, and that’s how he catches Seongje’s attention.
Those crazy fucking eyes, wide and unblinking and perpetually glassy get his attention first. Sieun stares at him for 1, 2, 3 seconds, then 4 and 5 and where Seongje would’ve killed anyone else he lets it happen.
“Hyung?” Hwangmo sounds confused.
“Hot girls get a pass,” is Seongje’s answer.
He sees Sieun again later when he’s with his class on a field trip just like him, almost no expression in those glass eyes.
He corners Yeon Sieun in the museum bathroom.
“Do you know me?”
“Do I fucking know you?” he laughs, at that incredulous twist to his mouth, those big hateful eyes. “Didn’t you stare me down like I killed your mom a week ago in Noryangjin.”
Sieun blinks at him rapidly, confused, his expression softening.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, “I wasn’t looking at you.”
“No?”
“No.”
Seongje grins at him.
“Okay. I’m Keum Seongje, by the way.” He bites his lower lip, corrects the position of his glasses on his nose. “Wanna go out sometime?” Sieun blinks in even more confusion. “A date,” Seongje chuckles.
His eyes go wider as he inhales audibly and then a fine dusting of blush appears on his cheeks as his lashes flutter the tiniest amount.
God, Seongje wishes he could turn him around, get that fat ass pressed to his rapidly hardening cock, shove a hand between those plush thighs, lick up his tears, bite him til he draws blood.
Sieun shakes his head the barest amount.
“I’m sorry,” he says dryly, “you have the wrong impression. I have to get back to my class.”
Seongje steps aside with a nonchalant shrug, lets him go, his gaze following that plump ass out. It’s not like he won’t follow the little bitch home anyway.
He kind of wishes he’d started following him at that very moment.
Next he hears of Yeon Sieun is about how he was hospitalized that very same day.
He contemplates it for hours and it eats at his brain until he decides to say fuck it and goes to the hospital. He argues with nurses and even offers to bribe them when he sees a guy in a red windbreaker passing by and abandons that effort.
“Yo,” he calls out. “Yo, are you in Yeon Sieun’s class?”
The guy turns, his head with a scowl, deep dark circles under his eyes. He looks fucking exhausted.
“What’s it to you?” he huffs, his jaw set stubbornly. Defensive.
Seongje wants to laugh a bit, but it passes quickly.
“I know him. Well, I guess- I got a bit of a crush, man. I heard he’s in bad shape, I wanted to visit, see how he’s doing. I’m Keum Seongje.”
“Ahn Suho,” the guy says and then drags a hand down his face, before running it through his hair. “He’s not good man. I-”
Sieun lives almost completely alone, with occasional visits from his parents who leave as eagerly as if the house contains a fire and not the prettiest creature Seongje has laid his eyes on.
He has a strict routine of waking up at 5 AM and going to sleep at about 11 PM, which is why his undereyes are always so black. He drinks no water, almost never eats and all he does is study.
Seongje can fix him.
Seongje will fix him.
“I’ll help you with one condition,” he says.
***
Sieun supposes the trouble starts when Jeon Yeongbin doesn’t get the fucking hint.
It starts out small.
Once in the PE changing room when Sieun is already dressed Yeongbin makes some stupid joke about how bad a shape Sieun is in and jerks up his shirt. Sieun is quick to pull the shirt down and glare at Yeongbin without a single word, unblinking.
He sees in real time as Yeongbin’s gaze changes, his eyes lose the amusement, fill with something strange and intense, incoherent.
Sieun starts catching that gaze on himself too often and the teasing becomes colored with this strange atmosphere. They start using strange pet names for him, touching him strangely as they pass by, and then one day his sports uniform gets replaced by a female one.
Even Ahn Suho, who Sieun usually pays 0 mind to, looks angry at this and tells them to collect themselves.
Sieun asks them, politely, to return his shit and instead they give him a wrong shirt, too big and smelling like cologne, and no one can replace the shorts.
Fuck it, Sieun thinks, the shirt is big enough to reach below the shorts anyway, and it slides off his shoulder unpleasantly, but fuck it.
They laugh at him as he runs and there’s some commotion but Sieun is pissed enough that he can’t give a shit.
In the changing room later on he wants to do something. He wants to tell them to stop again, politely, but instead the unthinkable happens.
As he stands collecting his bag someone passes behind him too close and he feels a hand squeeze his ass. Eyes wide, jaw taught, Sieun turns, his mind blaring in disbelief, to see no one close to himself.
That’s when the fear truly strikes his heart. That’s when he stops asking them anything and just tries to stay away. Tries not to react when it happens again in class. Tries not to glare when someone whistles after him.
Tries, tries, tries, and yet it still happens.
That night their class goes on a field trip to an author’s museum that he can’t make himself care about and when everyone presses too close to him he goes to the bathroom to wash his face.
Keum Seongje corners him there, a guy with wire-frame glasses, messy hair and wearing a stupid orange wind-breaker.
“Do you know me?” he ask coolly, taking deep breaths, trying not to show his fear.
“Do I fucking know you? Didn’t you stare me down like I killed your mom a week ago in Noryangjin.”
Sieun blinks at him rapidly, confused, his eyes widening as he tries to remember him and fails.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, “I wasn’t looking at you.”
“No?” the guy asks, voice pitching higher, brows raising,
“No.”
The guy grins at him like a fucking maniac.
“Okay. I’m Keum Seongje, nice to meet you.” He bites his lower lip, corrects the position of his glasses on his nose. “Wanna go out sometime?” Sieun blinks in even more confusion. “A date,” he says with a chuckle.
His eyes go wider as he inhales shakily and then feels his face go hot with humiliation.
Sieun shakes his head.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “you have the wrong impression. I have to get back to my class.”
The boy steps aside with a shrug, a strange look in his smiling eyes.
Sieun goes back to his class with his heart thumping heavily in his chest. Ahn Suho, looking sleepy, jerks his chin at Sieun and Sieun averts his gaze.
The guide drones on and on and on and Sieun wishes he could listen but in the last two weeks his situation has escalated so badly that he doesn’t even know how he gets through his daily routine. He studies, does his homework, but other than that he’s so distracted trying to anticipate where the attack will come from next.
Every few hours some asshole will grope him somewhere no matter how he tries to avoid everyone and disappear so fast that Sieun never knows who it was.
Except for Yeongbin.
Yeongbin always stares after doing it like he’s daring Sieun to act.
They’re supposed to eat at a cafe after the field trip and their teacher leaves them alone and Sieun wants to beg off the moment the teacher leaves but a hand lands briefly on his neck and then he’s incredibly dizzy.
He looks around but can’t catch anyone looking except the harmless new transfer.
He goes inside the cafe only to go to the bathroom, rinses his face, groans and hits his forehead on the mirror. The door opens and Sieun doesn’t even have the presence of mind to look who it is. There’s a click and then hands all over him.
Sieun’s pants get yanked down and he throws up into the sink at the same time, then sobs, because it doesn’t release him of the disgusting feeling.
And then pain.
Sieun’s head bangs at the mirror as someone smacks him on his bare ass like he’s a kid. He throws up again, cries out, scrambles at the sink for anything to hold onto and then he catches Yeongbin’s face in the mirror.
He probably passes out because he wakes up much later and when he blinks his eyes open it’s because someone is smacking at his face, trying to wake him.
“Yeon Sieun,” they say urgently. “Yeon Sieun, up! Yeon Sieun!”
The sound gets muted once more, though, because he must pass out again.
When he wakes up it’s in a hospital bed with his parents in the room, his mother crying. Ahn Suho is there as well, gaze downcast in shame.
Yeongbin had given the new guy a Fentanyl patch to drug him and cornered him in the cafe bathroom, locked the door. Suho had gotten worried, broken the door down and caught Sieun unconscious, choking on his own vomit and Yeongbin with his dick out.
Ahn Suho, a guy he’d never spoken to, had knocked Yeongbin out and called an ambulance for Sieun, and now the poor guy was getting threatened by that godless heathen’s parents for harming their precious son.
“You did right,” Sieun’s dad tells the poor guy, “we’ll help however we can.”
But help comes unexpectedly wearing a maroon school uniform and a shitty little grin. The same guy from the bathroom who knows Suho through a friend and tells him he’ll help.
He’s rich, he says, if he takes the blame instead of Suho he’ll come out of the whole thing unscathed. He just requests to talk to Sieun first.
“I have a condition,” Seongje says first thing and Sieun scoffs.
“Of course you do.”
“How much are you willing to sacrifice to save your savior, hm?”
Sieun thinks but doesn’t say.
A lot.
Since childhood he’s been a burden on his parents because of his poor health and for years now they’ve completely stopped giving a shit about him. He doesn’t know why Suho cared enough, why he’d ever help, but he’s so immensely grateful that when Seongje says he’ll clear Suho’s name, give him a cushy job, Sieun agrees even if he’ll have to date the guy.
He doesn’t give as much of a shit about himself, he can stomach a few dates, he can do it.
But Seongje doesn’t want a few dates. Seongje wants him, completely, utterly. Wants them to live together, wants Sieun to tolerate him constantly.
Sieun goes to school as an escape from that constant presence. Suho sticks by his side, the new guy apologizes, tags along, and they convince him to hang out but Sieun, embarrassedly, has to notify Seongje first.
Seongje waits for him outside his school, takes him to his cram school, then home, then to school in the morning.
Once, when Sieun is making them both coffee in the morning, Seongje stands behind him. Startled, Sieun jumps, turns back to scold him only to get a kiss pressed to his closed mouth.
That day when he’s so distracted that he gets a question wrong in the final test Yeongbin’s laughter pisses him off extra hard.
“Jeon Yeongbin,” he says quietly, standing near said asshole’s desk. “Can we talk alone?”
At the moment he’s not thinking enough to realize that getting him out of jail for killing someone is going to make him indebted to Keum Seongje forever. He’s only remembering Yeongbin’s hands on his bare skin, the smell of vomit and Seongje’s kiss.
They don’t sleep together nor eat, there is only the coffee and yet Seongje caught the time to steal his first kiss. Sieun had jerked away, wiped his mouth, watched Seongje smile smugly, but still deep down been thankful that it wasn’t Yeongbin.
And when he smashes Yeongbin’s empty head in the heavy storage room door, cracks his skull like a morbid kinder egg, he has this sureness in his core that Seongje might force him to love together, kiss him, hold him too much, too tight, but he’ll deal with whatever Sieun does.
Suho finds him splattered with blood, ugly sobbing with snot and tears, Yeongbin’s corpse at his feet.
“Oh, fuck,” he curses. “Fuck, Sieun-ah, how are we going to-”
“Call him,” Sieun orders with a gross sniffle. “Call him, he’ll fix it.”
And Seongje does. He arrives with a stern frown to his mouth as he looks him and Suho up and down. Sieun feels the urge to explain himself. He would’ve never done this.
“Hyung,” he says shakily, hugging himself.
Seongje doesn’t let him speak, hugs him, holds him close to his chest not minding the blood, presses a firm kiss to his head and starts ordering them around.
It’s ruled self defense easily because Sieun looks traumatized, beaten, and there’s the prior evidence of the night in the cafe. He’s free then but his records are shit and even Seongje’s little gang can’t force any school other than the literal worst one accept him.
Suho follows him there, and so does Beomseok, somehow having convinced Assemblyman Oh to agree.
And Sieun hates it. Hates that every action he takes in anger feeds into his debt to his boyfriend, who’s the very reason for said anger. Hates it, and yet relishes in the certainty that whatever he does as long as Seongje is his keeper he’ll get away with it.
It enables him.
It makes him worse.
***
His first day in Eunjang high school is marked by remarkable mundanity.
He’s spent months with Seongje already, 2 of them in each other’s pockets because they had the winter break. His vocabulary has been affected, the way he carries himself, the way he started smoking because it really helped with the stress of anticipation.
Seongje has never attempted to kiss him again but the anticipation, the anxiety, they eat him alive.
He’s going fucking crazy.
And yet still.
He studies as he did before despite everyone else refusing to, he sits silently with his deskmate staring holes into his skull, he waits for the day to end so he can go hang out with his friends. Suho and Beom got into another class, so Sieun has to suffer all alone for a bit as people try to gauge who he is and why he’s here.
During the long break someone finally decides to show him the ropes.
“Yeon Sieun, yeah?” yells a guy from the back. Too tall, too big, too loud, just too much. “Fuck isn’t that a girl’s name?”
The guy comes closer, stands in front of Sieun’s desk and Sieun doesn’t even bother to look up from his phone.
“Ignoring me?”
“Sure,” Sieun shrugs.
Seongje is arguing with him through text about going straight home instead of to Beomseok’s place and it’s royally pissing Sieun off. Where does this guy get off thinking he can even dictate this? Seongje is barely if ever home himself, what the fuck does he need Sieun home for.
Frustrated, Sieun takes a cigarette from its holder, a shitty gift from Seongje to mock him, a pretty blue box with silver details. He puts it in his mouth as he types at breakneck speed cursing Seongje out in his group chat with his friends.
“Do you know who I am, you-”
“Light me up,” Sieun interrupts the guy’s irate speech, not even looking up at him.
“What?” an incredulous laugh accompanied by hushed gossip from all over the classroom.
Sieun puts his phone on his desk, faced down, and finally looks up at a guy he clearly recognizes. This is the dick from Eunjang trying to get into the Union. Baekjin-hyung has meticulous notes on everyone and Sieun likes to snoop in Seongje’s things just to be a bitch so this might be Choi Hyoman’s first time meeting Sieun, but Sieun knows even his damn address.
“Are you slow?” he says lowly. “I said light me up.” No reaction except for an eye twitch. “Do you need detailed instructions?”
“Sieun-ah!” comes Suho’s voice. “Stop being mean to people.” He turns to Hyoman, wide shoulders squared, jaw clenched, and extends a hand. “Ahn Suho, man, nice to meet ya. Forgive my friend if he was rude, he’s used to different treatment lately.”
Sieun huffs and rolls his eyes at the display.
“Whatever.”
***
That’s the first time Sieun decides to ditch what Seongje wants and hang out with his friends anyway.
It’s a kind of test, actually, a pushing of boundaries. Suho’s been doing good in the Union and Seongje trembles over Sieun’s every cough a bit too much to sell him out. So Sieun hangs out with his friends and when Seongje is waiting for him as he exits Beom’s building he acts like it’s normal. Just takes the offered seat on the back of Seongje's bike and stays silent.
At home Sieun shucks his uniform off and puts on a big t-shirt that Seongje insists be his at home attire. A uniform out of uniform.
“Did you have fun?” he asks casually, and Sieun barely holds back an eye roll as he gets comfortable on the sofa to do homework.
“Yes.”
“Was Assemblyman Oh home?”
“No.”
Silence. Sieun looks up to see Seongje staring unsettlingly.
“Beomseok has a new little boyfriend, no?”
Sieun looks back down at his math homework to avoid that despicable gaze.
“Yes.”
“How do you think his dad would feel about that?”
Asshole. Dick. Fucking cunt.
Sieun closes his eyes, breathes in, out, in to calm himself.
Seongje comes close to crouch in front of him, this indulgent half-lidded expression on his face, the one he made when he bailed Sieun out or when he kissed Sieun.
“I won’t isolate myself to quell your stupid jealousy.”
“I don’t ask you to,” he says, his lips even forming a subtle pout. “I just ask you to do as I say.”
He imagines it happens suddenly for Seongje. One second Sieun is calm and the next he’s drawing his arm back, pen tightly clenched in his fist. He aims for the neck, but Seongje dodges so the pen stabs into his shoulder and Sieun doesn’t lose a moment, uses his other fist to hammer it in.
Seongje screams, but Sieun’s face stays impassive, he doesn’t make a single sound. As Seongje is distracted trying to yank the thing out Sieun kicks him in the chest as hard as he can and topples him over, stands up, steps on his chest and presses down with all his weight.
Seongje grips his ankle hard enough to bruise it.
“Okay, asshole,” he grits out. “I’ll do as you say as long as what you say is fucking reasonable.” He twists his foot painfully down onto Seongje’s chest despite the tight hold on his ankle. “Got it?”
Seongje smirks and leans up despite Sieun’s weight on him. Brings Sieun’s ankle closer to his face and drops a kiss on it before he twists it painfully and Sieun falls, almost dropping face-first on the coffee table.
Seongje catches him, though, squeezes him close like an unruly cat as Sieun hisses and spits. Drops another kiss on top of his head and then grips Sieun’s thigh with undue affection and squeezes.
“Got it, Princess. As you wish.”
Sieun has to fucking hobble to school the next day.
***
Sieun usually doesn’t concern himself with Seongje’s business unless he’s snooping to fuck something up for him on purpose.
Seongje buys him extravagantly expensive shoes and clothes that are still plain as he likes and their fridge at home is stocked with insane things like tubs of caviar, truffle and slabs of prettily marbled beef. Sieun can’t allow himself to let all that spoil so sometimes he cooks for the two of them following online tutorials and resists the urge to slip some rat poison in Seongje’s portions.
Thus Sieun has no idea who the fuck Baku and Gotak are and why they’re important at all. He categorically doesn’t speak to his desk mate nor anyone else in his class, but Suho makes cozy with a pretty blond boy because he tells Kim Pilyoung to fuck off.
The blond, Taeoh, tags along with Suho in their smoke break and tells about Baku protecting kids from the Union and from bullies in Eunjang and about how he got suspended for being such a saint. Sieun scoffs but Taeoh assures him that Baku is really just that good of a guy and that’s why his little friend gets so defensive whenever his name is mentioned.
Suho already seems taken with the idea of this paragon of virtue but Sieun has to grimace at it.
Sure, Baekjin-hyung is a piece of shit gangster, but he’s also had a bitter life and he does his best to be helpful to the poor and the orphaned. He’s not the fucking devil for a hero to oppose him like that.
Whatever.
He rolls his eyes and lets that shit go.
***
Hyoman is being a little shit in class again, bothering Sieun’s poor deskmate about some phones or some bullshit and the guy is really on Sieun’s last nerve.
“Yo, new guy,” he turns to Sieun, smirking. “Won’t you sacrifice your phone to save this guy a beating?”
Sieun glares at first, actually getting ready to just get rid of the guy, but then an idea occurs to him of Seongje seeing Sieun’s phone location go places he shouldn’t and he smirks.
“Okay,” he says casually and pushes the thing over, “take it.”
Hyoman and the deskmate stare a bit dumbfounded, before the former huffs out an awkward laugh.
“Rich, huh? Mommy and daddy buy you everything?”
“No,” Sieun smiles, his eyes widening a bit without his own notice as he leans over the desk a bit staring up at the boy without blinking. “My boyfriend.” A hush falls over the entire class. “Keum Seongje,” he says slowly, syllable by syllable, making sure they can digest the information, “do you know him?”
The rest of the day a hush falls over every space he enters and when he exits an immediate boom of whispering rattles the air.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Taeoh asks, looking truly offended.
“What does it even change?” he asks, bored.
Taeoh blinks at him, confused.
“No offense, babe, but you’re kinda scrawny,” he explains. “It’s hot and all, but not that good for fights. No one will dare say a wrong word to you now.”
Sieun laughs and Suho looks away with a pained expression, Beomseok following his lead.
“Jin Taeoh-yah, do you know why I had to transfer to Eunjang?”
***
Sometimes Sieun wakes up in cold sweat from the sight of Jeon Yeongbin’s mangled head haunting his dreams. Those days he’s usually extra cranky in the morning and it gets worse as the day goes on.
It’s like that today.
Seongje’s spoon makes an unpleasant noise as it scratches against his bowl and Sieun throws a glass at his empty head without even thinking. Seongje dodges, because he’s good like that, and in retaliation he catches Sieun before he can run.
He disregards Sieun’s teary glare as his hands cup Sieun’s face and then squeeze painfully, his thumb pressing against Sieun’s tightly pursed lips. Sieun makes a whiny noise, tries to shake those hands away, and Seongje moves his hand to fist Sieun’s hair at his nape and slaps him so heavily that without the hold on his head he’d topple over.
Sieun gasps and Seongje licks into his mouth like it’s his god-given right.
He can’t make himself close his eyes, he keeps glaring tearily at Seongje’s stupid face as the bastard kisses him on the mouth like a slobbering dog and suddenly lets him go. Sieun stumbles back and wipes his mouth with a sleeve.
“Animal,” he grits out through his teeth.
Seongje grins.
“Cunt.”
Sieun has to skip school so he can ice his face so Seongje skips it with him. They sit on the couch together as Seongje holds a bag of frozen peas to Sieun's face, cooing at his pout like he’s a fucking baby.
“Wanna come to the PC bang with me?”
“Why the fuck would I?” he scoffs. “Fucking loser.”
At lunch they’re both bored to death so Sieun gets up and starts cooking. Seongje is a burden upon humanity so all he does is stare after Sieun’s ass but at least he’s not trying to help.
They eat in silence, without taking a single look at each other.
Then they gravitate to the same couch where Sieun stabbed Seongje and kicked him down. Sieun sits parallel, Seongje correctly, with Sieun’s bare feet in his lap, holding onto them absently as he looks at the stupid drama on the TV with seemingly nothing behind his eyes.
How come he both wants to murder Seongje for kissing him and feels guilty for throwing the glass at his head. What would he ever do if something happened to Seongje? Go back to days alone in an empty apartment with the ghosts of his parents’ arguments etched into the walls.
It’s his yelling stitching itself into the wallpapers now.
Seongje reaches down to scratch at his stomach, hikes his shirt up and it’s not abs there, not after eating what Sieun made and drinking water and tea. It’s softer now, tanned. Sieun kind of wants a bite.
His eyes snap up Seongje’s face, his soft lips in a bored pout, not a thought behind those eyes.
Sieun had never thought of dating before Seongje and he rather thinks he won’t after him. In the months living together without much interaction Sieun has gotten used to the companionship and it fucks him up to imagine trying to get used to anyone else.
The decision clicks in his mind without any further thought.
He rearranges himself, crawls forward on all fours and straddles Seongje’s thighs before the boy himself comes to understand what’s happening. Seongje looks at him with this expression like he thinks something is coming. His shoulders are tense, like he’s expecting to defend himself.
“Princess?”
“Fuck off.”
Sieun is no taller than Seongje sitting on his lap than he is standing next to him. He has to reach up slightly to hold onto Seongje’s cheeks.
“Trying to whirl my head off, baby?”
Sieun pulls one hand away to smack him on the cheek like an unruly child.
“Shut the fuck up,” he says again. “Last warning.”
Seongje purses his lips into an amused little smirk and watches Sieun with much more interest than he ever had for the show on the TV.
Looking up into Seongje’s eyes is too hard so Sieun leans up, his lashes fluttering as he closes his eyes and presses his lips to Seongje’s mouth. Seongje inhales shakily, his hands come up to flutter around Sieun’s waist for a second before they grip him there, tight, hard, bruising. Sieun opens his mouth and Seongje doesn’t waste a second to lick into his mouth. Seongje’s hands move, one hand goes lower to grope Sieun’s ass while the other shoves under Sieun’s ratty t-shirt, pushes it up.
Sieun is concentrated on the feeling of Seongje’s lips on his, so wet, the way his tongue licks at Sieun’s lips, the way he sucks on Sieun’s tongue shamelessly, bites at his lips like an animal. He squeezes Sieun’s ass, his other hand moves forward to Sieun’s front and cups his hand between Sieun’s legs, squeezing.
Sieun hears himself moan, squeezes Seongje’s face and when Seongje bites his lip bloody he yelps. He doesn’t think about it, pulls away from the kiss, snipping the string of drool connecting their mouths, and draws his hand away to slap Seongje in the face again.
“Behave,” he grunts, his voice deeper than he’s ever heard.
Seongje is silent as he smirks that infuriating fucking smirk. His hand is off Sieun’s ass and on his cheek, his thumb pushing against Sieun’s lips again. Sieun opens his mouth, lets Seongje push his tongue down and hinge his jaw open, his eyes going half-lidded, his breath quick, his tummy hot.
Slowly, like he’s testing Sieun’s limits, Seongje opens his own mouth, tongue out, letting his spit drip into Sieun’s mouth, watching his reaction. He pulls his thumb out and Sieun spits the drool back right in his face.
Seongje huffs out a laugh.
“Brat,” he says affectionately as Sieun gets up to go do his damn homework.
“Ass,” he retaliates and gives a middle finger.
***
Sieun never comes to places like this.
He’d rather study at home or hang out with Suho and Beom and Yeongyi, or even be home with Seongje, God forbid the asshole finds out.
The PC bang is dark and smells like body odour and Sieun has to press his nose into Seongje’s neck once in a while to stop himself from gagging.
He’s sitting on his boyfriend’s lap, as Seongje plays LoL and curses loudly at his Ganghak classmates who Sieun hesitates to call Seongje’s friends. Sieun’s head is on Seongje’s shoulder, Seongje’s arm around him, his free hand on Sieun’s ass.
Sieun is bored out of his mind, texting Suho about tomorrow’s plans with his entire face in Seongje’s collar, breathing in his tasteless Dior Sauvage.
“Ah, fuck, do you blind assholes even know how to play?”
His hand squeezes Sieun’s ass a bit too painfully so Sieun bites his neck in retaliation.
“Hyung-nim,” Choi Hyoman, who gave Sieun the funniest look as he walked in, drones for what seems like the third hour now, although it hasn’t been even 5 minutes. He’s talking about the phones some poor asshole stole off Eunjang kids and how he’s barely short of the supply but he can do better and on and on and on. “Please, give me one last chance.”
“Whatever,” Seongje mutters, distracted.
“Thank you! Thank you, Hyung-nim!”
When Hyoman finally fucks off and Sieun’s mild headache leaves with him Seongje huffs out a laugh.
“Who the fuck was that?” he asks Hwangmo, who snorts.
Seongje’s hand gravitates down to where Sieun’s ass meets his thigh and squeezes there mercilessly, which makes Sieun squirm and bury his face in Seongje’s neck even more.
“These brats are playing gangsters, are you hearing? How fucking scary, these little shits need a good beating.”
The voice comes from the other side of the PC, it sounds nasally but not like a kid, like a shitty middle-aged man.
Seongje stills, his thighs going taut under Sieun, before his lips press to Sieun’s temple.
“Princess,” he murmurs, “you sleeping?” Sieun shakes his head. “Would you mind?”
“Be my guest,” Sieun scoffs and stands up, letting Seongje up as well.
“Is he a gen z gangster?” the grown man laughs and Sieun sits back down in Seongje’s chair, almost smiling at a text from Suho about Jin Taeoh’s cat.
There’s a bang and Sieun looks up, seeing his boyfriend smash the fucker’s head into the table by the hair.
Once, twice, three times.
Sieun curls his lip and rolls his eyes.
Seongje then looks towards the second man who’d been silently listening and grins like a maniac.
“Yeobo,” Sieun complains in a low uninterested voice as he leans forward to lean his elbow on the desk and braces his chin with that hand, “I’m bored. Let’s go home.”
Seongje’s eyes widen fractionally, his grin as well, and he almost seems to tremble with some kind of emotion Sieun can’t name.
He throws the mouthy asshole’s head on the desk and straightens his back.
“As my princess likes,” he says with a mocking incline of his head.
Like a herd of stupid fucking animals, his “friends” scramble to stand up so they can bow 90° at Sieun, interpreting Seongje’s tilt of a head as a bow.
Lunacy.
***
In a fit of insanity at 3 AM in the morning Sieun can’t sleep again so he makes it Seongje’s problem.
“I wanna dye my hair,” he says, looming creepily in Seongje’s doorway as the guy himself frowns and stirs in bed. “Taeoh is coming over with hairdye.”
“Babe,” he groans, raspy, “what?” He grasps around the bed blindly as Sieun comes closer to give him his glasses from where they’ve been left on the nightstand. “What time is it?”
Sieun bites his lip.
“Very early.”
“Babe,” Seongje whines, looking at his phone almost cross-eyed. It’s kind of cute. “It’s 3 AM, God.”
“You have to get up.”
Seongje closes his eyes and rubs them with a deep sigh.
“Why?”
“You have to tell me if it’s ugly.”
Taeoh comes into the house like a storm and they set up putting the bleach in each other’s hair in the middle of the living room as Seongje walks around with his eyes closed groaning like a zombie.
Sieun catches Taeoh giving Seongje curious glances but when the boy in question scratches at his belly, pushing his shirt up, his abs now more visible, Sieun hisses at Taeoh to look the fuck away.
Taeoh flushes and shakes his head like he didn’t mean to and Sieun lets it go.
He washes his hair first and finds himself looking like a newborn chick.
“I hate it,” he says grimly looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Seongje’s eyes are wide as he stands behind Sieun, biting his lips, clearly holding back laughter.
“Babe,” he tries, “you’d look good even if you were bald.”
Sieun scoffs, getting ready to give Seongje a tongue lashing when Taeoh gets done with washing his hair and comes to see Sieun.
“Oh,” he says with a blink, himself looking really good with the ugly yellow shade. “We’ll have to tone you silver.”
Sieun makes a dubious face.
“Can’t get worse than this,” Seongje shrugs and Sieun tries to strangle him as he laughs and picks Sieun up off the floor.
***
Sieun goes to school on Monday with a head of silver hair and no one is brave enough to scold him for it.
He meets the famous Baku and Gotak while with his friends out by the incinerator where they usually smoke. Sieun is sitting on a wooden crate, legs crossed, biting his lip at the stupid selfie Seongje sent him. He’s got his glasses on, uniform pants, and a half undone white button up that he’s holding up to show the bruise forming on the side of his waist because in his strangulation attempt Sieun had dropped him against the bathroom counter.
“Say I did a good job,” Taeoh brags, gesturing at Sieun’s head, obviously wanting to run a hand through his hair but not daring to.
“You did,” Suho says through an exhale of smole, “he’s smoking hot.”
Beomseok grimaces.
“Like he needed more attention.”
This breaks Sieun out of his horny stupor as he glares up at his friend.
“What?”
Suho is also raising an incredulous brow while Taeoh blinks in confusion.
“As in,” Beomseok stammers, “with the gloss and the boyfriend, you just-
“I just?”
Sieun’s hands are clenching on his phone, his unblinking wide eyes trained solely on Beomseok, waiting.
“You’ve got this thing going on.”
“What thing?”
“You know,” Beomseok looks away from him, gulps, “just-”
“HEY THERE, NEWBIES!”
Every single head in the vicinity turns towards the noise and Sieun momentarily decides to forget his friend’s transgression.
“I’m Park Humin, everyone calls me Baku. This is Gotak.”
A guy in a blue hoodie and clearly with an attitude problem jerks his chin up and Suho does the same back before his gaze turns to Baku. Sieun’s gaze never moves from the guy, though.
He’s abnormally tall, kind of like Baekjin-hyung, big, muscular in a way that not one sport can afford. His grin seems so genuine, it kind of makes Sieun uncomfortable.
“Ahn Suho,” Suho finally says, gestures to the others, “Oh Beomseok, you know Taeoh.”
“Yeah,” Gotak grimaces.
Baku’s smile loses some of its light as his eyes turn to Sieun. He seems to expect Suho to introduce Sieun as well but Sieun shakes his head at Suho’s questioning nod. He throws the half smoked cigarette away and stands up.
“Yeon Sieun,” he says, tilting his head to the side.
Baku is back to grinning.
“I was half scared you’d say the White Mamba or something.”
“The what?” he grimaces.
Gotak scoffs.
“That’s what they call you. That or Seongje’s crazy bitch.”
Sieun scowls but doesn’t answer with an insult. If they’re here to fight, they’ll get a damn fight, he thinks, as his eyes run over every available and unavailable object in their vicinity.
The crate, a wooden beam, the incinerator, his own bag, his phone, his belt, Taeoh’s coke can. If he throws the last one at Baku’s head he’ll surely be incapacitated-
“Yah, don’t be rude, Go Hyuntak! We’re here to invite them to hang out, not to get Keum Seongje on your ass.”
“Before it gets to Keum Seongje you’ll have to deal with me on your ass, actually,” Suho grunts with the corner of his lips raised in clear incredulity, “talking to my friend like that.”
Gotak kind of squares up but Baku throws a hand around his shoulder and reels him in like an unruly puppy.
“Don’t pay attention to him, he’s got a bit of an attitude but he’s very cute when you get to know him.”
“Hey!”
“So, you guys wanna play pool after class? It’s right near the underpass.”
Five gazes turn to Sieun at the same time and he feels like ripping his hair out. God. Now he’s going to be fucking embarrassed.
“Wait,” he mumbles and presses the call button for Seongje.
“Babe?” comes his gruff voice, curiosity coloring his tone.
“Yeobo,” he says as softly as he possibly can and turns away from the rest, “I’m going to hang out with my friends after class today.”
“Where?”
Sieun bares his teeth in a grimace.
“Pool, near the underpass.”
Seongje is silent for a few moments.
“Who’s going to be there?”
“Uhm, Suho, Beom, Tae-”
“Stop dragging it, baby, did the oaf and his puppy invite you?” Seongje doesn’t sound annoyed nor jealous, but that kind of scares Sieun more than if he yelled.
He turns panicked eyes to the rest and sees a tiny form with glasses and a cute bear coat. He snaps his eyes back to Suho and Suho immediately gets him, making his way to get Sieun’s deskmate.
“No, my deskmate invited us along but those two will be there too.”
Seongje huffs.
“I’ll be in contact with Suho.” Sieun’s lashes flutter as he breathes out in relief. “I’ll pick you up after, okay, Princess?”
“Okay.”
“Off you go then.”
He hangs up and turns to the boy from his class.
“Your name?”
The guy bows rapidly, holding the straps of his backpack like a little kid.
“Seo Juntae, Yeon Sieun-nim.”
Taeoh snorts at this and turns away to laugh, Baku seems amused and Suho rolls his eyes while Beom looks kind of disgusted and so does Gotak.
“Juntae-yah,” Suho says casually, “you’re coming to hang out with us. You invited Sieun-ah yourself, okay?”
He nods frantically.
“Okay.”
And Sieun kind of has fun. He demolishes everyone at pool and sits in smug satisfaction as they complain about him cheating. They all decide it’s a mission to try and make him lose and fail miserably as well as become indebted to him for the next century.
Then Seongje calls and Sieun shushes everyone loudly.
“Yeobo?” he answers.
They must’ve been in his company for too long, gotten used to him, and now know how absurd it is for him to use this word in this tone.
“Princess, I’m outside. C’mon out.”
“Okay.”
He tells his friends and they all decide to leave if he’s leaving, so seven teenagers pile out of the building at the same time.
Seongje stands leaned on his bike, wearing a red windbreaker, smoking. At the sight of Sieun he extends an arm without a word and Sieun hastens his step to reach Seongje, that arm wrapping around his shoulders and pulling him home. Seongje leans down comically to drop a noisy big kiss on his mouth then turns to the rest.
He greets Suho with a nod first, then passes his dismissive gaze over everyone, even Taeoh, who he was bullying Sieun with the other day. His gaze stops on Baku and Gotak.
“Twiddle-dee and Twiddle-dum.”
“Psychopath,” Gotak hisses and Seongje clicks his tongue, grins.
“You must be my baby’s new friend,” he then says to Juntae and Juntae stutters out a weird nonsensical phrase that has even Baku narrowing his eyes in confusion.
“Bye,” Sieun huffs, opting to end everyone’s suffering and straddling the back of the bike first.
***
Sieun and Suho are sitting in Na Baekjin’s office, at his desk. Suho is at Baekjin-hyung’s side, Sieun across from them, and he’s trying to explain a math problem to Suho as their hyung nods along and clarifies things when Sieun gets frustrated.
Halfway through he gets distracted by his Eunjang friends group chat and the absolute stupidity going on there. He takes a screenshot of Baku using a word completely wrong and Gotak correcting him with a few insults and sends it to Seongje, who answers with an lmao and calls him a shitty friend for exposing them like that.
He looks up to see Suho grimacing and complaining about a toothache as Baekjin-hyung hums and tells him he’ll arrange a visit to the dentist and pay for it. Sieun smirks and looks back down at his phone, texting Seongje about this when the door to the office clangs open and Grape steps in.
And Sieun now knows that Grape only started dating Beom because Seongje, the dick, made him, but from the very start he’d hated the guy. So he takes his usual stance when the little bitch is around, crosses his legs, leans back, chin in the air.
“Hi, Gongsam,” he says in a light airy voice.
Grape goes still like prey encountering a predator and turns his gaze to Sieun, wide and terrified.
“Won’t you say it back?” Sieun pouts. Gongsam starts fucking shaking and it takes everything in him not to smile.
“Hi, Yeon Sieun-nim,” he says in a voice very unlike his own. A usually cocksure piece of shit cowed at the sight of him.
Sieun has seen the way Grape acts around other guys from the Union, seen the way he orders them around, nose in the air, telling them to beat people he could never dream to fight on his own.
He holds his phone up and gets the camera on Grape.
“Say hi to Seongje-hyung,” he says seriously and Gongsam starts fucking shaking right there, making Sieun even hold back a smile.
“Sieun-ah,” Baekjin-hyung scolds and Sieun huffs, hiding his phone and rolling his eyes. “Delete the video.”
Somehow, Suho has gravitated to the arm of Baekjin’s chair, perched on it so casually as if it’s normal. Soon he’ll be on the guy’s lap, Sieun is sure. So he nods at Hyung innocently as he pretends to delete the video and instead sends it to Seongje.
He covers his mouth to hide the laugh he almost lets out as Seongje calls Grape a pissing purse dog and Baekjin glares at him, raising a hand to interrupt Gongsam’s issue report.
“Sieun-ah,” he says in a low level voice, then turns to Suho thoughtfully, as if only noticing his own arm around Suho’s waist, “Suho-yah,” he says more softly, “out, the two of you.”
“Hyung,” he tries.
“Out.”
On their way out Sieun sees what he thinks is a fuzzy brown coat on one of the seats.