Work Text:
It was wet out, and Sicheng’s cleats slipped in the mud. The bleachers were empty for the most part, but he wasn’t paying any attention to those. Sicheng was dribbling the mud-streaked ball down the field, weaving between defending players, passing it to his teammates and catching it back on the side of his foot.
Sicheng was a star. He pushed downfield and passed to the striker who sent the ball sailing into the goal with one swift kick.
From the bleachers, Jaehyun shot to his feet and nearly dropped his weed with all his wild cheering.
After the game, Sicheng would meet Jaehyun on the sideline before even changing out of his uniform. Jaehyun would sweep him up in his arms and give him the triumphant kind of kiss a soccer star deserved. “I can’t believe you’re out here in this rain,” Sicheng would murmur, his voice all rattling from running around on the field.
“It’s just spitting a little,” Jaehyun would reply with his lazy smile, and Sicheng would bury his nose in Jaehyun’s hoodie and take in his comfortingly ashy smell before climbing back out of his embrace. Sicheng would run off to join his teammates in the locker room, and Jaehyun would watch him the whole way there.
For Jaehyun, losing a few memories here and there was nothing new. He smoked a lot and his mind always had something dark to skirt around.
His father told him he was dull, but Jaehyun didn’t like to see it like that. Jaehyun saw the pavement getting wet before he ever noticed the rain. He was slow to all sorts of realizations, oftentimes repeating the same classes again and again, but in his slowness he managed to notice little things others didn’t always pay attention to, like the way Sicheng’s eyebrows quirked up almost imperceptibly when he was close to tears, or the pink sliver of tongue hanging out of his mouth when he snatched the soccer ball back from a gang of opposing players.
All that is to say that Jaehyun couldn’t remember the first time he saw Sicheng, or what he was thinking when he did. In fact, whenever Sicheng mentioned the fact that they were in the same statistics class together freshman year, Jaehyun was shocked that he didn’t remember seeing him. Even when, apparently, Sicheng had been staring at him all along. In fact, it wasn’t until Jaehyun caught Sicheng in soccer practice that his brain started recording any memories of the man.
That day, back in April during Jaehyun’s sophomore year, it was raining again. It always seemed to be raining where they went to school, but Jaehyun didn’t mind. He was used to the swampy weather from his hometown in Louisiana. That day, he had decided to smoke outside. He had a jacket spread out underneath him and an umbrella propped up in an empty water bottle that just kept falling over.
He was all spread out on the hill overlooking the soccer field, his ratty sneakers in the mud. Jaehyun’s eyes couldn’t stop following a particular player, with long legs like a deer, striding down the field and scoring goal after goal against the teammates he was practicing with. Jaehyun focused on the player’s face, his pink tongue creeping out of his mouth when he focused, and Jaehyun couldn’t ignore the fluttering in his stomach when the soccer player turned and stared up at him, a smile spreading across his face.
Soon enough, Sicheng and Jaehyun were smoking together, going on long walks off the edge of campus, holding each other at night. They both barely fit in their dorm room twin beds anyway, but now Sicheng couldn’t imagine falling asleep without his arms wrapped around Jaehyun’s muscular torso, his nose in the crook of Jaehyun’s neck. Sicheng gave Jaehyun little kisses when he fell asleep, his lips unconsciously pressing against the other man’s skin.
By now, the end of the semester was drawing near. The soccer season ended and Sicheng enlisted the help of Jaehyun instead, dribbling circles around his slow-moving boyfriend and shooting the ball right into the center of his torso. Jaehyun always flinched a little, but his low giggles when the ball made contact with his body were too precious for Sicheng to ignore.
“You going home for Christmas?” Sicheng asked, passing the ball to Jaehyun.
“Nah.” Jaehyun watched the ball go past him and ran after it, rolling it clumsily under one foot back to Sicheng, “I mean, I don't want to. And while I’m here, y’know, might as well use the excuse.”
“Right...” Sicheng kicked the ball into the air and bounced it off of his knee a couple times, “I don't think I’m going home either....Too soon.”
Sicheng and his mother hadn’t talked since he came out to her that summer. He couldn’t imagine that she wasn’t expecting it, what with his childhood ballet lessons and forays into crossdressing at the birthday parties for his second grade friends, but she was furious anyway. Not everything can go as planned. Either way, Sicheng felt lucky to have chosen a college across the country from his dry, windy hometown.
Here, the air was so humid it clung to his throat and left him with a thick sheen of water droplets on his face. When they finished practicing, and Jaehyun wrapped his arm around Sicheng for another bone-crushing hug, the two men left wet stains on each other’s t-shirts.
=
Sicheng’s giggles bubbled out of him, a little fountain of joy. His long fingers combed over Jaehyun’s scalp, picking through his hair, pushing the thin brown headband up on Jaehyun’s head.
“How do I look?” Jaehyun asked, his own eyes red and crinkling up fondly at the corners.
“Perfect.” With two fingers, Sicheng grabbed a couple strands of hair and tucked them back into Jaehyun’s hairband. He was giving Jaehyun that fond look again, the one Jaehyun couldn’t help but return. Jaehyun’s strong hands ran up either side of Sicheng’s waist, warming themselves on his skin. There love was a simple love, made up of time spent together and little physical gestures.
Sicheng’s fingertips combed back, over Jaehyun’s thick neck, pulling Jaehyun in for a gentle kiss. Sicheng giggled between their lips and, his arms sliding around Sicheng’s waist, Jaehyun giggled back. They weren’t anything special, in their sweatshirts and worn pajama pants. Sicheng slid further up the bed, nestling himself down in Jaehyun’s sea of flattened pillows, and Jaehyun followed. His hands traced the path down Sicheng’s waist, his hips, his thighs, catching the smaller man under his knees and pulling. Sicheng’s hips scooted easily down the bed, his legs accommodating a steep angle and coming to hook themselves around Jaehyun’s back, holding him tight.
An old record Jaehyun had fished out of a thrift store milk crate crackled on its turntable, some gentle guitar filling the room between peaks of ambiguous fuzz. The album was a little moldy, and Jaehyun had thought about cleaning it many times, though he’d never gotten around to it. Truthfully, he kind of liked the crackling. Sicheng was a soccer player now, but he’d been a dancer once, and he loved fucking Jaehyun with one of Jaehyun’s old records on in the background. He arched his hips up alongside the beat, grinding slow and smooth against Jaehyun, kissing his neck.
“You’re so cute,” Jaehyun slurred, and Sicheng gave him a glassy-eyed smile, showing all his teeth,
“No you.” Sicheng’s smile showed every one of his teeth. Jaehyun pushed him down into the mattress and caressed his thighs, his neck, his everything.
=
Sicheng was from Utah. A small dusty town, a tiny highschool with an all-purpose field in the back. Sometimes, he wondered how he ended up here. At their East Coast school across the country, everything was different. People didn’t go to church, he didn’t kick up any dust when he played soccer, and it was raining all the time. To most people Sicheng didn’t know, Sicheng came across as cold. He was dry and quiet, and he preferred a long walk alone through the woods to any frat house party. But even in Sicheng’s distant silences, Jaehyun always put a smile on his face.
When Sicheng got sick of his loud neighbors in the soccer dorms (and he was almost always sick of them), he’d spend the night in Jaehyun’s dorm. Jaehyun lived at the edge of campus, with a few sophomores who hadn’t really found their way socially just yet. On the worn wood floor of his single dorm room, Sicheng and Jaehyun would sit with Jaehyun’s enormous green bong between them and stretch.
“I’ve been so tense today,” Sicheng murmured, his hands wrapping around the arched soles of his feet. He had his legs straight out in front of him, his back folded over.
When Jaehyun stretched out to his full length, he could just barely reach past his knees. He giggled, “This is tense for you?”
“Mm-hm.” Sicheng took a deep breath, relaxing deeper into the stretch, “I can usually reach further than this. I used to do ballet, you know.”
“Seriously?” Jaehyun followed Sicheng’s lead, shifting his legs into a straddle and reaching towards his left knee, “I can’t believe your mother would approve of that.”
“Oh she didn’t...I told her my soccer coach recommended it for me.”
Jaehyun laughed and snuck a few glances at Sicheng deepening his stretch, bending until the tip of his nose grazed the ground. “So...do you have any baby pictures of you in a tutu or...”
Sicheng giggled and switched sides to reach towards his right foot, his face coming closer to Jaehyun’s, “Boys don't wear tutus. At least, where I come from they don't.”
Jaehyun switched sides too, “Not where I come from either. But I used to steal my sister’s sometimes anyway.”
=
Sometimes, Sicheng and Jaehyun just sat and stared at each other. When the record finished playing and they were left in a silent room, Sicheng and Jaehyun would remove their arms from each other and mess around the room naked. Jaehyun would straighten up, stretching his long arms above his head and letting Sicheng’s eyes fixate on the damp patches of body hair under his armpits.
“You’re so handsome,” Sicheng called from the bed, his body relaxing into some unlikely arrangement, legs all numb and buzzing. He watched Jaehyun pull a record off the turntable, sliding it delicately into its sleeve. Jaehyun liked that the records were difficult to care for. From where Sicheng was sitting, Jaehyun’s back looked like all muscle, cut down the middle by a thin shadow of a spine. He stood with his hips forward a little, his butt firm and a comfortable slouch in his shoulders. Sicheng admired the faint mole above his left hip.
Jaehyun was still hard, at least halfway, his cock red and bobbing between his legs. He stood so shamelessly at his bookshelf, combing through his collection for a new album to put on. They had already been fucking for a while, probably about a half hour, and Sicheng’s legs were beginning to grow sore. Jaehyun was surely tired too, his hair falling into his face.
Silently, Sicheng removed himself from Jaehyun’s bed and slid to his knees in front of the other man. “Put something on,” Sicheng ordered through a smile, “I want to suck your dick.”
Jaehyun glanced down and smiled. His hand found its way into Sicheng’s soft hair. He picked something they’d both listened to a hundred times before off the shelf and put it on the record player, turning a little so Sicheng could have easier access to him.
Sicheng’s bony knees went numb on the floor. His eyes fluttered shut and his fingers wrapped around the base of Jaehyun’s cok, gripping it gently as he let his tongue explore the tip. Sicheng dipped his head down and sucked on Jaehyun’s balls, greedily lapping up his sweat. There was some hair, but Sicheng didn’t mind. He let it tangle in his teeth, traveling from Jaehyun’s balls to each of his muscled thighs to the trail of hair leading up his stomach. Soon enough, Sicheng was wrapping his lips around the head of Jaehyun’s cock gazing up at him with a lazy sort of look that almost concealed his own excitement. Almost.
“Fuck, Sicheng,” Jaehyun groaned, watching his cock disappear into Sicheng’s mouth, combing his fingers through Sicheng’s hair, “Mm.” Jaehyun didn’t push, but his hips moved. He pushed himself deeper into Sicheng’s throat, sighing as Sicheng swallowed around him. Sicheng sucked Jaehyun off until the man’s breaths were more like shudders than anything else, sweat falling down his torso, until Jaehyun’s fingers tightened in Sicheng’s hair and Sicheng pulled away. He looked up at Jaehyun with a smile, wrapping two arms around Jaeyun’s thighs and embracing him, pressing his nose into Jaehyun’s lower abdomen and kissing him there.
Jaehyun took Sicheng’s face in two hands and caressed it, smiling fondly. “Get back on the bed,” he murmured, and Sicheng followed his orders, grinning the whole time.
=
Christmas came faster than expected. Once finals were over, Jaehyun and Sicheng spent nearly every day together, laying around in bed, passing a soccer ball back and forth, or packing Jaehyun’s bong into his backpack and taking it on long walks into the woods.
Sicheng was quiet on Christmas Eve. It was raining again.
“You okay?” Jaehyun asked, climbing into bed with his boyfriend and pulling the blankets up over the both of them, “You’ve been in bed all day.”
“I know.” Sicheng tucked his nose in Jaehyun’s shoulder, “I’ll be okay.”
“Have you talked to your family at all?”
“I’ll call them tomorrow.” Sicheng rolled himself around, wrapping himself up in Jaehyun’s arms until he was held tight enough that his breaths had to become steady and slow.
Jaehyun couldn’t see Sicheng’s face, but he was certain Sicheng was doing that arched-eyebrow thing he did when he was about to cry. He kissed the back of Sicheng’s neck, right where his soft skin met the border of his greasy black hair. Jaehyun’s family had never been kind to him, but he was sure Sicheng’s had been once. When Sicheng was still a highschool soccer star, his mother would bring snacks to all the games. Sicheng had been loved, and Jaehyun suspected he still would be. He just needed time.
Jaehyun listened to the rain on the windowsill and Sicheng’s breaths growing deeper as he sucked bruises into the side of the smaller man’s neck.
“That feels good,” Sicheng mumbled, feeling Jaehyun lips curve into a smile against his skin.
“Yeah? Am I a good distraction?” and Jaehyun moved lower, kissing Sicheng’s lean muscles between his neck and shoulders, his arms and armpits. Jaehyun lifted Sicheng’s shirt up and stuck his head under it to kiss Sicheng’s nipples and the faint scar on his chest where he’d broken his clavicle as a child.
Slowly, with Jaehyun’s kisses carrying him along, Sicheng floated off to sleep. Jaehyun waited until he was utterly silent before climbing out of bed.
=
The closest business to Jaehyun’s residential building was a gas station. This was bad, because it meant Jaehyun had to walk for almost an hour to reach any real grocery stores, but it was good because he could wear his pajamas inside. Even in the rain, Jaehyun loved any establishment he could walk into in his fleece pajama pants, no underwear and a hoodie pulled up over his head.
The glass door beeped when it closed behind him and Jaehyun, sopping wet, wandered between shelves of gas station food. It was no feast, Jaehyun knew that already. He had been here a thousand times before, so he knew which donut flavors to buy a lot of and which to avoid entirely. He stuffed a box with blueberry and chocolate glazed donuts, throwing in a few jelly-filled donuts for the hell of it. Jaehyun slid the box under his arm, paying no mind to the way the donuts all slid around and mixed frosting. He wandered over to the beef jerky and stared at it for a while, blinking slowly, before moving on to another section.
By the time Jaehyun made his way to the register, his arms were piled high with snacks. An assortment of kit kats and m&ms, the dill pickle chips Sicheng liked, strawberry snack cakes. He smiled apologetically to the cashier, fumbling his ID as he directed them to the right flavors of backwoods.
“I’m surprised you guys are open,” he chatted idly. The cashier, understandably miserable, shrugged and gave him a non committal answer,
“People need gas.”
“That’s true.”
With his arms full of plastic bags, Jaehyun made his way back to the building, a gentle smile pasted on his face. Success.
=
When Sicheng woke up, the bed was colder than usual. He sighed and rolled over, expecting to throw an arm around his buff stoner boyfriend, but Jaehyun wasn’t there. He must have gone to brush his teeth. Sicheng groaned and buried his face in his pillow.
If Sicheng was home right now, his younger brother would be jumping on his bed to wake him up. He’d be grumbling and climbing out of bed, stumbling downstairs to sit around the tree with his family.
Instead, Sicheng was sitting up slowly and glaring around the room. The rain was loud this morning, it was pounding his skull. He threw the covers off himself and swung his long legs out, shuffling around the room for a pair of Jaehyun’s old sweatpants. It was a simple thing, but there was still something sexy about wearing Jaehyun’s pants without underwear.
Sicheng yawned and found a shirt before making his way into the hallway, into the bathroom. Thankfully, there was no one still in this hall over winter break, so no one could see the way Sicheng’s hair was all sticking up on one side.
Sicheng was halfway through brushing his teeth before he noticed the note on the mirror:
Woww u look so hansome. Come 2 the K I T C H E N ! I looove [heart drawing, a little lopsided] u soccer star (Sweet Prince of Soccer).
Sicheng blinked, blushed a little, and smiled cautiously. He spat his toothpaste out in the sink.
The hallway was almost silent. Sicheng could hear his flip flops slapping the carpet. However, as he traveled out of the dark corner where Jaehyun’s room sat next to an emergency stairwell, he began to hear some faint acoustic christmas music. Sicheng crossed his arms over his chest, listening to the hallway’s motion-activated ceiling lights turn on almost in time with the beat.
The hall opened up into the empty space of the common room and its two blocky couches and, just beyond that, the kitchen. It smelled like pine needles, but in a really glaring kind of way Like huffing pine needle febreeze. The row of lights hanging over the island were dimly illuminated. Sicheng blinked and walked closer, taking in the room and Jaehyun inside of it.
To his left, all along the wall where windows looked out onto the lawn, Jaehyun had taped up little tree-shaped air fresheners, the kind you hang on your car’s rear view mirror. They shimmered slightly in shades of green, some still in their packaging as if Jaehyun had only realized halfway through that leaving the plastic on would keep the room from getting too perfumey. Alongside the tree, sheets of notebook paper were cut into block letters and scribbled in with red marker, reading “C H R I S T M A S”.
At the center of the kitchen was a countertop with a mottled tan surface. Usually, residents sat around it on weekends, playing Uno and drinking until they threw up in the sink, but this morning it was piled high with an assortment of random snacks, and two cups of gas station coffee freshly re-microwaved. At the center of the island, 5 blunts were arranged into the loose shape of a tree. Jaehyun sat behind them on a barstool, smiling and swiveling himself gently back and forth. Jaehyun looked like he didn’t quite know what to do with his face, he just melted into a lazy kind of smile. He looked a little stoned and mostly tired, some dampness lingering at the edges of his shirt.
“Do you like it?” Jaehyun asked.
Sicheng looked around the room again, then grinned, “It’s wonderful.” He crossed around the island and climbed into Jaehyun’s lap, holding him tight and smelling his damp hair.
“Merry Christmas, Sicheng.”
“Merry Christmas.” Sicheng thought he could fall asleep right there in Jaehyun’s lap.
Soon enough, Sicheng and Jaehyun had brought in blankets from Jaehyun’s dorm room and sat huddled up on the kitchen floor, staring out the giant windows. They were passing a blunt back and forth, surrounded by snack cake wrappers and watching the rain turn slowly to snow. The whole world seemed silent, and the campus was their home.