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It's raining, the heavy shower slamming against the roof and darting past the dark windows. A flash of lightning brightens the room, the curtains blowing alongside the restless wind.
Leehan’s crouched on the rumpled bed, unmoving, his bruised heart aching like an open wound. His fingers are numb, nails bitten to the quick after pacing round and round the tiny bedroom moments prior, focused entirely on the phone he'd discarded on the nightstand.
Now, Leehan grips the phone like a lifeline, and still, the screen refuses to shine. His stressed reflection greets him instead, his furrowed brows and gritted teeth ageing his face.
Like this, Leehan becomes as pathetic as he felt at that party earlier, his body drowned by inebriated college students staggering over themselves. Thorns claw up his throat the way they had when he saw Taesan in the middle of it all, gleaming purple and blue like a god with Jisu hugging his side like she belonged there.
Leehan was, and still is, aware of the arrangement. Taesan's draconian parents suspected things, and Jisu's parents were eager to set him up with their daughter since they all worked under the same law firm.
"My parents would kill me if they ever found out," Taesan had said on a storming night like this one, exactly two weeks after he and Leehan had begun... whatever this had morphed into. His face had been radiant in that car, the sharp glow from the amber streetlamps fanning his severely handsome features. "You should be lucky I'm even meeting you at all."
Leehan had known this wouldn't end well. He'd been a smart kid after all, top of his class. He'd endured Taesan's constant threats of leaving whenever he so much as voiced any complaints, his parents and their stubborn, outdated beliefs his favourite excuse.
But, like the ice jabbing his chest when Taesan shows for the millionth time that he isn't his priority, Leehan never quits. He doesn't think he can – doesn't think he even wants to.
It's been four months. Four months of uneasy glances across rooms, broken promises, and greedy, wandering hands in the dark, and Leehan has only become more hooked on the potent drug that is Han Taesan himself.
Leehan checks the time. 2:15 am sears into his retinae, making him all too aware of how foolish he's being. He has a class later that morning. He can't afford to miss it as he's already skipped far too many, always at Taesan's beck and call.
Just one more day, and I'll stop, Leehan would tell himself. But he's never learned the art of moderation when it comes to Taesan.
Hasty knocks shatter the silence right then, harsher than the deafening thunder.
Leehan leaps to his feet and races for the front door, hoping his roommate is still fast asleep. And if he isn't, he doesn't care.
Taesan glows before him, haloed by the yellow lights from the hallway.
He's shivering, dripping with rain, his thin shirt sticking to him like second skin. White hot desire ravages Leehan, and this is easier to give in to than the ache gutting his heart lately, splitting it like glass as soon as Taesan grips Jisu's small waist at parties, or kisses her dimpled cheek in the middle of the lecture hall – even when he knows Leehan can see him.
“I missed you,” Taesan whispers into the curve of Leehan's neck, over and over again like a desperate prayer. Leehan lets himself sink into Taesan's strong arms, and kisses Taesan hard enough to eradicate the remaining traces of Jisu's crimson lipstick. He kisses Taesan hard enough to steer his wayward heart back to him.
They stumble into Leehan's bedroom, limbs interwoven and mouths devouring each other whole.
Leehan feels like a deity the moment Taesan gently settles him above the twin size bed, his shorts tugged off in mere seconds. Leehan would kill if it meant he got to witness Taesan staring at him like this everyday – starry eyes brimming with arousal and worship, his lopsided smile sweet and tempting. Hungry.
Leehan's mind is emptied the moment Taesan's hot hands part his thighs, his head soon dipping between them. The tumultuous downpour worsens, shielding them from the rest of the world and blanketing their sins.
They should talk about it, about how Taesan outright ignored Leehan earlier to parade his girlfriend. How lonely Leehan gets at times, and the amount of pain Taesan's existence alone causes.
But every argument vanishes in Leehan's throat, replaced by soft, wanton moans when Taesan grabs and moulds him like he's his, fucking and filling him up just right.
Fingers grasping the broad expanse of Taesan's back, lost in unwavering ecstasy, Leehan feels as though he's been forgiven of his transgressions.
It's easy to forget when they're like this, breaths tangled with nothing between them. Leehan dismisses all of Taesan's wrongs, because when Taesan cups his cheek this way, thumb brushing off a stray tear, hope begins to sprout within his chest, fragile and bright. It'd wilted before, but seasons change, and if Leehan prays hard enough, so will Taesan.
"Saw you with Myung Jaehyun earlier," is what Taesan mutters over Leehan's stomach at that moment, shattering the illusion. "It's clear he wants you. I need you to stay away from him."
The veil is lifted, the adoration in Taesan's dark eyes dimmed by pungent fury.
Leehan can't move, his wrists pinned above him.
"Tell me you'll stay away from him," Taesan repeats. Lightning strikes, sparking half his face. Jaw tense, eyes narrowed, it's obvious he's pissed. Leehan wants to let Taesan's jealousy consume him, wants to press on the wound and make it hurt, but like yin and yang, for balance to be sustained, one must wreak havoc, and the other must suffer as a result.
And Leehan will not make Taesan suffer.
"I – I'll stay away from him," Leehan exhales. The smile Taesan graces him with is rewarding, even though he's about to lose another friend. His heart flutters when Taesan crashes their lips together, breathtaking and electric. Leehan hopes Taesan doesn't notice the way his mouth trembles, or his glassy eyes.
Taesan continues pleasuring him, tender and loving and effortlessly making him come. The sensation is heavenly, liquid gold in his veins while Taesan kisses the moles dotting his naked flesh, his index finger tracing a constellation over them.
I love you, I need you. Please stay with me, is on the tip of Leehan's tongue when he turns to face Taesan minutes after the haze of lust has faded, more exposed than ever while their hands brush.
"Are you leaving soon?" is what Leehan says instead, his voice barely a whisper in the frigid air.
Taesan smiles, but his eyes are already elsewhere. The hope in Leehan's chest rots the second Taesan gets up, the decayed petals choking his windpipe.
"I'm staying over at Jisu's. Can't have her asking questions," Taesan mumbles, fingers combing through his messy strands of hair.
He goes to grab the pair of jeans and the hoodie folded over the chair beside the work table – it's where he forgets some of his clothes whenever he and Leehan hook up. Then he hovers by the door. "Can I take a shower?"
Taesan never needed to ask, because Leehan never refuses him. Leehan wonders if Taesan notices his silence, the cold cavern his heart has turned into.
It doesn't take long. Taesan exits into the night half an hour later, chuckling fondly when Leehan had dashed to his side with an umbrella, not wanting him to get caught up in the rainfall.
Leehan shoves Taesan's damp clothes into the laundry hamper later on, but not before he inhales Taesan's sandalwood scent through his shirt, plagued by guilt but relishing his corruption like an angel that just lost his wings.
Leehan will wash Taesan's clothes when he regains his composure. Take good care of them. And hopefully, when Taesan needs him enough to return, he'll smell like him this time around.