Chapter Text
Jungwoo entered the code to take the elevator to the top floor, a little bit surprised to find that it hadn’t changed in two months, to find that Jaehyun hadn’t wanted to lock him out, erase him entirely, right down to the binary code that brought Jungwoo up to Jaehyun’s level. The numbers crept higher and higher, from 1 to 5 to 20 and then to 55, fast enough to ensure that he wouldn’t have time to have second thoughts, just like the very first night he had come here, going faster with Jaehyun than he had ever gone with a man before.
Fast to meet, to fuck, to fall, and fast to fall apart.
The elevator opened and there was nothing between him and Jaehyun but the front door. Jungwoo stood there, breathing, knowing he probably looked a mess – tearstained and angry and still wearing the outfit from the cafe shift he hadn’t even been able to finish because he was so messed up over flowers. He drew the line at trying to let himself in, even though he would have done it without a second thought during the four months they were happy. But now he was unhappy, furious enough to want the drama of pounding on Jaehyun’s front door with one shaking fist until it opened so he could have the pleasure of throwing torn and crumpled roses in a face so handsome it still made his traitorous heart skip a beat.
“What is wrong with you?” Jungwoo asked, knowing that he probably looked ridiculous, standing in the hallway of one of Seoul’s most expensive apartment building, spilling rose petals and tears over a man who had the gall to stare at him like he was the one who had been wronged, like he was the one with the broken heart. “Is it fun for you?” Jungwoo dropped the tattered bouquet, watched it fall to the marble floor, blood red between their feet. “To mock me like this?”
“Mock you? Sending you flowers is mocking you?” Jaehyun’s stoneface cracked, his lips parting around breath that smelled faintly of the expensive whiskey he had once shared with Jungwoo, little sips given kiss after kiss until his throat and cheeks burned. “You don’t even want this much from me?”
Jungwoo hated that Jaehyun had the audacity to look wounded when he was the one who had never wanted to give in the first place. “I don’t,” Jungwoo said, crossing his arms to keep from reaching out to touch this expression he had never seen before, not even when it had all come to a messy end. “Not now. And certainly not at my home, my work and my school.” He remembered the way everyone had looked at him like he was the luckiest man on earth to come out of class and find a courier waiting with a spray of roses big enough to have put a florist out of business. “It was humiliating.”
“You were humiliated by my roses?” Anger seeped between the cracks, tinting Jaehyun’s whiskey-soaked sadness.
“Yes,” Jungwoo said, because it was easier to say that than it was to say ‘ because I cried over you, again, in front of a hundred people you’ll never have to know. ’
“Say that again,” Jaehyun said, reaching for Jungwoo and pulling him into the foyer, looking as wild and desperate as Jungwoo felt. “I don’t believe you.”
Jungwoo thought about how long he had waited for even a single text from Jaehyun in the days and weeks after Jungwoo had walked out, how he would have fallen all over again for even a single stem, but all that he had gotten from Jaehyun was silence.
“I don’t hear from you for months and all of a sudden you’re pulling the rich guy stalker act? How did you think I was going to feel?”
Jaehyun picked up a rose, pressing it against Jungwoo’s chest, petals crushing into his one nice white work shirt. “Were you humiliated when he sent you roses? Did you hate it like this? Like you hate me?”
Jungwoo covered Jaehyun’s hand with his own, attempting to salvage what he could of his shirt and his sanity. This close, close enough to smell the cologne he had always liked, close enough to see the way that Jaehyun wasn’t wearing any lenses, squinting at him in the half-darkness, his body remembered what it was like to be this close to Jaehyun, remembering all the things they had done in this very doorway, smiling and laughing and coming together instead of coming apart.
His back was against the wall. “What?” Jungwoo asked, trying to understand what was coming out of Jaehyun’s mouth. “What he?”
“I saw it.” Jaehyun’s voice went low and thick, the way it used to when they were tangled up in one another, sticky-sweet and breathless from how good it had been. “The flowers were pretty but you were prettier. You were smiling,” Jaehyun sounded like it was a betrayal, like Jungwoo was the one who had wielded the knife and split them apart. “You were happy. With someone else.”
He knew then what it was Jaehyun had seen — an image posted on a whim one day after work, when he had been feeling good again, his hair falling just into place and his confidence slowly returning. There had been flowers. He had been smiling. The he in question had been Doyoung and the flowers had been a leftover centerpiece from a wedding. Jaehyun had misunderstood, but Jungwoo didn’t correct him because wasn’t Jungwoo wasn’t Jaehyun’s to understand, not any longer.
“You were creeping on my Insta.” Jungwoo pushed Jaehyun’s hand off his chest, tired of feeling rose petals between his fingers. “What? Were you jealous?”
Jaehyun’s hand hit the wall, palm splayed next to Jungwoo’s head and Jungwoo knew that he was playing with fire, but it was gratifying to have Jaehyun look at him like this – furious with want, like he actually felt something real for him. It was what he had wanted to see the last time they were together, when he had asked Jaehyun what they were to one another and Jaehyun had only laughed, looking every bit like the guy who had taken him home and fucked him over the back of a couch, and said:
Shouldn’t that be obvious?
“I liked them,” Jungwoo murmured, gazing at Jaehyun through his lashes, blinking away the memories of how that had hurt, wanting instead to prick Jaehyun instead. “Those flowers.” Jaehyun made noise like he had been stuck. Jungwoo looked at the mess of stems and petals on Jaehyun’s floor and asked again, “So, were you jealous?”
“Yes.” Jaehyun reached for him, his palm dry and rough as it brushed down the line of Jungwoo’s throat. “I was. Am. Will be.”
Jungwoo knew he should move away, but there was a little voice in the back of his head whispering to him that he had known all along why he had really come here. If he had really been only angry and humiliated and hurt, he would have thrown the roses away, thrown them into the Han or done anything at all other than show up on Jaehyun’s doorstep. Just like the first time, coming here had been a mistake, Jungwoo knew, but one he had wanted to make because there was still some part of him that craved the taste of Jaehyun’s mouth and the feeling of his fingertips.
“Why?”
Jaehyun’s thumb pressed down on the pulse point in his throat. “I don’t want anyone else to buy you flowers.” Jaehyun looked him dead in the eyes for the first time since Jungwoo had thrown roses in his face. “I don’t want you to look at anyone else like that.”
“Well, your little stunt worked.” Jungwoo took a breath and let it out, let himself give in to the inevitable. “I’m looking at you now.” Jungwoo licked his lips, watching Jaehyun watching the tip of his tongue slide out and over and back in, showing him the way forward. “You have my attention. So what are you going to do with it?”
The hand on his neck moved to his cheek, the eyes on his lips falling closed as Jaehyun came in for the kiss, for a moment soft and sweet before it felt like Jaehyun was trying to fuse their DNA, pressed against him from head to toe, Jungwoo’s bottom lip trapped between his teeth. Jaehyun dragged him away from the wall, kissing him without missing a step, always so good at multitasking when it came to sex that even now, Jungwoo couldn’t fail to be impressed, to trust that Jaehyun would catch him if he tripped, would keep him from getting bumped or bruised if he misstepped. In the seconds between kisses, Jungwoo caught glimpses of messes that had never been there before, a place in the kind of disarray he had never allowed for himself, not even when he was wallowing in the deepest part of the hurt. Jungwoo wondered if when the sex was over and he was gone again, if the flowers would stay where they were, scattered and wilted by Jaehyun’s front door.
Jungwoo let Jaehyun take him out of his shirt, tipped up his chin to make room for the marks Jaehyun usually left in places more discreet, places where no one would ever see, ever be able to guess that Jungwoo had someone who kissed him and bit him like this. But not this time, this time there were teeth on his throat and he knew he would wear his mistakes on his skin for days and days. The bedroom door fell open beneath the weight of his back hitting wood, Jaehyun taking him further and further until there were only steps between Jungwoo and the bed. Standing in what had once been Jungwoo’s favorite place, the place where Jaehyun sometimes brought Jungwoo coffee from the place he liked and blew on it until it was cool enough to sip, the place where Jaehyun wore glasses and his hair down and held his hand, Jaehyun went to his knees.
Moments later, when he was in Jaehyun’s throat, achingly hard and one deep touch away from coming in Jaehyun’s mouth, Jungwoo put his hand on top of Jaehyun’s head and said, “God I forgot how good you are at this, how you’re so good at everything. I hate it.”
Jaehyun stood, wrapping an arm around Jungwoo’s waist and hauling him to the bed, kissing him with a mouth that was still wet with spit and tasted of him.
“You should have come back before you could forget,” Jaehyun said, climbing between Jungwoo’s legs and working his pants off. Jungwoo lifted his hips and wondered how it was that Jaehyun could sound so sad while stripping him bare and kissing him like they were in the backroom of some sleazy club, trying to get off before the lights turned on and they got kicked out. Jaehyun turned Jungwoo over, spread his knees, and kissed the small of his back. “I thought you would come back.”
“Why?” Jungwoo murmured, turning his cheek to rest on Jaehyun’s nice sheets, trying to imagine why Jaehyun thought he would come back when he had never really been asked to stay, not in the way he wanted. “Because you’re so special and I’m someone who shouldn’t be able to resist someone like you?”
Jaehyun opened him fast and a little bit rough, the curl of his fingers as impatient and rushed as the way Jungwoo felt, as if he knew that if they stopped to take even a single breath Jungwoo would be halfway across town with rose petals stuck to the bottom of his shoes, clinging to what remained of his dignity. It was pathetic, Jungwoo knew, to have his ass in the air for a man who couldn’t really count as his ex, but the way Jaehyun touched him and kissed him had always made him a little bit stupid, a little bit of a fool for love.
“Because I thought you felt the same way I did,” Jaehyun said, wiping his hand on the sheets as he draped himself across Jungwoo’s back. “I thought you understood what we had.”
And what had they had, exactly? Jungwoo had asked himself that question over and over again as he tried to decide how long he could last being the one who felt more, who wanted things he couldn’t have. What did they have? Was it enough to stay?
Great sex. A handful of dates that always felt so stupidly expensive snuck in whenever Jaehyun could find the time because as it turned out being a chaebol-heir was time consuming. And once or twice, talking to one another, sometimes all night, talking until Jungwoo felt like his soul was as bare as his body. Those times, Jaehyun had always smiled and listened, his eyes bright as Jungwoo talked and talked, but Jaehyun had never once reciprocated, never stripped himself down, no matter how desperately Jungwoo had tried to see what was underneath, to find out if there was a way for him to get under Jaehyun’s skin.
“I understood, maybe,” Jungwoo said, not knowing even now if he had ever understood Jaehyun at all, even a little tiny bit. He rolled onto his back and let Jaehyun see how it hurt. “But it wasn’t what I wanted.”
Jaehyun sucked in a breath, his fingers digging into Jungwoo’s hips before he stood up and took off his clothes, his body as naked and beautiful as his expression was blank, the rock facade once more in place. “But you do want this, don’t you?”
Jungwoo knew he was weak, spreading his legs and closing his eyes, the truth of it always having been an endless, easy, “Yes.”
Jaehyun’s smile was thin, the inverse of happiness. He reached into what Jungwoo had always thought of his drawer full of party favors. “Shit.” The drawer slammed closed. “I don’t have a condom.” Jaehyun’s gaze was heavy, an accusation somewhere in the clench of his jaw and the bite of his tone. “I never got any more after you…left.”
“Oh.” Jungwoo stared at the ceiling, not sure what to do with that, not sure what to do with the impulse he felt to say sorry . “Are you trying to say that you haven’t…”
Jaehyun climbed on top of him, threading his fingers through Jungwoo’s hair and rocking their hips together. “Fucked anyone else?” Jaehyun sucked on his bottom lip and kissed him deeply, just like he had the very first time they met, when his tongue had tasted of the same vodka he had just tipped into Jungwoo’s mouth. “That’s right.”
“Well, then you can,” Jungwoo murmured, putting a hand between their bodies, wanting to feel and not to think, not wanting to question what it meant that Jaehyun had been alone, what it meant that his apartment was a wreck and he was sending Jungwoo red roses grown from jealousy. “Me too,” Jungwoo confessed, wanting the sex he had come for more than he wanted to preserve the illusion that he was fine, that he had moved on, that he didn’t care, that Jaehyun didn’t matter. “There was no one else.”
“Jungwoo.”
Jaehyun said his name and then nothing else, his lips pressed to Jungwoo’s lips as he pushed inside. Jungwoo opened himself up, let himself be kissed and fucked, Jaehyun taking him quickly and roughly, without any of his usual finesse, moaning like he had missed this, too, like he was just as hungry for Jungwoo. It was so good that Jungwoo wanted to laugh, wanted to call Jaehyun every name in the book for being so talented at making him feel like he was the most beautiful, most desirable man in the world when he was spread open and breathless beneath the weight of Jaehyun’s gaze, only to leave him never quite knowing where he stood – who he was – when it was over, when Jaehyun had gone back to smiling quietly at Jungwoo from behind his rock wall. He tried to give as good as he got, nails down Jaehyun’s back and teeth in his shoulder, filling up the emptiness between them with his endless sighs and moans, letting Jaehyun hear him beg for all the things that he had been missing.
“You want to be mine,” Jaehyun said as they moved towards the inevitable conclusion, whispering it into Jungwoo’s ear, half-question, half-demand, twining their hands together and pinning them on the bed. “You want to be mine.”
“I did,” Jungwoo thought, wrapping his legs around Jaehyun’s waist and urging him to go harder, begging for more and more so that he wouldn’t be coherent enough to say something as stupid as, “ Maybe I still do.”
Jaehyun held Jungwoo as he came, kissing the corner of his open mouth and rubbing his thumb back and forth and back and forth over his palm, murmuring something that sounded dangerously like please before filling Jungwoo up, hot and sticky and intimate in a way that Jungwoo should never have allowed, should never have liked as much as he did.
As soon as it was over, the fury that had brought Jungwoo to Jaehyun’s door wilted, passion cooling into the same sadness he had felt for weeks and weeks, through all of the days he had spent waiting for Jaehyun to call him, to text him, to give him a single hint that he had been missed. He turned away from Jaehyun and his endless silence, ready to leave, ready to go back home and throw away the single red rose he had stupidly put in a glass of water, unable to let it go.
Jaehyun’s hand curled around his waist, the touch as soft as his voice. “Dandelion. Stay.”
Jungwoo froze, the unexpected endearment holding him back from running away and making him cry humiliating tears for the second time in a single day. In the months that they had not quite been together, Jaehyun had only called him that a handful of times, and never for any particular reason that Jungwoo could discern, but he had always looked at Jungwoo like he had a secret he wasn’t going to tell every time he said it.
The sound of it lodged like a thorn in Jungwoo’s heart. “Why do you call me that?” Jungwoo asked, letting the question and his doubts fall out into the darkness, knowing now that he didn’t have anything left to lose, not when he had already given himself away time and time again. “Because dandelions are nothing special? Easy to pick up and then toss into the wind when you’re done with it?”
Jaehyun pulled him close, curled around him like a spoon, his lips gentle and his voice sweet as he said, “No. Because to me, you’re a wish come true.”