Chapter Text
The crowd winces as the ball narrowly misses the net. Sunoo's eyes quickly dart to Niki. The freshman curses loudly, throwing his head back in frustration. Niki is a vision on the field — jersey dark with sweat, clinging to his tall and toned figure, jet black hair dripping into his eyes. He looks good when he plays, and even better when he’s pissed.
The game drudges on painfully. Under the sweltering afternoon sun, they lose 0-2 to Seoul University. It is a friendly match, but it still bruises the team’s ego all the same. Their faces are sullen during the handshake line. Niki is the worst, pettily clasping hands with two fingers. Sunoo laughs under his breath in disbelief. “This kid…”
As though Niki heard him, he looks over from the field, searching the grandstand until he locks onto Sunoo. All of Sunoo's amusement vanishes under Niki’s dark stare, giving way to hot anticipation.
A text arrives for Sunoo as soon as Niki gets his phone.
wait for me in my room
Sunoo looks up, meeting Niki’s eyes. Niki is still watching him as he chugs from his water bottle, strong adam's apple bopping as he swallows. Sunoo’s heartbeat roars in his ears.
Sunoo leaves the grandstand, along with the other students who had gathered to watch out of boredom or curiosity. He makes his way to Niki’s dormitory room, letting himself in with the key card Niki gave him.
When Niki bursts through the door, Sunoo is already lying on his bed, stripped naked. His slender fingers move hurriedly between his milky thighs, slick with lube, working himself open.
Niki drops his bag and yanks the strings of his shorts loose. “Bend over.” Sunoo scrambles to comply, kneeling on the bed on all fours. He holds himself up with shaky arms, trembling.
Niki doesn’t waste any time taking off his clothes. He stands by the bed and peels his pants down just enough to pull out his cock. He fucks Sunoo hard and fast, pouring his frustration into every thrust. His calloused fingers grip Sunoo’s waist – strong enough to bruise — holding him still, forcing him to take every inch.
And Sunoo is in ecstasy. He claws the bedsheets and gasps Niki’s name, whining when Niki goes particularly deep. The room swells with the stench of sweat and sex.
They fuck for what feels like hours. Niki won’t let up. He’s been going at an overwhelming pace, grunting and cursing under his breath. Sunoo’s vision blurs and he struggles to hold himself up, muscles straining. “Niki…” Sunoo finally chokes out, looking back. “I can’t…tired…”
“Shh, I’m almost done.” Niki says, but takes mercy on Sunoo anyways, pushing him down to lay flat on the bed. Sunoo collapses, head spinning. Niki crawls on top of Sunoo, pressing his back against his chest, one hand gripping the bedframe, the other wrapped around Sunoo’s neck. From behind, he pushes his cock back in and fucks Sunoo frenziedly, cursing and breathing hard.
The aftermath is the two of them laid in a heaving mess on Niki’s bed, red in the face, bedsheets sticking uncomfortably to their skin. Sunoo is still seeing stars — vision crowded with black dots. Niki is the first to sit up, running a hand through his hair. He looks back at Sunoo with a smirk. “You okay?”
Sunoo continues to stare at the ceiling, still trying to catch his breath. “I need a minute.”
“Was I that good?” Niki peels the crumpled duvet off of Sunoo, chucking it into his laundry basket. Sunoo shivers from the sudden gust of cool air. “I’m not going to stroke your ego just because you lost the game.”
The same petulant frown Niki had on the soccer field appears once again. “You shouldn’t have come to watch today.” He grumbles, tugging his jersey off. “We play a lot better, we were just off today.”
“You can’t be so childish when you lose.” Sunoo chides. “That’s not how a good sportsman acts.”
“Okay grandpa.”
“I’m only 2 years older than you!” Sunoo balks. Niki laughs, shucking off his shorts. “You know,” he bends down, brushing their lips together. “I know something else you can stroke to make me feel better.”
“Stop it!” Sunoo laughs, swatting Niki away. “I’m tapped out for today.”
“Aw man.” Niki huffs but leaves Sunoo alone, hopping into the tiny attached bathroom for a shower. Sunoo watches him shut the door and afterwards, faintly brings a hand to his lips, where Niki’s mouth almost was. The key word being almost.
This is the problem: the termite that is worming its way through Sunoo’s wooden heart, chipping it open. He is starting to crave intimacy — pecks on the forehead, nuzzling noses, steady kisses on the cheek – all the corny, saccharine things that he once swore off of after Maki.
Maki was everything to Sunoo, until he abruptly dumped him on a random Thursday afternoon via one lone text message.
i’ve lost feelings. sorry.
Sunoo was blindsided and devastated, and it only made things worse when one week later, multiple people told Sunoo that they saw Maki together with Nicholas. Three years of Sunoo’s life, down the drain, over someone Maki had met a month ago.
Sunoo lost it. His friends were not allowed to bring up Maki’s name around him. His smartwatch would beep frantically every time he talked about Maki, warning him of dangerously high blood pressure. He vigorously reposted sad lyrics on Tiktok, sometimes going as far as to add a note of ‘lol. story of my life’, a stark indicator that he had reached the lowest of lows.
He also persistently waited for his friends to heed the long-standing ritual of bringing a broken-hearted friend (him) to the club to party his sorrows away, but Jake and Jungwon vehemently refused.
“If you’re like this when you’re sober,” Jungwon said. “I don’t even want to know what you’re like when alcohol is involved.”
Sunoo was left to mope in his room. He remembers that fitful week, tossing and turning until the sky turned bright, exhausted but kept awake by bitter thoughts. It was torture, until one night, at 3AM, there was an urgent knock on his door.
Sunoo, at that moment, was sitting upright in bed, ranting out loud about Maki to his empty room. He was immediately embarrassed, thinking it was his neighbour who heard everything and came to tell him to keep it down. A second, devilish voice in his head thought it was Maki himself, here to beg Sunoo for forgiveness. Sunoo leapt off his bed and swung open the door.
To Sunoo’s surprise, he was presented with an unexpected third option.
“This…thisis not…my room…” Niki mumbled drunkenly, swaying unsteadily.
Sunoo knew Niki — everyone did — for both the right and wrong reasons. Niki was tall, breathtakingly handsome, and the only freshman to make the soccer varsity team, but he was also a pathological flirt who notoriously slept around. Essentially, he was a quintessential, cliche fuckboy, and he was standing at Sunoo’s door in a dark leather jacket and sunglasses, smelling like heavy cologne.
“Yeah.” Sunoo looked around but the corridor was empty. Niki must have wandered here alone. “I don’t think you even live in this block.”
“Really? I could have sworn…” Niki whipped his head around to scan his surroundings, but the motion made him dizzy and he grabbed the top of the doorframe to steady himself. Sunoo could not deny the hitch in his breath as Niki came closer, towering over him. “Wait, aren’t you Jake’s friend? Sunwoo?”
“It’s Sunoo. Kim Sunoo.”
“Sun-oo.” Niki enunciated. “Well Sunoo, it’s really dark in here, you know? You should turn on the lights.”
“You do realise you’re wearing sunglasses right?”
“I’m wearing what?”
“It’s because your–never mind. Let me…” Sunoo reached up, carefully easing the sunglasses off Niki’s face. Niki looked around, blinking in wonder, as though he’d been blind and Sunoo had just restored his sight. “Woah. Woah. Woahhh…”
Sunoo bit back a laugh and shook his head. “Is there someone I can call for y–”
“You’re even prettier in the light.”
Sunoo blinked, his heart dropping in a sharp, startled swoop. “Even?”
“Even.” Niki affirmed.
“So… you think I’m pretty?”
“Very.” Niki answered, breaking into a slap-happy smile. Sunoo was not sure if this was part of Niki’s ruse — acting aloof, delivering sweet, guileless compliments — but it worked. Sunoo suddenly felt unusually generous. “Do you want to come in? I can make you a cup of coffee to sober up.”
“Thank. You.” Niki staggered in and collapsed on Sunoo’s floor in relief. “I am so dizzy right now.”
Sunoo whisked together a small cup of instant coffee and gave it to Niki, who slowly sipped on it, careful not to burn his tongue.
Niki began rambling about the night he had, relaying the series of events in short, unfinished sentences, his thoughts bouncing from one point to another like a pinball. “And then Jay fell down the stairs—no wait before that me and Jake were standing outside the club, waiting for him when— wait no before that what happened was—” Sunoo zoned out, occasionally chiming in with perfunctory ‘ohh’s and nods.
However, as Niki emptied his cup of coffee, sobriety returned to him and he became more and more quiet, eventually dissolving into an embarrassed puddle on Sunoo’s floor. “Um, thank you for the coffee.” He coughed and fidgeted, scratching his chin. “And I’m sorry for crashing your room. Really sorry. Did I wake you up?”
“You’re good.” Sunoo scooched off his bed and joined Niki on the floor, hoping to ease the awkwardness. However, Sunoo was suddenly tense himself, highly aware of how their knees were only centimeters apart. “I was awake anyways, so…”
Niki glanced at the clock. “Why were you up so late? Studying?”
Sunoo snorted. “No. I should be. Instead, I was wasting my time thinking about my ex.”
“Oof.” Niki gave Sunoo a wry smile. “I’m assuming it didn’t end well?”
It was a mistake to give Sunoo a fresh ear to pour out his hatred for Maki, because he took off like a bullet train. “I gave this guy three years of my life and he just threw it away like it was nothing! You know, it only took him a week to move on? A week. Here I am, a month later and I’m still so fucking pissed off. It’s so unfair! I have been there for him since the start of university and he just threw me away for some freshman. Can you believe it? I can’t. Now I’m traumatised for life, I’m never going to be in a relationship again, all for what? For a guy who couldn’t make me orgasm? Give me a goddamn break!” Realising that he was practically shouting, Sunoo held his hands out and took a deep breath. “I need to calm down.”
Niki stared at him with wide eyes, torn between a grimace and a laugh. “A bit too late for that, isn’t it?”
“Sorry. I get worked up every time I talk about him.”
“You have every right to be pissed. He sounds like a loser.” Niki drew a knee up and rested his arm on it. “Really though? Zero orgasms in three years?”
“Well, there was that one time I came really close.” Sunoo clarified pathetically. “But maybe it’s a me problem. Like my body can’t—”
Niki immediately snorted. “No, it’s definitely a him problem. It wouldn’t happen on my watch.”
Niki seemed like he did not mean for that last bit to slip out because he immediately bit down on his tongue and froze. The room stilled, tension thickening the air. A low flame flickered in Sunoo’s stomach. “Oh really?”
And to Sunoo’s complete and utter surprise, Niki turned red.
“Like, you know, just—in a sense like,”
To see someone like Niki - the supposed sex god - flustered over him emboldened Sunoo with a confidence he never had. He shifted to face Niki, demurely tilting his head. “So if you were my boyfriend, you would make sure I come?”
Niki made fleeting eye contact, constantly looking away. “Y-Yeah…”
“Why?”
The tip of Niki’s ears were flaming. “I just…” he mumbled but found the courage to look Sunoo in the eye, “...think you would look pretty.”
Sunoo’s heart thumped violently in his chest.
“Well why don’t you come and find out?”
That night, Sunoo finally had his first orgasm from a person instead of his own right hand. It was so good that he left a deep bite mark on Niki’s shoulder, and he thought that that would be all Niki would have to remember him by before he moved onto the next person, but Niki shot him a surprising question when he was pulling back on his jeans: “so when can we do this again?”
And that was how Sunoo started hooking up with Niki. These past few months have been, undoubtedly, the most thrilling period of Sunoo’s life, but the novelty is beginning to wear off. Sunoo is entering his final year of university soon. Conversations with his peers have transitioned from petty gossip to engagement plans and apartment hunting. Everyone is in serious, committed relationships while Sunoo is here fooling around with a younger guy.
It wasn’t just the rush of everyone sprinting ahead in life, leaving Sunoo to worry that he is falling behind — Niki was also a problem. Each time they slept together, he would up and leave so quickly, as though after sex, there was nothing else worth sticking around for. Sunoo knew that this was just their arrangement, and this was just who Niki was, but it does not stop the cold hollow feeling that sinks into his chest each time Niki shuts the door.
Now, as Niki is stepping out of the shower, asking Sunoo what his plans for the rest of the day are, Sunoo knows it is a prompt for him to leave. However, he stays on Niki’s bed, opening a delivery food app.
“Do you want to eat dinner together?”
They order Thai food. Sunoo perches on the edge of Niki’s bed, muttering a ‘thank you’ when Niki hands him his food. Niki drags his study table chair close to the bed and sits down. He scoops Sunoo’s dangling legs up onto his lap before cracking open his piping hot container of olive fried rice.
Sunoo gives him a questioning look, to which Niki replies, “isn’t this more comfortable for you?”
Sunoo wiggles his legs on Niki’s firm thighs and giggles. “I guess so.” However, he immediately catches himself. No more fooling around! “But I’m-I’m okay.” He quickly retracts his legs. “I have something to talk to you about.”
“What is it?” Niki asks in between shovelling large spoonfuls of rice into his mouth. Sunoo snorts under his breath. Niki is such a typical teenage boy when he eats.
“First of all, I think that I am officially healed from Maki.”
Niki stops, eyebrows raising before he breaks into a large grin. “Really? That’s great! Are you actually?”
“Yup!” Sunoo declares triumphantly, popping the ‘p’. “And I know that because well, I don’t cry over him anymore, and I feel like I want to start dating again.”
“Oh really?” Niki slowly stretches out his arms, placing his food behind him on the table. He then glances at Sunoo, rubbing the back of his neck. “Like, right now?”
“Well, soon, hopefully. Which is why…” Sunoo’s resolution wavers for a second, with Niki looking so good in his dark grey shirt and sweatpants, but he powers through, “...you and I have to stop what we’re doing.”
Niki’s smile falls. “What?”
“I mean, I obviously can’t keep sleeping with you if I start dating someone else.” Sunoo laughs. “But don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a lot of fun with you.”
However, Niki does not answer him. Instead, he turns away, staring down at his food. His silence drags out in the confined space, making Sunoo squirm. “Wait, I'm not like, cutting you off. I’m not saying to act like a stranger around me — of course not — like we can still be friends…right?”
Niki finally turns around, face blank. He shrugs. “I’m friends with everyone, so, sure I guess.”
“Wow,” Sunoo tries to crack a joke. “Don’t make me feel too special.”
“Why do I need to make you feel special?”
Sunoo flinches at Niki’s sharp tone. “Are you mad about something?”
“Can you take your dinner with you?” Niki suddenly rumbles around, flipping open his laptop and picking up his charger from the floor. “I forgot that I have a meeting to hop onto.”
Sunoo stares at Niki in disbelief. He gathers his things angrily and starts for the door. “What?” He throws out while cramming his feet into his shoes. “Are you mad because I can’t be your convenient fuck anymore?”
“What?” Niki’s head jerks up. “What? No? Why would you even think that?”
“I don’t know. Whatever. Bye.” Sunoo flounces out the door, gripping his sling bag tight.
Sunoo storms down the corridor, jaw tensed so tight that it aches. He can’t believe how quickly it took for Niki to act like a jerk the moment he denied him of sex. Were all his sweet words just a smokescreen? Was Niki just the kind of guy where how nicely he treated you was dependent on how likely he could fuck you?
However, Sunoo barely gets halfway down the corridor before a strong hand catches his wrist and pulls him back.
Niki yanks Sunoo against his chest and kisses him hard. His fingers cup the back of Sunoo’s neck, while his thumb presses deep into Sunoo’s cheekbone. Sunoo makes a muffled noise of confusion, tugging Niki’s shirt but Niki only holds him closer and tilts his head, deepening the kiss.
Sunoo’s heart is sputtering and frantically losing its rhythm. The kisses he and Niki share are rare, only occurring during sex, and it's more breathing into each other’s mouths than anything. It’s never like this.
The trance is broken when someone sees them and whistles loudly. Sunoo immediately pushes Niki away, flushing in embarrassment. “What-” Sunoo wipes his wet and swollen mouth, conscious that eyes are on them. “What was that for?”
Niki’s eyes track the movement of his hand before flicking up to Sunoo. He gives Sunoo a measured smile. “Peace offering. I’m sorry about just now. I am happy for you. I want you to be happy.”
Sunoo instantly softens, residual anger melting away. “Thank you Niki. That’s really sweet.”
“I’ll see you around okay?” Niki says and dips down, pressing a kiss to Sunoo's forehead. Just as quickly, he lets Sunoo go and vanishes back into his room.
Sunoo stands rooted in place, forehead tingling in shock. Niki has never done that before.
Maybe if Niki stayed, Sunoo might have seen it as something more. But Niki slipped away so quickly, just like how he always does, leaving Sunoo to chalk his gesture up to nothing.