Chapter Text
Lee Donghyuck’s dear mother had high expectations for her son.
Born in the break of a feverish summer, he was her little hero. She swore her trust in him the moment she had him swaddled in her arms — chubby baby cheeks glowing with a hopeful future and a face that, thankfully, hadn’t looked too much like her deadbeat husband’s.
And Donghyuck proved to be good. He excelled throughout elementary and high school, was adored by his neighbours, was the church choir trophy kid, easily adapted to being a child of divorce, parented three step-siblings, and still managed to graduate with honours.
Unfortunately, it looks like his life peaked in his youth.
Shooting stars don’t have an exponential path. And as for Lee Donghyuck, he’d crash-landed – headfirst in flames – once he’d reached adulthood. He signed himself away to be a corporate slave, and women weren’t wooed by how sweet he could sing hymns. All wasted potential sinking in the mud.
Nowadays, his mother’s dream is that she’ll live long enough to meet a grandchild. At least one.
A pipe-dream, that is.
A delusion so truly unattainable in Donghyuck’s eyes, considering the fact that he currently has his work slacks pooled at his ankles and his hand stuffed down the front of his boxers.
He couldn’t even be bothered to whip it out all the way, having come home from the office, dreary and itching to be enthusiastic about something.
His fingers clamp around his cock, pumping tight and frantic, the mixture of lotion he’d smeared over himself and his pre-come almost frothing in his palm. He’s not even paying attention to the woman getting glory-holed on his screen anymore, brain too zeroed in on getting off.
And when he finally does come, his knee-jerk reaction has him slamming his toes into the wall behind his gaming desk. The orgasm is nowhere near close to compensating for the pain.
“Fuck,” Donghyuck pants, swiping the come from his hand onto his rumpled button-up. He sags into his chair, immediately irked by the technicolour porn display and the shrill moans blasting from his speaker. Feels like a taunt.
Donghyuck promptly shuts his laptop, shrugs his shirt off, peels his boxers down his legs, and heads for the shower.
In the dim of his bathroom, his reflection stares back at him in a muddled mirror. Face greasy with another night of survival. Another day closer to 30. Another stage in the cycle.
Donghyuck’s alarm goes off three minutes before 7.30 am. A mistake he hasn’t fixed since it was first set because he’d decided that the delay gives him a while to lie under the sheets and remember day it is.
Within an hour, he’s on the train. Empty-stomached, feet in re-worn socks, and holding already lukewarm coffee in a thermos.
He’s shoulder-to-thigh plastered to a stranger, and there’s someone else’s breath hot against his ear.
Every exhale is minty, still fresh from toothpaste. If Donghyuck closes his eyes, he could imagine a make-believe lover standing behind him, crammed against his sweaty back and puffing something sweet into his skin. Maybe a woman with baby powder skin and cupid’s lips, eyes amber like sultry syrup. Slender hands, fingers long and nails like peach kitten-claws.
Those same fingers tracing along the hem of his coat…
It’s a nice vision. Dreamy enough to have him chub up in the middle of a sea of people.
Until the train jerks as it reaches the next station, and the mass of bodies collide into one another in a ripple. There’s a sharp elbow to his ribs, a bag digging into his thigh, and then his own foot landing on a somebody’s shoe.
He keeps his head down. Pulse tight. Has his eyes trained on the sliver of space between an ugly mustard pencil skirt and his crotch.
The crowd shifts, too close and too warm.
And he prays the train clears out by the next stop before another shove puts his half-hard dick against a stranger’s back.
It’s midday, slow rot.
Donghyuck’s been on the same spreadsheet for the past hour while his coworker shirks off work beside him, running his mouth like a broken dam.
Donghyuck thinks Zhong Chenle has a few more years left to him before the routine of being a 9–5 adult melts off the zealous energy. He still has that adolescent face — smiley and scintillating.
“You should try it. Maybe you’ll meet your future wife,” Chenle chirps, talking about his recent discovery of a video chat platform where you cycle through a slew of randos like playing cards.
Donghyuck doesn’t look up from the spreadsheet. “Ha. Ha,” he says flatly. “Not funny.”
Chenle punches him in the shoulder. One, two, three beats. Light but irritatingly eager, “I’m serious! It’s like roulette, right? If not for finding a girlfriend, then maybe a friend outside of work.”
Donghyuck scans the rows of numbers on his screen. The thought about having a girlfriend floats to the forefront of his mind.
His last relationship was in college with a girl he pictured a future with. Her name imprinted into the cordoned-off corner of his heart.
Huang Renjun. Renjun-ah.
Sweet utterance.
Renjun was the living version of those manic pixie dream girls people would criticise in films. She had cherry pink hair that had gone crispy from excessive bleaching, wore fake freckles on her cheeks and had chipped blue nails. She went through the same rotation of jeans, all soiled with dry paint.
And she reminded him of ambition and fire. Molotov cocktail temper.
They argued a lot. Oftentimes about nothing that mattered, but sometimes about how Donghyuck didn’t know how to ‘hold a moment’. Whatever that meant.
Donghyuck figures it’s because her heart was bigger than her body —even bigger than his body. She needed someone who could meet her where she burned and crack open in the middle of a fight.
He couldn’t give back the depth. Not even when she threw a mug at the floor and shards skittered across their shoebox apartment. Something he’d just laughed off and swept up.
Sometimes he wonders if that was the moment she stopped loving him. Or maybe it was the day she cried in the rain outside his part-time shift, and he didn’t run out to meet her — just texted: ‘Can’t leave. Promise we’ll talk later.’ She didn’t want later. She wanted someone who’d ruin their day for her. Who’d make her pain feel precious.
He didn’t understand.
Chenle’s shoe bumps into Donghyuck’s ankle as he spins in his swivel chair. He sighs long and theatrical, “Hyung, I get drinks with you every other weekend. Doesn’t it get tiring seeing my face this often?”
“Sounds like you’re the one sick of me,” Donghyuck finally leans back, aiming for nonchalant banter, but it’s embarrassing when the words stick a little hard in his throat.
“Oh, definitely,” Chenle fires back, not missing a beat. And that’s genuine nonchalance. Easy immunity. Cheerful ignorance of how much his presence could mean in Donghyuck’s otherwise stagnant orbit.
Good reminder that Donghyuck has no real connections.
He tsks. “Fuck you, Chenle,” and drags a hand through his hair like he’s trying to rub the whole conversation out of his skull. He grabs a small stack of papers from his desk and slaps it onto Chenle’s keyboard.
“Fix this report. The numbers are off.”
Chenle groans, already rolling back toward his screen. “I sent that in yesterday — ”
“Yeah. And it’s still wrong today."
His arrival back home is unceremonious as always. A greeting from his dead cactus by the kitchen window and the same old walls that have been holding its breath since he turned 21.
Donghyuck’s keys clatter against the kitchen counter as he drops his bag somewhere nearby. Then he stumbles his way to his bedroom, loosens his tie, and sits in the half-light of his desk lamp, limbs still in auto mode. When he opens his laptop to the freeze-frame of the porno from yesterday, shame floods over his face in seconds. Physical recoil.
He closes the tab.
Now it’s just a staring contest between him and the browser page. And maybe an imaginary devil that looks eerily similar to Chenle sitting atop his shoulder. And — oh, what the hell!
He types in the name of the site: NeoMingle. The homepage is cartoonish. Bubble fonts, neon buttons. Promises of ‘Fun, friends & flirty strangers!’
Donghyuck clicks ‘Start Chat’.
The screen flashes. Connects. Disconnects. Connects again.
Faces appear and disappear in bursts: a man vaping in a hoodie, someone holding up a drawing of a penis, two teenagers giggling between themselves and skipping him before he can even speak.
Another face loads in pixels. It’s a girl on the other end. Young — maybe early twenties. Maybe younger. She has the same adolescent radiance Chenle has, but prettier. A sort of forced innocence that manages to bloom through the shitty video-cam quality. Hair tied in a ponytail, loose shirt falling past a knobby shoulder. Dewy bright under where a lamp-light shines on her.
Donghyuck leans in with a shy ‘hello’, but she doesn’t answer, just stares her fox eyes somewhere past the screen, eyebrows drawing together.
And then she tips forward and shifts the camera lower.
She’s got her knees under herself, working its hinges to raise her body off of something unmistakable. Hot pink silicone. Big.
When she drops her weight onto the dildo, she gasps — loud and obscene, and Donghyuck thinks he gasps with her, an exhale that he chokes on. It has his hands snaking southward, fingers wrestling over a button and a zipper.
It’s a simmering, sickly realisation for Donghyuck. One that begins heavy in his gut like a balloon starting to expand. Growing and growing the further he reaches into his slacks, threatening to pop the moment his hands wrap around his cock.
He glances at her. She doesn’t blink at him. He strokes himself, tentative, and she doesn’t care. Doesn’t react, doesn’t breathe a word. Just keeps her pace. Little mewls for herself to hear, echoing over into the silence of Donghyuck’s room.
“You’re amazing,” Donghyuck whispers, tracking the girl’s movements with lazy eyes to match the rhythm of his hips.
It’s good. This is good. He feels within his body for once as he comes closer to his climax.
Then something in the chatbox flashes in his periphery.
[7.28PM]
PrincessluNaJ
Hi User: haechanlee !
Got u on cam!!
Donghyuck’s almost ignores it if not for a shot of nearly picture-perfect ahegao cutting to a black screen. The disillusionment has Donghyuck faltering, his hand slipping off his cock entirely, chest caving in a confused inhale.
He types with sticky fingers.
[7.28PM]
haechanlee
What?
He hears clicking on the other end. The screen shifts — and now he’s watching himself, from her perspective. Grainy, unflattering webcam feed of him hunched over in his chair, dick flushed a distinguishable red in his hand as he jerks off like a dog.
His heart punches up into his throat. Balloon completely bursting into a horrific wave of nausea.
[7.29PM]
haechanlee
Delete this.
[7.29PM]
PrincessluNaJ
Hmmm
Why should i??
[7.29PM]
haechanlee
Ok. I’m really sorry
Please, delete it.
[7.29PM]
PrincessluNaJ
Too late for sorries now bby
Shouldn’t have jacked off just like that huh
bet ur regretting..
[7.29PM]
haechanlee
Delete this please.
[7.30PM]
PrincessluNaJ
No lol
Donghyuck blinks. Squeezes his eyes shut so hard that the dark prickles, hoping that when he opens them again, he’ll wake up to his mildew ceiling. But what swamps his vision is the same video of himself replaying.
Depraved and desperate.
Surreal panic surges through him.
[7.31PM]
haechanlee
Fuck you
Fuckign delete it
I swear to god
This isnt fucii ng funny
DELETE !!!!!
Donghyuck pauses, shakes.
[7.32PM]
haechanlee
Do you want money?
I’ll pay up pls just delete it.
He watches as three mocking little dots bounce as she types out her response.
[7.33PM]
PrincessluNaJ
Send ur address
[7.33PM]
haechanlee
What?
No, what for?
[7.33PM]
PrincessluNaJ
I want it in cash
[7.33PM]
haechanlee
WTF
That makes no sense.
I’ll wire you just send your info.
[7.34PM]
PrincessluNaJ
Cash.
Donghyuck shoves the chair back in frustration with a violent scrape, the legs catching on the rug, his knees knocking the desk. The laptop wobbles, screen still glowing with his humiliation, caught mid-moan, mid-stroke, something he doesn’t want to recognise as himself.
[7.34PM]
haechanlee
I swear to god i’ll fucking go to the police
He grips the edges of the desk until his knuckles blanch.
A message notification pings.
[7.34PM]
PrincessluNaJ
Sure let’s see if they’ll believe u
Log off and find out what happens
His ears are ringing. His body feels like it’s shrinking into itself – collapsing inward under the weight of self-preservation, sick and sour.
[7.35PM]
haechanlee
[address attached]
[7.35PM]
PrincessluNaJ
Yayyy
see u soon, mr haechan lee
Then she leaves the chat.
Donghyuck slams his laptop closed.
He survives the rest of the week in sheer paranoia. Grasping for any signals that he’s been outed for his dirty little secret. A glance that lingers too long. A snort of laughter from two cubicles down. Chenle muttering something low into his phone, then looking up with beady eyes.
But nothing happens.
The world rolls like a marble, unbearably normal. And by Sunday, he’s already relapsed into a normal heart rate and the prideless pattern of his life.
He wakes up at 9 am. Not early enough to feel productive, but not late enough to feel rebellious, and scrolls through his phone in bed. Skips every message from his mother. While standing over the sink, shovelling reheated curry into his mouth for breakfast, a knock comes on the door. He wonders if he’d forgotten to pay last month’s rent.
Donghyuck swallows down half-chewed rice, and opens the door. An unfamiliar face comes before him.
A tall boy, in jeans and a wife-beater tank — mysterious stain near the nipple. There’s a bulky backpack slung over his shoulder. He looks like he should be in a magazine. He smiles down at Donghyuck like some sort of caricature. On instinct, Donghyuck tries to wedge himself in the doorway, “Hi. May I help you?”
“You’re a lot shorter than I thought you’d be,” the stranger says to himself more than anything. Sizes Donghyuck up.
Donghyuck huffs, “Excuse me?” And when he realises the absurdity of being insulted in his own doorway, he makes to shut the door in the guy’s face, “Whatever, kid.”
That is until said kid catches the doorknob with startling force, wrenching it back open, “Hello, Mr. Haechan Lee.”
Realisation hits him cold and fast. Like falling through ice.
“…You — that was you?”
The guy’s smile slashes through his cheeks, peace sign to the side of his face, “Bingo~ It’s Princess Luna Jae!”
When Donghyuck is too dumbstruck to answer, the man sighs with a flourish. “I know, I know — I look different.” He shrugs, easy. Confident. Righteous. “But that was just a…friend – standing in for me. She owed me one.”
Donghyuck hadn’t even registered the closing gap between them until there are ten rows of shark teeth inches away from him, bared at him in a tease. The stranger’s words warp and bend with the way he baby-talks, “You didn’t actually think that was in real-time, did you?”
Pure condescension as he leans over into his space, one leg already bypassing the barricade of Donghyuck’s body. Donghyuck trembles with an empty, open mouth — mortified, belittled.
“Aigoo. Just as stupid as the rest of them.” Then the young man body-checks Donghyuck out of the way to properly invite himself into the apartment. Doesn’t even spare a glance as Donghyuck staggers back with the force.
He kicks off his sneakers at the entrance and throws his bag to the ground. “Ugh. You live in a dump,” he declares, already padding across the apartment in his socks. Surveying Donghyuck’s house. Prodding at his things.
Donghyuck has to follow behind like a lost puppy. Gratuitously defensive, “I get busy. It’s hard to clean up.”
The guy throws a snicker over his shoulder, “But you have time to …” and waves around his fist, curled into an ‘O’, like a fucking bastard.
It has Donghyuck stopping in his tracks, timid tolerance fraying with each second, “You came here for cash, right? Just — can you tell me how much you want so we can — ”
And the man cackles, a mean, thunderous sound before flopping onto Donghyuck’s couch,“Will you even have enough? You just have 10k in cash sitting around? Do you even have that much in your own bank account?”
10k. Ten grand to protect his dignity? Whatever’s left of it? To uphold what reputation and to whom? His mom? …This fuckface on his couch?
And yet –
“I…I can pay it off. In instalments.”
Fuckface smiles like the cat that got the cream, spreading his arms along the backrest, “Yup! Sounds good to me.” Rolls his neck and puffs his chest, and Donghyuck can already hear the guy’s ego inflating with a big inhale. “Then in the meantime, I think I’ll crash here.”
What —
“What?”
“You have an extra mattress? I’d offer to take the couch, but…I don’t really want to. This couch is ass.”
Donghyuck’s patience is completely torn through when he strides up to Fuckface. Arms crossed and stance firm. Like a proper adult. He stands over him, hoping his glare burns, “No. No, you can’t stay here!”
Fuckface stares back, clearly bored, “I’m not going back to working at that whorehouse.”
Again, what –
“Whore…house?”
“Whorehouse. Don’t act like you’re not familiar.”
“I’ve never been to one!” And God, Donghyuck’s about to start stomping his foot just talking to this boy when he gives Donghyuck a once-over and a doubtful frown.
Donghyuck raises his shoulders high, lip curled in disdain as he looks down at him from an invisible pedestal, “What are you… like a sex worker? How old are you, even— like, 18?”
Just as easily, Fuckface knocks him down every peg, “And how old are you? 30? Jerking it to younger girls on the internet? Fucking perv.”
Donghyuck looms over him and spits, “Get out of my house, slut.”
What happens after that is a disorienting set of events, but Donghyuck clearly remembers the pain that bolted through his bones when his knees had crashed into the hard tile as Fuckface kicked his feet right out from under him.
He remembers the blistering heat under his skin when he’d been hauled forward by the hair, head held up in a vice grip. Fuckface had said something cruel, something along the lines of, “A pretty face wasted on a dead brain.” Or something.
That, and the memory of breaking down from the aggression – all of Donghyuck’s fury and bravado evaporating into full-fledged fear. Waterworks, snot, and doom clogging up his throat.
And what was worse was how Fuckface had pulled him to his feet at the first sign of Donghyuck’s tears, like he had been expecting more of a fight.
Fuckface had gawped at him, a little bit apprehensive, a lot transfixed. Gracious enough not to point out the chub straining against the front of Donghyuck’s shorts.
Donghyuck was ten, waiting in the damp church basement after choir practice, sweat clinging to his back under the white robe. The room smelled of cheap instant coffee, shoe polish, and bleach.
His mother was upstairs in the chapel, praying.
Down there, it was just him and the youth minister.
“Sit still, Donghyuck-ah,” Brother Min reprimands, gently. “You fidget too much.”
Donghyuck had straightened his spine, knees locked together. Brother Min was standing before him, petting his hair. When Donghyuck glanced up, the overhead lights were crested right above Brother Min’s head. It had looked like a halo. “You’re such a good boy,” he says.
The room was oversaturatingly warm.
Donghyuck had stared past Brother Min’s head, and at the crucifix on the wall. Christ is watching.
“Obedience. Loyalty. That is what makes a good man, Donghyuck-ah. You will grow up to be good. Not like your father.”
His body curled into itself for days after.
Two hours later, Donghyuck finds himself waking up to a dull ache in the back of his brain. A lingering shame that hurts more the longer he lies still. He blinks past the film of sleep, throat dry.
When he sneaks out of his bedroom, the living room is just as he’d left it that morning. Scuffed sneakers are gone from his doorstep, couch cushions undisturbed.
Maybe he imagined the whole thing. Fever dream.
Suddenly, he hears the telltale click of his front door opening.
Fuckface stands in the doorway with his arms full of grocery bags and a bottle of soda lodged between his elbow and his side. “Oh. You’re alive,” he says flatly. “Thought the panic attack killed you. Ah, wishful thinking.”
And only if Donghyuck didn‘t have a raging headache — “You bought food?”
“I got hungry, and you have nothing in the fridge,” Fuckface answers, crossing into the kitchen with his shoes still on. He sets three paper bags on the counter. Then reaches into his back pocket and tosses what looks like Donghyuck’s wallet on top of them. “I borrowed your wallet, by the way.”
“That’s not borrowing, you little fucker!” Donghyuck snaps. “That’s stealing.”
“Relax. I’ll take it out of the 10k you owe me. How about that, huh?”
Donghyuck rubs a hand over his face, feeling the exhaustion smear right across his frown, “If you’re gonna stay here, we need to set some rules.” He strides forward and lists it off his fingers, “Ask for permission before you use my things. No uninvited guests. Stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours.” A beat. “And give me a real name to call you.”
“You have a lot of demands for someone in your position,” Fuckface rolls his eyes, but nevertheless — “Jaemin.”
“Okay.” Donghyuck exhales. “Okay, Jaemin. I’m Haechan.” And extends his hand for a shake. Waving his white-flag. A truce. Donghyuck tries not to tremble right where he stands.
Jaemin eyes the peace-offering. Then he grins — slow, menacing — and meets Donghyuck halfway, “Hi, oppa.” The way he says it is oversweet, ‘oppa’ thick in his mouth just to take the piss out of Donghyuck. Then he yanks Donghyuck forward so their chests collide, “Weekly instalments,” Jaemin murmurs straight into his ear. “I want my cash every Saturday.”
“O-kay.” Donghyuck knows Jaemin feels it second-hand — Donghyuck’s responding shudder — with the way Jaemin’s smile grows bigger.
Before Donghyuck can pull away, Jaemin adds as a concluding afterthought, “Don't forget.”
The arrangement stands at this:
- Donghyuck has 6 months (that’s $400 give or take per week)
- Jaemin will help with the house chores (though his idea of “help” seems to involve cleaning only when Donghyuck is watching.)
- Respect each other’s space
That last one is more implied than spoken. A quiet agreement neither of them signed, but it’s one that Donghyuck clutches onto like a safety net.
It’s been nearly five years since Donghyuck last had to live around another person. And by the final, collapsing year of Donghyuck and Renjun’s relationship, they were barely in the apartment at the same time, except for when they touched by default, asleep in one bed.
Just too busy surviving parallel lives under the illusion of a shared one.
And while Renjun’s presence had always been salient, it was always subtle. Considerate. Bashful and coy, almost — in a way that Jaemin isn’t. At all.
It’s only been a week, and Jaemin has already started leaving his wet towel draped on the arm of the couch. He blasts music in the middle of the night that Donghyuck can hear through his tissue-thin walls. Drinks juice straight from the carton and stares Donghyuck down as he does it. Scatters himself around like mold.
Despite everything, Donghyuck endures it. Tells himself that this is what it’s like to be young and juvenile, even if he doesn’t remember anymore.
Donghyuck’s alarm goes off at 7.27 am. Today is a Thursday.
He goes through the motions. Showers. Brushes his teeth. Wears the same socks from yesterday. The kitchen hums under the dim light as he bumbles around, still bleary, preparing his coffee with the precision of habit.
Behind him, the mattress on the floor of the living room rustles as Jaemin stirs awake. They make brief eye contact before Donghyuck turns back to the coffee pot.
“Your alarm’s annoying,” Jaemin grumbles, voice sleep-rough. “Like, you set it at a really weird time.”
Donghyuck makes a non-committal sound as he uncaps his thermos.
Jaemin carries on anyway, “Skipping breakfast again?”
“Muh-huh.”
“That’s why you’re puny as fuck, by the way.”
Donghyuck swallows down his rising blood pressure. If he expends his energy on this argument, he won’t have enough to survive the rest of the day. “Go back to sleep, Jaemin.”
Jaemin doesn’t. Just yawns obnoxiously, drags a hand across his face. “You OT-ing again today?”
“Don’t know.”
“You OT so much.”
“I know.”
And an easy silence settles while Donghyuck finishes up in the kitchen and slips on his blazer. Jaemin watches him from the side as he’s tying his shoelaces, “You’re gonna die early, Haechan hyung.”
‘Better that way’ —is what Donghyuck thinks instinctively, but instead, he stands up and grabs his keys. “I’m leaving. Stay out of my room.”
That evening, when he comes back, the apartment smells… warm. Something umami and savoury.
Two bowls are set on the kitchen counter. Steamed rice and a thick, glossy stew he recognizes from childhood. Donghyuck’s staring at the steam curling upward when Jaemin emerges— wet-haired, skin flushed from heat and glistening from a shower. “I made extra,” he says, then walks past and tosses a very damp towel on the couch.
That evening, Donghyuck eats doenjang jjigae for dinner.
And when Donghyuck wakes up the next morning, his alarm clock reads 7.30 am on the dot.
It’s Saturday. Debt’s due.
“So you can cook,” Jaemin says around a mouthful of beef stir-fry while his fingers flip through crisp dollar bills.
That morning, Donghyuck had woken up earlier than his usual 9 am to have enough time to withdraw money, do the groceries, prepare breakfast, and pack his dues into an envelope.
Donghyuck scoops more rice into his bowl, “Yeah, I can. And can you count the money later? I’m trying to eat.” He sighs, “I can’t get away with paying short, anyway. We literally live together.”
That makes Jaemin scoff, “We do live together. Isn’t that romantic?” He tucks the bills back into the envelope and leans over the coffee table, “Hyungie, you can cook — and yet—you choose to eat all the junk you usually do because…?”
“It’s just me. Not worth the extra effort.”
At that, Jaemin makes a face, strong eyebrows worming over his forehead. “When I lived with my druggy aunt, you’d be sure as hell that I was cooking for me. Not for her. Never for her.” He pops another spoonful past his lips, sauce smudging the corner of his frown, “You should. Especially if it’s just you.”
Donghyuck shrugs, “It’s just habit, I guess. I grew up cooking mainly because I had to feed my siblings.” His fingers twitch as they grip his chopsticks. Eyes trained on stained lips, older brother instincts firing up. “I’m sorry about your aunt, by the way,” Donghyuck adds quietly, finally looking away.
Jaemin just hums, easy little tune, “Mm, it’s whatever… Y’know, I could’ve sworn you were an only child too.” He swipes his thumb over the mess on his mouth and grins to himself, “ — with how lonely you are.”
They eventually learn to cohabitate in a way that feels less like living around each other and more like living with each other. Jaemin eventually shapes himself around Donghyuck’s routine. Meanwhile, Donghyuck learns to appreciate Jaemin’s unpredictability and passing impudence.
Until one evening, he steps through his front door after three gruelling hours of overtime, and he’s met with silence. No teenage dirtbag boy in his living room or kitchen.
But then there’s an unmistakable sound that reverberates down the hallway.
A deep, from gut-to-chest moan.
Donghyuck’s mind spins as his feet carry him over to the doorway of his bedroom. “What the fuck are you doing?”
And lo and behold, Jaemin’s sprawled out on his sheets. His shirt is missing, and his pants and underwear are at the foot of the bed. And Donghyuck swears this is the type of erotic body you only see in pornos post-edit — gleaning, milky skin moulded over bricks of muscle, teeny-tiny waist and skull-crusher thighs. Monster cock.
(By Donghyuck’s standards, at least.)
Jaemin doesn’t startle. He doesn’t care about getting caught with his dick in his hands, and doesn’t even have the fucking respect to stop stroking himself. Donghyuck strides over to snatch Jaemin’s clothes off the floor, just to fling them out of the room, yelling at him, “Get the fuck out!”
Jaemin only groans, irritated, and slides himself lower down the bed so he has the angle to knock his foot into Donghyuck’s side – to nudge Donghyuck away like he’s just a nosy cat. Donghyuck catches his ankle and attempts to drag Jaemin off the mattress, forgetting the sizeable difference in their physique. He gets tugged over the edge of the bed as Jaemin draws his foot back.
Donghyuck gets an eyeful as he lands between Jaemin’s open legs, and he feels the hot churn of arousal in his stomach. But before he can get his arms under himself, Jaemin hooks his heel into Donghyuck’s armpit, calf crossed over Donghyuck’s back.
“Fucking — let go of me! Jaemin!”
Jaemin lifts his head to peer down at him, gaze growing more predatory with every struggling breath Donghyuck takes, “Let’s stop acting like you didn’t get hard the last time, oppa.” Jaemin props himself up on his elbows and presses his weight down just to hear Donghyuck wheeze, folds his legs inward to pull Donghyuck’s little torso into the trap of his thighs. “Do you wanna touch it?”
Donghyuck tries to twist out of the deadlock of Jaemin’s legs, but it makes Jaemin squeeze harder, and it has Donghyuck whimpering something pathetic and wounded.
And Jaemin so obviously likes it.
Likes Donghyuck small and at his mercy.
Jaemin leans down further to whisper, “Wanna put your lips around it?”
Donghyuck yelps as Jaemin shoves his head forward, scorching-hot skin slick against his face. “Or are you gonna cry again?”
Perhaps it’s muscle memory. Perhaps it’s instinct. Or it’s obedience and loyalty when Donghyuck opens his mouth and tucks Jaemin’s dick between his tongue and teeth, lube and pre-come coating his gums.
The head of his dick strikes Donghyuck’s hard palate as Jaemin jolts at the sensation. At Donghyuck’s unexpected compliance.
For a moment, Jaemin just watches as Donghyuck works his mouth around the tip, spittle escaping past the suction of his lips, and then he ducks his head to put his mouth to Donghyuck’s ear, “Finally, peace and quiet.”
Then a heavy palm pushes Donghyuck down by the nape of his neck.
Down, down, down.
Donghyuck’s lips crack at the far corners, the wider his mouth is forced open. And Donghyuck makes a noise as his throat fights back the intrusion, a terrible retch that threatens to turn him inside out.
But Jaemin pets his hair gently, lies through his teeth because he likes this. “Oh, oppa, you’re not so bad at this.” He digs his heels into Donghyuck’s sides and tips Donghyuck’s head back, delighted as his cock slides out of Donghyuck’s mouth with a sickly cough and a pearly string of spit.
Donghyuck rasps, “Fuck. You.”
Jaemin’s eyes practically twinkle as he holds Donghyuck’s head up by the hair, “Yeah? People pay me for that, usually. You planning to hand the cash in early this week?”
Donghyuck isn’t graced with a chance to answer because Jaemin mashes his cheeks together, mouth forced shut in a pout, “Stay still, oppa. Let me come on your face.
—Be good.”
They never talk about it after. Days turn to weeks. Weeks into a month.
Sometimes Donghyuck wakes up in a cold sweat when an apparition of their bodies comes to him behind his eyelids. The violation so surreal it has his stomach somersaulting.
It gets worse on some days when he works extra hours, and Jaemin’s already asleep by the time he’s home.
“Welcome back, Haechan-ssi.”
It was one of those days for Donghyuck. The kind where time trickles by like paint dripping down a wall, one agonising hour after another agonising hour. The hum of a hundred-something desktops pressing down like a weight, and the drone of empty, adult conversation.
‘Something, something, what weather we’re having.’
‘Some time, some place, let’s grab drinks!’
‘Someone and someone, getting married.’
And Donghyuck would hate to admit that he’s feeling bitter about today’s office gossip. His bitterness being the reason behind why he’d left his desk when the news had carried down to his department.
He’d slipped into one of the toilet cubicles and daydreamt of a wedding honeymoon with his cock in his fist. Ideas of breathless love, come stains on white satin, debauched bride and all. His orgasm had passed over him like a cold draft, about as meaningless as the chatter he returned to.
That may or may not be the reason why it grates on his nerves when he arrives home to a sink full of dishes, a growing pile of dirty laundry, and Jaemin, phone in hand, lazy on his couch, saying: ‘welcome’.
Sucks to know more days like this are waiting in line with no walk down the aisle and sex in a marriage bed and a family worth living for.
So instead of a ‘fuck you’, Donghyuck collapses onto what little space there is left on the couch, “Hey, Jaemin-ah, what do you do when I’m out at work all day?”
Jaemin glances up, “Hyung’s suddenly curious?”
“Well, I’d been keeping my hopes up that you’re actually doing chores while I’m away — but clearly not,” Donghyuck shields his eyes from the light, and from the spillage of what he believes is yesterday’s dinner on the coffee table. It looks like it’s been absorbed into the wood.
He hears Jaemin snort beside him, “Am I not a good enough trophy wife for you?” There’s a pause. “What did you call me when we first met, hm?”
Donghyuck lifts his arm from his face to find Jaemin turned to him, and now that he’s face-to-face with Jaemin, he’s reminded of— yeah, what a Fuckface. But before Donghyuck can say it, Jaemin interrupts happily, “Sex worker. Or slut, if you will. I’m getting paid the way I know best.”
The words filter into his tired mind, and the memory of their first meeting makes him cringe, until the meaning behind what Jaemin had said worsens the itch to have a fit. He clears his throat, “You still…but why? You’re already leeching off of me, I don’t get — ”
“Cuz’ I like it? I like sex. And I like money.”
“So I’m just extra income for you?” the response tumbles from Donghyuck’s mouth in a whisper, involuntary.
Jaemin raises a brow, rumbles, “What was that?”
And really, Donghyuck should just let it go. Stand up, drag himself to his room, and sleep it off.
But the spite has been building up for 2 weeks now. It had sprouted like a weed ever since he had the devastating realisation that he came the hardest he’s ever had with another man’s semen glazed over his cheeks while he humped the mattress like a bitch. Something that – all those years ago – he’d buried in a hatchet, and let all the silt and soil make sure it’d never come back to haunt him. But still.
It revived with the realisation that he might never know that same mortifying pleasure again.
Should’ve let it go – but he coughed it all up behind a lie.
“You’re basically ruining my life so that you can continue fucking yours up.” Donghyuck laughs, vicious, “You could be getting a real job. Live like a functioning member of society. Or you could fucking go back to school, learn to do something other than give a handy. God, I don’t know. You’re an actual slut and you’re proud of it, Jaemin. That’s — that’s fucking ridiculous.”
By the end of it, Donghyuck’s breathing hard, and Jaemin’s just looking at him. Not glaring, not staring him down. Just looking, like he’d said nothing at all.
Maybe this is how Renjun must’ve felt when Donghyuck would chuckle and sigh in the middle of a fight.
Donghyuck’s about to half-ass an apology when Jaemin crowds him into the nook of the couch. When Donghyuck goes to shove him away with a hand, Jaemin catches his wrist in a grip that threatens to snap bones and burst vessels, but the palm that goes to cradle Donghyuck’s jaw is not unkind. “My poor hyung. Throwing a temper tantrum because he gets neither sex nor money.” A thumb brushing sweetly under his eye, “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’re losing out.”
It feels like all the air has been sucked right out of his lungs.
“Does it make you feel small, hm?” Jaemin closes in, seeing Donghyuck’s fear in clear detail, mockery pressed into his skin and pores.
“No, I — ”
“No? Then what is it, oppa? What’s making you so upset?”
“Uh,” and Donghyuck doesn’t realise there are tears leaking down his face until he tastes the salt of it on his tongue. Jaemin noses the wetness over his cheek, and it’s in the tenderness that he’s been so starved of that Donghyuck cries harder.
Cries and wails, even as Jaemin benevolently brings a hand southwards to unbutton Donghyuck’s work slacks, strokes him over his briefs. Donghyuck folds into the touch, automatically bending his knees up and curling his ankles around the small of Jaemin’s back. He’s still crying, and he doesn’t quite know how to stop. But Jaemin doesn’t shush him, doesn’t tell him to ‘grow up’ and ‘just calm down’. So he lets his chest hollow out and pour from his eyes while Jaemin hooks his fingers into Donghyuck’s waistband and tugs everything off.
The sudden humiliation of being bare to someone else’s eyes swells in the back of his throat long enough to stop his sobbing in an aborted gasp. He tries to close his legs when Jaemin pins him open with the weight of his hands.
“Ah. Behave,” Jaemin chides, smoothing his hand over the inside of Donghyuck’s thigh. Donghyuck, against his better judgment, listens and watches as Jaemin leans back, reaching behind himself for his phone.
Donghyuck swallows, “Why – ” and the camera flash goes off. In an instant, Donghyuck sits up but gets promptly rammed back into the cushions. Jaemin keeps a palm flat to Donghyuck’s sternum while he uses the leverage he has between Donghyuck’s legs to keep him spread nice and open.
There’s a constant pulse of light as Jaemin aims his phone low. Donghyuck grapples for Jaemin’s phone and twists under his hold, “Stop — please, Jaemin.”
Jaemin tears his eyes away from the screen for a moment, “Hmm. Hyung.”
Donghyuck’s voice shakes, “Don’t — don’t blackmail me. I can’t.”
At that, Jaemin’s eyes crinkle, something near bewitching, and he laughs softly. He puts his phone away and leans down to scrape his teeth against Donghyuck’s nose. Donghyuck tries not to blench.
Jaemin’s hand trails down from his chest to where he runs the hottest, forefinger curling over the base of Donghyuck’s cock and thumb resting against his pucker. “I won’t use it against you, hyungie.”
“Don’t trust you,” Donghyuck stutters out through a gasp, the grip around his cock getting tighter.
But Jaemin reassures softly, “Oh, why? It’s just a keepsake. Like how my uncle used to do with polaroids.”
Donghyuck can’t process what Jaemin says because there’s sudden pressure against his entrance, a dry thumb trying to dip into new territory. Donghyuck claws Jaemin’s hand away, “Jaemin, I’ve never — I haven’t. Before.”
Jaemin hums low in his throat before he ducks out of Donghyuck’s line of sight, head tucked low between Donghyuck’s legs. Without warning, clammy heat swipes over Donghyuck’s hole, and he jerks away. It makes Jaemin laugh like an asshole before he’s clamping his hands around the concave of Donghyuck’s hips, and a horrified moan is ripped from him as he is held down against Jaemin’s plundering mouth.
Donghyuck’s head spins at the sensation of Jaemin tracing his rim with his tongue. It feels as dirty as it looks in the porn he watches: the way Jaemin seals his lips over his pucker. He keens, the sole of his foot battering against Jaemin’s shoulder when he feels the tip of Jaemin’s tongue probing past his entrance, trying to spade him open. “Jaemin!”
In response, Jaemin fucking giggles, sending puffs of hot air against Donghyuck’s hole. He wedges a finger alongside his tongue, brutish and mean even when Donghyuck’s body resists it — spitting Jaemin’s fingertip out on every attempt.
Jaemin only pulls away to pout, silken-thick saliva smeared to his chin, and smacks his lips, “You’re too tight, oppa.” And he releases his grip on Donghyuck in one careless pull of his hands. It has the lower half of Donghyuck’s body thumping onto the couch like a sandbag. It also has the knot in Donghyuck’s belly unravelling into instant chagrin.
“What’s happening? Why’d you stop?”
Jaemin pats Donghyuck’s knee placatingly, “I’m not about to tear you open.”
The visual shoved into Donghyuck’s brain makes him grimace. He feels too aware of the tacky tracks of tears on his cheeks, sticky in all the wrong places. His voice comes out on a rough exhale, “After all the shit you’ve already done to me?”
“That was barely anything, hyung.” It pisses Donghyuck off more that he can clearly tell Jaemin’s trying to suppress a laugh, condescending in itself. “You’re crying, and we haven’t even got to the really good part.”
Donghyuck props himself up on his elbows and peers down the ruined line of his own body. Past the up-and-down puffing of his chest, his dick is a raging red bull. Judging by the sizeable bulge behind Jaemin’s sweatpants, he’s faring no better than Donghyuck.
“Then what?” Donghyuck huffs.
There’s a second of silence where Donghyuck thinks Jaemin will roll his eyes and walk away. But then Jaemin is tucking the front of his sweats under his cock and knocking Donghyuck back, flat on the cushions. It’s a few breathless moments as Jaemin presses a kiss to the tip of Donghyuck’s dick before he leans in lower and closes his lips around one of Donghyuck’s balls, lolling it around, sloppy wet and warm as his hand works to jerk Donghyuck off.
And in the haze of an oncoming orgasm, Donghyuck realises that Jaemin had gone and locked his thighs around the meat of Donghyuck’s leg, rutting violently into Donghyuck’s shin.
A secluded part of his mind thinks it’s pathetic.
Horny little loser boy who’ll hump anything.
Doesn’t matter that the realisation hits him like a sledgehammer straight to his cock, coming so hard his vision bursts into static on a screen.
And I am no better.
When Donghyuck comes back to himself, Jaemin is rubbing circles into Donghyuck’s shin and calf, thumb smearing something treacly and thick into his skin. He kicks him at him with whatever energy he has left and sags back into the couch.
Almost sweetly Jaemin follows him down into the cushions, cramming his sweaty head under Donghyuck’s chin. His voice is low and creamy when he murmurs, “You’re real cute, you know hyung? It’s a shame you’re…like this.” He yawns and snuggles into Donghyuck’s side, “We should get you trained. Don’t you agree?”
“Fuck off. I’m not a dog,” but Donghyuck doesn’t sound nearly as mad as he should be with the drowsiness pulling him into its arms.
“What time is it, Lee Donghyuck?”
He still remembers the way his mother used to boom throughout the house. That time she’d been calling from the kitchen, her voice sharp with the clatter of dishes. “You promised Dohun you’d bring him to taekwondo!”
Donghyuck had only groaned into his pillow, hoping she’d give up and bring him herself. But eventually, the lack of response had his mother materialising at his door, yanking the blanket off of him and drawing the blinds. “Donghyuck.”
He rolled onto his back and whined, his voice pitchy with puberty. “It’s Saturday, Eomma.”
“I know what day it is,” she snapped. “You don’t get a day off from being a big brother. Do you think I get a day off from being your mother? Don’t you think I’m tired?”
He knew there wasn’t any point to arguing so he’d kept mum, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and let the resentment simmer just under his skin.
By the time Donghyuck was slipping his sneakers on, Dohun’s hair was ruffled, his belt already half undone, and his cheeks sheeny with sweat and flushed with excitement.
“Hyung, are we late?” he asked, bouncing in place.
“No,” Donghyuck said, grabbing the gym bag. “Relax.”
His mother handed him a bottle of water and a folded bill. “Don’t skip out early,” she warned, shooing them out the entryway. “And make sure he stretches this time. Last week, he complained his legs were hurting.”
“That’s because you make him kick air for an hour and a half,” Donghyuck had muttered.
“I heard that.”
Donghyuck sighs, shutting the door behind them with a dull thud, sealing off the apartment and the smell of leftover stew. The stairwell was cold, the walls that were white had gone swampy grey, but at least Dohun didn’t mind. His little brother took the steps two at a time, punching the air and going ‘kyaaa!’.
Outside, the neighborhood was quiet in that lazy Saturday way. Store shutters half down, ahjussis rolled out at the convenience store tables. Donghyuck walked a step behind Dohun, watching him skip over cracks in the pavement because stepping on one would ‘break eomma’s back’.
“Hyung.” Dohun had glanced back at him suddenly, “Do you hate it?”
Donghyuck blinked. “Hate what?”
“Taekwondo. And taking care of me and Dayoung noona and Daejin hyung. And stuff.”
He recalls how the question had stopped him in his tracks. The feeling of his heart drooping low where it hung. The way Dohun turned to him fully, his baby face losing its magnolia-bright cheer because he’d thought he said something wrong.
“No. I don’t hate you,” Donghyuck had said first, because that felt like the most important part. “Not you or Dayoung or Daejin. Uhm, taekwondo’s okay — I guess.”
“I know,” Dohun said. Twisting his body back and forth and digging the toe of his sneaker against the ground. “But ionno. You look upset sometimes.”
“That’s just my face, Dohun. I’m just tired.”
Dohun had looked like he was considering it, then nodded his head. “Yeah, I look like you after taekwondo, too. I’m tired. I don’t like it.”
“Then why’re you still going for classes, dude?”
“Because I know it makes eomma happy,” Dohun replied simply. “She likes when I can kick really high.”
Donghyuck had huffed out a laugh, a pang of something in his gut. “Then we’re all just eomma’s puppy-dogs, huh?”
Dohun giggled at that. He hopped and play-woofed all the way to the dojang, and hadn’t understood it.