Chapter Text
Anton’s mom and dad split when he was in grade school, with his dad assuming full custody of him while his mom took his younger brother halfway across the world. He went through the usual phases, but by the time of his senior year of high school, the arrangement was normal. He came home from school, ate dinner with his father, played games, and went to sleep hardly thinking about the divorce.
He and his dad were both quiet, studious people with a passion for music. While his father seemed to curate an abundance of connections as a prolific music producer, Anton mostly spent his time alone. Despite this, both seemed to effortlessly be liked by strangers. In that way, it was easy to be raised in such a way; he and his dad were so alike.
In school, Anton mostly drifted around, making friends quickly in each class and losing touch as soon as they stopped sharing them. Because of that, only a choice few of his classmates ever had anything negative to say about him. He could’ve been the face of B+ students everywhere.
“She’s got a son your age.”
Nothing his dad had previously chatted with him about over the phone had ever shaken things up, but, perhaps because it was Anton’s first year out of the house in college, his father had finally told him about a woman he was seeing, coincidentally with the same last name. He knew that his dad had been going on dates occasionally through hints, but this was the first time he’d been given any details.
“He goes to your school. Have you met a Sohee?”
Anton was enrolled at his dad’s alma mater, a private Christian institution with a class size of just two thousand. With a robust music program, Anton had no reason to pick a different one, beliefs aside, but the fact that the campus was so small meant that it was easy to know everyone.
He took a moment to recall the face of the guy his dad was talking about. Towards the front of his economics class, his button-up and knitted vest matched Anton’s freshman one. His initial impression of him was that of a delicate guy, but his spiky hair, painted black nails, and bag charms seemed to be just a product of living with multiple sisters. Apparently, he was nothing but machismo. His skinny necklaces and silver loops contrasted a wide, fanged smile.
The boy-crazy girl he sat next to in Bio gave him that information unprompted. Apparently, Sohee was a business major, but he was the envy of the choral program as a non-major, sniping their best solos.
Anton took a modest bite of their supper. “I think so.”
“They invited us to have dinner with them. They’ll have a chef to cook for us.”
Anton was no stranger to money. His father had accumulated a taste for quiet luxury, hence the fancy college being paid for in full. Still, there was a gap between what Anton’s father had and the hiring and maintaining of a full house staff. Not wanting to let down his father, he accepted. A week later, he was sitting directly across from the boy with a spread of fine cuisine before him.
Closer, Anton could see the way his eyelashes rested on a scattering of moles attached lopsidedly to one side. One nearly snuck into his waterline. His plump lips and angled brow made him always look a bit fussy, but his eyes sweetened the look, glossy and round as if he were bordering on tears. Sitting between his mother and one of his sisters, his masculinity was pronounced, and Anton wondered how he looked in Sohee’s eyes sitting alone next to his father.
The stiff pose Sohee donned made him look like a proper adult despite being a couple of months older than Anton. When his mother asked him questions, he answered, and that was the only conversation he made. Besides that, he thanked the servants when the food was brought out. He was dressed in a suit, and his head looked like a chestnut with his spiky hair neutralized. Gone were the pretty affects and nail polish, leaving only a ring with a cross stretched around it to clink on his silver fork.
They feasted on duck, potatoes, and artichokes, their manners those of a wedding. Anton had never paid much attention to him before in their only shared class, but as Sohee’s fangs bared down at the well-seasoned flesh of fowl, more memories started to come back.
Rarely alone, he and his friends would usually come in as a large group, and if someone sat at ‘their’ table, they stood there until they left. One time, when Anton was still learning his way around campus and ended up waiting in class super early, he witnessed Sohee telling a student directly to get out of his seat. When the class was silent, Sohee and his friends would be talking. When they were supposed to be talking, they’d be scrolling on their phones.
They’d been easy enough to ignore. There’d been plenty of kids like that at Anton’s high school since they functioned in a distinctly separate world from him. Little overlap meant that they didn’t interact. Anton ate a modest helping of each item and watched the imp act like a trained dove.
He never looked Anton in the eye except for when his mother placed a hand on his back and told him to bid farewell to their guests at the end. Between the two of them, they’d never share a dull interaction again.
—
It started off with little stuff from his group of friends, his lackeys. A bump on the shoulder around campus was the most common, but it quickly graduated into bigger issues.
If Anton had to speak publicly in their class, there was always a convenient laugh whenever he started to talk. After class, he’d heard their impressions of his voice, landing somewhere between a mouse and a mumble. Besides that, Sohee just loved to stare at him during class, grinning as if Anton merely breathing the same air was farcical. When Anton left the classroom, no matter how long he waited, there’d be at least one of them ready to walk beside him and whisper insults.
Anton had joined the swim team, which meant he had to cram practice in directly before a lecture. One day, when Anton went to put his shoes back on, they were tossed onto the top of the locker, requiring the janitor’s assistance to fish them off. Next practice, they were in the trash.
After the third time that happened, the coach pulled him aside. Anton pretended that he didn’t know who did it and diminished it when the coach pressed to find out.
Truthfully, Anton hoped that they could get along or that their parents would break up. Despite being older than him, Sohee felt younger, so Anton tried to pass it all off as immaturity. It at least made things more bearable.
A couple of months into their new arrangement, Sohee finally put his hands on Anton, smacking him on his back as he and his friends passed by. “See you after swimming!” His sharp smile still made Anton’s heart soften even as his snideness poisoned it.
Practice having gone overtime, Anton decided to cut across the field to save time getting to his next class. He’d forgotten about Sohee in the rush to avoid another tardy, so when Sohee caught up to him, wrestling him with a big grin like they were old friends, Anton had no clue how to handle it. Anton tried to grab his hands to push him off, but Sohee pulled him to the ground and pinned his arms apart.
The dampened blades of grass were like tacks against Anton’s back, blood pumping uncomfortably fast through his veins as he struggled against Sohee’s full grip. With a hand on his cheek, Sohee pushed Anton’s face to the side while keeping him down.
“There you go! I like you much better like this.”
They were doing this in the open during passing, but nobody in view seemed concerned about it.
Close enough to see the particulars of his face, he couldn’t help but study him again. His blown-out eyes were strikingly fierce against the red of his face, but as he closed in on Anton, pushing harder against his legs, the expression shifted. His eyebrow twitched, and Anton felt a different kind of heat flood his face.
The urge to get away had never been so strong. Anton tried to flip them, but it just made Sohee stretch out wider and pull in closer. Anton’s back arched off the ground in vain, and his fingers clamped weakly around nothing.
“Stop… resisting,” Sohee whispered.
“Then get off.” Anton couldn’t look him in the face any longer. There wasn’t an ounce of assertiveness in his tone, his racing heart stealing the only bit he had of it away.
Sohee guffawed. “Asking won’t work.“
“What do you want?”
“Do I need a reason to talk to you like this?” Sohee leaned in closer and pinched his ear. “You embarrass the hell out of yourself every day already, you don’t need to make it worse by bargaining.”
Anton groaned when Sohee brought a hand to his side, digging his thumb into the spot there. He laughed as he watched Anton squirm like a beetle flipped upside down, laughing at his convulsions. “You’re so sensitive, Toni. Just sit still…”
“Hey!”
It was just his friend calling out to him, but it distracted Sohee enough for Anton to buck him off. While his friend laughed away, Anton made a break for it, striding across the field and heading straight for his dorm.
Safe in his two-bed cell, Anton fell into his desk chair. Checking for bruises, there was little evidence of the act, but if Anton pressed his finger down to where Sohee was touching him, he could feel the deep ache in his muscle. Easing up the bottom of his shorts to check his thigh, he saw the bone blossom where Sohee’s foot had dug into it.
He knew how he was supposed to feel about it. It didn’t track; he had no reason to like Sohee, but Anton found it difficult to hate him. Raised mild-mannered, Anton had never been caught in the tumult of another’s fixation; he’d never so fiercely occupied the mind of another person. Beyond that, he didn’t know the last time he’d had so much physical contact with someone. It made his body restless.
Since Sohee didn’t give him a reason, he didn’t know what he could do to stop it, giving up with that line of thinking quickly. It shouldn’t have been so difficult to tolerate, but there was something worse than pain that Sohee gave him.
Anyone would speculate about Sohee’s motivations, but Anton felt all strength leave him as he stood outside that closed door. In truth, he felt much more comfortable remaining indifferent than becoming resentful or any other rational emotion. That way, he didn’t have to think much about it at all.
He pulled his pant leg back down and smoothed the fabric over it, sighing all the way to bed. That night, when he couldn’t shake the feeling, he pressed his thumb into the bruise to soothe himself to sleep.
—
The next time Sohee put his hands on Anton, nobody was around to interrupt.
Anton found himself once again under Sohee’s thumb, his stomach pressed into the linoleum as Sohee’s hand pushed against his head. He’d taken Anton into an unoccupied room in the wing of the biology department set for renovation. The ceiling was white-painted mold, and the floors were used solely by spiders and centipedes.
Anton grunted. He’d tried yelling earlier, but it just spurred Sohee’s aggression. He began measuring his breath, submitting like a mouse with its head firmly in the jaw of a snake. A blink and a twitch was all Anton could manage; he was not getting out of his grasp this time. In the nearest corner, a fly’s dried body bullseyes a web.
“Did Mom tell you about Saturday?”
Anton tried to nod, but his cheek was firmly against the ground. “No.”
“You’re coming over.” Sohee leaned forward. “And I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
When Anton let out a questioning groan, Sohee forced his jaw shut. Anton’s neck strained against his fingernails.
“That you’re welcome there. Or that you can tell my family anything about me.”
Anton tried to breathe evenly, but there was no way to disguise his choppy exhale. On one level, Anton understood the need to give him such a talk, but he also felt like he’d done nothing to make Sohee think he would tell. As quick as his heart was racing, Anton felt strangely peaceful. The struggle to breathe slowed down his brain while Sohee was crushing his lungs. And maybe because of Sohee’s size, he didn’t feel so much threatened as simply immobilized.
When Sohee pushed his knee to the dip of Anton’s spine and released his mouth, Anton responded, “Got it,” but Sohee didn’t make a move to get off of him.
In what Anton could only approximate as sympathy, Sohee spoke again. “I don’t want to be around you any more than you want to be around me.” He trapped Anton’s mouth again. As he spoke, he secured his legs more firmly around Anton’s waist, leading Anton to realize that he could feel—
“Hrghh, mmff.” Anton’s mouth clenched, trying its best to form the right words. He kicked out his legs but didn’t even manage to scoot himself on the floor.
“If we’re going to get through this, you’re going to have to be a lot nicer to me,” Sohee pouted. He sucker punched Anton’s side, but Anton still tried to twist his hips away, heaving. A second punch hit Anton’s stomach just as he managed to get it off the ground, and Anton shook until he was still.
In a way, he wanted to thank Sohee; the horrible pain in his gut distracted him from everything else. Sohee’s palm ran roughly over his head like he was some poor mutt.
“There you go. Are you going to be good or what?”
Anton was relishing the sweet diversion of his burning ribs when Sohee dug his fingers into his scalp, causing an unfortunate sound to come out. Out of everything, that’s what did it, making his entire body heat up so fast it started to itch.
“I’ll be good.” Anton squeaked, the tail end cut off when Sohee pressed his thumb to Anton’s top row of teeth, dragging on the upper lip. Anton’s eyes sealed shut, jaw twitching as Sohee continued to play with it again and again. His breath was bordering on a hum as he failed to tame what came out of his mouth.
“Good.” Anton could hear how happy he was, and, as if he weren’t gratified enough, Sohee asked, “Are you going to cry?”
His hand pushed away the hair from Anton’s face, pulling at his eyebrow to open his eyes and see the glossy, black irises looking straight back at him.
No tears fell, but when Sohee finally got off of him, claiming boredom, Anton remained on the floor. Staring at the door, it registered to him that it was over. While lifting his body made him aware of some ache, the pain as well as the excitement seemed to leave with Sohee. It was as if it were all theater and Sohee’s hands on him were mere puppetry.
He wanted to hold his wrists and make sure the weight suffocating him was real. If he were lucky, he could get Sohee to do the same.
—
Worn away was the veneer of fine etiquette he usually presented at these things; Sohee just looked bummed.
Anton did his best to spot him at his mom’s house before Sohee spotted him, but they seemed to meet each other’s eyes at the same time. Sohee’s eyes were cold as he looked away, popping his cufflinks to roll up his sleeves. It was his mom’s birthday, so everyone was wearing nice outfits in her favorite color: pink.
While Anton was grabbing a can of soda from the cooler, a pair of coral heels came into his vision.
“Hello!”
Anton returned the greeting. Sohee’s sister had thick, black hair down past her shoulders and a couple of years on him, but Anton could still see how similar they were in the face.
“You go to school with my brother.”
“Yes.” Anton answered it like a question even though he wasn’t sure that it was.
“Is he just as bad there as he is here?”
Although Anton laughed, he felt a great anxiety about answering. Obviously, he wasn’t going to tell her the truth, but he struggled to find anything convincingly positive to say.
“He’s… Sohee.” Anton opened his drink. “He… he seems…”
She was losing interest at lightning speed, just as impatient as her brother. “Seems?”
Anton actually wished that Sohee would come and interrupt them, but when he didn’t, Anton just had to use his imagination. In a world where Sohee was nice to him, where he looked at Anton with anything but shallow scorn, Sohee would be…
“Fun. He’s really… high energy. And, he’s the loyal type. Popular.”
She frowned at his answer, but Anton couldn’t tell if she sensed his lack of credibility or if she just disagreed. Regardless, he was let off the hook, so he used his newfound freedom to go find the bathroom. Just as his hand lifted to knock, the door opened.
Sohee.
Shocked, then frowning, Sohee scanned Anton’s face. “What?” It was a pleasant surprise: the tone was snide, but not hostile.
Anton pointed past Sohee. “I have to use the bathroom.”
With a scoff, Sohee checked Anton’s shoulder and headed down the hallway. Watching him, Anton studied him as he effortlessly weaved through the party guests and bounded up the staircase. Anton took a look at the bathroom door knob, then looked back again at the stairs.
—
He was warned, but maybe that was what incensed him. There was something he wanted answered and a secret he had to keep for Sohee, an iron maiden.
Why is it that Sohee could make him feel such a way? Perhaps he wasn’t an unalloyed jerk, his outward tolerance for Anton that day promising. He wanted to test if this could be anything but a beating, to see if Sohee had a breaking point at which his ego ended and his vulnerability was exposed.
After encountering a couple of empty rooms, Anton finally found the one he was seeking. The door squeaked as it opened, drawing the occupant’s gaze immediately towards him and draining Anton of all of his confidence.
Sohee was shirtless, his straight hips crowned with the thick waistband of his designer underwear as his pants sloped low with the belt discarded. Anton quickly closed the door behind him and faced the ground, but the damage was already done.
The voice pounded in his ears, gleeful and ridiculing. “No way… You’re a faggot!” Sohee laughed.
His words ran chills down Anton’s spine. It scared him so bad, he had to laugh too. It alleviated the horrible feeling in his guts at least, but only for as long as it took for Sohee to walk up to him. Half a head taller, Anton watched as Sohee stood a step away and wrangled on a new shirt. His ring glinted.
“You missed me?” Sohee put his palm flat against Anton’s diaphragm, applying pressure steadily instead of shoving. Anton’s back was securely mounted to the door. “Today I didn’t even feel like messing with you, yet here you are. What do you want?”
Anton tried to gather his thoughts, but Sohee’s hand tapped his cheek. “Eh? C’mon, what is it you want?” The touch, the short sting of the hit, just made it worse for Anton. His senses were heightened, every part of his body sensitive as Sohee grabbed his cheek. His hand jumped to Anton’s chest and squeezed his breast. Anton’s hands flew up, but failed to even grab his arms to stop him. When he let go, Anton’s shoulders went limp. “Don’t tell me… Does it have something to do with this?”
Anton’s eyes closed as a wispy exhale jolted from his body. Sohee’s hand was inspecting his crotch, the apparent tenting not waning as he pinched and pushed it around. “Incredible,” Sohee guffawed in disbelief.
“Don’t… touch it.” Anton laid his hands on Sohee’s, but that just made Sohee clamp down.
“You’re actually hard? Just from seeing a dude shirtless? How do you even function?” Sohee was laughing again, handling it until he could feel the rim of his tip. “Imagine if the swim team knew. I can’t imagine what you do to stop your boner in front of them if you’re this easy to rile up. Should I tell them?”
When Anton groaned, “Don’t,” he meant it in more ways than one. Sohee’s grip was crass on him, the arousal just bolstering the pain and making the strain even more dire. After Sohee pressed his thumb into the tip, Anton pushed Sohee’s shoulders, knocking him back and onto the floor.
Sohee was blank, as if, in his entire life, he’d never actually gotten told no. Anton couldn’t guarantee that he hadn’t. Sohee’s eyebrows twitched, and then the corners of his mouth. Standing up slowly, Sohee’s chest began to fill faster, his breath quickening in a tell-tale warning for Anton to run. He prepared for a hit, a push—something—but instead, Sohee just got up, a hand adjusting his pants around his crotch. When Sohee’s lips fumbled, coming closer as he was about to say something, Anton turned the doorknob and booked it.
Shaky hands punched the bathroom lock. Falling down to the floor, Anton braced himself for a knock, a twist of the knob, anything, but nothing came. He stared at the ceiling as he waited for his nerves to settle, not willing to look at what was between his legs and confront what it was Sohee made him into. The voices of the people downstairs felt like they were coming from another dimension. Far away from the little planet where Anton was, there were people happily chatting away.
Sometime afterward, Anton lost track of the time, there was cake, presents, and champagne. There was a father with his son and a mother with hers, smiling faces and fine silverware cutting into thick cake, all pictured in flash. For the rest of that time, as little as Anton was able to remember, they were perfect children. Shell-shocked dolls faithfully kept by their parents’ sides, making small talk and thickening the secret they kept with table scraps.
—
A hand wrapped softly around Anton’s throat, encompassing the trachea. When its fingers had stretched as far as they could go, they pressed down, hooking to his skin and cutting off his breath. Anton swallowed just to test it, and to his satisfaction, he could barely breathe.
If it was late enough and the mood was right, Anton could imagine that it was Sohee’s pressing down on him instead of his own. His other hand was on his dick, of course, trying to get it over with before the fantasy broke. Sometimes it worked, but tonight, Anton had to press his nail into one of Sohee’s bruises just to fall back into believing it. Alone in his dorm, he whimpered through a short orgasm, the feeling of regret returning faster than it did last time.
The memory was as torturous as it was arousing. He wished that Sohee had never touched him, had never gotten the chance to say anything about what Anton did or didn’t feel. At the same time, he fashioned the Sohee in his dreams with all manner of similar insults. ‘You like it when I push you down and fuck you? Or should it be you who’s fucking me? Do you people really enjoy sticking it up each other’s asses?’
Things didn’t change. Anton had to will himself away from staring at Sohee during economics, while Sohee didn’t dare to glance. The usual bunch made sure to jack with Anton’s stuff and throw their weight around, but absent was the word that only Sohee had uttered.
‘Faggot.’
Above the pool was a large, blunt cross, the underwater lights sewing wrinkles onto its surface. Anton had been coming to swim later and later, and as his stay extended into the evening, he ran out of things to practice, simply floating on the water or holding his breath beneath. Whenever 8 PM rolled around and he had to dry off, he felt as though he was learning to walk on land for the first time. He came to gather his thoughts and consistently left having not collected a single one.
When the choking and the bruises did nothing to stir him, he remembered the last thing he saw Sohee do in his bedroom: fix his underwear. The image stuck with him; it was the one thing that contradicted everything else. If there was any way it betrayed something about Sohee, Anton needed to know. One morning, when sleep had evaded him the entire night, he grabbed his things and made a trip to the only place it felt right to get answers.
Stained glass filled the arches beside the entrance to the chapel, the distant singing nearly animating the figures between the black lines in the ethereal space. Following the sound, Anton navigated through the halls until he stood within the entrance of the sanctuary. A woman spoke confidently towards different corners of the crowd before her hands waved, and the voices all broke out together.
The chorus sounded like a typhoon, raging harmonies purposefully discordant while an individual section broke from the winds like a rooted tree amongst fallen ones. No light shone on Anton, so he could only assume that he was hidden.
Just when the disparate parts seemed to merge into one sweeping blow, a beckoning tenor hailed the devastation in Latin—Sohee. Face as poised as an actor’s, he alone told the next part of the story while the others echoed the saddest words. He wielded his voice as a whip, cracking it with merely the flick of the wrist. From one note to another, he could be gentle, tortured, or striking, even as the words remained unintelligible to Anton. With the creasing of the director’s fingers, all sounds ceased, and the tale became the banal words and notes on the page they needed to fix.
Sohee suppressed a yawn as he kept his focus on her, nodding to the requests that applied to him specifically. He was as tired as Anton, but even on this random morning, he could bellow with a force that inspired pride, envy, and lust; Anton thought of that female classmate.
Up there, with all ears attuned to him, he injected his art with deft allure, and Anton wondered if he could have a piece of that beautiful side to himself. He imagined it as vividly as he imagined any fantasy involving Sohee, no matter how distant. Sohee was subdued and focused, the morning light fuzzing all the imperfections in his face and likening him to a cherub. He looked pure as a choir boy.
Just as the choir raised their songbooks once more, Sohee blinked towards Anton, the recognition like a hound’s. It wasn’t clear that he was even smiling until it fell, dark hazelnut pupils hard and glaring. The song started again, but Anton was already gone.
Nothing had changed between them. The only thing Anton elicited for Sohee was a persistent, unyielding enmity.
—
Pulsing through the vacant pool locker room was the streaking sound of tile, the two alone in the shower area after Anton stayed late to swim. Long gone were the staff who checked the area for stragglers, so the closest people were the headphone-clad students pulling late nights in the weight room.
Anton was still in his swimsuit, having just started the water, when Sohee pinned him against the floor. He knew every private detail of Anton’s schedule thanks to his accomplices, so even if he hadn’t caught him that night, he would’ve on another.
Water ran down the back of Sohee’s white shirt, turning it grey and making it cling to his body as his slippery hands tried to pin Anton down. Each movement was pronounced, each grunt, squeak, and splash loud and sharp in the shower as Anton struggled beneath him.
“Why are you stalking me, huh?” Sohee was enraged, but that bolstered the giddy verve he had to his strangling, Anton’s shoulder firmly within his claw.
With a twist, Anton loosened Sohee’s grip, causing him to stagger to the side for a moment. With that momentum, Anton flayed Sohee’s arms flat against the tile as Sohee’s thighs tightened around his stomach, trying to flip him.
“Didn’t you follow me?” Anton smiled at seeing Sohee struggle, but his victory was short-lived. Sohee easily slipped his arms away on the tile and wrangled Anton onto his back. He sat on his waist, thighs and calves flexed to keep him still.
The stray water droplets flicked onto the side of Anton’s face, making his eyes flutter to clear the blurriness. It somewhat worked, but the shadow of Sohee above him was still blurry. His hanging, transparent clothes made him look like a spirit.
“You followed me to my room, you followed me to my rehearsal… Shouldn’t I be calling the cops by now? Should I go tell your dad? Roommate?”
“No,” Anton grunted. “No. I just…”
“You just what? Spit it out.”
Anton’s head fell against the floor. He had answers, all of which were unflattering. Before Sohee could rip his head off, Anton settled on the one that was the easiest to say.
“Your voice... I wanted to hear it, just once.”
Sohee felt far away from him, even as he rooted his body deeper. Still a blur, he asked, “Was it good?”
Running down Sohee’s body, the warm water pooled on Anton’s skin, rinsing off the chlorine tacked to his skin as it overflowed. Although Sohee’s words were rotten, his voice’s resonance shone through even when he was just talking, more so with the smooth acoustics of the shower room.
Anton tried one last time to lift his chest up, but Sohee held him down properly. With nowhere else to go, he swallowed his spit. “Yeah. You were.”
Sohee remained there long after the water had started boiling over his back, chest beating while Anton waited calmly in his hold. It was as if Sohee were lost, as if he didn’t know what he wanted to do to Anton, but Anton couldn’t see him well enough to read his face. He blinked rapidly, wanting to.
With his stringy bangs over his eyes, Sohee dragged a hand down, making Anton’s stomach tighten as the fingertips passed over. Anton watched as they disappeared between them, the water from above smacking against the floor as they failed to exchange words. Sohee cupped Anton’s crotch from the bottom, lightly squeezing everything there. Even though Anton couldn’t make it out, Sohee was clearly faced toward him, head unmoving.
“You like my voice?” Anton nodded, trying to think of anything but Sohee’s touch. The compliment didn’t afford him any gratitude. “That’s… creepy.”
After shifting around his testicles, fingers gradually formed a ring and started moving up and down the middle of Anton’s dick, stuttering against the spandex. Anton groaned, and while trying to change it into a less incriminating sound, he chopped it into one that just embarrassed him further. There was no doubt that Anton’s reaction, his trembling, low voice a mess, made Sohee more interested. Anton expected things to play out similarly to last time, minus the part where he got away, but then Sohee raised his hips and slid Anton’s swimsuit off, Anton’s dick arching high off his naval.
When Sohee swatted it with his fingers flat, Anton cringed, the arousal making any touch hard to tolerate. Sohee did it again and cackled at how it moved. Fear coursing through his blood, Anton looked down, but looking seemed to make the sting worse.
Extending his back, Sohee used his knees to spread Anton’s thighs far apart, displaying his genitals entirely. Anton felt like a frog pinned for dissection, every little movement he made open to view. He wanted to mask his arousal, but Sohee didn’t give him the chance. He moved around, bringing his fingers together at the tip just to pull it up and let it slap against his stomach.
“Hah, you really get hard like this…” If there was any doubt about it, Sohee expelled it, letting it thwap against his stomach again a second time before gripping the shaft.
The panic really set in when Anton felt his dick twitch in Sohee’s hand and knew what was next. Sohee stroked up to his tip and immediately let go, shaking his hand when precum got on it.
“Oh fuck,” Sohee washed his hand in the shower and wiped his wet hand all over Anton’s leg. “Fuck, that’s gross.”
“C—Can I go?” Anton’s voice was even less clear than usual with the busy sound in the room.
“Can you go?” Sohee started stroking Anton just at the base, the grip too much to be enjoyable. Still, it only turned Anton on further. “You get your… all over my hand and then expect me to let you leave?”
Anton whimpered as he squeezed the tip, surely getting more of it on his hand.
Sohee mumbled, “What a fucking loser, getting off on this shit.”
The steam of the shower ran Anton’s thoughts together. Unable to look away, he peered in between the two of them and noticed…
“But you’re hard too.”
The water couldn’t hide anything. Sohee’s clothes were tight around his dick as the water sealed the fabric over his body.
The next slap wasn’t to Anton’s dick; it was across his cheek, and as loud as a busted fuse. In shock, Anton tried to touch where it’d hit only for Sohee’s hand to be there instead, soothing the blooming red there. Anton flinched when he realized, but Sohee’s hand was even firmer as he wiped away his wet hair to see the spot in its entirety. It didn’t hurt Anton so much as it surprised him, the pain fading within seconds as the fear remained.
Anton curled his stomach in as much as he could, stunned as deeply as he was aroused. With one hand on his cheek and the other on his dick, Sohee was barely pinning him down anymore, but Anton didn’t move to get up; he wanted to come that badly.
They stayed like that together by force and free will. Sohee pumped his dick crassly, muttering out things about how big and gross it was and how fucked up Anton was before Anton let out a warning cry, high-pitched and shaky. Sohee sped up, his other hand leaving Anton’s cheek to sneak down his pants, and Anton’s voice couldn’t stop breaking. When Anton did finally come, it nearly bent him in half with how intense it was. His abs flexed as cum flicked over them and his whimpers turned into cries.
For most of his life, Anton had considered himself to be a normal person, but as Sohee kneeled over him, moaning to chase an orgasm of his very own, that assumption was laid to rest. Sohee sank his nails into the left side of Anton’s chest and scratched across until he came, spattering on Anton’s stomach and hip. The white began to run together, the water from Sohee’s clothes still dripping hard on Anton’s sensitive stomach.
Sohee let go and threw his hands on the ground. Framing Anton on either side just above his ribs, Sohee leaned over just far enough to be in view of Anton.
“Fuck… fuck…”
Sohee’s muscles softened against Anton’s legs where he’d kept him down, another ‘fuck’ trembling from his lip. Anton searched for his eyes, but Sohee was set on avoiding him, instead looking at his chest. Since his arms were free, Anton finally touched his cheek and felt the skin burn hotter than any other part of his face. Petting it only made him wish that it was Sohee’s hand there instead.
In a snap, Sohee tucked himself in and stood up, wiping his nose as his sopping wet clothes trailed out of the shower and into the locker room. With short notice, Anton gathered himself, only running his stomach in the shower before grabbing his towel and running back into the locker room to follow him.
Not only was Sohee gone, but so was Anton’s dry clothing.
—
9 PM feels like 4 AM when you’re walking home to your dorm in only a damp swimsuit—chilly.
When it came time to attend swim practice the next day, Anton learned what a true walk of shame was. Four dark lines curved across Anton’s chest. Nobody wanted to stare, but everyone wanted to look. It gathered so much attention that nobody noticed one cheek being a touch redder than the other.
Word of mouth spread quickly on such a small campus, inviting non-swim team athletes to look at him too. When the girl in his biology class sat down, she couldn’t suppress a smile the entire time, asking him about all sorts of things like his favorite restaurant and what kind of music he listened to. People got the wrong idea about the kind of person Anton was, or maybe they didn’t.
Sohee, of course, didn’t bring it up to any of his friends.
Picturing Sohee above him again, Anton jerked off thinking about what he’d done to him. Sohee’s hands were so warm against his cock, unrefined as they pushed around Anton’s body however they pleased. Anton fisted his own hair and grabbed his dick hard, trying his best to replicate the way Sohee handled him. Luckily, the walls were thick enough to block out the name he choked on as he came.
Still, ashamed in the afterglow, Anton was terrified of what Sohee would actually do to him if it happened again.
The two of them were forced to be together again. Their respective parents had been spending more and more time together, and Sohee’s mother had even invested in one of his father’s music projects, which called for a celebration.
The car arrived in front of Anton’s father’s house, and Anton watched on the porch beside his dad as Sohee stepped out, dress shoes clacking on the asphalt as he opened the door for his mother and sisters. Making his way up the tall stairs, Anton could see that Sohee was dressed in the usual way—stripped of all his flourishes and ready for church. Anton looked the same.
They weren’t little kids. It was clear why both of their parents continued to insist on all of their kids being present for these things, but Anton didn’t want to talk about it any more than Sohee did. It would be hours before anyone else would show up since Anton’s dad insisted on a proper meal with just the two families.
With the appetizer came drinks, but when Sohee asked for a glass of wine, his mother intercepted. “Dear, you’re not even twenty yet. Can you please get him a Sprite instead?” Sohee’s face remained level, even as Anton spotted the secret elbow bump from his older sister, ‘Ha ha.’
After a full meal, everyone was moved to the living room for an album listen. Anton had heard the entire thing twice, so he zoned out through the entirety of it, just entertaining any comments made by their guests. Sohee paid a few compliments to Anton’s dad and then stayed quiet. Just when his sister had finished asking about a certain instrument, the doorbell rang, letting Anton know that the formal part of the evening had ended.
With several guests having arrived, Anton was set to go find a corner to hide in when he caught a conversation between Sohee and his mother.
“No, you can’t. I told you about this a week ago, so don’t give me the homework excuse. Why don’t you go find Anton and just play video games? That seems like it would keep you occupied.” Anton barely had the chance to process the conversation as one between an adult child and his mother before said mother spotted him. “Oh, there you are Anton! I was just saying that you two should play a game. Which is the one you like again, dear? The sports one?”
She brought Sohee closer with a hand on his back. Sohee’s eyes were to the floor. “…FIFA.”
“FIFA! Do you have FIFA?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Anton’s hands were crossed in front of him.
“Great! That’s something you two have in common; why don’t you play together for a little bit?” She passed Sohee off to him, and Anton led the way.
Anton would’ve been stifling a laugh if it were anyone else, but with Sohee, Anton had to refrain from checking over his shoulder the entire time they walked to the entertainment room. Entering the room and closing the door, Anton questioned if they were actually doing this, if he’d feel stupid actually starting a game, but when Sohee slumped into one of the loungers and waited, Anton went ahead and dimmed the lights.
Anton handed him a controller and started up a match. Tottenham vs. Manchester United, Anton vs. Sohee. Since the TV volume was low, the sounds of joysticks and button clicking became all that Anton heard. After one match ended, another one began. Nobody remarked on who won.
A loud laugh permeated the walls as a reminder that microcelebrities and musicians were mingling just outside while the mechanical cheers of the artificial crowd resounded from the speakers. It was dark in the room, but even in the green glow, Anton could see the way he measured his breath.
Sohee, even slouched in a chair, held all the magnetism of a bomb. A guy like him was liable to go off at any time, so Anton couldn’t help but keep an eye on him.
Sighing, Sohee unbuttoned his coat and set it to the side, his firm shoulders and thin torso revealed in a well-fitting dress shirt. The scratch on Anton’s chest seemed to reignite with his heartbeat—the longer he looked, the more intense the rush. Even when they were playing, Anton stole the occasional glance.
After a third game was completed, Sohee suddenly dropped the controller onto the seat. Anton’s body froze, thinking Sohee had snapped, but all he did was get up and walk away. Anton tracked his dim figure as it slinked out the door with his jacket in hand, the door shutting behind him. He put the controllers back in the cabinet and held the power button. They hadn’t exchanged words the entire time.
With nothing else to do, Anton roamed the party, trying to find his father. Hearing a shout, Anton’s father called out to him first, jogging from his prior conversation. “I have some exciting news about our winter holiday…”
His dad prattled on about the location as Anton looked around the room, his gaze naturally falling to the head of a brunette outside on the patio. The last image Anton had of Sohee that night was of him standing alone, staring at a wine glass left half-full on the coffee table, rolling his ring.