Chapter Text
We met over a small
earthquake. Now, my knees
shake whenever
you come around
and I’ve noticed your hand
has a slight tremor.
- “I Have Always Confused Desire With Apocalypse” by Daphne Gottlieb
--
Sungjong is fascinated by Sungyeol’s preferences. Or lack thereof.
“Do you know how few people there are like you? Equally attracted to both sexes? With no preference whatsoever? And with no particular physical 'type'? It’s a very small percentage of the population, hyung. You’re the only one I know.”
Sungjong is an anthropologist, so of course he’s interested in things like that, especially considering he’s only attracted to women. Sungyeol himself doesn’t care. He likes sex, he likes beautiful people, why should his definition of beautiful be narrow, and why should he care what the beautiful person he’s touching has between their legs? People of any gender can having amazing sex if they’re skilled enough, and everyone (every servicer) Sungyeol has ever been with has been. Besides, there are sexy things about both sets of genitals: the way someone with a penis can’t hide their desire, the way the hardening gives them away: that’s sexy. Sexy, too, is the slickness that sneaks up on you with a vagina, a more subtle evidence of yearning but undeniable all the same. What’s sexiest of all is that just because two people have the same primary and secondary sex characteristics doesn’t mean that they have anything else in common when it comes to sex—each person is different and the differences between individuals are greater by far than the differences between genders. Sungyeol knows from experience.
Sungyeol likes variety, not because he gets tired of people quickly but because every single person is different in bed and he’s always excited to discover anything new. Sungjong is monogamous, the pretty girl he picked—long hair and longer limbs, a face like a princess’s—promoted out of the pool and installed as Sungjong’s personal concubine. It’s rare, getting to keep a servicer all to yourself like that, and Sungyeol is still shocked that Sungjong even had the balls to file the request, much less that the panel actually approved it. But then, Sungjong is the smartest person Sungyeol knows (and, since he’s in the science division, that’s saying something) and extremely good at his job—they’ll probably do anything to keep him happy, so he got the girl he chose. She’ll stay with him till one of them dies, and Sungjong is working on paperwork make sure she won’t have to go to one of the departments for the prostitutes after they age out—or, worse still, become the subject of someone’s fetish.
It’s a rare thing, too, a professional being that attached to a servicer, even if the servicer is installed permanently, but Sungjong is a rare person. “If I die first, I want Minha to stay in my apartment,” Sungjong says seriously one day over lunch. “Promise me you’ll visit her, okay, hyung?” Sungyeol likes Minha and he always feels a bit sorry for her, since she can’t leave Sungjong’s apartment unless she’s being his escort to a party or something (unlike most professionals, Sungjong gets invited to parties—he’s that good at what he does, and it isn’t like there are many anthropologists anyway, so his novelty is appealing to administrators), and she has no other job than to make Sungjong happy which she’s very good at, so he agrees and he’s intrigued by the relief on Sungjong’s face. Sungjong is usually so very calm and collected, ruffled by nothing, but something about Minha makes him show emotions Sungyeol hadn’t known he had, emotions Sungyeol doesn’t have a name for since he’s never felt them himself. Since choosing Minha, Sungjong has filed more than one official report stating that, as an anthropologist, his professional opinion is that the system that enforces a chasm between physical and emotional relationships is not in the best interests of the human race. It’s risky, speaking out against the system that way, but Sungjong is in love, which is a rare enough thing (Sungyeol’s never known anyone else who was in love) that it seems to give him courage most others couldn’t dream of. Besides, Sungjong is good enough at his job—the best in his field, actually—that they’ll never get rid of him unless he breaks one of the Ultimate Laws, and that won’t happen.
Sungyeol is in love, too, in his own way, with every person they send him. There’s always something to fall in love with: the way the skin of this girl’s neck flushes, the way this boy’s thick eyebrows shoot up when Sungyeol nibbles on his neck, the way this man laughs and laughs almost the whole time they’re together. He remembers some of them better than others, of course, and he used to feel a bit sad about that: each one of them is worth remembering if only his mind would let him. But he’s made his peace with it and he works very hard to make sure that even if he won’t remember them in a year or two that they will remember him out of all the people they ever service.
He hadn’t been so careful about that at first, when he turned sixteen and had the option of having someone sent to him for the first time. Sungjong had wanted to celebrate his birthday by sharing a special dinner in the cafeteria—a specially-requested dinner with one companion of the birthday celebrator’s choosing is allowed, though most people don’t bother—but Sungyeol had been looking forward to this since he first started waking up hard in the mornings, and there’d been no way he was going to spend his birthday any other way than having sex for the first time. He had spent the months leading up to it pouring over the pictures on the provider’s website, certain that he had to pick the most beautiful person in the world for his first time. He went over and over the files, settling on one and then changing his mind the next day—there were so many options, so many beautiful people to choose from, he wanted all of them. Sungjong, still a few years away from being old enough to be provided with a servicer himself, was not impressed.
“You’re so greedy, hyung. Sex isn’t just about your pleasure—it evolved to have emotional and social uses in additional to the biological ones,” he said, but Sungyeol didn’t care (or understand. Emotional and social uses?). Every day after classes he would hurry back from the lecture room on the sixty-fifth floor to his apartment on the sixty-ninth and pull up the site on his pad screen. Before, he had spent his evenings with Sungong in the lounge—the anthropology department was small enough that it shared a lounge with chemistry and that was how he and Sungjong had even had chance to meet at all; most professionals never have any interactions with anyone outside their departments who isn’t in the service in some way, but Sungyeol’s always been glad of Sungjong, even if he can be annoyingly bossy and opinionated.
“But you’ve forgotten all about me, hyung,” Sungjong says over lunch a few times as the time till Sungyeol’s birthday grows short. He doesn’t sound sad or angry or amused or even annoyed, just matter-of-fact and something else specifically Sungjong that Sungyeol doesn’t hear from anyone else. But he doesn’t pay much attention to it because he’s too busy narrowing down options in his head. (It doesn’t occur to him until much later that he’s the only friend Sungjong has. Eventually Sungyeol realizes that and feels guilty, at least until Minha, and after that he doesn’t feel guilty at all.)
One boy, a few months older than him by his stats, with a pointy nose and the most alluring mouth Sungyeol has ever seen, starts to stick in his mind. Sungyeol rejects him at first because even though he’s undoubtedly attractive, he’s definitely not one of the most beautiful options. But that mouth keeps popping up in Sungyeol’s mind when he’s supposed to be measuring chemicals and taking notes. His assigned sunbae Sunggyu is even more frustrated with him than usual; Sungyeol’s pretty sure that the only reason he didn’t ask to be assigned to a new hoobae long ago is because Sungyeol is actually really, really good at his studies when he bothers to pay attention and his high test scores look good on Sunggyu’s file. But Sungyeol wouldn’t have been surprised if Sunggyu actually had asked to be transferred in the weeks before Sungyeol’s sixteenth birthday. Especially with the way his face screwed up when Sungyeol decided to ask him for some insight.
“What’s the most important thing in a sex partner, sunbae-nim?” Sungyeol asks one day when Sunggyu is peering into a beaker to make sure the compound is the correct color.
Sunggyu almost drops the beaker. He momentarily looks so flustered Sungyeol almost laughs, but then he gives Sungyeol a hard look. “It is not one of my duties as your sunbae to educate you about such things. If you wish to discuss sexual relations, you should talk to your life counselor.”
Sungyeol thinks of his life counselor, an older lady with graying hair and a terse manner, whose face is the first one Sungyeol remembers and who had been the one to tell him about the tests he would take for education assignments when he was six and about how his body would soon be changing when he was eleven or so. Every major life change or dispensing of non-studies related information has come from her, and yet he can’t imagine actually talking to her about something like this. Has she even ever had sex?
“I want to hear it from you, sunbae-nim. Tell me what your first time was like. Mine’s coming up soon, you know.”
“I know. I’m half expecting that you’ll never leave your room again and I won’t have to deal with you anymore.” Sunggyu actually does have a sense of humor, Sungyeol’s discovered over the years. It’s just that it’s very dry.
“Could I get away with that, Gyu-nim? Just stay in my apartment having sex forever?” The idea sounds fantastic to Sungyeol. Way more exciting than his future as a chemist anyway.
“How many times have I told you not to call me that? I’m going to dock points from your file if you call me that again.”
He never does get any actual response from Sunggyu about sex. He figures Sunggyu is one of those who doesn’t have it until he picks out the only servicer who will ever visit him, which Sungyeol knows he hasn’t yet. That seems crazy to Sungyeol, being faithful to just one servicer (especially when that servicer won’t be allowed to be faithful to him, not unless he gets as lucky as Sungjong and gets to keep a concubine) but he’s too caught up in the shape of that one servicer’s mouth to think much about it.
“Just because he’s got a mouth like that doesn’t mean he’ll be good at his job,” he reminds himself dozens of times. He’s decided to choose a girl, anyway, because the majority of males prefer females and he thinks Sungjong will be more interested in hearing about a girl than a boy. But somehow, the moment before lights-out the night before his birthday, he finds himself clicking on the boy’s profile as his final selection. The next second, when the lights in his apartment and the pad itself switch off, he feels a stab of regret: there were so many beautiful people to choose, why did he choose that boy? But the regret passes quickly and he barely sleeps that night, jerking off to the thought of the boy’s lips more times than he probably should, but who cares? He’s young and healthy and tomorrow he’s having sex for the first time.
He’s completely worthless the next day during classes. His professors yell at him and when he meets with Sunggyu, his sunbae smacks him over the head with a textbook but Sungyeol doesn’t even bother to sass back. At lunch, Sungjong rolls his eyes and tells him he looks like an idiot and to stop smiling that way, but Sungyeol doesn’t pay him any mind. After dinner, though—Sungyeol shovels it down so fast that Sungjong’s barely started before he finishes—Sungjong catches his arm as he shoves his chair back.
“I really hope you enjoy yourself, hyung. Happy birthday.”
He still has his birthday meeting with his life counselor that he has to get through before he’s allowed to go back to his apartment. He shows up twenty minutes early—Sungyeol is never early—and the old biddy makes him wait until the precise time to enter her office. She takes her time once he’s inside, too, pulling up his file and going over it slowly. He’d had his physical the day before, and she wants to talk about each aspect of the results. He jiggles his leg and twists his fingers and tries to answer in as short of answers as possible. Then she goes over his studies file and makes the same comments she always does about how his work is excellent but that he needs to focus more and quit goofing around in class. “Be respectful to Sunggyu-ssi,” she says, just like always. “He’s the best, and we assigned him to you because you have the most potential, but if you keep disrespecting him we’ll transfer him to someone who can better appreciate what he has to offer.”
Sunggyu is the last person Sungyeol is worried about right now, so he hurriedly agrees that he’ll be better to his sunbae. Then his counselor goes over a few other things—that it seems they can finally stop sending him new clothes each month as he seems to have hit his final height, that he needs to eat more vegetables in the cafeteria and stop wasting so much, that he is to keep his apartment tidier or they’ll take away privileges, that they’re going to intensify his exercise regimen, that he needs to stop spending so much time with Sungjong so he doesn’t get distracted from hist studies. Sungyeol sits there with his hands twisted in the fabric of his pants and wills her to hurry up. Finally she says, “And about tonight—“ and Sungyeol feels like his stomach is trying to throw itself on the ground.
“Let’s go over what we know about intercourse, shall we?”
Sungyeol has no desire to do any such thing. He knows everything he needs to—he’s read all of Sungjong’s textbooks on the subject, even though as a chemistry student he’s not supposed to distract himself with other areas of study. He’s watched the films they’re allowed now and then with eager eyes and even taken notes (they don’t show actual intercourse, of course, but sometimes there’s kissing, in these old films from Before, and that’s more than enough to get Sungyeol excited). He’s kissed someone, too, which is more than most have ever done before they get their first servicer. It’s not allowed, and it was only Sungjong, who had been disgusted—“For God’s sake, hyung, keep your mouth to yourself!”—but still, it had felt really good and had been worth enduring Sungjong’s scorn for. No one had found out anyway, so he didn’t get in trouble. But between the feel of Sungjong’s lips under his and jerking himself off every night, he thinks he’s more than ready for this.
He tries to look attentive as his counselor drones on about things like lubrication and respect and how all of the servicers are absolutely free of disease and are incapable of procreation, a task left to the breeders, who Sungyeol will never see. Sungyeol knows all of this stuff, though, so he fastens the image of the boy’s mouth in his mind and focuses on it (crossing his legs and shifting a little bit) until she finally concludes her lecture and dismisses him. He pops up right out of his chair, not even bothering to pretend he isn’t eager to leave, but he jerks to a stop and looks back at her when he hears her voice as he nears the door.
“Good choice, Sungyeol-ssi,” she says, and for a moment she doesn’t look quite as old as she always has.
For one horrifying moment he has the thought that she knows the boy is a good choice because of experience and he can’t think of anything in the world worse than sharing a servicer with his life counselor (though why that should bother him any more than sharing a bathroom or a cafeteria with her, he doesn’t know). But the way she looks at him makes him realize she hadn’t meant that at all, that she was just commenting on the boy’s stats or his pictures or something. It’s still weird, but Sungyeol manages a ‘rest well, counselor-nim’ and then hurls himself out of the office and to the elevators and promptly forgets all about it.
It isn’t till he’s thrown himself into his apartment that it occurs to him that showing up with his hair and clothes mussed and out of breath from rushing probably won’t impress the boy. He’s not sure why he wants to impress him, exactly—after all, Sungyeol is a professional and this boy is just a servicer; everything about Sungyeol’s life and brain is better than this boy’s. But the boy’s probably had lots of professionals to service, and the thought slams into Sungyeol that the boy could laugh at him. Nothing seems worse than that.
He does laugh, actually, standing up from where he was seated on Sungyeol’s coach, dressed in the simple white slacks and tunic of the servicers, only his clings to chest and thighs in a way that the uniforms that the ones who clean the bathrooms wear definitely don’t. Sungyeol’s eyes go wide. That mouth.
“Happy birthday, Sungyeol-ssi,” the boy says, bowing low, and when he rises, he’s grinning wide, eyes crinkling and teeth flashing, and he’s even more attractive than he looked in the pictures. Sungyeol swallows hard.
“My name is Woohyun, and I’ll be servicing you tonight,” the boys says (it isn’t until later that Sungyeol figures out that they aren’t supposed to tell those they service their names, and he spends a lot of time wondering why Woohyun decided to: if Sungyeol had reported him, he’d have been in big trouble), and then walks to him and Sungyeol has just enough time to remember that he hasn’t brushed his teeth since dinner but then he forgets to panic because Woohyun’s tilting his head back and pressing his mouth against Sungyeol’s and—wow. That kiss he’d stolen from Sungjong that night in the elevator had been nothing compared to this.
Sungyeol is flushed and panting by the time Woohyun pulls away, and Woohyun laughs again and presses a kiss to his nose. Sungyeol had never considered nose-kisses before, and they certainly don’t feel as good as the mouth kind, but he thinks he feels something warm knot up in his stomach at the gesture. “Fuck, you’re cuter than I thought you would be. It must be my lucky day.”
Sungyeol gets so caught up on the foul word—professionals aren’t allowed to use those words; the couple of times Sungyeol has, he’d gotten reported and had points docked—that it takes him a second to process what else he’d said. When he does, he feels his own skin turn so red that he can’t even blush any more than he already is when Woohyun laughs again.
“Come on,” Woohyun says, taking his hand and leading him towards the bed. “We’re going to have lots of fun.”
‘Fun’ doesn’t come anywhere close to describing what that night was like for Sungyeol. He’d give anything to remember it clearly, but afterwards it’s more a collection of jumbled images and sensation—the discovery of how many different things kissing could make him feel, the jolt that shot through him when Woohyun’s mouth latched onto his neck, the way he almost ripped his own shirt in two trying to get it off his body, the way Woohyun kept laughing with that amazing grin and telling him to calm down, how strong and steady Woohyun’s hands were everywhere he touched him.
He does remember his first sight of Woohyun’s nude body quite clearly, though. He’d never seen anyone else naked before, and he’d been fascinated by how different Woohyun’s body was from his own—all the muscles more obvious and defined, darker skin not soft but smooth, limbs shorter and not as thin, more powerful than Sungyeol could ever imagine being. He’d of course known intellectually that different people’s bodies were different—Sungjong has curves where Sungyeol doesn’t, and of course the girls have far more curves than that, though Sungyeol wasn’t entirely clear on what they actually look like under their clothes. But Woohyun’s body is absolutely perfect and Sungyeol can’t stop running his hands over it. Woohyun seems surprised but he laughs again and seems like he enjoys it and while he gives Sungyeol a few instructions now and then, he seems pretty content to let Sungyeol do whatever he wants. But after Sungyeol’s finished exploring with his hands (everywhere but Woohyun’s penis, because he can’t quite bring himself to touch it because it’s just too much for him) Sungyeol realizes he has no idea what to do next. He knows the outline of intercourse, of course, both with men and women, and he figures Woohyun brought everything they’ll need with him, but—
Woohyun is good at his job, though (Sungyeol won’t understand for some time just how good, not until he has lots to compare him to), and he takes the lead without seeming to be in charge at all. There’s Woohyun’s mouth first and it’s just as mindblowing as Sungyeol had dreamed of: Sungyeol’s first orgasm from something other than his own hand is so good he can’t even move when it’s over. Woohyun swallows, wipes his mouth, and leans on his elbow beside Sungyeol, looking down into his face with a grin, and Sungyeol has to pull him down to kiss him again; he can’t get enough of the kissing.
Once Sungyeol can breathe again, Woohyun asks, “Okay, top or bottom, Sungyeol-ssi?” and Sungyeol’s mind goes totally blank.
He’d had opinions on this, he knows he did, but he can’t seem to think of what they were right now, can only stammer and stare and—and Woohyun comes to the rescue again.
“Let’s start you out topping, then. Bottoming isn’t for everyone, but there’s no way you won’t like topping. We can try bottoming later—it’s a long night and tomorrow’s a rest day for professionals, right?”
Sungyeol is too flustered to figure out that that means that servicers don’t get rest days. He’s too busy silently freaking out.
But Woohyun is right—he likes topping so much. He likes it from the moment that he sees Woohyun’s slick fingers slip behind him and start prodding at a place Sungyeol really hasn’t thought about in a sexual context (no matter what his life counselor had explained to him, no matter what he’s read in Sungjong’s books, somehow it hadn’t really connected with him until then), likes it up until the moment he comes inside Woohyun’s unbelievable tightness (later, he’ll learn that he came embarrassingly fast, but Woohyun didn’t seem to mind). Everything about it is so much more overwhelming than Sungyeol had been prepared for, so unbelievably better than anything else he’s ever experienced that the rest of his life, which was never all that colorful to begin with, now seems rendered in grayscale.
Later that night, Woohyun introduces him to bottoming, too, and Sungyeol discovers that he does like it, very much, just not nearly as much as topping. Afterwards and in between, there’s lots and lots of touching and kissing, ranging from frenzied to lazy, and if he doesn’t really understand Woohyun’s joke about how good it is to be with someone young ‘with fast recovery time,’ that doesn’t mean he doesn’t laugh along.
They barely sleep any at all, and Sungyeol feels completely wrung out by the time Woohyun kisses his nose again and tells him he has to go.
“Did you have a good time?” Woohyun asks, as he pulls his clothes back on. Sungyeol is sticky and hungry and thinks Woohyun probably is, too, and he wonders if he’ll be uncomfortable as he goes back to wherever it is the servicers live. He hopes Woohyun can have a long, hot shower and a good meal before he sleeps the day away. That’s what Sungyeol’s plans are.
“Fuck yes!” Sungyeol says, and it’s the first time he’s cursed since he was eleven or twelve. The word feels really good on his lips—strong and powerful, and nothing less would be good enough for the night just passed.
Woohyun laughs again—Sungyeol will remember his laughter later, the first thing he ever fell in love with—and kisses Sungyeol long and deep. He pulls back and looks deep into Sungyeol’s eyes and Sungyeol holds his gaze and tries not to blush, especially when one of Woohyun’s big strong hands runs down the length of his bare side. “You really are so fucking cute,” Woohyun says and he’s smiling, but it’s not the easy wide grin from before but something smaller and somehow solemn that makes Sungyeol’s stomach squirm. “I won’t forget you, Lee Sungyeol-ssi. Don’t forget me, either.”
Sungyeol doesn’t. Sungyeol couldn’t. He is completely sure in that moment and forever afterwards that even if Woohyun hadn’t been his first that he’d never be able to forget him. And Sungyeol remembers his name, too, the only one a servicer ever gives him, and he thinks pretty often of requesting Woohyun again, but there’s so many other people he wants to experience, and by the time he gets around actually doing it a year or three later, he’s informed that Woohyun has been permanently placed. Sungyeol thinks of him often, and he hopes that whoever he’s found himself with appreciates him, his mouth and his muscles and his laughter and his solemn smile. Sungyeol still does.
Woohyun was his first introduction to sex, but Sungyeol discovers later that even though Woohyun was a perfect teacher, Sungyeol himself didn’t learn very much from him. He starts to request a servicer every time he’s allowed one (once a week), picking a new one each time. The first woman he sleeps with is stunning, if a little older than he expected, and fuck, women underneath their clothes are even more amazing than he’d imagined. She’s professional and not particularly chatty but she makes him feel so good and the sound she makes when he tongues at her breasts (discovering breasts is a huge moment for Sungyeol) is the thing he falls in love with about her. After her there’s men and women in no particular pattern, all gorgeous, and sooner or later the service gets to know him well enough that he stops requesting particular people and just lets them send whoever they want to.
He’s always so eager to get started, shucking his clothes off immediately and helping his servicer out of theirs. And then it’s a race to pleasure—he likes to explore their bodies because it gets him excited, but really he’s constantly itching to get his dick—one of the guys teaches him that word and he likes it—into something tight and warm, it doesn’t really matter what it is. He doesn’t much think about it from the servicer’s perspective, not even after he catches one of the girls, tiny and lovely with huge eyes and a birthmark on her shoulder, crying when he wakes in the middle of the night. She breaks off in a gasp when he asks her what’s wrong, swiping at her cheeks and smiling wide and promising it’s nothing at all. He relaxes again—well, if it’s nothing—and goes back to sleep. With each week that passes, he grows more confident that he knows all there is to know about sex. It isn’t until some months later that he figures out that he hasn’t learned nearly as much as he thought he had.
The girl they send has a wide smile that reminds him of Woohyun’s even if it’s nothing like his at all and it makes Sungyeol’s pace and heartbeat quicken as he crosses to her. Smiles like that are rare, he’s found. Most of the servicers look very pleasant and are completely accommodating, and none of them ever complain, of course. Most of them wait for him to tell them what he wants and they go along willingly. It’s really good, and he has enjoyed every one of them, but none of them have made him feel as alive and happy as Woohyun. But this girl’s smile makes him think that maybe she will.
He’s got his shirt off by the time he reaches her and tugs her to him before she’s even out of her bow, and he’s got her in a kiss before she can even greet him. She’s got long hair that feels amazing as his fingers tangle in it and a face—he’d barely caught a glimpse of it—halfway between cute and beautiful.
When he pulls back to breathe, hands already sliding up under her shirt, she laughs. It’s the first time a servicer has laughed with him since Woohyun, and the sound of it makes him feel more excited than he’s been in a while.
“Well, you just jump right into it, don’t you? No messing around for you.”
“What does that mean?” Sungyeol’s voice comes out sharper than he’d meant for it to, and for a second he thinks he sees a flash of fear in her eyes.
“Nothing, Sungyeol-ssi!” she says, face pleasant, but her laughing grin is gone. Sungyeol doesn’t like that. He tames his voice.
“I mean—no, I really want to know what you meant. I’m not mad, but—“
She searches his face for a moment and must decide he’s sincere because her own breaks out in a grin again and he feels something inside him relax while something else tightens. “It’s just—getting right to it can be really great. But easing in can be good, too, you know.”
No, Sungyeol doesn’t know, and for a second he feels a flash of anger at her: he doesn’t like the implication that she knows more than him. She’sa servicer. But her voice wasn’t patronizing and he smothers his anger. She probably does know more than him, at least about this, as everyone has their area of specialization, even servicers—probably there are lots of servicers that know more about repairing broken elevators than he does and that’s as it should be. Besides, he doesn’t want to scare her again: he wants her to laugh like Woohyun laughed.
He’s not going to actually ask her to clarify though. His pride won’t allow that. But she doesn’t seem to need the invitation. “There’s all different kinds of sex, you know. The slow-burn is one of the best.”
He learns more from her than from anyone else he’s ever been with. It’s as good as Woohyun (other than the two of them, he never rates experiences, because they’re all so different. But this girl—he wants to know her name so bad, in a way he hasn’t wanted to know any of the others’—and Woohyun, they’re far beyond all the others) but so very different. The slow-burn is good. Really good. She teaches him about teasing, about drawn-out foreplay. When he tries to rush right into penetration, she laughs and punches his shoulder and tells him that he’s ruining it.
“Sex is a lot better when your partner is as into it as you are,” she announces.
This, Sungyeol had never considered. Aren’t they all as into it as he is? It’s their job.
She rolls her eyes. (No servicer has ever done that before, and Sungyeol finds himself grinning. It reminds him of Sungjong.) “Look, most of us service a lot of people. For most of us it becomes pretty routine. Wouldn’t you rather be one of the ones who isn’t routine? Someone worth remembering?”
Fuck yes Sungyeol would. On the nights when he doesn’t have a servicer, he mostly gets himself off by remembering Woohyun kissing him and telling him he wouldn’t forget him. He wants more of that.
The girl teaches him how. She’s jokey and a bit loud, more personality than any servicer he’s ever seen, and sometimes he’s a bit annoyed by it, but mostly he likes it. He likes her, in a way he hasn’t thought about liking any of them but Woohyun. And she’s straightforward about it, which saves Sungyeol’s pride.
“You clearly only think about yourself during sex.” It doesn’t sound like a criticism, just a fact, and Sungyeol can’t really argue with her. He likes sex so much that that’s pretty much all he thinks about—and who else would he think about anyway? “And it’s not such a big deal—you aren’t cruel and you don’t want to hurt us so that’s good.” Sungyeol doesn’t know what she means about cruel or wanting to hurt, but she’s still talking so he doesn’t have much time to think about it. “But it could be better for you. If your partner knows that you want her to feel as good as you do, she’ll be that much more invested in making you feel good too. Mutual pleasure is the very best kind.”
And fuck, she isn’t wrong. The whole night she teaches him about what women like. When she finds out that he likes men, too, she grins. “Guys are different. Think about what you like, try it out for him. But every person is different. Each woman likes something different, each man likes something different. What I’ve told you about women can help, but you just have to experiment with each partner to figure out what works for them.”
She figures out quickly what works for him: she’s a fast learner, but then he is, too. And he discovers how right she is about everything: there’s a certain kind of pleasure he gets from making her moan (real moans, he learns, because she tells him that a lot of times the servicers fake it, and then laughs at how shocked he is) that makes his own even better.
She kisses him goodbye the next morning, just like Woohyun had, though her kiss is different, just like she said everyone’s is. “You’re a fast learner, Sungyeol-ssi. Good work!” she says, punching him on the shoulder again, and it’s nothing like any servicer has ever been with him, but he likes it.
“So you won’t forget me?” he teases, but there’s something inside him that really, really means the question, that really needs to hear that she won’t.
“I definitely won’t,” she answers, grinning, and he can tell that she means it. He’s smiling, wide and gummy, as he closes the door behind her.
Sex gets even better after that, once he starts focusing on making his servicer feel good too. Almost none of them are as good as Woohyun or his teacher-girl (as he calls her in his head), most of them professionally focused, but there are a few—the guy with the wild laugh, the woman with the swords and roses tattoos—that come close, that he’ll remember forever. But every encounter is good in its own way, every person worth finding something about them to fall in love with. Sungyeol goes to classes every day, annoys Sunggyu, meets with his life counselor once a month, graduates with honors but with a note in his file about unruly behavior, gets assigned to Sunggyu’s section, works mixing chemicals and taking notes and doing research, eats lunch and dinner with Sungjong, watches old movies now and then, reads some of Sungjong’s anthropology books about interesting things like war and language—but it’s his service visits he lives for.
He never feels more alive than when he’s touching someone, pleasing them, having them please him. It surprises him, how much he loves touching in bed when he never really cared much for it in other contexts. But he doesn’t question it because it’s his favorite thing in the world. Each week a new servicer, a new person to discover, a new something to fall in love with. Each week something new to tell Sungjong (at first Sungjong doesn’t care, isn’t at all interested in Sungyeol’s ‘exploits’ but eventually he decides that Sungyeol is an amazing case study and starts to listen to his stories with a sort of clinical intensity that really robs them of most of their fun, at least in Sungyeol’s opinion. Sungjong tends to disagree).
The move from classes to work is less drastic than he’d thought it would be—he’s doing pretty much the same work only with a few different people and for real now instead of for testing by the instructors—and other than the peripheral addition of Minha to his world when Sungjong is nineteen, there’s really nothing to measure the flow of time other than the new faces waiting for him each week when he gets home from dinner. Sungyeol feels the vague notion itching at him that he wants something else, something bigger, but it’s easy enough to ignore when he’s wrapped between sheets with someone else’s skin against his. Life, he thinks, is going to continue on this way until he dies and if that gives him moments of panic, they’re brief enough that he can move past them.
And maybe his life would have carried on just like that except that one day he walks into his room and the boy is there.