Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry?” Hyuntak says, leaning across the table as he gives Humin an incredulous look. “You found what?”

As he looks back up from Humin’s screen to meet his eyes, he can feel his brows knit together so intensely he can not see from how he’s forced to squint. He’s too busy trying to wrack his brain around this new life-shattering development to put much thought into unimportant things (think: breathing), and so has gone a little red.

Humin thumps him on the back. “It’s alright,” he says consolingly. Hyuntak blinks, then scowls.

It's not the serrated scowl, the one he fixes on Basketball Captain Humin or people trying their hand at pestering Sieun, eyebrows drawn and teeth bared, but it edges on it. Held off only by the unsquashable affection curling the line of his mouth, more exasperation than genuine rage in the crinkle of his eyes.

It's still one Humin sees a lot.

“Hyuntak armpit licker?” he reads, shrugging Humin off. With a grimace, he lifts an arm and looks down at the damp patch surrounding his kit shirt’s armpit. First things first, he fucking reeks from practise, so he should probably figure that out. Second, he really does not want to think about anyone licking him. Especially not there.

He’s not as affected by sexual comments put forth anymore—shout out to the general consensus of their high school’s student body, cheers!—but there’s also a vast difference between being the focus of public chatter and having a goddamn smut fanfic written about him. A smut fanfic in which he is—

“Why am I the bottom?” he demands, scowling at the screen as he lowers his arm. Beside him, Humin is plugging his nose, so Hyuntak sends him a blistering look until he lowers his fingers. 

“You have the thighs for it,” Humin marvels, a grin in his voice, but his expression is startled, too. 

It’s funny, the things that make him want to throttle his best friend. His whole life, he’s heard him make huge, sweeping statements about his aesthetic appeal, which, like, cool! He’s hot, that’s really good to know! And people know he’s hot, that’s, like, also pretty stellar! But it’s one thing to know people want to get in his pants. It is another thing entirely to be told he has ‘bottom thighs’, whatever the fuck that means.

Now, it isn’t even like he’s a celebrity, or anything, so it really makes no sense for anyone to be writing fanfic about him. Maybe that should be his most pertinent thought, but it’s a little hard to put consideration into that when he’s just found out someone genuinely believes he’s going to… y’know. He looks down at his thighs, rolling up the hem of his basketball shorts, and frowns. They’re thick, he guesses? But that’s all solid muscle; do bottoms usually have ten pounds of pure muscle on each thigh?

His frown deepens. This is disconcerting. He’ll have to do some research later—maybe he could ask Juntae? He did rec that one manhwa that one time with that one hunk and that one egg – 

That makes him shiver. He really does not want to be thinking about Full Volume or whatever the hell right now.

“This fic,” Humin says, looking reluctant. It brings Hyuntak back to the present issue when he holds up his phone, having scrolled further into chapter one. “They’re really dedicated.”

Hyuntak wrinkles his nose, perturbed. 

Taking the phone from Humin’s grasp, he scrolls down, skimming the first few lines of prose before slamming the phone facedown on the table. Humin doesn’t even bother trying to hide his snicker, instead laughing into his bag of fried tteokbokki chips as he tips them into the wide breadth of his grinning mouth. Suho and Sieun both look up, though, wide-eyed and furrowed-browed respectively, because they are the only mates Hyuntak can trust. 

“Hey, Tak, are you reading the fic?” Suho asks, while Hyuntak is trying to smack Humin into submission. He registers the question mid-arm raise, and almost swallows his own tongue, whirling his head to glare at Suho, who is sprawled across the club room couch, Sieun sat atop his stomach as he reads some textbook.

Well, he had been doing that. Now he’s looking between Suho and Hyuntak with an expression of ardent confusion. It’s sort of cute, actually, if Hyuntak had the wherewithal to care about how adorable his lil kitty kitty is. As it stands, he’s a little overwhelmed with the betrayal of not one, but two friends. 

He rounds on Humin. “How many people know about the fic?” he demands.

Humin does not show him any sympathy.

“Those in the know are in the know,” he says, apropos of fucking nothing. To add salt to the wound, he flicks Hyuntak a dry glance, which Hyuntak thinks is fucking rich, considering he is normally the one conducting the whole goddamn symphony in saying shit to make Hyuntak blow an embolysm. 

Briefly, he wonders if he hit his head in practise and this is all some concussion-induced fever dream.

"Have you all lost your minds?" he asks.

Ignoring him completely, Humin tacks on; "I really think it deserves classical acclaim."

Before Hyuntak can unleash a (reasonably) emotional barrage on his asshole of a friend, he is interrupted by Sieun making a quizzical noise from the couch. A momentary respite in the hostilities of war.

“What are you talking about?” Sieun asks, looking to Hyuntak for answers. Usually, he would give them, but he’s a little busy right now. Being furious. Whacking Humin. Important things like that.

Besides, Suho seems to have such matters covered.

He shifts Sieun atop him to sit up, cradling him to his chest as he pulls out his phone. Hyuntak watches incredulously, pausing in his assault on Humin’s big-fat-stupid head. It quickly morphs to horror when Sieun squints down at the screen, glances up at Hyuntak, and takes Suho’s fucking brick to scroll through. He has the temerity to look concerned, at least, if mostly just whetting his curiosity.

“Oh,” he says flatly, before immediately bursting into laughter. Sieun—Sieun! The last person Hyuntak would expect to contribute to the absolute clusterfuck happening right now.

“What?” Hyuntak demands, annoyed. 

“Is—it—is it like—oh my god – they’re using semi-colons and everything,” Sieun wheezes, choking out the words between giggles. Actually, it’s really hurtful. Sieun, at least, was supposed to be on his side.

Glowering, he picks the phone back up and begins to read.

Hyuntak slams the phone against the desk and turns around to throw up.

“Oh my god,” Humin is fucking howling, clutching his stomach as he doubles over. He collapses onto the table, scattering a handful of chips in the process. “Basket isn’t the only variety of balls… Dude. Dude, that’s poetic. Put that on my gravestone.”

“Oh, I will,” Hyuntak says, and goes to throttle him.

From the couch, Sieun is still making a high-pitched, wheezing sound, his face buried straight into Suho’s chest to muffle his hysterics. Suho, meanwhile, looks like he’s trying very hard to be the supportive friend, but his shoulders are shaking so violently that Sieun is bouncing up and down like a human trampoline.

“Shut up! All of you, just fucking shut the fuck up!” Hyuntak screeches, his hands flying to his hair as if he could physically rip the memory of those sentences out of his skull. ‘Basket isn’t the only variety of balls.’ It’s burning into his retinas. It’s echoing in his ears. It’s going to haunt him until the day he dies.

“And what the fuck is an orb?!” he splutters, pacing the length of the club room. “My orbs widen? I drool like awooga? Who talks like that?! Who writes this shit? Eighty-six thousand words? Sixty-two chapters?! That’s a goddamn trilogy of me being called a baby girl!”

“Actually,” Sieun gasps, finally lifting his tear-streaked face from Suho’s hoodie, his voice trembling with a level of amusement Hyuntak has literally never seen on him before. “It’s—it’s eight hundred and sixty-two thousand words, Tak. That’s longer than War and Peace.”

Hyuntak stops dead in his tracks. He turns slowly, looking at Sieun with a betrayed, vacant stare. “What?”

“He’s right,” Humin says, wiping an actual tear from his eye as he pulls his phone back toward him, careful to keep it out of Hyuntak’s striking range. “Dude, this guy is a machine. Chapter forty-five is titled ‘The Jock’s Secret Milkies’. I am not joking. I am going to read every single word of this.”

“If you read one more syllable out loud, Humin, I will bury you under the court,” Hyuntak threatens, but his voice cracks, utterly devoid of any real power. He collapses into a nearby plastic chair, staring blankly at the ceiling. He feels hollowed out. He feels violated. He is but a shell of a man; a jock who likes basketball and boobs, reduced to a 6’7” bad boy's property. Thank you, user hyuntakarmpitlikr, for shaping his life this way.

“Hey, man,” Suho says, his voice cracking slightly. “Look on the bright side. At least they said you have luscious locks like a shampoo commercial, Tak. That’s a compliment.”

To show him just what he thinks of that, Hyuntak grabs a dumbbell and goes to throw it. 

“That’s why you’re not the nonchalant dreadhead,” Sieun says.

Hyuntak drops the dumbbell. 

“I’m actually going to kill myself,” he promises.

Shaking his head, Sieun tries to regain his usual stoic composure, but he ultimately loses. His eyes are dancing with amusement, and Suho is still having an asthma attack or something of the sort beneath him.

Still, he manages to ask: “Why did you moan when he said the thing about balls?”

Hyuntak freezes, his jaw dropping. “I didn’t moan! The text said I moaned. I would never moan at a line that terrible, instead I would punch him in his ocean-blue sparkling eyes.” 

“But you read it out loud,” Suho says cheerfully, gasping in a lungful of air. He points at Hyuntak for – Hyuntak has no idea. Dramatic effect, probably. He tends to do that. “You did the little 'Ohhh...'and everything. It was very convincing. Very emotional.”

“I am going to kill all of you,” Hyuntak mutters, dropping his head into his hands. He can feel his ears burning. It’s a lost cause. His dignity is dead, buried under 862,982 words of semi-colon-infused, Linkin Park-soundtracked psychological warfare. “I’m changing schools. I’m moving to another district. I’ll move to France and I'll become a monk.”

“Don’t do that,” Humin says, sliding his phone back into his pocket with a satisfied smirk. “Who’s going to buy me my tteokbokki chips? You’re really sensitive, actuwaly.”

Hyuntak lets out a battle cry and launches himself across the table, tackling Humin right out of his chair.

Gagging, Hyuntak shoves the phone under his pillow, determined to ignore it. He rolls over onto his side, tucking his blankets around his chin.

I am straight, he reminds himself fiercely, glaring at a poster of Michael Jordan on his wall. I like girls. And taekwondo. And basketball. The fic is wrong. I don't even like leather jackets. They're sticky and they smell like dead cows.

Five seconds pass.

Ten seconds.

With a miserable groan, Hyuntak violently yanks the phone back out from under his pillow. He can't help it. It's like looking at a horrific, multi-car pileup on the highway; it's sickening, it's devastating, but you just can't look away.

Realistically, he should be asleep, it’s 2:17am and he has practiced in exactly six hours, but cut him some slack. He’s just learned that, apparently, his heart beats so loud the neighbours think he is fucking.

He scrolls down, his thumb hovering over the screen. Part of him—the sane, rational part that still wants to look his basketball coach in the eye tomorrow—is begging him to lock the phone, pitch it out the window, and go to sleep. But the sheer, morbid curiosity is like a parasite in his brain.

Chapter 45: The Jock’s Secret Milkies.

Hyuntak shudders, a full-body convulsion of pure disgust. He absolutely cannot click on that. If he clicks on that, he will actually lose the will to live. Instead, he clicks on entire fic and scrolls swiftly, his eyes catching random, horrific fragments of sentences as the text blurs by.

“‘...Hyuntak whispered as your name put his big manly alpha hand on his thick bbl jock butt…’ Alright,” he mumbles to himself. “‘‘You're so small and breedable, Hyuntak, your name chuckled darkly like a demon…”

He slaps a hand over his mouth, terrified his mom might hear him through the wall. He doesn't even know what a BBL is, but it sounds expensive and it sounds inherently humiliating.

Despite his best instincts, he keeps scrolling, desperate to find an ending, or at least a scene where they just play video games or something normal. 

Suddenly, his phone chimes.

Baku

yo tak u up?

chap 42 is crazy ngl

u guys go to an aquarium and he buys u a dolphin cuz he says it reminds him of the sounds u make on his cock ㅜㅜ

Me

DIE

IA M GOINGG TO BLOCK URR NUMBER STOP READDING IT

Baku

cant stop wont stop the prose is immaculate the story is gold

also i think he impregnantes u at one point

Hyuntak throws the phone face-down onto his mattress, refusing to look at the subsequent three texts that light up his screen in rapid succession. He knows exactly what they are: screenshots. Screenshots of him whimpering, or drooling like aooooga, or having his walls melt away like ice cream in the summer, or whatever the fuck.

He stands up, pacing the small perimeter of his bedroom. He stops in front of his full-length mirror, frowning heavily as he grips the hem of his oversized gray t-shirt and pulls it up to his ribs.

He stares at his waist.

It's... normal. It's a normal, athletic waist. There is absolutely nothing ‘slutty’ about it. He turns to the side, flexing his core until his abs twist into hard, defined ridges.

"I'm a jock," he tells his reflection, his voice firm, trying to reclaim some semblance of his identity. He takes a steadying breath, pushing down the shaking in his diaphragm. "I play basketball. I like video games. I am a normal, straight guy. I can’t even get pregnant.”

He lowers the shirt, his eyes falling to his thighs. He hesitates. Slowly, reluctantly, he rolls up the leg of his boxers, inspecting the heavy, dense muscle of his quadriceps.

Your thick thighs drive me crazy!

Hyuntak lets out a shuddering breath, slapping his hands over his face. He's losing his goddamn mind. He's literally analyzing his own anatomy based on the literary critiques of an author named hyuntakarmpitlickr. If anyone walked in on him right now, they'd think he was having a psychotic break. It’s possible that they wouldn't be wrong.

He walks back to his bed, collapsing onto his back and staring up at the ceiling.

How many vitamin gummies would it take to kill himself? Let’s find out.

“Okay,” Hyuntak says, hands slamming down onto the table. Several heads snap up around the cafeteria, but he does not deign to acknowledge the peanut gallery. 

“AGH!” Humin yelps. “Gogo, I’m eating!”

Hyuntak is unswayed by this protest. “You’re always eating,” he says, before reaching out to snatch the burger from his hands and throw it into the trashcan behind him. He ignores Humin’s indignant squawk, flicking the others a pointed look. “Right. We’re here to talk about the fic.”

Immediately, Humin brightens, food related objections forgotten to the whims of his favourite past-time: reminding Hyuntak why he’s on a double dose of anti-depressants. 

“Yeah? Have you read chapter thirty-seven yet?” he asks.

Hyuntak eyes him suspiciously. “No. I would die happily if I never did.”

To his left, Sieun sighs gustily, pretending at being the mature one again, as if he hadn’t been near pissing himself a day prior. It’s unfortunate that he has such a great poker face now, because Hyuntak knows for a fact that Sieun has the entire Ao3 tab bookmarked on his phone.

He’s such a two-faced dick.

"You’re a traitor, Yeon Sieun," Hyuntak deadpans, pointing a violently shaking accusatory finger at his so-called friend. "I saw you reading it during AP Calc. You were literally highlighting parts of it."

Sieun doesn't even have the decency to look ashamed. He calmly takes a sip of his banana milk, his expression perfectly blank. Hyuntak can see where this is going.

"I was studying the syntax,” Sieun says, as if that makes any sort of sense. “The author’s avant-garde approach to ignoring the fundamental rules of the Korean language is… subversive.” 

“I’ll subverse your jaw.”

Suho snickers. “I think that’s what you do to the guy in chapter twenty-nine, after you squeeze your thighs around his—”

It’s a miracle Hyuntak doesn't snatch up a pair of chopsticks and go to town. Such would be reasonable, in his opinion.

“Finish that sentence and I will put you in a hospital bed,” Hyuntak threatens. “I will hit you around the head so hard it will hurt, and you’ll be bed ridden for weeks.”

Suho just throws his hands up in mock surrender, his eyes crinkling with absolute delight. “Hey, man, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just trying to understand the plot. It’s got a lot of lore.”

“It doesn’t have lore, it has mental illness,” Hyuntak corrects, leaning heavily against the cafeteria table. 

“And you threw away a perfectly good double cheeseburger,” Humin laments, staring tragically into the depths of the trashcan. “That’s a hate crime, Tak. Your name would never treat my nutritional needs with such disrespect. He’s a provider. In chapter twenty-four, he buys you an entire Mcdonalds because you were hungry..”

“He isn’t real! He’s a figment of a lunatic’s imagination.”

Sieun calmly sets down his empty box of banana milk. “Statistically speaking,” he begins, twisting his straw thoughtfully, “the dedication is what’s reallt alarming. Eight hundred and sixty-two thousand words divided by sixty-two chapters averages out to roughly thirteen thousand words per chapter. And yet, they only have eleven kudos.”

Suho winces sympathetically. “Oof. That’s a brutal ratio. Honestly, I felt kinda bad for the author, so I left a guest kudo this morning to help them out.”

Hyuntak’s entire soul leaves his body. He stares at Suho with a look of such profound, cosmic betrayal that the table briefly falls dead silent. “You… you liked it?”

“I supported local art,” Suho corrects.

“I’m going to kill myself,” Hyuntak says. “I’m going to walk right out of these doors, find the nearest delivery truck, and let it kill me. I can't do this anymore.”

“There, there,” Humin consoles. “There, there.”

“Get your dirty, filthy, traitor hands off me,” Hyuntak snarls, swatting Humin’s comforting pats away. He slumps his forehead directly onto the sticky cafeteria table, letting out a muffled, pathetic groan. “Eleven… twelve kudos? One of them is Suho. One of them is probably the author’s alternative account. Who are the other nine people? Who is reading eight hundred thousand words of my secret milkies?”

“Actually, it’s thirteen kudos now,” Sieun pipes up, his phone already out and glowing against his pale face.

Hyuntak’s head snaps up so fast his neck clicks. “Don’t tell me you—”

“I didn’t,” Sieun says smoothly, though a tiny, treacherous twitch at the corner of his mouth betrays him. “But a user named baekjin_plslemmehit left a comment nine hours ago.”

Humin stops rummaging in his backpack for stray snacks, looking suspicious and forlorn. 

“Read it,” Hyuntak demands, his voice trembling on the precipice of a total nervous breakdown. “Sieun. Read it right now.”

Sieun adjusts his posture, clearing his throat. “Quote: ‘lmao this is the best thing I have ever read, I’m praying for you and Hyuntak to get together for real! Anyway, nice fic, update soon author-nim your name is so cool.’”

At once, Hyuntak rounds on Humin. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” he yells, pointing a trembling, white-knuckled finger at Humin’s chest. “You left that comment! You’re ⁠baekjin_plslemmehit⁠, aren’t you?! You sick, twisted, backstabbing piece of shit!”

Humin gasps, clutching his chest in mock offence, though his eyes are darting wildly around the cafeteria. Injured innocence colours itself within his voice. “Me? I would never! First of all, I don't pray for you to get together with your name, I pray for your character growth because, frankly, you're a terrible omega. It’s probably the clogged scent glands.”

“I will rip your scent glands out through your throat,” Hyuntak says, entirely forgetting that he doesn't even know what a scent gland is.

Before Hyuntak can actually leap across the table and make true of that threat, Suho gasps. 

“What?” Hyuntak asks. He looks at Suho, dreading the answer. “What did you find? Did they—did they write a sequel? Is there a crossover? Am I an omega in the Study Group universe too?! I hope so. Gamin would be a good Alpha.”

Everyone stares at him for that. Hyuntak ignores them, nudging Suho’s ankle to prompt a response.

Suho doesn’t answer right away. He’s staring at his phone, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly agape. For the first time since this entire nightmare started, he actually looks a little bit freaked out. 

“Tak,” Suho says, his voice dropping to a cautious whisper. “Look at the hit count.”

Hyuntak blinks, suddenly filled with more apprehension than he previously assumed possible. He leans forward to squint at the tiny text on Sieun’s phone beside him, who has scrolled up to check.

Hits: 824

“Yeah? It’s eight hundred and twenty-four,” Hyuntak says, letting out a shaky breath. “That’s... I mean, that’s still eight hundred too many, but it hasn’t changed since yesterday, right?”

“No,” Suho says, “Sieun’s page probably hasn’t refreshed. Look at mine.” He spins his phone around.

Hits: 7,329

What.

What.

Hyuntak stares at the screen. The numbers are bold, and they are crisp, and they are very, very real. Seven thousand. Three hundred. And twenty-nine.

"That's a glitch," Hyuntak protests, his voice frantic, his vision blurring around the edges. "The website is broken. It’s a DDOS attack. Some Russian bots are trying to steal my... my data."

"Hyuntak," Sieun says. He refreshes his own browser, his serene expression at odds with the collective choking that follows the wake of his next statement. "It's not a glitch. Look at the kudos. It's at five-hundred and forty-two."

"Five hundred?!" Hyuntak says, throwing his hands in the air. "Five hundred people clicked the little heart?! Who?! Who are they?!"

"Uh," Suho mutters, rubbing the back of his neck, suddenly looking very invested in a scratch on the wooden table. "So, remember how I said I left a guest kudo this morning?"

Hyuntak’s eyes snap to him, sharp and lethal. "Yeah. And?"

"Well... I might have also shared the link in the basketball association group chat," Suho admits, offering a weak, sheepish smile that does absolutely nothing to soften the blow. "I just thought the guys would appreciate the sports accuracy. You know, the part where you drop the ball because your thighs are too thick."

"You what?" Hyuntak whispers. The room is spinning. His heart is going bumbum bumbum, but not because of a 6’7” bad boy in a leather jacket. It’s because he is having a literal cardiovascular event. "You shared it with the team?”

"If it makes you feel any better," Humin chips in, entirely unhelpfully, "someone forwarded it to the Yoosung High forum too. Juwon sent me a screenshot. Apparently, Jimmy Bae pinned it to the top of their announcement board with the caption 'look at this princess'."

Why the fuck would that make him feel better?

A few things click into place for Hyuntak right then. Mostly the fact that he is going to jail. He is going to commit triple homicide, and he won’t even feel bad about it. It's deeply unfair that he is facing these adversities alone. His friends should be suffering with him. 

“This is ridiculous,” he says. Huffs, possibly. 

“Is it, though?” Juntae asks. Oh, right. He’d been so quiet Hyuntak had forgotten he was there. Like the others, he has his phone in his hand, but he isn’t looking at it, instead casting a critical survey of the table. Hyuntak thinks this is remarkably judgemental coming from someone who recommended him a manhwa where they have sex with liquid-filled eggs. Like, glass houses, man. “It is kinda funny, even if it’s weird.”

“Okay, you can’t talk,” Suho snorts. 

Hyuntak always knew Suho was his favourite friend.

“But it is really funny,” Suho adds a moment later.

Hyuntak retracts his statement.

“We need to find out who it is,” Hyuntak says, levering up to his feet. His voice is more level than before, still pointed but less combative. “Like—like IP, or something. Anything at all.”

Sieun seems to take this as a challenge. He squints down at his phone, tapping around on the screen. “I mean, judging off the original author’s note, I’m guessing his last name’s Keum.”

Hyuntak's brows furrow. "I do not know a Keum."

After a few more seconds of silence, Sieun glances up, addressing the table at large. “I guess we need to investigate,” he says, sinking into his seat.

All heads swivel towards him.

Hyuntak doesn’t move, but he sends him a sidelong glance. Sieun looks back to his phone, where he does, in fact. seem to be dutifully reading. Humin is reading over his shoulder and grimaces, pointing at something. Sieun scowls, then zooms in. Something shifts on his face, something taking it's sweet time dawning on him.

“Keum,” he says again.

Well, Keum fucking Hyuntakarmpitlikr. Today is your lucky day.

Hyuntak is going to find you.