Archive of Our Own

your hand’s on my neck / your hand’s on my muscles / your weight on my back / it keeps me from trouble
(SUNSET RUBDOWN)

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE DIRTY:

The first time Hoseok breaks a bone it’s two, simultaneously, in the mess of them that come together to form his wrist.

It’s an accident, of course. Hoseok’s barely nine years old and his brother, who is eleven and doesn’t understand his own pubescent strength yet, shoves him into a wall. It’s over something stupid and childish which they’ve both long forgotten but Hoseok hits the wall at an odd angle and, just like that, snap and snap.

Hoseok doesn’t even register the pain at first, just reacts. He pushes his brother back so hard he stumbles, trips, and cracks his skull open on the corner of the coffee table. Hoseok isn’t sure what to do, when his brother starts pouring blood all over the carpet, so he yells for his mother, who becomes nearly hysterical when she finds them.

They don’t even realize there’s something wrong with Hoseok until a nurse in the emergency waiting room notices his swollen wrist and asks him if it hurts.

He shrugs, says, “a little.”

Hoseok hisses when Kihyun runs a cotton swab soaked in alcohol along the cut on his forehead. “Don’t be a baby,” Kihyun hums, ignoring the way Hoseok keeps flinching. “You probably need stitches,”

Just because some guys can’t follow rules and not wear jewelry in the ring. Or they don’t follow rules on purpose. Whichever.

“Fuck that,” Hoseok replies. Kihyun scrapes a little roughly against the jagged cut. It makes Hoseok screw his eyes shut. He’s good with pain - but the alcohol gets under his skin with the way it stings. “You know I hate the hospital.”

“Only because you’ve run out of stories to tell them,” It’s Hyunwoo’s turn to speak now, from where he sits quietly on a chair in the corner of the room, watching Kihyun clean Hoseok up.

“I fell down the stairs,” Kihyun imitates Hoseok, eyes still trained on his ripped apart skin. “I ran into a door. The emergency nurses must think you’re so clumsy.”

Hoseok’s lip feels fat and swollen. “I think they stopped believing me,” he says.

Hyunwoo snickers, “I don’t think they ever did,”

Fighting’s easy. It’s one of the only things you can compress into a tiny little dot in your life and understand completely. This is when you fight, this is how you start a fight, this is why you fight.

Okay, so maybe the last one doesn’t really matter. You don’t really need a good reason to fight, do you? Fighting is usually born out of the absence of reason. When our thoughts get all jumbled and we regress to our simple instincts.

Fighting’s easy. All you need is knuckles and elbows and knees.

Hoseok fought a lot in high school. His mother hated it.

She was already a nervous woman who liked to cry, and Hoseok remembers every weary glance and disappointed head shake he got when he came home with a split lip or a black eye. She burst, finally, and cried when Hoseok came back one night missing a tooth, and presented it to her as two shattered fragments clutched in his palm.

“Oh, my baby,” she had wailed, like a mother losing a child, “you’re hurting me so much.”

Hoseok didn’t understand that, at that age. He wondered how he could hurt his mother so much when he had never knocked a tooth out of her mouth after he had punched her in the jaw. Later in life, he'll feel guilty. He didn’t mean to hurt her, he never did. He never meant to smear blood on door handles and on the inside of sink basins. But he did both those things regardless.

Fighting’s easy maybe because hurting something is easy. Hoseok was good at fighting, maybe because he already hurt people without trying.

Hoseok meets Kihyun because he’s trying to be a hero. 

Hoseok’s at his bar, bandaged up knuckles and a scab on his chin, and Kihyun’s there too. Kihyun’s drinking something expensive, brown coloured with ice, and he can’t afford it himself but it’s okay because somebody else bought it for him.

To make a long story short: this guy puts his hands on Kihyun and Kihyun doesn’t want this guy's hands anywhere near him and Hoseok gets it in his head that he’s somebody's knight in shining armor and not just a stranger dressed in all black with a bruise on his cheek.

“That was fucking stupid,” is the first thing Kihyun ever says to Hoseok, after the guy from earlier has leveled him with a punch to the gut and then the face and watched Hoseok drop to the floor. “What did you do that for?”

Hoseok is fucking pouring blood from his nose, it’s going everywhere, and this is why he wears black.

“He was bothering you,” Hoseok says, mouth filling with his own damn blood when he opens it to speak. Kihyun laughs and balls up four flimsy bar napkins, hands them to Hoseok to hold up against his nose.

“Yeah, really stupid,” he repeats, “you can come back to my apartment with me, though. Your nose is broken. I’ll set it for you.”

Kihyun kisses Hoseok before he even cleans him up. When he pulls away from Hoseok his mouth is streaked with the light red of someone else's blood.

“You fight people for money,” Kihyun asks, eyebrow quirked. Hoseok nods, because there’s no reason to hide it. “Is that legal?”

“Not entirely,” Hoseok replies.

Kihyun fits a palm against the planes of Hoseok’s bare ribs. He shed his shirt a moment ago and Kihyun had taken in every bruise and cut and scar, and that’s how they got here. “Are you any good?”

Hoseok shrugs. “I’m alright,”

Kihyun runs a finger along a particularly zig-zagged looking scar, found under the end of Hoseok’s ribcage but just above his hip. “Guess it’s lucky you found me.”

Kihyun did two and a half years of a four year nursing degree before he dropped out. “And then I moved out,” is how Kihyun tells the story, “because my parents wanted me to be a nurse, not me.”

“They didn’t ask me to move out,” Kihyun keeps talking, “but I did it anyway. I don’t think I gave them a chance to even ask.”

After Hoseok meets Kihyun, his cuts start to get less infected, and his scars look less ugly and scary. Kihyun sets his broken bones and cleans the blood from his skin.

It should be tender and gentle, but it never really feels that way.

“In french,” Kihyun says, covered in bruises and bite marks. He and Hoseok share the same wounds but they're slightly different. Hoseok’s all made from hard and fast impact and Kihyun’s all made from constant, firm presses. “They call an orgasm la petite mort,”

Kihyun’s tongue curls around the foreign syllables. Hoseok kisses him for it. “What’s that mean?” he asks.

Kihyun smirks, “the little death.” Hoseok quirks an eyebrow, “I think it suits you.”

Kihyun digs his nails into the skin around the sharp bone of Hoseok’s clavicle, like he’s trying to rip Hoseok’s bones out of him.

Hyunwoo works for the same people Hoseok works for, but Hyunwoo doesn’t fight. Or, he does sometimes, but not in the way Hoseok does.

Hyunwoo calls himself a bouncer. He’s there for when fights get out of hand, or go out of bounds, or someone breaks rules. He doesn’t lose fights because he’s never really fighting to win - but if he was Hoseok would say he’s undefeated. He gets hurt a lot less than Hoseok, aside from bruised and cut up knuckles.

“You seem like less work than Hoseok,” Kihyun tells Hyunwoo the first time he meets him. Hyunwoo laughs at Kihyun’s words, spoken from a mouth quirked up at one corner.

Here’s the score:

Kihyun and Hoseok have fucked a few times. Are fucking. Kihyun always want to fuck after he patches Hoseok up and Hoseok always indulges him regardless of soreness and pain. Maybe it heightens the experience, the contrast between ecstasy and hurt.

Hoseok and Hyunwoo? Yeah, they’ve fucked before. Once or twice. Nothing’s come of it, but it’s not like they had a falling out. Hoseok would say he loves the weight of Hyunwoo’s dick in his mouth and Hyunwoo would say Hoseok always asks him to do the nastiest shit, and he would say it with a pleased lilt to his voice. They’re good. They’d do it again, if they could.

Hyunwoo and Kihyun - nothing. Nothing yet. But don’t worry, we’ll be keeping track.

Kihyun starts coming to Hoseok’s fights.

He stands near the back of the crowd, who always form a circle around the fighting pair, mostly hidden in the dark, looking small where he stands next to Hyunwoo, safe for the edges of light that catch him and cast shadows.

(Hyunwoo always watches the fight. That’s what they pay him for. Hoseok watches his opponent. Kihyun watches Hoseok and sometimes.

Sometimes he watches Hyunwoo.)

Hoseok catches a right-hook to the ribs, and crumples over with a sharp exhale of air. He can already feel blood leaking from where he bit his tongue.

Hoseok taps out just as his opponent straddles his hips to start pounding him into the concrete. He’s pretty sure he cracked a rib and he has no desire to break anything else.

Through bleary eyes Hoseok sees the sea of people around him part for Hyunwoo, who is followed closely by Kihyun. Kihyun’s face shows no concern for Hoseok, besides his eyes, which seem softer than normal. Hoseok’s opponent is long gone now, off to collect his share of tonight’s money. Hoseok will get a share, too, only smaller, because he lost.

Hyunwoo hoists Hoseok off the floor, jostling him, and Hoseok hisses as pain shoots up his side.

“What’s the matter?” Kihyun asks quietly as they leave the group. Two new fighters take Hoseok’s place, and the audience has already forgotten him. People don’t spend much time on losers.

“My ribs,” Hoseok manages to huff out. Kihyun splays a palm across both sides of Hoseok’s ribcage, pokes and prods and applies pressure until Hoseok hisses again.

“Broken,” Kihyun says matter of factly, “two, if I had to guess, maybe more.”

“Should he go to the hospital?” Hyunwoo asks, eyes solely on Kihyun, looking for his response. Even if Hoseok protested, he doubts Hyunwoo would much care.

Kihyun shakes his head. “Nothing they could do for him that I couldn’t,” he replies, “they’d tell him to relax and give him some pain meds, probably. Not worth it.”

Inwardly, Hoseok knows Kihyun is probably right, and not just telling Hyunwoo this for Hoseok’s benefit. But he also kind of wants to thank Kihyun, for not subjecting him to the ugliness of a hospital.

“What should we do?” Hyunwoo asks Kihyun again.

“You guys have percocets around here somewhere, right?” Hyunwoo nods. They’re already doing something illegal down here, in this grimy basement with splattered blood and leaky pipes, stocking prescription medication isn’t much of a step up.

Besides, it comes in handy. 

"Get me some, then help me get him home.”

“Before you met me,” Kihyun speaks, mouth careful around every syllable, “how did you fix yourself up?”

Hoseok shrugs, immediately regrets it when pain shoots up his right side. “Didn’t,” he offers back simply.

Kihyun looks at Hoseok, actions paused along with his hands against Hoseok’s skin. There’s something in the look, something behind the shine of Kihyun’s eyes and his irises, nestled at the forefront of his brain. Hoseok can’t see that far, though, and even if he could he’s not sure what he would be looking for.

He lets Kihyun look at him that way, silent and unmoving, for as long as he needs. Hoseok’s not sure what to do otherwise. The moment seems to stretch and shrink, like it’s breathing, lungs expanding and contracting around a breath of stone silence.

Finally, Kihyun speaks. “Guess it’s lucky you found me,” he’s said the exact same thing to Hoseok before, but the tone’s all different. Different means to different ends.

Kihyun finishes wrapping bandages around Hoseok’s torso, gives him two painkillers, and promptly prescribes him sleep. Hoseok relents, only because if sleep does anything it helps you forget the parts of you that hurt.

Pain wakes Hoseok somewhere near dawn. He feels like his bone marrow is molten lava, leaking out all over his internal organs and burning against his skin. It makes him sore all over and like his own limbs are too heavy for him to hold up.

He weighs the options in his head: lay still and pray himself back to sleep, feeling like his whole body is throbbing, or waddle a little painfully to find Kihyun and ask him for more percocets.

He decides on the latter, trying to smoothly slide from off the mattress. He winces and clutches his side, padding quietly into the hall outside of his bedroom. Once there, Hoseok’s ears catch voices, a set of two. He stills, out of sight, and listens.

“He’s going to kill himself one day,” Kihyun, that’s Kihyun’s voice, says. He sounds somewhere between irritated and concerned. It’s a tone that closes a tight fist around Hoseok’s heart.

“He’s good at fighting,” Hyunwoo’s voice now, solid and unwavering and emotionally untraceable. Hoseok strains his ears to listen for things less obvious: tones, the shift of bodies, things left unsaid.

“Sure he is,” Kihyun sounds unconvinced, “it doesn’t matter, anyway. You get knocked down enough times and one day you won’t get back up.”

“You worry about him a lot,” Hyunwoo again, speaking quieter.

Kihyun doesn’t reply for a long time. “Of course I do,” he eventually says.

Hoseok never figured he was much of an enigma. He never considered he had a life and personality and attitude worth undressing, careful and slow, like the way Kihyun looks him over after a fight. An open book, lacking layers or a particularly dense plot. 

In the story of his life, there is no foreshadowing, no bigger picture hidden behind the smaller pieces of it. There is no puzzle, just a put together picture with crossing lines: the suggestion of ways to fall apart. Hoseok is uncomplicated, or at least, he always thought.

Maybe he had convinced himself as such so things would be easier to hide.

“I feel like I know nothing about you,” Hoseok, speaking to a dark room and Kihyun, the night nearing 4AM. Hoseok’s ribs mostly healed, but when Kihyun rode him earlier there had been a few sharp jabs of pain. Now he feels boneless, save for a leftover soreness in his side. 

Kihyun scoffs, “like you’re such an open book.”

Hoseok furrows his brows. “What do you mean? You know everything about me.”

“Hoseok,” Kihyun rolls over in bed to look at Hoseok, frames his face with two palms against his cheeks, “I know everything about who you are now, but I don’t know how you got here.” Kihyun continues,”I don’t know anything about your past. I know you fight for money but I don’t know why. I know you hate hospitals but I don’t know why.”

Hoseok opens his mouth to explain and finds he has no way to actually do that. He mouth clicks shut with the audible sounding of his teeth meeting and he, somehow, manages to bite his tongue.

“You only tell me things you have to.” Kihyun’s tone is final. When he finishes his thought he rolls back over, sighing into the pillows. Hoseok is left with nothing but the dark and his own thoughts, surrounded by the sound of Kihyun breathing.

The truth of life is as follows:

The invention of the ship was simultaneously the invention of the shipwreck. Success proceeds failure and maybe you circle around again.

Neither one can exist without the other.

Hoseok wins a fight. After two months off because of his ribs, Kihyun can be convinced to let him go back to fighting. He wraps Hoseok’s knuckles tight for him and wishes him luck.

The other guy had reach but Hoseok is fast, focused, and manages to get a few good punches to his gut before he swings a right-hook across his jaw, and the guy goes down like a bag of rocks.

He’s not getting back up, Hoseok knows, but rules are rules, and they have to count him out before they give Hoseok the victory. Hoseok watches, spits onto the brick below him, and sighs when they finally call the match in his favour.

They don’t have a bell to signal the end of the match, and the cheering usually dies down after someone drops, but Hoseok feels triumphant. He rolls his shoulders back and turns to leave, the crowd parting for him.

That night, Kihyun bites Hoseok's thighs. He gets his mouth on Hoseok’s cock through his boxers and rakes his fingernails down Hoseok’s abs.

He’s making a wet patch on the fabric by now, spit turning the light grey of Hoseok’s boxers a darker shade. Hoseok groans, feeling liking a frayed string about to snap.

“Kihyun,” he breathes, pleading. Kihyun looks up at him, smirking.

“You did good today,” he says, fingers against the elastic of Hoseok’s boxers. He pulls at it, lets it go, and it snaps back against Hoseok’s skin. It’s not painful, only the surprise of it makes Hoseok wince. Kihyun puts his mouth against the red spot left behind, already fading.

“You gonna reward me?” Hoseok asks, nearly squirming.

Kihyun hums against Hoseok’s hip bone, pretends to consider Hoseok’s proposition. “I suppose you might deserve it.”

Hoseok almost physically cheers when Kihyun pulls his boxers down and takes him into his mouth but, admittedly, he’s kind of busy getting his dick sucked. Kihyun is thorough, tonguing over the head, taking it all the way to the back of his throat, pulling all the way off and licking up the underside of Hoseok’s length.

Somewhere along the way, somewhere mid slow and messy blowjob, Kihyun reaches up and slides three fingers into Hoseok’s mouth. Hoseok sucks on them without needing to be asked, tongue trying to imitate Kihyun’s ministrations on his dick. And maybe Hoseok nibbles, just a bit, a bit shy of too hard, just to hear Kihyun make noises around his dick.

Kihyun pulls his fingers from Hoseok’s mouth just as Kihyun pulls his own mouth off of Hoseok’s dick, trailing spit behind across both their chins. He uses the opposite hand to push Hoseok’s legs a little further open, and Hoseok knows where this is going before Kihyun even gets there.

Hoseok like when Kihyun fucks him slow with just spit on his fingers. He likes the burn, feeling like he’s too full, and the way Kihyun will slide his tongue alongside his fingers when it gets too dry.

Kihyun pushes a finger into Hoseok, so slow it makes Hoseok want to scream. They have to go slow like this but this - this pace is still Kihyun teasing him. Hoseok shivers, spine rattling inside of him.

It’s quiet, for awhile, just labored breaths and the ugly noises of Hoseok’s ass trying to swallow Kihyun whole. When he eases in a second finger, though, Kihyun speaks.

“Can I ask you a question?” He says, really fucking eloquent for someone with his fingers in Hoseok’s ass. Hoseok groans in response, not quite an affirmative but enough to get Kihyun to continue. “Have you fucked Hyunwoo?"

And - well that wasn’t the question Hoseok was expecting. Not by a long shot. Kihyun does not sound upset, or alarmed, just curious. The kind of curious where your suspicions are all but confirmed. When you’ve put together your whole puzzle, and you know what it looks like, you’re just looking for the final piece.

Hoseok swallows, fingers clutching in the sheets, and somehow manages with empty lungs, a breathy, “yes,”

No reaction from Kihyun. Just a hum in the back of his throat and a crook of his fingers inside of Hoseok. Then, after what seems like forever, Kihyun kisses the base of Hoseok’s hard cock, says, “I wanna watch him fuck you.”

Hoseok can almost see it on the dark of his closed eyelids. Hyunwoo’s big sturdy frame holding Hoseok down, Kihyun kissing the planes of Hoseok’s face while he does, fingers in Hoseok’s hair. Saying fucking nasty shit into Hoseok’s ear.

Like he’s doing right now, saying, “I’d wanna watch you take all of his big cock inside you. You love being full so much, he’d fill you up. He’d fill you up so good and you’d love it, I know you would, I would be able to see you love it.”

A third finger inside Hoseok, nudged right up against his prostate. Kihyun’s mouth so close to Hoseok’s dick that Hoseok can feel the warm breath of the soft skin of the underside of it.

Kihyun mumbles, “and then, if you want, you could watch Hyunwoo fuck me,” and that’s it - Hoseok comes in spurts.

Kihyun licks it off of him.

Kihyun invites Hyunwoo out for drinks.

“We see each other all the time,” Hyunwoo says, confused expression etched across his face. His brows furrow thick across his forehead.

Kihyun puts a hand on the front of Hyunwoo’s shoulder, palm near where Kihyun could feel his heartbeat. “Never as friends,” Kihyun retorts, “come out with us.”

Hyunwoo does.

They are not an inconspicuous trio: Hyunwoo is large and broad, and people usually notice him when he enters a room. Hoseok has a black eye, and people notice him too, but in a way that they spend a lot of time trying to pretend they never did. Kihyun, between them, smaller, but something in the way he carries himself.

They sit at a table in bar, pool tables in the opposite corner making an awful lot of noise. Kihyun sits next to Hyunwoo, and the two of them sit across the table from Hoseok. They share a round of beers in tall, freshly washed pints. Hoseok finds that Hyunwoo drinks fast, long and steady pulls of beer, and Kihyun drinks slow, in occasional short sips. Hoseok finds his own drinking habits somewhere between them.

The conversation is not dull, necessarily, but it is perhaps stilted, speared on by mostly Kihyun. Hoseok doesn’t take offence - he and Hyunwoo are both of few words and they never speak much when they are just the two of them either.

Halfway through his second beer, Hoseok feels a pressure on the curve of his knee on the inside of his left leg. He realizes it’s Kihyun’s foot, firm and warm through Hoseok’s jeans.

Hoseok is not expecting for Kihyun’s foot to travel upwards - not rushed but at a steady pace - until his socked foot in nestled against Hoseok’s thigh. A hair’s breath away from Hoseok’s cock, which is already stirring to life behind his zipper.

Hoseok says nothing. He takes a sip of his glass while he listens to Kihyun talk, not even missing a beat, and when Kihyun turns his face from Hyunwoo back Hoseok, Hoseok gives him a look.

Kihyun retaliates by digging the heel of his foot into Hoseok’s cock, not painful, but enough for Hoseok’s to hiss behind his beer and for his dick to notice.

Hoseok doesn’t know what Kihyun’s doing but then again when does he ever? Here he is, half-crowded bar, Hyunwoo diagonal to him, with Kihyun’s foot massaging his dick, while Hoseok tries not to squirm even though he’s half-hard.

Hoseok catches movement in his peripheral. Where Kihyun had previously had both hands on the table, folded together with the fingers interlaced, one has disappeared below the table. Hyunwoo’s shoulders tense, suddenly, and then he sighs and everything clicks into place in Hoseok’s brain, despite the way his blood is rushing south.

Under the table, in this crowded bar, Kihyun pushes his foot against Hoseok’s dick while he pushes his hand against Hyunwoo’s. Hoseok can picture it: Kihyun putting his hand on one of Hyunwoo’s thick thighs, fingers pressed on the inside, so close to his crotch but not quite. Not quite until it is, until Kihyun’s fingers prod against Hyunwoo through his pants, until Kihyun uses a whole palm to cup Hyunwoo’s dick.

The thought, Kihyun with his hands on both of them, hidden from everyone around them but just barely, it’s so hot. Hoseok wants to get under the table and get his mouth and hands on the both of them.

“I think,” Kihyun says, cool as a cucumber, as if nothing is even happening, “we should go back to my place.”

Hyunwoo and Hoseok agree.

It’s overwhelming. All the skin, the spit and the sweat. Hoseok’s on his knees at the foot of Kihyun’s bed, Hyunwoo’s cock in his mouth while Kihyun pets his hair. Hoseok’s naked, totally exposed, every cut and bruise and scar, while Hyunwoo has nothing but his cock out and his shirt hiked up. Kihyun is fully dressed, lacking nothing but shoes and socks.

“That’s good,” Kihyun praises Hoseok, fingers on one hand tugging at Hoseok’s hair while the others run across Hyunwoo’s nipple. “What do you want, Hoseok?”

And Hoseok would answer, honestly, but his mouth is full. So full, and if he really thinks about the way Hyunwoo stretches his mouth, it might start to water.

“Do you want Hyunwoo to fuck you?” Kihyun offers, “or you could fuck me? Or Hyunwoo could fuck you while you fuck me?” Hyunwoo groans when Hoseok’s teeth nick the soft skin of the bottom of his dick. “Or, how about this,” Kihyun continues, “Hyunwoo can fuck me and you can watch, the whole time, while I suck your dick.”

Hoseok pulls his mouth of a Hyunwoo’s dick, licking precome and gathered spit off his bottom lip. “That,” Hoseok’s voice is raspy, “I want to do that.”

Hoseok lets Kihyun undress Hyunwoo then. He shoves his pants down the rest of the way while Hoseok kisses Hyunwoo, and then Kihyun straddles Hyunwoo’s hips and lifts his shirt off his head, kissing Hyunwoo's chest before running his tongue across Hyunwoo’s nipple.

They both tug at Kihyun’s clothes after that. They sit him up on his knees between them, Hyunwoo pressing his hard cock against Kihyun’s ass while Hoseok’s palms Kihyun's dick from the front, pulling his shirt over his head. Hyunwoo puts his mouth on Kihyun’s neck then, while Hoseok gets Kihyun’s dick out and into his hand.

It’s a mess of limbs. Hoseok’s never fucked two people at once before and he finds there’s a lack of synchronization that adds a certain messy quality to the whole thing. Hoseok finds it makes things even hotter, how the whole act is debauched from every angle.

Nothing gets hotter than how they end up, though. Hoseok, laying against the pillows with his head propped up. Kihyun, leaning down to take Hoseok into his mouth with his ass in the air. Hyunwoo, three fingers deep inside Kihyun, grabbing a handful of Kihyun’s ass before his replaces his fingers with his cock.

Every time Hyunwoo thrusts it sends Kihyun rocking forward against Hoseok’s dick, every time Hyunwoo thrusts he’s got his eyes on Hoseok, Hoseok’s got his hand in Kihyun’s hair, Kihyun keeps moaning around Hoseok’s cock.

Hoseok thinks he forgets how to breathe. He doesn’t remember until he’s come all over Kihyun’s face, propped him up against Hyunwoo to lick it off of him. Hyunwoo circles an arm around Kihyun’s waist and keeps fucking into him and Hoseok gets his hand around around Kihyun’s cock and jerks him off while he kisses him. Kihyun circles Hoseok’s cock with a tight fist aswell, matching his rhythm as best he can. Somewhere along the way they all end up coming.

Hoseok won’t recall when, or how, lost in the indescribable, distinct feeling of being surrounded.

Somehow two becomes three and Hoseok starts spending every night with Hyunwoo and Kihyun.

They don’t always fuck because it’s exhausting, but they always find themselves in each other’s presence. Hoseok comes to find he likes watching Hyunwoo and Kihyun from afar with a lazy hand wrapped around his dick just as much as he likes being caught between them, which he likes just as much as being watched by either of them while he's with the other.

He also finds he likes to talk with them, to sit with them and drink in the distinct energies they project.

Hoseok wins more fights. He breaks himself apart so Kihyun can sew him back together while Hyunwoo watches.

“If I asked you too,” Kihyun says one night. They’re all three of them in Hoseok’s too-small bed, various states of undress with their limbs tangled up. Hyunwoo is on his phone, doing something, but he’s listening. He’s good at listening.

“If I asked you too,” Kihyun repeats, “would you stop fighting.”

Hoseok fingers had been tracing the highs and lows of Kihyun’s facial features - the soft pout of his lips, the bridge of his nose, the firm bones in his cheeks - but they still after Kihyun speaks.

“What?” Hoseok asks, disbelief in his tone.

“I’m thinking of going back to school,” Kihyun says, lip caught between his teeth. Hoseok watches him peel a strip of skin away, blood bubbling in the wake of trauma. “And I could make good money and you could - stop fighting.”

Hyunwoo grunts, an affirmative in Kihyun’s favour.

Hoseok is stunned into silence. He’s not sure what to say, not sure how to even process what’s being said to him. It’s like this: there are two poles in his life and it would seem one of them is fighting and one of them is Kihyun, maybe Hyunwoo too, and they’re pulling him in opposite directions like a pair of magnets.

And here’s where it all goes wrong: Kihyun is new, parts of him still unsolved, unexposed to Hoseok’s naked eyes but Hoseok understands fighting the way he understands breathing. As in, he doesn’t have to because his body takes care of it for him. Hoseok’s been fighting his whole life and there is nothing but fog when he tries to picture himself without it.

So he says, “why would you ask me that?” in a tone more cutting then he means it to be.

The damage is done. Hyunwoo’s fingers still on his phone screen. Kihyun looks at Hoseok, wide-eyed, before the colour of anger spreads across his cheeks.

“Because you’re killing yourself, Hoseok,” Kihyun snaps back, pulling away from Hoseok’s hands, which are still near his face. He sits up in the bed, Hoseok following. Hyunwoo lifts onto his haunches, watching them. “You think you can take fists to the head every day and nothing will ever happen? Do you not realize your life doesn’t start and end with fighting?”

But it does, Hoseok thinks, of course it does. What else do I have? What else is wholly mine, of which I can deconstruct and reconstruct with my eyes closed?

Not you.

“You’re not going to say anything?” Kihyun’s standing up now, gathering his jeans off the floor. “You know what? Fine. I don’t know why I expected any different.”

“What’s that suppose to mean?” Hoseok’s words feel like venom in his mouth, a poison that he spits out but has already started to corrode his insides. Soon he’ll start spitting blood, a physical representation of hurt that is bright red and can’t be ignored.

“It means you’re selfish,” Kihyun is not moving. He is watching Hoseok, eyes locked with his, and it feels like challenge.

Hoseok bubbles with rage and there it is - all that hurt and blood - filling his lungs and crawling up his throat and right out of his mouth. “You want to pretend you know everything about me?” Hoseok grits out, “didn’t you say you knew nothing about me? What gives you the right to talk to me about what’s best for me, then? Or did you just say that so you could keep hiding so much of yourself from me.”

“Don’t -” Kihyun’s voice wavers, “this has nothing to do with what we were talking about. Don’t fucking make this about me and your insecurities.”

“You wanna talk like you know me?” Hoseok counters, “then act like you know me.”

Later, Hoseok will realize Kihyun’s eyes had been wet after this. Hyunwoo must have noticed too, because he reaches out and grabs Hoseok wrists. Hoseok jerks away from him, steps one foot closer to Kihyun and says, voice low, “you should go.”

Kihyun, to his credit, straightens his shoulders and bites back, “I was already leaving.”

Neither Hoseok or Hyunwoo move, not until Kihyun’s footsteps echoing in Hoseok’s apartment disappear with the sound of a slamming door. The sound breaks the red heat of anger in Hoseok’s head, and his clear thoughts leave him with guilt in his stomach.

“Do you want me to stay?” Hyunwoo says. It sounds so loud in such a quiet room. Only it’s as quiet as it was before they started fighting. It feels empty with just the lack of the sound of Kihyun breathing.

“I -” Hoseok starts, stops. No, he decides. There are things he doesn’t deserve and he never will. “No,” Hoseok breathes, “no, you should leave.”

The invention of the ship was the invention of the shipwreck.

As in: at the very beginning of anything time has already planned it’s end.

Kihyun leaves and he does not come back. Hoseok convinces himself he is justified until he believes it and Kihyun’s name starts to feel like acid on his tongue and headaches in his brain. Hoseok throws himself into fighting. It’s all out of spite, meant to sting like knives, but he’ll be damned if he lets anyone tell him that.

After a fight he won Hoseok sits near Hyunwoo, finger pressed against the split his lip, trying to stop the bleeding. Hyunwoo leans against the wall, arms crossed, watching the two guys after Hoseok fight. Hoseok sits on a concrete block right next to him.

“You been talking to Kihyun?” He asks. He pulls his finger away to find it covered in blood and feels his lip leak more. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and it fills with his own blood. It reminds him of Kihyun.

“Yeah,” Hyunwoo replies, shifting a little uncomfortably.

Hoseok scoffs. “You’ve been fucking Kihyun, too?”

“Hoseok,” Hyunwoo’s tone is terse and warning.

Hoseok scoffs again, wipes his palm against his bleeding lip and smears it across his cheek. “It’s just a question,”

Hyunwoo takes his eyes of the fight, for just a moment, to look down at Hoseok. It’s shadowy, especially from the angle Hoseok sits, and he can’t tell what Hyunwoo’s trying to tell him with his eyes. Hoseok decides he doesn’t care.

Hyunwoo speaks finally, turning away from Hoseok and back to the fight.

“You should go home,” he says.

There’s this scrappy kid who comes to fight sometimes named Jooheon. He’s got soft eyes and soft cheeks and he looks like the kind of boy this place has a habit of ruining. But Jooheon doesn’t fight like that kind of boy because he’s not that kind of boy. He’s got a soft face and soft skin but his knuckles aren’t soft and neither is his heart.

“My dad used to hit me,” Jooheon says to Hoseok one day, after he’s gone toe to toe with a dude about five inches taller than him and somehow won. Jooheon isn’t without his share of bruises, though. “He died before I could ever hit him back.”

So they’re all a little fucked up. So Jooheon pictures his dad’s face over the face of every nameless man and boy he’s pounded into the floor. So Hoseok fights because it’s one of the only ways he can feel like he’s not floating into space, like the pain tethers him back to earth. So he can’t imagine himself without fighting because it’s all he’s ever properly understood.

So what.

“You know Kihyun’s just worried about, don’t you?”

Two weeks since Hoseok’s seen Kihyun. Two weeks of fighting, of outward pain to distract from the biting and the scratching his ribs seem to be doing to his heart. Hoseok’s just won another fight and his nose is sore and Hyunwoo just decides this is the best time to tell bring this shit up?

“Yeah, well,” Hoseok’s voice is nasally from where he sits pinching the bridge of his nose. Does this hurt? Does this? Does this? Good. It should. “Kihyun can go fuck himself.”

“Don’t say that kind of shit about him,” Hyunwoo warns, “especially since you don’t mean it.”

“Oh? What’s this?” Hoseok looks Hyunwoo up and down, “you think because you fucked a couple of times you’re his protector now? You think now that I’m out of the picture he’s all yours? Bullshit.”

“Hoseok,” Hyunwoo rolls the syllables of his name slowly on his tongue, jaw clenched and eyes hard, “be quiet.”

“Guess what, Hyunwoo?” Hoseok continues, aware of Hyunwoo’s taut and dangerous body language but not giving a shit. Or maybe because of it. Maybe he wants to see what will happen when he knocks down all of Hyunwoo’s careful composure. “I had him first. Everything I don’t know about him? You know even less. You’re not any different because Kihyun let you stick your dick in his ass. I’ll call him whatever the fuck I want.”

Hoseok’s visions goes black, then bright white, and pain blooms in a sharp line across his face. When his vision returns he’s staring at the concrete floor of the basement, his cheek throbbing, chunk of his flesh bit off by his own teeth. It’s another moment, still, before Hoseok brain replays everything that happened in his head and he realizes - Hyunwoo hit him, punched him right across the face, a hard right-hook that could have knocked one of Hoseok’s teeth loose.

Hoseok spits and his spit is the faded red of blood in his mouth. He turns to look at Hyunwoo, bangs falling in his eyes as he straightens up again.

“You wanna fight, Hyunwoo?” Hoseok says, “then fight me.”

Hoseok is only half-expecting Hyunwoo to actually do it. The other half of him expects Hyunwoo to fold back into his calm, quiet but still looming demeanor. But he doesn’t. Hyunwoo knocks Hoseok across his face on the other side, knees him in the gut, pushes his up against the brick wall by his shoulders until Hyunwoo has him pinned there. Hoseok is helpless to fight back. He’s not expecting Hyunwoo to fight him, not expecting the strength and power behind each of Hyunwoo’s blows.

Hyunwoo lets Hoseok catch his breath pinned against the wall. God, Hoseok fucking hurts. He hurts all over, his insides and outsides, organs and skin and bones.

“Stop being such a fucking asshole,” Hyunwoo says, face close to Hoseok’s, warm breath against the parts of Hoseok’s face that hurt, that will bruise, that will bear the imprint of Hyunwoo’s knuckles. “You need shit to hurt to feel real? There, I hurt you, now listen, because this is real.”

Hoseok’s head is pounding but he does it, he listens, passed the ringing of his ears and the drumbeat in his heart he listens.

“Kihyun is worried about you because he cares about you,” Hyunwoo says, “I’m worried about you because I care about you.” Fuck, Hoseok aches when Hyunwoo says it. “You want everything to hurt so bad, I know. But you're hurting other people too. You don’t just get to hurt yourself and not worry about anyone else anymore, Hoseok, it doesn’t work like that.”

Hoseok kisses him. Kisses him because he feels like he forgets what it’s like to kiss someone, kisses him because maybe beneath the taste of Hyunwoo there’s Kihyun too, kisses him because he doesn’t know how to stop the bleeding or the ache in his chest that feels like it’s going to swallow him whole. Hyunwoo kisses him back, too, just for a second with his hands on Hoseok’s face, pressing into the pain he put there before.

Then he’s gone, pushed back from the wall and away from Hoseok, looking calm and steely-eyed once again. “Kihyun is worried about you,” Hyunwoo says.

Is worried. Present tense.

Hoseok slides down the hall, sits on the hard and cold concrete of the floor, and watches Hyunwoo walk away from him.

Hoseok loses Hyunwoo too.

Hoseok’s not sure what to say or how to say after fighting with Hyunwoo, so he doesn’t say anything. He sleeps in late, sits alone in his apartment, goes and fights and tries not to look at Hyunwoo. Goes home, looks at the way he’s damaged himself tonight and remembers the way Kihyun’s hands felt against his skin when he would bandage him up. Watches the sun creep back into the sky. Rinse. Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Hoseok forgets how long it’s been. He finds no reason to count the days anymore so he doesn’t. He wakes up feeling like a bruised fruit: beaten soft on the inside, held together by flimsy skin, easy to pierce and rip open.

Hoseok shows up to fight tonight just like any other. So his bandages on his knuckles are flimsier than normal because he had to tie them himself, so that cut someone punched across his cheek a week ago looks nearly infected because he’s not sure how to take care of it properly. So it’s probably going to scar.

They line Hoseok up to fight a guy a good foot taller than him, with muscled shoulders and proper fighting gloves. On any other day he’d wonder how he was expected to win against this guy, on any other day he’d realize he can’t. But this isn’t any other day, so Hoseok shrugs off his shirt and pushes through the circle of a formed crowd to take his fighting stance.

Hoseok and his opponent both bounce of the balls of their feet for a moment, before Hoseok ducks and goes for a swing into the gut.

Everything seems to start and stop after that, like the way they put togetherstop motion movies. Hoseok’s opponent dodges, catches the side of Hoseok’s head, right near his temple, with the hardest left-hook Hoseok’s ever felt. Hoseok's position leaves him vulnerable and he’s falling against the floor before he even has a chance to catch himself.

Hoseok gets the wind knocked out of him, his head is throbbing, and it’s like he blinks and the other guy’s on top of, straddling Hoseok’s waist and smashing his fists against Hoseok’s face.

Hoseok doesn’t know what’s happening, all he can register is pain. He feels his nose snap, crunched against knuckles like a bug under someone’s foot. It pours blood down his face, warm and sticky and it hurts, everything hurts. Another punch pushes Hoseok’s face hard against the pavement and he can feel it cut up his cheek even worse. Another punch and Hoseok feels like he can’t breathe, blood bubbling up in his throat, and if he drowned in his blood wouldn’t that just be poetic.

Hoseok taps his hand against the other guy’s shoulder, a sign of submission, but the guy doesn’t stop. He keeps pounding against Hoseok’s face, spraying blood and breaking bones and no one - no one is stopping him. No one knows how, no one thinks they can, no one wants to. It doesn’t matter why. All that matter is no one is doing anything.

See, this is the trouble with underground fighting rings. No proper regulations. No telling what kind of fucked up guy wants to fight you tonight. No consequences for bad behavior because they’re all doing something illegal here anyway.

The searing pain fades to numbness and Hoseok thinks to himself - this is it, this is where he dies. He wonders where Hyunwoo is and he chokes, on blood, and thinks maybe Hyunwoo doesn’t care. Maybe Hyunwoo is just going to let him die.

Suddenly, the weight holding Hoseok down disappears. Hoseok lifts himself off the groud, arms shaking, and then he vomits. He can’t see it happen, everything about him feels swollen, but he imagines it ugly. A mix of bile and blood.

An arm slides under Hoseok’s armpits, hoists him up. Hoseok coughs and it sprays blood down his front. “Hoseok,” It’s Hyunwoo’s voice, Hyunwoo saved him, Hyunwoo was going to watch him die but then he didn’t. “Hoseok, I got you. Don’t worry.”

“I’m sorry,” Hoseok says. It doesn’t sound right. His mouth is swollen, full of blood and his brain isn’t working right. “I’m sorry,” Hoseok repeats, he hopes Hyunwoo understands. “I’m sorry to Kihyun too.”

“Don’t worry,” Hyunwoo says. He’s right next to Hoseok but his voice sounds so far away. “I got you. You can tell him yourself.”

Hoseok hearts seizes up at the implication of Hyunwoo’s words. Before Hoseok can protest, though, the world goes black.

Hoseok wakes and his face is warm and wet. But not with blood, it doesn’t have the consistency or the smell. It takes a minute for him to realize it’s water. Hoseok opens his eyes and finds a harsh light waiting him, blurring his vision for a moment before he adjusts to it.

Kihyun sits above him, washcloth in his hand. The washcloth is stained red. Hoseok stained it red.

Kihyun’s expression is unreadable. He’s methodically running the washcloth, soft and slow, against Hoseok’s neck. God, he must be a mess. His shirt is off and he imagines their is blood streaked all the way down his chest. Everything hurts too much for him to try and look.

“I had to put twenty-five stitches in your face,” Kihyun finally speaks. He’s not looking Hoseok in the eyes, gaze trained on the parts of Hoseok’s body he’s cleaning. “You’re missing two teeth, your nose is broken. Maybe your cheek too, I’m not sure. He didn’t fuck up your orbital bones, or your jaw, so I guess somehow you’re lucky.”

“Kihyun,” Hoseok rasps out. His voice is husky, throat sore, sounding like it’s been raked over sandpaper.

“This is a really shitty way to get to say I told you so,” Kihyun says, ignoring Hoseok. Hoseok can see the way his eyes shine, tears collecting in them. “So I’m not going to say it but - you know.”

“Kihyun,” Hoseok repeats, framing Kihyun’s cheek with his palm. Kihyun finally looks at Hoseok - finally locks their eyes - and when he does he exhales in a way that trembles. Trembles through Kihyun's entire body. 

“When Hyunwoo brought you in here you looked - you looked fucking awful,” Kihyun’s voice shakes around every word, “and before I could think rationally I thought you were about to die in my goddamn living room. You -” Kihyun sighs, “Hoseok, you scared me so much.”

“I’m sorry,” Hoseok whispers, “not just for scaring you for - for everything. I’m sorry.”

“Hyunwoo told me.” Kihyun replies. He stands from the bed after that, disappears. Hoseok doesn’t want to lose sight of him, so he lifts himself up onto his elbows. Hoseok watches Kihyun step into his bathroom, ruined cloth in his hands, and in the corner of the room sits Hyunwoo. Silent as the darkest of nights.

“Hyunwoo,” Hoseok speaks to him, hissing when he feels a shooting pain in his shoulder. “I - Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Hyunwoo replies, tone as stony as his face is right now. “I’m mad at you right now,” he explains. “For scaring Kihyun, for being so stupid. You didn’t have to fight him, you know that?”

“I know. I don’t know what I was thinking,” Hoseok corrects himself, shakes his head, “I wasn’t thinking.”

Hyunwoo doesn’t reply, just hums in the back of his throat.

Returning from the bathroom, Kihyun agrees. “You do that a lot,” he says.

Every light in Kihyun’s apartment is turned off and the curtains are drawn so not even moonlight can find it’s way inside. The three of them are piled onto Kihyun’s bed, in a way that feels familiar but foreboding, and no one has spoken for a very long time.

“I don’t know if I forgive you yet,” Kihyun says finally. He’s always been the one among them to speak first, to lead conversations, to manage to put thoughts into words in a way that Hoseok and Hyunwoo don’t quite understand.

“That’s okay,” Hoseok says. Kihyun lays between him and Hyunwoo. Hoseok has his hands on Kihyun’s face and Hyunwoo’s arm circles over Kihyun’s waist to lay on the lowest part of Hoseok’s bare stomach. “You don’t have to forgive me.”

“You were right,” Kihyun shifts slightly, the mattress creeks to accommodate his movements. It’s too dark for Hoseok to see what he’s doing but he imagines he’s put a hand on Hyunwoo somewhere. Hyunwoo has really always been an anchor for the two of them. “It’s unfair of me to ask things of you I don’t give you in return.

“I want too,” Kihyun confesses. Hoseok runs a finger over his cupid’s bow. Kihyun’s face feels wet but his voice does not waver. “Forgive you, I mean. I just don’t know if it’s worth it.”

Hoseok kisses Kihyun. Kihyun lets himself be kisses. It’s slow and delicate in a way that’s not quite them, but it’s who they're pretending to be right now. Kihyun sighs against Hoseok’s mouth and Hoseok presses his hand against Kihyun’s heartbeat while he leans over him to kiss Hyunwoo as well.

It’s not perfect and it’s not quite them, it’s who they’re pretending to be, but they’ll hold onto this for as long as they can.

Things never quite go back to normal.

Kihyun and Hyunwoo returns as figureheads in Hoseok’s life. They touch him and kiss him and let him be apart of them and he returns all those things for them as well.

Kihyun never tells Hoseok if he forgives him.

And maybe he stops trying to put Hoseok back together again.