Waiting for You (Part 2)
Title: Waiting for you
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: 2min
Summary: Taemin leaves Minho without any answers but Minho is undeterred by his mystery and Jonghyun's strange dislike of him. Taemin, however, is wracking his brain trying his best to forget about his one night stand.
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Shiiiiiit...
Taemin's head pounded with that unpleasantly familiar ache that told him 'hey, you drank way too much last night.' It was a completely unnecessary and unwelcome reminder. He hadn't even opened his eyes yet and already he was feeling like shit.
Yeah, today's going to be a great day.
A groan from his side startled him upright.
Oh no... don't tell me...
Apprehensively, he sat up and looked to the person he was apparently sharing the bed with.
Fuck.
He grit his teeth. What was this guy's name again? He tried to recall last night in his head again but kept getting lost. Played a show, drank with some obnoxious guy, went home with him...? And by the looks of it, slept with him...
I have to stop doing this.
As light as he was, he barely made a sound as he got out of the bed and fished through the piles of stuff on the floor for his clothes. He kept looking back to the guy in the bed and couldn't remember a thing after sitting with him at that bar... Min... Minho? Was that it?
God damnit.
He dressed sloppily and left without saying anything. No note or anything sappy like that, he didn't do that kind of shit. One night stands were better off left as they are: one night. As he learned the hard way, it's smart to keep your distance with people like that.
Whatever, it’s not like this guy would even remember him anyway. They were both so drunk that he’d probably wake up and think he’d just had an awesome dream or something. Taemin left Minho’s bedroom and then the small apartment without being seen. He was used to walking around the city, so he’d find his way home eventually...
~*~
“Minho, wake the fuck up.” Jonghyun threw a shirt from the floor at the younger’s face, smacking him right on the cheek. “Damn it’s already 1:00pm, you gonna interact with the living today?”
Minho sat up, startled, and instantly recoiled at the bright light coming in through the window. “Mmh,” He rubbed his eyes. “Where’s Taemin?”
“Who?” Jonghyun asked sarcastically. “Oh, you mean that asshole singer you brought home last night and couldn’t manage to keep quiet!?” He barked.
The taller smirked and ran his fingers through his messy hair. “Did I make him scream that much?” He bragged.
Jonghyun groaned and walked away, not interested in hearing any more about the sexcapades from last night.
Minho laughed and laid back. He looked over his bare torso and admired the random red marks and scratches. The bed still smelled like Taemin, too; a delicate and clean smell. The boy was an angel and had the wings to prove it. Those wings, that back, his figure... how could someone be crafted so perfectly?
And where had he gone?
He got out of bed and put sweatpants on. Did Taemin just up and leave? But after everything that had happened, what they shared and what Taemin confessed, why would he leave without saying anything? It was disappointing; he really felt a passionate kind of connection with him. Love me, Minho! That sweet voice calling to him was too perfect.
“How did you get that kid to sleep with you, anyway?” Jonghyun yelled across the apartment.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Minho stood in his doorway and frowned. “I’m sexy, why else?”
“Yeah,” The older choked on a laugh. “I’m sure it was your sexiness that got him drunk out of his mind to the point where he would get naked for anyone, right?”
Minho looked at him impatiently and folded his arms. “What are you trying to say, hyung? Because it sounds like you’re accusing me of taking advantage of him.” He wouldn’t stand for anyone calling him something he wasn’t. Yeah, he and Taemin drank quite a bit, but it was never his intent to do so in order to sleep with him. That just sort of... happened.
“You just wanna keep it down next time?” The older growled.
Minho glared at him; he never complained when Jonghyun and his flavor of the night got a little loud. “What’s got you so touchy?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He switched the TV on and scrolled through the endless channels.
It was kind of hard to ‘not worry about it’ after Jonghyun had gotten him all riled up. It just made Minho want to go and find Taemin even more. “...You said those kids go to Hansung University, right?”
“What kids?” The older asked.
Minho rolled his eyes. “Bad Luck.”
“The hell are you doing chasing that fucking mess for? You don’t wanna get involved with him, trust me!” Minho had never seen Jonghyun get so mad about something.
Minho’s eyes narrowed. He saw a different side of Taemin; a gentle, vulnerable, and kind side that he had fallen for overnight. “How the hell should you know, huh? Just because he didn’t want to sleep with you doesn’t me--”
“Shut up, god!” Jonghyun blew up at him. “I didn’t try to sleep with him, I know him. He dated a friend of mine and was just batshit crazy, always crying and being clingy and chasing after him, even threatened to kill himself once to get more attention. You want that kind of responsibility?”
Minho froze. He adored how Taemin clung to him so desperately and begged him for love. He wanted to give that to him and more. But crazy? No, he didn’t feel that in him... not at all.
“I didn’t think so.” Jonghyun folded his arms. “Forget about him, Minho! I’m telling you!”
“I’m going to find out for myself, if you don’t mind.” Minho waved him off. He ignored whatever snide remark the older tried to give him and headed for the shower. He’d get to the bottom of this himself. No, Taemin couldn’t be crazy. Hurt, confused, lost perhaps, but not crazy. It was obvious in his touch that Taemin needed someone.
And Minho decided it was going to be him.
~*~
“Where did you end up last night?” Kai was tuning his guitar when Taemin finally got back. He, Kai, and the other two members of Bad Luck, Luhan and Sehun, shared an apartment just a few blocks from their campus.
“Don’t ask...” Taemin fell back onto the couch after kicking off his boots, his feet sore from walking those ten or so miles.
Kai smirked and played some chords to test the sound of the strings. “What’s his name this time?”
“Fuck you.” The singer held a pillow over his face.
Kai laughed. “Who names their child ‘fuck you’?”
“Oh my god,” Taemin groaned. “Just drop it!”
“Taeminnie hyung!” Luhan, the keyboardist, jumped onto Taemin’s lap and bounced happily. “I missed you last night! There was a One Piece marathon on all night!”
Taemin pouted and sat up to hug his dongsaeng. “Sorry. I wish I was here to watch it. It would have been a lot better than what I was doing anyway...”
Bad Luck’s drummer Sehun spoke up from the kitchen. “Did you go home with that tall guy I saw you at the bar with?”
“Tall guy?” Luhan cocked his head to the side as he randomly played with Taemin’s hair. Skinship between the four of them was nothing uncommon.
“Ugh!” Taemin pushed the youngest off of him and stormed to the bathroom. He needed a shower to get stupid Minho’s smell off of him.
“Taemin hyung...” Kai looked to the other two who both had worried looks on their faces. He stood and followed him into the bathroom, not caring that the older may be undressing. “Why are you so angry?”
“...” Taemin faced away from Kai as he undressed and started the water.
“Are you going to ignore me, of all people?” Kai spoke gently. He and Taemin had been close since middle school and practically treated each other like lovers, minus the feelings.
“What do you want me to say?” He stepped into the water and soaked his hair. “That I drank way too much and don’t remember anything I did? Yeah, because that’s what happened.”
Kai leaned against the sink and frowned.
“It’s really fucking awful to wake up naked in someone else’s bed and not remember how I got there.” Taemin watched as Kai undressed to join him in the shower. “And my best friend did nothing to stop me.”
Kai entered and closed the curtain, immediately wrapping his arms around Taemin’s slim waist. “If I try to stop you, you just get mad at me.” He spoke quietly as he kissed Taemin’s cheek.
Taemin sighed and rested his hands on Kai’s hips. “...I know. Sorry. I shouldn’t blame you for my mistakes.”
“We all make mistakes, hyung.” Kai drew little circles on Taemin’s lower back with his fingertips.
“Yeah,” Taemin ran his fingers through Kai’s hair to soak it with water. “I just happen to make a hundred times more than the average person.”
“Do you want a kiss?” Kai offered. It always seemed to cheer him up. “Will that help?”
Taemin nodded with a cute pout, turning to rest his back on the shower wall. “Mhm.”
Kai softly cupped Taemin’s face and leaned onto him, sweetly pressing his wet lips to the older’s. Their full lips moved against each others slowly, tasting a familiar sweetness that was distinctive to them. Pseudo-shyly, Taemin introduced the tip of his tongue and ran it along Kai’s top lip, waiting for him to return the favor. Instead, Kai latched onto Taemin’s bottom lip and sucked it, making a loud sound that echoed in the small shower space. Their hands always remained above their hips, though. Below was for lovers only, and they were strictly friends. Friends that made out occasionally.
When Taemin closed his eyes, the blurred memory of a few hours came to him in a flash. Minho’s hands and lips, how they moved across his body and felt so warm. He gripped tightly and pushed his hips forward, searching for that sensation again. “Minho...” He said before thinking but the mistake snapped him out of his memory and back into reality. His eyes opened wide to see Kai pressed up against him, stroking his erection slowly.
“Hyung?” Kai slid his thumb along the slit. “Who’s Minho?”
Taemin cringed. “The fuck!” He pushed Kai off of him and protectively covered himself. “What are you doing!?”
“You pushed into me. It looked like you really needed the attention.” Kai explained calmly.
Taemin was horrified with himself. “Why didn’t you stop me!?”
“Hyung relax,” Kai rubbed Taemin’s shoulders and kissed his cheeks. “Talk to me, come on.”
Taemin shook his head and pushed past the younger, hastily getting out of the shower to wrap a towel around himself.
“Taemin!” Kai called impatiently. Before he could stop the water and follow after him, Taemin had already left and locked himself in his room. “Aish...” Something big must have happened for Taemin to be so sensitive about this. There was never a time that he was so adamant to keep something from Kai in all of the years they knew each other. After he dried off and dressed again, he sat in front of Taemin’s door and waited.
“What’s wrong with Taemin-hyung?” Sehun asked, looking at the door as if to hope to see through it.
“I don’t know. I think it had something to do with the guy he was with last night.” Kai shrugged. He fell backwards a second later when the door opened unexpectedly and Taemin pulled him in. Right after, he slammed it shut again.
“What do you know!?” He yelled to the startled guitarist on the floor. “I asked you to drop it an hour ago!”
Outside of the room, Luhan and Sehun pressed up closely to listen.
“I would drop it if you weren’t acting so upset.” Kai stood and sat on the edge of Taemin’s bed. “You really like this guy, don’t you...”
Taemin froze and crawled into his sheets. “No! I don’t!” He shoved his face into a pillow. “I really don’t!”
“Then why are you thinking about him so much?” Kai always said the things that needed to be said, even if they were hard to admit or take in. That’s what made him such a good friend.
“I-I don’t know... He’s just some stupid one night stand and he won’t get out of my head!” Taemin hit the sides of his head.
“Hyung, it’s okay to like someone, you know.” Kai took Taemin’s hands away from hitting himself and held them tightly. “It’s been a long time since you and Jongmin... Not everyone is like him...”
“Don’t even say his name!” Taemin closed his eyes; they already stung with oncoming tears from hearing his terrible ex’s name. No one in his life ever made him feel so worthless and small. But for four years, he stupidly put up with Jongmin’s cheating and verbal abuse. No matter how many other men and women his boyfriend had touched, he begged for him to stay. No matter what terrible names and insults and threats Jongmin had spit at him, he forgave him for every single word. And why? Because he was under the illusion that Jongmin loved him. He didn’t really mean to do all of those terrible things, Taemin told himself. It was truly his fault for being such an inattentive and boring boyfriend.
But his moment of clarity came only a year and a half ago when he told gave Jongmin an ultimatum: look only at me or I’ll kill myself.
To that, Jongmin laughed. ‘Kill yourself then.’ He offered Taemin a gun and sat back.
Kai spent that night in the hospital with Taemin after he was put on suicide watch. And since then, the two lived together. Kai, only a few months younger than his hyung, took care of Taemin as he recovered from the four years of abuse. He wasn’t suicidal; it was just a result of the emotional overload.
However, Taemin still continued to abuse himself. He offered his body to anyone and sometimes he was taken home by men twice his age. ‘I don’t care. Don’t stop me.’ He would say to Kai when he tried to pull him away. Each time he’d return home the next day, his eyes seemed just a little more lifeless, like he hoped to do this until he could feel nothing anymore.
Nowadays things were better, if anything. The band kept Taemin focused and gave him purpose. Yet every now and then, he strayed from himself.
“I’m sorry.” Kai apologized for bringing back the painful memories. “But you can’t keep doing this. Why don’t you try getting a hold of this Minho guy and see if he’d like to meet up?”
“No way.” Taemin hugged his knees to his chest. “I don’t even want to see him!”
Kai sighed. “If you say so.” He stretched across the bed and groaned. “We have a show in two days.”
“Where?” Taemin laid next to him.
“Not sure. Sehun has the address. Some bar.” Kai shrugged. “I’m going to keep an eye on you this time.”
“Don’t let me go home with anyone.” Taemin hugged his pillow. “I don’t want anyone touching me anymore.”
Kai got up to leave him alone for a while. “Don’t be afraid to let anyone into your heart, Taemin- hyung. Love can be a great thing...”
Taemin stayed silent; as far as he knew, love was the most painful experience in the world.
Then why was his memory of Minho so warm? His touch was different than everyone else. It was caring, gentle, and sincere.
How annoying!