Mourn for me
Title: Mourn for me
Pairing: Kris/Suho, past!Chanyeol/Suho
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~8k
Summary: Joonmyun goes through seven stages
WARNING! sexual content, rimming, implied character death, profanity.
Note: filling this prompt at exopromptmeme
Mourn for me
( shock )
There’s a vessel made of oak. It floats alone in the ocean carrying promises more abundant than the stars, more precious than the waning moon. Waves roil around it and seafoam licks at its side, threatening to spill over the edge. But no matter how untame the seas are, it can never overcome its buoyancy.
They’re feather-light within it, defying gravity, every law and principle. One and one, making two, who are encapsulated within this utopia -- this dream-like state. It keeps them afloat, keeps them from sinking; this steadfast arc.
For a long time it does, carrying along the ocean’s breeze. It’s peaceful but maybe far too much so. They see the same stars, move across endless seas beneath the same sky as if they’re not making any real progress at all.
And it’s this that kills them, the mundane. For their stagnancy, Poseidon unsettles the seas with disdain.
It comes as unexpected as lightning, as frightening as fire. It lights up the sky for one second and extinguishes just as fast. He’s caught unaware, without time to close his eyes to the blinding flash or to cover his ears from the banter of thunder. But that’s all it takes to disturb the balance, tip the vessel with one upward heave.
He still can’t believe that it has happened until he hits cold water. The contact thrusts him out of oblivion, heartless and ruthless.
Not knowing how to swim, he sinks; deeper and deeper into a darkness that pulls him down. His lungs burn and he cries out for help but no sound escapes. His heartbeat is rampant as he tries to put up a fight.
But it’s too late. It’s done. He’s already ten foot under with no way out, a dead weight to gravity’s ministrations with nothing but trapped air spilling out from deflating lungs.
( denial ; pain )
‘Oh god,’ Joonmyun swears as he startles out of sleep, struggling to breathe.
He’s tangled in his sheets and his skin is covered in perspiration from the efforts of trying to free himself. He must have been thrashing throughout the night, the linen of his double bed are creased and untucked at the corners.
He drags a hand over his face and up through his hair, feeling the short hairs at the side prick his palms. There’s an emptiness beside him; an untouched pillow that lingers with his scent and untouched sheets on the colder side of the bed. It’s a side he can’t bear to look at, can’t begin to accept.
He straightens out the covers and smooths out the creases, neurotically trying to restore normality, before he tumbles out of bed.
Without Chanyeol, Joonmyun lives his days curled up on the floor or in bed with his front door bolted. He tries not to think about the date, the number of missed calls on the phone he hasn’t recharged for a week and the messages banked up in his mailbox.
The sun and the moon are no longer his problem. Joonmyun operates in his own time; the time he left and the time he returns.
Sometimes he lies on his side, sometimes on his back with his legs spread wide and waiting. He’s forever staring into space, his head polluted with listless dreams and his ears tuned to a familiar jangle of keys and a banter that’s distinctly Chanyeol.
Bare necessities; he needs nothing else. Bare necessities and Chanyeol.
‘It’s unhealthy,’ he imagines them saying with a frown that he will choose to ignore.
There would be an empathetic smile as well, but Joonmyun will turn a blind eye to that too. He doesn’t need pity because he’s going to come back; Chanyeol always does.
They’ll see; everyone will see that Chanyeol will return.
They’ve been through this before, Chanyeol has walked out loads of times when he was too fed up with the way their universes collide, two completely different entities.
He stumbles past the window on his way to the bathroom. Autumn rain is marking tracks down the glass, diffracting the iridescence of a lone moon.
Drip, drip, drip. He hears it patter against the frame.
Drip, drip drip like the ceaseless rhythm of sorrow and pain.
His feet are freezing against the tiles and he tiptoes on the balls of his feet towards the sink. There are fluffy slippers beneath his bed, obnoxiously pink, but they’re twice his size and a number he can’t fill.
He avoids his reflection entirely. It's probably atrocious anyway, and yanks open the cupboard door. It’s empty except for a labelled bottle that instructs him to take the white pills inside it an hour before bed, two at a time.
'This will help you, if only temporarily,' They had told him, some failsafe that relieves all medico-legal responsibilities for the way things move on from here.
‘Not that anything will,’ he reassures himself, biting his bottom lip, ‘because everything is going to go back to normal,’
He looks around the bathroom, pill bottle clutched tightly in his hand, and there are reminders of him everywhere. Two toothbrushes in the stand and bottles of Chanyeol’s favourite shampoo leaning against the shower wall. Sakura blossoms and oriental lilies. They’re scents that linger around him like the motionless air and the quiet that deafens him.
He closes his eyes and leans against the wall, throwing the bottle of pills into the sink. His fingers press into the cool tiles behind him and he remembers how he had tried to grip it so that the slide up and down was smooth and stable. He remembers how he had adjusted to it, the insistent pushing and pulling Chanyeol that ignited his senses. Up and down with water dribbling down his sides and lips hot against his front. They would make a trail down his jaw, his neck, his abdomen and eventually settle between his legs teasing him open and firing his lust.
Those moments, with caresses so affectionate and words so intimate, were one of his favourites. And his body is flush with the memory of them grinding against each other with shameless moans that echo loud within these walls and gentle touches that aim to please.
'I love you, I love you, I love you.'
Chanyeol had chanted against his neck from where he stood behind him, getting him off with languid strokes that would have him begging after two.
He sinks to the bathroom floor. Those words now sound rancid on his tongue, over-used like a broken record.
They make him question himself and where he went wrong.
And truthfully, the more he thinks about, the more he is convinced that it’s he who is at fault. He who comes with too much discomfort and too little confidence and trust in what they were. He thinks about the ‘I love you’s that were said for too late and whispered far too infrequent for someone whose optimism and fearlessness merely stems skin-deep. There was so much that could go wrong and Joonmyun was the one who didn't hold on. He was the one who failed to notice until it was far too late.
'It isn't you, it's me.'
Chanyeol had said before he walked out.
Those words resonate in the silence, hanging heavily in the air before the guilt he has break past insomnia.
‘It isn’t you, it’s me,’ he recites, on the brink of sleep.
He blinks once, twice, before he remembers their most treasured promise to one another.
‘There’s no me without you,’ he mumbles, words from once upon a time, ‘No me without you.’
( anger )
He doesn’t know how things ended up this way but he’s on the shady side of town nursing a cold glass of dry scotch between his fingers.
The bar he’s in is almost empty, small yet filled with depression. There’s a man chain-smoking in a lone corner trying to figure out why his glass is always half empty, and a woman with salt and pepper hair leaning across the bar attempting to lure the bartender who is the same age as her unborn son.
Joonmyun wonders how he wound up here and everyone else seems to be wondering about the same thing.
So young, so much potential.
He can read it in their hollow gazes and absent smiles. But this is the first place he stumbles into when he finally comes out of hiding to find winter waiting at his door.
He’s on his third drink when the world starts to spin but he doesn’t stop there. He downs another glass, closing his eyes and inwardly appealing for the burn to extinguish everything he knows.
He doesn’t want to see the lights, he doesn’t want to hear the sounds or feel the biting cold beneath his fingers. Yet, somehow, no matter how much he drinks the thoughts in his mind and the burden in his heart hold him captive within reality.
Joonmyun always had clear plans and all his dreams sketched in ink; plans made for him and dreams of them, two becoming an exclusive one.
There would be a grand proposal just as midnight is struck on their anniversary, a simple wedding with both of them dressed in white and walking hand in hand towards the altar because neither would want to make the distance alone. They would move to the beach, even if Joonmyun burns under the sun, because Chanyeol loves to feel the sand beneath his feet and hear the sound of waves as they meet the shore. They will adopt a puppy from the animal shelter, call it something ridiculous and raise it alongside pots of cacti that will sit on their window sills. It will keep them busy as they grow old and weary. Old and weary but together.
But now, that’s all erased. All that he had painstakingly built has come crashing down with one simple phrase.
‘I’m sorry’ he had said, spilling water across paper and causing black to bleed into the sanctity of white.
With nothing left, Joonmyun wonders if Chanyeol knew the weight of these words and what it meant for him when he had walked out with a suitcase containing half his things (and all of his heart).
Did he know that Joonmyun would be shattered?
Did he know that, behind the smile, he wasn’t unbreakable?
Did he know that he would be leaving him alone in a room full of people but with no one to pick up the pieces?
Did he know him at all?
Each question has his hand tightening around the glass. He can’t force out the possibilities and his futile attempts to find reason. Frustrated, he holds the glass to his lips but before he downs his drink, the door swings open to reveal a tall silhouette. The similarity has Joonmyun’s heart jumping into his mouth. The name is on his lips but as the man steps into the light, he realises that it’s not him. He visibly deflates and tries to look away, but there’s something about this stranger that has him unable to.
He will blame it on the alcohol tomorrow morning but it’s not long before he’s moaning in a deserted corner of the bar with the man’s legs hot between his thighs.
He can’t put a finger on it but there’s something that draws him towards the stranger. Perhaps he’s pining for Chanyeol but that can’t be true because they are different in every way possible. Where Chanyeol was soft, he is sharp; where Chanyeol was warm and inviting, he is cold and listless.
But perhaps it’s exactly that.
Perhaps he’s searching for something different to help quell his wavering soul and he hopes that he can find it in the intensity of that gaze, in the cropped black hair that’s prickly at the nape and so darn good between his fingers. But fuck, he’ll probably find the solution in those lips he frees from between his teeth and the way they mouth unsaid words down his neck, or in those long fingers that skitter down his sides and bruises his skin.
He rolls their hips together, so receptive and so hungry to find what he seeks. A groan slips out from deep in his throat and reverberates within his chest when their heat rubs against each other.
‘I want you right now, hard and fast. No prep,’ he growls in between breaths, popping open the buttons of the man’s shirt with impatience.
He gets no words of response, no teasing and no comments, only actions like honest business. And it feels exactly like that; going through the motions without the weight of emotions.
He’s lifted up the wall and lowered back down on an erection that stretches him to the hilt. He very nearly screams from the pain and he knows the other man feels it too from the way he freezes and groans into his ear. There are tears gathering in his eyes and his knuckles are a deathly white from where he grips the man’s shoulders. But pain is exactly what he wants and he grinds up and down, crying for more.
It’s messy and completely uncouth. There’s no art to what they’re doing, how Joonmyun is rocking up and down as the stranger’s hips snap back in then out of him. But, fuck, does he need this. He needs this so goddamn much to erase the way Chanyeol would touch him, how he would feel inside him and how they would fit so seamlessly together.
It’s not the same but he’s glad it isn’t. It’s not the same but it’s enough for now.
It’s enough for him to throw his head back with a wail when the man hits that sweet spot inside him over and over until Joonmyun can’t think straight any more. His hands are scrabbling for purchase that he can’t seem to find as the man thrusts into him at a pace that’s frantic. And, oh god, he’s so good at this -- ruthless like untamed waves crashing against the jagged rocks of a cliff face, short and sharp just as he had asked.
He forgets how to breathe and lust spreads like wildfire beneath his skin, building and building until he’s bordering combustion. He can feel the way the man’s cock pulses inside him and the way his own muscles are stretching taut. They’re both close and he quickens the pace, pushing them as far as they can go before he forces him to pull out and grab onto both their cocks. He holds onto his wrist and guides those long fingers along their lengths, stroke for stroke to completeness. He comes undone in the stranger’s hand with a cry, his head thrown back against peeling wallpaper and another man’s name on his lips.
He might have imagined it but he faintly hears the other speaking, warning him just before he leaves, ‘Don’t fall in love with me,’
Joonmyun’s shoulders starts to shake as much as his heart aches and he lets out a hysterical laugh that doesn’t sound like his own.
‘Love. Love? Love?!’ He repeats this over and over again as he stumbles out into the frigid night pulling half his clothes on whilst staring at nothing but the dark that swallows reality and sets his heart and soul in limbo.
( bargain )
‘I don’t do this often,’ he tells him the next time they meet when Joonmyun is kneeling on the ground with the tip of the same man’s cock resting against his lips mere moments before he mouths his way down the length.
That statement is true to a certain extent. Joonmyun doesn’t do this. He doesn’t run back to one night stands just so he could fall to his knees and flutter his eyelashes prettily as he makes kittenish licks at a stranger’s tip.
He never had to not when he had Chanyeol whom he still can’t forget and still can’t forgive for all that he had destroyed.
But the reality is that he doesn’t have Chanyeol, doesn’t have a lover to return to. And at the end of the day, when people go home alone, Joonmyun has to find a temporary repair; insipid coffee to cure the mid-afternoon slump, tape to hold the broken pieces, vapid notes to fill the dreaded silence.
It’s been only a few days since they first met but Joonmyun is pressed between a wall and the same man again. The reality is that his entire body seeths with a need that’s insatiable, a need only he can satisfy with the way those large firm hands work, the way they pull at his hair and guide him forward then back all tongue and scant amounts of teeth until he chokes.
The third time feels no different. They meet in the dead of the night within an even quieter alleyway.
He has no idea how they always manage to cross paths but those little details don’t matter not when he’s so caught up with the way those lips devour him and bite bruises down his waist and up the sensitive sides of his thigh, right then left.
He hasn’t even bothered to learn his name and moans incoherently instead because in the grand scheme of things, what has a name got to do with any of this? The label ‘stranger’ is past its expiry, but Joonmyun is stubborn and adamant on clinging onto that last strand of detachment even though he’s customising himself to everything else.
No. Little details don’t matter.
All that matters is how full he feels and how the scant similarities allow him to imagine that it’s Chanyeol who’s pounding into him until he climaxes messily against the burgundy wall.
( depression )
Somewhere between what feels like the fifth and the seventh time, Joonmyun loses count. But he’s there again, in front of him, leaning against the lamppost outside a motel with a cigarette sitting snug between his long fingers.
‘Convenient,’ Joonmyun hums wryly as he watches smoke unfurl from between those sinful lips whose shape are still imprinted in red along his collarbone and in that hidden juncture between his neck and shoulder.
He looks so relaxed and alluring in ripped jeans and a simple shirt that perfectly complements his modelesque proportions; proportions that fit so well around Joonmyun’s smaller frame, enveloping him just as Chanyeol had.
Their eyes meet halfway across the street as Joonmyun approaches him. Their gazes linger for more than a beat.
It’s as if he had been expecting him but if he had, he doesn’t show it and remains stationary with his closed to half-mast. Joonmyun’s stomach flips because he knows that look. It’s the one he uses when he wants Joonmyun to tug the rest of his sleeve of his exposed shoulder or when he wants Joonmyun to climb above him and lay needy kisses over his sternum as he rocks roughly against him.
Right now, it’s beckoning at him to approach all empty and ready to take everything he has to offer.
And approach Joonmyun does, pulling him inside the motel by the front of shirt and impatiently dragging him down to his height to suck at his neck as soon as he hits number six on the lift. They stumble in the dark, not quite knowing which room they end up in but a door unlocks and Joonmyun is falling supine on a squeaky bed, lying open on bleached sheets.
That night, he allows him to grip both his hands behind his back and push him face down into the mattress until his lungs are burning and his tongue feels dry and heavy from struggling. He lets him fuck him in a way that Chanyeol never would have and in a way that only he could.
He shouldn’t be letting this happen, shouldn’t be letting him have his way, but he does.
He doesn’t know when the tables started turning or if they even started to pivot.
But before Joonmyun can figure it out, he’s being pressed into from behind with his legs spread far apart. His cheek drags along the sheets, burning up from the friction, as the bed rocks at a rhythm his body is being manipulated into by mindless thrust after thrust until they both come undone.
‘Don’t fall in love with me,’ the man says in between haggard breaths as they lay side by side on an unfamiliar bed inches apart, a thousand miles between them.
They don’t touch, waiting for the tingling of their nerves to fizzle out and everything else to regulate. And when the cold begins to settle on his skin, Joonmyun lets out a sigh and a small shiver before sitting up with a wince.
It’s a while before he answers not because he doesn’t know how to but because it’s so obvious (to him). He chooses to pull on his discarded clothes and only responds when he has the door open, one foot in and one foot out. He steadies himself against the frame. The yellowing light of the corridor illuminates his profile and he swears, with the rancid taste of smoke lingering profoundly on his tongue, ‘I won’t. I never will.’
And true to his word, Joonmyun doesn’t. He doesn’t, until he finally learns the stranger’s name somewhere between his first and second climax when they fuck, hanging off the side of a squeaky bed of some crap hotel.
‘You can call me Kris instead of hey, faster, more and god,’ he grunts when Joonmyun whines from where he’s bent far too close to a miserably carpeted floor.
At first, Joonmyun does well to ignore him but blood is rushing far too quickly to his head as Kris thrusts into him at an angle he’s never been in before. His hands skitter like ice down his sides and through his hair, tugging him back until they’re arcing into each other.
And it’s with that final buck and the feel of Kris’ teeth sinking into his shoulder that Joonmyun learns to pronounce his name.
‘Kris --’
It spills out as a wrangled cry moments before he comes, dangling inches off the carpet, with his eyes fluttering and his entire body giving out to shudders.
His name sounds mispronounced, broken and foreign with a bitter aftertaste that suddenly turns so sweet when Kris’ grip tightens around his waist just to haul him upright. His head lulls back against Kris’ shoulder as he continues to jerk in and out of him in search of his own completion. His eagerness has Joonmyun half hard again and moaning his name, ‘Kris, Kris, Kris’, until it becomes second nature, sounds of an endless stream and an unsettled breeze.
And it’s as easy as that, as simple as turning on a light or lighting a wick.
Joonmyun looks and sees man above him. He takes in the beads of sweat as they roll down his hairline to meet his jaw, the harsh lines and the softer ones that make up his face when he’s straining one second and overcome with pleasure in the next, and the colours that paint his skin as he ruts into him -- black, white, red.
But it’s not only shades, shapes and lines he sees because the next time he blinks it’s Kris who floods his vision. Kris who is hard-mouthed and always refusing to kiss him directly, Kris who has depthless eyes hooded with lust, Kris who promises nothing and won’t commit to anything, and Joonmyun finds himself hopelessly falling for the way he looks above him and comes undone inside him.
‘Don’t fall in love with me, ever,’ Kris whispers huskily beside his ear that night when he lowers them down into the bed.
Joonmyun wants to say that he won’t but like the break of dawn that lies beyond these sparse curtains, harsh and unstoppable, Joonmyun realises that he can’t because he already has.
It’s written in the way his heart beats just that bit faster when Kris draws absent shapes up the supple insides of his thighs and along jutting bone of his hips. It’s painted in the way his body flushes and refuses to pull away from Kris’ warmth when he buries his face into his back and lays soft kisses along his spine.
It’s frightening and Joonmyun should leave right now because he can’t risk having his heart broken a second time but he finds that he doesn’t want to. He finds that he can’t.
That night Kris is the one who walks out the door and leaves Joonmyun lying alone.
The king sized bed is cold on the other side where Kris should be, where Chanyeol was, and Joonmyun feels like throwing up. He bolts to the bathroom, dragging the sheets along with him, and grips onto the porcelain for support as he empties the contents of his stomach.
He’s hollow on the inside when he’s done but there’s a phantom weight that’s pulling him down, more firm than the sheets he’s tangled in. Like sinking sand, he’s powerless to wade out of it. It’s the mess he’s thrown himself straight back into seconds after swimming to the edge as if he’s now bold enough to face asphyxiation.
And maybe he is, a little braver or a little more foolish.
But maybe, this time, it won’t feel like hell because Kris doesn’t promise fairytale endings; no happily ever afters, no safety net, no buoyancy. And if he already knows how to sink, he won’t fear the plunge that is to come.
‘Perhaps, this time,’ he thinks wistfully as he lays down on the tiled floor, ‘perhaps,’
( acceptance )
The next time they meet, there is no such thing as perhaps because it’s not by chance, at least not on Joonmyun’s part, that they do.
He’s scoured the streets for Kris, that familiar silhouette, the short cropped hair and those mile long legs. And when he finally finds him in a deserted street within the red light district, Joonmyun has to force himself not to break into a relieved smile from how his heart swells.
‘Kris,’ he breaths, creating a huff of white in the cold winter air.
It’s so obvious that he’s been searching for Kris all this time. He shouldn’t be, but this is what Kim Joonmyun does; he loves a little too genuinely and cares far too much.
If Kris notices anything, he makes no comment and his face is passive when he nods in mild recognition. But somehow, Joonmyun knows better. Or perhaps he’s simply reading too far into the way Kris’ eyes flicker down to the unbuttoned collar of Joonmyun’s shirt, up to his lips and back to his eyes.
But no matter how he misinterprets that gaze, there’s no misunderstanding what happens next.
It blurs into a haze of the familiar; lips trailing down jaws to suck at the junction of necks, teeth leaving possessive marks beside quickening pulses, palms pushing and fingers pulling at cotton, polyester and bony hips. It’s a familiarity Joonmyun has indulged in for the past month and one he savours once again as he’s held up against the side of the lift with the number sixty-six glowing beside the metal doors.
It’s all familiarity, the salty tang of Kris that’s sharp on the tip of his tongue as he runs the flat side up his neck, the unintentional shudders he draws out through his fingertips as he traces the prominent points of his crest and dips experimentally below the band of his pants. All familiarity, the moan he elicits when he cranes his neck to nip at his earlobe, teasing the metal stud he finds there in between his teeth.
‘Kris,’ he moans beside his ear as Kris cups his ass in response, pressing fleetingly along the crevice in a way that almost has Joonmyun knees buckling.
‘Yes?’ he leers and Joonmyun can almost see the smirk on his face and the glint in his eyes.
They had been expressions he had always chosen to ignore in favour of imagining someone else’s, someone who now feels so intangible and distant. But this time, Joonmyun chooses to turn his face towards him, tilting his head up and coming so close that their nose almost brush before he replies with a smile of his own.
‘I want you. I want you to fuck me. I need you inside me, I need you to make me beg and scream your name -- not god, not holy, not oh fuck,’
And from there onwards, it doesn’t take much for Joonmyun to be pushed backwards until his knees get caught on the edge of the mattress. It doesn’t take much, apart from another purposeful draw of his fingers against the inseam of Kris’ jeans and a lingering gaze that speaks a thousand words (or the same words a thousand times).
It doesn’t take much for his clothes to be gracelessly discarded and for him to fall onto the bed, pale skin still managing to glow appealingly across sheets of pure white.
There’s a pause as Kris climbs over him, taking his time to peel his own shirt off. His eyes never leave Joonmyun scouring over his body, taking in the flawlessness that’s laid bare before him with an intensity that has him wanting to squirm away as a flush works its way up his neck and settles across his cheeks.
‘Kris,’ he mumbles, ‘you’re staring,’
His eyes are wavering slightly despite how much he wants this and how his fingers itch to pull Kris closer; so close that there’s no breathing space between them, so close that there’s no way they’ll ever part.
‘Is there a reason why I can’t?’ Kris asks, unperturbed and wearing a smirk as he continues to indulge in the sight of Joonmyun as if he’s trying reignite his memories of the suppleness, the tautness and all the contradictions he has mapped out with his hands and his lips.
Joonmyun can’t supply an answer because, truthfully, he finds himself agreeing that he can and that he enjoys it. To be desired, to be coveted, to have his legs pushed apart with large hands that grip his knees and, fuck, to have lips pressing kisses up the inside of his calves until they skim dangerously close to his hip.
They’re lips he would rather have against his own but, god, they’re still able to release shaky gasps out of him from where they mouth at the base of his erection and travel up its underside until he’s arching into the sensation, whimpering for ‘More, more. Please, Kris. More’.
His fingers are skittering across linen as he tries to find purchase when Kris refuses to comply and continues at a pace he’s set, slow with transient touches, as his tongue slides perfectly along his slit and down a throbbing vein.
He wants to hate Kris for being a tease but a large part of him loves the way Kris manipulates him, making him greedily take in everything he offers yet crying out for more.
He loves the way he slicks his cock up, wet and warm, only to pull away and hook his knees over his shoulders, giving his perineum a playful lick before dipping lower. He releases a sharp cry of surprise when Kris’ tongue skates across his skin, alternating between that and whimpers which diffuse into keens.
And holy crap, how does he do that?
How can he fuel his lust to the point where Joonmyun feels like a freight train chugging towards a cliff as he rims his opening? How is he so good at making Joonmyun pant and moan with the way his tongue circles around those fluttering muscles and dip inside for its initial taste?
It’s so damn humiliating but nothing has felt as good as this. And it isn’t long before Joonmyun surrenders into his touch, allowing his insecurities to combust into desire as Kris’ tongue fills him again and again. He closes his eyes and blindly ruts against him, fucking his tongue, purely spurred on by desire alone.
‘Kris!’ he groans, arching his spine.
His movements almost gets frantic when the warmth and the slickness is replaced by a cool finger that invades him in one go, past the first, the second and what feels like the third ring of muscles. He can feel his insides tremble around the solidity inside him, too tapered to satisfy yet long enough to skim along places of hidden desire.
It doesn’t take long for Joonmyun to move just so he can make Kris reach that much deeper inside, just so he can make him angle his fingertips just right. And Kris lets him, spoiling him with a second and then a third finger, until Joonmyun is spasming around the sudden forceful changes in girth. And, fuck, when Joonmyun feels like he’s accustomed, Kris starts scissoring his fingers, crooking them forward and twisting them in a way that has Joonmyun losing all control, moaning and thrashing beneath him.
‘Fuck!’ he cries as Kris’ fingers reach his prostate and lingers on that spot, propping him higher above the bed until his back aches from the angle.
He’s so hard now, his cock straining for some kind of friction but receiving none as Kris continues to finger him. He reaches up to tug at his erection but goddamit everytime he tries, Kris pushes inside him in a way that has him screaming and his vision diffusing into white.
‘So desperate,’ Kris chuckles darkly, curling his fingers inside him when he does making Joonmyun moan just that bit louder until his voice cracks at the end.
He wants release, he wants it so bad. But after several failed attempts at self-satisfaction, Joonmyun quickly learns to stop seeking and simply takes everything he’s given with desperate cants of his hips and smothered whimpers. He takes as much as he’s offered, as much as Kris will reward him with another brush of fingertips against his prostate and the dip of his tongue back inside him. He circles his tongue around his fingers and Joonmyun nearly comes from the sensation, the roughness of his calloused fingers in comparison to the smooth glide of his tongue as they pull in and out to work him loose.
Joonmyun feels like he’s about to tip over the edge with every muscle straining fitful with pleasure and a wail he tries not to release between his lips, biting on them until he tastes iron in his mouth. He just needs a couple more thrusts, a few more strokes of Kris’ fingers inside him and swipes of his tongue.
But as if Kris knows he’s close, he retracts his hand, lowering him back onto the bed in a way that has Joonmyun starting and staring up at him in confusion.
‘Kris?’ he asks, hating the way he sounds so broken and needy. But Kris seems to enjoy it, lips curling upwards as he threads his fingers through his hair in a way that’s bordering affection.
‘You look so beautiful like this. Close yet still not quite there,’ he laughs and Joonmyun’s skin crawls, trying not to lean into the warmth of his palm.
He holds onto the very last strands of his dignity, which isn’t much not with the way he’s still panting and trying to regain his bearings -- cock pulsing hot and red against his stomach, glistening with precum.
'Then get me there,’ he growls but Kris just lets out a laugh and swipes his fingers softly against his lips as if to seal them with his touch.
He’s such a fucking tease and Joonmyun wonders when he became like this? When did he ever go slow and push Joonmyun to the brink only to pull him back to reality again?
They certainly didn’t start out this way but Joonmyun can’t think any more when he feels Kris’ erection pressing against his entrance. And so Joonmyun just complies with anything that Kris does because, fuck, he wants him so bad whether he’s teasing him or not.
He pushes a little too impatiently, mis-aiming completely, and Kris lets out another laugh followed by a soft click of his tongue.
‘Be good,’ he says playfully, ‘keep still,’
But dear lord how can he when Kris pushes in straight afterwards and stretches him to the hilt until he’s seated balls deep?
His walls spasm around Kris’ dick as he holds onto his wrists and brings his arms above his head, bracing him against the wooden headboard. He shivers from the way his fingers brush across the scars that litter his forearms and he opens his eyes. There’s a connection between them, something that says more than ‘god, you’re such a good fuck’. It lasts for a split second before it becomes exactly that with Kris looking away to pull out then straight back in. His back arches and he throws his head back with a gasp, slipping down and between twin pillows. He hooks his legs around Kris’ waist as he begins to set the pace just so he can feel him even deeper, even closer.
The angle is a little awkward but the way they’re pressing flush against each other hip to hip, thigh to thigh at the end of every entrance has Joonmyun feeling nothing else but the waves of desire that Kris reverently delivers.
Everything slips back into routine, their messy synchorinisation that creates undulating moans above a rhythm that’s kept with the creaking of springs, the knocking of wood against plaster and the sinfulness of skin meeting skin. But Joonmyun doesn’t want that, not when routine destroyed him the first time round. He wants so much more, he’s searching for so much more.
And it’s that unbridled yearning that has him wriggling his hands free to intertwine their fingers.
Their pace slows, bringing them into dangerous waters of intimacy, before everything comes to a standstill. Kris has halted mid-thrust with confusion etched into every sculpted feature of his face.
‘Joonmyun?’ he begins with caution as he tries to free his fingers from between Joonmyun’s, a space where they never once fitted into before. But Joonmyun thinks that’s where they belong as he stops him with pleading eyes and a quiet ‘please’.
‘Please, Kris, I want to do this,’ he elaborates as he tightens his grip and feels his heart skip, ‘Just let me love you. Only once,’
It screams wrong and the frown Kris wears says exactly that.
There’s a pause of consideration but Kris lets him do it anyway, relaxing back into him as if he was merely exhaling. Their hips undulate against each other at a pace that coincides with the way the world rotates and the way gentle waves roll to shore -- gradual but with such care as if they have all the time in the world. And in this space, at this moment, they do.
‘Just this once,’ Kris reaffirms brokenly as he moves in and out of Joonmyun with a tenderness he never possessed.
They’re pressed palm to palm, cheek to cheek and Joonmyun feels himself going light-headed from the way they touch. He arches up into him, meeting his every movement until he can feel Kris’ length graze along his walls and the way he throbs inside him.
He knows he can feel it too, how they fit as if he was sculpted to slide beneath him despite they way they contrast, supple against stern. He knows from the way Kris breaths a little heavier against his neck and from the way his muscles strain as he fills him again and again as if there’s no stop to how much he can give.
‘Just this once,’ he reaffirms, echoing a promise he doesn’t want to fulfill, before his voice tapers off into a whimper as Kris kisses him gently on his temple then his cheek and down his jaw. His lips leave Joonmyun’s skin tingling where they meet and he can just imagine how they will feel against his own.
They’ve never kissed before and each time Joonmyun had craned his neck up to meet him, Kris would turn his face the other way to plant them in the shadow beneath his mandible or on the frown lines that wrinkle his forehead. But this time when he tilts his head towards him, Kris doesn’t avoid the advance and Joonmyun’s heart grips.
He wants this, he wants this so fucking much; mouth falling open, lips pouting invitingly.
But millimetres apart, panting into each other’s mouth, Kris stops him.
‘Do you love me?’ he asks and Joonmyun feels him interlocking their fingers just that bit tighter as he seats himself deep inside him as if he’s afraid Joonmyun will disappear if he didn’t.
Joonmyun wants to laugh because Kris has this ridiculous obsession with love, something that Joonmyun had lived off of, learned to loathe and subsequently throw out of his life only to have it crawl back into the recesses of his heart. It’s something he would have scoffed at just a month ago but resonates so true now with how shallowly he’s breathing and how quickly his heart skips when he sees Kris looking down at him with eyes that appear so hollow they blend in with the dark.
So instead of answering, love is what Joonmyun demonstrates by returning the gesture, hooking his ankles in the small of Kris’ back and pressing their palms together. It’s written, marked and inked in the way he stretches up to rest his lips against Kris’ as he whispers a quiet but clear, ‘I do.’
And with that, Kris meets him halfway with a kiss of conviction, rocking their hips together in a way that has Joonmyun moaning into his mouth. There are no fireworks or sparks, no birds chirping in the background, as their lips move against each other and learn to fit together.
It’s unrefined but it can’t be classified as being raw when Kris sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and rolls it gently between his teeth. It’s unsteady and Joonmyun feels as though the ground is about to shatter beneath his feet when he lets out a moan and Kris takes the moment to slip his tongue inside without breaking contact.
It feels like random points scattered across paper, the way Kris’ tongue moves up the side of his mouth and against the roof before sliding along the back of his teeth. He’s shuddering against him, breath getting caught halfway out his windpipe as Kris exhales into the kiss and grinds his hips just so. It feels intangible but so right as if someone went between them with the daintiest pen and joined those dots together to create a masterpiece, the perfect picture.
Desire curls around his tongue, oh so real and grounded but his entity feels feather-light with disbelief. The more their mouths slant against each other, the more complete he becomes.
It defies logic, the way his heart racing to a point where he can no longer hear the individual pulses. But it must be beating, gruelingly, with the way Kris’ lips move against his and how much they’re both enjoying it.
He knows what and how he should feel. But everything becomes ethereal when he breaks their grasp to run his fingers through Kris’ hair to pull him even closer, brushing the short hairs at his nape and threading the longer strands at the vertex. His fingertips are numb where they come in contact with Kris’ growing warmth as if he can feel nothing at all. There’s nothing past the breathlessness that Kris creates when he deepens their kiss and restarts the pace.
Everything builds and builds as heat that coils in the pit of his stomach as he arches up and down to meet him. His fingers claw at Kris’ back when he comes with a cry that’s swallowed into Kris’ mouth. His fingers slip down Kris’ broad back and something about the way Kris’ muscles tense and the way he’s jerking unrestrained has him knowing that Kris is close. He moves a little faster and a more desperate until he reaches his own climax, lifting his head up and ending with a silent cry that dies off into a moan that reverberates through the air and sinks into every pore of his body.
‘Kris,’ Joonmyun mouths shuddering when Kris fills him, spilling what overflows down his spine.
He feels complete, so sated and somewhat accomplished with Kris lying on top of him. His vision is blurry, dotted with tears and stimulation, and it isn’t long before it starts to darken at the edges.
Even then, he can still make out the way Kris smiles above him and the way his lips move with words he’s repeated time and time again.
‘You shouldn't have fallen in love with me,’ he reads before Kris leans down and kisses him again.
He ignores the comment and kisses him back, eager to possess everything Kris has on offer even as he pulls out and leaves him empty.
This time, Joonmyun can’t feel the surrealness of what they do because it’s already been accomplished.
Instead, he can feel himself slipping and sinking into an abyss that swallows him completely. It’s a different type of hopelessness, a different type of darkness; one that he isn’t afraid of.
It reminds him of Kris’ gaze and his unsaid promises, how he expresses love; love that feels like breathlessness, love that can feel like dying and being born again.
( hope )
Within a different dimension, there’s a windless plain that stretches on forever beneath an azure sky. It’s the colour of vibrant greens and yellowing emeralds with hints of magenta that occasionally peeks through in poppies, zinnias and peonies.
He finds himself wading through it, with grass that comes up to his calves. Somehow he knows that he has been traveling through these plains for a long time now, lost and unable to point himself in the right direction because which one should he take?
He finds some assurance in how solid the ground feels beneath his feet. But nothing speaks of comfort like the figure he sees up ahead leaning against a blossoming sakura tree he swears was never there.
Pink petals flutter to ground as the branches rustle in the stillness, revealing a familiar face beneath the curtain of near white.
Joonmyun should feel his heart skip and his breath hitch at the sight. He expects it to. But he can longer feel it through the stagnancy of this place. It’s as if time has come to a stand still, or perhaps it was his time that had come to a standstill as everything continued to move on around him.
But they’re little details, details that don’t matter.
Nothing matters apart from the fact it’s Kris who he sees before him. Kris and no one else.
He calls out to him as he approaches, the name falling easily from between his lips, ‘Kris’.
‘I told you not to fall in love with me,’ Kris says, when he’s near.
‘But I did,’ he smiles unafraid.
‘And look at what you’ve become,’
There’s no reprimand in his voice and he’s uncrossing his arms as Joonmyun steps just that bit closer and leans into him.
‘Breathless,’ Joonmyun whispers with his eyes shining, ‘Completely, utterly but perfectly breathless.’
He might have imagined it but he can see the way Kris’ eyes seem to sparkle with life at his answer. But even if there’s much to question about what’s real and what’s not, there’s no denying how real Kris feels in front of him pulling him in until they’re chest to chest, lips to lips.
And really, there’s no denying that it’s Kris who takes his breath away with just a simple kiss.
a/n: to the dear op, it's a little vague & i started straying away from the prompt but i hope that this is what you were looking for ;;
Pairing: Kris/Suho, past!Chanyeol/Suho
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~8k
Summary: Joonmyun goes through seven stages
WARNING! sexual content, rimming, implied character death, profanity.
Note: filling this prompt at exopromptmeme
Mourn for me
( shock )
There’s a vessel made of oak. It floats alone in the ocean carrying promises more abundant than the stars, more precious than the waning moon. Waves roil around it and seafoam licks at its side, threatening to spill over the edge. But no matter how untame the seas are, it can never overcome its buoyancy.
They’re feather-light within it, defying gravity, every law and principle. One and one, making two, who are encapsulated within this utopia -- this dream-like state. It keeps them afloat, keeps them from sinking; this steadfast arc.
For a long time it does, carrying along the ocean’s breeze. It’s peaceful but maybe far too much so. They see the same stars, move across endless seas beneath the same sky as if they’re not making any real progress at all.
And it’s this that kills them, the mundane. For their stagnancy, Poseidon unsettles the seas with disdain.
It comes as unexpected as lightning, as frightening as fire. It lights up the sky for one second and extinguishes just as fast. He’s caught unaware, without time to close his eyes to the blinding flash or to cover his ears from the banter of thunder. But that’s all it takes to disturb the balance, tip the vessel with one upward heave.
He still can’t believe that it has happened until he hits cold water. The contact thrusts him out of oblivion, heartless and ruthless.
Not knowing how to swim, he sinks; deeper and deeper into a darkness that pulls him down. His lungs burn and he cries out for help but no sound escapes. His heartbeat is rampant as he tries to put up a fight.
But it’s too late. It’s done. He’s already ten foot under with no way out, a dead weight to gravity’s ministrations with nothing but trapped air spilling out from deflating lungs.
( denial ; pain )
‘Oh god,’ Joonmyun swears as he startles out of sleep, struggling to breathe.
He’s tangled in his sheets and his skin is covered in perspiration from the efforts of trying to free himself. He must have been thrashing throughout the night, the linen of his double bed are creased and untucked at the corners.
He drags a hand over his face and up through his hair, feeling the short hairs at the side prick his palms. There’s an emptiness beside him; an untouched pillow that lingers with his scent and untouched sheets on the colder side of the bed. It’s a side he can’t bear to look at, can’t begin to accept.
He straightens out the covers and smooths out the creases, neurotically trying to restore normality, before he tumbles out of bed.
Without Chanyeol, Joonmyun lives his days curled up on the floor or in bed with his front door bolted. He tries not to think about the date, the number of missed calls on the phone he hasn’t recharged for a week and the messages banked up in his mailbox.
The sun and the moon are no longer his problem. Joonmyun operates in his own time; the time he left and the time he returns.
Sometimes he lies on his side, sometimes on his back with his legs spread wide and waiting. He’s forever staring into space, his head polluted with listless dreams and his ears tuned to a familiar jangle of keys and a banter that’s distinctly Chanyeol.
Bare necessities; he needs nothing else. Bare necessities and Chanyeol.
‘It’s unhealthy,’ he imagines them saying with a frown that he will choose to ignore.
There would be an empathetic smile as well, but Joonmyun will turn a blind eye to that too. He doesn’t need pity because he’s going to come back; Chanyeol always does.
They’ll see; everyone will see that Chanyeol will return.
They’ve been through this before, Chanyeol has walked out loads of times when he was too fed up with the way their universes collide, two completely different entities.
He stumbles past the window on his way to the bathroom. Autumn rain is marking tracks down the glass, diffracting the iridescence of a lone moon.
Drip, drip, drip. He hears it patter against the frame.
Drip, drip drip like the ceaseless rhythm of sorrow and pain.
His feet are freezing against the tiles and he tiptoes on the balls of his feet towards the sink. There are fluffy slippers beneath his bed, obnoxiously pink, but they’re twice his size and a number he can’t fill.
He avoids his reflection entirely. It's probably atrocious anyway, and yanks open the cupboard door. It’s empty except for a labelled bottle that instructs him to take the white pills inside it an hour before bed, two at a time.
'This will help you, if only temporarily,' They had told him, some failsafe that relieves all medico-legal responsibilities for the way things move on from here.
‘Not that anything will,’ he reassures himself, biting his bottom lip, ‘because everything is going to go back to normal,’
He looks around the bathroom, pill bottle clutched tightly in his hand, and there are reminders of him everywhere. Two toothbrushes in the stand and bottles of Chanyeol’s favourite shampoo leaning against the shower wall. Sakura blossoms and oriental lilies. They’re scents that linger around him like the motionless air and the quiet that deafens him.
He closes his eyes and leans against the wall, throwing the bottle of pills into the sink. His fingers press into the cool tiles behind him and he remembers how he had tried to grip it so that the slide up and down was smooth and stable. He remembers how he had adjusted to it, the insistent pushing and pulling Chanyeol that ignited his senses. Up and down with water dribbling down his sides and lips hot against his front. They would make a trail down his jaw, his neck, his abdomen and eventually settle between his legs teasing him open and firing his lust.
Those moments, with caresses so affectionate and words so intimate, were one of his favourites. And his body is flush with the memory of them grinding against each other with shameless moans that echo loud within these walls and gentle touches that aim to please.
'I love you, I love you, I love you.'
Chanyeol had chanted against his neck from where he stood behind him, getting him off with languid strokes that would have him begging after two.
He sinks to the bathroom floor. Those words now sound rancid on his tongue, over-used like a broken record.
They make him question himself and where he went wrong.
And truthfully, the more he thinks about, the more he is convinced that it’s he who is at fault. He who comes with too much discomfort and too little confidence and trust in what they were. He thinks about the ‘I love you’s that were said for too late and whispered far too infrequent for someone whose optimism and fearlessness merely stems skin-deep. There was so much that could go wrong and Joonmyun was the one who didn't hold on. He was the one who failed to notice until it was far too late.
'It isn't you, it's me.'
Chanyeol had said before he walked out.
Those words resonate in the silence, hanging heavily in the air before the guilt he has break past insomnia.
‘It isn’t you, it’s me,’ he recites, on the brink of sleep.
He blinks once, twice, before he remembers their most treasured promise to one another.
‘There’s no me without you,’ he mumbles, words from once upon a time, ‘No me without you.’
( anger )
He doesn’t know how things ended up this way but he’s on the shady side of town nursing a cold glass of dry scotch between his fingers.
The bar he’s in is almost empty, small yet filled with depression. There’s a man chain-smoking in a lone corner trying to figure out why his glass is always half empty, and a woman with salt and pepper hair leaning across the bar attempting to lure the bartender who is the same age as her unborn son.
Joonmyun wonders how he wound up here and everyone else seems to be wondering about the same thing.
So young, so much potential.
He can read it in their hollow gazes and absent smiles. But this is the first place he stumbles into when he finally comes out of hiding to find winter waiting at his door.
He’s on his third drink when the world starts to spin but he doesn’t stop there. He downs another glass, closing his eyes and inwardly appealing for the burn to extinguish everything he knows.
He doesn’t want to see the lights, he doesn’t want to hear the sounds or feel the biting cold beneath his fingers. Yet, somehow, no matter how much he drinks the thoughts in his mind and the burden in his heart hold him captive within reality.
Joonmyun always had clear plans and all his dreams sketched in ink; plans made for him and dreams of them, two becoming an exclusive one.
There would be a grand proposal just as midnight is struck on their anniversary, a simple wedding with both of them dressed in white and walking hand in hand towards the altar because neither would want to make the distance alone. They would move to the beach, even if Joonmyun burns under the sun, because Chanyeol loves to feel the sand beneath his feet and hear the sound of waves as they meet the shore. They will adopt a puppy from the animal shelter, call it something ridiculous and raise it alongside pots of cacti that will sit on their window sills. It will keep them busy as they grow old and weary. Old and weary but together.
But now, that’s all erased. All that he had painstakingly built has come crashing down with one simple phrase.
‘I’m sorry’ he had said, spilling water across paper and causing black to bleed into the sanctity of white.
With nothing left, Joonmyun wonders if Chanyeol knew the weight of these words and what it meant for him when he had walked out with a suitcase containing half his things (and all of his heart).
Did he know that Joonmyun would be shattered?
Did he know that, behind the smile, he wasn’t unbreakable?
Did he know that he would be leaving him alone in a room full of people but with no one to pick up the pieces?
Did he know him at all?
Each question has his hand tightening around the glass. He can’t force out the possibilities and his futile attempts to find reason. Frustrated, he holds the glass to his lips but before he downs his drink, the door swings open to reveal a tall silhouette. The similarity has Joonmyun’s heart jumping into his mouth. The name is on his lips but as the man steps into the light, he realises that it’s not him. He visibly deflates and tries to look away, but there’s something about this stranger that has him unable to.
He will blame it on the alcohol tomorrow morning but it’s not long before he’s moaning in a deserted corner of the bar with the man’s legs hot between his thighs.
He can’t put a finger on it but there’s something that draws him towards the stranger. Perhaps he’s pining for Chanyeol but that can’t be true because they are different in every way possible. Where Chanyeol was soft, he is sharp; where Chanyeol was warm and inviting, he is cold and listless.
But perhaps it’s exactly that.
Perhaps he’s searching for something different to help quell his wavering soul and he hopes that he can find it in the intensity of that gaze, in the cropped black hair that’s prickly at the nape and so darn good between his fingers. But fuck, he’ll probably find the solution in those lips he frees from between his teeth and the way they mouth unsaid words down his neck, or in those long fingers that skitter down his sides and bruises his skin.
He rolls their hips together, so receptive and so hungry to find what he seeks. A groan slips out from deep in his throat and reverberates within his chest when their heat rubs against each other.
‘I want you right now, hard and fast. No prep,’ he growls in between breaths, popping open the buttons of the man’s shirt with impatience.
He gets no words of response, no teasing and no comments, only actions like honest business. And it feels exactly like that; going through the motions without the weight of emotions.
He’s lifted up the wall and lowered back down on an erection that stretches him to the hilt. He very nearly screams from the pain and he knows the other man feels it too from the way he freezes and groans into his ear. There are tears gathering in his eyes and his knuckles are a deathly white from where he grips the man’s shoulders. But pain is exactly what he wants and he grinds up and down, crying for more.
It’s messy and completely uncouth. There’s no art to what they’re doing, how Joonmyun is rocking up and down as the stranger’s hips snap back in then out of him. But, fuck, does he need this. He needs this so goddamn much to erase the way Chanyeol would touch him, how he would feel inside him and how they would fit so seamlessly together.
It’s not the same but he’s glad it isn’t. It’s not the same but it’s enough for now.
It’s enough for him to throw his head back with a wail when the man hits that sweet spot inside him over and over until Joonmyun can’t think straight any more. His hands are scrabbling for purchase that he can’t seem to find as the man thrusts into him at a pace that’s frantic. And, oh god, he’s so good at this -- ruthless like untamed waves crashing against the jagged rocks of a cliff face, short and sharp just as he had asked.
He forgets how to breathe and lust spreads like wildfire beneath his skin, building and building until he’s bordering combustion. He can feel the way the man’s cock pulses inside him and the way his own muscles are stretching taut. They’re both close and he quickens the pace, pushing them as far as they can go before he forces him to pull out and grab onto both their cocks. He holds onto his wrist and guides those long fingers along their lengths, stroke for stroke to completeness. He comes undone in the stranger’s hand with a cry, his head thrown back against peeling wallpaper and another man’s name on his lips.
He might have imagined it but he faintly hears the other speaking, warning him just before he leaves, ‘Don’t fall in love with me,’
Joonmyun’s shoulders starts to shake as much as his heart aches and he lets out a hysterical laugh that doesn’t sound like his own.
‘Love. Love? Love?!’ He repeats this over and over again as he stumbles out into the frigid night pulling half his clothes on whilst staring at nothing but the dark that swallows reality and sets his heart and soul in limbo.
( bargain )
‘I don’t do this often,’ he tells him the next time they meet when Joonmyun is kneeling on the ground with the tip of the same man’s cock resting against his lips mere moments before he mouths his way down the length.
That statement is true to a certain extent. Joonmyun doesn’t do this. He doesn’t run back to one night stands just so he could fall to his knees and flutter his eyelashes prettily as he makes kittenish licks at a stranger’s tip.
He never had to not when he had Chanyeol whom he still can’t forget and still can’t forgive for all that he had destroyed.
But the reality is that he doesn’t have Chanyeol, doesn’t have a lover to return to. And at the end of the day, when people go home alone, Joonmyun has to find a temporary repair; insipid coffee to cure the mid-afternoon slump, tape to hold the broken pieces, vapid notes to fill the dreaded silence.
It’s been only a few days since they first met but Joonmyun is pressed between a wall and the same man again. The reality is that his entire body seeths with a need that’s insatiable, a need only he can satisfy with the way those large firm hands work, the way they pull at his hair and guide him forward then back all tongue and scant amounts of teeth until he chokes.
The third time feels no different. They meet in the dead of the night within an even quieter alleyway.
He has no idea how they always manage to cross paths but those little details don’t matter not when he’s so caught up with the way those lips devour him and bite bruises down his waist and up the sensitive sides of his thigh, right then left.
He hasn’t even bothered to learn his name and moans incoherently instead because in the grand scheme of things, what has a name got to do with any of this? The label ‘stranger’ is past its expiry, but Joonmyun is stubborn and adamant on clinging onto that last strand of detachment even though he’s customising himself to everything else.
No. Little details don’t matter.
All that matters is how full he feels and how the scant similarities allow him to imagine that it’s Chanyeol who’s pounding into him until he climaxes messily against the burgundy wall.
( depression )
Somewhere between what feels like the fifth and the seventh time, Joonmyun loses count. But he’s there again, in front of him, leaning against the lamppost outside a motel with a cigarette sitting snug between his long fingers.
‘Convenient,’ Joonmyun hums wryly as he watches smoke unfurl from between those sinful lips whose shape are still imprinted in red along his collarbone and in that hidden juncture between his neck and shoulder.
He looks so relaxed and alluring in ripped jeans and a simple shirt that perfectly complements his modelesque proportions; proportions that fit so well around Joonmyun’s smaller frame, enveloping him just as Chanyeol had.
Their eyes meet halfway across the street as Joonmyun approaches him. Their gazes linger for more than a beat.
It’s as if he had been expecting him but if he had, he doesn’t show it and remains stationary with his closed to half-mast. Joonmyun’s stomach flips because he knows that look. It’s the one he uses when he wants Joonmyun to tug the rest of his sleeve of his exposed shoulder or when he wants Joonmyun to climb above him and lay needy kisses over his sternum as he rocks roughly against him.
Right now, it’s beckoning at him to approach all empty and ready to take everything he has to offer.
And approach Joonmyun does, pulling him inside the motel by the front of shirt and impatiently dragging him down to his height to suck at his neck as soon as he hits number six on the lift. They stumble in the dark, not quite knowing which room they end up in but a door unlocks and Joonmyun is falling supine on a squeaky bed, lying open on bleached sheets.
That night, he allows him to grip both his hands behind his back and push him face down into the mattress until his lungs are burning and his tongue feels dry and heavy from struggling. He lets him fuck him in a way that Chanyeol never would have and in a way that only he could.
He shouldn’t be letting this happen, shouldn’t be letting him have his way, but he does.
He doesn’t know when the tables started turning or if they even started to pivot.
But before Joonmyun can figure it out, he’s being pressed into from behind with his legs spread far apart. His cheek drags along the sheets, burning up from the friction, as the bed rocks at a rhythm his body is being manipulated into by mindless thrust after thrust until they both come undone.
‘Don’t fall in love with me,’ the man says in between haggard breaths as they lay side by side on an unfamiliar bed inches apart, a thousand miles between them.
They don’t touch, waiting for the tingling of their nerves to fizzle out and everything else to regulate. And when the cold begins to settle on his skin, Joonmyun lets out a sigh and a small shiver before sitting up with a wince.
It’s a while before he answers not because he doesn’t know how to but because it’s so obvious (to him). He chooses to pull on his discarded clothes and only responds when he has the door open, one foot in and one foot out. He steadies himself against the frame. The yellowing light of the corridor illuminates his profile and he swears, with the rancid taste of smoke lingering profoundly on his tongue, ‘I won’t. I never will.’
And true to his word, Joonmyun doesn’t. He doesn’t, until he finally learns the stranger’s name somewhere between his first and second climax when they fuck, hanging off the side of a squeaky bed of some crap hotel.
‘You can call me Kris instead of hey, faster, more and god,’ he grunts when Joonmyun whines from where he’s bent far too close to a miserably carpeted floor.
At first, Joonmyun does well to ignore him but blood is rushing far too quickly to his head as Kris thrusts into him at an angle he’s never been in before. His hands skitter like ice down his sides and through his hair, tugging him back until they’re arcing into each other.
And it’s with that final buck and the feel of Kris’ teeth sinking into his shoulder that Joonmyun learns to pronounce his name.
‘Kris --’
It spills out as a wrangled cry moments before he comes, dangling inches off the carpet, with his eyes fluttering and his entire body giving out to shudders.
His name sounds mispronounced, broken and foreign with a bitter aftertaste that suddenly turns so sweet when Kris’ grip tightens around his waist just to haul him upright. His head lulls back against Kris’ shoulder as he continues to jerk in and out of him in search of his own completion. His eagerness has Joonmyun half hard again and moaning his name, ‘Kris, Kris, Kris’, until it becomes second nature, sounds of an endless stream and an unsettled breeze.
And it’s as easy as that, as simple as turning on a light or lighting a wick.
Joonmyun looks and sees man above him. He takes in the beads of sweat as they roll down his hairline to meet his jaw, the harsh lines and the softer ones that make up his face when he’s straining one second and overcome with pleasure in the next, and the colours that paint his skin as he ruts into him -- black, white, red.
But it’s not only shades, shapes and lines he sees because the next time he blinks it’s Kris who floods his vision. Kris who is hard-mouthed and always refusing to kiss him directly, Kris who has depthless eyes hooded with lust, Kris who promises nothing and won’t commit to anything, and Joonmyun finds himself hopelessly falling for the way he looks above him and comes undone inside him.
‘Don’t fall in love with me, ever,’ Kris whispers huskily beside his ear that night when he lowers them down into the bed.
Joonmyun wants to say that he won’t but like the break of dawn that lies beyond these sparse curtains, harsh and unstoppable, Joonmyun realises that he can’t because he already has.
It’s written in the way his heart beats just that bit faster when Kris draws absent shapes up the supple insides of his thighs and along jutting bone of his hips. It’s painted in the way his body flushes and refuses to pull away from Kris’ warmth when he buries his face into his back and lays soft kisses along his spine.
It’s frightening and Joonmyun should leave right now because he can’t risk having his heart broken a second time but he finds that he doesn’t want to. He finds that he can’t.
That night Kris is the one who walks out the door and leaves Joonmyun lying alone.
The king sized bed is cold on the other side where Kris should be, where Chanyeol was, and Joonmyun feels like throwing up. He bolts to the bathroom, dragging the sheets along with him, and grips onto the porcelain for support as he empties the contents of his stomach.
He’s hollow on the inside when he’s done but there’s a phantom weight that’s pulling him down, more firm than the sheets he’s tangled in. Like sinking sand, he’s powerless to wade out of it. It’s the mess he’s thrown himself straight back into seconds after swimming to the edge as if he’s now bold enough to face asphyxiation.
And maybe he is, a little braver or a little more foolish.
But maybe, this time, it won’t feel like hell because Kris doesn’t promise fairytale endings; no happily ever afters, no safety net, no buoyancy. And if he already knows how to sink, he won’t fear the plunge that is to come.
‘Perhaps, this time,’ he thinks wistfully as he lays down on the tiled floor, ‘perhaps,’
( acceptance )
The next time they meet, there is no such thing as perhaps because it’s not by chance, at least not on Joonmyun’s part, that they do.
He’s scoured the streets for Kris, that familiar silhouette, the short cropped hair and those mile long legs. And when he finally finds him in a deserted street within the red light district, Joonmyun has to force himself not to break into a relieved smile from how his heart swells.
‘Kris,’ he breaths, creating a huff of white in the cold winter air.
It’s so obvious that he’s been searching for Kris all this time. He shouldn’t be, but this is what Kim Joonmyun does; he loves a little too genuinely and cares far too much.
If Kris notices anything, he makes no comment and his face is passive when he nods in mild recognition. But somehow, Joonmyun knows better. Or perhaps he’s simply reading too far into the way Kris’ eyes flicker down to the unbuttoned collar of Joonmyun’s shirt, up to his lips and back to his eyes.
But no matter how he misinterprets that gaze, there’s no misunderstanding what happens next.
It blurs into a haze of the familiar; lips trailing down jaws to suck at the junction of necks, teeth leaving possessive marks beside quickening pulses, palms pushing and fingers pulling at cotton, polyester and bony hips. It’s a familiarity Joonmyun has indulged in for the past month and one he savours once again as he’s held up against the side of the lift with the number sixty-six glowing beside the metal doors.
It’s all familiarity, the salty tang of Kris that’s sharp on the tip of his tongue as he runs the flat side up his neck, the unintentional shudders he draws out through his fingertips as he traces the prominent points of his crest and dips experimentally below the band of his pants. All familiarity, the moan he elicits when he cranes his neck to nip at his earlobe, teasing the metal stud he finds there in between his teeth.
‘Kris,’ he moans beside his ear as Kris cups his ass in response, pressing fleetingly along the crevice in a way that almost has Joonmyun knees buckling.
‘Yes?’ he leers and Joonmyun can almost see the smirk on his face and the glint in his eyes.
They had been expressions he had always chosen to ignore in favour of imagining someone else’s, someone who now feels so intangible and distant. But this time, Joonmyun chooses to turn his face towards him, tilting his head up and coming so close that their nose almost brush before he replies with a smile of his own.
‘I want you. I want you to fuck me. I need you inside me, I need you to make me beg and scream your name -- not god, not holy, not oh fuck,’
And from there onwards, it doesn’t take much for Joonmyun to be pushed backwards until his knees get caught on the edge of the mattress. It doesn’t take much, apart from another purposeful draw of his fingers against the inseam of Kris’ jeans and a lingering gaze that speaks a thousand words (or the same words a thousand times).
It doesn’t take much for his clothes to be gracelessly discarded and for him to fall onto the bed, pale skin still managing to glow appealingly across sheets of pure white.
There’s a pause as Kris climbs over him, taking his time to peel his own shirt off. His eyes never leave Joonmyun scouring over his body, taking in the flawlessness that’s laid bare before him with an intensity that has him wanting to squirm away as a flush works its way up his neck and settles across his cheeks.
‘Kris,’ he mumbles, ‘you’re staring,’
His eyes are wavering slightly despite how much he wants this and how his fingers itch to pull Kris closer; so close that there’s no breathing space between them, so close that there’s no way they’ll ever part.
‘Is there a reason why I can’t?’ Kris asks, unperturbed and wearing a smirk as he continues to indulge in the sight of Joonmyun as if he’s trying reignite his memories of the suppleness, the tautness and all the contradictions he has mapped out with his hands and his lips.
Joonmyun can’t supply an answer because, truthfully, he finds himself agreeing that he can and that he enjoys it. To be desired, to be coveted, to have his legs pushed apart with large hands that grip his knees and, fuck, to have lips pressing kisses up the inside of his calves until they skim dangerously close to his hip.
They’re lips he would rather have against his own but, god, they’re still able to release shaky gasps out of him from where they mouth at the base of his erection and travel up its underside until he’s arching into the sensation, whimpering for ‘More, more. Please, Kris. More’.
His fingers are skittering across linen as he tries to find purchase when Kris refuses to comply and continues at a pace he’s set, slow with transient touches, as his tongue slides perfectly along his slit and down a throbbing vein.
He wants to hate Kris for being a tease but a large part of him loves the way Kris manipulates him, making him greedily take in everything he offers yet crying out for more.
He loves the way he slicks his cock up, wet and warm, only to pull away and hook his knees over his shoulders, giving his perineum a playful lick before dipping lower. He releases a sharp cry of surprise when Kris’ tongue skates across his skin, alternating between that and whimpers which diffuse into keens.
And holy crap, how does he do that?
How can he fuel his lust to the point where Joonmyun feels like a freight train chugging towards a cliff as he rims his opening? How is he so good at making Joonmyun pant and moan with the way his tongue circles around those fluttering muscles and dip inside for its initial taste?
It’s so damn humiliating but nothing has felt as good as this. And it isn’t long before Joonmyun surrenders into his touch, allowing his insecurities to combust into desire as Kris’ tongue fills him again and again. He closes his eyes and blindly ruts against him, fucking his tongue, purely spurred on by desire alone.
‘Kris!’ he groans, arching his spine.
His movements almost gets frantic when the warmth and the slickness is replaced by a cool finger that invades him in one go, past the first, the second and what feels like the third ring of muscles. He can feel his insides tremble around the solidity inside him, too tapered to satisfy yet long enough to skim along places of hidden desire.
It doesn’t take long for Joonmyun to move just so he can make Kris reach that much deeper inside, just so he can make him angle his fingertips just right. And Kris lets him, spoiling him with a second and then a third finger, until Joonmyun is spasming around the sudden forceful changes in girth. And, fuck, when Joonmyun feels like he’s accustomed, Kris starts scissoring his fingers, crooking them forward and twisting them in a way that has Joonmyun losing all control, moaning and thrashing beneath him.
‘Fuck!’ he cries as Kris’ fingers reach his prostate and lingers on that spot, propping him higher above the bed until his back aches from the angle.
He’s so hard now, his cock straining for some kind of friction but receiving none as Kris continues to finger him. He reaches up to tug at his erection but goddamit everytime he tries, Kris pushes inside him in a way that has him screaming and his vision diffusing into white.
‘So desperate,’ Kris chuckles darkly, curling his fingers inside him when he does making Joonmyun moan just that bit louder until his voice cracks at the end.
He wants release, he wants it so bad. But after several failed attempts at self-satisfaction, Joonmyun quickly learns to stop seeking and simply takes everything he’s given with desperate cants of his hips and smothered whimpers. He takes as much as he’s offered, as much as Kris will reward him with another brush of fingertips against his prostate and the dip of his tongue back inside him. He circles his tongue around his fingers and Joonmyun nearly comes from the sensation, the roughness of his calloused fingers in comparison to the smooth glide of his tongue as they pull in and out to work him loose.
Joonmyun feels like he’s about to tip over the edge with every muscle straining fitful with pleasure and a wail he tries not to release between his lips, biting on them until he tastes iron in his mouth. He just needs a couple more thrusts, a few more strokes of Kris’ fingers inside him and swipes of his tongue.
But as if Kris knows he’s close, he retracts his hand, lowering him back onto the bed in a way that has Joonmyun starting and staring up at him in confusion.
‘Kris?’ he asks, hating the way he sounds so broken and needy. But Kris seems to enjoy it, lips curling upwards as he threads his fingers through his hair in a way that’s bordering affection.
‘You look so beautiful like this. Close yet still not quite there,’ he laughs and Joonmyun’s skin crawls, trying not to lean into the warmth of his palm.
He holds onto the very last strands of his dignity, which isn’t much not with the way he’s still panting and trying to regain his bearings -- cock pulsing hot and red against his stomach, glistening with precum.
'Then get me there,’ he growls but Kris just lets out a laugh and swipes his fingers softly against his lips as if to seal them with his touch.
He’s such a fucking tease and Joonmyun wonders when he became like this? When did he ever go slow and push Joonmyun to the brink only to pull him back to reality again?
They certainly didn’t start out this way but Joonmyun can’t think any more when he feels Kris’ erection pressing against his entrance. And so Joonmyun just complies with anything that Kris does because, fuck, he wants him so bad whether he’s teasing him or not.
He pushes a little too impatiently, mis-aiming completely, and Kris lets out another laugh followed by a soft click of his tongue.
‘Be good,’ he says playfully, ‘keep still,’
But dear lord how can he when Kris pushes in straight afterwards and stretches him to the hilt until he’s seated balls deep?
His walls spasm around Kris’ dick as he holds onto his wrists and brings his arms above his head, bracing him against the wooden headboard. He shivers from the way his fingers brush across the scars that litter his forearms and he opens his eyes. There’s a connection between them, something that says more than ‘god, you’re such a good fuck’. It lasts for a split second before it becomes exactly that with Kris looking away to pull out then straight back in. His back arches and he throws his head back with a gasp, slipping down and between twin pillows. He hooks his legs around Kris’ waist as he begins to set the pace just so he can feel him even deeper, even closer.
The angle is a little awkward but the way they’re pressing flush against each other hip to hip, thigh to thigh at the end of every entrance has Joonmyun feeling nothing else but the waves of desire that Kris reverently delivers.
Everything slips back into routine, their messy synchorinisation that creates undulating moans above a rhythm that’s kept with the creaking of springs, the knocking of wood against plaster and the sinfulness of skin meeting skin. But Joonmyun doesn’t want that, not when routine destroyed him the first time round. He wants so much more, he’s searching for so much more.
And it’s that unbridled yearning that has him wriggling his hands free to intertwine their fingers.
Their pace slows, bringing them into dangerous waters of intimacy, before everything comes to a standstill. Kris has halted mid-thrust with confusion etched into every sculpted feature of his face.
‘Joonmyun?’ he begins with caution as he tries to free his fingers from between Joonmyun’s, a space where they never once fitted into before. But Joonmyun thinks that’s where they belong as he stops him with pleading eyes and a quiet ‘please’.
‘Please, Kris, I want to do this,’ he elaborates as he tightens his grip and feels his heart skip, ‘Just let me love you. Only once,’
It screams wrong and the frown Kris wears says exactly that.
There’s a pause of consideration but Kris lets him do it anyway, relaxing back into him as if he was merely exhaling. Their hips undulate against each other at a pace that coincides with the way the world rotates and the way gentle waves roll to shore -- gradual but with such care as if they have all the time in the world. And in this space, at this moment, they do.
‘Just this once,’ Kris reaffirms brokenly as he moves in and out of Joonmyun with a tenderness he never possessed.
They’re pressed palm to palm, cheek to cheek and Joonmyun feels himself going light-headed from the way they touch. He arches up into him, meeting his every movement until he can feel Kris’ length graze along his walls and the way he throbs inside him.
He knows he can feel it too, how they fit as if he was sculpted to slide beneath him despite they way they contrast, supple against stern. He knows from the way Kris breaths a little heavier against his neck and from the way his muscles strain as he fills him again and again as if there’s no stop to how much he can give.
‘Just this once,’ he reaffirms, echoing a promise he doesn’t want to fulfill, before his voice tapers off into a whimper as Kris kisses him gently on his temple then his cheek and down his jaw. His lips leave Joonmyun’s skin tingling where they meet and he can just imagine how they will feel against his own.
They’ve never kissed before and each time Joonmyun had craned his neck up to meet him, Kris would turn his face the other way to plant them in the shadow beneath his mandible or on the frown lines that wrinkle his forehead. But this time when he tilts his head towards him, Kris doesn’t avoid the advance and Joonmyun’s heart grips.
He wants this, he wants this so fucking much; mouth falling open, lips pouting invitingly.
But millimetres apart, panting into each other’s mouth, Kris stops him.
‘Do you love me?’ he asks and Joonmyun feels him interlocking their fingers just that bit tighter as he seats himself deep inside him as if he’s afraid Joonmyun will disappear if he didn’t.
Joonmyun wants to laugh because Kris has this ridiculous obsession with love, something that Joonmyun had lived off of, learned to loathe and subsequently throw out of his life only to have it crawl back into the recesses of his heart. It’s something he would have scoffed at just a month ago but resonates so true now with how shallowly he’s breathing and how quickly his heart skips when he sees Kris looking down at him with eyes that appear so hollow they blend in with the dark.
So instead of answering, love is what Joonmyun demonstrates by returning the gesture, hooking his ankles in the small of Kris’ back and pressing their palms together. It’s written, marked and inked in the way he stretches up to rest his lips against Kris’ as he whispers a quiet but clear, ‘I do.’
And with that, Kris meets him halfway with a kiss of conviction, rocking their hips together in a way that has Joonmyun moaning into his mouth. There are no fireworks or sparks, no birds chirping in the background, as their lips move against each other and learn to fit together.
It’s unrefined but it can’t be classified as being raw when Kris sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and rolls it gently between his teeth. It’s unsteady and Joonmyun feels as though the ground is about to shatter beneath his feet when he lets out a moan and Kris takes the moment to slip his tongue inside without breaking contact.
It feels like random points scattered across paper, the way Kris’ tongue moves up the side of his mouth and against the roof before sliding along the back of his teeth. He’s shuddering against him, breath getting caught halfway out his windpipe as Kris exhales into the kiss and grinds his hips just so. It feels intangible but so right as if someone went between them with the daintiest pen and joined those dots together to create a masterpiece, the perfect picture.
Desire curls around his tongue, oh so real and grounded but his entity feels feather-light with disbelief. The more their mouths slant against each other, the more complete he becomes.
It defies logic, the way his heart racing to a point where he can no longer hear the individual pulses. But it must be beating, gruelingly, with the way Kris’ lips move against his and how much they’re both enjoying it.
He knows what and how he should feel. But everything becomes ethereal when he breaks their grasp to run his fingers through Kris’ hair to pull him even closer, brushing the short hairs at his nape and threading the longer strands at the vertex. His fingertips are numb where they come in contact with Kris’ growing warmth as if he can feel nothing at all. There’s nothing past the breathlessness that Kris creates when he deepens their kiss and restarts the pace.
Everything builds and builds as heat that coils in the pit of his stomach as he arches up and down to meet him. His fingers claw at Kris’ back when he comes with a cry that’s swallowed into Kris’ mouth. His fingers slip down Kris’ broad back and something about the way Kris’ muscles tense and the way he’s jerking unrestrained has him knowing that Kris is close. He moves a little faster and a more desperate until he reaches his own climax, lifting his head up and ending with a silent cry that dies off into a moan that reverberates through the air and sinks into every pore of his body.
‘Kris,’ Joonmyun mouths shuddering when Kris fills him, spilling what overflows down his spine.
He feels complete, so sated and somewhat accomplished with Kris lying on top of him. His vision is blurry, dotted with tears and stimulation, and it isn’t long before it starts to darken at the edges.
Even then, he can still make out the way Kris smiles above him and the way his lips move with words he’s repeated time and time again.
‘You shouldn't have fallen in love with me,’ he reads before Kris leans down and kisses him again.
He ignores the comment and kisses him back, eager to possess everything Kris has on offer even as he pulls out and leaves him empty.
This time, Joonmyun can’t feel the surrealness of what they do because it’s already been accomplished.
Instead, he can feel himself slipping and sinking into an abyss that swallows him completely. It’s a different type of hopelessness, a different type of darkness; one that he isn’t afraid of.
It reminds him of Kris’ gaze and his unsaid promises, how he expresses love; love that feels like breathlessness, love that can feel like dying and being born again.
( hope )
Within a different dimension, there’s a windless plain that stretches on forever beneath an azure sky. It’s the colour of vibrant greens and yellowing emeralds with hints of magenta that occasionally peeks through in poppies, zinnias and peonies.
He finds himself wading through it, with grass that comes up to his calves. Somehow he knows that he has been traveling through these plains for a long time now, lost and unable to point himself in the right direction because which one should he take?
He finds some assurance in how solid the ground feels beneath his feet. But nothing speaks of comfort like the figure he sees up ahead leaning against a blossoming sakura tree he swears was never there.
Pink petals flutter to ground as the branches rustle in the stillness, revealing a familiar face beneath the curtain of near white.
Joonmyun should feel his heart skip and his breath hitch at the sight. He expects it to. But he can longer feel it through the stagnancy of this place. It’s as if time has come to a stand still, or perhaps it was his time that had come to a standstill as everything continued to move on around him.
But they’re little details, details that don’t matter.
Nothing matters apart from the fact it’s Kris who he sees before him. Kris and no one else.
He calls out to him as he approaches, the name falling easily from between his lips, ‘Kris’.
‘I told you not to fall in love with me,’ Kris says, when he’s near.
‘But I did,’ he smiles unafraid.
‘And look at what you’ve become,’
There’s no reprimand in his voice and he’s uncrossing his arms as Joonmyun steps just that bit closer and leans into him.
‘Breathless,’ Joonmyun whispers with his eyes shining, ‘Completely, utterly but perfectly breathless.’
He might have imagined it but he can see the way Kris’ eyes seem to sparkle with life at his answer. But even if there’s much to question about what’s real and what’s not, there’s no denying how real Kris feels in front of him pulling him in until they’re chest to chest, lips to lips.
And really, there’s no denying that it’s Kris who takes his breath away with just a simple kiss.
a/n: to the dear op, it's a little vague & i started straying away from the prompt but i hope that this is what you were looking for ;;