these rules are made to break
title: these walls are built to fall
pairing: hakyeon/taekwoon
word count: 2450
summary: high school!au where hakyeon gets drunk, taekwoon gets mad, and sanghyuk falls asleep. (not necessarily in that order.)
a/n: this is the full version of this and i'm just i dON'T KNOW ANYMORE. i just want things. catboy things. (this is not a catboy thing, tho)
as some kind of unspoken rule, friday nights are almost always spent at wonshik’s house because his parents almost never come home until late saturday morning, doing whatever it is they do to keep their small but highly successful shop well-stocked for the weekend crowd. usually, they would all go to wonshik’s together right after school, but taekwoon needed some time alone today, so here he is, walking silently into wonshik’s backyard at a quarter to nine.
he lets himself into the kitchen via the back door, and he can hear the tv playing from the living room. he frowns at the volume. sanghyuk is going to go deaf before he even graduates.
the kitchen is at its usual friday night level of destruction, meaning that wonshik has unearthed (and possibly recently acquired) all the alcohol they’re not meant to drink. there’s also three boxes of pizza perched precariously on the edge of the stove.
he’s counting the number of open liquor bottles when hakyeon and wonshik stumble into the kitchen, brows furrowing when hakyeon sways dangerously at the sight of taekwoon.
hakyeon is really fucking drunk, taekwoon ascertains when his not-best friend attempts (and fails fantastically) to envelop him in a koala hug.
“taekwoon!” hakyeon crows delightedly, drink sloshing dangerously close to the edges of his cup. his eyes are bloodshot, and his breath fucking reeks. “you’re here!”
taekwoon plucks the drink out of his hands without answering. wonshik is standing on the other side of the kitchen counter, peering into several bottles curiously before dumping a bit of everything into a plastic cup and handing it to taekwoon.
“cheers,” he says with a wink. taekwoon dumps it all in the sink. “hey!” wonshik squawks. “that was perfect!”
“that was poison,” says taekwoon, pushing hakyeon away roughly when the other tries to shove his hands under taekwoon’s shirt.
“no!” hakyeon practically yells. “yours are way better!”
“what the hell,” taekwoon hisses, grabbing hakyeon’s hands and dragging him out into the living room.
“yours are better,” hakyeon insists, stumbling over nothing. taekwoon doesn’t fucking know what hakyeon is talking about and feels somewhat guilty about not coming over earlier to wrestle hakyeon away from this shithole. of course, there’s still the whole deal of not really having anywhere better to be than this shithole because taekwoon already told his mom that they were all going to be at wonshik’s for the night. (taekwoon really hates wonshik.)
jaehwan is sprawled out on the couch, watching whatever’s playing on the tv with the glazed over expression of someone’s who’s completely stoned, but that’s just his default expression and there’s no scent of smoked weed anywhere anyway. taekwoon kicks at him to move. jaehwan takes one look at hakyeon and slumps off to sit next to sanghyuk who’s sprawled on his stomach, either dead or asleep.
taekwoon dumps hakyeon on the couch and checks to make sure the idiot doesn’t have alcohol poisoning. hakyeon makes this rather difficult by pawing restlessly at taekwoon’s neck, accidentally cuffing the back of his head more than once.
“stop,” taekwoon commands, grabbing hakyeon’s face with both hands. hakyeon grins at him stupidly.
“taekwoon-ah,” he giggles, as taekwoon checks his pulse. “why didn’t you come?”
“i’m right here,” taekwoon says flatly. hakyeon’s pulse is steady and regular beneath his fingertips, and the skin is reassuringly warm. he scowls when hakyeon leans in close and the stench of alcohol burns his nose.
“you wouldn’t come when i called,” hakyeon whines. “i didn’t know if you would come.”
taekwoon kind of wants to strangle him, but there’s a tap on his shoulder and when he looks up, hongbin is holding out a bottle of water. “he had a lot,” hongbin says when taekwoon takes it and practically forces it down hakyeon’s throat.
“i know,” taekwoon says bitterly. hongbin purses his lips.
“he was upset,” he says. “he said you guys had a fight.”
taekwoon closes his eyes. “we didn’t have a fight.”
“i didn’t say that,” hakyeon says. water spills out of his mouth, and taekwoon leans back, disgusted. “i said taekwoon is mad at me. there’s a difference.”
hongbin looks amused more than anything and heads towards the kitchen with nothing more than a “finish your water, hyung.”
taekwoon shoves the bottle back towards hakyeon’s mouth. “finish it,” he orders, because a drunk hakyeon is always more compliant, and today is no different. hakyeon finishes the bottle and taekwoon tosses it towards the coffee table, but it bounces and ends up smacking jaehwan in the back of the head. jaehwan doesn’t even flinch.
“are you still mad?” hakyeon asks, hiccuping slightly.
taekwoon sighs, because yes, he’s still fucking pissed because hakyeon is a moron and a well-intentioned asshole who can’t seem to comprehend the meaning of boundaries.
“you are still mad,” hakyeon says accusingly when he doesn’t answer. “i’m sorry,” he implores, tongue not quite cooperating with the r’s.
taekwoon swallows another sigh and nudges for hakyeon to make room for him. yes, he’s still mad, but hakyeon seems to think he’s still mad over being involuntarily volunteered for the school talent show. which he is. it’s just that he’s also mad that hakyeon has this way of looking at him, drunk or sober, that makes him wish he wasn’t mad because the rational side of him knows that hakyeon has this unrelenting need to do things for people that he thinks will be good for him, and it’s not like it would really kill taekwoon to sing in front of an auditorium full of people, it’s just that he doesn’t want to and hakyeon can’t seem to grasp the idea that someone can be good at something and not want recognition for it.
hakyeon, taking advantage of his silence, has managed to wrap himself around taekwoon like an octopus. it feels suffocating and yet rather comforting.
“i’m sorry,” he mumbles into taekwoon’s ear. he does sound very sorry. he noses at taekwoon’s cheek like an attention-starved puppy until taekwoon finally gives in and pets his head reassuringly. hakyeon settles himself on taekwoon’s chest, apparently contented, and practically purrs. his hiccups have subsided, and he’s mumbling incoherently.
“you’re stuck in my head like an infinite loop,” he says, or at least, taekwoon thinks he says. taekwoon blinks. hakyeon looks at him and seems to decide they aren’t close enough already and snuggles closer. taekwoon grunts when hakyeon haphazardly elbows him in the stomach.
“what?” says taekwoon when hakyeon’s face is mere inches from his own.
“you and i would add up better than a riemann sum,” hakyeon says.
no, we don’t, is the first thing that comes to taekwoon’s mind. the second is, “what.”
“i wish i was your derivative,” sighs hakyeon, breath hot against taekwoon’s neck. “so i could lie tangent to your curves.”
taekwoon immediately shoves him off. hakyeon lands on the floor in a pile of drunk limbs and blinks up at him owlishly in confusion. he eyes the couch warily and flops back to the floor, defeated. “taekwoon-ah,” he whines. “taekwoon-ah, why are you being like this.”
“you’re drunk,” says taekwoon.
“yes,” huffs hakyeon. “because you’re mad at me, and you wouldn’t come when i called and wonshikie said that i should drink some more because you weren’t coming yet anyway, and you were supposed to be here to tell me not to and it was awful and i had like five, and i let sanghyuk have some oh god, and now he’s going to be a drunk and a dropout and his mother is going to kill me. how could you do this to me,” he finishes, punching the floor sadly.
taekwoon doesn’t answer, mostly because he’s biting back a retort about how is this his fault you moron, and he doesn’t want to say anything that might fuck this up because a drunk hakyeon takes things way more literally than a sober hakyeon would and the last thing taekwoon needs is a drunk hakyeon trying to fix things that aren’t broken.
“i’m gonna throw up,” hakyeon announces to the silence. jaehwan ignores them, too engrossed with an exploding manhattan skyline on the screen to be bothered to care. sanghyuk snores loudly. taekwoon sighs. it’s not his house, and wonshik should be the one to clean up after hakyeon considering how he’s seventy-five percent responsible for hakyeon’s current state.
hakyeon tugs at taekwoon’s pant leg forlornly. “help,” he says, sounding as pitiful as he looks. taekwoon exhales slowly through his nose, counts backwards from 50 by sevens, and proceeds to help (aka carry) hakyeon to the bathroom. he shuts the door behind them and sits down in the corner while hakyeon dry heaves into the toilet.
“don’t leave,” groans hakyeon into the bowl. he lifts his head a little, eyes watery and mouth set in a most miserable pout. “why are you always leaving when i need you?”
“i’m not leaving,” says taekwoon, wincing when hakyeon ducks back down and properly vomits. this is really disgusting, taekwoon thinks as hakyeon feels around blindly to flush. considering how many times they’ve shared this particular bonding experience, taekwoon thinks that his friendship points have reached infinity because he has seen hakyeon at his worst and then some. there was that one time last year when hakyeon had a really bad stomach flu and taekwoon had stayed with him in the school restrooms while they waited for his parents to come pick him up. cleaning hakyeon’s pathetic face of vomit is something that taekwoon never wants to do again and that was the one exception he will ever make because hakyeon had a fever of 103 and was kind of hallucinating and it was really the only thing taekwoon could do for him.
anyway. the point is, he’s stuck through worse with hakyeon. he’s actually a little offended that hakyeon seems convinced he’s going to leave.
“you’re going to leave,” hakyeon insists, resting his forehead against the edge of the bathtub. “because that’s what you do.”
“what are you talking about,” taekwoon sighs, running a hand through his hair.
hakyeon is quiet for a moment, playing with the frayed edges of the bathroom rug. “it’s okay to be mad,” he says. “but you always leave when you’re mad and then you don’t come back. you don’t come back, but then you do, but you’re still mad and i don’t know how to make you not mad.” he puffs out his cheeks, exhaling sharply, and rubs his face with his hands. “i don’t know, taekwoon-ah,” he sighs. “we’ve been friends for three years, and sometimes i think i’m your friend but you’re not mine, and that’s okay because i just want to be your friend. you don’t have to be mine. and i’m okay, really, so you don’t have to pretend to be friends with me if you don’t want to.”
he looks up at the ceiling, and taekwoon traces the curves of his neck with his eyes because he doesn’t know what else to do. “because it’s hard, right?” hakyeon continues. “you leave, and i never know if you’re coming back. i don’t know if you even want to come back. and it makes me feel selfish, that i’m trying to make you stay when you might not want to.”
taekwoon doesn’t move. he should probably say something, like how that’s not true, they are friends, and he always thought hakyeon knew this because hakyeon always seems to know everything, like how sometimes he just really wants to strangle wonshik if he has to listen to another butchered jay-z rap and if hakyeon isn’t there to shove a piece of sweet bread in his face, he might actually follow through. or how he honestly doesn’t know how to take care of sanghyuk because sanghyuk looks like a lost puppy 95% of the time and has this tendency to oscillate between wanting to please taekwoon or running the opposite way if taekwoon so much as breathes in his direction.
and it makes him wonder what other things hakyeon has misinterpreted because he’s not some obligation that taekwoon has to see to and he can’t believe hakyeon thinks that. taekwoon doesn’t do things he doesn’t want to, and he most certainly doesn’t keep friends he doesn’t like, and for fuck’s sake, he’s cleaned hakyeon’s face of vomit. he would probably shoot himself before doing that for anyone else.
“you don’t have to stay,” hakyeon mumbles from his side of the bathroom.
taekwoon sighs audibly and pads over to crouch in front of his hyung--his dumb, stupid, idiotic hyung--and forces hakyeon to look at him. “you’re an idiot,” he says firmly. “you’re not a burden so stop saying this nonsense. you’re pissing me off.”
hakyeon lowers his eyes, but taekwoon isn’t having any of that. he slaps hakyeon lightly on his cheeks. “hyung,” he orders until hakyeon looks at him again. “stop.”
hakyeon swallows. “i’m sorry,” he says.
“you keep saying that,” says taekwoon, carefully brushing hakyeon’s hair out of his eyes, tucking some stray strands behind his ear. “stop.”
“i’m--” taekwoon pinches the back of his neck, and he stops.
“hakyeon-ah,” he says, reluctantly fond. “you’re such an idiot.” he kisses the tip of hakyeon’s nose to prove his point.
hakyeon’s face is scrunched up when he pulls away. “um,” says hakyeon. “i’m not hallucinating, am i?”
taekwoon pinches him again.
“just making sure,” he says, smiling a little.
taekwoon’s mouth twists. “sober yet?” he asks.
hakyeon laughs hollowly, fisting the front of taekwoon’s shirt. “are you kidding?” he says. “the room is spinning, and i think i might throw up on you.”
“that’s cute,” taekwoon says flatly. hakyeon laughs again, lighter this time, and there’s a warmth that settles in taekwoon’s chest that lets him, finally, relax.
“so does this mean i get to hold your hand in the halls and buy you sweets just because?” he asks earnestly.
“you do that already,” taekwoon points out.
“oh,” says hakyeon, smile wide. “i guess that’s true.”
(hakyeon winces a little when he shifts, and taekwoon reflexively pushes his face towards the toilet bowl.
“for the record,” taekwoon says, unimpressed, as hakyeon retches. “you are an idiot.”
he’s answered with the sound of something (things?) hitting the toilet water, and he grimaces in disgust. “of all people,” he mutters under his breath. “i had to love you.”
hakyeon groans in misery and swears he’s going to kill wonshik. taekwoon reaches over and pats him on the back.)
pairing: hakyeon/taekwoon
word count: 2450
summary: high school!au where hakyeon gets drunk, taekwoon gets mad, and sanghyuk falls asleep. (not necessarily in that order.)
a/n: this is the full version of this and i'm just i dON'T KNOW ANYMORE. i just want things. catboy things. (this is not a catboy thing, tho)
as some kind of unspoken rule, friday nights are almost always spent at wonshik’s house because his parents almost never come home until late saturday morning, doing whatever it is they do to keep their small but highly successful shop well-stocked for the weekend crowd. usually, they would all go to wonshik’s together right after school, but taekwoon needed some time alone today, so here he is, walking silently into wonshik’s backyard at a quarter to nine.
he lets himself into the kitchen via the back door, and he can hear the tv playing from the living room. he frowns at the volume. sanghyuk is going to go deaf before he even graduates.
the kitchen is at its usual friday night level of destruction, meaning that wonshik has unearthed (and possibly recently acquired) all the alcohol they’re not meant to drink. there’s also three boxes of pizza perched precariously on the edge of the stove.
he’s counting the number of open liquor bottles when hakyeon and wonshik stumble into the kitchen, brows furrowing when hakyeon sways dangerously at the sight of taekwoon.
hakyeon is really fucking drunk, taekwoon ascertains when his not-best friend attempts (and fails fantastically) to envelop him in a koala hug.
“taekwoon!” hakyeon crows delightedly, drink sloshing dangerously close to the edges of his cup. his eyes are bloodshot, and his breath fucking reeks. “you’re here!”
taekwoon plucks the drink out of his hands without answering. wonshik is standing on the other side of the kitchen counter, peering into several bottles curiously before dumping a bit of everything into a plastic cup and handing it to taekwoon.
“cheers,” he says with a wink. taekwoon dumps it all in the sink. “hey!” wonshik squawks. “that was perfect!”
“that was poison,” says taekwoon, pushing hakyeon away roughly when the other tries to shove his hands under taekwoon’s shirt.
“no!” hakyeon practically yells. “yours are way better!”
“what the hell,” taekwoon hisses, grabbing hakyeon’s hands and dragging him out into the living room.
“yours are better,” hakyeon insists, stumbling over nothing. taekwoon doesn’t fucking know what hakyeon is talking about and feels somewhat guilty about not coming over earlier to wrestle hakyeon away from this shithole. of course, there’s still the whole deal of not really having anywhere better to be than this shithole because taekwoon already told his mom that they were all going to be at wonshik’s for the night. (taekwoon really hates wonshik.)
jaehwan is sprawled out on the couch, watching whatever’s playing on the tv with the glazed over expression of someone’s who’s completely stoned, but that’s just his default expression and there’s no scent of smoked weed anywhere anyway. taekwoon kicks at him to move. jaehwan takes one look at hakyeon and slumps off to sit next to sanghyuk who’s sprawled on his stomach, either dead or asleep.
taekwoon dumps hakyeon on the couch and checks to make sure the idiot doesn’t have alcohol poisoning. hakyeon makes this rather difficult by pawing restlessly at taekwoon’s neck, accidentally cuffing the back of his head more than once.
“stop,” taekwoon commands, grabbing hakyeon’s face with both hands. hakyeon grins at him stupidly.
“taekwoon-ah,” he giggles, as taekwoon checks his pulse. “why didn’t you come?”
“i’m right here,” taekwoon says flatly. hakyeon’s pulse is steady and regular beneath his fingertips, and the skin is reassuringly warm. he scowls when hakyeon leans in close and the stench of alcohol burns his nose.
“you wouldn’t come when i called,” hakyeon whines. “i didn’t know if you would come.”
taekwoon kind of wants to strangle him, but there’s a tap on his shoulder and when he looks up, hongbin is holding out a bottle of water. “he had a lot,” hongbin says when taekwoon takes it and practically forces it down hakyeon’s throat.
“i know,” taekwoon says bitterly. hongbin purses his lips.
“he was upset,” he says. “he said you guys had a fight.”
taekwoon closes his eyes. “we didn’t have a fight.”
“i didn’t say that,” hakyeon says. water spills out of his mouth, and taekwoon leans back, disgusted. “i said taekwoon is mad at me. there’s a difference.”
hongbin looks amused more than anything and heads towards the kitchen with nothing more than a “finish your water, hyung.”
taekwoon shoves the bottle back towards hakyeon’s mouth. “finish it,” he orders, because a drunk hakyeon is always more compliant, and today is no different. hakyeon finishes the bottle and taekwoon tosses it towards the coffee table, but it bounces and ends up smacking jaehwan in the back of the head. jaehwan doesn’t even flinch.
“are you still mad?” hakyeon asks, hiccuping slightly.
taekwoon sighs, because yes, he’s still fucking pissed because hakyeon is a moron and a well-intentioned asshole who can’t seem to comprehend the meaning of boundaries.
“you are still mad,” hakyeon says accusingly when he doesn’t answer. “i’m sorry,” he implores, tongue not quite cooperating with the r’s.
taekwoon swallows another sigh and nudges for hakyeon to make room for him. yes, he’s still mad, but hakyeon seems to think he’s still mad over being involuntarily volunteered for the school talent show. which he is. it’s just that he’s also mad that hakyeon has this way of looking at him, drunk or sober, that makes him wish he wasn’t mad because the rational side of him knows that hakyeon has this unrelenting need to do things for people that he thinks will be good for him, and it’s not like it would really kill taekwoon to sing in front of an auditorium full of people, it’s just that he doesn’t want to and hakyeon can’t seem to grasp the idea that someone can be good at something and not want recognition for it.
hakyeon, taking advantage of his silence, has managed to wrap himself around taekwoon like an octopus. it feels suffocating and yet rather comforting.
“i’m sorry,” he mumbles into taekwoon’s ear. he does sound very sorry. he noses at taekwoon’s cheek like an attention-starved puppy until taekwoon finally gives in and pets his head reassuringly. hakyeon settles himself on taekwoon’s chest, apparently contented, and practically purrs. his hiccups have subsided, and he’s mumbling incoherently.
“you’re stuck in my head like an infinite loop,” he says, or at least, taekwoon thinks he says. taekwoon blinks. hakyeon looks at him and seems to decide they aren’t close enough already and snuggles closer. taekwoon grunts when hakyeon haphazardly elbows him in the stomach.
“what?” says taekwoon when hakyeon’s face is mere inches from his own.
“you and i would add up better than a riemann sum,” hakyeon says.
no, we don’t, is the first thing that comes to taekwoon’s mind. the second is, “what.”
“i wish i was your derivative,” sighs hakyeon, breath hot against taekwoon’s neck. “so i could lie tangent to your curves.”
taekwoon immediately shoves him off. hakyeon lands on the floor in a pile of drunk limbs and blinks up at him owlishly in confusion. he eyes the couch warily and flops back to the floor, defeated. “taekwoon-ah,” he whines. “taekwoon-ah, why are you being like this.”
“you’re drunk,” says taekwoon.
“yes,” huffs hakyeon. “because you’re mad at me, and you wouldn’t come when i called and wonshikie said that i should drink some more because you weren’t coming yet anyway, and you were supposed to be here to tell me not to and it was awful and i had like five, and i let sanghyuk have some oh god, and now he’s going to be a drunk and a dropout and his mother is going to kill me. how could you do this to me,” he finishes, punching the floor sadly.
taekwoon doesn’t answer, mostly because he’s biting back a retort about how is this his fault you moron, and he doesn’t want to say anything that might fuck this up because a drunk hakyeon takes things way more literally than a sober hakyeon would and the last thing taekwoon needs is a drunk hakyeon trying to fix things that aren’t broken.
“i’m gonna throw up,” hakyeon announces to the silence. jaehwan ignores them, too engrossed with an exploding manhattan skyline on the screen to be bothered to care. sanghyuk snores loudly. taekwoon sighs. it’s not his house, and wonshik should be the one to clean up after hakyeon considering how he’s seventy-five percent responsible for hakyeon’s current state.
hakyeon tugs at taekwoon’s pant leg forlornly. “help,” he says, sounding as pitiful as he looks. taekwoon exhales slowly through his nose, counts backwards from 50 by sevens, and proceeds to help (aka carry) hakyeon to the bathroom. he shuts the door behind them and sits down in the corner while hakyeon dry heaves into the toilet.
“don’t leave,” groans hakyeon into the bowl. he lifts his head a little, eyes watery and mouth set in a most miserable pout. “why are you always leaving when i need you?”
“i’m not leaving,” says taekwoon, wincing when hakyeon ducks back down and properly vomits. this is really disgusting, taekwoon thinks as hakyeon feels around blindly to flush. considering how many times they’ve shared this particular bonding experience, taekwoon thinks that his friendship points have reached infinity because he has seen hakyeon at his worst and then some. there was that one time last year when hakyeon had a really bad stomach flu and taekwoon had stayed with him in the school restrooms while they waited for his parents to come pick him up. cleaning hakyeon’s pathetic face of vomit is something that taekwoon never wants to do again and that was the one exception he will ever make because hakyeon had a fever of 103 and was kind of hallucinating and it was really the only thing taekwoon could do for him.
anyway. the point is, he’s stuck through worse with hakyeon. he’s actually a little offended that hakyeon seems convinced he’s going to leave.
“you’re going to leave,” hakyeon insists, resting his forehead against the edge of the bathtub. “because that’s what you do.”
“what are you talking about,” taekwoon sighs, running a hand through his hair.
hakyeon is quiet for a moment, playing with the frayed edges of the bathroom rug. “it’s okay to be mad,” he says. “but you always leave when you’re mad and then you don’t come back. you don’t come back, but then you do, but you’re still mad and i don’t know how to make you not mad.” he puffs out his cheeks, exhaling sharply, and rubs his face with his hands. “i don’t know, taekwoon-ah,” he sighs. “we’ve been friends for three years, and sometimes i think i’m your friend but you’re not mine, and that’s okay because i just want to be your friend. you don’t have to be mine. and i’m okay, really, so you don’t have to pretend to be friends with me if you don’t want to.”
he looks up at the ceiling, and taekwoon traces the curves of his neck with his eyes because he doesn’t know what else to do. “because it’s hard, right?” hakyeon continues. “you leave, and i never know if you’re coming back. i don’t know if you even want to come back. and it makes me feel selfish, that i’m trying to make you stay when you might not want to.”
taekwoon doesn’t move. he should probably say something, like how that’s not true, they are friends, and he always thought hakyeon knew this because hakyeon always seems to know everything, like how sometimes he just really wants to strangle wonshik if he has to listen to another butchered jay-z rap and if hakyeon isn’t there to shove a piece of sweet bread in his face, he might actually follow through. or how he honestly doesn’t know how to take care of sanghyuk because sanghyuk looks like a lost puppy 95% of the time and has this tendency to oscillate between wanting to please taekwoon or running the opposite way if taekwoon so much as breathes in his direction.
and it makes him wonder what other things hakyeon has misinterpreted because he’s not some obligation that taekwoon has to see to and he can’t believe hakyeon thinks that. taekwoon doesn’t do things he doesn’t want to, and he most certainly doesn’t keep friends he doesn’t like, and for fuck’s sake, he’s cleaned hakyeon’s face of vomit. he would probably shoot himself before doing that for anyone else.
“you don’t have to stay,” hakyeon mumbles from his side of the bathroom.
taekwoon sighs audibly and pads over to crouch in front of his hyung--his dumb, stupid, idiotic hyung--and forces hakyeon to look at him. “you’re an idiot,” he says firmly. “you’re not a burden so stop saying this nonsense. you’re pissing me off.”
hakyeon lowers his eyes, but taekwoon isn’t having any of that. he slaps hakyeon lightly on his cheeks. “hyung,” he orders until hakyeon looks at him again. “stop.”
hakyeon swallows. “i’m sorry,” he says.
“you keep saying that,” says taekwoon, carefully brushing hakyeon’s hair out of his eyes, tucking some stray strands behind his ear. “stop.”
“i’m--” taekwoon pinches the back of his neck, and he stops.
“hakyeon-ah,” he says, reluctantly fond. “you’re such an idiot.” he kisses the tip of hakyeon’s nose to prove his point.
hakyeon’s face is scrunched up when he pulls away. “um,” says hakyeon. “i’m not hallucinating, am i?”
taekwoon pinches him again.
“just making sure,” he says, smiling a little.
taekwoon’s mouth twists. “sober yet?” he asks.
hakyeon laughs hollowly, fisting the front of taekwoon’s shirt. “are you kidding?” he says. “the room is spinning, and i think i might throw up on you.”
“that’s cute,” taekwoon says flatly. hakyeon laughs again, lighter this time, and there’s a warmth that settles in taekwoon’s chest that lets him, finally, relax.
“so does this mean i get to hold your hand in the halls and buy you sweets just because?” he asks earnestly.
“you do that already,” taekwoon points out.
“oh,” says hakyeon, smile wide. “i guess that’s true.”
(hakyeon winces a little when he shifts, and taekwoon reflexively pushes his face towards the toilet bowl.
“for the record,” taekwoon says, unimpressed, as hakyeon retches. “you are an idiot.”
he’s answered with the sound of something (things?) hitting the toilet water, and he grimaces in disgust. “of all people,” he mutters under his breath. “i had to love you.”
hakyeon groans in misery and swears he’s going to kill wonshik. taekwoon reaches over and pats him on the back.)