Perfect Fit (B.A.P. AU oneshot - 1/3)
Title: Perfect Fit (1/3)
Author: himawarixxsandz
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: BangHim
Summary: Better than puzzle pieces
A/N: Ahahaha ;A; okay the second part isn't even close to done but I just wanted to put this up because I refuse to be MIA with writing for over a week that's just ridiculous for me I feel unproductive and gross okay so here you are my emotions are a mess with this because Commander is like taking over my bias world, kicking my other biases around because not even Joon and Zico became my bias this fast okay this is scary but Himchan is stupidly attractive and dumb and amazing and ugh just here also Guk is ruining things too for me I hate you Yongguk
Part 1 // Part 2
Whether it’s separation or eternal love,
I want to find it with you
Baby, you’re a perfect fit
When Himchan is six, Bang Yongguk is the boy across the street.
Yongguk is a neighbor who’s a neighbor-Himchan doesn’t really know him, has only seen him once or twice at neighborhood gatherings in someone’s backyard. He has to greet and bow Yongguk when the neighborhood gathering is at the Bang household, and Yongguk greets and bows back, and then that’s it for the month.
That’s all Himchan sees of Yongguk until another three weeks pass and there’s another barbeque or dinner party that his parents bring him to at a neighbor’s house because they don’t feel all that safe leaving Himchan with a babysitter.
Yongguk isn’t particularly interesting or nice-looking or fun to play with. He’s just Yongguk and Himchan is just Himchan-and he has a lot more fun playing with Hyosung and Hyosung, lately, likes playing with the new neighbor’s baby. So, lately, Himchan has been playing with the baby too at all the barbeques (baby Junhong).
Like-
Himchan hasn’t really tried playing with Yongguk.
But that’s okay.
It’s just Yongguk.
Himchan is nine when he scrapes his knee, walking back from Daehyun’s house (they both were yelled at by Hyosung for making Junhong cry). He trips over a deep crack in the sidewalk and lands on his legs, knee scratching the cement. He doesn’t cry because it hurts, but it doesn’t hurt-hurt.
He just sits there and watches the blood start to ooze out of the crossing of thin cuts because he doesn’t want to stand up and start walking again since that would hurt more. He’s halfway through figuring out his plan of how-to-get-home-without-walking (because he’s hungry and wants to go home but he doesn’t want to walk so he’s decided to try flying since he’s always wanted to fly) when an hand roughly grabs his arm and yanks him to his feet.
“I can help you home,” Yongguk says, sweaty and covered in grass stains and Himchan tries to edge away because Yongguk looks like he just played too much soccer (and missed the ball a few too many times).
Himchan wants to ask the other boy where he came from, but doesn’t bother to because it’s probably easier to let Yongguk help him home than try flying right now (Himchan’s heard that it’s easier to try flying when you’re not under a lot of pressure-like the dire emergency that a scraped knee is). “Okay,” he says.
Yongguk smiles (a smile that’s too big and shows all of his top front teeth)
Himchan smiles back-he doesn’t really know why, but he does.
They go to the same school because they live in the same neighborhood so even if Yongguk is just Yongguk, Himchan sees him around a lot. They have the same friends too, and they’re all in charge of making sure Junhong doesn’t float into space so they see each other a lot since Junhong likes following Yongguk around.
In Himchan’s first year, they’re in the same period for English and they’re assigned to each other as partners for the semester culture project.
“Aw,” Yongguk drawls, grin wide as he leans forward in his chair and tugs at the edge of Himchan’s sleeve. “I’m stuck with you?”
“Be happy,” Himchan says, sitting down with his notebook in his lap (he grabs Yongguk’s pen out of the other boy’s hand), “I’m hot shit at English.”
Yongguk kicks Himchan’s shin underneath their desks.
Working with Yongguk is easy and effortless and Himchan doesn’t understand why, but it is. Their houses are across the street from each other so they can stay at the other’s house until late hours and still be able to make it home without the hassle of sleeping over and bringing clothes and commuting to school together.
Yongguk does his fair share of work and Himchan does his and everything easy and effortless and Himchan has no idea why, but it is, so it’s not like he’s going to complain about an easy grade. He needs that grade since he really isn’t that hot at English (not that Yongguk needs to know because then he’d just brag about it to Himchan’s face since Yongguk is that hot at English).
“At least I’m hot,” Himchan says, while they wait for the last few pages of the report to finish printing at Yongguk’s house.
Yongguk looks at him. “Say that again and I’ll mess your hot face up.”
Himchan laughs. “So-wait-you admit that I’m hot then.”
The other boy rolls his eyes away, grinning.
Himchan realizes he’s gay in his second year.
The realization comes in stages-ones that he tried to deny every time a new one emerged-mostly from being turned on by things that shouldn’t and not being turned on by things that should. He’s mildly thankful that the realization doesn’t come because he has feelings for someone he shouldn’t have feelings for because that would make this suck ten times more than it already does.
He’s also glad that he realizes (or maybe he’s always known, but-so-okay-the night that he stops denying) on a night when his parents are out of town because his father has a meeting and his mother decided to go with him since Himchan is more than old enough to look after himself for a few nights.
It really isn’t all that tragic-it’s not like he’s going to get stoned by the village and then shunned to the outskirts of the nation-but it feels just about that tragic at the moment and Himchan chalks it up to being sixteen and when anyone is sixteen, everything seems tragic. So he goes into his parents’ alcohol cabinets and starts taking out whatever he thinks his parents won’t really notice missing.
He goes outside onto the sidewalk in the middle of the night, sits at the curb, and starts to drink. All the lights of the surrounding houses are off, and even if they weren’t and the neighbors saw him, he doesn’t really care at the moment. He’s sixteen and gay and fucking depressed about it and life is tragic and he wants to get drunk on his parents’ alcohol and he’s underage and doesn’t care.
He gets about halfway through the bottles of beer he’s brought out and starts nursing his way through a bottle of soju before a familiar hand grabs his arm in a familiarly rough way and wrenches the bottle out of his fingers.
Himchan looks up. “I don’t need help getting home, Yongguk-ah,” he slurs. “Fuck off. Go to bed.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Yongguk hisses incredulously. He’s in sweatpants and a t-shirt and Himchan guesses he was probably going to go to sleep until he saw Himchan getting drunk through his bedroom window. Or maybe he was taking out the trash. Or getting the mail. Or something.
“Drinking,” Himchan says and smiles his best smile, squinting up at the other boy (because there’s like four Yongguks right now even though Himchan swears he only hears one talking).
“Okay, Christ,” Yongguk says, grabbing Himchan by the elbow. “Next time your parents are going out of town, I’m fucking telling them you still need a babysitter-fuck-get up, Himchan-ah.”
Himchan lets Yongguk more or less drag him back into the house (he doesn’t remember or know how Yongguk cleaned up the bottles on the sidewalk or how Yongguk got rid of them, but it happened clearly since the bottles weren’t there anymore in the morning). He’s drunk enough to not give a shit about slumping himself all over Yongguk and breathing alcohol straight into the other boy’s face.
He’s drunk enough to mumble, “I’m gay,” right into Yongguk’s ear as the other boy tries to set Himchan down on the couch.
He’s not drunk enough to not notice how Yongguk’s hands suddenly freeze against Himchan’s body. Himchan rolls out of Yongguk’s arms onto the couch by himself and lies there, staring at the ceiling and not at where Yongguk stands to the side.
“I don’t care,” Yongguk finally says in a small voice (it’s weird to Himchan how a voice that’s so deep can suddenly sound so tiny).
Himchan shrugs.
“I don’t care,” Yongguk repeats and this time his voice isn’t small. Himchan glances up and meets the other boy’s eyes.
“Okay,” Himchan says.
As it turns out, Yongguk doesn’t care.
Himchan does.
He hides it from everyone except for Yongguk (his preference was to hide it from Yongguk too but that was kind of shot since the whole drunk-coming-out thing ruined the ultimate-complete-secrecy thing). He sneaks off to parties that’re only for college students (he gets in because he’s in the music department and he has connections and he’s attractive and Kim Himchan always gets in) so no one at the school will see him and so he can experiment without having to worry too much about stupid things like feelings and relationships.
He makes-out with college boys who don’t care, he blows and gets blown by college boys who’re drunk out of their minds, he jacks off and gets jacked off by college boys who’re just in it for the wild fun one way or another.
He comes home from every party to texts and missed calls from Yongguk. Himchan used to bother texting and calling the other boy back during their second year, but by their third year, he doesn’t really bother to anymore because he knows that Yongguk knows that Himchan can take care of himself and that Himchan’s parents just think Himchan has late-late-late practice with the orchestra.
It doesn’t really matter anyway-pointless-because Yongguk always texts the same things and says the same things whenever Himchan calls him back.
Text me back when ur home
“You drank too much again,” Yongguk’s low voice mumbles through Himchan’s cell phone.
“Yeah,” Himchan says, and counts the seconds before he can hang up because while it’s nice that Yongguk is always checking up on Himchan’s soberness and all, there’s really no point because Himchan isn’t five. He’s seventeen and gay and Yongguk is seventeen and straight.
Yongguk is just Yongguk.
Himchan is eighteen when he has sex for the first time.
He has sex with just another random boy he finds at another random party that he’s managed to slip off to on a Friday night where his parents think he’s rehearsing late again for a concert the school is putting on for Sunday morning.
Himchan’s first time has him pressed against the wall of a bathroom stall and it hurts so much that Himchan wants to pass out for a solid four hours until the pain is completely gone from his body. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, half-dressed and sweating and panting and aching (and not crying-he’s not crying-and if he is, it’s only from the pain or from sweat getting into his eyes), on the grimy bathroom floor of a random club.
He doesn’t want to get up because it’ll hurt more to walk but he wants to go home because he wants to shower and fall into his bed (maybe with some Advil or something because fuck it hurts-he had his first time standing up and pressed against a wall-fuck). He wishes he could fly home but he knows he can’t-he wishes he still believed he could fly because then he could start forming a plan to fly and right in the middle of forming that plan, Yongguk would appear and drag him home by the elbow.
Eventually, maybe thirty minutes later, Himchan picks himself up and drives himself home like the big boy that he is (he’s eighteen-he’s a big boy now).
He’s a big boy, so he doesn’t understand why he ends up calling Yongguk and asking him to sneak over to Himchan’s house (Himchan’s parents are already asleep when he gets home). He doesn’t understand why, but he does, and Yongguk says yes, so about seven minutes after Himchan gets home and gets upstairs to his bedroom, Yongguk is there next to him and freaking the fuck out in a way that would be hilarious if Himchan didn’t ache all over.
“You let him fuck you?” Yongguk says in a voice that’s far too high to be Bang Yongguk’s voice.
Himchan glares up at the other boy (Himchan is slumped on the bathroom tiles, leaning back against the tub while Yongguk kneels beside him). “Fuck off,” he says. “Please? Okay-I hurt like a bitch and I just want to shower and knock myself out with Tylenol, not get the purity chapter.”
“You let him fuck you,” Yongguk repeats and this time it’s not a question.
“So?” Himchan snaps. “I can’t have sex?”
Yongguk’s eyes narrow. “You had sex for the first time with some random ass stranger-”
“I’m sorry I can’t afford to have nice, lasting relationships and preserve my virginity for my wedding night with a wreath of daises around my head, presenting myself for my fucking soulmate,” Himchan cuts him off. “It must be nice to be straight.”
Yongguk doesn’t say anything-he looks away.
“Can you get out?” Himchan asks. “I need to shower.” Something in his chest stings when he watches Yongguk stand up because Himchan knows Yongguk is just being a good friend, and Himchan is just being a crappy one.
Yongguk is at the doorway now, one foot already out of the bathroom. “Why the fuck did you even call me?”
Himchan stares down at the tiles. “You can go home,” Himchan says quietly. “Sorry for waking you.”
Yongguk closes the bathroom door as he leaves.
Himchan showers and hopes that his mother’s already restocked the medicine cabinet because he really needs Tylenol.
When he opens the bathroom door, towel over his wet hair and pajamas still sort of sticking to his damp body, he almost falls flat on his face because of the humongous lump right in front of his feet, obstructing his path from the bathroom to his glorious bed.
It’s a lump of sleeping Yongguk.
Curled at the doorway of the bathroom, half leaning against the wall, and legs outstretched (it was the legs that tripped Himchan and had nearly cost him his face planted on the floor).
Himchan kicks at Yongguk’s shoulder. “Yo,” he says, “you almost made me break my face. I thought you went home.”
Yongguk wakes up slowly-yawns, cracks his neck from left to right, and then looks up sleepily at Himchan. “Was going to,” he drawls, grinning the grin that takes over his entire face-comfortable and warm and familiar. “But you looked like you were going to cry, so I thought I’d stick around to watch.”
Himchan’s mouth drops open a little bit.
Just a little.
“I’ll go home if you really need to sleep though,” Yongguk says and his grin starts to fade immediately. “Sorry.” He stands up and Himchan has to take a step back because he didn’t realize how close they were to each other (when Yongguk stands, their faces are inches apart).
“I have a shitload of homework to do,” Himchan blurts out, and doesn’t know why, but he does (Yongguk makes him do a lot of things where he doesn’t know the reason, but it happens). “I’ll text you all the answers if you help me finish-I want to get it done before Sunday.”
Yongguk frowns. “Not tired?”
“Are you?” Himchan frowns back.
Yongguk shrugs and shakes his head-smiles. “You’d fucking better remember to text me the answers we get, though.”
Himchan smiles back (doesn’t know why, but he does).
They don’t end up doing any of Himchan’s homework.
Himchan ends up throwing crumpled pieces of looseleaf at Yongguk’s head and Yongguk ends up throwing pencils at Himchan’s face and Himchan ends up snapping at how Yongguk already almost broke Himchan’s face once for the night-a second time is just ridiculous and fucking annoying.
They end up falling asleep in Himchan’s bed together.
Himchan graduates and goes off to university. Yongguk graduates and goes off to a different university. Their universities neighbor each other-campuses staring at each other across town, just like how their houses stare at each other across the street. They’re at different universities but they both major in music composition and production, and Himchan thinks that’s kind of funny.
Yongguk still texts him sometimes and sometimes Himchan texts back, but mostly he doesn’t, because now he’s in university-he’s not living at home anymore-so he can afford to invest in a few actual relationships here and there. It’s not great, none of them are spectacular, but there’s sex and there’re some nice moments, and Himchan guesses that that’s all he can ask for.
In his second year of university, Himchan is assigned as the co-organizer for all the music that’s going to be played throughout the entire Festival of the Arts that the universities in the region are putting on. His fellow co-organizer is Yongguk, which isn’t a coincidence because the committee had apparently picked Yongguk first and then asked him if he knew anyone at Himchan’s university who was a music major as well-and Yongguk had picked Himchan to work with.
Himchan is neither excited nor thankful nor irritated nor reluctant.
Yongguk is Yongguk and he’s neither here nor there to Himchan-they work well together and maybe this will boost Himchan’s resume a few points, so it’s a good deal as far as Himchan stands.
“And here I thought you’d be pumped,” Yongguk says, folding his arms and leaning back in the chair during their break. Their laptops sit, still open and with too many tabs open, on the table between them in the café.
“So pumped,” Himchan says, yawning. “I can feel the adrenaline rush as I reach my seventieth Google tab.”
Yongguk laughs.
Himchan grins back, and takes a sip from his bottle of water.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Yongguk says, as Himchan tries to make the break in his pound cake somewhat even and down the middle.
“Okay,” Himchan says, and wipes the frosting off of his fingers on a napkin. He looks up in time to see Yongguk rolling his eyes and smiling.
“You look good,” Yongguk says.
Himchan frames his cheeks with peace signs on either hand. “I know,” he says, puffing out his cheeks.
Underneath the table, Yongguk slams his foot into Himchan’s shin.
When Himchan is twenty, in his second year of university, he and Yongguk stay up late together in Himchan’s dorm one night because they have to wait up for the head-organizer for the festival to email them back the approval for half the scheduled songs and the head-organizer (from Yongguk’s university) supposedly has the crappiest laptop on campus and also the shittiest sense of timing (so Himchan doesn’t understand which fucktard made her the head-organizer).
“Why’d you tell me I look good yesterday?” Himchan asks, sprawling himself out on his bed. He feels his shirt ride up, feels the slight rush of air against the strip of skin, but he doesn’t feel like moving his arms to pull his shirt down because his arms are folded above his head and in the perfect position and he’s just too comfortable to move.
Yongguk spins around and around in Himchan’s desk chair, silent for a moment before stopping the turning and facing Himchan. “You want me to tell you that you look like shit?”
“Hey,” Himchan stretches the sound out, grinning and narrowing his eyes. “I know you think I’m hot.”
“Oh my God,” Yongguk says, and grins back, right as he throws the empty pencil holder on the desk at Himchan’s face. Himchan dodges (because Yongguk is always throwing things at him when he doesn’t have a good enough comeback to Himchan’s amazing rhetorical strategies). “You’re a dumbass.”
Himchan shrugs. “A hot one.”
“You have a boyfriend then?” Yongguk asks suddenly-his voice is still light, but that kind of subject matter is increasingly dangerous and prods into territory Himchan isn’t that bothered with anymore, but he never knew Yongguk wanted to know things like that. “Since you’re such hot shit.”
Himchan sits up, legs stretched out on the bed and apart, hands limply on the space between his thighs. “No,” he says, one corner of his mouth tugging upward. “Broke up a month ago.”
Yongguk stares down. “Sorry,” he says quietly-whenever Yongguk speaks quietly, his voice drops to a pitch so low that Himchan can barely pick it up with his ears. But he’s used to it by now because he’s known Yongguk for long enough-and Yongguk is Yongguk, so Himchan is used to it.
Himchan shrugs. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s what it is.”
“What?” Yongguk asks, frowning.
“Being gay?” Himchan raises his eyebrows. “It’s not like you’re dating to get married, so you can just break up like whatever and not be a whiny pussy about it. You just get over it.”
Yongguk stands up.
Walks over to the bed.
Sits down beside Himchan.
“Why’re you always like that?” Yongguk says. “Things are what they are?”
Things are what they are.
There’s a certain order to everything that lies in the fact of how everything is everything, so nothing is nothing and Himchan can’t just change things that are going to stay the way they are. Just like how Yongguk is Yongguk-he’s neither here nor there to Himchan-so is being gay. Himchan is gay and he’s gotten over the whole depressing tragedy of it all and he’s not a pissy drama queen over it-he’s just gay and he has to deal with it, and it’s not that bad as long as he doesn’t expect the same things straight people get to expect.
Himchan just smiles humorlessly at Yongguk. “Must be nice to be straight,” he says, because he figures that’s all there is to say since it’d take more effort than Himchan feels like exerting to explain to Yongguk why it’s just different.
Yongguk smiles back-just as humorlessly. “Must be,” he says.
Himchan stares. “Wait-”
“Yeah.”
“Wanna try it then?” Yongguk asks, after five minutes go by (literally-five minutes, as Himchan watches them tick by on his phone’s clock) in silence because Himchan doesn’t really know how to react to some kid he’s known since he was six come out to him. (Because Yongguk is just Yongguk-he’s not Himchan’s best friend, not Himchan’s classmate, not someone at Himchan’s university, not Himchan’s enemy, not Himchan’s anything-he’s just sort of always been there)
Himchan blinks. “What?”
Yongguk actually looks nervous for some reason-a cross between nervous and far-too-obviously trying not to look nervous but Himchan can tell he’s nervous because they’ve known each other for too long and Himchan can always tell. Just like Yongguk can always tell. It goes both ways. A lot of things between them do.
“Dating.”
“You?” Himchan squints.
Yongguk squints back, clearly mocking Himchan’s eyes.
Himchan scrambles across the bed to punch Yongguk in the shoulder-in both shoulders, again and again until Yongguk is flat on his back, laughing out loud-laughter bouncing off of the walls of Himchan’s dorm. Yongguk’s arms wind around Himchan’s waist, throwing Himchan off of Yongguk and back onto the bed. “Stop hitting me,” Yongguk laughs.
“Stop being a dick,” Himchan shoots back, and shoves the other man away.
Yongguk rolls around on the bed, laughing again for another few seconds before he stops abruptly and turns his head, looking up at Himchan. “So-wanna try?”
Himchan’s first reaction is to squint again, but he scraps that because he doesn’t want Yongguk to make fun of his eyes again. So he settles for furrowing his entire face in what he hopes clearly displays how fucking weird this is.
“We can just break-up whenever,” Yongguk shrugs, punching Himchan’s arm lightly. “You said dating isn’t a big deal for you so-”
“This is really fucking random,” Himchan says, and doesn’t even care anymore-he squints as hard as he wants to because Yongguk is being a dumbass that doesn’t make sense. “Do you even like me?”
Yongguk rolls his eyes, smiling incredulously. “I fucking hate you, Kim Himchan,” he says, “that’s why I picked you to work with for a project that takes an entire month to do. Also-you’re fucking ugly as crap.”
Himchan launches himself at Yongguk.
And not to make-out in order to commemorate their first day as boyfriends.
To scratch Yongguk’s eyes out.
Author: himawarixxsandz
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: BangHim
Summary: Better than puzzle pieces
A/N: Ahahaha ;A; okay the second part isn't even close to done but I just wanted to put this up because I refuse to be MIA with writing for over a week that's just ridiculous for me I feel unproductive and gross okay so here you are my emotions are a mess with this because Commander is like taking over my bias world, kicking my other biases around because not even Joon and Zico became my bias this fast okay this is scary but Himchan is stupidly attractive and dumb and amazing and ugh just here also Guk is ruining things too for me I hate you Yongguk
Part 1 // Part 2
Whether it’s separation or eternal love,
I want to find it with you
Baby, you’re a perfect fit
When Himchan is six, Bang Yongguk is the boy across the street.
Yongguk is a neighbor who’s a neighbor-Himchan doesn’t really know him, has only seen him once or twice at neighborhood gatherings in someone’s backyard. He has to greet and bow Yongguk when the neighborhood gathering is at the Bang household, and Yongguk greets and bows back, and then that’s it for the month.
That’s all Himchan sees of Yongguk until another three weeks pass and there’s another barbeque or dinner party that his parents bring him to at a neighbor’s house because they don’t feel all that safe leaving Himchan with a babysitter.
Yongguk isn’t particularly interesting or nice-looking or fun to play with. He’s just Yongguk and Himchan is just Himchan-and he has a lot more fun playing with Hyosung and Hyosung, lately, likes playing with the new neighbor’s baby. So, lately, Himchan has been playing with the baby too at all the barbeques (baby Junhong).
Like-
Himchan hasn’t really tried playing with Yongguk.
But that’s okay.
It’s just Yongguk.
Himchan is nine when he scrapes his knee, walking back from Daehyun’s house (they both were yelled at by Hyosung for making Junhong cry). He trips over a deep crack in the sidewalk and lands on his legs, knee scratching the cement. He doesn’t cry because it hurts, but it doesn’t hurt-hurt.
He just sits there and watches the blood start to ooze out of the crossing of thin cuts because he doesn’t want to stand up and start walking again since that would hurt more. He’s halfway through figuring out his plan of how-to-get-home-without-walking (because he’s hungry and wants to go home but he doesn’t want to walk so he’s decided to try flying since he’s always wanted to fly) when an hand roughly grabs his arm and yanks him to his feet.
“I can help you home,” Yongguk says, sweaty and covered in grass stains and Himchan tries to edge away because Yongguk looks like he just played too much soccer (and missed the ball a few too many times).
Himchan wants to ask the other boy where he came from, but doesn’t bother to because it’s probably easier to let Yongguk help him home than try flying right now (Himchan’s heard that it’s easier to try flying when you’re not under a lot of pressure-like the dire emergency that a scraped knee is). “Okay,” he says.
Yongguk smiles (a smile that’s too big and shows all of his top front teeth)
Himchan smiles back-he doesn’t really know why, but he does.
They go to the same school because they live in the same neighborhood so even if Yongguk is just Yongguk, Himchan sees him around a lot. They have the same friends too, and they’re all in charge of making sure Junhong doesn’t float into space so they see each other a lot since Junhong likes following Yongguk around.
In Himchan’s first year, they’re in the same period for English and they’re assigned to each other as partners for the semester culture project.
“Aw,” Yongguk drawls, grin wide as he leans forward in his chair and tugs at the edge of Himchan’s sleeve. “I’m stuck with you?”
“Be happy,” Himchan says, sitting down with his notebook in his lap (he grabs Yongguk’s pen out of the other boy’s hand), “I’m hot shit at English.”
Yongguk kicks Himchan’s shin underneath their desks.
Working with Yongguk is easy and effortless and Himchan doesn’t understand why, but it is. Their houses are across the street from each other so they can stay at the other’s house until late hours and still be able to make it home without the hassle of sleeping over and bringing clothes and commuting to school together.
Yongguk does his fair share of work and Himchan does his and everything easy and effortless and Himchan has no idea why, but it is, so it’s not like he’s going to complain about an easy grade. He needs that grade since he really isn’t that hot at English (not that Yongguk needs to know because then he’d just brag about it to Himchan’s face since Yongguk is that hot at English).
“At least I’m hot,” Himchan says, while they wait for the last few pages of the report to finish printing at Yongguk’s house.
Yongguk looks at him. “Say that again and I’ll mess your hot face up.”
Himchan laughs. “So-wait-you admit that I’m hot then.”
The other boy rolls his eyes away, grinning.
Himchan realizes he’s gay in his second year.
The realization comes in stages-ones that he tried to deny every time a new one emerged-mostly from being turned on by things that shouldn’t and not being turned on by things that should. He’s mildly thankful that the realization doesn’t come because he has feelings for someone he shouldn’t have feelings for because that would make this suck ten times more than it already does.
He’s also glad that he realizes (or maybe he’s always known, but-so-okay-the night that he stops denying) on a night when his parents are out of town because his father has a meeting and his mother decided to go with him since Himchan is more than old enough to look after himself for a few nights.
It really isn’t all that tragic-it’s not like he’s going to get stoned by the village and then shunned to the outskirts of the nation-but it feels just about that tragic at the moment and Himchan chalks it up to being sixteen and when anyone is sixteen, everything seems tragic. So he goes into his parents’ alcohol cabinets and starts taking out whatever he thinks his parents won’t really notice missing.
He goes outside onto the sidewalk in the middle of the night, sits at the curb, and starts to drink. All the lights of the surrounding houses are off, and even if they weren’t and the neighbors saw him, he doesn’t really care at the moment. He’s sixteen and gay and fucking depressed about it and life is tragic and he wants to get drunk on his parents’ alcohol and he’s underage and doesn’t care.
He gets about halfway through the bottles of beer he’s brought out and starts nursing his way through a bottle of soju before a familiar hand grabs his arm in a familiarly rough way and wrenches the bottle out of his fingers.
Himchan looks up. “I don’t need help getting home, Yongguk-ah,” he slurs. “Fuck off. Go to bed.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Yongguk hisses incredulously. He’s in sweatpants and a t-shirt and Himchan guesses he was probably going to go to sleep until he saw Himchan getting drunk through his bedroom window. Or maybe he was taking out the trash. Or getting the mail. Or something.
“Drinking,” Himchan says and smiles his best smile, squinting up at the other boy (because there’s like four Yongguks right now even though Himchan swears he only hears one talking).
“Okay, Christ,” Yongguk says, grabbing Himchan by the elbow. “Next time your parents are going out of town, I’m fucking telling them you still need a babysitter-fuck-get up, Himchan-ah.”
Himchan lets Yongguk more or less drag him back into the house (he doesn’t remember or know how Yongguk cleaned up the bottles on the sidewalk or how Yongguk got rid of them, but it happened clearly since the bottles weren’t there anymore in the morning). He’s drunk enough to not give a shit about slumping himself all over Yongguk and breathing alcohol straight into the other boy’s face.
He’s drunk enough to mumble, “I’m gay,” right into Yongguk’s ear as the other boy tries to set Himchan down on the couch.
He’s not drunk enough to not notice how Yongguk’s hands suddenly freeze against Himchan’s body. Himchan rolls out of Yongguk’s arms onto the couch by himself and lies there, staring at the ceiling and not at where Yongguk stands to the side.
“I don’t care,” Yongguk finally says in a small voice (it’s weird to Himchan how a voice that’s so deep can suddenly sound so tiny).
Himchan shrugs.
“I don’t care,” Yongguk repeats and this time his voice isn’t small. Himchan glances up and meets the other boy’s eyes.
“Okay,” Himchan says.
As it turns out, Yongguk doesn’t care.
Himchan does.
He hides it from everyone except for Yongguk (his preference was to hide it from Yongguk too but that was kind of shot since the whole drunk-coming-out thing ruined the ultimate-complete-secrecy thing). He sneaks off to parties that’re only for college students (he gets in because he’s in the music department and he has connections and he’s attractive and Kim Himchan always gets in) so no one at the school will see him and so he can experiment without having to worry too much about stupid things like feelings and relationships.
He makes-out with college boys who don’t care, he blows and gets blown by college boys who’re drunk out of their minds, he jacks off and gets jacked off by college boys who’re just in it for the wild fun one way or another.
He comes home from every party to texts and missed calls from Yongguk. Himchan used to bother texting and calling the other boy back during their second year, but by their third year, he doesn’t really bother to anymore because he knows that Yongguk knows that Himchan can take care of himself and that Himchan’s parents just think Himchan has late-late-late practice with the orchestra.
It doesn’t really matter anyway-pointless-because Yongguk always texts the same things and says the same things whenever Himchan calls him back.
Text me back when ur home
“You drank too much again,” Yongguk’s low voice mumbles through Himchan’s cell phone.
“Yeah,” Himchan says, and counts the seconds before he can hang up because while it’s nice that Yongguk is always checking up on Himchan’s soberness and all, there’s really no point because Himchan isn’t five. He’s seventeen and gay and Yongguk is seventeen and straight.
Yongguk is just Yongguk.
Himchan is eighteen when he has sex for the first time.
He has sex with just another random boy he finds at another random party that he’s managed to slip off to on a Friday night where his parents think he’s rehearsing late again for a concert the school is putting on for Sunday morning.
Himchan’s first time has him pressed against the wall of a bathroom stall and it hurts so much that Himchan wants to pass out for a solid four hours until the pain is completely gone from his body. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, half-dressed and sweating and panting and aching (and not crying-he’s not crying-and if he is, it’s only from the pain or from sweat getting into his eyes), on the grimy bathroom floor of a random club.
He doesn’t want to get up because it’ll hurt more to walk but he wants to go home because he wants to shower and fall into his bed (maybe with some Advil or something because fuck it hurts-he had his first time standing up and pressed against a wall-fuck). He wishes he could fly home but he knows he can’t-he wishes he still believed he could fly because then he could start forming a plan to fly and right in the middle of forming that plan, Yongguk would appear and drag him home by the elbow.
Eventually, maybe thirty minutes later, Himchan picks himself up and drives himself home like the big boy that he is (he’s eighteen-he’s a big boy now).
He’s a big boy, so he doesn’t understand why he ends up calling Yongguk and asking him to sneak over to Himchan’s house (Himchan’s parents are already asleep when he gets home). He doesn’t understand why, but he does, and Yongguk says yes, so about seven minutes after Himchan gets home and gets upstairs to his bedroom, Yongguk is there next to him and freaking the fuck out in a way that would be hilarious if Himchan didn’t ache all over.
“You let him fuck you?” Yongguk says in a voice that’s far too high to be Bang Yongguk’s voice.
Himchan glares up at the other boy (Himchan is slumped on the bathroom tiles, leaning back against the tub while Yongguk kneels beside him). “Fuck off,” he says. “Please? Okay-I hurt like a bitch and I just want to shower and knock myself out with Tylenol, not get the purity chapter.”
“You let him fuck you,” Yongguk repeats and this time it’s not a question.
“So?” Himchan snaps. “I can’t have sex?”
Yongguk’s eyes narrow. “You had sex for the first time with some random ass stranger-”
“I’m sorry I can’t afford to have nice, lasting relationships and preserve my virginity for my wedding night with a wreath of daises around my head, presenting myself for my fucking soulmate,” Himchan cuts him off. “It must be nice to be straight.”
Yongguk doesn’t say anything-he looks away.
“Can you get out?” Himchan asks. “I need to shower.” Something in his chest stings when he watches Yongguk stand up because Himchan knows Yongguk is just being a good friend, and Himchan is just being a crappy one.
Yongguk is at the doorway now, one foot already out of the bathroom. “Why the fuck did you even call me?”
Himchan stares down at the tiles. “You can go home,” Himchan says quietly. “Sorry for waking you.”
Yongguk closes the bathroom door as he leaves.
Himchan showers and hopes that his mother’s already restocked the medicine cabinet because he really needs Tylenol.
When he opens the bathroom door, towel over his wet hair and pajamas still sort of sticking to his damp body, he almost falls flat on his face because of the humongous lump right in front of his feet, obstructing his path from the bathroom to his glorious bed.
It’s a lump of sleeping Yongguk.
Curled at the doorway of the bathroom, half leaning against the wall, and legs outstretched (it was the legs that tripped Himchan and had nearly cost him his face planted on the floor).
Himchan kicks at Yongguk’s shoulder. “Yo,” he says, “you almost made me break my face. I thought you went home.”
Yongguk wakes up slowly-yawns, cracks his neck from left to right, and then looks up sleepily at Himchan. “Was going to,” he drawls, grinning the grin that takes over his entire face-comfortable and warm and familiar. “But you looked like you were going to cry, so I thought I’d stick around to watch.”
Himchan’s mouth drops open a little bit.
Just a little.
“I’ll go home if you really need to sleep though,” Yongguk says and his grin starts to fade immediately. “Sorry.” He stands up and Himchan has to take a step back because he didn’t realize how close they were to each other (when Yongguk stands, their faces are inches apart).
“I have a shitload of homework to do,” Himchan blurts out, and doesn’t know why, but he does (Yongguk makes him do a lot of things where he doesn’t know the reason, but it happens). “I’ll text you all the answers if you help me finish-I want to get it done before Sunday.”
Yongguk frowns. “Not tired?”
“Are you?” Himchan frowns back.
Yongguk shrugs and shakes his head-smiles. “You’d fucking better remember to text me the answers we get, though.”
Himchan smiles back (doesn’t know why, but he does).
They don’t end up doing any of Himchan’s homework.
Himchan ends up throwing crumpled pieces of looseleaf at Yongguk’s head and Yongguk ends up throwing pencils at Himchan’s face and Himchan ends up snapping at how Yongguk already almost broke Himchan’s face once for the night-a second time is just ridiculous and fucking annoying.
They end up falling asleep in Himchan’s bed together.
Himchan graduates and goes off to university. Yongguk graduates and goes off to a different university. Their universities neighbor each other-campuses staring at each other across town, just like how their houses stare at each other across the street. They’re at different universities but they both major in music composition and production, and Himchan thinks that’s kind of funny.
Yongguk still texts him sometimes and sometimes Himchan texts back, but mostly he doesn’t, because now he’s in university-he’s not living at home anymore-so he can afford to invest in a few actual relationships here and there. It’s not great, none of them are spectacular, but there’s sex and there’re some nice moments, and Himchan guesses that that’s all he can ask for.
In his second year of university, Himchan is assigned as the co-organizer for all the music that’s going to be played throughout the entire Festival of the Arts that the universities in the region are putting on. His fellow co-organizer is Yongguk, which isn’t a coincidence because the committee had apparently picked Yongguk first and then asked him if he knew anyone at Himchan’s university who was a music major as well-and Yongguk had picked Himchan to work with.
Himchan is neither excited nor thankful nor irritated nor reluctant.
Yongguk is Yongguk and he’s neither here nor there to Himchan-they work well together and maybe this will boost Himchan’s resume a few points, so it’s a good deal as far as Himchan stands.
“And here I thought you’d be pumped,” Yongguk says, folding his arms and leaning back in the chair during their break. Their laptops sit, still open and with too many tabs open, on the table between them in the café.
“So pumped,” Himchan says, yawning. “I can feel the adrenaline rush as I reach my seventieth Google tab.”
Yongguk laughs.
Himchan grins back, and takes a sip from his bottle of water.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Yongguk says, as Himchan tries to make the break in his pound cake somewhat even and down the middle.
“Okay,” Himchan says, and wipes the frosting off of his fingers on a napkin. He looks up in time to see Yongguk rolling his eyes and smiling.
“You look good,” Yongguk says.
Himchan frames his cheeks with peace signs on either hand. “I know,” he says, puffing out his cheeks.
Underneath the table, Yongguk slams his foot into Himchan’s shin.
When Himchan is twenty, in his second year of university, he and Yongguk stay up late together in Himchan’s dorm one night because they have to wait up for the head-organizer for the festival to email them back the approval for half the scheduled songs and the head-organizer (from Yongguk’s university) supposedly has the crappiest laptop on campus and also the shittiest sense of timing (so Himchan doesn’t understand which fucktard made her the head-organizer).
“Why’d you tell me I look good yesterday?” Himchan asks, sprawling himself out on his bed. He feels his shirt ride up, feels the slight rush of air against the strip of skin, but he doesn’t feel like moving his arms to pull his shirt down because his arms are folded above his head and in the perfect position and he’s just too comfortable to move.
Yongguk spins around and around in Himchan’s desk chair, silent for a moment before stopping the turning and facing Himchan. “You want me to tell you that you look like shit?”
“Hey,” Himchan stretches the sound out, grinning and narrowing his eyes. “I know you think I’m hot.”
“Oh my God,” Yongguk says, and grins back, right as he throws the empty pencil holder on the desk at Himchan’s face. Himchan dodges (because Yongguk is always throwing things at him when he doesn’t have a good enough comeback to Himchan’s amazing rhetorical strategies). “You’re a dumbass.”
Himchan shrugs. “A hot one.”
“You have a boyfriend then?” Yongguk asks suddenly-his voice is still light, but that kind of subject matter is increasingly dangerous and prods into territory Himchan isn’t that bothered with anymore, but he never knew Yongguk wanted to know things like that. “Since you’re such hot shit.”
Himchan sits up, legs stretched out on the bed and apart, hands limply on the space between his thighs. “No,” he says, one corner of his mouth tugging upward. “Broke up a month ago.”
Yongguk stares down. “Sorry,” he says quietly-whenever Yongguk speaks quietly, his voice drops to a pitch so low that Himchan can barely pick it up with his ears. But he’s used to it by now because he’s known Yongguk for long enough-and Yongguk is Yongguk, so Himchan is used to it.
Himchan shrugs. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s what it is.”
“What?” Yongguk asks, frowning.
“Being gay?” Himchan raises his eyebrows. “It’s not like you’re dating to get married, so you can just break up like whatever and not be a whiny pussy about it. You just get over it.”
Yongguk stands up.
Walks over to the bed.
Sits down beside Himchan.
“Why’re you always like that?” Yongguk says. “Things are what they are?”
Things are what they are.
There’s a certain order to everything that lies in the fact of how everything is everything, so nothing is nothing and Himchan can’t just change things that are going to stay the way they are. Just like how Yongguk is Yongguk-he’s neither here nor there to Himchan-so is being gay. Himchan is gay and he’s gotten over the whole depressing tragedy of it all and he’s not a pissy drama queen over it-he’s just gay and he has to deal with it, and it’s not that bad as long as he doesn’t expect the same things straight people get to expect.
Himchan just smiles humorlessly at Yongguk. “Must be nice to be straight,” he says, because he figures that’s all there is to say since it’d take more effort than Himchan feels like exerting to explain to Yongguk why it’s just different.
Yongguk smiles back-just as humorlessly. “Must be,” he says.
Himchan stares. “Wait-”
“Yeah.”
“Wanna try it then?” Yongguk asks, after five minutes go by (literally-five minutes, as Himchan watches them tick by on his phone’s clock) in silence because Himchan doesn’t really know how to react to some kid he’s known since he was six come out to him. (Because Yongguk is just Yongguk-he’s not Himchan’s best friend, not Himchan’s classmate, not someone at Himchan’s university, not Himchan’s enemy, not Himchan’s anything-he’s just sort of always been there)
Himchan blinks. “What?”
Yongguk actually looks nervous for some reason-a cross between nervous and far-too-obviously trying not to look nervous but Himchan can tell he’s nervous because they’ve known each other for too long and Himchan can always tell. Just like Yongguk can always tell. It goes both ways. A lot of things between them do.
“Dating.”
“You?” Himchan squints.
Yongguk squints back, clearly mocking Himchan’s eyes.
Himchan scrambles across the bed to punch Yongguk in the shoulder-in both shoulders, again and again until Yongguk is flat on his back, laughing out loud-laughter bouncing off of the walls of Himchan’s dorm. Yongguk’s arms wind around Himchan’s waist, throwing Himchan off of Yongguk and back onto the bed. “Stop hitting me,” Yongguk laughs.
“Stop being a dick,” Himchan shoots back, and shoves the other man away.
Yongguk rolls around on the bed, laughing again for another few seconds before he stops abruptly and turns his head, looking up at Himchan. “So-wanna try?”
Himchan’s first reaction is to squint again, but he scraps that because he doesn’t want Yongguk to make fun of his eyes again. So he settles for furrowing his entire face in what he hopes clearly displays how fucking weird this is.
“We can just break-up whenever,” Yongguk shrugs, punching Himchan’s arm lightly. “You said dating isn’t a big deal for you so-”
“This is really fucking random,” Himchan says, and doesn’t even care anymore-he squints as hard as he wants to because Yongguk is being a dumbass that doesn’t make sense. “Do you even like me?”
Yongguk rolls his eyes, smiling incredulously. “I fucking hate you, Kim Himchan,” he says, “that’s why I picked you to work with for a project that takes an entire month to do. Also-you’re fucking ugly as crap.”
Himchan launches himself at Yongguk.
And not to make-out in order to commemorate their first day as boyfriends.
To scratch Yongguk’s eyes out.