Archive of Our Own ^beta

Johnny draws the balcony door closed behind himself, sounds of the outdated house music Chenle takes way too much pride in clinking against the glass. Outside it’s just the good-old quiet night — late cicadas still buzzing to the the soft cacophony of crickets tangled up in the evenly mowed grass, and in the distance, somewhere in the glitzy depths of Northern Shore, tires squeaking against asphalt, over and over: some lost late-night driver, probably, searching for the meaning of life in this concrete millionaire maze.

It doesn’t work like that, though. Johnny’s tried. Things like that never come when you look for them. That’s why they’re so easy to miss.

With a sigh, Johnny runs a hand through his sweat-damp hair. A plume of glitter rains down to his feet.

Fucking Chenle and his fucking obsession with glitter.

God, at least the outside air carries some semblance of freshness. Johnny takes in a grateful lungful — chlorine, some type of flower his mom would probably name right away, petrichor, vehicle exhaust. It feels incredible. He was getting suffocated back there in the living room, enclosed into a ring of sweaty, drunk bodies (not very unlike his own, if he’s being honest, which maybe he should be, he’s been lying to himself about way too many things lately), the too-loud beat with a truly abominable amount of stuttered synth, and the perpetual haze of smoked pot, hanging like a veil in the air. Why does he attend these parties again?

(He knows exactly why.)

What a waste of a night.

Johnny leans against the glass, takes another breath, lets it out, slowly. His mouth still tastes of the cranberry vodka he got at the inside bar, and also like tequila, and absinthe, and that god-awful lipgloss of that Sarah girl — honestly, fuck knows why he went for that — and something Yuta said would taste good but actually tasted like ground then liquified seaglass. He should’ve stopped at the beer. It’s always best to stop at the beer. Actually, it’s best to not start at all, but Johnny’s kind of lax on the whole impulse-control thing. He’d promised himself he’ll get sober sooner than later, but who cares, ultimately. College years are supposed to be the best years of his life. If that means getting drunk on the regular… it’s not that bad of a thesis.

Maybe I did drink too much, he thinks after too many minutes of staring at the dots of glitter under his feet. Theses have never been his strongest suit. Fuck, or was that a metaphor? He can’t remember now. Who gives a shit. It’s not like he’s a lit major, thankfully.

Impulsively— he’s kind of a romantic when given enough vodka — Johnny tilts his head up, towards the dark, depthless sky. It's pretty. Stars everywhere, scattered like crushed jewels, like he's on an island in the middle of the sea, and not in one of Boston’s uselessly upscale neighborhoods (alongside alcohol making him a sensualist, it also tends to ignite his socialistic spirits), escaping the drunk crowd of a stupid party in the shadows of some rich sicko fucks’ backyard.

(He means Chenle’s parents, not Chenle. Chenle’s nice. Relatively.)

After a minute of staring, the stars start to swim in his vision. Rubbing his aching neck, Johnny makes his way across the suicidally-pristine lawn, towards the shimmery, still surface of the pool. It doesn’t seem to be covered for the night. Halfway across the damp lawn, he almost trips over what appears to be a Roman statue, narrowly avoiding knocking the entire thing down.

“Motherfuck—“ Johnny catches the monstrosity just in time, tipping it upright and trying to calm his heartbeat down.

Maybe he should’ve just let it crash. It’s not like there aren't a dozen more, wherever it came from. Chenle’s parents are loaded. It comes as no surprise, because fucking everyone here is loaded. His mother always said that people with too much money never have enough taste. As always, she’s right. Alongside gilded ashtrays, wrought-iron chairs, and crystalline chandeliers, Chenle’s parents have a polar-bear rug back in the living room, stretched out across the polished parquet. With the head and everything, the tiny black nose, the paws, even the tongue, lolling pink between the lacquered yellowed teeth. And just — fucking imagine that. Imagine buying that on purpose.

Having avoided destroying any more property, Johnny stops by the pool’s edge. He peers down, where the mosaic lies in beautiful, blue geometric patterns. It’s extremely tempting to dip a toe in. The thing is, he’s kind of terrified of finding out Chenle’s parents are the type of people to keep some kind of decorative mini sharks in their pool. Not that he hasn’t swam with sharks before, but — besides the threat of being gnawed to death, there’s also the fact that it’s still too cold to swim. Unless, of course, the pool is heated—

Behind him there’s a sudden, bright wink of orange light.

Abandoning his imaginary fish, Johnny looks back up, letting his eyes adjust. In the muted flashes of strobe-lights coming from the house, he catches the outline of someone lying prone on the round wicker sunbed, right by the far end of the pool, tucked safely away in the shadows.

Johnny feels his lips curl up in a smile.

(He knows exactly why.)

Seems like night’s not a waste after all.

“Jaehyun,” Johnny says in greeting as soon as he’s by the sunbed, putting his knee onto the cotton cushion. Its occupant jumps in an evident startle. “I was looking for you.”

It’s not even a lie. Which is bad, because Jaehyun treats truths like ammunition. But Johnny can’t be bothered with being careful tonight — he’s suddenly feeling much, much more sober than he has in weeks. Something in him has lit up, a soft simmer just below the skin. Yuta says he’s as easy to read as a book sometimes; and Johnny doesn’t mind being easy to read. He just wishes, sometimes, that some people were into literature.

“Wow, John,” Jaehyun says after a moment, sounding perfectly bored despite the evident shock of being discovered. He is also in the possession of a unique ability to make Johnny’s name sound like a flowery insult. “You’ve found me.” Johnny watches him bring the joint, glowing like a tiny red gem between his fingers, to his mouth. After a moment, he exhales the plume of smoke right into Johnny’s face. Like a little bitch. It’s probably weird that Johnny likes that, but tonight he can’t be bothered with being normal either. “Want a pat on the back? Will that make you go away?”

“Is that weed? I thought CBD was below you.” Johnny tilts his head sideways to avoid the haze. “You said you weren’t coming.”

Which is — okay, that’s not exactly true. Jaehyun never said anything at all. He simply ignored Johnny’s message of ‘are u coming to chnls?’, just like he did the one before, and the one before, and the one before, the one where Johnny said, ‘busy tnght?, and then something about snacks, he can’t really remember now.

He’s a rude little thing. Jaehyun. You would never know by just looking at him, though. By looking at him, you’d unavoidably slip into the common misconception of beauty equating goodness. What a trap!

As though to confirm Johnny’s unspoken words, Jaehyun exhales more smoke, the blue haze of it rising up into the dark sky.

They haven't talked in two weeks. Not that they do a lot of talking when they do meet up, if you’re being factual, but — still. Aren’t they friends? Okay, no, Johnny knows they’re not. Sex buddies, then? Acquaintances who hook up? Classmates who fuck? None of these seem to fit, because Jaehyun is a fucking weasel when it comes to any label besides a designer one, and Johnny should really actually be tired of his bullshit by now, except, you know. He’s not.

“I didn’t,” Jaehyun says.

Johnny lets his eyes drift back to his face. He didn’t even realize they’d strayed and he’d been staring at the pale skin of Jaehyun’s knee. It’s a nice knee. Johnny doesn’t even like knees. Who the fuck likes knees?

Damn. Johnny’s fucked. But he knows that already.

What were they talking about? “Didn’t what?”

Somewhere in the house, someone turns the music louder. Remixed electronica. The beat of it rushes through the garden, whispers through the grass like wind, muted and soft.

“You know what your problem is?” Jaehyun, without looking up, flicks his elegant wrist in the air. Johnny follows the movement. It’s a nice wrist. Johnny is fucked, he’s so fucked. “You never get the gist. That was a polite way of me saying, hello, John. Nice to see you, John. Please fuck off, John. Right? Wouldn’t that have been nice?” He taps the blunt in his fingers, and sparks of ash drift down onto the cushion. He clearly doesn’t give a shit about Chenle’s property. Not a surprise. In the few months they’ve known each other, Johnny has come to the conclusion that there are very few things Jaehyun gives a shit about, at least explicitly. “Alas. Now you’ve made me say it, and all my efforts at niceness have been wasted, and now I’m very, very mad. So.” Jaehyun takes another drag, holds the smoke in when he smiles, teeth glinting in the dark. “Fuck right off, John.”

It’s a nice speech. Johnny lets himself laugh.

“Wow,” he says. “I never knew you had it in you to be nice. Is it because you’re high right now? Is that it?”

“I am always nice.” Jaehyun’s voice is glacial, a dagger pointed in Johnny’s general direction at all times. Most likely something vital, like an artery. “I’ve been nice since I was born. Ask anyone.”

Eyes adjusted to the lack of light, Johnny can see him clearer now — white t-shirt stretched over wide shoulders, distressed jeans to match, the glint of a silver chain on his neck. He’s got one knee pulled up to his chest, almost protectively, skin peeking through the frayed denim, feet bare on the cotton.

He doesn’t look nice. He looks like a stray cat that would bite you if you offered it a home.

How long has he been sitting here, away from the party? Too long, probably. He hates crowds, Johnny knows. Hates people in general, one could say. You’d never tell just by looking at him. But Johnny hasn’t been looking. He’s been observing.

Jaehyun is blinking at him, clearly expecting an answer to his smart little retort. This is how they talk — insults, jabs, flirting from Johnny’s part, deflection and thinly veiled murder threats from Jaehyun. It’s irresistible.

“Born? I thought they made you in a lab. Pulled you together with electricity conductors and steel in some fucked-up mastermind dungeon.” Johnny twists his hands through the air, as though playing with a ball of wires. He adds the little beeping noises, too, purely to see what it does to Jaehyun’s expression. “Like Frankenweenie.”

“Another dumb film reference?” He almost sounds mad. “I thought I told you I don’t watch trashy American TV.”

“Trashy? No. That’s Tim Burton, babe.”

Jaehyun’s face goes blank. “Don’t flirt with me.”

“Flirt!” Johnny can’t help his laugh. Jaehyun is so cute. He’s so fucking cute. Johnny wants to throw him into the mini decorative shark pool. “If I was flirting with you, you’d know it.”

Jaehyun’s smile is polysaccharine. “Because I’d be traumatized?”

“Funny.” Johnny puts a second knee onto the cushions, soft cotton giving under his weight. Jaehyun gives him a look. “Come on. Move up.”

“God, I just told you to fuck off,” Jaehyun mutters, but he moves up to make space, shuffling to the side of the sunbed, pulling his knees in and wrapping an arm around them. He’s not looking at Johnny at all.

After a moment of shuffling Johnny settles, leaning against the tough wicker back. Their thighs brush. Despite the cool air, Jaehyun radiates warmth like a heater. This close, he smells like the usual — smoke, expensive perfume (cologne, he’d said through gritted teeth once, you uncultured swine), clean linen, vodka. A lot of vodka. It’s almost familiar, like summer locked in a person’s scent.

Familiar.

They met around nine months ago, at the start of the college year. Johnny still remembers catching sight of a stone-faced, dark-browed, aloof newbie in that huge lecture hall, with the droning professor and the mountain of sleeping students as backdrop to his stunning visuals. Not that catching sight meant anything. Jaehyun didn’t talk to Johnny, or anyone else, up until the middle of winter holidays; and even then it had been a stilted, curt, forced little hello, which made it sound like it pained Jaehyun to open his mouth and converse with the lowly human contingent of his college class.

It was pretty funny to watch from the sidelines. At the start, at least. Some people tried to befriend him, even straight-up ask him out — despite having the stoniest RBF Johnny had ever seen, Jaehyun was undeniably, painfully, unfairly handsome — but he’d shoot them down so fast and with so much vitriolic disgust you’d think he was on a campaign to gain an army of arch nemeses by the end of the year.

And who knows? Maybe he was. He could certainly afford it. Johnny had taken one look at his pristine Claudie Pierlot shirts, LV loafers, and silver Rolex, and quickly categorized him to the crowd of stupid, boring, cocksurely trustfunded babies from the Upper East Side, the only ones that would still be renowned capitalists by the end of the school year.

But, well.

Turns out Johnny’s kind of a bad character judge.

Jaehyun wasn’t stupid. He didn’t seem to try in class, preferring to stare out of the window and flick his pen and eye the professors with a condescending little brow-arch, like he was acting out a scene from a Fitzgerald novel, but he always managed to get top grades. It was pretty annoying— the put-on boredom, deliberate aloofness. But after spending a few hours in Jaehyun’s company at Mark’s Christmas party — which had been, incidentally, the place where Jaehyun had said anything besides hello and this is my chair to Johnny for the first time — Johnny had realized Jaehyun was also the furthest thing from boring. Rude, curt, uptight — but not boring. The cocksure part was perhaps the biggest miscalculation — despite having an insufferable air of conceit around himself, Johnny didn’t ever hear one word of brag fall from Jaehyun’s mouth. Jaehyun didn’t speak much at all. Most times he just shot daggers with his eyes and made his little you disgust me face and silently gestured people to fuck off into the sunset.

And he wasn’t even a capitalist.

Still, somehow Johnny found himself in Jaehyun’s orbit, like a planet gravitating towards the magnetic pull of a star. Although maybe a real magnet analogy would’ve been better. The one where opposites repel each other. They were so different in everything they did Johnny frequently asked himself what the fuck the point of it was — this strange not-friendship, not-relationship, not no-strings or tied-up or nothing or anything at all.

It sucked. Of course it sucked. Johnny liked to know people. Johnny liked to be known by people. Johnny liked laidback, easy, funny; Jaehyun was impossible to read, downright mean, and with a sense of humor so dark his punchlines frequently eclipsed the joke. He couldn’t stand being laughed at, couldn’t stand being ignored, couldn’t stand kindness, affection, playfulness. He was like a clam. A mutant clam with teeth and a tongue that only knew two words, first one being fuck and the second you, and the rest was usually swallowed or held back behind his perfect gums when he smiled. Even after a few months of ‘befriending’ Jaehyun, Johnny knew maybe ten things about him (the information was, of course, far from volunteered, but Johnny was thorough). He knew that Jaehyun hated overbrewed tea, that he was a perpetual dieter despite being too thin for it to be natural, that he didn’t like movies, that he had never read a Fitzgerald novel, that he was allergic to most nightshades, and that he would smoke absolutely anything offered to him.

Oh, and that he liked it when Johnny pushed him against sinks and pulled his hair as Jaehyun sucked him off, gasping around the cock in his mouth, big black eyes open and staring at Johnny like Johnny was laying the world at his feet and not face-fucking him in a seedy dorm bathroom.

But that one is another thing entirely.

Johnny reaches out to take the blunt from Jaehyun’s fingers. Jaehyun makes a face.

“Give it. You’ve had enough.”

“Fuck off.”

Johnny rolls his eyes, sitting back against the tough wicker. “You know you can smoke inside? Chenle doesn’t care. He literally had a bong party last week.”

“I don’t want to smoke with Chenle,” Jaehyun mutters, staring right ahead, at the cluster of oleander bushes hanging over the asymmetrical lip of the pool. “Or with you.”

“Aw.” Johnny nudges his thigh with his knee. “You were supposed to be nice.”

Jaehyun makes an annoyed noise — he sounds a little like a cat when he does that — then exhales more smoke into the sky, moving away and rubbing his leg as though Johnny actually hurt him. “Just stop bothering me. I’m tired of talking to those idiots.”

“Yeah?” Johnny turns to look at him, scooting closer.

“Yeah.” In the barely-there light from the patio sconces, Jaehyun’s eyes glitter, mocking and dark, pupils smudged, huge. Just how high is he? Johnny should really get that weed out of his fingers. “You know, John, the problem is that people are too honest when they’re drunk.” Jaehyun taps the blunt again. This time, Johnny sighs and swipes the ash off the cushion, into the grass. Chenle’s a nice kid. A little glitzy, but who wouldn’t be, with that kind of money. It isn’t a sin meriting property destruction. “Too honest. It makes them incredibly, unbelievably boring. When they’re sober and lying to your face, they at least try to make shit sound interesting.” Jaehyun takes in a shuddering breath, feigns a shiver of disgust. “I can’t fucking stand college drunkards. I’d rather drown myself than spend a second in their stupid company.”

“Well. I think that was personal.” Johnny makes a move as though to get up.

A pale hand lands on his thigh.

Johnny is careful to hide his smile. Jaehyun would probably think he’s laughing at him. Johnny’s laughing at himself.

Jaehyun’s fingers press into the muscle, cold through the polyester of Johnny’s basketball shorts, almost punitive, but his voice is carefully neutral. “You can stay. If you keep your mouth shut.”

“How ‘bout you do it for me,” Johnny says, an octave lower than he’d intended. It’s just reflexive by now, the way they talk.

The way they don’t.

He doesn’t actually expect Jaehyun to do it. He’d gotten the seemingly explicit message Jaehyun was no longer interested in — whatever it was they’ve been doing— after the fifth ignored text. Okay, the sixth. Johnny’s an optimist. He’s also a realist. He knows neither of them seem to want to name it anything. Not that Johnny can. And it’s not like there is much to name, anyway. A few good handjobs at a few bad parties. Some kissing. A blowie here and there. Last time they saw each other was Jaemin’s birthday rave two and a half weeks ago, and Jaehyun had been drunk and warm and hard against Johnny, pressing him into the bathroom sinks as Johnny sucked hickeys onto his jaw and wriggled a hand down his jeans, and Jaehyun panted Johnny’s name like a litany, over and over, and fucked his fist until he came between Johnny’s fingers, until his eyes shone from under his damp lashes, dark with a question Johnny didn’t believe he’d ever ask aloud.

And after that, radio silence.

The funniest thing is, Johnny didn’t even know Jaehyun was gay until that one night at a mutual friend’s house, when they’d somehow ended up in one empty bathroom, and Jaehyun had turned, said look John, I hate your guts, but I’m high and horny and frankly this lightning doesn’t make you look as disgusting as the one in the living room does, and proceeded to get on his knees to give Johnny one of the best heads of his life. Johnny had still been reeling from coming his brains out into Jaehyun’s fucking mouth when Jaehyun stood up, wiped his lips, washed his hands, said you can’t tell anyone, and staggered out with an obvious hard-on.

That had been months ago. Two, to be precise.

Nothing much has changed. As much as Johnny might want it to.

But even now, in reality, in the nighttime present, Jaehyun is as unexpected as always. Mercurial. Warm, sweet when he wants to be. He has a few strange habits he seems to have perfected — standing exactly at an adult man’s arm’s length, recognizing someone’s level of inebriation from the sound of their footsteps, switching from angry to perfectly, wonderfully accommodating at the snap of a finger.

He’s there to meet Johnny’s mouth with his own when Johnny leans down, hot and wet and ready. They connect with a soft click, like a lock snapping shut; Jaehyun seals his lips to Johnny’s, slipping his tongue in, angling his head back, somewhat impatient and familiar and real. Sometimes it feels like the only time he’s honest is when he’s sure you’ll think he’s lying. His fingers dig into Johnny’s thigh. Johnny kisses him harder. Jaehyun moans.

And — look, Johnny isn’t stupid.

He could be. Of course, he could pretend to be dumb. This — whatever it is — would still be fun. Still be something Johnny wanted. But he knows Jaehyun’s type. Or, rather, he can presume to identify his type through the very few bits of information Jaehyun has let slip, mainly unintentionally, mainly when he’s drunk or lying on top of Johnny in one of their friend’s guest-room beds, tracing patterns on Johnny’s stomach until the post-coital high wears off. It’s not that hard to see through him, like this. It jumps straight at you. Like a stop sign. Like a red flag.

Jaehyun is: The ‘Father Problems’ type. The Troubled Rich Kid type. The If I Can’t Be The Best, I’ll Be The Worst, And Fuck Anyone Who Tries To Help Me type. Perhaps Jaehyun is trying to prove something to his family, shake off the good-son persona. The signs are all there if you look closely enough — which Johnny has been doing lately, for fuck knows why. Maybe it’s because Johnny likes picking at scabs. His coach always yells at him for that. He can never leave an injury alone.

But anyway — the signs are there, and they’re clear. The parties. The drugs. The smoking. The stilted impertinence, like it costs Jaehyun something in the spine to not be intrinsically polite. The endless drinking he doesn’t even seem to enjoy. Every time Johnny watches him bring a glass to his lips, he’s reminded of that one movie scene where a guy cuts off his own forearm to free himself from a dislodged boulder in a canyon.

Johnny isn’t stupid.

It could, of course, definitely be that Johnny is one of those stop-signs, too. A red flag of his own. Perhaps Jaehyun is using him to prove something — not only to his father, but to himself. Prove what? That he can go against his undoubtedly rich-sicko dad and not die? That he can fuck and get fucked and be wanted and never let himself be had? That pain can be a good thing if he just wills it so? Is he trying to prove a good thing or a bad thing? More importantly — has he been raised to know the difference?

Who the fuck knows. Johnny isn’t masochistic enough to ask, which is an answer in itself.

In the end, Johnny doesn’t care much. No; better said, he does care, who wouldn’t, but the benefits of Jaehyun’s company outweigh its ulterior motives. And Johnny has always been of the belief that a potentially painful thing done willingly cannot be used as a justification for punishment. If he takes his shoes off in a room littered with broken glass, it’s on him if he’ll need stitches later on. They’re adults; if they want it to hurt, then so be it. Submission in itself is a kind of power. The power of choice.

And so, it seems that Jaehyun has chosen for it to hurt. Almost like he thinks that if it hurts bad enough, he’ll finally be found, helped. Wanted.

It’s a common misconception. Johnny’s been there, too. He’s been there long enough to know that it’s never the case, as unfair as it seems. You will spend days, months, years steering your life into a nosedive, picking it apart for the sole purpose of having people trip over the pieces and finally notice — but it turns out you’ll still wake up as yourself every morning, with the addition of being hungover, and broke, and royally fucking alone. You think doing things you don’t want to do will turn you into a different person, but it won’t. It will always be you. You with a split lip. You with a DUI. You with a drinking problem.

Just you.

After a minute, Johnny breaks away to breathe. His lips are on fucking fire. Next to him, Jaehyun is panting, heart thudding where his chest is pressed into Johnny’s shoulder, hand a hot weight on Johnny’s hip, almost possessive, right at the inseam of his shorts, dangerously close to the beginning of a very, very bad idea.

Johnny licks his lips. “Yuck. You taste like burnt weed.”

“Better than tasting like vanilla lipgloss.”

Johnny wipes at his mouth, shamed; he can’t help his laugh. “Aw, fuck. That’ll be Sarah.”

Suddenly, Jaehyun’s no longer leaning on him.

His voice is cool, unreadable when he says, “right. I forgot you’re a manwhore.” He spits that word out, meanly, like he intends it to hurt. He should know better.

“Aw, baby. I thought you liked it.” Johnny leans down again, hand coming to rest on Jaehyun’s denim-clad hip, thumb pressing into the bone. He kisses up the long, pale column of his neck, skin so white in the starlight it almost shines. Jaehyun lets him do that, squirming under the tenderness even though Johnny tries hard not to let it slip. He smells like nighttime, something familiar, elusive.

What the fuck is it about him that Johnny can’t seem to get enough of?

“I,” Jaehyun swallows with a click. Johnny feels it against his lips, where the sensitive knot of his Adam’s apple bobs up and down. Maybe it’s this. The way his body betrays him, over and over, every time Johnny touches him. “Shut up. I don’t like anything about you.”

“Really.” God, he’s so fucking — Johnny lets his hand wander, tracing the zipper, until his palm presses into the undeniable bulge of Jaehyun’s erection. Johnny almost forgot how easy he is to rile up. How responsive he is. “I would never tell.”

Jaehyun’s fingers snap around his wrist like a vice. “Fuck y— ah, fuck, ” he gasps, when Johnny rubs him over the jeans, simultaneously sucking on the tender skin under his jaw. “Johnny—“

“You seem to like this a lot,” Johnny murmurs as Jaehyun cants his hips against his palm. He’s straining against the denim already, clearly holding back whines. Well, Johnny knows what he sounds like anyway. He’s heard him moan about enough times to have the sound ingrained into his memory. It’s not something easily forgotten, either. Jaehyun’s voice is as perfect as his teeth. It’s super fucking annoying.

It’s stupid, maybe, but Johnny wants to hear his ugly laugh. His cranky morning voice. See him let his guard down, for once. But how can you ask that of someone who’s clearly made of it?

“Fuck you,” Jaehyun breathes, like a plea, nails digging into Johnny’s wrists. He tilts his face up in an obvious invitation for a kiss, but Johnny ignores his pliant, wet mouth, going for his sensitive ear instead. Jaehyun shudders when Johnny licks the shell of it, kisses the curve. “You — you like this more than me.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” He does. Johnny gives his cock a tight, rough squeeze. Jaehyun moans in a broken gasp, then immediately tries to cover it up with a series of profanities.

After a moment Johnny lets Jaehyun go, leaning out of his space. He himself is half-hard. It’s not going to be noticeable in the night, probably. The benefits of making out in the dark is that no one can tell how desperately you want someone.

They’re silent for a bit, afterwards. Jaehyun has leaned against him, uncharacteristically forgiving and weed-scented. He’s evidently trying to catch his breath, fingers still latched onto the strings of Johnny’s shorts, like he’s afraid Johnny will bolt as soon as he lets go. He really is so strange. Where the fuck will Johnny go? Johnny came to this party to see him.

Not something Jaehyun should know, though. Still Johnny lets his eyes wander. In the half-dark, he examines Jaehyun’s profile. The gentle slope of his nose, the curve is his dark lashes, shadows thrown down his perfect cheeks. Lips, a little swollen, slightly asymmetrical. The stumped, thin line of his blunt, like a stick of packaged sugar, between his long fingers.

How much more do you need it to hurt to believe I want you, Johnny thinks. How much more can I lie to your face for you to believe me?

He doesn’t, of course, ask any of those things aloud. Just stares at the way shadows dance over Jaehyun’s mouth.

“You think you know me,” Jaehyun says after a while. Johnny watches him bring the blunt he’s somehow kept alive to his lips. His hand is shaking, barely noticeably. “You think just cause we fucked once or twice, just cause you get me hard and I let you fuck my mouth, this is real. But it’s not. And you don’t.”

“We haven’t fucked, technically. And you’re pretty easy to read.”

Jaehyun shoots him a tired glare. He pinches Johnny’s thigh with his free hand, then rubs the mark. “You know why I hate people like you? You’re stupid, Johnny. You’re a stupid, happy idiot. I think you don’t hear that often enough.”

“Eh. I think I do.”

“No you don’t. From who? Everyone adores you.” Jaehyun doesn’t sound envious — he sounds like he’s angry at Johnny for denying an objective fact. “Everyone loves you. You’re just so nice. You’re so easy, such a gentleman, such—“ Jaehyun takes in a breath. “You’re trying so hard. Honestly? It’s fucking pathetic to watch.”

Johnny almost laughs. “Everyone loves me? You think too much of me, babe. People barely know I exist.”

Jaehyun snorts like he thinks Johnny’s joking. Another contradiction. Johnny should really stop trying to read him. He'll get it wrong anyway. “Sure, darling of the rugby team, star of the season. How many cheerleaders have you slept with this week? Ten thousand and counting?”

“None.” Six.

“Six, from what I’ve heard.”

“What you’ve heard?” Johnny sighs, leaning back on his elbows. “What kind of digging have you been doing, Jaehyun?”

Up above, the sky is one dark sheet of velvet, stars like the studded Swarovski diamonds on Jaehyun’s watch.

Johnny thinks it’s so strange how Jaehyun equates being adored to being sexually desired. Maybe to him, it’s the same thing. What the fuck is Johnny supposed to do with him?

“None. Your hookups talk a lot.”

“Damn, they really do have big mouths, don’t they.”

“If you give me an STD,” Jaehyun says, flicking ash in Johnny’s direction, “I will chop your fucking dick off.”

Johnny shakes the singed weed off his arm. “Hey, no. I’m always careful.”

“Yeah?” Jaehyun turns to face him. “You’re careful with the other dozen guys who suck your dick in the changing room? Aw, thanks for that, bro.”

“What other guys?”

Jaehyun’s smile is ugly with disbelief. “You actually think I’m stupid.” Johnny watches him take another pull from the joint. “You’re a walking fuckboy blueprint.”

“Oh, so that’s why you picked me. Got it.” Without Johnny meaning for it to, his voice tilts into a challenge. He knows Jaehyun is just trying to get a rise out of him, get into the familiar zone of having people despise him, since he understands anger better than he understands kindness. But there’s only so much Johnny can take. “Nothing serious, no strings, right? Nothing real. An easy fuck with no meaning.”

Jaehyun stares at him, eyes flickering over Johnny’s face. His pupils are blown huge. His hand, where it’s been steadily climbing across Johnny’s chest, stills.

”I don’t think you’re stupid, Jaehyun,” Johnny says. He knows he’s blurring the lines of their game by speaking so bluntly, but there’s something about the inevitability of tonight, the cold shoulder Jaehyun’s been giving him, the empty feeling that’s been growing in Johnny’s chest for months, that has him throwing caution to the wind. “And I don’t think you hate me. You know what I think?”

He leans down, until his mouth is brushing the shell of Jaehyun’s ear, and whispers, “I think you hate being alone, but the idea of having anyone know the real you has you scared shitless.”

Silence all around them. The cicadas must have died. Only the pool splashes softly against the mosaic borders.

Johnny lets his breath ghost over Jaehyun’s jaw. “Stop being a coward, Jaehyun. What do you really want from this? Just tell me. Tell me and I’ll give it to you.” I’ll give you everything. Whatever you’re missing. Whatever you’re denying to ask. 

He stops inches away from his mouth. Jaehyun’s eyes are two dark things, staring at him.

“I won’t run away from you,” Johnny breathes. “I promise.”

The sudden weight of his words hangs between them.

A beat passes. Two.

Fuck. Why the fuck did Johnny just say that? He should’ve just kept his mouth shut.

Jaehyun slides his hand up Johnny’s chest, over his collarbone, to wrap his cold fingers around Johnny’s neck. His thumb brushed Johnny’s pulse.

“Johnny,” Jaehyun whispers. His voice is mockingly soft, splashing against the quiet like the water in the pool, locked by the hazy mosaic dark. “What on earth made you think that you have anything I want?”  

Before Johnny can process the ache that resonates at hearing him say that, Jaehyun he replaces the dark sky above — stars and moon and everything — and leans over him, presses his smoke-hot mouth to Johnny’s jaw, fingers curling in Johnny’s t-shirt to pull him closer, closer. Like he can’t get enough.

They kiss for a while, until Jaehyun starts making aborted, seemingly unconscious thrusts against Johnny’s thigh, moaning into his mouth. He feels wound up, coiled like a spring. Maybe he’d missed this, just like Johnny had. Or maybe he’s just high and lonely. You can never tell with people who don’t want you to know.

The downsides to making out in the dark.

Jaehyun makes a frustrated noise when Johnny leans away. His fingers pull at the t-shirt until Johnny carefully pulls at his wrists so he lets go.

“What?”

“Not here.”

Jaehyun laughs in profound disbelief. “Really?”

“Jae, we’re literally in Chenle’s backyard. The living room windows are panoramic.”

“That’s where you draw the line?” Jaehyun’s voice is vitriolic. “I heard you fucked a girl in a supply closet. And another on the football field. Don’t pretend to be modest now, John, it looks so ugly on you.”

Johnny studies him in the shadows. “Where’s all this coming from?”

“Whatever.” Jaehyun moves away, shakes Johnny’s hand off when Johnny tries to draw him back in.

“What’s up with you tonight?”

Jaehyun scoffs. “As if you care.”

“You think I don’t?”

“You know what, I really don’t need this bullshit from you.” Jaehyun sits up, fully out of Johnny’s reach now. With an aborted suck, he tries to draw smoke from his blunt, but it’s barely even a stump now; Jaehyun’s jaw ticks in evident frustration, yet all he does is put it out on the denim of his jeans and throw it over the sunbed, into the prickly grass. “Who cares what I think, as long as you get your dick wet, right?”

“Jae.”

“Whatever. This is getting boring. I’m gonna swim.”

In Jaehyun’s vocabulary, boring is the worst insult. Boring to him is being asked too many questions, prodded too deeply, made to speak on anything that could potentially require honesty and render deflection useless. He will push until he discovers the other party capable of the same attitude, and will then say boring! with a triumphant little smile. Like he’s waiting for people to hurt him, so that, when they inevitably do, he can shove it in their faces, the see, I knew it. I was right. You were the same as everyone else.

Johnny always wonders what comes after that. Just pain, probably, at being hurt.

He sits up. “I want to finish this conversation.”

Jaehyun snorts. “Yeah, I don’t give a fuck.” He’s already wrestling out of his t-shirt, letting it drop onto the sunbed. The lean, flat planes of his chest and abs are part of the shadows.

“Jaehyun. The water’s cold. Don’t be stupid.”

Jaehyun doesn’t respond. He unbuckles his belt, pulling it out of the loops, then drags the zipper of his jeans down and kicks them off his long legs. In the pale light coming from the house, Johnny can see he’s still half-hard, tenting the dark fabric of his boxers.

“Jae.”

“You’re too pussy to swim in a cold pool? Aw, Johnny. What a baby.”

Johnny finds himself stifling a disbelieving laugh. “Okay, someone’s really up your ass tonight.”

“Yeah, and fortunately it’s not you.” With that, Jaehyun slips off the sunbed and into the pool with a soft, shattered splash. The night bubbles, then goes still again. Quiet.

“My fucking god,” Johnny says, to no one in particular.

The stars above wink down at him in understanding.

With no other choice, Johnny slips out of his own t-shirt, shorts, and follows Jaehyun in.

The water is an immediate, ice-cold shock. He hasn’t swam in forever; last time was in the midst of an abnormally warm September, at one of Haechan’s pool parties, but Johnny had drunk so much strawberry champagne back then that the memories have gone all hazy. Swimming isn’t his favorite — he prefers to feel the solid face of ground under his feet rather than float without a sense of gravity — but it’s not as bad as he thought it’d be, especially this early in June.

Finally Johnny breaks the surface, pushing off the slippery mosaic floor and dragging air into his lungs. All he can smell and taste is chlorine. Even his eyes sting. The pool cleaners seem to have a heavy hand.

Jaehyun’s waiting got him by the shallow edge, leaning against the tiles with his elbow.

“You look like a drowned racoon,” he comments when Johnny floats within earshot. His voice is back to its usual, ironic, unreadable intones. Whatever had prompted the outburst of unexpected honesty is hidden back behind his perfect gums. “An otter. I wish I could take a picture of it. Pass it down to generations.”

“Look who’s talking,” Johnny says, after a moment. He’s bluffing, of course. Jaehyun, unfortunately, looks hot as fuck. As he always does. Johnny excuses too much of his shitty personality for those dimples.

Jaehyun rolls his eyes and splashes at him, weakly. That’s his first mistake. Johnny sends him a merciless wave in return, which produces a fight that lasts up until Jaehyun gets close enough to play dirty and kick Johnny in the shin and send him tumbling underwater. Johnny laughs all his air out, bubbles breaking the surface a moment before he does. He feels high with a strange euphoria. Happy in a way he can’t remember being.

They float on the surface after, like two pieces of plastic, gazing at the stars. Well, Jaehyun is. Johnny can’t help but steal glances of his elegant profile, somewhat relaxed, eyes half-lidded and mouth a plump downwards curve. He looks younger like this. Vulnerable. Maybe it’s the dark, bringing out the softness. Jaehyun usually hides it so well.

“I,” Jaehyun says, suddenly. His voice is barely audible. There are crickets in the grass around the pool, chirping in tune with the splashing water.

“Hm?”

“I’ll miss this,” Jaehyun says, almost through his teeth. His eyes stay locked on the sky above, two dark things peering at each other.

“What d’you mean? We’ve still got a year until graduation.”

“I’m leaving.”

“What?” Johnny must’ve misheard. He tilts upright, letting his feet stand on the slippery mosaic floor, so that the water isn’t obstructing his hearing. “You're leaving?”

“Yes.”

“What — why?”

“Because,” Jaehyun says, voice devoid of anything, a single emotion. It’s almost pleasant. “My father said so.”

Johnny still can’t believe his ears. Something is tugging at his insides, like a colt metal hook. “Where the fuck are you going?”

“Back to New York.”

“But — we’ve still got a year,” Johnny repeats, like an idiot. “What about your diploma? Your exams?” What about us? “They can’t just cut your studies off like that.”

“They enrolled me into a different college.”

“Why on earth—?”

“Because they hate me.” Without any further explanations, Jaehyun flips sideways, sinks underwater like a stone.

Johnny reels while Jaehyun glides to the shallow end, a graceful shadow below the surface. When he finally breaks through the rippling water, Johnny says, in the calmest voice he can, “Jaehyun, the fuck. Did you do something?”

Besides the drugs, the parties, and fucking around with guys your parents will definitely not approve of?

Jaehyun leans against the edge of the pool tiles and laughs, once. There’s no humor behind it. “No. Yes. It doesn’t matter, it’s not enough. They just like making my life a living hell. It’s their favorite hobby, the thing they live for.”

“You said your dad didn’t… uh, mind you being here.”

“I did?”

“At Jaemin’s.” They’d been standing in the empty kitchen, Johnny nursing a beer and Jaehyun laughing over a glass of awfully clear liquid that smelled like straight up rubbing alcohol, saying, you think he cares? I could walk out of the window and he’d be glad for the publicity.

“Well, I lied,” Jaehyun says, flatly. “He hates it when I’m having a good time. As soon as he finds out I’m enjoying life he sends me off somewhere else. It’s like a game, you get it? He likes showing me my place.” His fist is white-knuckled on the tiles, the only indication of his true frustration. “Likes shoving my face into it. So that I don’t forget.”

Fuck, Johnny is too drunk for this conversation. “He sounds like a fun guy.”

Jaehyun doesn’t even smile, this time. “Oh, you have no idea.”

“So you’re going back?”

“No,” Jaehyun says.

“No?”

“I’m running away.”

That startles a laugh out of Johnny. “Really?”

“Yes.” Jaehyun doesn’t sound like he’s joking. If anything, he’s tethering on desperate. The calm, composed mask he pulls on everyday leaves nothing but his eyes on show, but they are enough, now, burning like two pinpricks of starlight in the shadows. “I’ll run. I don’t need his fucking money. He can choke on it. I’ll run to fucking… to Montana. No, Wyoming.”

“You sound insane, you do realize that?”

“But why the fuck not?” A muscle in Jaehyun’s jaw ticks when he smiles. “Everything good is always somewhere else. I’ll get to see mountains. Lakes. Wapiti. Far-away shit I’ve never seen. Do you know I’ve never gone camping, not once? He never let me go anywhere. You don’t know what life with him is like. You can’t imagine what kind of shit he says to me.”

Johnny tries not to sound too concerned; he knows it’ll scare Jaehyun away. “What the fuck are wapiti?”

“Old World deer. American Elk. It doesn’t matter.” Jaehyun pushes his wet hair back, then draws in a long, shuddering breath. “I’m not going back. Nobody is going to force me to do something I don’t want to do.” He says it quietly, under his breath, as though to himself. The grim determination is like a live wire in his voice. “Never the fuck again.”

After that he turns away and pulls himself up and climbs out, splashing water along the stone tiles. In the hazy dark he is a mere outline, a sliver of a man no one knows anything about. Sometimes Johnny wishes he could take him by the shoulders and shake all his secrets out of him. Strip him down to his skeleton, open up his skull, and see what the fuck is going on inside there. Some people are enigmatic; Jaehyun is more than that. He is inexplicable. All these stupid deductions Johnny has had fun drawing over the past few months are just illusions, a game. In reality Jaehyun is too good at what he does to ever be deduced. Maybe that’s part of why Johnny feels so drawn to him; he wants to solve him, press the right buttons. It’s a strange desire, to want to know someone.

Jaehyun shakes his hair out as Johnny, too, pushes himself out of the pool.

“Fuck, I swam in my Rolex.” Jaehyun scowls at his wrist, where his silver watch gleams in glitters in the dark, then bends down to pick up the shirt he’d unceremoniously thrown onto the lawn. He starts wiping his chest with it, already shivering.

Johnny looks around the empty courtyard, repressing a shiver of his own. His boxers are dripping cold rivulets of water down his thighs. They need to get dry. There should be a cabinet with towels somewhere by the house. “Wait here.”

Sure enough, by the far wall, under the palm trees, Johnny finds a teak cabinet. He brings the fluffy white towels over and hands one to Jaehyun, who immediately wraps it around himself.

Johnny rubs his back, feeling some warmth come back to him. A light breeze picks up around them, whispers through the papery palm tree leaves. Briefly, Johnny wonders what time it is. Maybe two am. The sky is too dark for it to be any later.

“I want to leave,” Jaehyun says. His lips are still tinged blue. He probably wouldn’t appreciate it if Johnny came up to him and started rubbing him to warm him up, so Johnny pushes that idea away.

“Leave? Sure. I’ll take you home.” Johnny pulls his shirt and shorts off the sunbed, checks the back pockets for his phone and wallet. “Come on.”

“You— no. No, it’s fine, I’ll just — call a cab.” Jaehyun is still standing on the tiles by the pool, a small puddle of water spreading under his feet.

“Don’t be an idiot.” Johnny picks Jaehyun’s jeans up, too, flings them over his arm. He doesn’t think either of them want to start pulling clothes onto their damp bodies. “Hey, d'you reckon Chenle’ll miss these towels?”

“… no.” Jaehyun hesitates for a second more, then follows Johnny as he walks across the prickly lawn, towards the cobblestone driveway. His footsteps in the grass are soundless. “You drove here?”

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t you drunk?”

“I’ve sobered up now, thanks to our little swim.” Johnny flashes him a smirk. “Relax. I won’t crash us.”

Jaehyun scoffs, but doesn’t say anything else.

Through the wrought-iron gate of the property, they walk out onto the sidewalk. The road is silent, empty. Oleander bushes glint green and pink in the streetlights. The asphalt under Johnny’s bare feet is hard and warm, but he’s not bothered to get his shoes from the house. He’ll ask Chenle to pass them over with someone tomorrow.

“Cold?” Johnny asks, turning to look at Jaehyun walking beside him. In the golden streetlamp light, he looks like something Johnny’s seen somewhere. In a movie, maybe. At least his lips aren’t blue anymore.

“No.”

They get to Johnny’s car in another minute. Johnny digs the keys out of the pocket of his shorts, unlocks the vehicle. He’s about to pull the passenger door open for Jaehyun when Jaehyun steps up behind him and says, quietly and with intent, “hey.”

Johnny turns around.

In an instant, Jaehyun’s arms are wrapped around his neck, and he’s being pushed against the sleek metal side of his Porsche, still warm from having stood in the sun all evening. Jaehyun kisses him, a fast, sudden, hungry slide of mouth on mouth, almost angry. It makes Johnny’s teeth ache with want.

He wraps a hand around Jaehyun’s naked waist and pulls him closer, dizzy with the proximity, the perfect, lean hardness of Jaehyun’s body pressing into his. He’d missed this. He’ll miss it. The thought clamps around his chest like a vice, taking his air. I’ll miss him.

“Fuck me in the backseat,” Jaehyun breathes into his mouth, fingers digging into Johnny’s shoulders. “Right now.”

“Jesus,” Johnny manages, and then a second later Jaehyun’s hands are in his hair, pulling him down into a deep, mind-numbing, open-mouthed kiss. How can you say no to that? Johnny won’t. He can give Jaehyun a break, a good time with no bullshit. What else could Jaehyun want him for? What else can Johnny give to someone who doesn’t know how to ask for anything else?

Johnny fumbles with the car door behind himself, pulls it open. Jaehyun climbs backwards into the seats, leather squeaking under his damp skin. The towel is a tangled mess under him. He spreads his legs when Johnny gets in, watches him slam the door shut, throw the clothes onto the passenger seat — some of it slips onto the floor, his aim’s all out of whack — and settle between his thighs, hands on either side of his narrow hips.

“Johnny,” Jaehyun sighs when Johnny starts kissing up his stomach, his lean muscle quivering under Johnny’s lips. He’s cold and damp and he tastes like chlorine. Johnny licks into his navel, then sucks on the soft skin, and Jaehyun’s breath turns into a giggle as his fingers wind up in Johnny’s hair, pulling lightly.

“Hey, that’s —!” His knees clamp around Johnny’s waist when Johnny drags a wet stripe along his left nipple, then sucks it into his mouth. Jaehyun’s hands slide down to his shoulders, fingers digging into the muscle. When Johnny bites him, he arches up into Johnny’s mouth, gasping. “Please—“

“Please what,” Johnny says, kissing up his sternum. Jaehyun is clean-shaven. Everywhere. Johnny’s almost forgotten that. He sucks the skin pink, then licks the marks, and Jaehyun stifles a gratifying whine.

“You said you’d fuck me.”

“No, you said I’d fuck you.” Johnny trails a hand up his side, lightly, drawing goosebumps.

“Don’t be a jerk now,” Jaehyun breathes, hips lifting off the seat and moving along whatever part of Johnny he can reach — his thigh, his hip — in unconscious, rolling thrusts. Johnny can feel his cock, hot and already so hard, against his skin. It’s maddening.

“I don’t have condoms.”

“I do.” Jaehyun loops his hands off Johnny’s shoulders, then leans down to reach the floor. He pulls his jeans up, draws a golden foil packet out of the back pocket.

Johnny can’t help but raise an eyebrow. “Who’s that for?”

“What?” Jaehyun tosses the jeans to the floor, settles back down on the seats. “Jealous?”

Johnny snags the packet out of his fingers. “You want me to be?” He leans over, sucks at the hickey that’s already beginning to form on the perfect skin of Jaehyun’s neck, presses Jaehyun into the seats with a hand on his waist.

“You wish.” Jaehyun’s voice is starting to sound like a continuous whimper. “Come on .”

“Why’re you in such a hurry?”

“I haven’t been fucked in forever, alright? Just hurry up.”

“You like taking cock that much?” Johnny sits up, placing both hands on Jaehyun’s thighs. Spread out like that, under him, in the half-dark, Jaehyun is a fucking wet dream, something out of a fantasy. “Should’ve told me sooner.”

“You’re so disgusting.” Jaehyun’s face is pink. “If you’re not gonna fuck me, t— ah!” He arches right into Johnny’s hand when Johnny gropes him over the damp fabric of his boxers, where he’s already so blood-hot and hard it must be painful.

After a bit of friendly fondling that has Jaehyun begging, Johnny decides to be merciful. He moves Jaehyun's legs to the side and pulls his boxers off, leaving him completely naked on the red leather of his Porche’s backseat. Jaehyun’s cock springs up, flushed and slick against the pale skin of his stomach.

“Pretty,” Johnny comments, pushing Jaehyun’s thighs back down, apart, holding him open. He keeps his touch light as he runs his fingers up Jaehyun’s length. It really is too fun, fucking with him.

“Just shut up,” Jaehyun whines, his own hand coming to grip his cock. Johnny pushes it away.

“No touching.”

“Fuck you.” Jaehyun fists his hands, but doesn’t fight him. His stomach is taut, muscle jumping with every stroke of Johnny’s fingers, chest rising and falling with his quickened breaths. “Genuinely.”

“I will if you stop squirming.” Johnny gives his cock a few tight pumps, twisting when he gets to the base, and Jaehyun covers his face with his hands, his entire body shuddering.

After a minute of that — after Jaehyun’s thighs start shaking and he bites his forearm to keep quiet — Johnny reaches over towards the console of the car, pops it open, pulls out a small bottle of unscented lube.

Under him, Jaehyun scoffs. “Seriously? Lube but no condoms? You’re such a pervert.”

“Says the guy with a condom galore in his back pocket.” Johnny leans back over him, squeezing lube onto his fingers and rubbing it around to warm it up.

“Are you complaining?”

“Nope.” Johnny gives him a slick pump, then another, slower, rubbing the sensitive underside until it’s pulsing. Jaehyun throws an arm over his face, bucking into Johnny’s fist like his life depends on it, like he can’t hold back. He keeps making these cut off moans, his usually blank expression giving way to carefully controlled pleasure.

After another stifled groan, he says, “harder.”

“You can be loud, no one’s here.” At least, Johnny hopes so. His windows are tinted anyway.

“No,” Jaehyun gets out, then immediately gasps out a broken groan when Johnny rubs at his slit, pushing the foreskin down with his thumb. His knees clamp around Johnny’s arm — or, try to. Johnny keeps one on the seat, holding him open with his own knee. He gives him another slow, tight stroke, and Jaehyun cries out, thrashing under him. God, he’s so fucking sensitive.

“No, wait, Johnny— I’m gonna, I’m,” Jaehyun gasps, and Johnny regretfully takes his hands off his cock.

“Not yet.” He settles a hand on his waist, keeping Jaehyun still. In the quiet of the car every one of his labored breath sounds like a held-back moan.

Slowly, Johnny trails his fingers down the inside of his thigh, reaching between his legs, spreading lube over his rim.

“You like it on your back?”

“I don’t care.” Jaehyun’s throat bobs as he swallows. He squirms in evident anticipation.

Johnny doesn’t hesitate to press the first finger in, pushing in to the first knuckle. It’s not a far stretch, not even close, but Jaehyun still gasps, head falling back on the seats.

“Oh fuck, oh, that’s it,” he groans, finally rendered unable to control his voice. Hungry for it, Johnny rocks the finger in to the second knuckle, and Jaehyun moans and clenches around him. His eyes are closed shut. Part of Johnny — a stupid part — wants him to look back.

After that Johnny fingers him open, pumps in as steadily and carefully as he can, trying to be thorough more than he’s trying to be skilled. At first Jaehyun just lies there with his lip bitten, pliant and quivering, then starts rolling his hips down, trying to meet Johnny at every thrusts of his fingers. Pretty soon his mouth hangs wet, open, and he’s breathing hard, chest flushed, hands fisted by his sides. He looks lost. Taken apart, and Johnny hasn’t even fucked him yet, hasn’t even done anything remotely deserving that kind of half-lidded look.

“Yeah, oh,” he moans when Johnny adds a third finger, then whimpers when he unceremoniously drives it in to the last knuckle, palm pressing into his balls. “Uh, Johnny—!”

“Sorry,” Johnny mutters, rubbing soothing circles on Jaehyun’s spasming waist, keeping his fingers still to let him adjust. Jaehyun doesn’t seem to hear him. His head is thrown back and his eyes are closed, eyebrows pulled up in pleasure, hair a dark halo on the leather.

He is so fucking pretty.

Johnny stretches his fingers apart, going slow, then quickens the pace, until Jaehyun finally starts to loosen up, hot and soft and malleable. His hands come up to hold onto Johnny’s shoulders as he blinks up at him, his beautiful mouth curved into a half-pout, half-smile.

Johnny swallows back a few stupid words and pulls his fingers out. He can’t wait anymore. “Fuck, come on, turn around.”

Jaehyun blinks his glassy eyes. “Huh?”

Johnny squeezes his hip, once. “On your knees.”

Surprisingly, Jaehyun doesn’t throw a fuss. He doesn’t even give Johnny one of those dirty looks he likes to pull out when Johnny bosses him around. He just lifts himself up on his shaky elbows and flips over, onto his stomach, gathering his knees under him, ass up. His skin is red where Johnny held him down.

“Like that?” He asks, voice muffled by the leather. “This okay?”

“Yeah.” Oh, fuck. Johnny swallows. He didn't realize what exactly such a view would do to him. Jaehyun like this is — fuck. “Okay. Great.”

Compelled, he runs his hands up the long lean muscle of Jaehyun’s back. Jaehyun immediately arches under him, like a petted cat, letting out a breathy sigh.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” Johnny mutters, tracing Jaehyun’s shoulder blades.

“What?” Jaehyun lets out something like a scoffing laugh, looks back over his shoulder with an odd expression. “Relax. You don’t have to talk me into it.”

“I mean it.” Johnny runs his fingers down Jaehyun’s sweat-slick spine, presses his thumbs into the dimples on his lower back. On impulse — he’ll blame it on the weed, the alcohol if Jaehyun asks — Johnny leans down and kisses the last vertebrae at the bottom of his neck, then moves his lips down his shoulder, raising goosebumps. “You’re beautiful. I’m always fucking thinking that.” Johnny moves his lips next to Jaehyun’s ear. “Every fucking time,” he breathes, sliding his hand down the smooth planes of Jaehyun’s stomach, “I see you, I’m thinking that.”

Jaehyun keeps still, breath so quiet it’s like he’s holding it. He doesn’t make another comment, doesn’t offer any answer. Johnny sits back up. He suddenly feels stupid, unnecessarily honest. Maybe that was — too much for what they are. For what they’re not.

Trying to shake off the feeling, Johnny starts pulling his own shorts off his hips. The waistband catches on his erection — he didn’t even realize he was this hard, fuck.

“Gonna fuck you now,” Johnny says, placing a hand on Jaehyun’s thigh.

“Okay.” Jaehyun’s voice sounds odd. Unexpectedly soft, like he’s trying to hold something back.

“Changed your mind?”

“No.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Jaehyun throws him a glare over the broad, pale curve of his shoulder. “When the fuck did I ask for that?”

Johnny lets out a chuckle — that’s more like the perpetually irritated Jaehyun he knows. He tears the condom packet open with his teeth and rolls it on, trying to be as fast as he can.

So that’s what Jaehyun’s into? Johnny should’ve guessed. People like him will look for violence to hide behind anywhere they can find it.

Maybe Johnny’s a shitty, fucked up person. But he can’t deny that it’s doing it for him, too. Jaehyun, pliant and responsive. Jaehyun, begging to be made vulnerable so that even here, even now, that submission is under his control. Jaehyun, trusting Johnny enough to let him in on the game.

“Fuck.” Johnny gives himself a few strokes to take some of the pressure off, breath caught in his throat.

“Hey,” Jaehyun says, turning his head to look back at him. “Really? Stop touching yourself and fucking fuck me already.”

Johnny lets go of himself. “Kay.”

Without any further preamble, he spreads Jaehyun’s perfect cheeks apart as he lines himself up, digging his fingers hard enough of the muscle to leave marks. Jaehyun lies pliant under him as he pushes in, making no noise. He’s still so fucking tight and slick with lube it has Johnny dizzy for a moment.

“Oh god. You good?” Johnny rocks in a little deeper, trembling with the strain. It feels so fucking perfect already he’s losing his breath. He’s had fantasies about this, not this exact setting but not too different either, although he’d rather eat glass than admit to it aloud. Jaehyun would mock him for that until the day he died. “Baby, fuck, talk to me.”

“It’s,” Jaehyun says, hands white-knuckled by his shoulders, “it’s great, keep going.” He sounds like he’s being choked.

“Too much?” Johnny steels himself and begins to pull out, keeping his hands on Jaehyun’s hips.

In an instant, Jaehyun twists and grabs his wrist.

“No.” His cheeks are flushed, hair a mess, perfect mouth bitten blood-red. His fingers squeeze, hard. “I can take it. Just make me take it. Okay?”

“Fuck, alright,” Johnny says, rather intelligently. Jaehyun drops his hand when he begins to rock in, resting on his elbows, back a swooping arch, head hanging low. Johnny reaches under him and cups his cock to distract him from the familiar discomfort of being stretched, trying to match his strokes to the movement of his hips. Right on cue, Jaehyun moans, brokenly, hips pushing down and then up, like he doesn’t know where to go, can’t decide whether he wants to be held or fucked.

Luckily, Johnny can do both. He draws back, almost pulling out, then pushes deeper, into Jaehyun’s tight, slick heat, his own heartbeat deafening in his ears. It takes a moment for him to bottom out, an endless slide, and then suddenly his thighs connect with the back of Jaehyun’s hips and he sees stars with his eyes open.

Jaehyun cries out, elbows going out under him.

“Shit, you alright?”

“Stop talking,” Jaehyun grits out, getting back up, “and fuck me.”

God, he’s such a brat. Johnny likes him way too much for his own good.

With a deep breath, Johnny resumes his rhythm, getting Jaehyun used to him. After a minute of Jaehyun’s harsh, breathy gasps he grips his hips up and starts fucking him for real, thrusting in, thighs slapping against the back Jaehyun’s, loud and obscene. His cock in Johnny’s fist is so wet it’s like he’d already come.

“You like that?” Johnny fucks deeper in, grinding on something that makes Jaehyun let out another cry. “Feels good, huh, Jae? That all you wanted?”

Jaehyun moans, head bobbing as he nods. It’s strange to see him so open, so honest. Johnny kind of misses his smart mouth. Jaehyun’s back is slick with sweat, gleaming in the streetlight flooding the car. “Fuck, don’t stop, it’s so good, ah, da—“

He cuts himself off when Johnny braces against the seats and rocks in hard and deep, rolls his hips, then quickens the pace, leaning over him, chest to back. It does something to the angle — Johnny’s cock slides deeper with almost no resistance, and Jaehyun shudders, moans turning into a continuous high-pitched whine.

“Johnny,” he whimpers, bucking backwards, “fuck, I—“ he chokes on a moan when Johnny impulsively slaps the back of his thigh, watching the skin go red, then back to being its perfect, creamy white. “Yes,” he gasps, reaching behind like he wants to get Johnny’s hand back. “Spank me, do it, please, I want you to.”

Johnny feels dizzy. The insides of his skull are slowly turning to mush. Maybe Jaehyun’s trying to kill him. It is the most probable of all conclusions Johnny has about him.

“You’re such a freak, babe,” he gets out over the rushing in his ears. “You know that?”

He suddenly remembers the first time he saw Jaehyun, in his pristine little Dior vest and with that look of contempt sharpening his handsome face into something of an offended royalty. Johnny kind of hated him, then. His fucking aloof silences and raised brows, the way he acted with Johnny’s friends, like he was above it all, above himself. If someone would’ve told Johnny that in a few months he’d have Jaehyun on his knees, writhing under him, stuffed full of Johnny’s cock in the backseat of his Porsche, begging to be spanked, Johnny would’ve laughed his ass off.

“Yeah,” Jaehyun breathes, real and perfect and desperate, “yeah, I do, you have no idea.”

Johnny draws his hand back and gives his thigh another slap. Then again, harder, on the same spot, with an open palm. The sound ricochets through the Porsche, obscene, mingling with Jaehyun’s little gasps.

I want to see you lose it, Johnny thinks, feeling wild with it, with Jaehyun’s need, his want. I want to see you lose control. I want to show you how good it feels to let go. Just let go.

“Look at you.” Johnny gives him another spank. It’s louder than the others, almost wet. His palm buzzes with the impact. Jaehyun jerks and moans, brokenly, dropping his head down. It sounds like he’s holding back tears. “You’re gagging for this. Do other people know this about you? How big—“ Johnny hits him again, harder, “of a fucking slut you are, do they know?”

“No,” Jaehyun groans, open-mouthed on the leather, “just you, Johnny, oh fuck, please.”

Johnny grabs his hips, spreads him open, pushes his cock back into the tight, perfect heat. Jaehyun actually shouts when Johnny bumps his prostate, so Johnny grinds deeper, fucking into him until Jaehyun’s moans become incoherent.

“Close already?” Johnny’s breath is coming out harsh, in rhythm with his thrusts. “Gonna bust that easy? You needed to — get fucked that badly?”

“Shut,” Jaehyun starts, then cuts off when Johnny draws out and slams back in, his back a helpless arch. “Wait, I can’t,” he says, quivering with every roll of Johnny’s hips, “can’t, I’m sorry, Johnny, fuck—“

“Let go,” Johnny says, sliding his hand around, down Jaehyun’s abs, to wrap around his cock. Jaehyun’s dripping wet, swollen and hard between Johnny’s fingers; he gasps when Johnny squeezes, head turned sideways on the seat, mouth parted and bitten red.

“I can’t, I’m gonna—“

“I’ve got you.” Johnny gives him a few tight, slick, quick strokes, pushes him back on his cock as he grinds in, “baby, I’ve got you, come on, come for me,” and just like that, Jaehyun obeys, jerking under him, mouth open on a silent shout. He spills between Johnny’s fingers, hot and slick, hips moving restlessly as he quivers in Johnny’s arms. Johnny fucks his orgasm out of him, holds his hips up when Jaehyun drops onto the cum-stained seats, shuddering, taking it.

“Don’t pull out,” he gasps when Johnny begins to do just that, fearing pushing him into oversensitivity, “please, finish in me.”

“God,” Johnny says through gritted teeth. Jaehyun is going to drive him crazy, ruin him. He’s going to fucking kill him. Johnny braces on the seat and thrusts in, then out, keeping it deep, keeping Jaehyun in place. He knows his pace must be painful, but he can’t stop: he’s so close, so fucking close. “Fuck, gimme a second, baby—“

“Johnny, please,” Jaehyun whimpers, and then he goes tight and silent as Johnny fucks his hole, over and over, jostling Jaehyun’s body on the seat like Jaehyun’s nothing more but a doll. It doesn’t take long — Johnny sheaths himself in as deep as he can go, shuts his eyes, and spills into the condom, groaning when he feels Jaehyun clench around him. He has barely enough brain power left to remember to pull out before he collapses on top of him in a sweaty, wrung-out heap.

Johnny’s ears are ringing. He can’t remember the last time he fucked someone like this, until he was hollowed out, mind emptied of any thought. His thighs ache with the strain. He can fix that in the gym. But what the fuck is he supposed to do about his heart?

“Okay,” he breathes, then pulls himself together and sits up, rolls the condom off, wads it in a ball of tissues he gets from the console. He’ll have to throw it out at home. The downsides of car sex.

When he drops down to the seats, exhausted, Jaehyun turns onto his back and pulls Johnny between his arms, sweat to skin.

It should be disgusting. It’s not.

They lie there for a while, Johnny between Jaehyun’s thighs, his cheek pressed to Jaehyun’s damp sternum, listening to his erratic heartbeat. It’s odd to find out Jaehyun is the type to go cuddly after orgasm. Usually, after either Johnny jerking him off against a wall or Jaehyun sucking him until he comes, he’ll pull himself together, wash his hands, and leave. Johnny didn’t even know Jaehyun liked making out up until tonight.

But he seems into it, now. Into being close. His leg is curled over Johnny’s, palm pressed to his back. His other hand is lazily carding through Johnny’s sweaty hair. It’s almost sweet, so unlike him. Or maybe that’s what he’s truly like, beneath all that shiny, sharp veneer.

Johnny lifts his head, props his chin up on his fist to gaze at Jaehyun’s face.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.” Jaehyun’s voice is quiet. His eyes are dark, soft. He runs a finger down Johnny’s nape, then caresses the curve of his ear, touch feather-light.

Johnny feels something tighten around his lungs. He reaches out, traces his finger along the curve of Jaehyun’s cheekbone, his eyebrow. Jaehyun’s eyes slip closed. He’s so beautiful it’s almost unbelievable. He really could have anyone he wanted. Who wouldn’t want him back? What is he so afraid of?

Johnny’s fingers halt at a small, jagged scar at the curve of Jaehyun’s dark brow.

Will you miss me? Johnny thinks, pathetically. Instead he says, “Where’s this scar from?”

“Hm?”

“Here.” Johnny taps the place, gently. “On your brow.”

“Oh, that...” Jaehyun tilts his cheek into Johnny’s palm. His skin is so soft, so warm. “I got my head smashed into a computer screen.”

Johnny feels himself go still. “I’m sorry, what? When?”

Jaehyun huffes out a sigh, opening his eyes. “I was fourteen, I think. Father needed me to read him an email, it was in English and he couldn’t read it cause he’s fucking illiterate, and I think I translated something wrong… or maybe I was too slow at it, I can’t remember now. I guess it made him angry. And so he took me by the hair, like this,” Jaehyun’s gentle fingers grip the hair at Johnny’s nape, sending cold, prickling sensations down the entirety of his spine, “and bashed my face into the screen. My brow split. At least it wasn’t my eye.”

Johnny stares at Jaehyun in shock.

The almost-smile that has been forming on Jaehyun’s face slips off. His mouth turns wary, tight. He lets go of Johnny’s hair, drops his hand onto the seat.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” he says. His voice is cool, empty of that soft edge. “It wasn’t — it didn’t hurt that much. And it was funny. Afterwards.”

Johnny echoes, “funny?”

“I got a new phone out of it.” Johnny’s face must do something at the words, because in the next second Jaehyun’s fingers are back and digging into his nape, almost meanly. “Hey. I said stop looking at me like that. I didn’t tell you all that to get you to pity me.”

Johnny feels his jaw clench and unclench. He draws in a breath, tries to school his face into something calm. “That’s not… I’m not pitying you. I’m just saying that it's not normal.”

“No one’s normal,” Jaehyun says, in an odd, tight tone. “Everyone’s a sicko fuck if you give them enough leeway. If you give them a reason.”

Johnny thinks of his parents, his mother’s soft hands and his father’s booming laugh. He has never felt unsafe around them. It feels wrong for it to be a privilege.

Jaehyun, back to being a clam, gives his shoulder a nudge. “Okay, enough. Get off me now.”

“Then let go.”

Jaehyun’s arm tightness around Johnny’s waist, just for a second, and then he drops it.

Johnny rolls off him, sits up. He feels cold and stiff with chlorine and a mixture of cum and lube drying on his skin, and also with Jaehyun’s words, the little, soft smile he let grace his face as he said at least it wasn’t my eye .

When he looks back down, Jaehyun is leaning back on his elbows, sex-flushed and elusive.

“Do you have a cig?”

Johnny shakes his head. “I don’t smoke.”

“Not even a vape?”

“Nothing. I’m an athlete, I need the lungs.”

“Oh, right, yet another thing I hate about you.” Jaehyun sits up, wincing. He picks the towel off the seat and wipes himself down, careful around his soft cock, the inside of his thighs. It must hurt to sit where Johnny spanked him. “Almost forgot.”

“Mm.” Johnny, on impulse, reaches down to run a palm up Jaehyun’s naked waist, up to his ribs, and Jaehyun shudders, looking up at Johnny with huge, guarded eyes. His lips part like he wants to say something, but in the end he doesn’t.

If I ever meet his father, Johnny thinks, looking at his hand on Jaehyun’s pale skin, I’ll rent a chainsaw.

Johnny pulls his nylon shorts on, shamelessly going commando, whilst Jaehyun gives his damp boxers a nudge and picks his jeans up with a sigh. Johnny leaves him to it and gets out of the car to get to the driver’s seat; his legs still feel unsteady, but at least he’s sobered up. Fucking the brains out of someone can have that effect.

When he gets in, Jaehyun’s already in the passenger seat, seemingly having climbed across the console. He’s shirtless, the thin chain around his neck a glint of silver in the streetlights.

Johnny sticks the keys in the ignition, waits until the motor whirrs to life. “Hungry?”

Jaehyun looks up from where he was examining his hands like he’d never seen them before. “What?”

Johnny pulls out of the parking space. It feels weird to drive barefoot, but whatever. “Are you hungry? Cause I’m fucking starving.”

“So?”

“Let’s go to McDonald’s.”

Jaehyun snorts in disbelief. “So you don’t smoke, but eat in that shithole? Figures.”

“It’s my car, so I decide. I want a McMuffin.”

Jaehyun rolls his eyes with a mutter, but doesn’t otherwise protest. He looks too tired for that. Maybe next time he gets bratty, Johnny should pull his jeans down and bend him over.

They drive to McDonald’s. Johnny takes the highway from Chenle’s neighborhood; it’s almost empty, the central artery lit a faded yellow from the towering poles of lamplights, asphalt polished as it disappears under the wheels of his Porsche. When they get to the orange-blossom-lined downtown roads he rolls his windows down, inviting the soft wind into the car. He does the same to the passenger side, too. Then he steals a glance at Jaehyun.

Jaehyun’s eyes are closed. He’s leaned his head on the headrest, turned his face towards the breeze. His dark hair dances around him, brushing his forehead. Streetlights pass over his face like hands stroking his cheeks.

Johnny feels his breath catch in his throat and looks away.

You are an idiot, he thinks at himself, tiredly. Then he focuses on the road.

Finally, after a maze of concrete massifs and colorful seven-elevens, they get to an open drive-thru. Johnny rolls into the driveway. The brightest thing there is the enormous M across the parking lot, floating hypnotically, like a fluorescent yellow moon.

“Hello and welcome to McDonald’s, would you like to try out chicken pie we have a special soda menu if you get a double burger fries come for free,” says a robotic voice right out of the speaker, all in one breath.

“Whatcha want?” Johnny turns to Jaehyun and finds him already looking back.

“I don’t know,” Jaehyun says. “I’ve never been here.”

“ You’ve never been to McDonald’s ?” Somehow, it’s not as surprising as it should be. “How old are you?”

Jaehyun’s face goes defensive. “Why are you asking me that?”

Johnny shakes his head, then leans back out of the window. “Uh, hello, can we please get a… number two, please, two sausage McMuffins with egg, and the hashbrowns?”

“Anything to drink?”

“Coffee, please,” Johnny says. “Oh, and water. Water, one bottle.”

“Anything else?”

“No, that’ll do it.”

“Two number twos, two coffees and water?”

“Yep.”

“Got it. Please drive to the window to receive your order, thank you.”

“Thank you.” Johnny leans back down into the car, steers it towards the first little window. He pays with his card, then waits by the second one for their food. There’s a pretty view out of the windshield. Boston glints in the faraway dark, a line of glass and streetlights and stone.

“Thanks,” Jaehyun says, out of nowhere. Johnny looks back at him, but he’s staring at the glove compartment. He’s still shirtless.

“I can’t believe you’ve never had a McMuffin.” Johnny shakes his head.

Jaehyun turns his nose up. “It never seemed like a necessity.”

“Dude, it’s, like. A cultural experience . Where do you go when you get the munchies, your private chef’s kitchen?”

“I have a mini fridge in my bedroom,” Jaehyun says, crossing his arms over his chest, like that’s any different.

“Full of caviar and lobster, probably.” Jaehyun gives him A Look, so Johnny amends with a, “I’ll show you how it’s done, baby, we’ll come here again. You’ll taste the secret menu.” A thought occurs to him, suddenly. “Hang on. Do you even know what a secret menu is?”

“I’m not stupid,” Jaehyun grits out. But his cheeks are pink, for some reason.

“So what is it?”

“A menu with secret items.”

Johnny laughs. At that moment the drive-thru window opens, and he gets a paper bag full of perfectly hot, cheap breakfast food, as well as two coffees and a water. He tosses the bottle at Jaehyun, who catches it in surprise. “Drink.”

“Thanks.” Jaehyun uncaps the water and drinks, almost all of it in one go. He passes the rest to Johnny. Johnny takes it, finishes it off, then parks them at a spot at the empty parking lot. Passes Jaehyun a box. Unwraps his own.

They eat. The food is greasy, salty, perfect. The coffee is as shit as usual, which is a reassuring normalcy— and yet, shockingly, Jaehyun doesn’t complain. He doesn’t say a word, actually. Just chews on his hashbrown with a tiny wrinkle between his brows.

“Is it good?” Johnny asks.

Jaehyun looks up. His fingers and lips are glossy with grease. “Yeah. Thank you.”

“Mm.” Johnny swallows the last of his McMuffin and washes it down with the coffee, grains of it like sand on his tongue. Hopefully Jaehyun doesn’t get to the dregs. It seems like he’s reached the limit of his cultural experiences.

He’s done soon, too; thankfully, his coffee remains mostly untouched. They ball up the trash and stuff it into the paper bag.

Johnny starts the car, steering them out of the parking lot. Gravel crunches under the wheels; he goes slow, rolling by the sidewalk, streetlights passing them like searchbeams. “Home?”

Jaehyun looks at him.

Behind his head, Boston stretches out in a line of glittering gold, like a splatter of freckles in the dark. He seems tired, soft in the early hours of the morning. Like a kid about to fall asleep after eating too much. Johnny feels a strange urge to take him into his arms, wrap him into blankets, hold him close. It’s such a stupid thing to wish for. Jaehyun makes him want stupid, stupid things.

“Home?” Jaehyun echoes, like he doesn’t understand the word.

“Yeah. I said I’ll drive you home.”

Jaehyun hesitates for a moment, searching Johnny’s face for something. Johnny doesn’t know what he’s looking for, so he just keeps it honest, open. Hopefully he doesn’t look the way he feels inside. Like he's hoping the night doesn’t ever end. Like he wants Jaehyun to hope so, too.

Finally Jaehyun says, “yeah, okay. Drive me home.”

He inputs the location into Johnny’s phone, props it onto the dashboard. It’s not too far; close to Chenle’s neighborhood, actually, by the Northern Shoreline. The closer they get to the destination, the thicker the air gets with a saline breeze coming from Nathan Bay, and, when the car stops by the neat block of luxury apartments, Johnny catches sight of the first glimmer of gold spilling along the horizon. It’s like the sky is splitting at the seams, bursting with fluorescence.

“It’s morning already,” Jaehyun says, like he’s surprised, apparently having noticed the same thing. The early sunlight catches in the glass of his eyes, makes them look like pools of dark water. “What time is it?”

“Five-seventeen,” Johnny says, glancing at his phone. He’s not even tired. His body is humming with something other than adrenaline, other than a late cortisol spike. It’s like he’s a live wire about to burst.

“Oh.” Jaehyun swallows. He fiddles with the belt loops of his jeans, long, elegant fingers skimming the denim, like he, too, can’t sit still.

“Want me to walk you in?”

“What?” Jaehyun looks up, something swimming behind his eyes. He wets his lips, then bites his bottom one. “No.”

“Okay,” Johnny says. “Then do you wanna kiss?”

Jaehyun does, apparently.

With no hesitation, he leans over the console and cradles Johnny’s jaw in his perfect greasy palm and kisses him, intense, slow, humming when Johnny slides his hand into his hair and pulls him down to deepen the angle. They kiss warm and careful at first, and then tether over the line of desperate, both pretending they aren’t trying to mouth-fuck their way out of breaking apart. Jaehyun’s fingers press into Johnny’s neck like he’s taking his pulse. It’s a futile exercise — Johnny’s pulse is probably audible anyway; his heart is a drum in his chest, thumping against his ribcage like a caged animal.

He tells it to shut up.

By the time they separate, Johnny’s growing hard in his nylon shorts, and Jaehyun’s lips are so red they look bruised, tender, soft. He gives Johnny a gently uncharacteristic final peck on the side of his mouth and slides back into his seat, taking his warmth with him.

Johnny fights the desire to tie him down with the seatbelts and kidnap him for the rest of the day. The week. The month. It suddenly doesn’t feel like nearly enough, the three stolen hours they spent together. He wants so much more. So much more they didn’t get to have. He wants to talk. To touch. He wants—

Okay, maybe he needs a bit more caffeine.

Jaehyun pulls the passenger door open. The early-morning air, cold and fresh, sweeps into the salon, tangles in his hair. It smells like the sea, vehicle exhaust. Familiar. It reminds Johnny of waking up with his window open back in Chicago, with the Michigan lake lapping at the shore outside, crawling through the sprawling city alongside the dry-gold beams of sunrise.

“Call me,” Jaehyun says, holding onto the door handle like a man about to go underwater. “Tonight. Or — tomorrow.” His throat bobs as he swallows. “Whenever.”

Johnny swallows the initial shock of that admission from him, somehow finds his voice, and manages, “I thought you blocked my number.”

“Well, I — I didn’t.”

“So why ignore my messages?”

Jaehyun gives him one of his Signature Looks. But for some reason, it lacks its usual vitriol. His cheeks are the softest, faintest pink, color crawling to the gente curve of his ears.

Behind him, the sun is beginning to rise, dipping out of the dark like a polished coin, catching on the angles of buildings and seeping into the polluted cotton of Boston’s skyline. It really is like a movie. One of those American ones Jaehyun says he hates but Johnny thinks he’d love if he just gave it a chance. Johnny would put the subtitles on for him, too. So that he’d get the gist. So that they both would.

The thought hooks into Johnny’s mind, painful and immediate. Somewhere, in another universe, in an alternate reality, they could be — something. Sitting on Johnny’s bed back in his house in Chicago, dusting the top coverlet with Dorito crumbs and laughing at stupid on-screen dialogues. Tangling their legs in the sheets. Going to parks and clubs and late-night drives. Making up grocery lists. No time crunch, no running. None of this stupid performative shit. Just —

“You are such an idiot , Johnny Suh,” Jaehyun says, with an odd tone to his voice, almost like anger, or something else, something like — yearning.

Then he slams the car door shut.

Yeah, Johnny thinks, an emotion swelling in his chest like an enormous balloon of hot air. He watches Jaehyun stop on the sidewalk, turn around, make a threatening gesture at him through the windshield. Jaehyun is outlined in gold. The entirety of him, every curve and angle now an imprint in Johnny’s memory.

Johnny’s answering smile hurts his cheeks.

Yeah. I really fucking am.