Chapter Text
Jisung thinks he may be wasting away.
Hands in dirt, another snowdrop dead as soon as her buds hit the air. Wasting away.
Another hobby— his latest— floriculture.
He’s due for the next soon, because none of his flowers will grow. Snowdrop, daisy, baby’s breath, star of bethlehem. No matter what he does, they all die.
The greenhouse is stuffed full with plants, and he’s carved out a corner of his own to try his hand at something. Humid, the smell of fertilizer permeating through the air, seeping into his brain.
His snowdrops died, just like the daisies before them, and he thinks he’s wasting away.
It’s not something that happened all at once. More like a slow progression from one moment in time. A holiday in Ibiza, a flight home, a party. Lines in the bathroom and flutes of champagne and his stepfather’s Rolls crushed in from the nose back.
Yongbok’s head was bleeding, and he looked over at Jisung and smiled in that way he does when he knows they’re doing something they shouldn’t— all sparkly eyes and professionally whitened teeth. He laughed, and Jisung was dizzy, and then the engine started smoking.
He realized then, when the paranoia in his scrambled brain wasn’t cured after he was pulled from the driver's seat, that he needed to find something worth living for.
A soft downhill spiral to white petals shriveled in the dirt, and brown stuck under his nails. He can’t grow a fucking flower to save his life, and when his mother asked him to come with them up north for the summer, he couldn’t be bothered to care.
Jisung is wasting away— he thinks— but he’ll have to see. Such a big decision to make off of a handful of snowdrops and a fresh bout of self-hatred.
When he told his mother he’d stay home for the summer, he didn’t know. A stroke of luck, then. Or, maybe it’s not luck at all, because Jisung overheard her talking to Minho on the phone a few weeks back.
“I’m worried about your brother, I think you should come stay with him for the summer.”
Jisung had rolled his eyes, gone back to his room and called Felix to complain— “She thinks I’m going to kill myself or something.”
“Well, are you?”
“Depends on if Minho will fuck me or not.”
What came after was some rendition of Felix telling him to quit being so dramatic and come over. But that’s not the part Jisung is focused on. Not the part that matters.
Because what is there to say other than, it’s always been about Minho.
Minho, Minho, Minho.
Jisung wants Minho to be his new hobby. Learning each tick and hum. The way his bones creak and his breath tumbles from his lips. He wants to become an expert.
He thinks Minho could be the hobby that sticks. The thing that will finally stop the clock on his humiliating, slow demise— his deterioration into nothing but soil, and dirt, and the dust of flower petals that never grow correctly.
He’ll have to see.
He brings his knuckles to the oak door, open just a sliver.
“Come in.”
A breath in, and another out. Not held for a moment. There’s not a second for it to catch, not when he’s everything Jisung expected.
Hair just long enough for their parents to scoff, brushing his eyelashes– a muddy brown, like the dirt beneath Jisung’s flowers. Those eyes— his eyes— the first thing Jisung has always noticed. The first thing he ever noticed.
Expressive, bright when he’s at least a wall away from his father. Minho is always watching, studying, gaze flicking down to whichever portion of Jisung’s body is reacting to his presence. One of those machines that reads earthquakes, Jisung’s tremors indicative of his stupidity, most likely.
Minho stands across the room, hands stuck in the drawer of his armoire, sleeves unbuttoned and rolled above the elbow. Honey skin, tanned from being in the sun. Minho is a runner. His face gives not a hint of surprise, voice monotone as can be, “Oh, Jisung.”
Jisung met Minho when he was fifteen. Knobby knees and shaking hands and acne untouched by modern medicine. Minho was seventeen, and he had it all together. Properly groomed hair, buttons done up how they should be, a steely expression and a firm handshake.
He met Minho at fifteen, and then not again until he was sixteen.
A lot can change in a year. A first kiss, a rushed handjob, a sexual awakening. Acne can disappear with the sort of chemicals that require warning labels, and bodies can fill out.
Jisung decided, the second he locked eyes with Minho at their parents wedding, that he wanted him.
“Oh, Jisung,” he said. He blinked. “Good to see you again. You look—”
“Good?”
“Different.”
A start. Or, rather, the start.
Back then Minho wouldn’t look twice at him. Jisung knows why— it’s because he was a child. But that didn’t stop Jisung’s chest from filling with the type of heat that’s impossible to ignore. For his gut to do the same.
A silly, childhood crush. Jisung so badly wanted to be seen as a man rather than a little boy. Sitting at Minho’s feet, if he had a tail it would have been wagging.
But Minho wouldn’t look twice at him. Now, Jisung is glad he wouldn’t— but when he was sixteen it felt like something impossible to overcome. A massive why.
Why him? Why not him? Why, why, why?
The first time he got drunk that same summer, he spilled his guts to Felix. He told him that he’d wait as long as it takes for Minho to want him back. Felix laughed at him, told him he’s crazy. Jisung vomited in the bathtub.
He’s not crazy, he just knows what he wants. He decided then that he wants the next person that touches him to be Minho. He hasn’t changed his mind. He’s stubborn to a fault— that’s what his mother always said when he was young.
Abstinence is a silly daydream. A romantic notion more than anything else, but romantic nonetheless. The idea of being had for the first time— a gift to the receiver of the most desperate kind.
I waited for you. I want you to be imprinted on my skin for the rest of my days.
Felix tells him that he’s insane. That saving himself for his stepbrother is the most twisted sort of torture. A sort that can’t guarantee a payoff.
Jisung isn’t so sure.
When Minho looks at him like that. Completely bored, eyes trained on his face. They only stray for half a second, a quick trail up and down the length of him.
If Felix were here, he’d laugh. But Felix isn’t keen to every twitch of Minho’s body in the way Jisung is.
Half a second. That’s all he needs to keep the spark alive. He’s stupid like that.
“Hi, Minho,” a finger drags along the post of Minho’s bed. “It’s been a while.”
Minho shuts the drawer to his armoire with his hip, lets himself lean on it like that. “A while,” he repeats. “School kept me busy.”
“You don’t need to lie to me. I thought we were closer than that.”
“Close enough that you know I don’t need to say it, sure,” Minho blinks.
Minho hates his father. He hates him enough to fall off the map for over a year, not so much as a visit. If Jisung tried that he’d get dragged back home by the ear.
Turns out studying for a respectable career offsets the need to come home. Drugs don’t. Minho has always been smarter than Jisung.
And now Minho is here, and Jisung can finally take a full breath again without his bones aching for something he didn’t know he’d miss so badly.
Just two arms lengths away. At the foot of Minho’s California king. Jisung doesn’t dare get closer. If he had it his way he’d crawl inside of Minho’s mouth and curl up there. Warm and safe, party to every lick and word he doles.
“I missed you.”
Minho doesn’t flinch, he blinks again. “Did you?”
“You know I did.”
“I haven’t spoken to you in a year and a half, Jisung. How would I know that?”
Jisung chews on his lip, skin peeling off, stinging. “You knew how long it’s been, and I know you’re right, so that seems like a damned good start.”
Minho sucks his teeth, he licks over them once, goes to unroll his sleeves. Jisung watches his fingers move, hands flexing.
“Did you miss me too?” Jisung’s heart stutters, Minho’s blunt nails reaching the watch on his left wrist. An expensive thing. One he certainly didn’t pick out for himself.
“I’ve been busy.”
“Sure,” Jisung sniffs, refusing to back off. Not now that he’s got Minho where he wants him. He refuses to back off, because he thinks Minho knew exactly what he was stepping into when he agreed to come home. Minho knows more than he says he does. Jisung would be willing to bet on it, because he’s one in the same.
They were raised to be untrustworthy, and unlovable, shoved out of the nest by a hand that wasn’t the same that bore them, and told to fucking cope. That’s how life is.
“Mom thinks you’re going to kill yourself,” Minho throws it out casually, looking up for only a moment as he goes back to folding his clothes.
“Ew,” Jisung’s lip curls, hands crooking into his arms. “Don’t call her that.”
Minho looks at him then, all bored eyes and flat mouth. “Are you going to kill yourself?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought. Maybe I should just fuck off, then.”
Jisung fights off the rise of bile in his throat, and with it the cry of, I’ll try, right now, if it means you won’t leave me again. Something horribly dramatic, an attempt on his life for just one word of affirmation. Untrustworthy. Unloveable.
He clears his throat, tries, “I don’t mind the company.”
A short breath from his nose, and Minho smiles, serene, closed lips. “Of course you don’t.”
They only have family dinner when Minho is home.
It’s like a game. A fabrication. Playing house to try to coax the loved child back home. If it were that easy Jisung would have done it long ago. He loves Minho more than both of them combined.
Maybe that’s not saying much.
The dining room is long, filled with a table that’s obscenely big for a family of four. On either head, their parents, and in the middle, across from one another, Jisung and Minho.
Jisung’s refuses to wear shoes indoors. His socks rub into the plush rug, aching to reach out to Minho’s calf. He would tuck his toe up, drag it along the length of Minho’s leg until they both shiver.
Minho looks gorgeous in candlelight.
Family dinners lend themselves to reprimanding. Jisung is too busy to listen closely.
Minho looks gorgeous in candlelight.
“I’m worried about leaving you here alone, Jisung. You have yet to earn my trust back.”
Minho looks gorgeous in candlelight.
“Having your brother around will be good for you. You could learn something about discipline from him. I expect the best behavior this summer.”
Minho looks gorgeous in candlelight.
The rules, of course. No parties, no boys, Yongbok can stay over, but that’s it.
“I’ve never fucked anyone, and no one has ever fucked me.” Jisung only blinks when his eyes go numb.
“Good, let's keep it that way.”
Jisung licks his spoon free of sauce, staring Minho in the eye all the while. “I’m twenty three, I’m not a baby anymore. I’m more than capable of having sex.”
“This is not talk for the dinner table. You’ll follow the rules or be punished.”
Jisung sticks the spoon so far back on his tongue that his eyes water. Minho hasn’t let up his stare— supremely bored. Jisung gags a bit, just enough for his throat to react. Minho looks away. One point Han.
“Will Minho be doling out spankings at your behest? I can’t wait.”
“You are excused, Jisung.”
The back of Minho’s head, unsurprisingly, looks gorgeous in candlelight.
Jisung used to carry the weight of shame.
Dripping off of every orifice, cemented and chained and pulling him towards hell. His limbs couldn’t bear the burden, not enough to do more than a few sloppy strokes in his shower, fist shoved into his mouth. He used to cry every time he masturbated, because he was so ashamed that he liked it so much.
Whatever shame Jisung had left was rid of by the drugs, though. Drugs do that to a man. Cumming in his pants because he and Felix were high out of their minds and rubbing against each other does that to a man. Driving a car into a house does that to a man.
Amongst other things.
The shame died with the brain cells he fried with the coke— but even before that, he got over the masturbating thing.
He has no qualms with setting up in the living room when no one is home, watching his porn in surround as he rides a pillow on the sofa. With bending over in front of the mirror at the end of the entryway, watching himself react to the adjustment of fucking a toy inside of him too quick for comfort.
Sometimes, though, the best sort of masturbation isn’t the adventurous kind. Or the type that carries the rush of adrenaline that he could get caught.
No. Sometimes he just wants to lay bare in the middle of his bed, canopy draped above him shrouding his body from the prying eyes of the powers that be, and take his time.
An altar of his own creation. He is the devotee, the sacrifice, and the benefactor. Back arching off the mattress, lube dripping onto his sheets. He doesn’t bother with towels, it feels better when he can make a mess.
He likes to pretend that Minho has a big cock. Call it manifesting. No matter how big Minho’s cock actually is, it’s probably not as big as the dildo Jisung stuffs himself full with— but he likes to be over prepared.
Sweat breaks at his forehead, arms sore. He’d love to be taken care of. He’d love his arms to be sore from being held behind his back instead of working to get the angle he needs to get his eyes to roll into his skull.
“Hah— Min—”
Jisung circles his hips, body light as air. Not even an ounce of shame leftover. He loves thinking of Minho. Minho deserves to be thought of.
“—ho— Ahh!”
He doesn’t ever need to touch himself when Minho is on his mind. The thoughts alone are more than enough. And the fifteen inches buried inside of him. His orgasm builds like that, cock weeping messily over his stomach.
Minho would make him cry, and then he’d kiss the tears away afterwards. Manifesting. Minho would pin Jisung down and have him. Manifesting. Minho—
Jisung cums on a particularly well placed thrust against his prostate, ears ringing, throat raw.
His chest heaves, breath erratic as he lets his arms fall to the bed, dildo still inside of him. Minho would stay inside of him too— cock softening, cum buried as deep into Jisung as he could get it.
Jisung laughs— slightly deranged, wholly giddy. After-orgasm high. He can’t stop laughing.
If only Minho’s room was situated next to his instead of down the hall. Jisung could leave his door open, try to lure him in.
Manifesting.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m reading.”
“Reading what?”
“Lolita.”
Felix breathes, smile on his lips— Jisung can tell just from the way it sounds over the phone. “A bit on the nose.”
“I’m not actually reading it.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Hm,” Jisung flicks to the next page, words blending together into inky blobs. His thighs are cold. Pressed against the granite of the kitchen counter, shorts riding up.
His posture is terrible. His mother told him thirty minutes ago when she left. Walked out the front door with a pitiful look in her eyes, told him to be good.
Jisung half thinks he should off himself just to teach her a lesson. The irritating paradox of caring enough to want him alive, but not enough to watch him herself. Pawning him off on someone more well suited to worry.
The spine of his book digs into his skin. Another page. Sugar melts across his tongue. A box of candied figs. His guilty pleasure, only because everyone always scowls when he eats them.
“I want to go out tonight. Let’s go out tonight,” Felix moves on. He’s good at that. They wouldn’t still be friends if he weren’t.
“No.”
“Let me come over, then,” Felix is pouting now.
“I have to ask my keeper,” Jisung looks up. Manifesting— or just the way the floor sounds when it’s being walked on. Minho is wearing slacks, a button down shirt. Jisung has no doubt he’ll lose them as soon as he’s sure his father is gone for good.
“Is he there?” Felix asks.
Jisung’s eyes trail Minho. To the fridge. Another fig, melting on his tongue. Minho pulls out something wrapped in foil— leftover from last night.
“How did you know?”
“Could tell by the way you’re breathing,” Felix says.
Minho’s eyes flick up. He can’t hear Felix, Jisung’s phone isn’t loud enough.
“Say hi to Yongbok, Minho.”
“Hi Yongbok,” Minho repeats, without missing a beat. He’s cutting his food, doesn't bother to look up again.
Felix coos, whispers something immoral in Jisung’s ear. Jisung isn’t listening. Ink blobs— blurring together. “Can he come over tonight?”
“I don’t care, I’m not your mother.”
“No,” Jisung frowns. Pouts. Just as Felix taught him to when they were sixteen and fleecing men triple their age at the country club. “But you’re meant to protect me from losing my virginity, aren’t you?”
An outright lie. Jisung believes in lying to get what he wants, so long as it doesn’t jeopardize what he already has. He won’t fuck Felix. He knows it, Minho knows it, Felix knows it.
Minho leaves without responding, taking his plate with him.
“I’ll be there at six,” Felix chirps in his ear.
Jisung drops his book on the floor.
It lands cover up, and Minho isn’t even around to see it.
Cherry red.
One of the nannies that Jisung liked the most always had her nails painted cherry red. She looked so put together, and professional— so he thought. He’s been trying and failing to emulate her nonchalance, in the brand of cherry red, since he could conceptualize what it meant to be an individual.
She got fired for sleeping with his father.
Felix holds Jisung’s index finger steady, and paints cherry red onto his nail.
On their stomachs in the living room, music playing from a phone. Felix has his hair clipped back. He’s always been especially pretty. Jisung used to be jealous, before he found out that Minho doesn’t like blondes.
“What is he doing cooped up in there, anyways?” Felix nods towards the hall. The door at the end of the hall— the study— where Minho has been all afternoon, and all evening, and will be for most of the summer, if Jisung had to guess.
“Studying for the bar.”
Felix scowls. “Ew. That’s horribly unsexy. You should drop him.”
“You don’t like lawyers?”
“Lost my virginity to one. You remember.”
Jisung does. They were freshly eighteen, fleecing men at the country club, and Felix had his nails painted cherry red. ‘The sluttiest color.’
“He wasn’t all that.” Felix manages an unempathetic little frown.
“Maybe it’s because he was old.”
“No, I don’t think so. I think it’s because he was a lawyer.” Felix grins. He’s beautiful. If Minho liked blondes, Jisung wonders if he’d let Felix visit. Probably not, unless he dyed his hair. He’s selfish.
“I don’t know how to catch his attention,” Jisung sets his hand under his chin, chemical fumes threatening to kill the few brain cells he has remaining. “He won’t look long enough for me to try.”
Felix scrunches up his nose, still pretty. Nail polish wand hanging between them. Cherry red, threatening to spill on the rug. “You’ve always been good at teasing. That’s what you need to do.”
“I haven’t.”
“You have. Remember Seungcheol?”
“He was interested in you, not me.”
A prissy little scowl passes over Felix’s face. “Sure, I fucked him, but he was interested in you at first. He was only so into it because you were watching the whole time.”
One instance out of hundreds doesn’t make Felix’s argument hold any water.
Men approach the two of them for Felix, they stick around for Felix, and they fuck Felix. Jisung is an incidental— a happenstance.
Not that he cares. If he did, he’d have bailed a long time ago. He doesn’t care about anyone else, all he cares about is end of the line. The problem is getting there without the knack for drawing wandering eyes.
“You’re good at talking.” Felix changes his line of reasoning. “Men like the way you talk. It forces their eyes on you. Even if they’re begging you to shut up.”
Jisung frowns. Makes a soft noise. Discontent, shifting close to the edge of insecurity. Sometimes it’s hard for Felix to understand.
“Either way, Jisung. There’s not one thing in your life you’ve wanted and haven’t gotten. It’s less about the technique and more about how the spirits favor you when you want something.”
There’s not much that Jisung wants all the way through.
He wanted to get into an elite university. He did. He didn’t go, because he just wanted to get in.
He wanted to take up gardening. He did. His snowdrops died.
He wanted to stop feeling like a chore. He almost killed himself. He’s too bored to try again.
Cherry red. Felix caps the nail polish. Finished up on Jisung’s nails. A slutty color. Jisung has the urge to rub it all over the rug, leaving stains, just because he can. Because he’s been trusted here with a man that doesn’t care to look over him.
“Once you stop thinking about it so much, the teasing will come naturally. Place yourself in ways that allow you to necessitate attention.” Felix grabs Jisung’s face in his hands, wiggling closer. Until their noses brush.
The music is too loud to notice footsteps. Not too loud to hide a clearing throat.
Felix’s lips quirk to the side, catching Jisung’s eye just a second before they both turn their heads.
“Yongbok, it’s been a while.” Minho has his hands in his pockets. Standing still. Bored eyes, bored posture.
“It has. You look well,” Felix’s smile is saccharine.
A hum. Minho doesn’t give. “What are you two up to?”
“Waiting for Jisung’s nails to dry.”
Minho’s eyes shift to Jisung for a moment. Back to Felix. Still bored. “Don’t spill on the rug.”
The second Minho turns his back to go, heading towards the kitchen, Felix is rolling his eyes. “Christ. What a peach. I see why you want him.”
“What do you mean?” Jisung’s arms are frozen, trying not to smudge his nails. Felix is still cradling his face. Squeezing at one cheek.
“You need someone to give you directions, just like I need someone who folds in half for me.” Felix squeezes again, pouting slightly. “But you know that. It’s because I had too many rules and you had too few. It’s a natural consequence of our parents’ love.”
“Freud would have loved you.”
“He would have let me fuck him, too.”
Jisung doesn’t doubt that.
Felix leaves before the sun rises.
Another of those rules he was talking about. Sundays are, still, for the Lord.
The spot he occupied in bed holds his shape for a while, warmth slowly dissolving, the first hints of sunlight filtering through Jisung’s curtains. Sheer, because he isn’t allowed the ones that black out. His mother’s shaman told her that he’s less likely to allow depression to direct his hand if he gets sun.
He’s a flower— though his snowdrops got plenty of sun.
When Felix leaves a room, his presence lingers. Jisung can practically feel him breathing, and the weight of his wayward arms, flung about in sleep.
Jisung has spent a lot of time trying to be someone like Felix. Beautiful, refined, charming. Slutty when he wants, and sultry as he pleases. Comfortable, and confident, holding everyone under his thumb.
But, Minho doesn’t like blondes. And isn’t that the point?
Dust dances in the soft beams of sunlight. Quiet and small. Just out of focus. Felix’s perfume lingers on Jisung’s pillow. Impossible to ignore. Both work in tandem to form the whole. And isn’t that the point?
Stretching comes with cracking joints. Jisung groans. Gets out of bed. Tired on his feet, because Felix needed to kiss him goodbye. He’s just like that. It’s easy for him to act like that. One on each of Jisung’s cheeks, and his forehead for good measure.
Lingering.
Jisung is tired.
He’s wearing Felix’s sweater from last night. Stumbling down the hall to the kitchen. No signs of life.
Minho has leftovers in the fridge. Boxed up and portioned. Jisung takes one of the containers, not bothering with utensils.
His feet slide along the hardwood smoothly, socks slipping around. On his way outside. The bugs are barely awake, but Felix had to kiss Jisung goodbye.
Three steps down, once he’s on the patio. A sprawling, stone thing, with planters inlaid, and multiple layers rolling into the property. Swimming pool sitting just below the main landing, overlooking the gardens.
Jisung shuffles up to the edge, and sits. Knees to his chest, staring into the water. Icy blue, reflecting off tile.
He pries open the lid of his meal. Dips his fingers inside immediately, pressing gimbap onto his tongue.
Yesterday, he watched Minho roll it up. His fingers, all over the ingredients. Jisung can almost taste his presence on his tongue— lingering.
The sun peeks over the top of the trees. Jisung licks his fingers clean. Knees aching. Submerges his feet in the water.
Tiny ripples lapping up at his calves, socks sucking up as much as they can. Jisung finishes off his food like that. Staring at the way the moving surface warps the image of his feet.
He tosses the container to the side. Shrugs Felix’s sweater off. Finishes the job.
The pool is heated. Always turned on. It’s warmer than the crisp morning air. Jisung’s shorts climb higher up his legs, begging to float, shirt sticking to his stomach.
One deep breath. Exhale. Another. On his back. Jisung stretches his arms. His legs. Points his toes, and his fingers, and floats.
Above, the faint memory of stars. Presence lingering. They’ll be wiped away soon. Deep breath. Exhale.
Weightless— for once.
The shaman that told him about the curtains also said something about swimming. It’s the closest a grown adult gets to being in their mother’s womb. Safe and comfortable.
Jisung would argue that his stay was inhospitable. That he likes floating because he’s holding himself up from what could be certain death.
A practice in will to live rather than life itself.
Deep breath. Exhale.
“Where’s Yongbok?”
Minho stands at the edge of the pool, right where Jisung got in. Dressed for a run, arms across his chest. Bored.
He must have side stepped the food container to get here. He doesn’t mention it.
Jisung moves his arms, pushing himself closer. “At church.”
“You didn’t go with him?”
“I don’t believe in god.” Jisung stares up at Minho from below, and the words feel like a lie as they leave his lips.
“As long as you know what you believe in.”
Jisung blinks. He can still smell a hint of Felix’s perfume on his neck. “Can I ask you a question?”
Minho ignores him. “Why are you wearing socks in the pool?”
“I just felt like it.”
“You’re going to drown yourself.”
Deep breath in. Exhale.
“Would you save me if I did?”
Minho takes a deep breath of his own. Jisung can’t hear the exhale. “What was your question?”
“That was the question,” Jisung sighs. “Would you save me if I started to drown?”
“I can’t swim.”
Deep breath in.
“But, would you try?”
“Then we’d both drown.”
Exhale.
“Is that your answer?”
Minho takes a moment to stare. He gazes down at Jisung with bored eyes, and a bored mouth. His arms shift, just enough for it to be noticeable. “Mom thought you were going to kill yourself, so I came home.”
That’s Jisung’s answer.
“Don’t call her that.”
When Jisung makes it to the greenhouse, there’s nothing left but dirt. All of his snowdrops have died— melted back into what they once were.
And isn’t that the point?