Archive of Our Own

It didn’t take long for Minho to notice him. 

Maybe it was subtle at one point in time. When he thought he felt something lingering over his shoulder– making him wonder if he had forgotten his towel in the studio or his charger or the case of his headphones. Small things. Insignificant things. 

It felt like a strange gust of smoke. Barely there. Not his problem. So very easy to ignore. 

But that strange gust of smoke very quickly turned into fine fibres of dust and smog and dirt and lodged itself alongside the cells floating through his bloodstream. 

Because that was all it was; insignificant. At first, he supposed. 

Maybe he thought it wasn’t so strange to see the same face at the other end of the train platform every day. He had been taking this route on the subway since he started at the agency. He always recognised that same handful of people. The high schoolers who always took up an unnecessary amount of room on the carriage with their instruments and folios. The old woman who did her makeup with a compact folded in her palm. The businessman who barked orders down his phone at eight in the morning and then again at a little past five. 

And him– hidden behind those dark-rimmed glasses that he felt burning into the side of his head. 

The same dark-rimmed glasses he saw in the convenience store by his place and disappeared behind the shelves. A fleeting glimpse of hair and a jacket and jeans on the monitor playing the CCTV above the clerk sitting bored at the counter. The glasses which imprinted into the back of his head and spine and lower back, creating circular singes that lingered for the days to follow. He saw them in the lobby of his apartment. Fleetingly and by the mailboxes. It wasn’t that strange. They clearly lived in the same neighbourhood. 

He saw the woman who lived on the floor below him at the dentist once. He saw a guy from university in a crowded bathroom in a gross bar on the bad side of town. He saw his doctor in a line at the grocery store– umming and ahhing about which litter to buy his cat. 

It wasn’t that strange. 

But Minho could recognise those little coincidences in the same way he felt the prickles ignite across his entire stretch of skin when he finally noticed him. 

He recognised his lips at first. He had a small mouth. Usually pressed tightly closed. His bottom lip was thicker than the top and they turned a bright shade of pink the second he swiped his tongue along them. The same lips that sat behind the monitor at one of his shoots and muttered a ‘tell him to relax this take,’ to the photographer when Minho was getting his makeup touched up. 

He came off monotone and short. Like he was bored sitting there and watching new photos of Minho modelling a designer bag filter across the screen in short bursts. 

Minho had experienced worse. Way worse. But he also didn’t leave with anything more than some cash in his pocket and the promise the editorial would end up on the sixth page of a magazine he wouldn’t read if he was paid to. A quiet and bored tech was just that and soon a lingering memory in the highway of Minho’s subconscious. 

But it was that hair– seldom styled or pushed away from his glasses that snagged itself onto his hippocampus. It hung in loose curls around his temples and while it looked as though he only had run a hand through it of a morning, Minho was privy to seeing the silver piercings hidden beneath the dark strands as he cowered between the light fixtures and screens. He was hiding. And for a brief lapse of reality, he was good at it. 

But the technician with the silver piercings just muttered and grumbled and fiddled with his laptop. Avoiding eye contact. Grazing the ground or the light fixtures in some brick-lined studio on the other side of town. He let the stylists and the director do the talking. Like his very existence teetered on the precipice of him watching a screenful of Minho and nothing else. 

It was like he was hiding in plain sight. He didn’t want to be noticed. He didn’t want to be perceived. He didn’t want the same stares in return. 

It was hypocritical in a way. That he found it fine and okay to follow Minho from photo shoot to photo shoot, on the same train at the same time. Even when Minho was running late and copped the five minutes of sitting idle on the chin. Even to the gym of an evening– where Minho could swear he was sitting on the bench across the road, reflective dark-rimmed glasses flashing like some sick take on the green light at the end of the dock, and waiting for him to step out onto the chilly street with damp hair from the shower and his gym bag across his chest. 

So maybe that was why Minho didn’t feel so bad, watching him back in the same way. 

Especially when he got a little sloppy. 

So sloppy that Minho’s lips curled to the side when he noticed the thin, wiry black cord connected to his lamp in the lounge room– right by the TV stand. Did he really think that Minho wouldn’t notice whatever-the-fuck he was holding between his index finger and thumb in place of his gaming console? 

It was pathetic. A shoddy attempt to get closer and closer to him. Did he want to listen to him staying up to all hours of the night flicking between documentaries? Did he want to listen to his coffee machine growl in the morning? Did he want to hear him have a wank? 

Probably, he surmised, when he found a similar-looking device by the lamp beside his bed. 

It was almost vomit-inducing. 

And Minho didn’t even have much to say. Kept to himself. Yabbered on a little too much when he went out for drinks with his friends. Tried to be as personable as he could with stylists and directors and his agent– anybody he needed to suck up to if he wanted to continue living as comfortably as he was. But when he was alone, in his sanctuary, he had nothing to say. 

Of course, he suspected the thing that had followed him from place to place had broken into his apartment before he discovered the listening device. 

He remembered coming home in a huff. Headphones wrapped tightly around his head– lost in his emails of upcoming schedules and his social media that suddenly gained traction after his past few campaigns. Likes and comments and direct messages. Snorting at the lewd images that filled his inbox from fans. Rolling his eyes at the comments beneath his posts reading meh or another model did that designer better. 

He barely noticed the rose on his pillow at first. 

That slice of red out the corner of his eye. Like a drop of blood on his perfectly white sheets. 

Maybe that should’ve been the biggest sign that he called the police. Stay at a friend's. Get his name. Do something about it. 

But he only sighed when he saw that first rose. That first gift. Because what could he possibly have to say about red flag number five-hundred and ninety-seven when he didn’t do something about the first five-hundred and ninety-six? 

It wasn’t like he was a stranger. No. Minho had an idea of who he was way before he started getting dirtier and grimier. 

In fact, he remembered the first time he figured out just who was following him from place to place. Breaking into his apartment. Getting his sticky little fingers all over his wardrobe and sheets. Leaving roses on his pillows. Stealing his underwear. Gifting him prettier pairs. Very sloppily leaving cords and wires– anything to capture a glimpse of what Minho did behind closed doors. 

He seldom ever dared to venture into the caverns of the comments on his social media accounts. He usually disabled them when he posted brand deals or sponsored posts. Contractually, of course. But he kept them on when he posted personal things– a selfie in the mirror in the hallway to his apartment blessed with natural lighting. The food and drinks he had with Hyunjin and Felix. The artsy one Chan teed up– his palm curving around the lens of his phone. Be candid, his best friend snorted and in the fleeting second Minho didn’t giggle to himself at the absurdity of it all, he got a rather cute, postable picture. 

It was beneath that one he scrolled past the compliments of cute and sexy and that he needed to post a shirtless picture, that he saw him. And then he saw him again. And again. And again. In every comment section of everything he ever posted.

User91400_x. 

No display photo. Nothing to decode in his name. Nothing more to meet the eye than his replies to almost every comment with a connotation of negativity. 

Where Minho would usually scoff at a comment calling another model a better fit for a brand deal than him or tag one of their friends and point out something he didn’t realise he needed to be insecure about, he saw him there. In the replies. User91400_x. 

Leave him the fuck alone. 

Show yourself if you’re going to say that about him. 

If I looked like you I’d peel the skin off my face with a rusty blade. 

“God,” Minho muttered when they got worse and worse the ruder the originating comment was. He could take being called overrated. He could take being called a wannabe or a try-hard. He could take it all and if he couldn’t, he knew his skin was nowhere near as thick as it needed to be.

Maybe he was a little tipsy the night he let the morbid curiosity get the better of him. When he swiped his thumb to the side to check out his profile. He didn’t expect much… and yeah, maybe he did expect to see what he saw. 

Pictures of himself all over the profile. 

Lee Minho at the Esquire Afterparty looking handsome. 

Lee Minho with Hwang Hyunjin at the launch of a new wellness drink. Minho looks the best.  

Lee Minho behind the scenes. He’s so funny. 

He had seen fan accounts before. There was nothing disturbing about it. But the further he scrolled– long past pictures of himself getting younger and younger as his thumb moved, he almost felt his upper lip twitch when the feed started getting a little… jagged. 

He could still see himself, of course. In official photos– that his agent gave the green light to post. Or updates from his Instagram and Twitter. Even tracking what comments and posts he liked of his friends in the industry. But filtered between everything, were photos of other things. 

The view of the skyline from a balcony of grey concrete. A stray cat. The cover of a novel. An iced coffee. 

Whoever was behind the account was bleeding to the surface before Minho very evidently became his everything. 

And then, of course, a slip-up. Of a dark curl and an eyebrow sitting in the corner of a photo. A person. An actual, real person behind the account who fought for Minho when he didn’t even realise he was under attack. 

Minho didn’t connect the dots at first. In fact, it took a while before he realised the curl and eyebrow were the same that followed him home from photoshoots. Probably because he played with his food for a little bit– before it became the big, fat looming cloud of poison it was today and that was his bad, he supposed. 

He found himself reading User91400_x’s posts whenever he could. On the toilet mostly. Or when he was out on his balcony, having a cigarette and wanting to unwind from a particularly shitty day. Narcissistic? Maybe. Desperate? Oh, surely. Entertaining? Well… enough for Minho to toy with him a bit. 

Back in the days User91400_x used their account for something other than Minho, he posted a quote. 

You are wanted in the quiet spaces between words. 

Kind of cheesy. Kind of lame. But Minho didn’t mind holding his phone in the air, capturing a quick picture of himself in the light of the afternoon sun, twisting his lips to the side and posing for the camera. Once he was happy, he put the quote in the caption. Word for word. And posted it on his story. 

He could just about see the replies from his friends. The question marks and the laughing emoticons. Because better than anybody he knew, they were well aware that Lee Minho was anything but pseudo-inspirational. 

But he wanted a reaction. He wasn’t sure why.

And it was instant– User91400_x reposted his photo. 

Minho…? You’re so deep. 

And then again. 

You like poetry, Lee Minho? 

And again. 

I love you more than life itself. More than there are stars in the sky. 

And again and again and again and again. 

Your eyes are shining. 

Your lips are pink. 

Your words have touched me. 

Well… that humoured him for a total of five seconds before he was hastily ashing his cigarette and sliding his phone into his pocket. But it didn’t stop him from doing more. 

He was sure to take a photo of that same novel User91400_x must’ve read years ago when he found it in a bookstore. Loved this one– highly recommend it, Minho wrote in his caption to his million followers, not even bothering to read the blurb. And a stray cat he saw on his way to work. It wasn’t the same one he used in the picture he posted but it did the trick. Cute baby, Minho captioned it. Word for word from that same post on that same account with zero followers that Minho was sure was slowly beginning to lose his mind. 

Minho didn’t know why he needed to toy with this account out of the million he had at his disposal. One glimpse at his direct messages saw other models in the industry; attractive, real people who wanted him. Asked him if he would be in their area anytime soon for drinks. Complimented him. Not weirdly. Normally. 

But he liked playing with User91400_x. Well… until he connected the dots. 

He was barely thinking when he did it. It wasn’t like he wasn’t allowed to post what he wanted. He was nowhere near as famous or as well-known to have anything in his contract that told him to push a particular agenda across his socials or to behave himself. Just don’t be a dick, his agent told him when he started to gain a little more notoriety.

It was a picture of everything he loved. 

Chan and Changbin– friends from back home. They were out getting drinks to celebrate Changbin’s promotion and the night soon became a blur of laughter and neon lights. It wasn’t like he hadn’t posted them before. But he hadn’t posted that third thing he loved. 

A cigarette, dangling between his fingers and just to the left of the frame from the arm he had around Chan. 

He didn’t see the big deal. 

But when he checked up on User91400_x after a couple of days of letting that bit of fun slip from his mind, he blinked when he saw his hand and the cigarette zoomed in and decorating the entirety of his feed. 

You stupid fucking idiot, read the most recent caption. 

Are you trying to die?

Do you want to die? 

You’re going to die. 

Killing yourself. Disgusting. Gross.

Stupid Lee Minho. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. 

I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry. You just need help. 

That’s all it is… you need help. I can help you. 

I’ll save you, Lee Minho. Because you saved me. 

And so came the realisation that the same black-rimmed glasses that stared at him from street corners and had a hankering for breaking into his apartment and User91400_x were the same people. When he woke up in the morning, crawled out of bed and went to the toilet to take a piss, noticing 14 cigarettes and a scrunched-up carton floating in the bowl. 

⨼⨽

Life wasn’t impossible with a stalker like User91400_x. 

Sometimes it was convenient. 

This rain sucks. I wish my umbrella didn’t fly away last week :(

And there it was, in his mail compartment in his apartment lobby, a brand new umbrella, waiting for him. 

He also became a little predictable and that really added to Minho’s strange sense of safety. He didn’t push it. He kept his distance. At least 100 yards away— nowhere near close enough for Minho to even grasp what he looked like to completion. So, he relaxed a little bit. 

Even if the listening devices currently collecting the silence in his apartment were really starting to irk him. He suddenly became conscious of everything he did. If he talked to himself. If he took a phone call. If he wanted to keep replaying the same TV series or play the same song. If he wanted to burp or be gross because it was his place he was allowed to be gross. 

God… Minho felt pathetic even considering his stalker’s potential adversary to a burp or cough or phlegmy throaty sound leaving his mouth. 

His friends found it an amusing little story. A fan account that was a wee bit too enthralled in him. They didn’t know the extent of it, of course– there wasn’t a world where the police wouldn’t be called if they caught wind of his frequent little visitor. Or the military if Chan and Felix did that thing where they catastrophised everything the more they went back and forth on the slightest inconvenience. 

User91400_x usually backed off when Minho spent nights with his friends… and he really increased the frequency in which he stayed at a friend’s house or let the drinks turn into dinner and dessert the more intense it all got. Even from a distance, Minho knew he could probably take him in a fight if it came to it. What? With those bandy legs and small frame… no wonder he kept away when he went out with Changbin, Chan and Felix. 

So, Minho liked to relax a little on those few occasions. He even felt okay walking home from the bar, through the quiet streets with few people waiting out for taxis and rideshares on a Saturday night. Maybe he forgot about the very high chance someone may be following him when he had a few to drink. Maybe he forgot about the dark-rimmed glasses that reflected the headlights of oncoming traffic when Minho dipped into the convenience store by his apartment, buying some snacks he really shouldn’t be buying but knowing they would cure the headache he’d have in the morning. Maybe his upper lip twitched and a scoff fell from his mouth when he caught sight of the cigarettes behind the cashier and how he hadn’t bought himself any since he found them decimated in his toilet bowl. 

It sometimes slipped his mind that User91400_x didn’t know Minho. He, like anybody else who bothered picking up a magazine he was featured in, just saw what he looked like. He knew the way he modelled clothes. The way he posed. The extent of his facial expressions. Even his runway walk if they looked hard enough online. 

But he didn’t know anything about him. And maybe that was what empowered the model to glare behind the cashier and mutter a ‘throw in a pack of menthols as well,’ when he was about to swipe his card to pay. 

Not smoking in two weeks because the little freak who probably jerked off in Minho’s bed when he wasn’t home doesn’t want him getting sick. What the fuck would he know about him and his health and his needs? 

When he stepped out onto the street from the convenience store and walked back to his apartment, Minho clasped the plastic bag in his left hand that itch bit tighter when he felt that same wave of dust and dirt and smog wash over him. Like a lingering shadow. Like he was forgetting something. 

He tapped his jeans and his jacket– lips thinning when he felt his wallet and phone. But a simple glance over his shoulder revealed everything he was forgetting. 

Just a corner away and stepping out of that same convenience store, underneath the fluorescent orange streetlight, he saw the reflective flash of those two lenses wrapped around his head. A mess of curled dark hair hidden beneath a grey hoodie, hands pocketed across his stomach and baggy jeans leaving him shapeless and languid. 

Minho wasn’t sure why he felt his stomach buzz with excitement when he glared ahead, like he had simply seen what that sticky little creature wanted to be seen as; nothing. He simply swung his bag, letting it crinkle and rustle in the sated midnight wind– knowing that every movement of his muscles and bones was being monitored. Someone actually cared what he looked like when everything was mundane. 

Maybe he liked the way Minho’s back raised as he breathed. Or the hand he ran through his hair. Maybe he made his heart skip a beat when he glanced around at the empty streets, feigning faux curiosity as he flickered his gaze to the moon and stars. Like he gave a shit. User91400_x’s perception of Minho was deep and serious and poetic. 

So, he made sure to look around like his perceptions were something of fact. It was like he was on a shoot. Smile with your eyes, the director would order and Minho would give them what they wanted. Slow and natural… be sexy, they would add when Minho would spread his legs on the props, melting into the character they wanted him to be. 

The sticky little director to his rear wanted him to be good. He wanted him to be healthy and okay. He wanted to listen to him. He wanted to spoil him. He wanted to keep him all to himself. 

Pathetic thing. 

Minho’s smile slowly waned when he reached his apartment and ventured into the elevator, knowing User91400_x would stop just out the front of the building. It was true Minho had yet to find out how he even got into the building in the first place, but the second he typed in the after-hours security code, he sighed when he felt those same eyes on his back. Maybe he needed to move somewhere with a doorman. 

But he knew this boundary. The messy little thing. So pathetic and lonely and dumb that he thought Minho had no idea of his existence. That he would back off when Minho would venture to his apartment, unlock the door and put down his bags. He probably stood out the front with headphones on, listening to the pipes groan and water hitting the tiles when he got in the shower, hand stuffing down his pants even imagining what Minho looked like naked. 

Yet, it was probably that third glass of wine at dinner that stopped Minho before he even went into his bathroom and carried out his normal routine. Morbid curiosity. Sure. Minho was comfortable with morbid curiosity. He wanted to see what happened when he disrupted the harmonic unspoken deal they both had. 

So, he was snatching up a lighter he hadn’t used in two weeks and his fresh packet of cigarettes and heading back to the elevator. 

“What the fuck am I doing?” Minho whispered when he waited to reach the lobby– transferring his weight from his left foot to his right. 

But he knew exactly what he was doing when he peered through the glass windows of the lobby and saw those two reflective lenses, sitting on a bench across the road. Close enough, that was for sure. 

And Minho loved the way he raised his head, body tensing all over, knees pressing tightly together with his inturned feet wearing pristinely white sneakers. Like Minho wasn’t meant to be re-stepping out onto the street at midnight. He was meant to be at the shampoo stage of his shower, the freak probably thought. 

They were closer– even a street’s width apart. Staring. Watching each other. 

Even when Minho walked a few paces to lean against the brick wall of his apartment building, hands in the pocket of his denim jacket as he glared at his stalker. He could just see those pink lips from that small mouth of his. Slightly agape. His grimy hands were still covered in hoodie, but from Minho’s particular vantage point, he could just see his eyes through the lenses of his glasses. 

Minho was not meant to be out here and that was written all over User91400_x’s face. 

So he enjoyed it, leaning against the brick and fiddling through his pockets to grab his fresh carton. He only drew his gaze away when he grabbed a cigarette and rested it between his teeth– trying not to make a noise of contentment as the tip of his tongue pressed against the end of it, missing that taste. But he probably would’ve liked that. Seeing him moan and loll his head back, clasping his eyes shut at the lingering taste. 

Instead, Minho just stared and watched as he lit the tip of the cigarette, inhaling deeply and letting the smoke drift out in a haze. 

Minho couldn’t help his mouth. The way it twisted to the side in a sly smile. 

He couldn’t help that fiery flicker in his chest at the sight of User91400_x looking so uncomfortable. The way his knees drew closer together. Like he was physically pained by the sight. 

Even from across the street, Minho could see his breath– the steady rise and fall of his chest, lips pressed into a tight, thin line. 

Oh, those lips– so pink, even from a distance. 

What would they do for him? Minho wondered. Kiss? Lick? Suck? Worship? 

Maybe nothing, because he was staring at Minho like he wanted to kill him. Like he wanted to run across the road, snatch the cigarette from Minho’s lips and stomp it out in the gutter. Or, he wanted to ash it on Minho’s skin– his face, his chest, his throat. Marking him because, for some sick and twisted reason, he felt like Minho deserved it. 

Oh… Minho was having fun now. 

The kind of fun he’d never quite experienced before. It was a rush. Like trying a new strain of a drug– one he’d never tell his friends or family about because they’d call him an addict or a mess for even thinking about it. But the fun ended as abruptly as it began when User91400_x stood up from the bench, shoulders slumped, and pivoted on his heel to walk away. 

“Coward,” Minho muttered as he exhaled. 

For it was only then, watching him disappear into the shadows and the night, that Minho understood why everyone he knew with any sense would tell him to run the other way. Not because he needed to be scared of the guy. But because maybe… if the feeling lingered and marinated and sat there to dwell, he needed to be scared of Minho instead. 

⨼⨽

For the first time in what looked like months, User91400_x hadn’t posted. He didn’t reshare Minho’s latest campaign which was released a few days prior. Nor did he even acknowledge the photo he took of himself in a new pair of sunglasses. Or the candid one Chan took in the back of a rideshare. 

It seemed his tipsy stint did the trick. Letting him know that he knew. 

Figures, Minho thought. That was all it took? 

“...That’s not even my problem, though,” Minho’s finger lingered over his page, frozen in time, photos of himself all over it but not updated in days. Like it was an archive and Minho suddenly lost faith it would ever reopen. “Right? Should that be my problem? Do I look like I give off the vibes that you can just do whatever you want to me? Like I don’t even exist?” 

Minho ran his fingers along his empty, soulless profile picture of nothingness and snapped his eyes upward to glare at the man sitting next to him through the mirror they were sharing. 

“What?” Minho didn’t mean to mutter as he felt the silky smooth brush dipped in gloss run along his bottom lip, the makeup artist buzzing around him as the stylist finished spraying something in his hair. 

He tried his best to recall Hyunjin’s words. Knowing that he often asked too many questions. Pried a little too hard. Pressed and pressed and pressed that he got an answer out of Minho the second he suspected something was up. So, he tried pulling something out of his ass. That usually worked. 

“–No,” he figured was the best course of action to keep Hyunjin as far away from the strange, strange thoughts pervading his mind as he tucked his phone into his dressing gown pocket. “You’re not a walkover, Hyun. They’re just… that’s just the industry talking, you know?” 

Hyunjin sighed as his makeup artist sprayed a setting mist across his finished look. 

“I’m thinking of dropping out of my course anyway,” the younger man hummed, glaring only at himself in the mirror, ensuring every edge and curve was perfect before they had to start shooting. “They don’t take me seriously– when have they ever, though?” 

Minho thinned his lips as he stared back at the guy who had been one of the biggest players in the industry for like ever smiling sadly like a strange fish out of water. Sure, Minho only got close to him to garner more opportunities, but the second he realised he wasn’t one of the other selfish airheads that he saw in the industry but rather a chattering, kind-hearted guy who had more to him than the general public ever thought, they became rather close. He almost feared getting as big as Hyunjin. All those fans and people watching him. 

It almost crossed his mind that he probably had his own User91400_x that saw him as everything. That followed him home. Watched him come and go. Monitored everything he put in his body. Dreamed of even being an inch closer. 

But maybe his User91400_x was more loyal. Not some weak thing that ran from a fight. 

“You can do better than them anyway,” Minho sighed, glancing at himself and the strand of dark hair the stylist left languid on his forehead. “I mean… we get this bullshit over and done with and you can do whatever you want.” 

“This bullshit,” Hyunjin hummed longingly, side-swiping the makeup artist with his cat-like gaze as he leaned closer to the mirror to inspect the flick of eyeliner and the white rose he had pinned against his shoulder-length hair the shade of midnight, just above his ear. “Don’t you think a flower is a little on the nose for a perfume campaign?” 

Minho snorted, sure to avert his eyes at the directors and stylists decorating the set with even more white roses. 

“At least you get a rose,” he hummed, leaning closer to the mirror beside one of his closest friends in the industry to inspect the dark makeup on his waterline, making his eyes pop. “All I’m gonna get is a cold.” 

Hyunjin was sure to scoff, eyes flickering to the wardrobe they had picked out for the two of them. The thinnest white shirt possible for Minho and some vest thing for Hyunjin.

“Would it kill them to turn the thermostat up?” 

“Like they’d wanna pay the bill.” 

There was a reason Minho often got hired on shoots or walked the runway with Hyunjin. Maybe because like Minho, Hyunjin took direction well. Listened intently. Did what he was told– all the while adding his own subtle flair to every instruction. 

He never complained when he saw Hyunjin’s name on a calling sheet. 

“Minho, get behind him. Hyunjin, sit with your legs spread,” the director had a flurry of set designers around them, decorating their tight-knit bodies with more white rose petals. “We need devotion. We need love. We need… Euphoria.” 

Minho almost rolled his eyes at the particularly corny instruction, avoiding Hyunjin’s gaze out of fear of bursting out laughing. But they were professionals, after all. They settled into place seamlessly– kneeling behind Hyunjin and moving in sync with every click and buzz and flash of the camera. 

They were surrounded by fixtures and lighting and corporate lackeys from the perfume company, fussing over every detail of the shoot. 

“Play into each other,” the director called out again, voice pitched with that excitement. Their poses shifted, movements closer, tighter, a mirrored dance of limbs and stares. 

Click. Click. Click. 

“Break. Water.” The command was sharp and the team swarmed in with bottles, towels and touch-ups with the director, grinning under his silly little hat and scampering over to the monitors by the lighting technicians. 

“You going to that club opening tonight?” Hyunjin whispered, his voice low as they waited for the next round, makeup darting in for touch-ups. 

“Not if I can help it,” Minho was quick to mutter, feeling the soft brush of rouge against his cheeks. 

“Come on…” Hyunjin drawled. “Lix will be there. It won’t be that bad, huh? You can get ready at my place.” 

Minho snorted, inhaling deeply as the makeup artist darted away.

“He does owe us a round from last time.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Hyunjin smirked as they reconvened their positions.

“Okay– very good, very good, guys– we’re gonna go again!” The director’s voice was animated, hands waving wildly as he pointed at different people on set, barking out orders. 

Repositioning, Minho sighed as his focus shifted to the monitors where the playback looped over and over and over again. 

And then, like every coming summer, he saw them. 

That same pair of dark-rimmed glasses reflecting the bright fluorescents from the screen. He was sitting in the exact spot Minho had seen him in once before, just at the edge of the set. Before all the following. Before the unease. Before Minho had realised that this was all one big game and boy… his opponent had greatly underestimated him. 

It was a hit of that euphoric, sticky drug– shooting through his veins, straight up his spine, muscles tensing involuntarily. His mind sharpened, every instinct on high alert and yet… there was a thrill– a rush– that surged right through him. 

The glasses glinted in the light, reflecting his own image back at him. A warped image. A strange image. A distorted version of himself. 

A small smile curled at the edge of Minho’s lips.

 So, they were playing again. Good. 

“Hey,” Minho whispered, dipping right by the rose decorating the space above Hyunjin’s ear. “I wanna try something.” 

“Huh?” Hyunjin hissed back, spreading his legs, ripping his gaze from his agent who was trying to communicate what he wanted for lunch on the side of the set. 

“Just trust me, okay?” Minho whispered again. “Play off my lead.” 

Hyunjin turned on his shoulder, that icy gaze only heightened by the sheen of makeup extenuating the curve of his eyes. 

“Why are you going rogue?” 

“Yes or no, Hwang?” 

“Fine but make it quick,” he rolled his eyes and thinned his lips, glancing back at the army of people waiting for them and him… sitting all small and invisible behind a monitor– like Minho wouldn’t notice him. 

Nothing in days. No trail. No posts. No desperate, pathetic words begging him to take better care of himself. No nothing. 

It was almost nauseating that Minho had no power in extinguishing the fire simmering in his chest. He could just see the tuft of his dark hair, a mess of a thing but there and clear and it wasn’t hidden by a hood or a shitty dark baseball cap that he usually fashioned when he liked to follow Minho home. 

Maybe it was the fact he actually showed up to a photo shoot he knew Minho would be on that made the model’s mind a cacophonous vessel of so much noise and words. Part of him was screaming– the type of adrenaline he felt when he walked a runway or sat idle, waiting to find out if he landed a campaign or not. 

But the second the director yelled out a ‘let’s go again,’ Minho snapped into action. 

From his vantage point behind Hyunjin, he reached around his statuesque neck, fingers pressing against the flesh. He could feel Hyunjin’s breath hitch, his body tense, but in the fleeting second of a bodily reaction, the younger model was meeting him in the middle. He would always be such a good little professional. 

Minho eyed his stretch of skin, the shade of honey as he elongated his neck– like he were a damsel, bearing his throat and veins for a very hungry vampire. The director was making some sort of contented noise. Words like yes and more and keep doing that! But Minho could only feel those two eyes burning into him. 

He knew matters were made worse when Hyunjin snapped his head to the side, staring up at Minho– eyebrows drawn together, dark, sharp eyes staring back at him like they were lovers or something. It was perfect. And truly, Minho couldn’t help the way his stomach simmered as he clasped Hyunjin’s flesh tighter, feeling it yield and move beneath his fingertips. 

God, he wanted to look to the side. See his face. See that disdain and to see him pale like a ghost. He wanted to see his envy–  his green, his garden. He wanted to see him slip those sticky little hands into his pants, and rub and tug and play at the sight. It was cute. 

Maybe he imagined that he could be in Hyunjin’s exact position one day, feeling Minho’s lips lean down and brush over the jut of his sharp collarbone. Maybe he wanted to exist as the taller man’s long and elegant fingers as they reached upward and tangled in Minho’s hair. Maybe he wanted to crawl across the floor, embarrassing himself in front of the whole crew by grovelling at Minho’s feet as though he were an altar and he was just a pathetic little servant offering up his body as a sacrifice. A mouth for him to use. 

And Minho saw him then, just out the corner of his eye as he continued to pose, holding Hyunjin tightly as the younger man turned and looked into the camera in their compromised position– letting that waft of his natural perfume infiltrate his senses. He could just see the reflective white of the set in his lenses, hidden behind the monitors. He could see his small pink mouth,  diminished, defeated and curled into a ball. Like it hurt to watch Minho like this. 

He could see his throat and the way he swallowed. Minho wondered what he was going to do about it. He couldn’t break into his apartment and shove Hyunjin down the toilet. He couldn’t do anything more than stare and observe like a good little voyeur. He knew his place. That was what Minho missed most about User91400_x, after all. 

Minho wasn’t sure how long he was lost. Deep in the softness of Hyunjin’s skin, his fingers ran rampant along his flesh. That phantom touch was intoxicating. Feeling the taller man react and breathe and run his eyes all over him… like he was putting on a show for the little freak that always sat in the front row in his personal auditorium. It was like he wanted his gaze to last forever… to linger as it always did. 

But the second the director calls cut, Minho’s eyes almost widen when he feels a vibration against his chest and a flash of dark hair break away from his body. 

“Any closer and it would be porn,” Hyunjin immediately broke from that trance Minho ensnared them both in before he laughed. “Great direction though… oh my god– oh my god, you will not believe what that newbie director said to me at that skincare shoot I was at last week–” 

Minho blinked through it, unable to just snap like Hyunjin and venture down some long-winded anecdote about a small inconvenience that happened to him the week prior. He still felt that flame. He still felt that fire. He still needed to do something with his hands before they pressed against the floorboards and hoisted himself upward, straight in the direction of those reflective lenses hidden behind a monitor. 

In a single glance toward him… in his lowly, lonely little box of the universe, Minho truly couldn’t help the way he stared. 

And stay away from me for good… He supposed his gaze attempted to convey. But god… that feeling of him so close was that same injection of heroin in his veins as it had been for months now. 

“Really nice work today,” his agent was grinning as the stylist syphoned a robe around his shoulders. “The execs are talking about keeping the two of you on for the summer campaign too but… you didn’t hear that from me.” 

Minho could only nod and chew his lips and let the hands of random people he had never met roam all over his body. Even as they removed the gems from the corners of his eyes. Even when they tightened the cord to the robe around his hips. Even when they rubbed the sweat from his brow. 

Even as he stared at the wall before him, imagining those sticky little fingers to be the ones who ran across his skin instead. He liked to think that when he broke into his apartment of a night… he saw Minho asleep and maybe played into some sick little fantasies he had buzzing around his mind. Maybe he ran his fingertips across Minho’s sheets. Wanting his scent to linger. Maybe he sniffed his dirty laundry– after all, he knew he was stealing bits and pieces so he couldn’t even put him past that. Maybe he laved his tongue along the rim of the dirty glasses in his sink. Where he knew Minho’s lips and taste once existed. 

Nothing he ever did would surprise Minho at this point. 

“Hey Min,” a scoff of a voice on the other side of the now-waning set almost sends a shiver down his spine. “These look fucking great.” 

Minho turned on his shoulder to see Hyunjin, in his robe wrapped tightly around his thin body and an iced coffee now held in his left hand. He was standing before the monitors. The sample pictures were already updated. Tens of them. Littering the entire screen. 

Minho’s hands wrapped around his statuesque neck. Hyunjin’s long, elegant fingers wrapped tightly in his hair. The ones where he was brushing along his throat. When Hyunjin’s eyes rolled back like he was experiencing the most pleasurable bout of euphoria possible. 

But Minho’s gaze was cast somewhere else. 

On that pathetic thing sitting before the monitor Hyunjin was musing at, the mess of curls decorating his temples and forehead, looking as though he wanted to sink through the floor. 

“Can you show me the next page?” Hyunjin was still bumbling. “Where’s my agent? Fuck– no, seriously, this is really great, Min– look at your eyes, damn–” 

But Minho didn’t hear much. Just slowly crept closer and closer, feet directly behind the seat of the lowly technician doing what he was told like a good, subservient boy. 

Oo… Zoom in, Hyunjin was ordering between long pauses of admiring himself. God, my arms look great, he would grin. Can you go back to the third one? Wait– can you enhance the fourth one? 

And he obeyed, of course. So compliantly. 

Minho’s eyes lingered on his fingers, on the mouse. Clicking and scrolling and doing everything Hyunjin asked of him. He had thin fingers… neat nail beds– skin the shade of fresh honey. The same hands that probably plucked his toothbrush from the cup in his bathroom and ran the bristles along his gums to even garner a hint of Minho’s taste. 

So, the model bent down, to the level of the poor little technician, moving his head to the point it was just lingering by his shoulder. 

“Mm,” Minho whispered, sucking in a deep breath of that scent– strangely sweet. He flickered his gaze to the side, seeing those big, dark, pesky eyes behind those black-rimmed glasses reflecting Minho and Hyunjin holding each other in ways he could only dream. “They’re quite good.” 

He agreed with Hyunjin but his voice wasn’t in response to the taller of the two, still going on about how good his arms looked. He was speaking to the technician, his User91400_x, trying to make himself smaller in the chair before them. Like that was even possible. He wasn’t even breathing. In every second Minho’s eyes ran along his hair, strangely soft and clean and freshly washed, his chest didn’t rise or fall. 

In fact, he stilled. Like he was waiting for Minho to blink and recognise him. Point at him with darkness in his eyes and utter that security seized the one thing that was the catalyst of all of his nightmares and strange desires for the past few months. Security was right there, after all. Right by the doorway and the lunch table. 

“Which one is your favourite?” He muttered, right by his ear. Just one little sound. One little word. Anything. Minho didn’t know what he sounded like. Was his voice as weak and as pathetic as him? Did his pink lips portray pretty sounds? Was his heart quaking at the proximity? Was his inner fire burning like Minho’s inferno? “I like this one.” 

He placed a hand on his shoulder covered in a heavy jacket. The touch was tight enough to feel the sharpness of one of his collarbones on his thumb. The sound of his breath hitching was music to Minho’s ears. It was a symphony of violins and pianos and a cello. It was the fuel that would feed the tides of the strange fascination Minho had for him. There, he pointed at the shot the technician enlarged. Right. That was Minho’s favourite, for sure. 

It was a still of his hand wrapped around Hyunjin’s neck– the exposure of the lighting showed the pink indentation of his fingertips across his flawless skin. It was raw and real and everything he wanted that little freak to see. 

Was it a warning? Probably. Did he like the way the technician tensed, tongue poking out of his mouth to run along his pink bottom lip? Undoubtedly. 

“–yeah… but my leg looks funny in that one.” 

Minho’s eyes didn’t break away. Not to Hyunjin and his mouth continuing to run… like he thought Minho’s words were for him and not the quivering mess before him. Whose steady breaths were quickening every second Minho lingered closer and closer, fingers tightening on his shoulder. 

“Hm?” Minho whispered again, letting Hyunjin carry on now that his agent sauntered by the monitor, joining him in his musings. “You didn’t tell me your favourite. Come on… which one is it?” 

Maybe Minho’s eyes flashed white when he saw the technician’s chest rise and fall jaggedly. His eyes were pressed to the screen. Like that reality he existed in every single day staring at a screenful of Minho was something of a comfort when Minho was right there, watching over his shoulder– speaking to him, begging for his attention. 

“Is it this one?” He continued, pointing at the shot of Hyunjin’s eyes rolled back in his head. “Or do you like this one here?” He ushered his head toward the still where Minho was staring deeply into the camera. Like Hyunjin was his to have and control and wield. Like Minho was the thorn amongst the bed of white roses. 

The technician’s mouth opened and closed. Minho could see his teeth. Straight and white and pretty– words balling and hiding behind them like they could possibly say anything to shock the older man. 

But instead of giving him anything even akin to pleasure or satisfaction, the technician thinned his lips, clicked around a few times on the screen and brought up another image before shoving himself away from the model with the grip on his shoulder, flying out of his seat and disappearing amongst the crew. 

Minho wanted to scoff. Wanted to chase after him. Wanted to find him, pin him up against the wall and force him to explain himself. 

And yet, his eyes only softened when he glanced at the screen and all that User91400_x left there… a single image of Minho. In a brief test shot where Minho was looking at the camera as Hyunjin was slightly out of frame– getting his makeup retouched. It wasn’t his favourite photo of himself. In fact, it hadn’t even cracked the top 20. But it was him and raw and candid– every flaw evident on his skin, even the follicles of makeup were clear and existing before his very eyes. 

He could only flicker his gaze to the door left of set, opening and closing and taking with it, the only thing in the world to elude him. 

⨼⨽

Morbid curiosity. That was what it was. 

Everybody was morbidly curious sometimes. Searching up crime scene photos after watching a documentary. Twisting to the side to watch the emergency efforts on the pile-up on the highway. Even opening Pandora’s Box… probably the most ill-advised thing Minho could ever do if he wanted to carry on with what little semblance of sanity he felt he had left. 

But his Pandora’s Box wasn’t this mystical thing of wonder and fable. In fact, opening his Pandora’s Box in this case consisted of a simple phone call, his laptop and a cigarette between his teeth, waiting for the clasps to undo on their own. 

“Why do you need to know?” His agent chuckled on the phone at quarter to midnight, just after Minho got back into his apartment after spending the night out with Hyunjin and Felix. “What is a technician going to get you?” 

Minho stared at the empty screen on his laptop, fingers tap, tap, tapping on his kitchen table as he waited for his agent to just give him what he wanted. 

“I just need to know his name,” he muttered, teeth clenching together in a mess of sharp little fangs. 

“How am I supposed to know?” 

“He’s…” 

The guy breaking into my apartment at night. 

The guy threatening my safety. 

The guy who hadn’t updated his page or followed him home in days. 

“He’s got a copy of the stills from today that I need.” 

God. Fuck. What was he doing? 

He was a second away from lighting the cigarette now sitting between his index and middle fingers. Letting his expensive couch and clean kitchen fixtures waft with that sting of smoke and hazy mist. He only wanted one thing. One little, tiny, thing. 

User91400_x had his name. His address. His work schedule. His code to even get into the fucking building. 

He was owed the same in return. 

“Here,” and then a ping of his email caught his attention, eyes lighting up at the little red dot appearing at the top of his inbox. “It’s the call sheet from today’s shoot. I don’t know if his name is gonna be on there but it’s late Minho and I–” 

He hung up the second he pulled the call sheet up. His eyes were darting across the words. The director. Minho. Hyunjin. His makeup artist. The executives from the perfume company. Lighting Assistants. Photographer. Set Designers. 

And a digital technician called Han Jisung. 

His fingers tapped along his lips, feigning off that craving of nicotine on his tongue. Was it meant to be this exciting to find out somebody’s name? The name of a digital technician of all things. User91400_x. With his sick little social media feed. Who once posted mundane, boring and unaesthetic posts that anybody seldom cared about. Books. Quotes. Small trinkets. That same skyline on that same concrete balcony. 

Han Jisung………………………………….Football Player 

Han Jisung…………………………………. Jazz Singer 

Han Jisung…………………………………. Consultant Services 

He didn’t exist in a precursory search either. So insignificant and monotonous that only other people with the same name as him fronted. No matter how many pages he searched through. No matter how deeply he felt his nails dig into the flesh of his palm when he was led to dead end after dead end. No matter how grating it felt to have all of his information, so readily fucking available while the sick freak with a stalking problem got to hide in plain sight. 

And so he tried flickering through images this time. Of the football player. And the jazz singer. And the older man in his suit and the lazily designed Consultancy Service logo. 

Until he found a glimpse– even a fleeting one– of that mess of dark hair and glasses and honeyed skin. An actual real photograph of him and his face and body. Not hiding. Not diverting Minho’s gaze. He was there and evident and clear. 

And Minho’s fingers were brushing against the screen in an instant. He could just touch him. The pixels wouldn’t elude him. The pixels wouldn’t run. The pixels wouldn’t back down from a fight. A phantom taste of something… maybe metal… maybe blood… maybe vengeance danced along his tongue as he glared at him. Maybe a year younger than what he would be today. 

His lips were curved into that same shy smile, angular jaw and protruding cheeks. He had a camera strapped to his chest, his eyes those big dark pools of things and hidden behind those same glasses. He was delicate. Thin wrists and tan arms. Even his legs, covered in those dark baggy jeans, were slightly inturned. Feet wearing a pair of grey sneakers. Nice ones. 

Han Jisung - son of Korea’s leading tech specialist, 23. 

He wasn’t sure just how many times he read the caption beneath the photo of him. Maybe a hundred times. In case his eyes were playing tricks on him. Han Jisung. Son of… 

God, his teeth were digging into his bottom lip so hard. Maybe he was feeling saliva. Maybe he was feeling blood. But something was pooling in the space beneath his tongue at the idea.

A something of a man… who looked the way he did. With mousy features, and a decent fashion sense but burdened with those eyes. So dark and deep and unsettling. 

He was the type of guy who Minho would pry on in a bar if they ever came across each other naturally. He had something of a hankering for cuter, more doe-eyed men. All innocent and subservient and sweet. The type that blushed when Minho would buy them a drink or compliment their hair. The type that suppressed the noises they made when Minho first inched inside like they wanted to be good for him and not fall apart at the seams from his touch alone. 

He looked like he didn’t need to stalk and prey and follow. And yet he did. To Minho. 

Was Minho his first? Did he have somebody else he bothered in the same way? With the gifts and messages and dedication? 

Did he break into anyone else’s home? Did he touch himself? Did he monitor anyone else so closely that their mind was tormented with flashes of those lenses that caught everything in sight? Did he yearn and long and torture himself with fleeting glimpses of another? All in the hopes that maybe one day they could be so close that they were huddled behind a laptop, proverbially banging their head against a brick wall trying to figure out a thing about him? 

Han Jisung. Han. Jisung. Twenty-three. Seoul University graduate. Honours. Rich daddy. Trust fund. 

And the catalyst to a mind that wouldn’t shut up with all of the thoughts of what he would look like in nothing but those dark-rimmed glasses. So watchful and reflective and shiny. Whether he would come instantly at Minho’s touch on his bare skin. Whether he would fall to his knees immediately, pawing at the fly of his jeans, peering up at him with those desperate eyes. He wanted to know why… why Minho? He could have anyone– could have anything and yet… 

Minho felt the base of his stomach stir at all winding thoughts of him. His small, pink mouth. How it would open up upon command. How he would bend down, present himself, give and give and give because maybe he had never received before. 

His phone was in his hand. User91400_x. And a new post… the first in the days that followed since Minho lit up a cigarette and stared at him in all ways he definitely didn’t want to be stared at. 

A black square. Sitting aimless amongst the sea of Minho, Minho, Minho. 

There, beneath the endless void of nothingness, the caption read a simple question: 

Why are you doing this? 

And Minho didn’t realise that he had his hand in his sweats the entire time, tugging and pulling and grasping himself at the very thought of being near him again… that his hands and underwear were stained with the build-up that only that glimpse of communication could be responsible for. 

⨼⨽

That first night was for his name. The second night was for everything else. 

He wasn’t particularly proud of the clothes he had configured to his body. Every shade of dark and shapeless. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing… lingering on a street corner, staring up at a shiny new apartment building a couple of blocks away from his own. 

It wasn’t that difficult to find his address. Once he had his name, he had his father’s name. Once he had his father’s name, he had his company’s name. Once he had his company’s name, he had some news articles about it. Risky investments in other tech firms, data, research and property. Even the apartment the founder bought for his son… nameless in the article, but Minho saw him bleed through the lines as he all too familiarised himself with his father’s portfolio. 

It took some trial and error and some very questionable searches. 

But once he figured out that User91400_x’s father bought a handful of properties in the past few years… he struck out the family home, the penthouse apartment four postcodes over and the farmhouse in the country. A one-bedroom, two-bathroom studio just a few blocks away from Minho’s place did just fine. 

And he was standing before it at quarter to one in the morning, in a hoodie he only wore to the gym– unsure if he was meant to feel guilty or gross for doing a very shitty, very illegal thing. 

But User91400_x– Han Jisung, was active again. 

The posts were frequent. Taking the same form as his usual. 

A barrage of photos of Minho followed that question he left on the black square amongst the sea of the model’s face and body. 

The posts of Minho came in the hundreds if not thousands. Of the week he missed out on uploading about him. He got that campaign that came out a few days prior. He got the photo of Minho in the sunglasses. He got the photo of him in the back of a rideshare. He screenshotted everything he liked and interacted with. He got the photo of him at that nightclub opening with Hyunjin and Felix– even adding a creative new flair of scrubbing out his friend’s faces with red. Like they didn’t exist… only Minho did. 

And the captions to the photos didn’t waver in their devotion. 

I wish you would touch me again. 

You smell so pretty up close, Lee Minho. 

You deserve the world and more. 

I just wish you would touch me again. 

Do you remember? 

Lee Minho? 

Do you remember what I feel like? 

Maybe one part of his mind worried that if another came across his page they would put two and two together. But the two and two to be put together were very ugly, gnarled things that could barely make sense in Minho’s head– let alone to an innocent person who found his account. 

Nobody came or went for at least a half hour and fuck… Minho wasn’t even sure what he would’ve done if he saw him, Han Jisung, leaving his apartment with somewhere to go. Would he follow him? See what sick and twisted thing he did to fill his time? Would he confront him? 

It was in all fairness, after all. 

Han Jisung did this to Minho. For months. Maybe longer– he really wasn’t sure. 

He wasn’t going to hurt him. He wasn’t going to break into his apartment and steal his shit. He wasn’t going to do anything bad because Minho wasn’t a criminal. He didn’t do this. He didn’t need to do this. 

But something was itching at the back of his mind that he just couldn’t scratch on his own… no matter how hard he tried. So perhaps, after psyching himself up to the point that adrenaline was coursing through his veins, he found himself dipping into the apartment building the second he saw a few guys tap their key cards and walk through the automatic doors– locked after hours. 

He slipped in… like he was a reclusive member of their group– just dipped toward the back and wearing all black. And fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What the hell was he doing? 

Too late now. He was in the lobby. No reception but cameras all over the place. 

Okay. He was going to act relaxed now. He wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t a stalker. He just wanted… Han Jisung. 

He slipped into the elevator with the others– a plastic bag of beer and chips in their hands as they laughed– wafting gin and soju and a night spent out on the town. God… Minho was just like them. Social and real and normal. Not a recluse backed into the corner of the elevator as they continued to talk about a baseball game. 

Minho flickered his gaze to the keycard in their hands and how they tapped it on a scanner before selecting their floor. The fifth floor. 

No. No. No. No. No. No. 

Minho needed to be on the thirteenth floor. This just wouldn’t do. 

So, he rode with them to the fifth floor and watched them leave. Good. They were gone. 

Now alone, he ripped the hood from his head and pressed the button for the 13th floor, but when it lit up in the blue backlight, it faded instantly. 

The scanner. 

Okay… okay. Minho, teeth sunk into his bottom lip, stole away whatever strength he felt he had left and opened the elevator. Peering out, he saw those drunken baseball fanatics had somehow made it to their apartment. The hallways were empty. Dead. And so, he glared ahead at the space in front of the elevator, at the door reading Fire Escape Stairs, and sighed. 

After clobbering up eight flights of stairs, wondering why the hell he was doing this and what the hell he was even going to do, he made it to the thirteenth floor. Unit six on the thirteenth floor to be exact. 

Yet that voice… that headache… that was feeding him thoughts of reason, somehow faded into the night when his eyes laid eyes on it. The door was right there. Before him. He could touch it. He did touch it. 

Han Jisung. Han. Jisung. User91400_x. He didn’t need to do this. He didn’t need to worship Minho like he was an altar. 

But he did. Oh god… he did. 

But why? Why? 

Minho’s fingers ran along the silver handle. The keyhole. He even squinted his eye and fruitlessly glanced into the peephole, only seeing darkness and his eyelashes.

It was maddening. Being this close. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears and his stomach in his throat… thrumming a frantic beat that drowned out every rational thought. His breath was hitching now, his chest rising and falling as he stood there– inches from a door that could hold all the answers he craved– or none at all. 

He should turn around. Walk away. Forget this whole thing. 

But his feet didn’t move. His hand didn’t leave the handle. The curiosity wouldn’t stop gnawing. Like a dog with a bone that wouldn’t fit properly in its mouth. 

Maybe he could knock. He would be awake, after all. He posted a photo of Minho a mere fifteen minutes ago. Maybe he would answer and Minho could just… ask. Demand. Confront him. He imagined that slate grey door swinging open to reveal those dark, glassy eyes and that sweetly innocent face that had been burned into his memory like hot iron. 

But he hesitated. What if Jisung didn’t open the door? What if he wasn’t alone? What if– 

No. He couldn’t think about that. Not now. 

He wasn’t a criminal. He wasn’t a stalker. He was just a man standing outside another man’s door, wanting– needing– answers. He just needed to squat and lean close to the metal handle, seeing if he could see anything through the keyhole. 

His breath fogged against the cold metal, the chill biting into his skin even through the fabric of his hoodie. The hallway was so silent. So oppressive. 

But the darkness of the keyhole was all that stared back at him– unblinking, unyielding, a void that offered nothing but more questions. 

And still, Minho didn’t move. 

⨼⨽

Maybe it was two in the morning when Minho realised he wasn't home. He surely wasn’t asleep. Every few minutes, there was a new post, a new caption. 

Thinking of you tonight, Lee Minho. 

You look so good in white. 

I wish you weren’t sitting with the others. 

Your hand. 

It’s on that slut’s leg. 

Do you love him? 

Did you fuck him? Are you fucking him, Lee Minho? 

Minho shoved his phone into his pocket when the posts got more and more deranged and User91400_x noticed unimportant peculiars available to him. The one of him sitting with Hyunjin and Felix at the nightclub opening was the most prevalent– given that his hand was resting casually on Felix’s lap. 

It was nothing– just the ease of friendship. There were other photos released from that night too, like the one where Hyunjin’s lips were on Felix’s cheek. He knew for a fact they weren’t fucking. God. Why did he care so much what this guy thought? 

And so, began the walk back to his apartment. Maybe it was a walk of shame– embarrassing and fruitless. He’d gotten nothing out of it. 

The streets were these long stretches before him. Empty but for the occasional rumble of a distant car. The orange glow of the streetlights felt like they were singling him out. A lonely loser who couldn’t even capture the one person who made him his world. Even a stray cat darted into the shadows and a dog barked in the distance– everything told him to get home. 

When he reached his building and got into the elevator, he glared at his reflection in the mirrored walls. His brows furrowed at the dark hood pulled over his head, the bags beneath his eyes from the research the previous night– the complete lack of touch with reality staring back at him. He looked almost like a stranger to himself. Disheveled. Tired. 

He would block Jisung’s account in the morning, change his locks, lodge a police report maybe, and wipe his hands clean of this whole mess. Because Minho knew the more he learned about the sticky little thing that followed him from place to place, the drizzle of rain in his mind would become a storm. And that wouldn’t end well for anyone. 

With a sigh, he fumbled with his keys, fingers clumsy with exhaustion. His feet still dragged one over the other, and he nearly tripped forward– his foot colliding with the door. He braced himself for the pain that should have followed– the sharp sting– the wince that would have slipped from his mouth, his eyes squeezing shut in reflex. 

But the door didn’t stay closed. 

Instead, it clicked open… like it hadn’t been properly shut in the first place. 

He noticed the two shoes by the door when it first opened. White sneakers. Clean. Orderly. Neatly put to the side in the same spot that Minho left his house slippers. Guests usually left their shoes right where those clean white sneakers sat. But he didn’t have any guests frequent his apartment at two in the morning. 

A creak of noise sounds off in the bedroom, hidden by a wall and immediately Minho’s eyes notice his circular kitchen table and that everything he left on there was put away. His laptop– now on his desk. His coffee mug– now hanging with the others. His plates that were once unwashed with the scraps of last night’s dinner, sitting all soapy on the drying rack by his sink. 

And then he hears another creak. And another. And another. Footsteps on his bedroom floorboards. 

Minho’s stomach was tying and untying into knots as the second flittered on. Not sure if he underestimated him. Not sure if he had a knife… maybe to peel off his skin and wear a suit of it like some of the freaks he watched in true crime documentaries. Did Minho need to grab the closest hard object to him and hope for the best? Did he need to back away and call the police? Did he need to prepare himself for what was to come? 

And then that panicked voice in his head faded away for he was face to face with the intruder in his midst. 

Dark-rimmed glasses poked out of the bedroom first, wide eyes gleaming behind a mask of deranged curiosity. Minho’s heart pounded so fiercely he could feel it against his ribs, the gummy flesh of the muscle trying its best to bleed through his sturdy bone. His breath hitched, fingers trembled at his sides– electricity, coursing through his veins. 

For a moment, they just stood there, staring at each other across a darkened room. Two strangers at the wrong place at the wrong time at two in the morning. In his own home– Minho felt fear lodge itself firmly in his chest. 

No. No, he didn’t need to be scared. He wasn’t scared. 

His breathing, in fact, began to steady but that heart of his… it refused to relent. It continued to beat– hard, erratic– pushing up into his throat and pulsing on his tongue. Only now did he realise how starving he had been these last few days. 

Eyes flickered to his intruder’s body. His dark t-shirt and jacket concealed his shape– hiding every curve and surface. Maybe for a good reason. Who knew what Minho would think if he saw his body and flesh for the giving? 

Jisung’s bottom lip quivered– mouth opening and closing with each passing second as if trying to find words that wouldn’t come. 

What could he possibly have to say? How could he justify this? What did he get up to? Minho was curious. 

So, he took a step forward. 

“M-Minho–” There it was. His voice– deeper than Minho had imagined, but scared, trembling and weak. Of course, it was. 

Minho’s gaze flickered past him and into the bedroom, scanning for anything out of place. Everything seemed normal– stilled, but who knew? Maybe his sticky little fingers had planted a camera somewhere this time. With his daddy’s money and tech connections, Minho wouldn’t be surprised at what else he had hidden around. 

“I was just… I–” 

He stopped when Minho took another step forward to his step backward. 

“I w-was just cleaning up… you hadn’t done your laundry or put away your takeout, and I bought you a new cleanser–” 

He fumbled through his pockets, clumsy and desperate, and pulled out a small blue bottle. Minho recognised the brand. Expensive. 

“See– see, it’s anti-inflammatory because I know your skin gets irritated and–” 

Silence again when Minho moved closer. His eyes darted around Minho’s apartment– seeking refuge from the man before him. He was looking to the ceiling, to the floor, to his bedroom and to the laptop now sitting perfectly on the desk. As though they could possibly help him now. Even his bottom lip continued to tremble… so pink and pretty and his, if he just asked. 

Minho could almost laugh. 

God… he was crazy. He had to be crazy. Insane, in fact. And yet, despite everything, Minho found his own fingers curling, his breath catching, his heartbeat sounding off in the space between his ears as he looked at him up close. What was this? 

Morbid curiosity, he supposed. 

So, he took another step forward, until the fly in his web had no choice but to press his back against the closest wall. 

“I thought you were… I thought–” he continued to choke on his words. Like they were thick and jagged and stuck in his throat. Chest rising and falling quickly. Eyes darting everywhere but the subject of his fixation. “A-And you were meant to be asleep you weren’t… where were you?” 

Minho couldn’t hide the unfathomable shock written all over his face. Where was he? He spat like a scorned lover accusing him of infidelity. Oh… but he looked so strangely gentle and soft all angry. 

His chest was vibrating. His tongue swept along his bottom lip. Even his hands opened and closed– flexing the muscles in his arms that wanted to reach forward and grab. 

“W-Were you with someone?” Jisung’s voice was a whisper, all out of touch. Minho could only see the whites of his eyes beneath the din of his dark-rimmed glasses. So wide and big and aghast. “Is that where you were?” 

His voice was a melodic hum in Minho’s ears. He was strong enough to stare. He was strong enough to flicker his gaze to his pink lips and perfectly white, straight teeth as he continued to speak. He was strong enough to inhale that strangely sweet perfume clad to his body and something else… Was that Minho’s new cologne? 

He was too far gone. He was lost. He was troubled. He was seriously fucked up. 

But he was trembling… like Minho made him nervous. Oh? But he claimed to know him so well. He was continuing to speak. Continuing to assume. 

Maybe on another the words would’ve sounded harsh. Disruptive. Even violent as his breathing continued to spike. 

Yet, Han Jisung and his pretty mouth and deranged mind that didn’t know anything of order or normalcy, said the words like he was terrified of Minho. He knew he shouldn’t be in his apartment. He knew he shouldn’t be buying strange, expensive gifts. Or cleaning his house like they were lovers sharing the space. 

He had some awareness of how batshit crazy this all was and yet… continued to speak. Continued to dart his eyes all around– avoiding the stare Minho truly couldn’t help. He even used his hands to get his point across– waving them around or picking at the skin near his nail beds. Pretty, long, slender fingers. So sticky. 

“Please,” he then whispered, looking down– almost out of shame. Which was ironic in a way when Minho thought him shameless in everything else he did. “I can leave, just don’t… please–” 

“Don’t what?” Minho hummed, unable to rip his gaze away. It would’ve been easy. To follow his darting eyes or fixate on his fidgeting hands. His energy was so nervously rancid that Minho imagined a dark cloud was suddenly flurrying on the ceiling of his apartment– threatening a torrent of rain at any second. “What do you think I should do to you for breaking into my apartment?” 

“I-I… I didn’t break in I just–” 

“Just what?” Minho took another step closer, eyebrows raised. “Were you hoping I’d be in here? Asleep?” 

A shadow of something cast quickly across his face. 

Minho really couldn’t help it. He couldn’t. 

To see the man he had spent the entire night scouring the internet for, piecing together a picture from scraps and shadows and– there he was, standing right before him. 

Han Jisung. Digital technician. He had been working in the fashion industry for just a year. Was it that first day on set, where Minho noticed him lingering at the edge of the crowd, that had been the catalyst for all this? And god… Minho felt almost dirty for finding him so pretty, all demure and scared and hiding in the shadows like some lost thing. 

But the closeness of their proximity was rewarding in a way. His hair– it looked even softer up close, every curl and wave seeming to beckon Minho’s fingers that coiled around the phantom feeling. 

Han Jisung – who had studied digital technology at the University of Seoul. Who graduated with honours and had his name on the Dean’s list. A smart little thing, who did so well, and stayed out of trouble and yet… here he was, meddling in places he shouldn’t be. Meddling with things he couldn’t possibly understand. 

What was Minho to do with him? Maybe he just wanted to hear that sweet voice again before he decided. 

“What do you do when I’m asleep, huh?” Minho whispered, his voice a low hum that sliced through the stillness. He tilted his head slightly to the side as if trying to catch a better view of the truth hidden in Jisung’s eyes. “Do you touch me?” he continued, stepping closer, trapping Jisung against the wall– disarming his options. 

Jisung’s head shook– frantically, but Minho almost smirked. 

“Oh? Do you touch yourself then?” A twitch at the corner of his lips. 

And then Jisung’s eyes snapped up, wide and wet, like a cartoon deer caught in headlights, pupils trembling. 

He was so perfect up close. So transparent. Unable to hide a lie behind that terrified gaze. 

So, Minho pressed further– empowered purely by the power thrumming in his veins, sweet intoxication. 

“Where do you come?” Minho hummed, voice dripping in that mock curiosity. “Do you come all over yourself and clean up in my bathroom? Or do you come somewhere dirty for me to find later?” 

Jisung’s lips thinned, his breath quickening, his chest rising and falling in fast, frantic rhythm. His cheeks were a deep pink now, no longer pale like a ghost. And Minho couldn’t help but think how pretty he looked, caught between fear and arousal. It suited him.

“Tell me, Jisung. It’s only fair, hm?” 

“I–” The stalker’s mouth flew open, words tripping over his tongue, panic flashing across his features. “How do you know– my name?” 

“Well, you know mine, don’t you?” Minho pressed, voice like a blade wrapped in silk. “How do you know how to get into my apartment? How do you know what train I catch? How do you know where I’ll be or where I’ll go?” 

Jisung’s silence was a delicate thread stretched taut, ready to snap at the smallest movement. His eyes darted everywhere but Minho, searching for an escape that didn’t exist, and Minho could feel the thrill rising in his chest something dark and satisfying. 

Maybe his questions were a dance and to see him stumble was the greatest answer of all. 

“I just… I just wanted to make sure you were sleeping okay,” his voice was small and defeated. “Your eyes… they’re tired a-and I just wanted to make sure you weren’t working yourself too hard.”

And this time, he looked at Minho boldly unafraid. Like Minho was wrong to question his unwavering motive. 

“Have you? Have you been sleeping well?” Jisung whispered, blinking those long, pretty lashes slowly. “I hear you on your phone at all hours of the night and… you’re looking perfect as usual but you shouldn’t be staying out late with everything you have coming up. And your fridge–” 

He glared at the kitchen abhorrently. 

“–There’s hardly any fresh food. All you do is order takeout and you have barely any fruits or vegetables in there,” he puffed out his chest like he was right and normal and sure that he was saving the day. “I-I was just trying to make sure you were staying healthy.” 

“Healthy?” Minho whispered, blinking through the seconds of being momentarily stunned by his audacity. The way he stopped twitching and fidgeting and moving because he thought he was right. He really… thought he knew what was best for Minho. 

“Yes, yes… I was just worried about you. That’s all. You know, the industry, it can be so harsh,” his voice was soft, almost soothing like he believed his own lies. “I don’t want to see you get hurt by it.”

Minho’s lips couldn’t help but curl into a smile, cold and sharp and real. 

“You think this is normal?” He asked, leaning that inch bit closer so that he could inhale the mixed mist of their colognes– one and steadfast and some twisted iteration of theirs. “Breaking into my home… watching me… going through my fridge and my things?” 

Jisung’s eyes widened, that pink bottom lip quivering again. 

“No, no, it’s not like that,” he stammered, hands fluttering in front of him as if trying to erase Minho’s words as they met the air. “I-I’m not– I’m not like that, Minho. I just… I care about you.”

Minho took a slow, measured breath. His heart was still racing– unsure if it was because of the fear but one thing he knew for sure was that there was a new beat to it. One that thrummed something dangerously close to fascination. 

“Care about me?” He repeated, the words tasting strange on his tongue. “You don’t even know me.” 

“I know enough,” Jisung whispered, so softly it was almost lost in the shadows that enveloped his feeble frame no longer cowering but standing up firmly. “I know you can’t sleep when the room is too quiet, and that you talk while you dream. I know that you hate the taste of coffee but you drink it because your parents got you the coffee machine. I know that… that you’re more lonely than you let anyone see.” 

That smile continued to tug at the corner of his lips, the sheer absurdity dissipating from his bloodstream and the very logical part of his brain that knew his walls were painted red for the flags that were waving in his periphery. 

“I see you when no one else is looking, Minho,” Jisung’s voice cracked slightly, still on the brink of tears with shallow, wet breaths and lips slick in saliva. “Does anyone else?” 

And Minho felt his heart scrunch like a ball of paper. Those wide, dark-rimmed glasses made his eyes look enormous– filled with that desperation and fear and god… just all of the love in the world. He saw camera flashes when his eyes closed of a night. He saw the names people called him. The names critics called him. He saw the endless dredge of one-night stands– like he was some trophy for people to acquire rather than someone capable of more. 

And Jisung… and his sticky little fingers reached into his chest and ripped the paper shrouding his heart away and touched it with flesh and blood of his own. 

He leaned closer, his mouth mere inches from Jisung’s ear. 

“What do you see?” Minho asked, his voice a breathy whisper, trying not to tremble at their tightness. His vibrating frame buzzed with electricity and so much more. “Tell me, Jisung. What do you see when you look at me?” 

Jisung swallowed hard, tilting his head back for their eyes to meet once more. They were inches away from one another. He was cornered. Trapped. And Minho had no plans to move if he had him right there, in his arms, unable to run away into the shadows as he always did. 

“I see someone just like me,” he whispered in a shaky tremble. “I see someone who is lonely. Someone… who needs to be seen. Really seen.” 

“Is that why you’re here?” Minho whispered, lips brushing against Jisung’s ear until he felt a hand reach out and clasp his forearm, latching on with little faith he would ever let go. “To see me?” 

Jisung’s breath hitched like sweet perfumy pleasure, knuckles white in his dextrous grip of Minho’s jacket. 

“I-I don’t wanna hurt you, Minho. I just wanna… understand.” 

Minho felt that strange warmth bloom in his chest. He saw white everywhere. Cleanliness. So squeaky and neat and pure. Daisies and cosmos like rain. All over his mind and stomach at the thought of someone so consumed by thoughts of him, they were resorting to this. 

Minho couldn’t help but laugh then, a soft, almost incredulous sound. 

“Does that mean… d-do you think I’m strange?” Jisung’s voice was so small, almost frightened to hear the answer. Minho could see the thoughts hidden behind his glasses. Thoughts of a preconceived answer to such a question because of course, the model thought him strange. He thought him batshit crazy. Obsessed. Out-of-touch. A jarring shard of glass in his otherwise endless yawn of unmarred flesh and skin. 

But Minho had blood on his hands too. Thick, murky, dirty blood he couldn’t wash away even if he scrubbed until his nailbeds bled. So, he could only answer in a way that wouldn’t beckon a bolt of lightning to shoot out of the sky and pierce his lying heart. 

“I like strange,” he whispered instead, leaning in just a little closer, feeling the heat of Jisung’s body against his– feeling his fingers tighten around his forearm. “Maybe because I’m strange too.” 

“You…” he laughed softly, head shaking– melding the cusp of his ear back towards Minho’s lips, letting the flesh linger. “You’re not strange.” 

“Oh?” Minho hummed and at that point, he saw it fair game to reach forward and grasp his waist hidden beneath that heavy jacket. He was gripping Minho’s sleeve so tightly the model was sure he wouldn’t let go. “That’s where I gotta disagree with you, Jisung.” 

A sweet noise escaped his mouth when Minho pulled him closer, letting the sturdy denim of his jacket pull him so close their hips were on the cusp of connection. 

“Where do you think I was tonight, hm?” 

“I-I don’t know,” he shook his head, leaning back for their eyes to meet. It was unfortunate that Minho could see his reflection in the glass of his lenses. He wanted to see him. All of him. Even the whites of his eyes and how his pupils dilated when Minho’s lips twisted to the side. It was like the model could see everything and nothing in his face and it touched him in every way he wanted to be touched. “Where were you?” 

Minho’s lips pressed together to tut, tut, tut. 

“I was on my way to see you,” he hummed. “In your nice little studio just a few blocks away from here. But you stood me up, I was waiting for you for hours.” 

Jisung was making that face again, where his eyebrows scrunched in the middle of his forehead and his bottom lip curved beneath the top. It wasn’t fearful. It wasn’t dark or menacing or unhinged. 

It was the personification of flattery and Minho’s chest couldn’t heat up more if a hot iron was pressed against the flesh. 

“A-And what were you going to do to me?” He swallowed back a gulp of saliva and Minho’s mind crossed with thoughts of what it might taste like. 

“I didn’t know then,” he pulled back, just enough. “But after seeing you… here… like this… I have an idea.” 

Jisung’s face lit up with a strange, almost inappropriate eagerness, his fingers tightening their grip on Minho’s sleeve. 

“I want to see how far you would go to see me,” Minho reached forward with his spare hand– making do with his hip hidden by heavy denim, tingling with the phantom feeling of his flesh and how his fingertips would glide over it like fresh silk. “You really wanted my attention that bad, huh?” 

Jisung swallowed hard, his fingers trembling as they brushed against Minho’s sleeve– a touch so light, so cynically gentle, it could have been a figment of Minho’s imagination. He hesitated, his mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air. 

“I-I just… I just want you to see me,” he confessed, his voice crackling, breaking like a fragile piece of glass under a leather boot so heavy and laden with reality and thought. “And I know you only look at me like I’m just another face in the crowd that looks up to you… like I don’t matter. But I do, Minho. I matter to you, even if you don’t know it yet.” 

Oh, something strange was churning in the model’s gut. Something dark, something dangerous, something he hadn’t felt since he suppressed all those thoughts he had years ago. About control. And fame. And making something of himself before the thoughts swallowed him to the point he wouldn’t be able to be saved. 

So, his lips brushed against Jisung’s ear again, absorbing that shiver that rippled through his body at the contact. He even pressed a small kiss against the flesh of his cartilage– for an experiment, he supposed. Or perhaps, to hear his breath tighten, his chest still, his body freeze. 

“You do matter,” he whispered. “Maybe I’ve been looking at you all wrong.” 

Jisung held him even tighter, grip sturdy and strong on his arm like it would save him. 

“You mean that?” 

Minho pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes, his own gaze steady, almost hypnotic. Jisung followed him. Loyally. He didn’t blink. He wouldn’t want to miss a moment and god Minho’s veins pulsated at the sight. 

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted, a sly smile playing on his lips. “But I’m willing to find out.” 

“I… I can show you,” he stammered, his voice a rush of breathless excitement. “I can show you everything, Minho. I can make you see. I can make you feel–” 

Minho’s smile only widened, a touch of something so utterly wicked curling at the edges. 

It was giddiness, Minho supposed. Jisung was near salivating, tongue continuing to poke out from the side of his pink mouth, to swipe along his already saturated bottom lip. There were even tears creased in the corners of his eyes. Like he couldn’t believe it but he didn’t want to stop, not even for a second, in case he blinked and it was all just a dream. 

“What do you think of doing?” Minho whispered, his hand reaching forward, thumb brushing against Jisung’s bottom lip. He let the slick glide of his saliva stain the tip of it. 

“Everything,” Jisung’s answer was instantaneous, keen, wide-eyed. His hand shot up, clasping his thin, delicate fingers around Minho’s wrist– making sure he couldn’t do anything more than continue grazing those wet lips. He even let Minho tug his bottom lip down until the fleshy part of his gums showed. “I wanna see your body, Minho. I wanna see you watch me. I wanna see you touch me. I wanna know what sounds you make– a-and what causes you to make those sounds. And I wanna know what you taste like… god I wanna know so bad. I bet you’re sweet. But maybe you’re salty like the sweat you leave on your gym clothes and–” 

Minho watched him babble and giggle and laugh like it was fine and normal and oh Minho and his sweaty gym clothes he just curled into a fist and threw in his laundry basket. His eyes were lighting up as he spoke. Like Minho’s words were cues for him to follow that prompted and guided him into some dark, wet alleyway where he could do whatever he pleased without the solace of another human’s eyes. 

Minho was curious, that was all. Maybe the feeling of being watched for months– the sensation of those two circular lenses boring into his back– had made him want to witness it all himself. Firsthand. 

“That’s–”

–Crazy. 

–Insane. 

–Terrifying. 

“–very good, Jisung,” Minho whispered, lips curling to the side as he ran his thumb along his row of straight bottom teeth, maybe letting his taste linger in the mouth that moved so quickly and passionately for Minho’s expectant gaze. “I like that.”

“Really?” His eyes lit up again, so sweetly– like he had won first prize. “If you want me to be good for you… I’ll be good. I really will.” 

Minho raised an eyebrow, the idea of Jisung being good for him– when he’d been so bad in the past– amused him. His lips pressed together as he kissed the tip of his thumb, his eyes fading in and out of focus. All he could see was his thumb and what else he might want to wrap Jisung’s lips and tongue around. 

Was it wrong to take advantage of the lost soul that had stumbled into his apartment at such a ridiculous hour?

But then Jisung suckled– like some desperate, deranged concubine made to serve, to give, to worship him. 

And the thought slipped away, melting into the night. 

“Get on your knees,” Minho raised an expectant eyebrow. “You be good and then I’ll take care of you, Jisung.” 

“You mean it?” His eyes glimmered with hope and need and want and god… Minho felt the cock trapped in his jeans twitch at the very idea of his sardonic devotion. 

“I mean it.” 

And he was sinking downward, even in the cramped corner of his open-planned kitchen. Usually, Minho was just happy to venture to the bed or the couch, or if he liked whoever he took home enough, the shower was good too. But Jisung… he would be happy with anywhere– anything… so long as he got to touch and be and exist in the same orbit as Minho. 

It was cute in a way. 

“A-And what do you want me to do for you… here… on my knees?”

Minho wondered just how self-aware Jisung was. He knew what was right and what was wrong. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be caught. He knew he wasn’t allowed to be here. He knew he thought he was doing what was best for Minho. 

And so, he wondered if he knew just what he did to Minho in asking that question, blinking his gleaming wide eyes, fluttering those long, thick lashes, and staring up at him from his position on his knees. 

“I want you to show me,” he whispered, trailing a finger to the cusp of his chin, angling his face upward so all he would see was Minho staring back at him so wistfully. Minho wanted to be the only thing he saw. He didn’t like it when his gaze flickered to the floor or to the side out of nerves or the overwhelming cast of his stare so intent and omnipotent and watchful. He wanted that burning fire to scar his flesh. Leave the imprint that usually lingered on his back or shoulders when he was followed to remain there for days. He wanted Jisung’s attention. Now. Always. He wanted it to consume him. 

“You’d… you’d let me,” and Jisung was licking his lips now, darting his eyes to Minho’s cock, suffocating in his jeans like it had never seen the light of day. What was happening to him? Minho was sure that if Jisung pressed against his thigh and applied a palm of pressure upon him, he would topple over like a mess of limbs on the floor. He was jelly. And melted, hot, sugar bubbling and spitting and hardening as Jisung continued to stare. “You’d let me… suck your cock, Minho?” 

He had a Pavlovian reaction to those words and those hands, slender, soft, and languid, pawing the zipper to his jeans. His gleaming eyes were a bell calling for dinner, and Minho was nothing better than a mutt producing enough saliva he could feel it near escape his lips that couldn’t quite stay closed. 

“Yes,” he whispered back, fingers tightening around his chin, clasping him there– in focus, his to move and have and command. “That would be very, very good.” 

Maybe Minho thought himself stronger once upon a time. Where he usually lasted a good while getting his dick sucked in club bathrooms and hotel rooms, before getting bored enough he ended up just begging they fucked and got it over with. But maybe he hadn’t quite seen such devotion until now. And devotion looked best beneath those lenses that followed him to bed. 

Especially the way Jisung couldn’t help his face when he concentrated. His eyes were glistening with that intense want and his tongue was poking out the side of his lips as he fiddled with the fly of Minho’s jeans, unzipping and tugging the denim and his underwear until it was tight around his thighs. 

“Open,” Minho’s voice was the only thing that rip Jisung’s eyes away from his cock. He was an altar and Jisung was knelt for prayer, devotion laced in his gaze as he stared upward, listening to Minho’s words like they were gospel. 

He was good and obedient and so predictably attentive that he parted his pretty pink lips, tongue pressed against his chin and watching Minho for whatever would come next. 

Minho clasped a hand around the base of his cock, embarrassingly hard at this point, and pressed the tip against his tongue. He had to bite down a noise– the satisfaction. He had to sink the tips of his fingers into Jisung’s scalp with his other hand, knowing quickly that he would lose control the second he breathed. 

He was soft and warm and a damn hard worker. It was cute, how his eyes asked for permission but his sticky little fingers had a mind of their own and reached forward, taking the base of Minho’s cock from the model and clasping it between his own. Selfish and greedy and needy. Everything Minho didn’t need but wanted entirely. 

“Minho…” his voice was a sweet, serene whisper as his tongue ran along the underside of his length and maybe it was the lighting. Dark and shadowed but so strangely intimate. But Minho hadn’t felt anything like it before. Soft and tentative and waiting for him. Like he was knelt on his knees, leaving soft licks and kisses from tip to base wanting Minho’s words and eyes to command him. Even the hand Minho had so selfishly tangled in his hair to use his head as a vessel to wield. He was pressing upward, into the model’s touch. “Does this feel nice?”

A something of a noise fell from Minho’s mouth. The type of noise he wasn’t proud of. But it was guttural and real and autonomous. 

It was almost nauseating that he could just break into his place, sift through his things, watch him and watch him and watch him and think that Minho would bend down, kiss his pretty, soft lips and tell him that he felt perfect. So rather than serving him even smithereen of satisfaction, Minho’s hand fell downard, to his jaw– clasping his chin between an index finger and thumb. 

“Open,” he repeated, clenching so tightly that Jisung had no choice but to pull off his cock, chin slick in saliva and lips laved in the pre-come that dribbled from Minho’s tip the second his breath came into contact with it. 

He stuttered through words but presented nicely, obediently– even if there was a slight fog to his dark-rimmed glasses that still felt like two burning rings of lingering fire in Minho’s periphery. 

Minho couldn’t help the way his lips coiled to the side, watching Jisung’s sweet eyes blink and chest pant. He couldn’t help the way his stomach stuttered at the sight of his cock before his face– so close yet so far, and a feast for his watchful gaze. Minho almost wanted to shrink real small, crawl into Jisung’s ear and find his way into that strange, strange brain. He wanted to ride his neurons around as they pinged and buzzed. He wanted to melt into every last one of his dark thoughts and shower in his tornadoes of excitement. He wanted to know everything hiding behind those eyes and he wanted to know just where Jisung saw Minho amongst it all. 

But for now, Minho only had the power to lean forward, purse his lips and dribble into his awaiting mouth– letting his taste amalgamate on his palate like they were one and together and bound. He knew what sort of sick fantasies might be bouncing around his mind but he wanted that control back. He wanted to be part of it too. 

“Look how good you are,” Minho whispered, licking the residue spit on his lips, thumb reaching into Jisung’s mouth to dip into their shared taste, letting the flesh of his finger press against his bottom row of teeth. “Try again and then I’ll tell you whether it feels nice. Okay?” 

His lips tugged to the side, nodding to follow, before he leaned forward and recycled their shared taste on the tip of Minho’s cock. His mouth was wet and warm when it wrapped around Minho’s flesh, glassy eyes aimed upward, blinking through a haze as though asking for praise and validation. 

“Good boy,” Minho hummed again, caressing the side of his head like he was some meddlesome little mutt and not the man who had haunted his dreams. “Doing so good for me.” 

And it was like Jisung got exactly what he wanted when he propelled his head forward, experimentally dallying with how far he could go. He was good at it if not adequately experienced and Minho really had to wonder who he had been with before. He knew Minho best, after all. He knew his noises and quickly caught onto the fact that a tighter grip on his hair meant more and deeper and just like that. 

He found his sweet spot quicker than Minho could have ever anticipated– drinking in the moans and curses as he drank him in until the model felt the air from his nostrils on the fibre of dark hair above his cock. It was sardonically amusing to Minho that Jisung overestimated himself– too eager and messy and needy that he sputtered a cough, pulling away quickly to catch his breath, leaving a line of spit trailing from the tip of his cock to his bottom lip. 

Jisung was panting, chest rising and falling and he refused to even break, just continued to lave kitten licks upon his sensitive tip, ebbing with the flow of Minho’s fingers running along his scalp. 

He looked so strangely happy with Minho’s cock in his mouth. He looked whole. And complete. Like this was all he wanted– nothing else. He wasn’t going to hurt him. He wasn’t going to hurt anyone. So sweet and innocent. Just lost in that same fog Minho couldn’t imagine himself getting pulled out of anytime soon. 

The model couldn’t imagine blinking. He couldn’t imagine losing a millisecond of the sight before him and maybe it was instinct when he thrust his pelvis forward until he felt his cock hit the back of Jisung’s throat, earning a buzz of vibration from his wet and warm mouth. 

“Is this what you wanted?” Minho’s voice was something between a grunt and a mutter, tightening his hands in Jisung’s soft, curled hair. He tried not to curse at the sight of him– dark eyes watching nothing else but the cock stuffed into his throat but fuck and shit and baby escaped alongside a maelstrom of noises he couldn’t quite articulate. “You wanted me any way you could get me, huh?” 

Jisung, nearly teary-eyed, pulled away and Minho nearly whined at the lack of his warmth around his length, now soaked and glistening with his saliva. 

“Just wanna see you happy, Minho,” he whispered like a parting prayer, poking out his tongue to collect the spit and precome on his bottom lip, fingers running from base to tip. “If this makes you happy…” 

“...it makes me happy,” he reassured him, grasping his cock and running it along the flesh of the tongue now resting languidly on his chin. “You know how to make me happy, don’t you?” 

And then Minho was using his hair to guide his cock back into his mouth, laying it gently on his tongue before his twisted little stalker sealed it off by wrapping his lips around it. His. Not for the taking. Perhaps that was what curled Minho’s upper lip and reverberated that grunt from his throat. It was enough to use Jisung’s hair as a guide to thrust into the tight wet heat of his throat, taking that deft whimper against his cock as electricity to fuel him for more. 

He could see the cogs working in Jisung’s mind. How to breathe. How to sustain. How to take, take, take. But in every ministration where his cock was lodged so deeply down his throat he felt nothing but soft air against his stomach, his brain moved in all twisted ways once more. 

“I wish you could see this,” he mutters, pulling his hips back to let him breathe. “I wish you could see what it's like to have you… like this.” 

Jisung licked the underside of his cock the best he could. He was opening and giving as though he was nothing other than a vessel for Minho to use in any way he saw fit. He was determined and unwavering– even if his mouth, so small and as slight as the rest of his body, wasn’t nearly as big enough. And his eyes… those dark, deranged, giving pools of black welled at the seams with fresh, hot tears threatening to fall the deeper he went. 

Minho was at the point where he wasn’t even considering what he was doing to be fucking Jisung’s face. In fact, he was keeping his cock lodged at the back of his throat in short intervals to feel that vibration. To feel him hum so happily. So giddily. Like every movement of Minho’s was a reward and the come that was threatening to burst like that dam he felt lodged in his chest, was the grand prize. 

Fuck– he felt nothing holding him together. Not those sweet sounds and strange air of need. It wasn’t that feeling of his hair between his fingertips or that all he could see was Jisung. Han. Jisung. User91400_x on his knees. Rather, it was that strange, strange ideal that nothing felt as comfortable as knowing where he was. 

“Gonna come in your mouth,” he uttered, seeing nothing in the darkness but his moving head and glistening cock capturing the moon flittering in from the window by the sink. “But you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Bet you’ve wanted nothing but this.” 

He was nodding and humming and making some sick contented noise around his cock that Minho felt his chest strum once, then twice, a third time and he could barely blame the sutures that barely held him together in their dissipation into thin air. 

It was a gasp that fell first, and then it was relentless, pent-up ropes of come that thrust into the wetness of his throat as he fought to keep his eyes open. But Jisung couldn’t stop licking and slurping and drinking him in that even when Minho pulled away from his throat, resting the tip of his cock against his tongue, he continued to stare upward, like he had never seen anything so pretty. 

Minho couldn’t even watch. He could only feel. His fingers were brushing through his hair as if to pet him for letting him fuck his mouth– feeling the waning embers of his orgasm flow through him. Jisung was pertinent. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t stutter or cough or hesitate. He swallowed, sure to go back for seconds and thirds. Sucking until it hurt and a whimper cleaved his facade in half. 

“Sweet,” Jisung smiles up at him, nuzzling against the sensitive tip of his cock. His lips were wet– saturated like his thirst had finally been satisfied. “I knew it.” 

Minho only had the power to reach toward his glistening pink lips, running across them with his thumb to garner even a semblance of his euphoria. 

“But I guess it’s because you’ve been drinking lots of water and juice, right?” He’s grinning again– this time aimed at Minho’s cock still sitting spent in his palm. “I never hear your coffee machine these days and you keep getting that smoothie from that cafe on the corner instead of your usual.” 

The model couldn’t help the grunt that left his mouth at the words– the way he had the satisfaction. It was dangerous, that feeling. Especially when it led a hand to duck under his arm and pull him to his feet, uncaring that his jeans were at his ankles in the middle of his kitchen and he was nearly breathless. He just had to have him. 

Jisung squeaked when Minho pressed him to the opposing wall with whatever strength he thought he had left. If they were something as simple as lovers, yeah, Minho might’ve been a little careful. He would’ve been mindful of the potted plant that flew off the shelf from beside Jisung’s head. He would’ve flinched at the smash and the soil that bounced from the shattered ceramic. He would’ve even feigned a laugh, a smile, a comment that they better be careful. 

Yet, unlike lovers, he liked Jisung’s give. He liked that he didn’t wince at the sound. He liked that he didn’t move– just stayed pressed against the wall because he knew Minho wanted him there. He even batted his fucking lashes and licked his lips again. It hurt to feel his cock fight for more and his stomach twist to support it. 

But he couldn’t see. At least, not how he used to see. With reason and logic and clarity. He just saw Jisung. Right in front of him– with pink lips glistening in his apparently sweet taste. He saw his eyes, hidden behind those dark glasses and mused upon that pretty glint that held mischief and disparagement. 

His tongue met Jisung’s chin first, following a line of drool and come that snuck from the crease. He could taste himself but he tasted Jisung more. He tasted his spit and his lips that were eagerly nipping at his own. There was little need for air when Jisung was this close. Moaning and muttering and spitting into his mouth when their lips parted and the heady slick of saliva guided their tongues between each other. 

There was nothing clean about him. Not even in his grabby hands wrapping tightly around Minho’s neck, like he was an anchor that he could use to fly if he were ever granted wings. And his noises only grew louder and wetter and even the friction of his clothed cock rubbing against his own so spent and red and raw, ached. 

“Min-ho,” he sputtered, head thrown back as the model’s lips pulled away for respite, needing to feel his throat beneath his teeth as he suckled mark after mark. Everything– in obscene words of fuck and more as he humped against Minho’s sensitive tip. It sounded like Minho had him bent over the kitchen table, legs spread, with nothing more than spit in his hole and his cock, fucking him with abandon. But he was still clothed– Minho still spent. And yet his voice rose and rose and rose and– “Minho–” 

He whimpered, melting into Minho’s teeth and touch and only then did Minho feel the tears against his cheeks. Soft, languid sobs escaped his lips. But they were happy cries as he continued to frot against him. Minho could feel the outline of his cock through the denim as its sharp edges and zipper scraped his skin until it turned red.

“No,” Minho whispered when he felt that warmth against the outline of his jeans, eyes widening as he flickered his gaze to Jisung’s inturned knees and knitted brows. “Tell me you didn’t come.” 

And Jisung only cried again, letting Minho manoeuvre him any way he saw fit. He even let Minho grasp his thin, slight waist so tightly he squeaked, moving him back toward the kitchen table, the only source of natural moonlight in the darkness of his apartment. He laid his slack body onto the oak like he was a meal and Minho was starving. He could see the saturating outline against his light denim– pooling in darkness all over his pelvis. It would stain. It would hurt and yet, he was fascinated. 

“-I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean–” he stuttered so apologetically, grabby hands reaching forward to caress Minho’s torsos and arms, whatever flesh was in his reach. “You just– you are–”

And so began that movement of his lips again. Coiling to the side as he stared at the darkened denim… so much of it, a stark contrast in colour. It was a shame. They were nice. Pity they were ruined, Minho supposed. 

Maybe he was unbuttoning the fly to his jeans because he wanted to return the favour. To taste his come as it painted the insides of his underwear. He wanted to know what colour they were. What texture? What taste? He wanted to see and kiss every vein on the underside of his cock. He wanted to see it twitch in overstimulation and turn a very angry shade of pink when he flickered his tongue along the tip. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry– don’t hate me,” he continued to cry, continued to grab and hold and claw into Minho’s arms with the tips of his fingers.

But Minho wanted to see his come trickle downward, into his hole. He wanted to push his shirt up until he saw his nipples, pretty and pink, and as soft as the rest of his skin he had hidden in such heavy, dreary clothes. 

“Dirty thing,” Minho’s voice was a sharp whisper when he tugged at Jisung’s jeans as he lay on the table before him– light grey underwear turned slate surrounding the outline of his perfect cock. His fingers spread, like a web flailing in the wind toward a fly it could ensnare. And oh… the noise that fell from Jisung’s mouth. “But how could I hate you?” 

He didn’t seem to flinch when it was a knuckle that reached forward, rubbing tentatively against the tip of his cock, trapped beneath the tight cotton. 

“You were so good,” he whispered with a strange smile, index finger peering beneath the band around his hips. There was hardly anything of him. So petite and tan and soft. It was like his skin was made of silk. He spread his fingers and laid a palm on his bare stomach, toned but soft and pliable, and grabbed the skin until it folded in his hands. “So, so, so good.” 

And maybe he was referring to the way his flesh felt beneath him. How natural it all was that it was teetering on the brink of scary. He was just a stranger, after all. A stranger plucked off the streets, who probably waited and waited and waited until one of Minho’s neighbours came home and slipped into his apartment door as he had. Who probably ran the tip of his tongue across every surface he knew Minho would use when he got home. Forks and spoons and knives. But he had a strange sadness in his eyes that only brightened when they touched. 

So, out of courtesy and not because the voice inside of his head was screaming and crying and demanding he find out what he tasted like, Minho flattened his thumbs on his hip bones and pulled until his backside was hanging off the edge of his kitchen table. Jisung whispered something when Minho pulled his underwear to his thighs and glared at his pretty cock covered in come from something as baseless as rubbing against the model as they kissed. 

He licked a stripe from the underside of his length, collecting the droplets of his load that didn’t quite seep into the fabric, before opening his mouth to take it in entirely. He knew Jisung was sensitive. He even knew that it might’ve hurt– stung, even. But he couldn’t help following Jisung’s sounds like an obedient violinist waiting for the conductor to signal him in. Minho was sure to suck the tip clean of every remnant of that sweet, sweet taste– making sure he got everything in his mouth. 

Selfish maybe, that the taste empowered him to lick him dry. Even sucking the moisture from his underwear in the particularly soaked parts of the fabric. He dipped down, spreading the crevice of his ass until he saw his hole, glistening in the light filtering in through the window by the sink and suckling whatever he could until Jisung’s nails were digging into his scalp.

He was nice and clean now. Even when there was no come left and Minho was just laving against him because he wanted to. Because he enjoyed his noises and cries and overstimulated moans. 

It was with a careful smile, maybe a fond one, that Minho pulled back to see Jisung lying on his kitchen table. Eyes rolled back in his head. Mouth agape. Cock glistening in nothing but Minho’s saliva. He rolled his straining erection between his index finger and thumb, knowing he was tired and spent and felt something akin to adoration flutter across his senses. 

He had defeated User91400_x and as he tucked his own, aching cock into his underwear, he could at least admit it was a close fight. 

So, he only needed to whisper a ‘come on, Jisung,’ before he nipped a gentle kiss against his neck. It wasn’t a time to go. It wasn’t a fun is over now. It was a come on, let’s get you where I can keep you. 

⨼⨽

Minho woke up to a feeling he knew anywhere. 

At first, he thought maybe he was still dreaming. He often did that. When he jerked awake at all hours of the night, imagining that he wasn’t truly alone in his apartment always so devoid of life. He often saw him there. Those glasses, reflecting the train light and traffic. He saw the camera flashes and a head of curls hidden by a hood and baseball cap. 

But when his eyes fluttered open, the weight of his chest didn’t dissipate. It wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t a strange, scary dream. It was real. 

There, on the side of the bed he always kept empty, sat two bare legs, crossed at the ankles, the skin warm against the light fabric of his sheets. His gaze followed upward, to socked feet– his socks, ones that had been neatly balled in his drawers just hours earlier. Long, slender fingers drummed lightly against his outstretched arm. 

Minho’s eyes travelled further, tracing the familiar curve of a body– his own underwear clad to it, pulled snug against someone else’s skin. Soft rolls formed along Jisung’s hunched stomach, his frame deceptively delicate, his waist narrow and lithe, just as Minho remembered holding in his arms. Collarbones marked by the remnants of Minho’s kiss and faint bruises littered his throat from the shower earlier. His gaze rose to his jaw and finally, those eyes– dark, unblinking, always watching. 

The glasses were gone, but it didn’t change the way Jisung looked at him, as if he could see everything… like Minho had never been more visible. 

“Hi,” Minho’s breath hitched, voice fragile against the stillness of the room. 

Outside, dawn was beginning to creep in, casting a faint glow that brought with it an even harsher reminder that it really wasn’t a dream. He felt the exhaustion weigh heavy in his throat and taste stale in his mouth but more than anything, he felt Jisung. His presence. His bones. His warmth. His gaze. They probably slept two hours. Maybe less. 

“You were talking again,” he mumbled with a toothy grin as he reached out, fingers threading through Minho’s hair with a gentleness that made his chest tighten. “Dreaming about all sorts of crazy things.” 

Minho’s lips curled faintly at the corners. Crazy things. Of course. 

“Mm,” he hummed in response, his hand moving to clasp Jisung’s wrist. He gripped it tightly, grounding himself in the reality of the moment. Jisung was here. Tangible. Present. No longer playing a lingering figment of his imagination. “Tell me more.”

“Something about cats,” he made something of a giggling noise– completely unblinking and for a moment, Minho wondered if he even slept. He knew he felt his bones meld with his own. He felt his breath and damp hair in the crook of his neck when they drifted off to sleep with Jisung whispering short iterations of IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou until they were dreaming. He felt his warmth and his air. He felt every curve wrap itself tightly around his waist and shoulders until he couldn’t wait to wake up once more. “It was the same thing that you dreamt of on Wednesday night. Cats and missing your bus and Minho… you’re just so silly.” 

Minho’s hand tightened its grip on his wrist, pulling him closer, even if he continued to talk and ramble about dreams and things the model had no such control over. 

“–And you have to call your dad back sometime today,” he let Minho pull him any way he saw fit, toward his chest where he could nuzzle his face against his mess of dark, curled hair– inhaling his sweet scent. “He wants to know when you’re coming around.” 

Minho pulled Jisung closer, their bodies tangled in a familiar knotted vine. He could feel his breath against his neck, the warmth of it vibrating with the quiet hum of his voice. Minho tightened that grip, hooking his foot around Jisung’s bare calf, locking him there as if the act could tether them to this moment indefinitely. 

An exasperated sigh escaped Minho’s lips as he glanced past the tousled curls of Jisung’s hair, eyes catching sight of his phone on the bedside table, too far away to matter. The thought of it, of anything outside of this, felt distant and unimportant. 

There was no argument to be had. No sickness rising in his throat. No resentment bubbling to the surface, even in the small part of his mind that knew Jisung saw everything– knew everything. 

The soft, broken thing in his arms, so utterly devoted, loved him more than anyone ever could. Minho knew that. 

So, he buried his face in the crook of Jisung’s neck as he spoke words of just what else he found on Minho’s phone. Mundane searches for directions. Ingredients for a recipe. Places that delivered alcohol with the lowest delivery fee. All the while Minho’s fingers trailed down the curve of his bare spine, mapping the familiar terrain, kneading the round bones and sturdy muscle as he inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the scent of soft linen and his own shampoo. 

It was everything comforting and familiar– everything that was him. 

“Found something else on your phone,” Minho enjoyed it when his breath hitched as his hand dipped lower, fingertips tracing the waistband of his underwear before settling over the softness of his backside. “My name. Over and over and over again.” 

Minho liked that. How the flesh gave easily under his grip, pliant and warm, and for a moment he simply held him there, marvelling at the feeling of having him. All of him. His. 

He liked how he only needed something as simple as his touch and words to find his cock hardening, brushing and nuzzling against his soft stomach as he listened to his words. 

Sickeningly flattering words. 

“Y-You were looking up where I went to school?” 

Minho thrust forward once, feeling something close to a grunt escape from his lips at the friction. 

“A-And my dad? You found his address?” 

13-14 Hanrok-ro, Seoul. 

By that point, his lips were back on Jisung’s neck, sucking and licking, and completely uncaring to the marks he was leaving. Knowing they were lazy, callous and apathetic to his appearance. He covered up anyway. Nobody would see the marks– Minho’s marks. 

“Even my ah-” he wasn’t as articulate when Minho squeezed the flesh of his ass tighter, ensnaring it in his steely grip, even stretching his middle finger until it caught onto his rim and tugged. “–my clothes you… you were trying to find the same ones.” 

Minho kind of sort of remembered the blood he tasted on the tip of his tongue when he clasped his bottom lip so tight his teeth popped the delicate layer of skin. He remembered rubbing his temple with a fist until the thought was conjured on its own. That heavy jacket he wore– the one currently laid to die somewhere in his kitchen before they made it into the bedroom. He just wanted to know where he got it from. He just wanted to know the type of fit. The type of fabric. He had experience in the fashion industry. Knew names. Knew brands. Maybe he wanted to buy his own. Maybe he wanted to have Jisung’s because it was Jisung’s and what a fascinating person Jisung was. 

But such a thought escaped his mind when he hummed a satisfied noise against his throat, fingers dipping in again and again until he was softly tracing up and down his smooth and hairless rim. It was made for him– letting Jisung’s counter-thrusts against his hips answer any lingering qualms of his affection. 

“Just wanted to see you,” there was a whine that followed Minho’s voice. Maybe it was the morning or the lack of sleep. Maybe it was every hitch of his breath in every movement of Minho’s fingers that halted his autonomic nervous system. That stopped him breathing and blinking and god Minho was sure he couldn’t feel Jisung’s heartbeat against his chest for a fleeting second. “Wanted to smell you… and taste you… wanted to be in you.” 

Jisung was quick to get emotional again. The same strain of emotion he felt when Minho had him pinned against the wall of his shower– clenching his jaw between his index finger and thumb and tonguing his mouth until he was sure he had laved over every tooth and gum. Too much it hurts my heart, Jisung whimpered, coming for a second time in Minho’s fist as the water flittered around them. 

They weren’t sad tears. They weren’t angry tears. They were joyful– prideful… like all of his dreams were coming true. 

He was doing the same thing now… as he rutted against Minho’s hip– sure to brush his cock against his thigh while pressing his ass into the model’s probing fingers in each sinful ministration. He was whimpering and moaning and muttering just how good Minho felt. 

That was fuel enough for the older man to do more. To listen to that voice that liked him put together… but loved him in the midst of falling apart. 

“Knew you’d be so soft right here,” Minho only pulled his fingers from Jisung’s underwear to spit on his index and middle fingers and return them to form. “And tight…” he whispered when he wiggled the tip of his finger further, closer, earning a wince of noise to escape his lips. He barely touched him– just applied an apt amount of pressure and he was already a crumbling mess.  “Haven’t even got my cock in you yet and I already know it’s gonna be hard to fit.”

“Please,” Jisung whispered against his throat, wet and hot. “I’ll make it fit. I-I will… I’ll–” 

And the tears fell from his cheeks again, when Minho pulled back and twisted his chest away from the lithe body curled around his own to reach for the drawer by his side of the bed. It didn’t take him long to find the bottle of lube beneath his underwear he suspected Jisung had already familiarised himself with. There was probably no need for the lube. Minho had the time. The energy. The will to want to sink to his knees at the edge of his mattress and lick and lick and lick at Jisung’s hole until his chin and nose were saturated in his taste. 

But the ache in his cock didn’t go away. It needed to feel Jisung’s walls clench onto him and hug his length. He needed a slick glide to counter that thought that continued to bubble and orbit around his mind. The thought to pin him to the mattress and stuff his hole until he filled him once or twice or until the come spilled out of his entrance on its own accord and stained the back of his thighs until Minho granted him the mercy of sucking it out. 

He listened to his whines and whispers as he lathered up his fingers and palmed Jisung’s underwear off beneath the thin sheets. It was relaxing. Melodic. His voice– the way he had no control over it, not really. 

“Right,” Minho would whisper as he listened to his gentle coos. “Mm-hm and what else?” 

Jisung continued to speak, continue to profess his love and devotion amongst the soft crying noises between fetters of yes and more when Minho spread his legs, laving some of the residue of lube on the tip of his cock– maybe to see him flinch from the sudden chill. 

“I dream of you,” Jisung’s breath hitched when Minho pressed the tip of his finger against his rim, sure to feel the give and pull and glide of the viscid gel contradict with his heat. “All the time. Of this. Of your fingers and cock and m-mouth–” 

Minho couldn’t help his smirk at the words. His Jisung was so deep. Everything he said carried meaning to him like some sanctimonious verse of a poem and maybe Minho felt like he didn’t deserve it. That Jisung and his poor, love-starved heart should profess such sweet words to somebody else who could reciprocate with articulation and thought and learned experience. 

Minho was shallow. Always had been. He skimmed over parts of a book he couldn’t quite care to read. He skipped to the end of the movie to make sure it had a happy ending before he committed to watching it. He used people to get where he wanted to be. To climb so high he could look down on everyone who got him there. 

But he wanted to take his time with Jisung. Especially when he was so hot and tight where Minho held him most intimately. He was pliant and smooth on every surface and his kiss was so taut. He wanted to hear his whispers of I love you and I need you instead of the baseless moans and grunts he’d usually get. He wanted to see him ruined and broken and completely Minho’s until he forgot his own name. 

And then he wanted to carry him into the bathroom and run a washcloth underneath the tap until he was satisfied. The water had to be a perfect balance between soothing warmth and gentle heat– he had to get it just right. He would clean him and kiss him and tell him he was a good boy. He would dry him with his plushest towel and dress him in Minho’s clothes, knowing he loved the scent of his detergent only to rouse him from slumber after they were fed and rested to do it all over again. 

“Yeah?” Minho whispered as he pushed his middle finger into his tightness until he felt his knuckle hit the flesh of his backside. “You dream of me, pretty thing?” 

“Dream of you, think of you, wait for you…” 

Minho chuckles when Jisung jolts the second he wiggles a second finger in, marvelling at his scrunched eyebrows and pink lips curling into a circle. And then he’s kissing him again–inhaling his moans and grunts and whimpers as he fucks his fingers in and out of him until his give was no longer as bound. 

“Dream of me fucking you…” Minho mused, teeth skimming against his swollen bottom lip, and clamping down until he echoed yet another cock-twitching moan. “Think of me coming in you?”

“Minho– what are you doing–” 

And he was lost for words again when Minho curled his fingers, remedying each choked noise and sound with a kiss along his throat, collarbones and chest. Only when Jisung’s hand reached upward, running itself in Minho’s hair some tangled mess of sheen and sleep until he curled his fingers so tight Minho suppressed a grunt against his flesh. 

So, Minho broke the kiss and decisively grabbed Jisung by his petite hips, flipping him onto his knees on the bed and pulling his two very lube-slick fingers from his hole to rub against the taut and warm skin of his lower back. He took the opportunity to pull his underwear further down, until he was on all fours with legs tucked tightly together to protect Minho’s boxers gathered at his knees, slowly stretching as his thighs worked to keep them close together. 

It was a very pretty view. A picture worth a spread in every magazine Minho had ever been in. There, Minho pressed his chest possessively against Jisung’s back and whispered, “Do you dream of me fucking you?” His lips nipped at the lobe of his ear all red from the heat of their bodies. “Is that what you think of when you watch me sleep? Do you imagine yourself right here, crying and begging that I just wake up and fuck you?” 

His two fingers returned to his tight, lubricated hole. 

Jisung choked, thighs a trembling mess as he reacquainted himself with the feel– the stretch. Even his hips pushed back into Minho’s fist, slobbering wet saliva on the model’s hand as it clasped around his jaw– perching his view up and away from the pillows he so badly wanted to bury his head in. 

Minho twisted his fingers, a pleased smile clad to his mouth as he earned obscene sound after obscene sound from his mouth, unrestrained and liberal with nothing to hide. Jisung twitched and hissed ‘please’ into Minho’s fist as he worked in another digit– fucking into him with vigour. 

“Good boy,” Minho murmured into his ear, kissing just beneath it– contradicting the softness of his lips with the strength he was utilising in holding Jisung’s trembling body up. “So perfect, so pretty, so sweet–”

And Jisung sobbed a choked noise once more. 

“I know, I know,” Minho couldn’t help his airy laugh. “You want something more, don’t you?” 

“Y-Yes… more… now… Minho–” 

And Minho obliged. He was doing so good– so well and while he could have sat there all night, massaging his inner-walls until he cried and came all over himself, he needed everything to feel the tides of his need come into fruition. 

Not without a second of respite, however. Something curled inside of his chest at the feeling of his hot tears slick on his cheeks and his grabby hands reaching for Minho’s arm holding him from behind. Minho held him there– in his arms, letting him catch his breath, steady his thighs, calm his beating heart. He even rocked him back and forth until he began to even out, using the gentle lull of his coos and ahhs as time in itself to pull his cock from his underwear and lube it up. 

“I’ve got you,” Minho kissed his neck again, sure that if he stayed there, cradling Jisung’s jaw in the nape of his collarbones, he wouldn’t abide by the voice inside of his head that wanted to fuck him with everything he had. Rather, he would’ve held him, listening to every breath, counting every sigh and hum. He would’ve kissed him– lazily, without form, maybe just laving his tongue across his lips until he was satisfied he had tasted all of him. 

But he wanted to explore Jisung. His Han Jisung. So, he whispered “Come on, turn around for me,” instead. 

Jisung turned to rest on his back, spread legs and glaring up at Minho with glassy eyes catching onto the rising sun from the window above the bed. His cheeks were flushed pink, mouth wet and swollen and twisted to the side like everything he had ever wanted was happening in all the ways he wished for it to. 

“Just look at you,” Jisung’s whisper cut through Minho’s breathing ceding control of the bedroom. His index finger trailed up, brushing along Minho’s stomach– eyes following every pigmented indentation left when he applied an apt amount of pressure. It was almost like he was drunk… fixated… entranced at the sight. And god Minho felt no different as he looked at all he had before him– with his pink, glistening cock against his pelvis, pulsating and stiff and sensitive when Minho fisted it from base to tip. “Nothing will ever be as perfect as you and this moment.” 

The creases by Minho’s eyes folded again. His words… the way he whispered them. They were a poem– a song. He was so loved. So wanted. So needed and yet, Minho felt that strum of worry infiltrate his chest once more. Maybe sadistically, he thought of this moment escaping them. He didn’t want to look at anyone else– he didn’t want Jisung looking at anyone else. He wanted his devotion. He wanted his loyalty. He wanted that sick, twisted love to wrap him up and hold him near forever. 

And so Minho dipped down and kissed his lips until he lost whatever oxygen was keeping him afloat. 

“I want more moments,” he whispered, feeling Jisung’s teeth scrape against his cheek when they pulled apart to take a breath. “Not just today. Not just this.” 

“You really mean it?” 

Minho nodded and sat upward, placing the head of his cock at Jisung’s welcoming hole, grasping his hips before he began to breach his tight, waiting opening with a very smooth thrust until his tip popped inside. 

“I mean it,” Minho’s voice was sharp, trying not to wince at the fire-like depths of Jisung’s entrance as he stretched further, locking him deep inside. Jisung whimpered again, drawing out a slow contented noise from his throat as his thighs spread wide to counter Minho’s hips. Grabby hands reached forward aimlessly– with his left-hand landing on Minho’s waist while the right ended up on the back of his neck when he lowered downward to press their lips together.

In every thrust, Jisung’s hole dragged as he withdrew– as if he couldn’t live to part with Minho’s cock. He even made a perfect, sweet sound when Minho surged back in– equally unable to cope without filling him to the brim. 

Keen to hear every cry and moan draw sharply from his throat, Minho moved his hips again and again and again– fucking into him with rolling thrusts that had Jisung’s knees drawing to the sides of the older man’s body, locking him into place if he ever garnered the thought to pull away. 

“You’re taking me so well, baby,” Minho uttered against his lips, expelling hot, moist breaths against him as he dipped down to roll Jisung’s cock with his fist. “So good for me. Just like I thought.” 

Minho didn’t want to close his eyes and let his mind drift. The first few ministrations were long, but after that, they settled into a rhythm of quick, powerful thrusts that earned such sweet sounds from the man laid before him. It was nice to be inside of him. His soft, tight flesh clasping his cock so tight– keeping it warm and loved and wanted. 

He could barely contain himself when he felt the dribble of pre-come on his thumb as it ran across Jisung’s sensitive cock. He tugged and rubbed it, not liking that it was just moving around so uselessly between them. He needed Minho’s hand. His warmth. He needed to be treated like he was good and fine and that if he wanted Minho so badly, he could’ve just shown up at his apartment months ago. Minho fucked forward roughly, the other hand reaching up to grasp Jisung’s jaw once more, keeping his pretty face there and in sight and his to kiss and love and use as a vessel for everything he needed.

The image of his face so tightly wound and the sound of his voice stayed with Minho as he caught his breath, hips jerking languidly into Jisung’s lube-slick entrance. 

It was perfect. It was everything Jisung wanted– Minho could tell from that smile that didn’t quite dissipate. Even with tear-stained cheeks and trembling thighs. He was happiest with Minho settled against his rim, taking it in his stride and clenching reflexively around it. 

Jisung kept his eyes on Minho– proving he could be good. That he could spread his legs and present and give. Minho was strong enough to glance down and meet his burning, deep gaze and fuck into him with purpose. Minho must have imagined how he must’ve looked to Jisung, watching him like that lingering shadow of dust and dirt from every dark corner and alleyway he followed him down. Of Minho, fucking his tight and hungry little entrance, filling it to its limit, and pistoning his hips until the younger man cried. 

What a sweet thought– made even sweeter when Minho realised that after months of mindless, pesky following, he was finally giving him the type of attention he wanted. 

“I just love you so much,” oh how his deranged mouth moved, hitching through every unyielding pulse of his cock as it inched deeper and deeper. In and out. “Minho. Min-ho. I love you. I– l-love… you.” 

Minho felt his nails dig into Jisung’s scalp, unable to focus, unable to think, unable to breathe without thoughts of flooding him. He wanted to hear those words forever. Wanted to see those dark, desperate eyes watch him. He wanted to roll his wrist again and again and again until he listened to those melodic cries escape his mouth as he milked Jisung through his third bout of come for the night. 

His hole clenched tighter than Minho imagined possible, anchoring his cock deep inside as that itch, that warm and wonderful itch, continued to pester the restraints barely holding Minho back. And god… he looked so desperate. Opening his mouth wide, sticking out his tongue, pleading with those bright, big eyes that Minho gave him what he wanted. A gift. A present– in thick ropes of come with the only intent to bury itself within him. 

“I love you too,” Minho whispered rather sardonically, trying not to whimper, trying not to hiss, needing to keep his eyes keened on Jisung’s face when he uttered the words into the stratosphere. It was insane. It was batshit fucking crazy that Minho could say words he seldom ever thought about. But he wanted to say them to Jisung. He meant to say them to Jisung. 

How could he not love the primal whine that left Jisung’s lips when his eyes snapped at the realisation Minho said what he said? How could he not love the way he only needed to tug once and then twice, for Jisung to spill himself all over his clenched fist, splattering on his stomach and warming the barely-there space between them? How could he not love that pure devotion laced in his gaze when he doubled down and fucked Jisung exactly how he craved? 

Such pleasure was contagious, so powerful, so unavoidable, that it felt like returning home after being lost for so long when Minho felt his balls tighten, hips stuttering, cock finally, fervently pulsing deep inside his tight entrance, clenching so narrowly around him it nearly hurt. It was like his brains were spilling through his cock as he drew himself deep within the trembling man beneath him until he could hardly breathe at the perfect fit of it. 

He just wanted this. He just wanted him. 

Coming in Jisung was like feeling the burning ache of his deepest, tightest muscles disappear. He couldn’t hear anything more than the sounds coming from Jisung’s chest, revelling and writhing at the new sensation– the type of sensation that didn’t just melt away after a few seconds. 

It lingered on and on. Until Minho was leaning forward, head buried in Jisung’s warm neck and suckling on the flesh. Until he kissed and listened to his incomprehensible words and noises. Until he could barely remember who he was, how he got here, why they were even together in his bed at some ridiculous hour of the morning. 

But he didn’t care when there was a warm, needy sleeve around his cock, drawing every ounce of sustenance out of him until he didn’t have a drop left.  

“IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou…” 

Jisung’s whispers were sharp and written in red ink that scarred his brain. They were consequential. Terrifying. An indication that they wouldn’t just… separate like this was fine and normal and healthy. 

But that hardly mattered when Minho held Jisung in his arms, letting the waning embers of their shared pleasure die down. 

This was where Minho belonged, he thought when Jisung reached a hand downward to pet the base of his cock still lodged in his saturated heat. This was where he needed to be, he mused in the moments he drifted toward the edge of his sanity and thus, away from consciousness. 

⨼⨽

Jisung didn’t need much of a morning. 

Just a glass of water and tea steeped in honey. 

The blinds rolled up but with drawn curtains so only a veil of sunlight reached the bed. 

And Minho, who just so happened to be the earlier riser, there– in his sight and perfectly within reach. 

The alarm would sound off in two minutes time. The default alarm– a jarring sound. One that made his teeth clench and voice whine when it finally woke him up. Minho liked to wake before it even had the chance to sound off. He didn’t like it when Jisung squeezed his eyes shut, letting his brows draw in the middle of his forehead and hum that his phone shut up. 

He didn’t like seeing his discomfort. His disdain. He didn’t like it when things weren’t going absolutely perfectly for him. 

Rather, Minho liked it when Jisung woke up to his fingers tangling in his hair, letting the scuffed curls from a night spent in his arms straighten and coil as he moved them up and down. He liked the first thing Jisung heard to be his voice from the perched position on his side of the bed, cooing and whispering that ‘it was time to wake up’ and ‘you’re going to be late for work’ instead of that relentless ring… ring… ring of the alarm. 

But Minho didn’t mind sitting there. Sometimes he timed it well– giving him five or so minutes to sneak out of bed, boil the kettle and get his tea ready to be on his bedside table by the time he woke up. Sometimes he timed it differently. Where he would rouse from sleep a whole hour before Jisung needed to be awake. Usually, Minho didn’t like just sitting there, idle and alone and waiting to claim his spot as the first and only thing Jisung saw every day he set out to live. 

Yet in the time that stretched on from when he first flew into Minho’s web, waking up earlier meant he got to sit there for longer and watch his chest rise and fall as his lungs sucked in the air of soft morning. He got to watch his fingers gathered atop the duvet, seeing them stretch and grab and move slightly as he snuggled into the blankets. He even got to be there, to catch the words that rarely fell out of his dreamscape and give him some insight into the one part of Jisung’s life Minho couldn’t see… no matter how hard he tried. 

“Baby,” Minho whispered, seeing his phone clock tick over to seven in the morning. “Your tea is getting cold. Time to get up.” 

Minho loved the sight of when he first rose. It was always the same when Minho made sure everything ran to plan. 

On a perfect morning, Jisung would blink once, rub his eyes, then blink twice. Whisper “Good morning, my love,” and spread his fingers to cover his mouth as he yawned. 

“I missed you,” Minho, even after all these months, couldn’t help but etch forward, lay beside him and pull him to his chest. “And you were talking in your sleep again. Something about the sea and sitting on a boat at sunset.” 

Jisung’s mouth coiled to the side, lips soft and leaving the skin of Minho’s chest to tingle when he pulled away from the older man and leant over to his side table, plucking his glasses from the spot beneath the lamp. 

“You were talking in your sleep too,” he gleamed, turning back to face the man he loved with those reflective lenses of glass. “Something about me and you and being together forever.”