Archive of Our Own

“You wanna learn what? You wanna learn how to play Valorant?”

San nods his head furiously, his hands clapping together in a pleading gesture before his face. “Please.”

Wooyoung gawks, judging him shamelessly from across the table. His chopsticks dangle between the loose grip of his fingers like he’s so stupefied he doesn’t know what to say—doesn’t even move for the few seconds San has his eyes squeezed closed in seriousness.

Slowly, he peeks one eye open, only to find Wooyoung shoving a mountain of kkalguksu into his mouth as though he hasn’t even heard him in the first place. With an offended scoff, San drops his hands back into his lap. “What the hell!” he whines under his breath, then nudges his glasses further up his nose in embarrassment. He avoids the gaze of a girl staring at him from where she sits at the table past Wooyoung’s shoulder.

With a grimace, like it’s too much to swallow, Wooyoung asks, negligent to the fact they’re in public, “Don’t you think there are better ways to get into your roommate’s pants?”

San sucks sharply against his teeth, loud enough to partially mask the words that just left Wooyoung’s mouth. “You’re so loud! And it’s not like that, man.”

The boy across cocks a brow as though he doesn’t believe him in the slightest, but San can’t actually find it in himself to give a proper defense. As his closest friend, Wooyoung knows a little bit too much about him—sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes, like this time, it’s awful. He can deny it all he wants, but there is no truth untold between them. It’s just that Wooyoung tends to put things in ways that sound terribly crude, and San really, seriously, doesn’t actually care about what’s in Jeong Yunho’s pants.

“Please,” San tries again, “can’t you help me?”

“Help you? Why don’t you just ask him to teach you? Is it not, like, the perfect opportunity?”

“I can’t. You know I’m bad at games. I need to—I need to get to know the game first,” San whispers, like the conversation is somewhat humiliating to him. Wooyoung, on the other hand, does not seem to give a flying fuck.

“Fine, but just so you know, I don’t really play Valorant. I can get you set up, but you’re on your own after that. Also, you have to let me know how big his dick is.”

“Dude, stop.”

The download itself was relatively easy. San didn’t know why he thought it’d be a complicated process, but after making his Riot account and spending forty-five minutes trying to come up with an account name, he is now staring at the title screen as bright, neon colours flash across his face. The main menu music was so loud it startled him into turning it down all the way, but now that he’s in, he doesn’t know what to do.

Wooyoung told him to wait for him to get back from class, but San is also heavily conscious of the fact that his roommate gets back around the same time as Wooyoung on Tuesdays. Does it really matter? Well, it’s not like Yunho ever barges into his room unannounced, so no, not really, but there’s still something about the thought of Yunho being on the other side of the door while San has Valorant open that gets his heart thumping in his chest.

Maybe it’s because it’s widely known that San does not play games. He has his computer, a tiny little thing pre-built by one of his old high school friends back when Chinese parts were actually cheaper and easier to find, and if he isn’t doing school work on it, he’s at the gym, at the grocery store, or on the couch with the dinner he made in his hands and a show playing on the TV.

Yunho knows this—has known this since the first week they moved in together. It was a little awkward getting to know each other at first, but it didn’t take longer than a month to realize just how different he and Yunho are.

They’re both homebodies in their own way, but Yunho is practically confined to his own room. He’ll come out sometimes if San cooks for him, but he realized quickly as well that their tastes don’t really align, either.

Not that San doesn’t eat delicious food, but most of his meals are portions carefully measured to meet his macros, and sometimes they’re devoid of oils and fats and all the good stuff in between—and, well, Yunho, like most people, enjoys the good stuff.

They only started talking a little bit more when San introduced Wooyoung to him when he came to visit halfway through their third year. By then, San and Yunho had been roommates for half the second semester.

San can somehow always trust Wooyoung to be a bonding agent. It helped that Wooyoung played games, because he was able to hold a pretty good conversation about all the games San has never heard of before (well, he knew a little bit about Genshin Impact, only because he thought Barbara was really cute) but the fact remains that he and Yunho are, to this day, friendly roommates, whereas Yunho and Wooyoung are actually friends.

Honestly, considering their very lukewarm relationship with each other, San doesn’t even know how or when he developed this crush. One day, he just suddenly realized how attractive Yunho was, even though he already knew that from the day he met him. Realizing and knowing are kind of different, though.

When he’s in San’s space in the kitchen, asking about what he’s making solely for the sake of showing curiosity, San gets unexplainably nervous about the lack of distance between them. He’ll catch a whiff of the eucalyptus body wash he uses after the shower, and he has to make a conscious effort to not sniff so hard to the point it’s audible.

Seeing Yunho in his tight tank tops never bothered him in the past, but now, seeing him in even a henley has San scrambling to find something else to put his eyes on. Grey sweatpants are worse, and it’s definitely something San does not want to talk about.

“You want to fuck him,” Wooyoung blurted out of nowhere, unprovoked, into the silence one day.

San’s back went pin-straight, his heart lurching up his throat as he spun in his Herman Miller chair to face the boy sprawled across his bed.

“What?” he squeaked.

Wooyoung’s face was unreadable. Then, “No, wait. You want him to fuck you.”

San immediately got up, his gaze flitting to the door even though they were the only two in the apartment. He hissed out in a whisper, inching closer in case he needed to physically shut Wooyoung up, “Dude, what are you saying?”

“I know everything, Sannie-yah,” Wooyoung sang while rolling away from San’s hands. “You’re not as nonchalant as you think. In fact, yesterday, you stared at his ass for exactly thirteen seconds and—mff!”

Truthfully, he’s been really good at keeping himself in check when it comes to how he acts around Yunho—hence their very dry, very banal interactions. He gives himself credit for being able to keep his feelings at an arm’s length away whenever Yunho is around, when he’s studying, when he’s working out.

Lately, though, it has been especially hard keeping it together, and he knows exactly why that is. It was a moment of shame, a time San can’t think about without raising goosebumps along his skin as embarrassment consumes him, and it had happened three weeks ago on a stupid Friday night.

Yunho was supposed to be out—he said he would be out, and that’s usually a pretty rare occurrence. With the apartment to himself, San figured it might’ve been okay to masturbate a bit and, really, for people like himself who don’t do it much and don’t crave it much, why wouldn’t anyone take such an opportunity?

Well, it was a mistake. At the time, San had been in such an abysmal state of lust, his hand furiously beating his dick, he didn’t fully register the fact that Yunho had come home early, threw on his headset, and got on a game.

When he heard the very unmistakable curse from the other side of the wall, he had been so close, it physically hurt when it interrupted his concentration. Then, a long, throaty groan, a sharp edge of frustration laced in the sound, and San realized his hand was still moving, still stroking, thumbing at his tip.

His breaths quick and heavy, he came with a strained whimper at the same time Yunho shouted, “Fuck!” A loud bang against the table followed afterward.

The whole thing shook San to the core. He laid in his bed for what felt like minutes too long, and then it was like clarity hit him full force afterward. He shot up on his ass, stared at his softening cock and the cum splatter over the back of his hand, and felt shame crash into him like a ten tonne truck.

He didn’t just jerk off to his roommate, right? Well, no. Actually, it was worse than that. All Yunho did was grunt and curse a couple times and San had the most jaw-dropping, toe-curling, ass-clenching orgasm of his entire life.

And, he didn’t tell anyone about it—not a single soul. He obviously has to pretend like it didn’t happen, because he can’t put himself out of his misery by telling Yunho, “Hey, uh, I accidentally jerked off to you but I swear it was an accident,” and he also can’t travel back in time and undo it.

Clearly, it doesn’t work, hence why he’s impatiently waiting for Wooyoung to get back home so he can teach him how to play this stupid game. Even though it’s a distant memory he has forcibly shoved to the darkest part of his brain, it seems he’s starting to go insane from the hurricane that is the two wolves inside of him. The angel is telling him to let it go, that these things happen, and there’s nothing he can do about it, while the devil on the other side is crying, begging, pleading for him to finally make a move on Yunho—that this is as good an opportunity as any.

And yes, San has given himself no chances. In the three years that he has been Yunho’s roommate, he has never once allowed himself to think about what more they can have. It’s always been denial, denial, denial. Yunho is not a good match for him, they’re both taking a master’s degree right now—maybe he’s not even into men!

But god, does he want to try. He has been wanting to try since the incident-that-shall-not-be-named, or maybe that was the one push he needed. For the first time, San was willing to give in to the devil on his shoulder, and so he came up with a plan. First, he needed to get closer to Yunho; like Wooyoung, he needed to be his friend. Second, he’ll have to come up with a clever way to seduce Yunho, and San has never seduced anyone in his entire life. He’s not even really sure if he can do it. He’s never even considered it—at least, not until recently.

Maybe he can start by showing more skin, or maybe they can drink together one night. Maybe San also needs to start wearing henleys and grey sweatpants around the apartment. It worked on him, will it work on Yunho?

Lastly—well, he can cross that bridge when he gets there.

Right now, he needs to learn how to play Valorant. His phone buzzes in his hands and San unlocks it so quickly he feels embarrassed for how eager he is, but before he can officially read Wooyoung’s text, three loud knocks startle the device right out of his hold. He curses under his breath and tries to catch it, but the corner of his case hits the ground and glides across the vinyl flooring.

“San?” the voice on the other side of the door speaks, confusion seeping through the single word. “Are you okay?”

In his state of panic, San accidentally hits his elbow as he attempts to exit out of the game application on his computer, but he realizes with horror he doesn’t know how, so he ends up forcing a shutdown on his entire computer. The whirring of the fans soften to a quiet hum before they stop altogether just as the door pops open.

“Uh, hey,” San croaks, his hands in his lap.

Yunho’s expression remains rather perplexed as his eyes briefly scan the way San has his hands in his lap, phone face-down on the floor, and cheeks flushed from his break in composure. San lunges forward for his phone, then dusts it off with the back of his hands because he needs something to do with them.

After a brief moment of silence, Yunho breaks it to ask, “Were you watching porn?”

“What?” San squeaks, a nervous smile spreading awkwardly across his face. “No, I—I don’t watch that… stuff.”

Yunho nods, then takes another step into San’s room. “Sorry, I know I shouldn’t have just barged in like that. I didn’t know if you were okay. You’re okay though, right?”

San’s hand flies to his elbow, nursing it with a grimace. “Yeah, you, um, scared me. Why are you home so early today?”

His roommate snorts, then knees the door open further. “My lab was cancelled ‘cause someone got a positive back for norovirus.”

“What? In the middle of your lab?”

Yunho laughs, the sound of it bright like a chime. “Right? Anyways, look at what I made.” He pulls something out from behind his back and thrusts it forward, an excited grin on his face.

Honestly, San doesn’t really know what he’s looking at. He blinks. “Uh, what is it?”

“It’s a beer bottle opener, but it has a funnel attached to it! It’s something I made for Jongho, so he stops leaving his bottle caps everywhere,” Yunho answers while inspecting it closely. “I ran the print overnight at, like, 1AM, but I didn’t get to paint it until this afternoon. What do you think?”

“It’s really cool!” San lies, but he’s learned to be pretty convincing with it. Over the years, Yunho has brought and shown him countless things he made with his 3D printer. A lot of the times, they were super bizarre and strange, ideas San would’ve never even considered in two lifetimes, but he also could never hurt Yunho’s feelings with the truth about his ignorance.

That, and the fact that he loves seeing Yunho’s little moments of triumph that come naturally with San’s praise.

Yunho’s grin turns a little shy, his hands dropping back to his side. “Yeah, sorry, I just wanted to show you before I meet up with him tonight. Do you want one? I can run another print.”

“No, it’s okay!” San waves his hands before him awkwardly. “I don’t really drink beer.”

Yunho nods once, his lips pursed. “Right. I knew that.” He clears his throat, then throws a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m gonna head out soon. I’ll see you tonight if you’re still up?”

San nods furiously. “Yeah! See you tonight.”

His bedroom door shuts with a gentle click, and then San lets out a deep, shaky breath. He stares at an empty spot on the floor for so long, the incoming vibrations from his phone make him jump in surprise.

Oh, shit, he forgot about Wooyoung.

San turns his computer back on, and while he waits for it to boot up, he messages Wooyoung back. Somewhere between the silence of a still late afternoon and the whirring of his computer fans, he hears the front door of the apartment creak open and then close shut with a resolute clang.

He picks up the video call from Wooyoung and props his phone up against the edge of his monitor.

“Sorry,” is the first thing that leaves San’s mouth. “Uh, should I start it up?”

“Yeah,” Wooyoung responds with excessive mouse-clicking in the background. “Do you have Discord?”

“Discord? What’s that?”

“It’s what we use to play games ‘cause Kakao audio sucks. Can you download it?”

Somehow, getting Discord set up was harder than understanding the rules of Valorant. He doesn’t have a microphone—he actually doesn’t even have a gaming headset (“Oh, god, I forgot to tell you you’ll probably have to get those things,” Wooyoung cried woefully) so even though he spent fifteen minutes setting up his Discord account, they end up not being able to use it.

San ended up downloading it on his phone because Wooyoung’s right—the audio quality on KakaoTalk is really bad when he’s button mashing and yelping with every enemy he encounters.

“He’s heaven,” Wooyoung says, “ah—behind you! Behind—”

San makes an expression of annoyance when he’s shot in the back. “How am I supposed to know that?” he whines. “I can’t hear anything.”

“You need to get a headset.”

With a sigh, San slumps back into his chair to spectate his teammates. “Fine, I’ll get one.”

“Get one with a mic if you don’t want to invest in a separate mic. Do you want me to send you some links?”

“Sure, send me whatever and I’ll buy it tonight,” San mumbles, frustrated with the game. They’ve played three games after Wooyoung spent the better part of an hour explaining to him the basics of it, and even though San can understand it in theory, actually being and playing in the game is a whole different story.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, he has no idea where he’s going or what he’s looking at. He gets shot before he can use any of his utility—sometimes, he dies before he can even shoot a single bullet.

“Do people really find this game fun?” he asks no one in particular.

Wooyoung replies, “Just try it out for a week. You were the one who was so adamant about learning this game. You know I don’t even play, right?”

San scowls bitterly at the reminder. “Yeah, yeah.”

That night, Yunho comes home late enough for San to not bother getting out of bed to greet him, but he does listen intently to the run of the showerhead when Yunho gets in the shower, the unsteady stumble of footsteps that come with too many beers, and the roll of his gaming chair over his plastic floor mat as he powers on his PC.

If San goes to sleep soundly after shoving his hand down his pants to stroke himself to the deep rumble of Yunho’s voice on the other side, then that is a secret only for him and the devil on his shoulder to know.

“You know, I think you’re getting better!” Wooyoung exclaims when San gets his fourth kill in the game. Never mind that it’s fourteen rounds into it, but San doesn’t disagree.

His headset sits comfortably on his head, the attached mic sitting near his lips as San smiles excitedly to himself. It doesn’t stay on his face for long, because he dies two seconds later.

“So, um, what rank is Yunho? Do you know?” he asks quietly. Yunho’s home right now, and he’s afraid he might hear him. Honestly, since getting the headset, San doesn’t actually use the mic as often as he should. It’s been a little over one week and he has dedicated around two hours to the game every day, but he’s still learning all the maps and callouts and terminology.

When silence stretches between them, confusion spreads on San’s face. “Wooyoung?”

“Oh, sorry,” Wooyoung speaks up, dialing back in. “Uh, everyone’s been wondering where I am. How do you feel about joining our Discord server?”

“What?” San whispers, suddenly out of breath. “No! No, I can’t. Yunho’s in there, isn’t he?”

“Well, yeah, but you might as well start playing with everyone. There are more people who can help you with Valorant there. Plus, Jongho has been cursing me out ‘cause I haven’t been on League. He’s gonna get suspicious.”

San shakes his head vehemently. “I can’t. I told you I didn’t want to play with them until I got better at the game.”

“C’mon, please? I promise they’re not toxic. We’ve had new players in the server before. Look at Soobin! He used to be shit at the game—now he’s gold! I think.”

San thinks about it for so long, he doesn’t talk about it until the end of the game. They don’t win, unfortunately, but San isn’t even upset by it anymore. He stares at the match result screen for a solid two minutes before he sighs and tabs out of the game.

“Fine, but… don’t tell anyone it’s me,” he grumbles, half hoping Wooyoung doesn’t actually hear him. Unfortunately, his mic is too good.

“What do you mean?”

San sighs through his nose. “Just tell everyone you met me online or something.”

“You’re not gonna talk?”

He contemplates it for a few moments. “I don’t need to, right? It’s not like I’m good at giving comms anyway…”

“And your name? Do you want me to just introduce you as Pudding?”

San’s cheeks grow warm. “I-is there something wrong with it…?”

The couple of seconds that Wooyoung doesn’t say anything makes him feel antsy in his chair. “Nah, it should be fine. So, we met on Valorant. I wanted to give it a try again, but I still don’t really like it, but I also don’t want to ditch you, so I invite you to the server. How’s that?” Wooyoung suggests.

Honestly, San’s pretty impressed. He doesn’t know how Wooyoung thought of a story like that so quickly, even if it sounds pretty simple in itself. With less reluctance than before, he agrees.

Wooyoung works rather quickly. Within seconds, he’s sent an invite to a Discord server titled ‘Solo Leveling Prohibited’ with seven active people and fourteen members total. If San clicks this, he’s going to become the fifteenth member.

Wooyoung says he’ll meet him there, leaving San alone in the call he shares with him in their private messaging chat. He swallows the lump in his throat, then gently hovers his cursor over the invite link. He doesn’t realize how shaky his hands are until he clicks down on it without meaning to, fully unprepared to hear the sudden plethora of three other voices in his ears.

“—have you been? Did you find a new friend group?”

“Huh? Someone joined.”

“Who joined?”

“Who’s that?”

“Ah, no way… A girl?”

San’s cursor flies to the mute button. Holy shit—what a close call.

Wooyoung’s voice cuts through. “I invited my friend. No, he’s not a girl. We met on Valorant. He’s new, so please teach him well!”

Jongho’s voice, a familiar one that gives San a huge relief when he hears it, spills from his headset, “So you’re cheating on me.”

“I was only giving it another try.” San can practically hear the eyeroll in Wooyoung’s tone. “I didn’t wanna ditch Pudding-ssi, so I thought I’d invite him. It’s okay, right?”

“Of course, it’s okay,” a deep, velvety tone says. San’s heart skips a beat—he can recognize that voice anywhere. After a beat, he comments, “You must like cats.”

San’s Discord profile picture is of his childhood cat, and he’s pretty sure Yunho might have seen a couple pictures before, but it’s inconspicuous enough for it to not really be recognizable. Still, San doesn't know what to say. Well, he’s still muted.

“He’s muted,” someone states.

“No mic?”

Wooyoung cuts in, “Uh, he’s shy.”

San is not shy, but he can’t argue with Wooyoung under these circumstances, so he lets it slide. Instead, he quickly types out a message in the general chat.

[Pudding] Sorry ^^; I don’t want to use it right now

[Pudding] And yes, I love cats

Wooyoung cuts in shortly afterward, “Pudding-chan, I’m gonna play League now, okay? Go play Valorant with them.”

San curses under his breath. He hadn’t thought this far. Now that he’s here and Wooyoung is actually throwing him to the wolves, he suddenly doesn’t know what to do next. How does he add a friend again? What if he accidentally takes someone’s agent? Are they really okay with him playing with them?

He watches sadly as Wooyoung leaves to join another voice channel with Jongho and another person named Hethet.

“Yes, come play,” Yunho’s voice slices through San’s thoughts. “We need a fifth anyway. What level is your account? You must be pretty new, right?”

San’s hands tremble when he sends his message in the channel.

[Pudding] Level 12

“Oh, shit, you’re, like, new-new,” someone says.

The guy with the black profile picture assures him, “Don’t worry, we will carry you.”

“I think my smurf is plat, though.”

San chokes on his own spit. “Platinum?” he squeaks quietly to himself. He can feel the sweat bead at his temples as he tries to figure out how to let everyone know he’s worse than the shit at the bottom of their shoes, probably, but then he gets a Discord friend request.

It pops up unexpectedly, and San nearly has a heart attack when he sees who it’s from. It’s been less than five minutes, and he has already heavily associated Yunho with that profile picture of his—a photo at the beach of his hand with a very pretty pink seashell in the middle of his palm.

He accepts the friend request, and then he gets a private message chat immediately.

[Hotteok] hey!

[Hotteok] who are you most comfortable playing?

[Pudding] Sage

[Hotteok] ok perf

[Hotteok] whats your riot id?

[Pudding] uh one sec

San remembers, but he also doesn’t want to be wrong, so he switches tabs to double check.

[Pudding] Pudding #meow

[Hotteok] lolol so cute

San stares at his monitor. He thinks his heart just fucking stopped.

[Hotteok] ok i added u

When San opens up his game, there’s a friend request notification from no one but Yunho himself. He accepts it quickly, and then he’s immediately added to the party, the last to join to complete a full team.

“Pudding, are you already warmed up?” Yunho asks.

San winces, because he’s not even sure if it really matters whether he’s had his warm up or not.

[Pudding] Yeah!

“We’re playing unrated, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll probably make a new smurf, though. I can get mine set up tonight.”

“Same.”

“Yeah, me too.”

[Pudding] Does it matter if we’re not playing competitive?

Yunho answers, “Yeah, there’s still MMR in unrated.”

[Pudding] What is MMR?

“It’s the matchmaking rating, so you’ll still be playing against experienced players,” Yunho explains easily. “Don’t worry, just play with me, I’ll teach you.”

There’s something warm and fuzzy that spreads across San’s chest at Yunho’s words, and he can’t help but feel somewhat relieved at the idea that Yunho will be teaching him.

[Pudding] I will follow you :3

Yunho’s chuckle is deep and only lasts a couple seconds, but it is also the most genuine one San has heard in weeks. “Yeah, don’t heal anyone else, okay? Only heal and res me.”

“What?” Tokkibun asks, appalled by Yunho’s declaration.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Yeon.zip adds, but San doesn’t even really hear them, too focused on the way Yunho’s giggles filter through his headset. He should really thank Wooyoung for suggesting it to him. He has never in his life heard voices so clearly in his ear, and it is downright sinful whenever Yunho opens his mouth.

The queue for their game lasts for mere seconds before he’s suddenly being thrown into agent select where he has quickly learned to lock in Sage before anyone else can take her, and then the game starts.

Reyna pops up on his monitor, stepping side to side, and then Yunho asks, “You’ve played on Pearl before, right?”

San moves his mouse up and down to nod his agent’s head.

“Okay, come with me to A. If you hear footsteps, you can wall them off like this. If they break your wall, throw your slow orb. I’ll play A with you, so you won’t be fighting alone if they push.”

Thankfully, they don’t come to the A site, but when San has to rotate to B, he suddenly forgets what he has to do. He wants to help his team but he doesn’t know how, so when he pushes out onto the site, ends up getting shot a million times, and then dies, he can’t help but feel embarrassed.

[Pudding] I’m so sorry

“All good!” Yunho chirps. “Just be careful if you’re ever pushing out of a smoke. You’re playing Sage so it’s hard to do something like that.”

San nods to himself and takes a deep breath, scooting in closer to his table before switching to spectate Yunho instead. He’s never actually watched him play before, so it’s very surprising to see just how controlled his movements are.

San doesn’t really understand their comms—they’re so much more different from the type he usually receives in his own games, where everyone is new.

“Flashing, can you swing?”

“You flashed me, Yeonjun.”

“Well, stop swinging so fucking early.”

San blinks. Yeonjun is a name he’s heard quite a bit—one of Yunho’s friends, actually. So, it must mean Soobin is playing too, right? He’s never actually met them, but Yunho’s mentioned both of them on occasion.

“Uh, someone pillar—nice!” someone named Minki says. San has long assumed that it was Mingi. He’s Yunho’s best friend, and San has met him before. He comes over sometimes, but he doesn’t really stay for long. He supposes it’s what happens when your entire friend group consists of gamers. Everyone probably wants to get home to their PC.

Even Wooyoung, San’s best friend who he has known for years, stays home more often than he used to in favour of playing games, so it really is just San, and while he has his own busy schedule to fulfill, he can’t help but feel like he’s missing out on something that half the population in Korea is seemingly in on.

Everything he does, he does alone. He goes to his classes, then he goes to the gym, and then he works his job on the weekends. He’s usually done by three so he has the rest of the day off which he’ll spend studying, and on Sundays, he does his grocery shopping and meal prepping for the week.

He’s never really felt lonely living this kind of life, and neither has he been very interested in picking up other hobbies, but lately, he’s been yearning for something more. Maybe it’s okay to not have to put all his free hours into studying—he’s a great student already—and maybe it’s okay to let that ‘something more’ come in the form of playing video games with the roommate he’s been crushing on.

“Nice game, guys!” Soobin says.

[im hungry] GG

[sleepyhead] GG

[korea spiderman] gg

[trash game] GG

San hasn’t gotten into the habit yet of saying ‘GG’ after every game, so he’s a little late when he tries to, and the loading screen kicks him out of the game chat. He frowns—now he’s going to seem like an asshole.

[Pudding] GG, you guys are very good… I only got 3 kills T_T

“You’ll get better with time,” Yunho reassures him, “I promise. Wanna play another one?”

This time, San follows Yunho around like he’s glued to his side. He starts shift-walking everywhere after Yunho tells him his footsteps are too loud, like he doesn’t want to make another mistake and disappoint him.

In the fifth round, it’s just the two of them alive against a full team. Somehow, their teammates weren’t able to get even one pick, whatever that means.

“Wall and defuse—yes, perfect, like that. Stay on the bomb, ‘kay? I’ll protect you,” Yunho says, positioning his agent’s body right in between San and his quickly-decaying wall.

His heart beats in his chest when an enemy comes into view, outlined harshly in red, but then Yunho taps him once in the head, and then another, and then one more behind San. 

“One link,” someone calls out, so Yunho quickly turns to hold that angle, but there are still two enemies left, and San is pretty sure the other one is looking right at him.

“Oh god,” he gasps out, getting off the bomb even though Yunho told him not to. He pulls his gun out and shoots, and just as Yunho gets a kill behind them, San somehow manages to get a headshot on the last enemy.

“Pudding, nice kill!” he cheers in English. “Good job!” Yunho turns back around to finish defusing the bomb. Then, he jumps back and forth and around San, laughing in his ears as he praises him.

San swallows the saliva that has gathered at the back of his throat, his cheeks flushing heavily from the other man’s words. He didn’t even really do much—Yunho did all the work. Maybe he thinks he’s a little undeserving of the compliments, but hearing it from Yunho is making his heart beat faster.

He wants to hear it again.

[Pudding] Thank you…!

They play for so long, he completely loses track of time. He thinks it’s the longest he’s ever spent on the game in one day, but he has so much fun, he doesn’t even realize how tired his eyes are until he blinks them away to the polaroid picture of him and Wooyoung that he has on the wall behind his monitor. His stomach starts grumbling as he stretches his arms above his head, the ache in his back releasing gently with it. He was supposed to go to the grocery store after work today, but he put it off in favour of rushing home so he can get on the game, and he still hasn’t gone. He looks at the time and his eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets.

“Oh shit,” he curses under his breath, jumping out of his chair and spinning on his heels to find a hoodie in his closet before bending down at his keyboard to send a quick goodbye message to the team.

[Pudding] Sorry, that was my last one

[Pudding] It was really fun playing with you guys!

[Pudding] Thank you for the games and have a goodnight~

He exits the game and shuts off his PC before he can see what anyone else says, and he only feels a little bit bad about it because he wants to try to make it to the grocery store before it closes for the night. There will always be more opportunities to play and chat.

San grabs his keys and his wallet before swinging his bedroom door open, except he nearly bumps into a tall figure on his way out.

Yunho glances at him with curious eyes. “Are you going somewhere? It’s so late.”

“Uh, yeah, I—I forgot to go to the grocery store today,” he admits with burning embarrassment at the tips of his ears. He doesn’t even know why he’s embarrassed. It happens, right?

His roommate tilts his head. “You never forget.”

“I forgot today. I had something to do,” San answers vaguely, then takes a step to the side. He’s not short by any means, but Yunho is so tall he can’t help but feel smaller when he’s this close to him, and that’s saying a lot considering how much bulkier San is compared to him.

“Can I come with?”

San looks up, surprised. “What?”

“Yeah, I’ve been playing games for four hours straight. I need some air.”

Holy shit, were they really playing for four hours straight?

“Yeah, of course,” San squeaks out, his hands clutching onto his keys tightly.

Yunho grins, and it is the prettiest thing in the world. San has to force his eyes away to stop himself from staring too hard. “Okay, great! Give me a minute to change.”

San stands by the front door awkwardly while he waits. He and Yunho rarely ever go grocery shopping together, and that’s only because San has been so strict with his routine of going straight there after his Sunday shifts. There was never any reason for them to go together.

When Yunho joins him at the front door, he offers to hold the shopping bags for him, which San reluctantly gives because he’s not sure why it matters who holds it, but he’s not really a confrontational person.

The late evening air is a relief on San’s skin as they walk along the street. They’re in a decently secluded area, quiet after ten every night, but they’re just a few streets away from the bustle of a commercial district. It’s probably the best apartment complex San has ever lived in. He might not dine out often or go shopping a lot, but it’s still nice to know he’s not far from liveliness if he ever needs it.

“How were your games today?” San asks, turning his head to look at Yunho.

“They were good! We won most of them,” he replies easily, his hands tucking further into his pockets. The shopping bags are neatly folded and sandwiched under his arm, and the length of his bangs falling over his eyes, shielded by a pair of thin, silver frames, makes him look modestly charming in a way San has always loved. In so many ways, they are different, but San still can’t help the yearning he feels for him.

“You okay?”

San jolts. “Huh?”

“I asked how your day went,” Yunho says slowly, observing him quietly. “You mentioned you had something to do. I figured it must’ve been important if you came straight home right away after work.”

San’s brain blanks out. “Uh… yeah! This, um, assignment. I forgot to do it.”

“Sounds like a pretty crazy assignment if it took you that long,” Yunho comments with a short laugh.

“Yeah, crazy,” San bluffs.

More voices start to gather around them as they near the grocery store. They’re still half an hour out until closing, which is usually plenty of time, but he’s starting to realize shopping with Yunho can make time pass like the snap of fingers.

“What’s this for?” Yunho asks, picking up the bag that San just dropped into the cart. His eyebrow scrunches like he’s reading foreign words.

“It’s just a fibre supplement.”

Yunho’s eyebrows furrow together. “Are you constipated?”

San chokes on his inhale. “N-no! It’s just good for your gut health because it helps wake up your gut in the morning.”

“Really? I was always told to start your day with two eggs.”

“I mean, yeah, that’s fine too. You can eat whatever you want,” San answers. “I have both in the mornings.”

“I see,” Yunho mumbles, putting the bag back into the cart. “Is it gross?”

San tries to hold back his smile, but after a few seconds of silence, he fails and lets it crack across his lips. “Yeah, it’s pretty gross.”

The laugh that Yunho gives him is unrestrained and authentic, and San has to force his eyes back onto the shelves in order to distract himself from the warmth filling in his cheeks. For the next fifteen minutes, Yunho follows him around the store as San picks out his snacks for the week, from ice cream to protein bars to the strawberry-flavoured mochi he’s been obsessed with lately.

“Don’t you like these too?” Yunho asks, holding up a pack of Oh Yes chocolate cakes. Then, in his other hand, a pack of pudding cups. “And these. Pudding?”

San blinks, his steps coming to a stop. “Um, yeah.” He tries not to think about how familiar the word ‘pudding’ sounds coming from Yunho’s mouth.

Yunho puts them into the shopping cart with a tight grin on his lips. “I noticed. They’re always in the cupboard, but I think you ran out.”

He nods in response, only because he doesn’t know what to actually say. He didn’t realize Yunho roamed the cupboards often enough to notice these kinds of things, but then again, he supposes that’s where Yunho mostly searches for his own meals and snacks.

“Do you really eat ramen all the time?” San asks while watching Yunho pick out four different brands of ramen before setting them all into the cart that is beginning to fill up rather quickly.

“Not all the time, I usually order,” Yunho replies.

“You do?”

Yunho blinks once. “Yeah?”

“I… never noticed.”

Yunho snorts. “I eat pretty late. I try not to wake you up, so… good? I guess.”

“Oh,” San responds curtly. He had no idea. “Um, did you want to get anything else besides that? Since we’re already here. Maybe protein? Vegetables? Do we have eggs?”

Yunho’s lips twist like he’s unsure. “Uh, up to you. I don’t really cook.”

“Right.”

“I think we do still have eggs, though.”

“It’s okay, I’ll get more anyway,” San answers, then starts rolling the shopping cart forward, but Yunho steps closer, a hand on the handle to stop him.

“Here, let me push.”

San takes a baby step back. “Oh, you don’t have to—”

“It’ll be easier for you to shop, right? They’re gonna close in ten minutes.”

Like earlier, when he offered to take the shopping bags, San gives in, his hands releasing tension around the handle before they fall to his sides. He watches as Yunho takes over, then turns his head to give him a grin. “Where to?”

They end up in the fresh produce section, where San spends maybe two minutes grabbing what he needs. He always gets the same vegetables, only because he doesn’t actually love them as much as he needs them in his diet. As disgusting as psyllium husk is as a fibre option, he’d much rather take that every morning than think about how green blended spinach makes his apple banana smoothies look.

San picks up an apple, inspects it, then drops it into the plastic bag. Then, Yunho’s hand comes into vision, his fingers so long it covers eighty percent of it. San blinks down at the fruit, then looks up at Yunho slowly before carefully accepting it in his hands.

He turns it over to look for bruises, then again to check for other blemishes. Slowly, he lowers it into his bag and tries not to notice the way Yunho smiles in triumph out of his periphery. Afterward, they move to the protein section—San’s favourite spot in the entire store. Their meats are always packaged with such care and quality, and he always finds himself splurging a little too much when he gets here. It’s always why he does his protein shopping last.

“Look at this,” he says with barely contained excitement while holding up a large package of brisket, “half off today because it’s the first Sunday of the month!” 

“That’s a lot,” Yunho comments. “You can eat that in a whole week?”

“Of course!” San doesn’t realize how pouty he sounds when he says it. “I need to hit my protein macros. Look, there’s this, too.” He continues to point out all his favourite cuts of meat as they walk down the row. He doesn’t know how long he spends talking, but by the time it nears closing hour, San hasn’t actually put anything in the cart yet.

“Do you like barbecue?” Yunho asks suddenly, just as a voice over the intercom reminds shoppers of the time.

“Y-yeah, why?” San responds, a little taken aback. He watches Yunho pick up the brisket, a pack of pork belly, and pre-marinated galbi.

“Wanna eat dinner together this week?” he suggests, waving the meat in his hands. “I have plans on Thursday, but I’m free any other day.”

San swallows around a ball in his throat. “What about, um, Tuesday?”

“Tuesday works,” Yunho says, putting the meat at the top of the pile. “Did you need anything else?”

“I don’t think so… Ah! Maybe another pack of the brisket. I need to meal prep with it.” They don’t have time to shop for other stuff, so they start heading to the front to pay for their items. He’ll have to make another trip here for some more things if they want to grill meat on Tuesday, but it’s fine because he doesn’t know what they have at home and what they need, so he’ll check before leaving for his classes tomorrow morning.

Yunho takes his items out of the cart, but then he also takes the meat too.

“I can pay for that,” San says quickly with an outstretched hand.

“It’s fine, it’s my idea,” Yunho brushes him off with a crooked grin.

Well, San isn’t going to fight it, but he doesn’t expect Yunho to take the stuff he’s going to meal prep with, too. He shoves down his reluctance before loading his other items up after Yunho.

They take their time heading back to their apartment complex. Yunho has long legs, but he’s not really using them to his advantage, his pace matched perfectly with San’s. The straps of the shopping bags weigh down heavily on their curled fingers. He doesn’t mind, but he wonders how Yunho’s holding up.

“How did Jongho like your gift?” San asks out of nowhere. He doesn’t know why he asked. Maybe he just wants something to fill the silence between them. It’s not like it’s awkward, but San thinks it might get there the more he focuses on it.

“He said he hated it,” Yunho replies with a burst of short laughter. “Ah, but we still used it that night!”

San hums quietly. Then, “Do you like to drink beer?”

“Yeah, I love it! It’s the best for games, because you won’t get drunk so fast,” Yunho answers. “You don’t really drink it, right?”

“Not much… but I’ll drink it if I go out with my friends.”

“Ah, but you don’t go out much, either.”

San pouts with his head downturned. “Wooyoung is the only one who invites me these days. I think I turned too many people down in the past, but I don’t think I’d mind going out more these days.”

“Really?” Yunho asks, the curiosity in his voice heightened. “What changed?”

“Huh? Oh, um—I-I don’t know. I guess… I’m just not as strict with myself as I used to be.” He doesn’t think it’s far from the truth, but deep down inside, he knows it’s a little more than that.

He thinks somewhere along the way, he may have focused too heavily on one aspect of his way of living, laying down all these rules for himself and restricting himself to so many things that people enjoy, he eventually lost balance in life.

Oftentimes, San didn’t know whether something he did was for leisure or for work anymore. The lines felt blurry, but he continued on the one path he set for himself because it felt like the only right thing to do. 

It started with turning down dinner invites because he took his cut seriously, and Koreans all love their carbs. Then, he stopped drinking, and if he wasn’t drinking, he saw no reason to go clubbing if all he was going to end up doing was calling taxis for his friends or patting them on their backs while they threw up in a nearby alleyway.

After that was a sugar-free diet, and that sent San straight to hell. It only lasted a good month before he caved and bought the strawberry cake that always tempted him on his way home from campus every day.

By then, loneliness had already crept up on him in a way he hadn’t truly noticed until a couple years down the line, when his roommate Yunho, who he, at the time, still spoke little words to, felt closer than anyone else in his life—aside from Wooyoung, of course, but Wooyoung had his own circle of friends to hang out with in the ways San couldn’t provide.

He’d come to terms with it last year, but he did begin to allow himself a bit more freedom with his habits shortly afterward. He’s stopped counting his calories as meticulously, and it’s not like there’s really a difference in how his body looks if he consumes sugars and carbs as filler foods. These days, if he’s having a craving for anything, he has stopped denying himself that, and if he really wants a drink, a couple beers won’t hurt.

He’s twenty-six. He’s gone clubbing maybe twice, never kissed anyone, nor has he ever stayed up past 2AM doing something other than studying. According to Wooyoung, they’re experiences that everyone learns, especially when he’s lucky enough to get to attend a university like theirs.

He just wonders if he’ll ever get to experience something like that.

On Tuesday, San gets home later than usual, but he thinks it’ll be worth it as he steps inside their apartment, a grocery bag in one hand and a black plastic bag in the other. Yunho is already in the kitchen, dressed in a casual pair of light grey sweatpants and a navy blue university crewneck.

“You’re home,” he greets, a glass of water in his hand and his glowing RGB headset around his neck.

“Yeah, sorry, I stopped by the grocery store for some extra stuff,” San says, placing his bags on the table. They make a gentle thud against the surface, the uneven legs rattling on the vinyl floor.

“I took the meat out early, so it’s defrosted,” Yunho explains, gesturing behind him. “Oh, also, I didn’t know if you wanted to or not, but just in case, I bought a few bottles of Sero. I usually drink Jinro, but I thought maybe you’d prefer sugar free—if you’re drinking, of course.”

“What?” San blinks, then looks down at the black plastic bag. Slowly, he pulls it down. “I bought beer for you.”

They stare down at it, then back up at each other. Slowly, a grin cracks across Yunho’s face, and he sputters out a laugh. San can’t help but mirror it. “Somaek, then?” he suggests, reaching for the pack of beer and dragging it across the table with one hooked finger.

San laughs. “I’m down!”

“—and then he said I was cheating! Can you believe it? Trust me, people who are actually good can tell if you’re cheating right away,” Yunho chastises with a shake of his head.

Steam rises between them, and the splatter from the grill has decorated the surface of everything nearby it in little flecks of oily specks. The meat they’ve defrosted has dwindled enough for San to lay the rest out on the grill, cooking slowly while they pick at the side dishes he bought from the grocery store earlier today.

“But if you’re not actually cheating, can’t you take it as a compliment?” San ponders.

“Sure, I guess, but it was kind of annoying because he was trash-talking me and my teammates.”

San nods. “I see.”

Two empty bottles sit on the table. San’s cheeks are flushed and warm, and his head a little heavy. Truthfully, Yunho drank most of the soju. San had four glasses of somaek mixed embarrassingly weakly, meanwhile he watched Yunho down half a glass of straight Sero like it was nothing.

“Are you playing later?” he asks, trying not to sound as interested as he is. He’s not supposed to know what the game’s about. It was already kind of hard not acting shocked when Yunho told him his Valorant rank. He’s not even supposed to know what Immortal or Radiant means.

“I might. Maybe not a competitive game. I’ll see if the others are on and if they want to hop on smurfs or somethin’.” After a stretched silence from San, Yunho picks up his glass. “It means, like, a lower-tier account, so we don’t have to play other high-level players.”

San nods slowly. “Do you think it ruins the games for others?”

Yunho shrugs, his glass lifted to his lips. “It happens. We at least try to give a handicap and roulette an agent or play with pistols only.”

San stares at the way Yunho’s throat bobs with every gulp he takes of the light brown liquor. His fingers look really good wrapped around the glass. Ah, he needs to stop staring. With his lower lip tugged between his teeth, he mumbles, “Can I watch?”

“What?”

“Um, never mind.”

Yunho’s head tilts. “Sorry, I mean I didn’t hear you.”

San groans internally. Whatever, he’s kind of drunk. He might as well repeat himself if he’s not going to feel any shame for asking in the first place. “Can I watch you play?”

“Yeah, of course,” Yunho responds immediately. “I don’t have another chair, so if you wanna bring yours over… Or you can lay on my bed, up to you. You’ll still be able to see the monitor from there.”

It takes a little too long for the words to sink in properly. Lay in Yunho’s bed? San gulps. Never mind that—he’s hardly even been in his room. He tries to remember what it last looked like. It had been maybe almost a year ago, when Yunho had gotten sick right before the beginning of winter. He had gone in after making sure he was okay with it, dropped off medicine, and popped open his window for fresh air.

There was maybe one hoodie slung on the back of his gaming chair, and he had two posters of some e-sports team on his wall—San doesn’t know who—but it otherwise looked like a typical college boy’s room. Probably, the most interesting thing in there was his gaming PC, if not Yunho himself.

“Um, sure,” he answers meekly, then lifts his chopsticks, the metal pressing down onto his lips. He’s too busy staring at a spot on the table to notice the way Yunho stares at him with laser focus.

“Are you done drinking?” Yunho suddenly asks, pulling San’s attention back onto him. The other boy is holding forward a fresh bottle of soju, the lid hooked off his fingers of his other hand.

“I can have more!” San responds right away with a little too much eagerness as he holds his empty glass up to Yunho’s offer. He watches as the soju splashes into his glass, then thanks Yunho when he tops it off with beer for him.

They chat a little bit more, the both of them too full to really continue eating. Well, San feels like he’s doing most of the chatting this time. Maybe Yunho’s a little drunk too (he has to be, right? He drank so much) but it’s almost as though he’s purposely asking San all these question he’s never asked him before, and San doesn’t realize it until the time is already half past ten.

“Really?” Yunho continues, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. “You only give yourself two days of rest? Why?”

“I mean, it’s not that I only give myself two days of rest… It’s just always been like that. Um, but, I guess cutting down to four days at the gym doesn’t make a huge difference,” he mumbles, his tongue feeling heavier in his mouth. “But there’s not much for me to do if I don’t go.”

“Why don’t you pick up a new hobby?”

San blinks. Well, he did, didn’t he? It’s just that Yunho doesn’t know. “I might. I’ll think about it.”

“You could try playing games. I’d teach you.”

San sputters out a laugh, and Yunho cocks an eyebrow. “I know. Are you itching to play? I can clean up.”

“It’s okay, I’ll help you,” Yunho answers, quick to move as he begins stacking empty plates on top of one another. San watches him for a good solid few seconds before he jumps out of his seat as though he’s lagging in real time. He’s lightheaded and slightly unsteady on his feet as he and Yunho clean up the mess together.

When they’re done and their hands are dried, San follows Yunho out of the kitchen. He tells him he’ll be right there after changing because he doesn’t want to smell like barbecue while being in Yunho’s room, but when he closes the door behind him, the first thing he does is fall face-first into his bed.

He supposes maybe he shouldn’t have agreed to that last drink he had considering how fast the room spins as he lies still on his sheets. But also, maybe it’s okay that he did, because Yunho’s muffled voice, deep as it rumbles through the wall, makes him push himself up with a kind of vigour that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

He strips himself of his hoodie, hot underneath his skin, and pulls on a large t-shirt before stepping out of his sweatpants and into a fresh pair of loose exercise shorts, ending mid-thigh.

In hindsight, maybe he should’ve showered before dinner if he knew he was going to get drunk on a random Tuesday night, but he also didn’t want to go to sleep smelling like food.

He huffs and tells himself he’ll figure it out later before turning around to face his table. In the silence of his room as San stares at his empty chair, purchased with the intention of proper back support, a hiccup sprouts from his belly.

“San?” Yunho calls out loudly. “You coming?”

San’s fingers that were ghosting over the back of his chair drop suddenly to their side, and within ten seconds, the lights have been shut off and the door is closed behind him.

The entrance to Yunho’s room is wide open, his bedroom door pushed all the way back. From the hallway, San can see the crown of Yunho’s hair peeking just above the headrest of his gaming chair. Before he can announce his arrival, Yunho spins to look at him.

“Come,” he says with a soft smile, gesturing inside with a jerk of his head.

San’s feet pad gently against the floor as he steps into Yunho’s bedroom. The first thing he picks out is the very noticeable scent of linen. There’s a hint of something woodsy and earthy underneath, like moss and sandalwood—the kind of smell San sometimes picks up when Yunho passes him by on his way out to meet with someone.

San loves it. He’s never asked before what kind of perfume Yunho uses because it’s not the kind that he would wear, but god, does he love it on Yunho. He’s still not going to ask, probably.

“You can sit,” Yunho casually mentions.

San’s heart skips a beat. “Oh, shit, I forgot my chair,” he lies straight through his teeth.

“It’s fine,” Yunho responds like it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. Then, he chuckles, leaning back into his chair. “Why, you don’t think my bed will be as comfy as your Herman Miller?”

“No!” San objects immediately. “That’s not what I—ah, never mind…” He plops down with a stubborn pout in the middle of Yunho’s bed, the mattress springy underneath him.

“Can you see like that?” Yunho tilts his head. “I’m gonna be blocking you.”

San has no choice but to move higher up, but he makes sure to set Yunho’s pillow to the side so he isn’t sitting on it. “I can see now.”

At some point through Yunho’s first game, San decided to lay his head down. He’s still not using Yunho’s pillow, choosing to lay flat across as he looks through his emails on his phone. 

Then, he switches to Discord just as Yunho gets out of his game.

“Oh!” Yunho shouts, straightening out in his seat. “Pudding is online!”

San drops his phone on his face, his hands scrambling for it as he tries to get it back up. His heartbeat rattles in his chest, so loud he’s afraid Yunho might hear it through his headset, even though they’re most likely noise-cancelling.

He waits, frozen on the bed as he stares at Yunho’s side profile in fear. The other man suddenly says, “Should I ask him? I can ask.” His fingers fly across his keyboard, the clicks nice and muted, a complete contrast to San’s loud keyboard, and then San gets a ping on his phone.

His breath catches in his throat when he goes to set his phone on silence, but then Yunho is spinning so quickly in his chair to face him, he nearly has a heart attack.

“W-what?” he squeaks out, his knuckles white with how tightly he grips his phone.

Yunho watches him for a moment. Then, “Is it boring?”

San shakes his head, his hair tousling into the sheets. “No, not at all! I, um, don’t really know what’s going on, but I’m having fun! I promise.”

Yunho cracks a smile, then leans forward, and San swears he almost whimpers from how close his roommate suddenly is, but then Yunho is plucking his pillow out from behind San’s head.

“You can lay on my pillow,” he says with a laugh, holding it out for San. “Were you really laying like that this entire time? You’re gonna hurt your neck, tsk-tsk.”

San accepts the pillow and places it gently under his ear. He lays his head down slowly, as though he’s testing its durability, before completely melting into it. He hopes the deep inhale he takes goes unnoticed because now it really smells like Yunho.

Yunho’s head whips back towards his monitor. “Huh? Uh, no, not yet. Let’s wait five minutes.”

When San is sure Yunho is no longer paying attention to him, he wrestles his phone away from his chest and stares at the blurry bubble that is Yunho’s Discord picture. He blinks the drowsiness—brought on by the effect of too much alcohol in one night—out of his vision and taps on the notification.

[Hotteok] wanna play?

[Pudding] I can’t right now :(

[Pudding] I’m not feeling well

[Hotteok] oh noo did u get sick?

[Pudding] Ummm… something like that…

[Hotteok] lol

[Hotteok] drinking?

San swallows around the tightness in his throat.

[Pudding] How did you know?

[Hotteok] lucky guess lol

[Hotteok] lmk if u want a stream

[Hotteok] it helps to learn by watching other players

[Pudding] Really?

[Pudding] Ah, I mean, I can’t right now

[Hotteok] all good

[Hotteok] yea there are some high-elo players who give good commentary

[Hotteok] also vod reviews

[Hotteok] want me to link u some stuff?

[Pudding] Sure! But I think I’d rather watch you play sometime

[Hotteok] oho

[Hotteok] i’ll stream for u anytime, just lmk :)

San doesn’t know when exactly it happens, but sometime between Yunho’s second and third game, he accidentally falls asleep. Maybe it’s the sound of the quiet keyboard and mouse clicking that lulls him into it, or the fact that the alcohol in his body is slowly beginning to make him drowsy as he recovers, or maybe it’s Yunho’s voice, neither loud nor quiet, that makes him slip into slumber.

In his dreams, it’s him that Yunho is talking to—gentle and serene, somewhere distant where it’s just enough for it to feel like the kind of background noise he can lose himself easily in.

He can see the smile on Yunho’s face when he turns to look at him, the way his bangs glide across his forehead when he does that little curious tilt of his head, and the softness in his eyes when he gazes at San, like it’s meant for him, like he deserves it.

“Sleeping? When I’m right here?” Suddenly, Yunho is in front of him, his face inches away from his own. “You know, there are better things we can be doing.”

San jolts at the touch on his elbow, but Yunho’s slender fingers chase him until they close around San’s forearm, gripping him with a strength he never realized Yunho had. This is not real, right? San can barely move, but the touch feels like it’s present and nonexistent at the same time.

“Sannie,” Yunho teases, his face coming in close, eyes heavily lidded. “San.”

“San.”

Like electricity sets all his nerves on fire, San jerks, his eyes popping open to a dark room, heart pounding in his chest. Yunho’s face is barely visible until San blinks himself awake properly. It’s close, but it’s not as close as it was seconds ago. Still, it doesn’t help the heat that suddenly engulfs San’s cheeks as he grows dizzy with how fast blood rushes to his head. He’s glad Yunho opted to turn his lamp on sometime after San fell asleep.

“Sorry,” Yunho whispers.

San tosses his head back into the pillow with a huff. “I accidentally fell asleep. I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s fine. I mean, I’m sorry I woke you up. I wouldn’t have if…” Yunho’s voice trails off at the same time San’s heart rate spikes.

“If—if what?” San panics, pushing himself up onto his arms. “Did I say something?” He doesn’t know why he asked, it’s not like he’s prepared for the worst thing Yunho can possibly say even if he’s given the time of six months for it.

Yunho’s inhale through his nose is audible in the silence. San watches him tilt his head, eyes to the corner of the room as though he’s pondering over something. “Mm… you were kind of like, ‘ah, ah!’ and—” he makes a sort of grumble as though imitating him, “and then you said—”

“I didn’t say anything weird, right?” San interrupts him, not wanting to hear anymore. The tips of his ears are hot, redder than the Valorant icon at the bottom of Yunho’s taskbar, and he figures as long as he didn’t actually say anything weird, he doesn’t really want to hear Yunho mimicking whatever dumb noises he made in his sleep.

“Um, not really,” Yunho answers. “I just thought you were having a nightmare or something, so I woke you up.”

San blinks, staring back at Yunho for so long he’s only now realizing how tightly he’s hugging the pillow to his chest. He releases the tension on it immediately, setting it back down on the bed and patting it to try to get it to fluff up again.

“Um,” San starts, clearing his voice after it cracks, “you weren’t going to wake me up…?”

Yunho finally sits back into his seat, his gaming chair rocking gently with his weight, and shrugs nonchalantly. “I didn’t want to wake you if you were tired, and I couldn’t tell, so.”

“I see,” San mumbles, slightly dazed. Then, “Are you sleeping soon? I’m gonna go to bed now.”

Yunho shakes his head, rolling his chair back until it hits the edge of his table. “Not yet, I’ll sleep later. Thanks for hanging out with me tonight.”

“Yeah! Um, sorry again for, y’know…”

“Don’t worry about it, seriously. You’re cute when you’re sleeping anyway.”

San hiccups, but he’s pretty sure he isn’t drunk anymore. Yunho’s words raise goosebumps along the expanse of his back, his shoulders lifting just a little as he stumbles out of Yunho’s bed with his phone in hand.

“Um, yeah,” he blurts, shuffling backwards. Then, he stops, and in the few seconds where the only movement in the room is the rise and fall of their chests, they stare at each other. San dips his head before uttering goodnight.

Something in their relationship shifts after that night. San hadn’t really noticed it immediately—or maybe he had, but he didn’t think it amounted to anything important until he really sat down to think about it.

Just a couple weeks ago, days after that night, Yunho asked San if he wanted to come out drinking with him and Jongho. He turned him down because he pulled a muscle in his chest that day at the gym.

Then, a week later, on a Friday, he asked again if he wanted to go out for drinks. That time, San said yes, and he invited Wooyoung.

(“You’re inviting me?” Wooyoung gawked over the phone.

“What about it? Are you coming or not?”)

And the craziest part about that night, too, was that Yunho was constantly talking to him. His attention was always on San, legs shifted slightly so they were pointing towards San. He’s pretty sure Yunho learned more about him that night than in the few years they’ve known each other as roommates.

Yunho also started coming around more when San prepared his meals and dinners in the kitchen. He always asks what he’s cooking, and lately he’s been asking to have dinner together, even if they’re eating different meals.

San, too, has noticed he’s been a little looser with his diets. He tells himself it’s okay to have cheese in excess on a Wednesday night if Yunho’s offering to order, that soy-glazed chicken with rice is as much protein as he needs in a meal anyway, and that dining with someone sometimes is worth it even if it means he strays from what he’s used to.

Two nights ago, Yunho asked to come grocery shopping with him again.

“You’ve been cooking for me too, you know that, right?” Yunho said while tugging one sneaker on. “It’s not fair that you’re always paying for groceries alone.”

It all comes together, wrapped in a little bow, as San stares at his monitor. Actually, the bow is not all that cute. He thinks Yunho feels bad for him. Maybe it was that conversation they had weeks ago, when they were on their way home from the grocery store with half-off meats and pudding cups in their bags.

Yunho must think he has no friends. That’s why he doesn’t go out, that’s why eats alone, that’s why he does everything alone. He literally thinks San is a loser, and he feels bad for him.

“Pudding? Pudding, Pudding, Pudding~ Pudding-ssi, Pudding-san, Pudding-chan,” Yunho sings, his tone cutesy and higher pitched as though he means to tease.

San minimizes his tab to open Discord, his fingers tapping down into his keyboard.

[Pudding] Sorry, yes?

“Oh, wow, you respond to Pudding-chan?”

[Pudding] What…! You didn’t even give me the chance…

Yunho chuckles. “So, what are you doing now? Done with school stuff yet? Wanna play?”

San types something out with an evident pout on his face, but just before he hits send, he backtracks in panic and deletes the whole thing. He almost asked Yunho if he finished his schoolwork. He’s not even supposed to know Yunho’s in school.

[Pudding] I’m a little tired so I might just play one… Should we move to the server?

Actually, in the time since San fell asleep on Yunho’s bed to now, he and Pudding have also gotten closer online. San’s not really sure where it all started, but Yunho started sending him videos to clips and other educational tips on Discord, and San watched all of them.

Maybe it was what Yunho asked last week. It was just a simple question—and it was one San readily had an answer for.

[Hotteok] do you actually want to learn the game seriously?

Of course, San’s answer was immediate: yes!

Since then, they’ve started playing more often. San still goes to the gym, but he’ll hurry home, shower, and always be on Discord by the time 5PM hits. Yunho seems to have learned his schedule quickly and made sure to always meet him at that time. Two hours later, San will come out of his room to cook, and Yunho will join him thirty minutes later for dinner. Then, school work, and after that, San gets his free time for the night.

Sometimes, he spends it playing a couple more games, other times, he watches Yunho play. He’s always given really good commentary, and he always answers San’s questions with enthusiasm, no matter how dumb San thinks his questions are.

On the nights he watches Yunho play because he’s really tired, he doesn’t talk much. Instead, he lulls himself to sleep with his phone propped up against a pillow by listening to Yunho talk. The sound of his voice is terrifyingly soothing in the late night, and San is a little afraid he might get found out, struck by guilt, for feeling like he’s using him as background noise sometimes.

“Nah, they’re ranking tonight,” Yunho answers.

San chews his bottom lip. Lately, he’s been playing with Yunho a lot—just Yunho. Also, their private conversations are no longer only game-related. Sometimes he asks about San’s day, sometimes he’s curious about what San had for lunch. They’re just little conversations here and there that don’t really breach unfamiliar territory, but San can’t say he hasn’t noticed.

“What is it?” the other man suddenly asks. “If you don’t wanna play anymore, that’s fine, too. We can do something else!”

San swallows around a lump in his throat.

[Pudding] Actually, I’ve just been wondering

Yunho’s end is silent.

[Pudding] Isn’t it boring for you? Playing with just me

There’s a few seconds of pause as San’s heart rate picks up. Maybe he didn’t say the right thing.

Then, Yunho laughs—a little dry chuckle, like the thought of it is almost ridiculous. “No way. I’m teaching you the game, remember? I enjoy coaching, too. What about—do you still have the VODs? We can go through one of them. I know we played a lot earlier, so don’t force it if you’re not feeling up to it,” Yunho assures him.

San lets his lip spring free from his bite, and then he’s sitting up straighter, scooting himself closer to the table. Yunho suggested he start saving videos from his games, good ones and bad ones, whichever he felt he struggled on, certain maps—anything—so they can review it together. Apparently, people learn a lot like this.

“Send one over to me, I’ll stream it and you can just watch and listen.”

As he waits for Yunho to get set up, San pulls his legs up on his chair and gets comfortable. He’s already feeling a tinge of humiliation from having to rewatch his own gameplay. Even though Yunho always plays with him, it feels different now that he’s reviewing San’s actual POV.

“Are you struggling with Fracture?” Yunho asks just as the stream is made available. San goes to fullscreen it.

[Pudding] Yes

“Honestly, Fracture doesn’t allow for easy repositioning. Like here,” Yunho begins to explain as they skim through the first few minutes. He then drags the timestamp past the second round, “the Omen’s flank failed because he was too late.”

[Pudding] But how do they know he’s there?

“It’s an educated guess. He was unknown while we were pushing out link and canteen. If he was also there—and if he was good—he would’ve played off of us. But since he didn’t, it’s most likely he’s not there. So now, the other team is going to look for a flank from main or arcade.

“Also, here, you weren’t able to swing on time, and you swung too close,” Yunho continues, backing the video up just a little to where San’s agent swings into incoming bullets. “When Phoenix peeks, you should be swinging with him—out here, not here—and not after. That way, you’ll get a proper 1v2 instead of two 1v1s.”

San nods slowly to himself. Yunho has explained it before while they played, but watching it like this is so much more informative, he’s actually surprised.

[Pudding] So that’s a better trade? Compared to trading after death

“Yeah, absolutely! It’s not always going to be guaranteed, because you two could have swung into a 2v2 or even a 3v2, but the idea is correct. The enemy Neon showed in arcade, but you probably didn’t notice it. If  you did, you would’ve known right away that you and Phoenix are swinging a 2v1. It’s okay, though. The more you play, the better your gamesense will get, and you’ll start looking at your minimap more. You don’t really look at it, right?” Yunho asks.

San’s gaze flicks to the top left corner of the stream and frowns.

[Pudding] No, not really…

“It’s a lot more helpful than you think. That’s where you get a lot of map and player positioning info.”

[Pudding] I see…

[Pudding] Then I will do it more!

For the next hour, Yunho continues to coach San on his Fracture game. His praises get to him to the point where he feels dizzy, but then he’ll be brought back down and grounded as Yunho gives him tips on where to hold his crosshair, when to crouchwalk, and when to start rotating.

He’s gotten good enough at the game now to understand everything Yunho is talking about. It’s a nice feeling, listening and knowing instead of feeling confused over all the terms. Even if he doesn’t know something, Yunho always explains it in a way that’s easy to comprehend.

Also, he doesn’t know why, but he’s aroused. Actually, no—he knows why. It’s the same kind of feeling he gets when he watches Yunho play—every time he gets a kill, every time he makes a good call, whenever he acts as the in-game leader. For some reason, the fact that Yunho is good at Valorant is hot.

Even as he’s giving advice to him, kindly and with purpose, San can feel it—this heat under his thin t-shirt, this jumping static along his chest. His skin vibrates with energy, thighs tense, throat dry. Sure, it’s late spring, but San’s room is not even that hot.

He clears his throat and pinches at the front of his shirt, peeling it off his chest. Yunho’s stream has ended now and they’ve been chatting for the past five minutes. He always feels so weird when they get to this part of the night, the part between that last game and a delayed goodnight, because San sometimes feels like Yunho is talking to himself.

He knows it’s probably normal—he’s not the only person to not have a mic or want to use a mic—but a part of him still feels bad that Yunho has to read all his messages while being the only one talking. But then San thinks about Yunho finding out who he really is, and then every hint of guilt dissipates into a whisper.

“So,” the voice shocks San from his thoughts, “this is around the time you start feeling sleepy.”

[Pudding] Oh. Actually, I’m not too tired yet

“Really? How come?”

San swallows thickly.

[Pudding] I like talking to you

“Ah, I see… So when I stream, it must be boring,” Yunho jokes lightly with a laugh.

[Pudding] Nooo! No no. Your voice is just really nice to listen to. It helps me feel relaxed.

“Ohhh?” Yunho teases—he’s clearly teasing. “My voice?”

[Pudding] Well, yes…

“Are you in bed right now?”

[Pudding] No, I’m at my computer

[Pudding] Why…?

“Maybe you’ll start feeling tired if you’re laying in bed, since you’re already listening to my voice anyway,” Yunho speaks, and it is impossible to not notice the way his tone has dropped an octave, almost as though he wants to speak the words right into San’s ear.

San’s breath hitches, a wave of heat climbing up his shoulders to the back of his neck.

“Pudding-chan,” Yunho calls out playfully, “are you still here?”

[Pudding] Yeaj

[Pudding] Yeah

“You know, you can turn your mic on if it’s just the two of us,” Yunho suggests with an air of nonchalance, completely oblivious to the fact that San feels like he’s two minutes away from a meltdown. “I won’t tell anyone.”

[Pudding] I can’t

“Why? Are you still shy? We’ve been talking every day for the past two months.”

[Pudding] Actually, I don’t have a mic

Yunho clicks his tongue. San imagines him shaking his head left and right. “You’re such a liar. You have a mic.”

[Pudding] What?

[Pudding] How do you know that?

“Why are you muted then?” A heavy beat of silence. “Well, actually, the first message you ever sent in the server was that you were shy, and you didn’t want to turn your mic on.”

San’s fingers freeze, hovering over his keyboard with a tremble in each digit. Maybe he takes too long to reply, because it draws a disappointed hum from Yunho’s end. For some reason, the sound is almost degrading, and it creates a very confusing sensation of both shame and lust within San.

“You’re so shy, Pudding-chan. Don’t tell me you lied and that you’re actually a girl,” Yunho says in a teasing tone, but San can sense the hint of something filthier underneath it, and it’s sending his brain into overdrive.

[Pudding] I’m not

“Oh yeah?” Yunho responds almost immediately. “Are you pretty like one, though?”

The noise that leaves San’s mouth is straight up pornographic—something between a whimper and a gasp, and in the next second, he has his shorts and underwear shoved down to his mid thigh, cock red and aching hard as it smears precum against his shirt.

He pants heavily, flipping his shirt up to try to get it out of the way, but when it falls back down and brushes against his sensitive cock, he hisses and gathers it between his teeth instead.

“What are you doing right now?” Yunho asks, almost as if he knows.

San takes his dick into his hands, squeezing around it once as his cheeks flush heavily in embarrassment. It’s so disrespectful, listening to his roommate’s voice—the shit he’s saying—while fucking into his fist. He’s crazy. He can’t control himself.

“Are you still here, Pudding-chan?”

With a shake in his fingers, San reaches his free hand forward and types out a message he doesn’t bother actually looking at.

[Pudding] yes

“Are you touching yourself?”

San’s moan is muffled into his bunched shirt, his eyes flitting up from the stroke of his hand to the flickering ring of green around Yunho’s Discord picture. He has half the mind to be quiet even though he knows they’re in separate rooms—even if Yunho has his headset on.

The silence encourages Yunho to continue, “Where are you touching yourself?”

A drop of sweat trails down from San’s temple as he thumbs over his tip gently, the sensation enough to have his eyes rolling towards the back of his head. He should probably reply to Yunho, right? The thought of it is somehow more enticing than actually getting himself off. He’s so fucking embarrassed when he comes to terms with it.

Without as much reluctance as he thought he’d have, San’s hand slows to a stop so he can give Yunho a proper reply.

[Pudding] Everywhere

“Where’s everywhere?” comes Yunho’s quick reply.

[Pudding] You know

“Know what?”

[Pudding] Why are you making me say it?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

San’s exhale through his nostrils is hot from the way Yunho pretends to be oblivious. San knows he knows—he fucking started this. He honestly doesn’t even have to say anything, but he doesn’t know why he wants to so badly.

[Pudding] I don’t know what you’re talking about either

Yunho hums, disappointed, but the sound goes straight to San’s dick instead. He strokes up once, lashes fluttering at the pleasure, then drags his fist down to his balls.

“You don’t have to pretend. I know you’re touching yourself,” Yunho says, just as San’s hand picks up speed again. “You said you’re not a girl, but that doesn’t mean you can’t put fingers inside yourself, right?”

San’s heart nearly stops, his eyes rolling back with a curl of his toes. He’s never even thought about it. He’s never touched himself there before, but the way Yunho says it—like he wants him to, like he’s encouraging him to—makes all rationality fly out the window. He can’t help it when his legs lift naturally, knees bending to brace himself against the edge of the table.

“You can try it, right?”

San chokes on a noise, something between a sob and a whimper.

“Put your fingers in your mouth.”

When San relieves the tension on his jaw, his shirt drops down to his chest, still bunched and trapped between the bend of his body, wet with his spit. Then, he presses two fingers onto his tongue, embarrassed by how quickly he begins to salivate.

“Mm, good. Get them nice and wet, Pudding-chan.” Yunho’s voice has gotten breathier, and when San closes his eyes, he too can imagine Yunho at his desk, his hand stroking over his own cock. He imagines it’s him who Yunho is jerking off to, him who’s getting him close.

The feeling of his own fingers in his mouth was weird at first, but San grew to enjoy them rather quickly, and quite subconsciously too, as he doesn’t even realize how far back he has them until he’s gurgling around frothy spit.

“Do you like it? Sucking on your own fingers?”

San’s eyes squeeze shut, his fist closing down tighter over his dick. The more Yunho talks, the closer he gets. He’s afraid he won’t even last—though, does it even matter? Yunho can’t even hear him. A sensation deep in San’s gut tells him he shouldn’t come until Yunho says he can.

He’ll tell him, right?

“Have you ever put anything there before?”

San’s breath hitches when he drags a wet trail past his balls and down the curve of his ass. His heart beats so loudly in his ears, he has to focus to listen to what Yunho says.

“You can do it,” he encourages in a voice dripping with absolute sin, “just try putting one in.”

San’s breathing picks up in pace as the tip of his finger presses gently against his hole, clenching out of reflex at the touch. He doesn’t know why he’s so afraid. He can’t believe he’s even touching himself there.

“Relax,” Yunho speaks right into his ear.

Slowly, San rubs his spit around his rim, wetting it up as a way to disguise his anxiety over it. The hand over his cock has stilled completely as he braces himself with careful preparation. He takes a deep breath, then pushes gently against it, testing its resistance. He gulps, forces himself to relax, before somehow managing to wriggle his finger inside, stopping at just an inch. The intrusion is weird, almost uncomfortable. The noise he makes is one of desperation, like he doesn’t know if he wants to keep going or pull out.

“It’s okay, it’ll start feeling really good soon,” comes Yunho’s voice, almost as though he knows exactly when San needs a boost.

San’s not sure if Yunho’s telling the truth, but he pulls his finger out just enough for his rim to hug the tip of it tightly before pushing back in, this time further. He has half the mind to stroke his cock gently.

“Curl your fingers up.”

San’s eyebrows knit together in concentration as he listens to Yunho’s instructions carefully, his finger curling up towards his tummy. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to be looking for, but when he finds it, he fucking finds it.

He jerks so hard, his foot hits the underside of his table with a loud bang, a stifled curse falling from his lips as he takes in a full-body shiver.

“Mm, feel good?”

San pants heavily, eyes rolled back as he carefully looks for it again, massaging it gently like he’s afraid of the new sensations in his body. It’s so good, he can’t even be bothered thinking about replying to Yunho right now.

Yunho lets out a particularly harsh breath. “Don’t you wanna know what I’m doing right now?”

San’s so turned on, it hurts. He strokes his cock furiously, begging in silence for Yunho to continue, to keep talking, to keep telling him what to do.

“I’m so hard, Pudding-chan,” Yunho grits out. “You should put another finger in.”

With zero hesitation, San pulls his finger out to put a second one in with the first, but his spit has dried and there’s a sting of pain when he tries to wrestle them inside. He curses out of frustration, but he takes the chance to tap a clean finger onto his keyboard.

[Pudding] feels good

“Yeah?” Yunho sighs out like it’s relieving to see a message from him. “Fuck.”

San is quick to spit onto his fingers again, rubbing them together quickly to spread it before pressing them back into himself. To be honest, the angle is a little awkward, and San’s arm trying to crowd into the little space between his thighs is making it rather difficult, but when Yunho told him he could do it, San knew he was going to do it.

He presses his fingers so deep into himself, it draws a quiet whimper from the back of his throat. Then, he curls his fingers up, just like Yunho told him to do. This feeling is nothing like San has ever experienced before, and it’s so good, he’s almost afraid of how it’s possible.

It’s not like San has no idea how gay sex works, but he’s never researched up on it, either. There’s a part of him that wonders if he would even bother trying this on himself if it wasn’t for Yunho—Yunho breathing into his ear, Yunho seducing San as though he wants to corrupt him, Yunho praising him like sin and heaven have their lines blurred.

He’s close. He’s so close. Every time Yunho lets a quiet moan slip through, it’s all San can focus on as he rubs insistently at that spot, stroking his cock in tandem with the thrusting. His toes curl, his hair taped to his forehead from how much of a sweat he’s worked up, and when Yunho chokes on a moan, San thinks he’s going to come.

“Fuck, I’m close,” Yunho pants out. “Wish I could hear you. Fuck, I wanna see you.”

San comes with a grunt and a shudder, his back arching off his chair as he spills into his hand. In his ear, he can hear the way Yunho’s breaths stutter, and he sounds exactly like how San imagined he would when he comes (he’s thought about it a lot, unfortunately). He strokes himself gently through it, pulling his fingers out because he gets too sensitive too quickly, and heaves his chest with every breath he takes.

His legs drop, feet hitting the floor with a thud. There are dark red indents on his shins where they rested against the edge of the table, and he’s only feeling the soreness now. He stares at the messages he sent Yunho on Discord. It’s all him, every single one of them. Yunho hasn’t sent a message for days, but he’s always in San’s ear.

His cum is starting to cool on his skin, so he goes to grab a tissue to clean it off himself. After dropping it in the garbage can, he closes his eyes.

Fuck. He can’t believe he just did that.

Clarity hits him hard—harder than it ever has—and shame takes him rather quickly considering how desperate he had been just moments ago. The flush on his face is bright red as humiliation finds every cell in his body, and he’s quick to pull his headset off his head, dropping it with a clang onto his table.

[Pudding] Be right back

He pulls his underwear and shorts back up to his hips, then slaps himself in the cheek with the back of his hands. “Get yourself together,” he whispers, blinking a few times to wake himself from the fog in his brain. His slippers pad gently against the floor before he clicks his bedroom door open, swinging it open quickly to avoid the creak in the hinges that have persisted for the past year.

He tiptoes quietly to the washroom, but just as he gets there, the door right across from it—Yunho’s door—pulls open, and San fucking swears he almost has a heart attack. He spins on his heels with his hand tight over the handle of the washroom door behind him to greet Yunoh. “Hey!” he chokes out without thinking it through.

Yunho looks at him, his eyes lacking something San can’t define, something that’s usually always there when he’s talking to him or spending time with him, but the look makes something disgusting lick up San’s belly. His hair is slightly disheveled, probably from wearing that headset all night, and there’s a faint flush to his neck and cheeks, a brutal reminder of what had just transpired minutes ago.

San swallows thickly. “Did—did you need to use the washroom?”

Yunho regards him in silence for a moment, his gaze dropping down to San’s legs before flicking back up quickly, then peels his eyes off of him. “No, you can go first.”

Without another word, San watches as Yunho leaves down the hallway and turns into the kitchen. In the washroom, San stares at himself wide-eyed in the mirror. He probably looks normal, he looks fine, but he knows he isn’t. He looks at himself and all he can see is he and Yunho in their respective bedrooms, getting off on each other and getting each other off.

San never even spoke a word to Yunho. Yunho doesn’t even know it’s him. Actually, does this mean that they just got off to strangers on the internet? Maybe the case is different for San because he knows, but Yunho technically just got a fucking online stranger off.

For what? San has no idea. Does he just do that? Is this normal?

The cold water on his skin grounds him when he splashes it up into his face. His shirt, although thin, sticks to his body like a he’d just ran a marathon in it, so he peels it off and takes a shower. When he exits, Yunho is back in his room, door shut, and San doesn’t bother him anymore.

[Pudding] I’m going to bed now

[Pudding] Goodnight!

San waits for a response, but then the call disconnects and three little dots float up above the message bar on Discord.

[Hotteok] talk to u tmr! goodnight

The next day, Yunho talks to him as though nothing ever happened. Well, Hotteok messages him like nothing happened, because nothing technically happened between San and Yunho.

“You’re home,” Yunho greets him from the kitchen when San gets back from the gym that afternoon.

“Are you… cooking?” San asks while slipping out of his shoes.

Yunho looks up at him with a crooked grin. “Yeah, do you want to try it?”

San sets his backpack down on the couch before stepping into the kitchen. Yunho digs his fork into the plate and twists it to gather the noodles, then holds it up for San. “Ah,” he says, his gaze hanging low on San’s lips.

There’s a steady hum of anxiety sitting in San’s belly as his jaw relaxes, mouth falling open naturally. Yunho is careful when he presses the fork past his teeth, his own mouth opening and closing as San wraps his lips around it.

Slowly, he slips the fork out. “It’s gochujang pasta. I tried! What do you think?” he asks while taking a step back, acting as though his face wasn’t inches away from San’s just mere seconds ago.

San nods with a hum, his hand flying up to cover his mouth while he speaks, “Good. Really, really good.”

“Yeah?”

Yeah?

An echo of last night, and San remembers it so clearly. Actually, he’s been thinking about it all day. Yunho hadn’t sent him anything on Discord until noon, but even before that, San couldn’t get him off his mind.

Not that it’s uncommon for him to think about his crush, but not like this, and definitely not after what happened last night. San wonders how Yunho is able to talk to him so normally after that happened—online, of course. He’s struggling trying to keep the warmth from spreading up to his neck.

“Do you want some? I made you some just in case, but if you don’t want any, I’m gonna put it away,” Yunho says while setting his plate down on the counter.

“Yeah, of course, I’ll have some,” San answers as coolly as he can. Then, they have dinner together. He doesn’t talk much this time, just listens as Yunho tells him about this new anime he’s been watching and how San needs to get on it—that he’ll even rewatch it from the beginning with him.

The thought of it is nice. San agrees, and they make a plan for it for sometime next week. When dinner is done and Yunho retreats to his bed, San shuts his door gently before booking it for his computer.

He waits impatiently as it turns on, then sighs in relief when Discord opens up to show that Wooyoung is online.

[Pudding] Wooyoung

[Pudding] I have a question

[Lotte Addiction] whats up

[Pudding] Okay

[Pudding] Ah, how do I say this…

[Lotte Addiction] omg

[Lotte Addiction] what happened

San gnaws on his lower lip. Actually, he hasn’t had the opportunity to gather his thoughts properly before spontaneously sending Wooyoung a message. He can’t just tell him what happened.

He rubs the knuckles of one hand into the side of his temple as he battles for words.

[Pudding] I think Yunho is flirting with me

[Lotte Addiction] oh

[Lotte Addiction] congrats! LOL its what u wanted right?

[Pudding] No OMG he’s flirting with ME

[Pudding] On Discord. He doesn’t know it’s me…

[Pudding] Does he usually do that?

[Lotte Addiction] ohh

[Lotte Addiction] no not really

[Lotte Addiction] like hes had some egirls reach out to him before but i dont think hes ever entertained any of them

[Lotte Addiction] wow. honestly i didnt even know he had game like that

[Lotte Addiction] granted i dont think youre that hard to seduce but yk

[Pudding] Hey

[Lotte Addiction] maybe its cuz he doesnt know u?

[Lotte Addiction] ur the only one in the server he doesnt know

[Pudding] What is egirl?

[Lotte Addiction] uhhh

San blinks dumbly at the message. Wooyoung begins to type something, but he suddenly stops. After a while, he starts up again, but a couple minutes pass, and he never sends anything.

San’s about to Google it himself when he suddenly gets a Discord notification from none other than Yunho himself. He clicks on it before he can even think it through, and he nearly chokes on his own spit.

[Hotteok] again tonight?

[Pudding] Again, what?

[Hotteok] call?

[Pudding] Are you playing now?

[Hotteok] not rn

[Pudding] Yeah, sure!

The call comes immediately—not even two seconds later—but San counts to five to pick up.

“Hello?” Yunho greets.

[Pudding] Hey

“Still don’t wanna put your mic on?”

[Pudding] Sorry, no…

San can hear Yunho’s grin through his words. “I’m just kidding. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.” There’s a short pause between his sentences. “What are you doing right now?”

[Pudding] I was just talking to Wooyoung

“Oh, I didn’t realize you knew Wooyoung.”

There’s a couple of seconds where San’s brain blanks completely, fingers hovering over the keyboard like he’s struggling to process what Yunho is trying to say.

“You know him, right?”

When San snaps back to reality, his heart is pounding fast and his head feels dizzy.

[Pudding] He told me before

[Pudding] We got closer, I think

“You think?”

[Pudding] I mean, I don’t talk to him that much

San reaches for his water bottle, clenching his hand into a fist when he realizes there’s a tremble in his fingers. He drinks like he’s parched, even though he hasn’t spoken a single word since dinner.

“But you know his name,” Yunho finishes for him. “Does he know yours?”

[Pudding] No

“You can at least tell me, right? Unless you like being called Pudding-chan. I feel like we’ve gotten pretty close lately too.” Before San can actually send anything, Yunho continues, “Or do you talk to Wooyoung more than I do?”

There are a lot of thoughts that swim through San’s head at that moment. First, he absolutely cannot tell Yunho his name. Second, he can’t say he does talk more to Wooyoung, because he’s never in the same voice channel as him as he’s always playing League of Legends with Jongho. Third, he’s pretty sure he’s been talking to Yunho more often than Wooyoung as of late.

Lastly, why does Yunho sound upset about it?

[Pudding] I don’t talk to Wooyoung that much

“I see,” Yunho responds with a low hum. “What were you guys talking about?”

[Pudding] Oh… nothing much. He just never answered my question

“What did you ask him?”

San scratches his head, unsure of how to phrase it. In the end, he just asks it in the simplest way possible.

[Pudding] What is egirl?

For a moment, there’s silence from Yunho’s end, but then San hears it: a little huff of laughter, like he can’t really believe what San just asked him.

“Really? Why are you curious?”

[Pudding] Oh, Wooyoung mentioned it, but I wasn’t sure…

“Are you an e-girl?” Yunho asks quietly, the cheeky grin still heavy in his tone. His voice sounds closer, like it’s bypassing the static of the digital signals and going straight into San’s ears

[Pudding] I already told you I’m not a girl

“Sure, fine,” Yunho responds with little resistance, “but an e-girl is kinda different. They’re usually, like, girls online who flirt and say cute things. Not saying boys can’t do it, too, though. Sometimes, they get stuff in return. Those are called e-kittens.”

San’s eye twitches at the awkward term. E-kittens.

[Pudding] You mean, like, give compliments and stuff?

“Say meow.”

[Pudding] Meow?

Yunho chuckles, the sound airy and breathless. “Yeah, like that. Exactly like that. It’d be cuter if you added a cat emoji.”

[Pudding] What cat emoji?

“Like this. The one you always do.”

[Hotteok] :3

[Pudding] Ohhh

Two seconds of silence, and then Yunho’s voice cuts through it. “Aren’t you going to do it?”

[Pudding] Do what…?

“Meow?”

[Pudding] Meow?

[Hotteok] :3

[Pudding] :3

[Pudding] Why?

Yunho’s laugh is bright and unguarded, like the circumstances are actually amusing to him. “This is usually the part where you start asking for Discord Nitro.”

[Pudding] What is that?

“It’s a monthly subscription on Discord for better benefits.”

[Pudding] … Really? It’s that easy?

“Well, not really. You usually have to work a lot harder than that, Pudding-chan.” After a brief pause, Yunho asks, “Why? Do you want me to gift it to you?”

[Pudding] No, no! I only use Discord to play games with you

“What do you want, then?”

San blinks at his monitor, his head not really wrapping around the question. “What do I want…?” he mumbles to himself.

[Pudding] What do you mean?

“Well, since you were so good and meowed like a little e-kitten, I don’t mind gifting you something.” There’s something in Yunho’s voice—something that he can’t describe but can feel, in the heat of his shoulders, the twitch of his thumb, the hitch of his breath—that makes San turn to putty. He says it so nonchalantly too, it almost gives him whiplash.

[Pudding] Why are you doing this?

“Doing what?”

[Pudding] I know what you’re doing

“What am I doing?”

[Pudding] You’re flirting with me

It’s that breathless little laugh again. “And so what if I am? What, I can’t?”

[Pudding] But you don’t even know me

Yunho hums, the sound almost playful. “I know enough about you.” San’s heart rate speeds up until it thumps loudly in his ears.

[Pudding] Like what?

“I know you like it when I tell you ‘good job’ after every kill. You probably get all shy, don’t you? Do you like it? Tell me.”

San’s throat has gone completely dry at the words that leave Yunho’s mouth. He doesn’t even know what to say. He doesn’t even know how Yunho knows. He never says much, and he only occasionally sends messages in the team chat because he knows he and Yunho aren’t the only ones who’ll see them. At most, maybe, he jumps around on the game.

The fact that Yunho is able to deduce something so scarily accurate from just observing him on Valorant is insane.

“Do you like it?”

[Pudding] Well, yes…

Yunho doesn’t stop there. In fact, it turns worse so quickly, San might as well have fallen off a cliff. “You like listening to my voice. Do you fall asleep to it? Or do you touch yourself first? More than anything, you probably like being told what to do, don’t you? Like when I told you to fuck yourself open on your fingers last night?”

The gasp that falls from San’s lips isn’t silent at all. It’s choked out like he’s been suppressing it for too long and he can no longer contain it.

“You like being good, don’t you? God, I bet you make such a pretty face when you come.”

This isn’t supposed to happen again. San didn’t think it ever would—but fuck, the promise of pleasure is right there, dangling in his face, and he’d be a fool not to take it, right? He’s so desperate for Yunho, he’s willing to do all of this behind a fucking screen for him.

“Am I right? Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror when you come?”

San’s thighs squeeze together, jaw clenching down tightly as he types out a single word in the message bar with his left hand.

[Pudding] No

“Maybe you should. I bet I’m right.”

San can’t help it when he palms himself through his pants, annoyed at how little friction he’s getting from pulling a pair of sweatpants up over his shorts after his gym. Behind three layers of clothes, he’s hardly getting anything.

“What are you doing right now?”

He hates it. He hates that he can’t reply without stopping to type back a message on his keyboard—hates that he can’t be in bed and reply to Yunho when Yunho wants him to. He stands up, hooks two thumbs into the waistband of all three layers, then shoves them down before hastily sending out a message.

He’s shy, but he’s not so shy he’ll torture himself over this. Since Yunho wants to be so vulgar, San can play the same game. He’s anonymous online anyway, so why not, right? What is there to lose? Yunho might know how old he is, but he doesn’t know his name, where he lives, or even what he sounds he makes and how he looks like. He doesn’t know he’s right fucking next door, cock achingly hard, about to masturbate to all the crass words coming out of Yunho’s sinful mouth.

[Pudding] Gonna touch myself

There’s a sharp intake of breath on the other end, and San shudders at it. “Mm, I knew you would. You get turned on from my words?”

[Pudding] Yeah

“Can you Discord from your phone?”

[Pudding] Yeah

San is very uncoordinated when he takes his phone into shaky hands, stumbling around while trying to get out of the rest of his clothes and nearly falling on his face for it. He finds Discord, ends the call on the computer, and rejoins on his phone.

It takes him a second to realize his mistake, though, because Yunho’s profile picture lights up, and San can hear his voice, although very muted and very muffled—enough for him to not hear what he said, but also loud enough for him to realize he’s on fucking speaker.

He turns his volume all the way down to zero and rips his headset off his head, setting it down with a clang on his table. How is he supposed to do this? Bluetooth connect his gym headphones? He curses, then yanks open his gym bag to find his Sony headphones.

When he finally gets them set up and on his head, he lets himself fall ass-first onto his bed.

“What were you doing?”

Typing on his phone is so much easier.

[Pudding] Looking for my headphones

“You need them?”

San sucks his lower lip in between his teeth in concentration.

[Pudding] I have a roommate

“How naughty. Why not just let them hear?”

[Pudding] What? No, I can’t

“What do you do if you have someone over?”

[Pudding] What do you mean?

After a moment of silence, Yunho asks, a hint of confusion seeping through in his tone, “You’ve never had anyone over?”

San flushes so hard, he’s dizzy. He understands now.

“You’re a virgin?”

[Pudding] Is there something wrong with that?

“No,” Yunho answers so fast it’s a little surprising, “not at all.”

[Pudding] I’m in bed now

Yunho snickers. “Yeah? Waiting for me to tell you what to do?”

A little petulant, San decides not to answer him, and, instead, takes his cock into his hands. The first touch has his stomach tensing up, sensitive as he strokes himself slowly.

“Fuck, I wish I could see you right now,” Yunho groans.

San spits into his palm and strokes himself with it to make the glide easier, and he lets his eyes fall shut as he soaks himself completely in Yunho’s voice—all his little noises, his harsh breathing, his grunts. It doesn’t take long at all, maybe just a few minutes of harsh stroking and very vivid imagination. He comes so embarrassingly fast when he thinks about Yunho being right beside him, lips to the shell of his ear, and that it’s his hand instead of his own jerking him off. So embarrassingly fast when he can tell Yunho’s about to come, too.

“Send a picture,” Yunho tells him when he’s done. “Your face doesn’t have to be in it if you don’t want it to be.”

San’s head is too high in the clouds to really think about the risks that it involves when he taps on the camera icon on Discord. His face comes into view first, and he’s a little shocked by how he looks. His face is dusted in pink, similar to how he looks when he’s got an Asian flush going strong, and his bangs are taped to his forehead, damp with perspiration.

Shy and a little self-conscious, he quickly angles the camera down to his chest. Although dim, the tone of his muscles is heavily evident in the shadows, contrasting against his pearly skin, and the reflection of his cum painted against his abdomen shines brightly as it sits in the grooves of his abs.

Like this, the picture actually looks ridiculously sexy—even he thinks so. It’s only a picture of his body with the evidence of his orgasm on it, so there’s really no harm in hitting send, right? His dick’s not even in it.

He ends the call, hits send, and types a short message.

[Pudding] I’m getting off for the night! Goodnight

There’s a plethora of short buzzing in quick succession after he shuts off his phone and tosses it somewhere next to him. San promises he’s not going to check it until tomorrow morning, only because he really, seriously needs to sort out his thoughts this time.

San wakes up bright and early the next morning. For the first time in a long time, he feels very well rested. Maybe it’s because he didn’t stay up late playing games the night before, or maybe it’s because he just had crazy orgasms back-to-back, two nights in a row. When he heads into the washroom to wash his face, he notices the way his skin glows, eyes bright and vibrant.

Then, when he finally sits back down on his bed, his thoughts begin to drown him.

He still has to look at Yunho’s messages. His fingers twitch, itching for his phone. It takes him less than thirty seconds to cave, as he’s quickly pulling up the their messaging history, only to gasp in shock at the picture that greets him.

He had forgotten about it and didn’t expect for it to pop up like that.

[Hotteok] jesus fucking christ

[Hotteok] didn’t know you had a body like that

[Hotteok] ur fucking crazy

[Hotteok] ur so fucking sexy

There’s a timestamp after that, and the next message from him had come just a little after midnight.

[Hotteok] just came on ur picture lol fuck

[Hotteok] goodnight

San doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until he lets out a heavy exhale. Something about the way Yunho just admits it so casually makes his stomach twist in arousal. He can’t believe he’s hard at five in the fucking morning—and just from a few messages? San thinks he’s genuinely going insane.

But… this is fine, right? Now that he’s thinking about the whole situation he has going on with Yunho, there’s really no harm in it, right? He can just enjoy this while it lasts. Or, even better, he can just make sure Yunho never finds out. This is honestly good enough for him. He didn’t even think learning to play Valorant would really get him that far with Yunho—friends at best, probably.

This is more than what he could’ve asked for, and, honestly, he’s content with it, this sexting thing they have going on. He’s never sexted before, but he thinks he likes it. At least, with Yunho, he does.

While he gets himself ready for work, he lets his mind wander. Can it be better? He’s not allowing himself to talk, and typing with one hand constantly is proving to be really hard, whether it be at his computer or on his phone.

He can do better. He needs to consult someone.

“Are you asking me how to sext?” Wooyoung asks him over a beer. “Also, I can’t believe you invited me out for drinks.”

The time is late now—San needed to take a break from it all just for a day, so he showered at home after work, told Yunho in passing that he was going out for a bit, and met up with Wooyoung.

“Can you let it go? I told you I’d be better with it,” San grumbles while staring down at the appetizers on the food menu.

“Yeah, crazy,” Wooyoung responds while shaking his head.

“Are you going to answer me?”

“Okay, first of all, you just dropped a bomb on me. You and Yunho are sexting? Sexting, like, how? Like pictures? Words?”

“Um,” San starts, swallowing down the lump in his throat before lowering his voice, “b-both? I sent him a picture.”

Wooyoung’s jaw drops. “You sent him a picture.”

“Not of my face—”

“Well, obviously. Are you sure you didn’t get anything in the back?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It was just… my body,” San answers with reddened cheeks.

Wooyoung sits up a little closer. “Well, yeah, but, you’ve got a ridiculous body. I mean, that—like—I just mean, have you seen yourself?”

“But he wouldn’t know, would he?” San argues. There’s no way Yunho can possibly connect the dots. Lots of men in Korea look like him, and, sure, maybe Yunho has seen San shirtless a few times around the apartment before, but there’s just no way it’s possible for him to think it’s his literal roommate. The coincidence is too unbelievable.

Wooyoung sucks a breath through his teeth, tearing his gaze away. “I dunno. It’s up to you. What do you want to send more of? Everyone sexts differently. I don’t really think you’re that good with your words, though.”

“Wow,” San deadpans.

“No, seriously. Think about it. You said he just talks to you, right? So, he must be good at it?”

Now that San is really thinking about it, Wooyoung is right. Some of the things Yunho says sound so filthy coming out of his mouth, but they did their job, didn’t they? They had San so weak in the knees, he wasn’t even using his brain anymore.

He doesn’t know why it has such an effect on him. Sure, he’s a virgin, and yeah, he doesn’t masturbate nearly as much as he’s been wanting to lately, but it also means he doesn’t have the experience to understand why his body responds the way it does with Yunho. It’s not just attraction. He feels like Yunho knows something about him that even he doesn’t know, and it’s worrying because it somehow makes him feel vulnerable despite being behind a screen.

With a hint of exasperation in his features, San lifts his beer to his face and takes a big drink of it.

“What about photos, then? You already sent one, and you didn’t seem to mind. You obviously can’t talk to him, either, but you’re pretty good at taking pictures and stuff. At least you can edit it that way,” Wooyoung suggests after watching him with pity for a moment.

San lowers his glass until it hits the table. “What do you mean?”

“Like, instead of taking them in the moment and sending them to him, you can just take pictures before, like on a day off or something. Then send it when you want to—after cropping and editing, of course,” Wooyoung explains. “I mean, you can even send videos, if you really want to.”

San only considers it mildly. He came to get help, but now that Wooyoung is offering it, he can’t seem to actually entertain that thought. Would Yunho even like it? And what kind of photos? It’s so new, the fear of underperforming consumes him instead.

When he gets home, Yunho is in his room. That night, San doesn’t go online at all. Instead, he opens up his browser, and that’s where he hides himself in until he knocks himself out.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, San encounters an issue. What he feared before begins to slowly seep through—perhaps not too much from Yunho’s side, but his own anxiety does eventually catch up to himself. He could be overthinking it, but he doesn’t think so.

They keep their routine of playing games often, going through San’s plays and mistakes every once in a while (he’s actually gotten a lot better!) and then they’ve also incorporated their daily jerk off sessions into it. Most of the times, San sends a picture, but his worries ensnare him when he realizes with a sinking feeling in his chest that it all looks the fucking same.

He’s worried Yunho will get bored of him, and the thought alone is enough to get him jumping out of bed on his Sunday afternoon after getting home from work. He can’t accept it. He has to do something. Thankfully, ever since that night he went out for drinks with Wooyoung, San has been doing plenty of research.

That night, San gets onto Discord late at night. Yunho had reached out earlier asking to play, but San hadn’t been on at all this evening. He goes straight into his private message with Yunho and ignores the message from before that.

[Pudding] Can I send you something?

Unsurprisingly, Yunho responds almost immediately.

[Hotteok] yea sure, what is it?

San sat on the thought for a very long time earlier, but now that he’s here, fingers hovering over the keyboard on his phone, he can’t stop dwelling further. He already reached out—he needs to just do it. He shuts his mind off and opens up his camera roll, then selects his favourite of the few he took tonight and sends it to Yunho. Then, he turns off his phone and throws it face down on the bedsheets next to him.

All in all, it’s really a simple picture—nothing substantial. It’s a photo he recreated from something he pulled off Pinterest (it’s a great place to look, he found this out last week) and it’s cropped conveniently at the tip of his nose, so all that’s visible is anything under it to his pecs. The most important thing is that he has two fingers in his mouth, coated in glistening saliva as they push around his tongue, edited to look redder than it did originally.

This is the best one he took tonight, but seriously, they all look good. San almost wants to send them all, but then he’ll be left with nothing else to send for the following days.

He waits impatiently for the notification to come, but it is radio silence for minutes. He’s a little worried Yunho might not have liked it, but he tells himself it’s possible that, maybe, he just hasn’t seen it at all. He swallows the spit at the back of his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut. When he feels like he’s waited too long, he reaches blindly for his phone to open up their messaging history again.

There, Yunho is typing. On and off, on and off.

San gnaws at his bottom lip with concern. Is it too late to delete it?

[Hotteok] holy shit

[Hotteok] idek what to say

[Hotteok] that’s you?

San’s thumbs tap rapidly across the screen.

[Pudding] Yes

[Pudding] Do you like it?

[Hotteok] yea

[Hotteok] ur hot as fuck

[Hotteok] fuck

[Hotteok] your mouth

[Hotteok] seriously…

[Hotteok] you’re so fucking hot

[Hotteok] seems like u do really like fingers in ur mouth lol

[Hotteok] wish they were mine tho

[Hotteok] fuck i wanna know how ur lips would feel around me

[Pudding] I’ve never done it before…

[Hotteok] done what

[Hotteok] giving head?

[Pudding] Yeah…

[Hotteok] wanna learn? lol

[Pudding] What?

[Pudding] How? I can’t just… go out and learn

[Hotteok] u don’t have a sex toy or smth?

[Pudding] No…

[Hotteok] want one?

San’s mouth runs dry. This isn’t anything he’s ever thought about either. He may be inexperienced, but he didn’t realize sex toys were just something he can casually buy. Sex is always between two people, isn’t it? Why would he need a toy?

Although, now that he thinks about, it might be useful, right? To learn? Not that he’s thinking about sucking Yunho’s dick—well, no, not true, he thinks about it a lot, but it’s besides the point.

[Pudding] Should I get one…?

[Hotteok] if u want one

[Hotteok] i’ll get it for u

[Pudding] No way…! It’s okay, I will get one

[Hotteok] aw lil kitten listens so well

[Hotteok] fuck i keep going back to look at it, the photo you sent

[Hotteok] can i save it

[Hotteok] please?

[Hotteok] i promise i won’t share it with a soul

[Pudding] If you want…! It’s for you anyway

[Hotteok] only me?

[Pudding] Yeah! :3

[Hotteok] i’m so hard rn

San doesn’t even think about it before typing out his message and hitting send.

[Pudding] Can I see?

There’s no reply from Yunho after, but San knows he saw it. In the meantime, he allows his hand to travel into his shorts where his cock rests against his abdomen. He strokes it to full hardness, hips lifting off the bed in search of more friction.

When Yunho finally sends a photo, San’s eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets.

“Holy fuck,” he breathes out under his breath.

Maybe it’s the angle, maybe not—San doesn’t know—but Yunho is so big it’s almost hard to believe. He’s well aware of how large his hands are, so he’s got something decent to compare it to. His fingers are long, wrapped prettily around the base of his cock, tip glossy with precum.

San doesn’t even realize he’s salivating. He’s never sucked cock before, but he wants that in his mouth, and he wants to do it well. The thought of Yunho’s hands carding through his hair, gentle praises falling from his lips spurring San on—it alone is almost enough to have San gripping the base of his dick out of fear of coming too early.

It’s long and it’s pretty and if San holds his phone close enough to his face, it almost feels like it could be the real thing. That night, they don’t even get to call, too busy jerking off to each other’s photos. At least, San can confirm this will help.

He scrolls through his camera roll before falling asleep that night, already thinking about which one he’ll be sending tomorrow.

As promised, San orders himself a sex toy—a dildo, to be exact. It’s not really big and it’s not anything special, but it’ll do for now, right? It should be here today, he had gotten the notification for it, but when San makes it up to his apartment, there’s no package to be seen anywhere.

Panic bubbles up in his chest as he glances down the hallway behind him, thinking it might’ve been dropped off at the wrong door and he missed it, but there’s nothing. The floor on the hallway before him is completely clear, too.

Quickly, he lets himself into the apartment. Yunho is laying on the couch, half his legs dangling off the armrest—they should really get a bigger couch—as he looks away from his phone to greet San.

“Hey!” San responds, a little breathless. “Did I—did we get a package today?”

Yunho turns his head, gesturing to the kitchen. “Yeah, I left it on the table. I went out to grab a coffee, and I saw it being dropped off on my way back, so I just brought it in.”

“Oh,” San exhales out in relief, his shoulders sinking with the release of pressure, “thank you. Thank you.”

He heads into the kitchen to pick up the package, inspecting it carefully to make sure it’s fully sealed before turning on his heels—only to bump into Yunho. He startles, taking a step back and hitting the chair in the process, the legs scraping gently against the floors.

“What is it?” Yunho asks. “Something cool?”

San chokes on his own spit trying to deny him. “W-what? No, it’s—it’s nothing.”

Yunho’s head tilts, puzzled. “Really? Are you lying to me? You looked excited for it!”

“No!” San squeaks, shoving the box behind his back, but his backpack gets in the way and it bumps it out of his hands, falling to the floor. He scrambles quickly to pick it back up, then meets Yunho’s gaze with a flush high on his cheeks.

“Hm,” Yunho’s hum holds a tease, but then he steps back and gives in. “Fine, don’t tell me. Anyway, you’re not working tomorrow, right? Holiday? Wanna grab drinks tonight?”

San clears his throat, trying to collect his composure. “Um, yeah, sure. When?”

“I think we’re meeting up at nine.”

San grimaces. “That’s so late.”

Yunho shrugs. “Whatever, it’s just Gaecheonjeol. Nobody’s got jack shit to do tomorrow.

“Okay, sure, I’ll go,” San answers.

“Ah, right! Before I forget, I closed your window earlier. It got pretty windy this afternoon, so your door kept shaking. That’s okay, right?”

San blinks. “Oh, um, yeah! That’s fine. Thank you.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Yunho nods with a puppy-like grin. San knows there’s nothing innocent hiding underneath that face. He supposes he’s pretty guilty for it too, considering he’s got a package with a purple dildo in his hands. He begins to make his way towards his room, but Yunho’s next words stop him dead frozen in his tracks. “By the way, since when did you start playing games?”

San’s blood runs ice-cold. Slowly, he turns to look Yunho in the eyes, and there’s this sort of dark curiosity in his gaze, but when he blinks, it’s gone. “Um, I don’t,” he lies through his teeth. He’s almost certain he turned his computer off last night, and he hadn’t touched it all this morning.

“I saw your gaming headset.”

“Oh—oh! That! Um, that was just what Wooyoung recommended to me. I just thought it’d be nice to have one.”

“Right… and the mic?”

San laughs nervously. “I just—I thought I might as well get one too. Wooyoung also recommended it.”

“I see…” Yunho answers with a slow nod. For a second, San thinks he might have to come up with something more convincing, but then Yunho is suddenly grinning ear to ear, his demeanour shifting completely. “Well, if you ever wanna learn to play something, let me know! Seems like you’ve got a great setup for it already.”

“Yeah, totally, of course!” San says without missing a beat, surprisingly. God, when did he get so good at faking it? He retreats to his room quickly, shutting the door behind him gently before leaning back into it to let out a deep, shaky exhale.

He has about five hours before they leave—four, taking into consideration the hour he’ll need to get ready, and maybe three if he needs to work himself up to actually open that damn package.

He sets it by the corner of his bed before flopping down into his chair, his temple resting into his knuckles. Should he even do it today? He can always do it tomorrow, since he has the entire day off, but that just means he won’t be drinking much tonight.

San doesn’t know why, but if he’s going out seriously, shouldn’t he try to drink a little more?

For the next hour, he uses studying as a way to calm his thoughts, and he’s a lot more relaxed by the time he’s turning his computer off and finally pulling the package up onto his thighs. His boxcutter slices it open easily, and then San is lifting back the flaps to reveal the original packaging.

It’s got a big picture of the purple dildo on the front, and the entire thing is lined in a protective plastic film that peels off easily once San manages a small tear through it. Two minutes later, he’s staring the thing in his face. It’s smaller than he expected—a lot smaller than Yunho, that’s for sure—but the thought of it going anywhere in him is still somewhat mortifying.

San has only put two of his own fingers inside himself ever, and only three times—and not without Yunho’s guidance. He stares at it nervously, then startles when something clatters outside his door. The dildo jumps from his hand, and San falls to the floor trying to catch it.

He lands with a thud, and then his ears strain for any other noise.

“San?”

Quickly, San sits up on the floor, the sex toy hidden underneath his hoodie. The silicone is cold against his tummy, drawing a sharp hiss from him.

A knock. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah! I’m good. Are you okay? What was that?” San responds, volume raised so Yunho can hear him behind the door. He gets up slowly, then hastily shoves the dildo under his blanket. He swings the door open, and Yunho is staring at him from the kitchen, hand on the back of his head.

San’s eyebrows furrow. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah! I, um, hit my head on the cabinet door,” he admits sheepishly. “Did you fall or something?”

“Yeah, I’m good though,” San reassures before awkwardly clearing his throat. “I’m gonna try to, uh, take a nap before we go out.”

Yunho nods. “No problem, I won’t bother you. Did you want me to wake you up?”

“Oh, no, that’s fine! I’ll—I’ll set an alarm.”

San is obviously not taking a nap, so he’s not going to set an alarm. He waits a few minutes to see if Yunho will go back to his bedroom, but the footsteps outside are consistent—around the table, near the microwave, the fridge popping open and closed twice.

He sucks in a deep breath, mildly annoyed, and shoves the sex toy under his hoodie before swinging his bedroom door open again. It sucks that he’s got this side of the apartment while Yunho’s room is tucked at the end of the hall near the washroom, because it’s impossible to slip by quietly if he has a full view of the kitchen upon leaving.

Yunho glances at him curiously when he steps out, but San only offers a tight-lipped smile before disappearing down the hall. In the washroom, he cleans the sex toy with soap and water and dries it off with a paper towel before shutting himself back in his room.

Now, comfortable on his bed, San stares at the thing like it’s got eyes staring right back at him. He’s watched some videos, but the thought of actually performing the task is so embarrassing he can’t help but shy away with a hand dragging down the lower half of his face.

He’s really going to do this, right? Is there even anything sexy about this?

A tongue swipes over his bottom lip. He’s sitting at the edge of his bed, feet still planted in his slippers, and all he can think about is how silicone is going to taste.

He gulps, then opens his mouth tentatively, the tip of the toy pressing against his lips. It’s cold and hard and he wasn’t prepared for it even though he already knew this was exactly what it would be like. Slowly, he takes it farther into his mouth, the rubbery, velvety texture rubbing against his tongue. He’s mindful not to use his teeth as he gives it a gentle suck.

It’s not very comfortable and San’s jaw starts aching after a while, but he tries his hardest to learn—to get used to it. He’ll have to if he wants to impress Yunho.

After five minutes, he takes it out of his mouth, his free hand cupping his jaw to massage it. He didn’t think it’d hurt so bad—is this really what it’s going to be like? San’s not sure if he likes it.

He takes a break, then does it again. He does this three times before he’s finally stripping out of his top, lifting his phone up, and hitting record. To be honest, watching back on it, he thinks he’s gotten pretty good at it over the course of teaching himself this afternoon. He thinks it doesn’t look too bad as he edits it to crop out most of his face.

This time, when San goes to wash the sex toy clean, Yunho is back in his room. He wonders if he should send it right now. There’s a heated energy that simmers in the pit of his belly when he thinks about it—would Yunho look at it right away? Even though it’s still pretty early in the day? What kind of noises would he make? Will San be able to hear him if he presses his ear up against his door?

He sits on the thought for a solid hour, then more as he gives an attempt at studying for the next, and he doesn’t make a decision until he’s halfway through getting ready to go out tonight.

The black shirt he’s wearing feels a lot tighter than he last remembers when he reaches down to pluck his phone up from his night stand, but he does look good—he’ll give himself that.

[Pudding] Meow

The video takes a while to send, but once San confirms that it has been delivered properly, he tosses his phone back onto the bed and turns to look at himself in the hanging mirror on his wall. The strings on this shirt are always a hassle to fix, so he spends a good, solid five minutes tugging at them to make sure the lengths are even on both sides. It’s an interesting shirt, he had bought it on the whim, but it’s laced down the middle, so he has to pull pretty tightly to get the shirt to close up all the way. He does, however, leave a small sexy triangle at the top near his chest.

He smooths the collars flat, then turns to check himself out. The black jeans hug his thighs and hips nicely and sit comfortably at his waist. It’s a good outfit if he pairs it with his dress shoes. He doesn’t know where they’re going, but this is a pretty good outfit for any occasion, right?

He sprays his perfume at his wrists before dabbing at his neck, ruffles his hair a little, then heads out his room.

Yunho is nowhere to be seen. Is he still getting ready? They should leave soon if they don’t want to be late. San’s footsteps are quiet as he makes his way to the end of the hall.

Two knocks, then he leans in close. “Hey, you ready?”

“Shit. Ow,” he hears Yunho curse, although it’s slightly muffled. Then, in a much clearer tone, “Yeah, sorry! Be out in five minutes.”

San lowers his hand and heads back into his room to grab his phone and wallet. Curious, he opens up his Discord app, only to be bombarded by messages from Yunho.

[Hotteok] holy fuck

[Hotteok] baby you look so fucking good

[Hotteok] u sent this at the worst possible time

[Hotteok] i have to go out right now

[Hotteok] ah, seriously

[Hotteok] im so fucking hard and i cant even do anything about it

San doesn’t even realize the grin he’s trying to hold back until he reaches the end of the messages. He can’t help it. He’s a little proud of it. Yunho said it was fun to tease him and he’s starting to understand the appeal. Teasing is fun.

[Pudding] Oh nooo

[Pudding] Sorry, I didn’t know :(

The door to Yunho’s room flings open, and San, in a panic, shuts his phone off and tucks it into his back pocket. The other man appears around the corner, head sticking in because San had left his bedroom door open.

“Sorry, I’m ready now! Let’s go?”

San slips his wallet into his other pocket, then pauses. “Should I bring my keys?”

“Nah, I’ve got ‘em!”

As they put their shoes on together, San can’t help but let his thoughts translate into words. He knows he’s toeing the line here. “You look a little flushed. Are you sick?”

Yunho’s head pops up from where he’s crouched over, two fingers hooked into the back of his black sneakers. It pairs well with his white cargos and grey shirt, brown flannel—slightly wrinkled—tying the whole outfit together. The cap pulled over his head makes his bangs seem so much longer than they usually look, shielding part of his eyes, and that silver chain dangling from his neck glints in the soft lighting of the living room.

“Huh? Oh, I’m good. I wasn’t keeping an eye on the time, so I was rushing a bit.”

San nods slowly. “Fell asleep?”

“Yeah! Nice nap—I needed it,” Yunho answers with a natural grin. He’s so good at lying, San almost resents him for it.

The two of them arrive at the restaurant on time, but they’re also the only ones there. San takes the seat on the inside at the very edge near the wall, and Yunho, naturally, sits next to him.

“Drinking tonight?” Yunho asks while flipping to the very back of the menu.

San nods. “Yeah, a bit.”

“Really? Only a bit? But you’re not working tomorrow,” he feigns some cuteness, lips forming a small pout.

San has to tear his eyes away from it. “Yeah, but—”

“C’mon,” Yunho tilts his head, his cheek pressing into his long fingers. “Everyone’s drinking tonight. It’ll be fun. What are you worried about? I can take you home, remember?”

There’s a sensation that pools in San’s chest when Yunho says those words, and it goes straight to his head so quickly he gets dizzy. He blinks, reaching for the menu, but Yunho is quicker, pushing it away easily.

“Soju?” he continues. “We all want soju.”

San scoffs. “No one’s even here yet.”

“Oh, c’mon, you know them as well as I do. They’re gonna want soju,” Yunho rolls his eyes with a crooked grin on his face. “In fact, I’m gonna order right now.”

San observes Yunho quietly as he speaks to the server. Honestly, he doesn’t mind drinking more tonight, but the way Yunho was so adamant about trying to convince him makes him wonder if there was a reason he so desperately wants him to drink.

It’s probably because everyone’s drinking tonight. It won’t be fun for anyone if San is too sober—and he agrees. Still, he will drink responsibly. He’s pretty good at keeping count of how many drinks he has. It’ll be fine, right?

Everyone arrives slowly. Jongho comes first, then Mingi and Wooyoung, and then Soobin and Yeonjun arrive together. San bows his head respectfully—he’s only met them a few times, and they do get more comfortable once everyone’s had a few drinks in them, but San can’t say he knows them well enough to hug out an apology or anything like that.

Well, Pudding knows more about them than San should.

They order a spicy clam soup, stir fried gizzard, jokbal—so much food, San can hardly see the surface of the table by the time everything arrives. He’s going to be honest, everyone here looks like they’ve got a big appetite, him included. This food will go fast.

Before he could even get any food into his stomach, he’s already been peer pressured into a shot. It’s almost embarrassing to think he’s tipsy off of it, but at least he doesn’t have to admit it out loud. He should watch how much he’s drinking. Everyone here looks like they’re good at peer pressuring, but San can stand his ground.

Right?

Wooyoung glances at him sneakily from across the table, eyebrows lifting as he raises his shot glass to his lips. San fully ignores him while dropping an empty clam shell onto a nearby plate.

Yunho leans into his side to fill his shot glass up for him.

“Ah, wait—”

“I’m just pouring it,” Yunho interrupts, his eyes flicking up to meet San’s wide-eyed expression. “Eat first.”

He says that, but five minutes later, he’s being roped into a group shot. After he takes a drink of his soup, his shot glass is somehow full again. Ten minutes pass, and San is beginning to feel very warm in his cheeks. Jongho and Wooyoung are deep in a conversation about some clash they want to participate in for League of Legends, and Mingi is telling the rest of the table about the professor-student drama from his department.

Yunho looks like he’s listening until he’s tilting his shoulder lower towards San, head turned just enough to whisper into San’s face, “Do you think it’s ‘cause they’re fucking?”

San reels back so fast he hits his head on the wall, a noise of pain falling from his lips as a hand flies up to nurse at the spot.

“Oh my god,” Yunho immediately says, reaching out with a hovering hand, “are you okay?”

“Ah,” San hisses, eyes squeezed shut, “yeah… Why—why would you say that?”

Yunho’s hand drops slowly. “What do you mean? Mingi’s professor and the student? The spat they got in, don’t you think it was kinda playful?”

Yeonjun leans his back into his chair to look at them. “Hey, that’s what I thought too!”

“Yeah, they’re doing it, right?” Yunho asks, turning around to look at Yeonjun.

Honestly, San had not been paying attention to the details of Mingi’s conversation at all. Of course, the question took him by surprise. More than anything, he doesn’t think he’s ever heard anything like that leave Yunho’s lips before—at least, not in his face. Not to San.

San shifts in his seat. “I-I guess,” he mumbles.

“You know, I think you need to take another shot,” Yunho muses with a click of his tongue. He lifts his shot glass and holds it near San’s, gesturing for him to take it.

San grimaces, his shoulders sinking. “I don’t know, I—”

“C’mon,” Yunho’s voice is quieter now, like it’s meant only for San to hear, “for me?”

A sigh leaves his lips, and then he reluctantly picks up his shot glass. It goes down easier than it did his first few shots, but San still has to reach for his water after, the taste somewhat unpleasant. Usually, San can tell he’s pretty drunk when he starts looking for things to snack on, something to put in his mouth. The onions, half raw on the hot stone the gizzards came on, provide a crunch that’s so satisfying he can’t stop picking at it. At some point, Yunho swaps it with the tangsuyuk so that it’s easier to reach for him.

As the minutes pass, San’s head starts growing heavy. When he turns to look at Yunho from Wooyoung, his vision seems to lag, like his brain can’t catch up with what he’s actually looking at. His mouth feels both wet and dry at the same time, but when he reaches for his water, Yunho picks up his shot glass.

“One more?” he suggests, eyebrows lifting with hope.

San shakes his head, fully leaned into the back of his chair. “No, really, I can’t.”

“Please? Just one.”

He stares at the shot glass in Yunho’s hands for a moment, but then Yunho is resting a hand on the back of San’s neck, his shot glass coming in close to his lips. Instinctively, San’s head tips back into the warm touch, and then the cold liquor is sliding down his throat.

Yunho just fed him a shot, and it wasn’t even from his own shot glass.

When did he get so drunk? He was never supposed to get to this point. How many shots did he take? How many did he take with Yunho? He glances over at him with lidded eyes and takes in how handsome his side profile is. The slope of his nose to the pout of his lips, the curve of his chin and down his long neck, veins prominent in his pale skin.

“Gonna go for a smoke,” Wooyoung says with a double-finger gesture to his lips.

San makes a face when a few chairs scrape against the floors in unison. “What? No! Why are you still smoking?”

A couple patrons turn their heads to look at his outburst, and San swears he hears Yunho giggle from next to him. He sends an elbow to his roommate. What did he say that was so wrong?

“Give it t’ me,” he slurs, holding his palm out across the table.

Wooyoung swallows down a laugh. “Um, you’re super drunk, by the way. Anyways, BRB!”

A large hand comes overtop of his own, pulling it back down to his side. San turns his head to stare Yunho in the face, his lips downturned. “Why are you stopping me? You’re not a smoker, are you?” He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Yunho with a cigarette before. He doesn’t think he’s ever smelled cigarettes on him before.

“No?” Yunho’s laugh is incredulous. “I think you’d know if I smoke.”

San grumbles, “Good. Don’t smoke. It’s bad for you.”

It’s just the two of them at the table now. The portable gas stove under the clam soup has been turned off now that all that’s left are a few green peppers and some sad, limp white onions. Empty soju bottles sit scattered around the table wherever there’s space, and it’s then that San realizes there are beer bottles around, too.

“There was beer?” he croaks out, dazed. He blinks a few times to readjust his vision.

Yunho’s tongue wets his lip. “Yeah. I didn’t know you wanted any.”

San’s mouth falls open, disbelief colour his expression. “What? You—you forced me to take shots…!”

“No, I didn’t! Didn’t you want to?”

Yunho is lying straight through his teeth, but San feels like he’s going crazy. He’s drunk enough to not remember anything clearly anymore. “I—I did?”

“You didn’t?”

San’s mouth closes as he tries to think back to earlier. He did? “Oh. Shit, sorry, I’m s… so drunk right now.”

“You are?”

San doesn’t realize Yunho’s still holding onto his hand until he’s pulling his arms up to rest his elbows on the table, burying his face into his hands. “No more. I—really, I can’t.”

“But we’re going to karaoke later. Don’t you wanna come?”

San looks up suddenly, wide-eyed. “Karaoke?”

“Yeah!” Yunho chirps. “You love it, don’t you?”

“Oh,” is all San breathes out. He doesn’t actually ponder over it for too long. “That sounds fun…”

Yunho’s grin is crooked, almost a smirk. “Exactly. Let’s see if they wanna go soon.”

“Do you like karaoke too?” San asks, turning his body to fully face Yunho now. There’s a sudden chill on his thigh near his knee, like something that had been resting there has suddenly disappeared. San blinks, confused, but Yunho is pulling at his attention.

“Yeah, I love it. I don’t think we’ve gone together before, right?”

It almost feels like Yunho’s hand had been on him. “No, I don’t think so… What, um, songs? Do you like to sing?”

“Everything. What about you?”

“Ohhh, I really like… slow songs? Maybe… ballads? But I like older generation songs too.”

Yunho hums, leaning into the table, but he’s also closer than he was before. “Really? Like your parents’ generation?”

“Yeah, like… Kim Gunmo, Lee Sunhee…” he trails off slowly.

“Kim Dongryul?” Yunho offers with a hopeful grin.

San claps his hands together, then points at Yunho, impressed. “Kim Dongryul!”

Yunho laughs, and San thinks it is the prettiest thing he has ever seen. It’s the way his eyes crinkle, the apples of his cheeks lifting to show his perfect teeth. Seriously, what a beautiful smile. San stares for so long he has to consciously force his eyes off him.

He pushes himself out of his seat, stumbling in his spot. Yunho gets up immediately with him, a hand steadying him at his elbow, but San waves him off. “No, ‘s okay. Need to use the washroom.”

“Do you need help?” Yunho asks, stepping aside to let San out.

San shakes his head with a grumble, and he feels the touch at his arm tighten when he trips the toe of one foot over his other heel.

“It’s okay, I’ll come with you.”

San can’t fight back, not right now, so he lets Yunho walk him down the hallway to the men’s washroom. When he gets inside, the door shuts loudly behind him as he slumps back into it. His hand moves slowly to lock the door, and then he’s slumping into the sink counter instead. When he looks up, his eyes are lidded, cheeks so red it should be embarrassing if he isn’t already too drunk to give a shit, and his hair looks messier than it should be considering he didn’t even touch it that much.

Or, did he?

San takes his time in there, enough for him to be surprised Yunho is still waiting outside for him. The taller man turns to face him immediately.

“Are you okay? Need water?”

“Um, sure, maybe,” San croaks out.

He’s not sure how long exactly he was in there for, but the bill has been paid (Yunho told him not to worry about it) and everyone has gone outside to wait for them. He chugs the rest of his water before bowing three times to the server behind the counter on his way out. He’s mildly aware of Yunho’s hand on his lower back.

“Ugh, finally,” Wooyoung shouts, flicking what San assumes is his third or fourth cigarette of the night deeper into the alley they’re bundled in. “Let’s go sing!”

As they walk to the train station together, Yunho ends up lagging behind with San. The gentle chill of the night wind is a relief on San’s heated skin. It’s helping him sober up enough to walk in a straight line, but he still feels a thud in his head with every step that he takes.

“I really like your outfit today,” Yunho says suddenly. When San turns to look at him, there’s a little grin on his face.

“Oh… thank you,” San answers quietly while glancing down at his outfit. His hands find the two stings hanging from his collarbones and gives it a gentle tug. “I don’t remember the last time I wore this shirt out.”

“The shirt is my favourite part,” Yunho tells him. “Seriously. Looks… really fuckin’ good on you.”

“You think so?” San asks, a little shy. He shouldn’t have been that familiar with the way Yunho curses like that, but he’s too drunk to realize that some memories are Pudding’s, not his own.

Yunho chuckles and adjusts the cap lower onto his head. “Yeah. Your muscles really pop in it. Pop.”

San holds his arms forward, flexing his triceps. “Actually, you’re right. You can see it well.” Yunho’s heated gaze lingers too long on his arms, but San doesn’t even notice.

They get on the train together and ride the few stops to a karaoke place that Mingi had hastily made a reservation for back at the restaurant. Yunho sticks close to San’s side the entire way there. When San gives his seat up for the elderly lady that comes in, Yunho also gets up. They grab onto the same pole together, bodies swaying with the occasional stop and go of the train, and when they exit onto the platform, Yunho lets San exit first.

San flops right into the corner of the booth when they arrive, his head resting against the leather cushion. Yunho slides in beside him, sectioning him off from everyone else. Yeonjun orders more drinks while Wooyoung and Mingi dive straight for the karaoke remote as they fight over who gets to pick the first song.

When San opens his eyes, he makes eye contact with Soobin, who kind of looks just as fucked up as he feels. Then, Yunho leans forward, eyes wide and big, like he’s desperate for San’s attention.

“What do you want to sing?” Yunho asks. “Lee Kichan? K.Will?”

“Mm, remote,” San grumbles, holding his hand out to make a couple grabbing gestures. He doesn’t know how long he sits like that for, but the moment the music starts, loud from the speakers in the room, and Wooyoung’s voice starts spilling out of it, he feels something heavy and rubbery in his hands.

“Do you need help?” Yunho asks.

San opens his eyes to find the remote in his hands. Then, he thrusts it in Yunho’s direction. “Must’ve been love.”

Yunho blinks. “What?”

San sits up suddenly, shocked. “You don’t know? ‘It Must’ve Been Love’? By Yoon Dohyun!”

“Ah…! Ah, I know, hold on a second,” Yunho answers quickly before directing his attention to the TV. He types the song into the search bar before reserving it and setting the remote down on the table. Jongho picks it up almost immediately.

When it’s San’s turn to sing, he demands for the mics, then passes one to Yunho. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t realize it earlier, but it takes until the end of the song for him to realize Yunho barely sang with him. He turns to look at him, only to find Yunho staring back at him with a look in his eyes San can’t quite explain.

The song finishes and Yunho claps and hollers so loudly, San is almost embarrassed.

“No idea you could sing like that,” Yunho praises, then reaches forward to tug two full shot glasses closer to them.

San only glances at it for a second before he’s taking one of them into his hands. Why? He doesn’t know, but he’s so happy he can’t even complain. “You liked it?”

“Of course!” Yunho answers like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Cheers?”

Their glasses clink gently between them, and then San is downing the shot like he never once thought alcohol could be gross. It tastes like water. He leans into Yunho’s heat even though the temperature in the room is a little too warm for him to be seeking more.

“Seriously,” San starts, lips wet, “I think ‘m done. I drank so much tonight.”

“Aw, but you’re having so much fun,” Yunho rebuts with a pout on his mouth. “Let’s sing another song!”

San doesn’t know how many songs he sings tonight—he’s not exactly keeping count, but neither is he keeping count of the shots that Yunho keeps feeding him. It’s almost two in the morning, but San somehow doesn’t want to go home yet.

Also, the last he remembers, he’s pretty sure Yunho was never this close to him. Their thighs are taped right alongside each other, and every once in a while, San feels a touch at his shoulders, sometimes his waist, and other times his knee. The sensations were always a little dulled, but he’s crushing so hard on Yunho, he pays close attention to all of it.

“Dude, you are fuckin’ drunk,” Wooyoung laughs as they head to the washroom together. San has to keep a hand on the wall to keep himself from stumbling too much.

“I know,” he slurs. “Oh my god, I drank so much.”

“‘S okay, me too,” Wooyoung answers while pushing the door open. “You’re not working tomorrow, right?”

San mumbles from the stall next door, his head swirling as he takes his piss. “No…”

“Also, did you see Yunho tonight? He was all over you.”

San comes out to wash his hands, his head swimming with the implication behind Wooyoung’s words, but he doesn’t get the chance to explain because his focus zeros in on the mirror. His shirt, slightly wrinkled, has parted open so far, he can see the top of his abs.

He’s not embarrassed by his own body by any means, not at all, but he can’t help the humiliation that hits him like a truck at that moment. It’s different when he’s posing post-pump, but this is—

“Whoa,” Wooyoung says, followed by a whistle, “I don’t remember your shirt being that sexy.”

San tugs at the strings, tightening it back up. Has he been so drunk he never noticed it? The way his shirt was beginning to loosen? It’s never happened before; he never thought it would be an issue. Before he can truly fix it to be the way that it was before, Wooyoung swats at his hands, the sting drawing a hiss from San’s mouth.

“What?” he asks, shocked.

“Just leave it. It looks good like that! Maybe Yunho likes it too!”

The moment the words leave Wooyoung’s mouth, San’s hands fall back down to his sides. He turns to look at the mirror, his line of sight dropping to the lowest part where his skin is revealed.

When they finally make it back to their room, San’s shirt sits exactly the way it was, untouched, unfixed. This time, he tries his best to take note of Yunho’s expressions, where his eyes look, where his hands touch him. When they go in for another shot, Yunho is so close, he’s practically leaning on San. Then, he feels a tug at his shirt—more specifically his shirt.

Just a little bit, San notices the way his shirt has loosened some more.

Ah, he seriously thinks he’s going crazy.

“What are you doing?” he asks, shot glass slamming down onto the table.

Yunho looks at him with steady eyes, but the way his eyelids sit heavy on them tells San that Yunho is not as sober as he tries to be. For a moment, Yunho doesn’t say anything, but when he does, it’s a complete diversion. “Wanna sing with me? ‘All For You’, Reply 1997?”

“I need a break,” San says with a shake of his head, so he watches Yunho reach for the remote and punch in a song he doesn’t really recognize. While he sings, he listens, he swears he is, but he doesn’t want to give the impression that he is, so he goes on his phone.

Too drunk to really think about it, he opens up Discord. There’s a message from Yunho.

[Hotteok] ur evil

[Hotteok] i bet u liked it

[Hotteok] teasing me like that

San worries his lip between his teeth as he thinks of how he should reply.

[Pudding] So what if I did?

[Pudding] You do it all the itme

[Pudding] Time

Yunho’s phone, sitting face up on the table, lights up. San quietly sets his phone aside, then tugs harshly at the strings of his shirt, closing up the window down his torso. When Yunho is done and has passed the mic onto someone else, he takes back his seat by San’s side.

San pretends not to notice, but he knows when Yunho’s eyes fall to the front of his shirt, narrowing slightly before sliding up to his collarbones. He also pretends not to see when Yunho reaches for his phone. He takes a moment just looking at the notifications before finally unlocking it and tapping his thumbs across the screen.

There’s a gentle buzz on the booth next to him. He picks it up immediately.

[Hotteok] oh i see

[Hotteok] youre being a brat

[Pudding] I am?

[Hotteok] why? u dont like it when i call u that?

[Hotteok] seriously, ur only good when u wanna be

[Hotteok] messaging me when im out

[Pudding] I’m also out right now

[Hotteok] oh, so youre a bitch

San flushes so hard, and he doesn’t even know why. Yunho has never said anything like that to him before. It has always been praises upon praises, which San loves, don’t get him wrong, but this is something completely different. It’s something he doesn’t even understand.

[Hotteok] dont worry, i like it

[Hotteok] i like putting bitches in their place

[Pudding] Why are you saying this?

[Hotteok] dont act like u dont like it too

[Hotteok] u like it, dont you?

[Pudding] Stop

[Hotteok] what else do u have to show me?

[Hotteok] gonna go through ur camera roll while ur out in public like that?

San nearly whimpers, but he catches himself by biting over the knuckle of his thumb. He’s considering what he should say when Wooyoung’s loud voice over the speakers interrupts his thoughts.

“The fuck are you bitches doing! Get off your phones!”

Quickly, San and Yunho set their phones down, but neither of them say a word in response. Actually, neither of them move for a solid minute. There’s currently a foot of space between them, and it stays that way for the rest of the night. Thankfully, they’re not there for much longer.

Apparently, Soobin has thrown up twice in the toilet already, so when Yeonjun says he’s going to take him home, they decide to call it there. They’re all drunker than they should be, but San can’t tell just how drunk he is until he’s stepping out into the night. He stumbles right into an arm and a warm body, but he doesn’t have to look to know who it is.

Mingi braces himself with two hands on his hips as he lurches forward. “Fuck, I don’t think we should’ve killed those bottles before leaving.”

Jongho laughs with little restraint at him. Wooyoung, jokingly, of course, chides, “League later?”

“I’m down. Drunk League?” Jongho suggests, not so jokingly despite his familiar laughter.

San can barely focus on the conversation, his head rolling sideways and backwards into Yunho’s shoulder. He doesn’t know where he is, and he also doesn’t know where he is fifteen minutes later. The train ride back home is ridden in silence as he mumbles quiet gibberish with his ear pressed to Yunho’s soft flannel. At some point, Yunho has taken his cap off to pull it down over San’s eyes, shielding him from the bright fluorescents of the train lights.

“Sit right here,” he hears Yunho tell him after a brief five-minute walk. San feels a pressure on his shoulders, and he goes down, his butt hitting something hard and flat. He doesn’t bother looking up, head hanging low as he tries to get the ground to stop spinning under his feet.

A minute later, there’s a touch underneath his chin, gentle and warm, and when he tilts his head back, his eyes finally crack open. Yunho stands before him, his long legs inches from San’s spread knees, and he’s looking down at San with lidded eyes and a flush on his cheeks.

“Open your mouth,” he says, the tone of his voice low and cool, not too much like a demand, but it’s definitely not a suggestion, either. San’s lips part, and then something sturdy presses against his lips.

San doesn’t realize how parched he is until he’s swallowing the first gulp of ice-cold water. His throat bobs as he downs half of it, although some of it spills past the corner of his lips and drips down his neck and into his shirt. A hand comes to wipe at the stream, and San hums against the touch.

“Okay, c’mon. Let’s go,” Yunho says while helping San up with an extended hand. When San is finally steady on his own two feet, Yunho tilts his head back and finishes the rest of the water before dropping it into the recycling bin outside the convenience store.

Yunho is so attentive. San is pretty sure he’s also drunk, but he pays such careful attention to how San puts one foot in front of the other as they climb the stairs to their apartment. Every time San stumbles a little, Yunho’s grip around him tightens, fingers digging into his waist. When San leans into him, Yunho leans back to offer himself up as a pillar. San can smell his perfume, and maybe he’s using drunkenness as an excuse to turn his face into his neck, breathing in deeply like he can’t get enough of it, but he doesn’t care.

The moment Yunho gets the apartment door to click open, however, San is pushing himself off the taller man and shoving his way inside, shoes kicked off haphazardly and Yunho’s cap flung onto the backrest of the couch.

Yunho calls after him, “Where are you going?”

“Couch,” San grumbles. Then, he falls chest-first onto it.

Yunho joins him shortly after—but on the floor, and right in front of San’s face as he sits cross-legged on the rug. “Don’t wanna go to bed yet?”

San peeks one eye open to find that Yunho is leaning his arms into the seat cushion of the couch. He’s close, but not as close as he was at karaoke. “No,” he mumbles, “no work t’morrow.”

Yunho scoffs, but in a way that shows endearment. “Yeah, but we went out for drinks. You’re allowed to sleep if you feel tired.”

“Are you sleeping?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t wanna.”

“Why?”

San frowns. “Why, what?”

“Mm,” Yunho hums, lips pursed, “never mind.”

After a beat, San asks, “Aren’t you drunk?”

“I am drunk,” Yunho answers like it should be obvious. San doesn’t get the chance to elaborate before he’s speaking up again, “But I said I would take care of you.”

Something stirs inside San at the words, like butterflies flapping their wings against his ribcage—or arrhythmia. San sure hopes it’s not arrhythmia. For a long moment, all he does is just stare at Yunho. He thinks maybe he’ll shy away from his gaze eventually, but he doesn’t. Actually, he levels his stare with San’s very well.

“You got me drunk,” San blurts. He doesn’t want to give Yunho the chance to say anything, so he continues, “I know you did.”

Yunho falters for a second. Then, “I didn’t know you were such a lightweight.”

San wants to argue that he knows—he doesn’t know how, but he still wants to argue—except he doesn’t. Instead, he asks, “How come… we never really hung out before?” Something in Yunho’s face shifts, like he hadn’t expected the question, but he schools it into a more neutral look. San pushes himself up onto his arms, his chest lifting off the couch. “I mean, we only recently started to, right? Like, actually hang out.”

Yunho’s gaze flicks away. “I just thought you were busy doing your own thing. I didn’t know if I had any place in your routine.”

“I see.”

“But it’s different now, of course! I realized now, I mean,” Yunho adds with haste. “And trust me, I’m happy we’re spending more time together.”

San can’t help the way the corners of his lips twitch upward. “So many years living together, and we’re only spending time together now.”

The laugh from Yunho’s lips is bright and honest, and it’s a sound San wishes he can keep for himself. “I don’t regret it. I hope I didn’t affect your routine too much. I know you were pretty strict with it even before we became roommates.”

San wants to laugh. Yunho has no idea just how much of an impact he’s had on his life as of late. “It’s not too bad,” he ends up saying.

“So, you don’t meal prep as much anymore,” Yunho states the obvious.

“Well, you cook dinner sometimes.” After a beat, San shoots up, sitting cross-legged on the couch. “You know!” San suddenly exclaims. “You’re not even that bad at cooking! For the longest time, I thought you were terrible at it.”

Yunho’s expression morphs into something mixed between disbelief and humour. “What? I am terrible at it.”

“No, no,” San shakes his head adamantly. “You’re not, I swear.”

“Are you trying to get me to cook you dinner more often?” Yunho muses with a sideways glance, but then he leans back into his arms, his jaw resting on his knuckles. Like this, he’s hovering near San’s knee, but San doesn’t move away, either. “I’ll cook for you. What do you want to eat tomorrow? I’ll find a recipe.”

“I was just joking…” San grumbles, his thumbs twiddling in his lap. “We can always cook together too. I enjoy it when we do.”

Time passes easily as they discuss their dinner plans for the next day. It bleeds into a conversation about grocery trips and where they should go on which days for the cheapest meats, and then they’re suddenly joking around as though they’ve known each other for years.

The only good thing about being a lightweight is that San sobers up rather quickly, too. He doesn’t even know what time it is, but they talk for so long, the only evidence of a late night out is the fact that his cheeks still feel a little warm and his head slightly fuzzy.

Even as fatigue begins to settle in, San still does not want to go to sleep yet. In fact, Yunho is the reason he’s even trying so hard to stay awake. He latches onto every word, eyes focused on the way his lips move when he speaks, the flash of teeth when he laughs too widely, and the crinkle at his eyes when he looks up at San.

“But what do you even have all those muscles for? Seriously,” Yunho asks with a hand over his mouth to hide his laughter. “Just to look good? I mean, it looks good, don’t get me wrong.”

San pouts. “It’s a whole lifestyle! You don’t understand. What do you play games for? Just for fun, right? It’s not like it’s keeping you active.”

“Ah, but it keeps my brain healthy.”

“And working out keeps my body healthy.”

“You know,” Yunho starts, clicking his tongue after like he means to chastise him, “it’s a good thing to play games every once in a while. It’s even encouraged for seniors.”

“Oh, am I a senior now?” San scoffs.

Yunho shrugs. “No, but we’ll get there one day.”

“You’re just trying to get me to play games,” San quarrels with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Yunho leans a little closer, his grin full of mischief. “Well, why not? I’m really good at it. I could teach you so fast.”

San’s words catch at the back of his throat, only because he knows. He knows Yunho is really good—has known for a long time. The offer he makes to teach him is one he might’ve said yes to months ago, but now, it’s a little different, isn’t it? He’s technically already learning from him.

San watches him for so long, Yunho tilting his head shakes him out of his own thoughts. “Um, I—I mean, I don’t know, I don’t really think it’s for me.”

“Are you sure?” Yunho insists. “If you play with me, I’ll even consider going to the gym with you.”

San’s jaw goes slack. “What? I—what? Really?” He’s never had a gym partner before. He actually has never even thought about it. He never thought to ask, he never thought to drag anyone with him—he has always just gone alone.

The thought of Yunho at the gym is terrifying, actually. He’s already pretty lean and toned, and San knows this well because he’s constantly staring when he can—at Yunho’s collarbones, the flex of his forearms, the sharp curve of his shoulders—but thinking about him filling out in ways that should be illegal has him very dizzy very suddenly.

“Yeah! I’ll do it,” Yunho confirms, jollier than anyone should be at this hour.

San glances at the time on the wall. It’s just a little past four in the morning. “I’ll think about it,” he answers. He shifts a little on his butt. “I think… I’m gonna head to bed now. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

“Oh, sure.” Yunho gets up immediately, a hand extended to help San up from the couch. He’s no longer wobbly from the alcohol, but his legs do feel a little cramped from sitting like that for so long. They really sat and talked here for over an hour, and he didn’t even know.

“By the way,” Yunho says as San grabs a water from the fridge, “that shirt really does look good on you.”

San glances down at it and swallows down his shock. The strings have come loose again. His hand flies up to his chest, palm pressed over his skin, before he whips his head up to look at Yunho, but he’s already leaving for his bedroom.

He swears he saw a cheeky smirk on his face.

San doesn’t actually get comfortable in bed until half past four, and he fully expects to crash right away, but he’s actually wide awake. He wants to think the reason to blame is from the muffled voice on the other side of the wall, but he knows it isn’t. The residual drunkenness from earlier that night sits like a simmer under his skin, warm and tingly, a gentle buzzing.

Yunho is still up playing games—of course he is. San has long realized that most gamers are night owls. If they’re given the chance to stay up all night, they’ll take it. It’s a common occurrence with his roommate, who neither works nor volunteers, but at least he’s very diligent with attending his classes.

It’s clear he’s in a game. It’s so easy to tell now whether he’s online just talking or actually playing. San can even tell if he’s playing a competitive game or a casual game. He opens up Discord on his phone and goes into the server to find that everyone is online, except for him. Well, he’s online, just not active.

He swipes back to his and Yunho’s chat history. The last message had been from Yunho, and it hangs heavy at the bottom, taunting San—teasing him.

[Hotteok] gonna go through ur camera roll while ur out in public like that?

Would he have? San’s teeth sink down into his bottom lip in thought. Even if he was pretty drunk back then, he thinks he has enough dignity to not scroll through his indecent pictures in public.

But… was Yunho trying to get him to do it? Wasn’t he trying to get under San’s skin? He’s the type to want to do something like that, he knows, and he thinks San is an easy victim for him.

Suddenly fired up, San gets out of bed and opens up his camera roll. He’s now changed into shorts and a hoodie, something he pulled from the back of his closet, and his hair is slightly damp and soft from his shower half an hour ago—it’s the perfect look for something promiscuous at this time of night.

Positioned in front of the mirror like this, half the bedroom is visible on camera, so San sinks down to the floor, his back resting against his bedframe. If he’s smart with how he crops it, he won’t give too much away.

Then, he hits record, filming himself in the mirror with his phone blocking part of his face as he spreads his legs, knees bent. His other hand trails gently up his front, brushing a ticklish touch over the bulge in his shorts before hooking two fingers under the hem of his hoodie. He pulls it up, revealing tanned skin and tight abs, beautifully contrasted in the yellow lamp from San’s nightstand.

When he crops it, he considers cutting his entire face out of it, but then he changes his mind. He leaves just enough for the video to catch the shy crook of his lip, a sweet little smile hidden partially by his phone, considering Yunho’s already seen a video of him sucking a dildo earlier today.

It’s still embarrassing when San thinks about it, but the most important thing is that Yunho enjoyed it.

He makes sure nothing else in the video is discernable before silently creeping back under his covers. Then, he hits send. With bated breath, San waits patiently, straining his ears to listen for anything telling from the other side of the wall.

A couple minutes later, San sees Yunho typing.

[Hotteok] im in a game

Rolling his eyes, San throws his blanket off his body and lifts his hoodie all the up to his chin, then higher to catch the fabric between his teeth. He holds his phone directly above him and takes a picture right in their Discord chat of his naked chest, teeth a pretty white as it bites down on the cotton blend, then sends it over to Yunho.

[Hotteok] what r u trying to do right now?

[Pudding] Teasing you

[Hotteok] for what?

[Pudding] I like it

[Hotteok] it’s a comp game

[Pudding] I know

San can hear Yunho speaking to his teammates, his comms sharp and uninterrupted. He wants to blame the alcohol for his sudden bravery, even though deep down, he knows it’s not completely that, so he doesn’t think too much about it when he slicks up a finger with his own spit before touching it to his nipple.

The video is only five seconds long, and San makes sure he isn’t audible enough to give anything away, but he can hear his own shaky breathing in it. It’s good enough. Yunho will probably like it, actually.

There’s a bit of silence from Yunho’s room afterward. He imagines Yunho taking his eyes off the game to glance over at his second monitor instead, where San’s videos, one after another, are full-sized and easy to access.

San shuts his eyes and rolls his hips, his cock slowly hardening in his shorts. He’s unwilling to touch himself yet, however, his focus fully trained on the way Discord tells him when Yunho is typing or not.

[Hotteok] wait for me to finish my game

San bites his lip to stop himself from grinning too widely. He doesn’t know why he’s toeing the line like this, but there’s a sort of adrenaline that pumps through his body when he thinks about crossing over it completely.

He’s not going to question himself for it. All he knows is that it was hot when Yunho was mean to him back at karaoke.

[Pudding] But

[Pudding] I don’t want to

[Hotteok] pudding chan ur being bad

[Hotteok] thought u liked being good?

[Pudding] Can’t I be both?

[Hotteok] yea u can

[Hotteok] tells me a lot about what u rlly want

[Pudding] What do I want?

For the next twenty minutes, it is radio silence in their chat. San lays on his back with a frown as he listens to every cheer and every curse that filters through the wall. Suddenly, he hates Valorant.

He waits patient before finally—finally—he can hear a sharp round of applause, something Yunho does after every game whether they win or lose, so San wrestles his phone out from under his bed covers.

[Pudding] Are you done now?

Yunho’s reply is instantaneous. The sounds from his room have gotten quieter until there’s absolutely no more noise that San can make out. When he glances at the Discord server, everyone has gone offline—all, except for two.

[Hotteok] wow…

[Hotteok] r u stalking me?

San hurries with his message.

[Pudding] I saw everyone go offline

[Hotteok] sure

[Hotteok] wanna tell me what that was about?

[Pudding] What about it?

[Pudding] Did you win your game?

[Hotteok] dont play dumb with me

[Hotteok] i know u did that on purpose

[Hotteok] what was the intention?

[Pudding] I like teasing you too

[Pudding] You do it all the time to me

[Hotteok] no

[Hotteok] say what u actually wanna say

[Hotteok] u like when i get a little mean

San’s heart stutters when he reads the message, his hand going down to cup over the tent in his shorts. He’s hard, and the tip of his cock where his boxers hug it protectively is wet with precum. He hates that he has to let go to reply back properly, but he does it anyway.

[Pudding] It’s hot…

[Hotteok] u know, deep down i knew u were a dirty little freak

[Hotteok] u act like ur so innocent but u just wanna get fucked real good, dont u

[Hotteok] its a dangerous game ur playing pudding

[Pudding] Not true…! You already know I don’t have the experience for it

[Hotteok] does it matter?

[Hotteok] u still want it, right?

[Pudding] No, I don’t just want that

There’s a pause as San considers sending what he has typed out. With a huff, he hits send.

[Pudding] I want you

Then, there’s another period of waiting as Yunho figures out what to say to that.

[Hotteok] call me?

San already has his headphones on, bluetooth connected because he knew they’d end up on a call anyway, the way their conversation is headed. He hoped for it. Actually, more than anything, he was working towards it. It was going to happen either way, if Yunho didn’t ask, he would’ve eventually.

He checks to make sure he’s muted before letting out a breath he’s been holding.

“You drive me fucking crazy,” is the first thing Yunho spits out, right into San’s ears. He has him turned up all the way, just the way San likes it. It sounds like Yunho is in his head.

“Just ‘cause you asked earlier, we did win the game. I would’ve been pretty pissed if we lost. It would’ve been ‘cause of you,” he continues, voice raspy like he’s restraining himself.

San kicks his shorts and his underwear off before typing out a reply.

[Pudding] I was rooting for you ^^

“Yeah, right,” Yunho answers. San can almost hear him rolling his eyes from the sarcasm. “I bet you everything you wanted me to forfeit my game.”

[Pudding] Honestly, I’m surprised you can play when you’re drunk!

“Who says I’m drunk?” Then comes a stretch of silence that hangs so heavily, San can feel the weight of it over his lungs. “Wait, how did you know I drank?”

[Pudding] Oh I just assumed

[Pudding] Because you said you were out

[Pudding] You didn’t?

It’s a pretty good save, right? San slaps a hand over his mouth, almost dreading the next words to leave Yunho’s lips. A dry laugh sends a shiver down San’s spine. “You’re not actually stalking me, are you?”

[Pudding] Of course not

[Pudding] That’s ridiculous

“I’m not sure I believe you. If you’re somewhere here, you’re allowed to come out now, you know?” San is not sure what to say to that, but he doesn’t need to, because it seems like Yunho isn’t done voicing his thoughts. “Or, what? Are you scared? Of what I might do to you?”

San shudders suddenly, his hand fully gripping the base of his cock now. He strokes it once, knees bending to plant his feet on the bed. He bucks upward, a moan falling from his lips at the friction.

“Don’t you wanna know? Answer me,” Yunho demands.

[Pudding] Yes

“I wanna put you on your knees—” San muffles a whimper into his wrist, “and watch you suck my dick from the floor. Since you never wanna turn your mic on, you must have another use for that mouth, right?”

San’s eyes roll to the back of his head, his phone lowered to his chest now as he strokes himself quickly.

“You know, watching that video, it’s pretty obvious you’ve never sucked dick before. It’s really cute watching you try, though,” Yunho comments.

San’s hand suddenly stills over his own cock. He sits up straight, undeniably offended as an embarrassed flush spreads across his chest.

[Pudding] What???

[Pudding] It looked good to me

[Pudding] I worked really hard to get it right

Yunho chuckles, the sound sending a wave of humiliation through San’s body. “Baby, you’re hardly sucking it. You’re not even gagging.”

San’s eyebrows scrunch in confusion. Why the hell would he want to gag?

“Don’t worry, you can still give someone a pretty good blowjob even if you’re new to it,” Yunho muses with a hum. “You just have to sit there with your mouth open.”

“What?” San whispers to himself, puzzled.

“Just let me do all the work,” Yunho continues easily. “Think about it. All you have to do is sit still. You can do that, can’t you? Sit there and look pretty for me?”

San’s stomach twists with heat and arousal, the feeling so all-encompassing he has to lay himself back down onto his bed. His hand is back around his cock, stroking himself to the image of Yunho before him, legs spread and cock hard.

He can almost feel the imaginary fingers in his hair, the ghosting touch of Yunho’s dick on his lips as he guides it into his mouth with ease. Would Yunho be gentle with him because he’s never done it before? Would he care?

“Yeah, you’d like it if I fucked your mouth, wouldn’t you?”

San’s moan is shaky, his hips bucking up into his fist. It feels good, but it’s not enough. His hole clenches down, tight and unprepped, and he thinks about Yunho’s long fingers stretching him open.

Actually, even that isn’t enough. He wonders how he’d feel split open on Yunho’s cock. It’s so big, would it even feel good?

Somewhere in the back of his mind, San remembers the dildo he had stored away. It takes all the energy in him to stop everything he’s doing to get up and dig it out of the satin carrier it came with.

When he’s this turned on, this purple thing is not as daunting as he last remembers. Without any reservations, he shoves it into his mouth, and he presses it deep—so deep it hits the back of his throat and he sputters.

“You seem like the messy type, Pudding-chan. You’d get spit and drool all over your chin, but I bet you’d like that, huh? Wanna get all dirty and nasty for me?”

Saliva gathers in his mouth as San thrusts the toy slowly in and out past his lips. The velvety texture of the toy glides smoothly along his tongue with how wet the inside of his mouth has gotten. It feels so much better than before. Yunho’s right—San does like it messy.

The toy gathers spit on his lips and pools at the back of his throat, but San doesn’t want to stop. He imagines Yunho’s cock gliding across his tongue instead, pushing in, pulling out, shoving him down, lifting him up.

“Gonna fuck yourself on your fingers for me, kitty?” Yunho suddenly says, and almost as if driven by instinct, San pulls the toy out of his mouth, a string of spit snapping to his lips when he tosses it somewhere next to him on the bed.

San slicks a finger up quickly before reaching down past his cock to circle his rim gently. He’s gotten used to it by now—the amount of times they’ve done this, can San still say he’s as inexperienced as he used to be?

The feeling is familiar when he prods lightly at the muscle, fingertip dragging at his fluttering hole. He’s so focused on the sound of Yunho’s heavy breathing in his ear, he doesn’t even know where his phone slipped off to. It’s probably pinched somewhere underneath his lats, or maybe it fell off the bed.

Does it matter? San sinks his finger in and moans wantonly, lashes fluttering against his cheeks.

It’s unfortunate, the circumstances leading up to this moment. From when San developed this silly crush to him asking Wooyoung for advice on how to play Valorant, from the first real dinner he shared with Yunho to the amount of shots he’d taken tonight, they all must lead to something.

San doesn’t get to think about it, he doesn’t even get to decide.

All it takes is an accident—the brush of skin against the screen of his phone; his finger taps on it while trying to wrestle it out from underneath him. It’s blunt and annoying, and it was digging into San’s back. When he tosses it to the side, he replaces that relief with its own set of consequences.

It should have been a sign when Yunho suddenly goes silent in his ear, or maybe San is just a little too engrossed in the feeling of the stretch around his finger, he’s developed tunnel vision.

“Hah—ah,” he moans out breathlessly, toes curling when his fingertip brushes against his prostate, then slips off. He’s desperate, his mind playing the most vivid images of Yunho kneeling on the bed between his legs. If this was his finger, he’d find it so easily, right? San wouldn’t have to struggle like this.

“Please,” San whispers, attempting to find that spot again, “please, please, Yunho—hah…!”

A thud, and San only barely hears it, but the unmistakable sound of Yunho’s footsteps is hard to miss, and it raises every alarm in San’s body. His nerves are hot like a live wire, igniting with fear and anxiety when Yunho’s bedroom door swings open with so much force it bangs against the wall.

San has mere seconds, and he spends all of it pulling his hoodie down, ripping his headphones off his head with a heartbeat so loud in his ears he can hardly hear his own panicked breathing, and shoving the stupid purple toy under his pillow. Perhaps he should’ve looked for his phone first—his phone, stupid fucking thing—whips across the room when he flicks his blanket to shield his body, and it lands on the other side of the room, right by the door.

San doesn’t even get the chance to retrieve it, because his bedroom door flies open so hard, he startles with a yelp. He’s afraid to look, but he’s also afraid to look away.

Yunho has him locked in a stare, headset pulled down to his neck, his eyes dark and eyebrows anchored—almost as though he’s mad. San sits frozen where he is, hands clutching tightly to his comforter. Yunho is the first to break eye contact, his gaze lowering to the floor where the phone rests.

San’s line of sight travels with him, his words stuck in his throat, and he watches as Yunho drops to a squat, taking his time to pick the device up from the floor. He rests his arm on his knees, flipping it over to look at the screen for a few seconds before dangling it in the air.

San has no words, and neither does Yunho, but their gazes hold a conversation of their own. Slowly, Yunho gets back up, tugging his headset off to place on San’s table, and makes his way over to where San holds out a trembling hand to stop him.

Finally, he manages, “Wait, I—I can explain—”

“Explain what?” Yunho interrupts sharply while tossing San’s phone onto the bed. They both look down at it, where an active call on Discord stares back at them. San scrambles for the phone with shaky fingers and taps his thumb in quick successions to end the call.

Slowly, with his phone tight to his sternum, he lifts his gaze to meet Yunho’s dark irises. “How… how did you know?”

Yunho blinks twice, like he can’t believe San just asked him that, and then he echoes back in a tone that borderlines mocking, “How did I know? You know this,” he pauses, his hand shooting out, and suddenly San is tugged to the side by the hood of his pullover, “is mine, right?”

The bed dips when Yunho sinks a knee into the mattress, his hand still fisted into San’s hood. The expression on Yunho’s face is one San has never seen on him before—it’s dark and disturbed, tense like he’s not ready to listen to what San has to say, restless like he’s restraining himself.

San’s heart beats loud in his chest, his breaths coming out fast and harsh when Yunho leans in for a dangerous utter, “What are you doing? Take it off.”

San despairs in silence when he realizes he’s fucking hard under the covers from this type of treatment. He doesn’t want Yunho to know. He never wanted Yunho to find out like this. He was supposed to learn the game and get better at it, then ask Yunho to play sometimes, and then they were supposed to get closer and closer until San could finally muster up the courage to tell him—

“Did you think I was asking?” Yunho interrupts his spiralling thoughts. “Do you even know what you send half the time? ‘How do I know?’”

San is shoved on his shoulder, his back hitting the bed to bounce on the mattress, and everything happens so quickly, he doesn’t even have the time to register it. Yunho’s hands are back on his hoodie, tugging it up so far it draws a shocked yelp from San’s lips.

A cold touch lands on San’s right collarbone. “You have two moles right here,” Yunho states, his fingers tracing the length of his collarbone back and forth. San tucks his chin to his neck, but he can’t see anything. The hold Yunho has on the front of the hoodie keeps him pinned to the bed with nowhere to go. “You didn’t know that? No, you knew, and you still sent me all those pictures and videos of yourself.”

“No,” San denies adamantly, “I—I didn’t do it on pur—”

“And my hoodie?”

“That…! I didn’t even know it was yours!” San argues, trying to wrestle Yunho’s grip off the bunched fabric. In two seconds, he finds his wrists pinned to the pillow above his hand. “I found it in my closet!”

Yunho’s head tilts a few degrees to the side, like he’s considering something. San holds his breath as he waits, but then Yunho is pressing him deeper into his bed, fully crowding into San’s space now that his bed dips with the weight of the both of them. “I don’t believe you,” and he says it with so much finality, San doesn’t even think anything else he can say will change his mind.

“Y-Yunho,” San gasps out, his abdominal muscles clenching when Yunho’s hand on his collarbone wanders lower to splay a hand out over his pectoral muscle. His thumb ghosts gently over one pebbled nipple, the touch teasing, barely there, before it disappears again.

“You know, I’m actually a little shocked,” he says while staring down at the length of San’s exposed body. His gaze flicks back up to look San in the eyes. “You say you’re virgin—I know you’re a virgin—but the way you act is something only whores do.”

A noise spills from San’s throat, the sound guttural and embarrassingly loud considering all he’s responding to are Yunho’s words. Their positions are extremely compromising, and San hasn’t even been given the chance to fully understand everything that’s happening.

The way Yunho looks down at him, the long fingers of one hand clamped tights around his wrists, how his skin buzzes with heat where it’s exposed—San wants this, but now that he has it, he doesn’t know how to react without having processed it all yet.

He doesn’t even know why Yunho’s words turn him so on much but they do, and he’s afraid of being found out for it.

“Why don’t you fight back?” Blunt nails rake over San’s torso, and he arches away from the ticklish touch, body squirming but never pushing back. “All the work you put in for these muscles, all those hours you spend at the gym—for what? Don’t tell me you actually want this.”

San glares up at Yunho, and the laugh that leaves the other man’s lips is so demeaning, it goes straight to the heat in San’s stomach—because he’s right. If he really wants to, he can probably shove Yunho off him.

But he doesn’t want to.

And Yunho knows that.

The other man leans in close, so close San tucks his head back to keep their noses from bumping.

“I’m sorry, but I think I know you too well, Pudding-chan,” Yunho whispers while staring down at him with lidded eyes. San withers completely under that heated gaze. “Tell me to stop, and I will. But if you don’t say anything, I’m not going to stop until I’m done with you.”

San’s lips remain firmly shut, and Yunho is not a patient man either, so he waits a full two seconds before finally closing that tiny distance between them. The way Yunho kisses is filthy, slow but not in a way that’s sweet. San can feel it in the way his lips move like he’s trying coax him into opening up fully, every swipe of his tongue deliberate as though he’s tasting him.

San parts his lips embarrassingly quickly, and he’s not ready for the touch of Yunho’s palm at his neck nor the teeth that sink into his lower lip to bite. His first kiss, and he’s giving it to someone who tastes so much like everything that is sinful. His chest ignites with heat, and he knows he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Yunho licks into his mouth like he’s trying to claim him, and San becomes putty under the touch that has grown warm at his neck and the grip around his wrists despite the fact that it has slackened a hint . He feels so small under him, and that’s not something he thought he’d ever feel considering his own size—and he likes it.

San’s mouth moves clumsily at first, but Yunho kisses him with so much expertise, or maybe it’s because he has such a presence in their kiss, he can’t help but let himself be guided with every grounding nip of teeth and every rhythmic brush of Yunho’s thumb against his jaw.

He sighs into it, his head swimming with pleasant thoughts, all of them about the man above him. He’s dazed when Yunho pulls away, his eyes blinking open in confusion to stare up at him. Yunho is looking down at him like he wants to devour him, and it sends a zap of electricity through San’s mind, waking him up.
“You kiss so sweet,” Yunho says with that wicked grin on his face. It takes a while for San to realize Yunho’s not even holding onto him anymore, but his hands rest in the exact position they’ve been left in, crossed above his head. When Yunho’s hand grabs the comforter to pull them away, San finally reacts, hands darting forward to tug at them.

“Wait,” he gasps out. “I—I’m not wearing anything.”

But Yunho isn’t impressed. He pulls, but San pulls harder. “Did you think I was going to touch you through your clothes or something? Let go.”

“I—I can’t, I’m…”

San’s muscles bulge with how tight he wrestles Yunho for the blanket.

Yunho’s lips pull downward. “I know you said you like teasing, but I really do recommend trying to be good for your first time. It’s gonna be a lot harder for you if you act like a bitch.”

San’s grip loosens just a little bit, and Yunho notices. He leans forward and takes San’s hands into his carefully. San lets him gently pry each finger off the blanket. “What are you so shy for now? You weren’t like this earlier when you were sending me all those filthy messages, were you?”

“It’s different,” San spits out, ultimately letting go.

“Is it?” Yunho asks, pulling the comforter off San completely and whipping it somewhere behind him. He finds home between his legs, crowds into his space, and doesn’t say anything when San tugs the hoodie so far down it shields his aching cock away from curious eyes. “Your goal was to get me hard, wasn’t it?”

Yunho rolls his hips down on him, and San shudders when he feels it. He guesses it was a success. With an experimental hand, San reaches out to touch tentatively at the tent in Yunho’s sweatpants, squeezing it so lightly it should have been nothing, but Yunho’s groan tells him he’s just as sensitive as San is.

It’s different when it’s someone else in his own hands. It’s different when it’s Yunho he’s feeling up. He lets go of his hoodie and instead bucks his hips up, too shy to actually say what he wants.

Yunho seems to read him well because he asks, “What were you about to do before I came in here?”

San bites back a whimper when Yunho grinds his hips down into his, the friction a delicious drag against his erection.

“C’mon, tell me. You never said anything for months, can’t you say something for me now that I’m right in front of you?” Yunho encourages, his tone dripping with rotten honey—sweet and sinful at the same time. “Or, what? Do you really want me to find another use for your mouth?”

A gasp fights its way out of his throat when Yunho reaches out a hand to brush his finger against San’s nipple. He squirms under the touch, embarrassment evident in the flush high on his cheeks.

Yunho’s lips form a frown. “Say something.”

“W-what do you want me to say?” San blurts, then tosses his head back when a particularly harsh thrust has pleasure shooting to his head.

Yunho hums like he’s distracted for a second. When San turns to look, the two of them catch the hint of purple peeking out from underneath the pillow next to San’s head. Yunho reaches for it before San can even process it, then holds it between his thumb and two fingers as he dangles it above San’s face.

“What were you doing with this?” he asks before dropping it onto San’s chest. It’s cold, and it draws a hiss from the man underneath him. “Or did you give up on it and use your fingers instead? It’s a pretty big upgrade.”

“You’re a pretty big upgrade,” San bites back with a glare.

The corners of Yunho’s lips quirk upward like he finds the situation amusing. “Is that what came in the package today? The one you were trying so hard to hide?”

San’s lips tremble while looking for words. He has to avoid direct eye contact, choosing to stare at the obvious bulge in Yunho’s sweatpants instead as he grumbles out, “I was using my fingers.”

“Yeah?” Suddenly, San finds a pressure at his inner thighs as his legs part easily, hamstring muscles stretching when Yunho presses a large palm on the underside of his thigh. Like this, San is fully exposed, and he’s so underprepared for it, it pulls a nervous hiccup from him.

Fuck it, he thinks, tossing his head back into the pillow and giving in.

“Here?” A touch at his hole causes him to jolt, a yelp of surprise sounding from his chest.

“Stop teasing me,” San cries, his legs instinctively closing, but Yunho keeps them parted with a kind of strength San didn’t even know he possessed.

Yunho laughs into his thigh, his breath warm and ticklish. “I can’t. You look tight. Do you have lube?”

“No…”

“Seriously?” he gawks, his demeanour shifting slightly. “You just… use your spit?”

San’s sigh is one of frustration and exasperation. “Can you stop talking so much? Do something.”

“Ah, but don’t you like it when I talk? I’ve been talking to you this entire time,” Yunho says while lifting San’s hoodie off his cock. He gives a tentative touch to the underside of it and watches as San’s legs flinch but remain steady where they’re parted otherwise. “Your cock is so cute.”

“Shut up—ohhh my god,” San’s words choke off into a moan when Yunho’s hand wraps around his length, stroking it gently. He’s so hard it’s not even funny anymore, and with the way Yunho is touching him, he’s worried he won’t even last long. It’s a fucking dream, the way San has imagined it a million times now how his cock would look in Yunho’s large hands. Now, he gets to actually witness it.

A hot breath fans across his length, and San’s eyebrows twitch in surprise. “You—you don’t have to—”

“Let me show you what a blowjob looks like,” is all Yunho tells him before pressing a kiss to the head of his dick, then sinking down all the way to the base.

San cries out, a sound mixed somewhere between surprise and pleasure, as heat engulfs him completely. Yunho is so good with his mouth, San can’t help but buck his hips up into it, moaning in ecstasy every time his cock brushes against the back of his throat.

Yunho’s hands keep him steady in place at his adductors, stretched to the max under the pressure, while dipping his head down, then back up to circle his tongue around the head of his cock. Eventually, a hand lifts off to close around the base, stroking wetly and slowly.

When San looks down, he nearly cums at the look Yunho gives him, cheeks flushed and lashes glistening, eyes dark but that gaze darker. He looks so fucking good, San can’t control it when his breaths quicken, coming out in harsh pants as he finds himself unable to look away. It’s incredible.

“I’m gonna cum, I think,” he manages to whimper out, teeth sinking into his lips when Yunho’s eyebrows twitch upward like he fully expects him to say it, and with a twist of his hand and hard suck down his length, San is coming into Yunho’s mouth with a choked cry falling from parted lips and his head thrown so hard into the pillow, his headboard knocks into the wall.

Yunho takes his mouth off him with a singular stroke following after, and San is so sensitive from it, his thighs clench and shake with a moan falling from his lips. He watches Yunho sit up before leaning forward to hover himself over San.

“Your turn,” he says it so casually, San takes a moment to understand what he means, but before he can say anything, Yunho is kissing him again, all tongue and all spit, and San taste the hint of his own cum on Yunho’s lips.

It’s so hot, and San can’t even begin to explain why. When they part for air, San gasps out, “You swallowed it?”

Yunho stares at him with such intensity in his eyes, it shakes San’s core, but his lips are pulled into a grin, restrained only by the teeth that bite into his lower lip. San finds it so fucking hot when he smiles like that, like he’s teasing him. “Why not? I expect you to, too.”

Then, San is being yanked up by his elbows and into a seated position, the band of his hoodie dropping back down to his waist following gravity.

“Remember what I said to you earlier? Everything I wanna do to you?” Yunho begins to say while tugging San to the edge of the bed. San can’t fully remember with the way his head is spinning, but his knees sink to the floor like his body knows anyway, like he was made for it. “I didn’t even get to finish before you unmuted and—what did you say, ‘Yunho-yah, ah, ah—’”

“Stop,” San hisses, humiliation a pretty red across his face. Here, he sits on the back of his heels, his back to the mirror on the wall as Yunho’s long legs cage him in on his sides.

Yunho tilts his head. “What do you think? Wanna sit there and look pretty for me?”

San’s throat bobs when he swallows around his spit, unsure of where to put his eyes, but then Yunho is standing up and hooking two thumbs into his waistband. San is given something to look at, and god, does he look. Yunho’s cocks springs free slowly, slapping him against his black shirt, and San cannot take his eyes off of it.

It’s big, so much bigger than he thought it’d be—really, he thought it was just the camera angle, but it isn’t, and San has no idea how he’s supposed to take something like that into his mouth. His dildo pales in comparison. Every dick he’s seen pales in comparison.

San lets out a breath he doesn’t realize he’s been holding as Yunho steps out of his clothes and takes back his seat on the bed. With it right in front of his face now, he doesn’t know what to do, but it seems like Yunho knows, since he takes his cock into his own hands, thumb pushing down on it to guide it forward.

It’s so natural, the way San’s mouth falls open to let Yunho tap his tip against the flat part of his tongue. The sound is sharp and quick and filthy, and San cannot look away. The head is blunt, the pinkish colour pretty, and he wonders how long Yunho has been hard for. Since they rang each other on Discord? Or even earlier than that, when San sent all those things to him during his game?

Yunho rocks his hips forward slightly, hissing a little as the underside of his cock drags along San’s tongue, the tip of it tapping against his upper lip. “Wider,” he orders, and San stretches his mouth a little more before a pressure at the back of his head pushes him down onto it.

Yunho’s cock is heavy in his mouth, and San’s jaw is already starting to ache with how wide he has to keep his mouth open, but it’s so rewarding in a way that a dildo can never offer. His toy is cold and lifeless, hard not in the same way Yunho’s cock is hard, and it has no smell, makes no noises, and doesn’t fill San’s mouth to the brim the way this does.

San keeps himself very still as Yunho has one hand placed on his head, the other resting on San’s cheek. He rolls his hips shallowly, and San instinctively closes his lips down on his cock, his tongue squirming under the weight of it. The groan it draws from Yunho’s lips is encouraging, so San urges himself forward on him.

Yunho lets go of him immediately to watch him, but San chokes the moment his hip brushes against the back of his throat, unprepared for it.

“It’s okay,” Yunho whispers through his restrained breathing while running his fingers through the hair at the crown of San’s head. The touch is soothing and reassuring. “You can do it, kitten.”

San’s eyes water when he pulls off just enough to circle his tongue around the head before inching himself down on Yunho’s length again. He gags again when it taps against the back of his throat, but he refuses to pull off him, holding him there despite how filthy the noises he makes are.

“Oh, fuck,” Yunho curses, and when San dares a glance up, he finds the other man with his head tossed back in pleasure. The angle is so hot, San thinks he’s fucking hard again. His gaze drops back to Yunho’s abdomen where it tenses up and relaxes, the motion repeating itself a few times as San keeps his cock buried in his mouth.

It’s not even in all the way, but San is a little afraid of pushing further. For now he keeps it on his throat to try to get used to the feeling, but it’s already beginning to draw wetness to his eyes. He pulls off completely when he thinks he’s going to gag again, a heavy drop of saliva hanging off Yunho’s cock as he breathes harshly through his mouth.

Yunho takes his cock into his own hand and strokes it twice, gathering the spit before pushing San back onto his cock, this time much deeper than San has ever gone on his own. He sputters, choking around the intrusion, and places both palms on Yunho’s inner thighs, pushing, but not hard—not enough to really want it.

“Relax, baby,” Yunho gasps out like the pleasure is almost too much for him. He rolls his hips once and San makes a gagging noise around his dick, sucking air in around the sides because he can’t breathe properly, but saliva escapes from the corners of his mouth in the process, dripping down his chin and onto his neck to soak the hoodie. It’s frothy and disgusting, but San can’t think too much of it when all he can think about is how fucking big Yunho is in his mouth.

“Fuck, your mouth,” Yunho moans, alleviating the pressure on San’s head for a second before pushing him back down. “You feel so good. Look so fuckin’ good like this.”

Tears spill from the corners of San’s eyes, hot and wet but not unwanted. His nose stings as his eyes scrunch, jaw aching and throat tender. He wants to be good so bad. This is good, isn’t it?

Yunho rocks him gently, pushing down on his head before releasing him, then pushing again, again, and again, almost as though he’s using San’s mouth for his own pleasure. He wonders how he looks right now—he wonders how Yunho looks. When he forces his eyes open, going nearly cross-eyed from trying so hard to not choke around his cock, his gaze meets with Yunho’s. He must look sinful, because Yunho’s eyebrows scrunch so hard, he almost looks obsessed.

“Fuck,” he spits, yanking San’s mouth off him with hands gripping into his hair. The sting it leaves behind is a dull ache, but San doesn’t mind. In fact, it feels so good when Yunho’s hands are on his scalp, tugging, pushing, whatever the fuck he wants to do with it.

Yunho gets up onto his feet and pulls again at San’s hair, lifting him onto his knees properly before sliding his cock past San’s lips without warning. “You can’t look at me like that,” he gasps out, shoving his cock deep into San’s throat, uncaring for how San chokes around him.

The words ring repeatedly in San’s ears, but instead of taking it to heart, he looks up at Yunho again, eyes watery despite the tears that have already been spilled. With his cheeks flushed red, lips and chin glistening with spit, and Yunho’s cock so far down down his throat, he must look debauched.

He chokes and gags but never pulls away, even when his stomach twists with nausea and spit drips down his chin in frothy bubbles, he wants to be so good for him.

Intelligible curses fall from Yunho’s mouth as he stares down at San while fucking his hips forward, the wet click at the back of San’s throat like music in the early morning silence of their apartment. It’s wet, it’s filthy, it’s everything San wants and only because it’s Yunho.

San makes a guttural noise at a particularly hard thrust, the sound choked off as he’s gagged around his dick. Yunho’s pace picks up to something close to punishing, and all San can do is take it as he kneels there with two hands bracing himself on his hips. The hands in his hair pull tight, and Yunho looks down on him like he wants to absolutely ruin San, like the wet glisten in his eyes is not enough, like he needs more from him—wants to see him broken.

“You look so good like this,” Yunho’s words are uttered through a moan as he fucks into San’s mouth unforgivingly. “Fuck, you look so pretty when you cry. What do you think, huh? Like having a real cock in your mouth? It’s different, right? Hah, fuck, just like that, baby. Keep lookin’ at me like that.”

It’s almost as though Yunho’s own words urge him on. “Fuck, it feels so good when you choke on it. That’s how you fuckin’ suck dick, kitten. Gonna cum down your throat. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

It isn’t like San can answer him anyway. His nails rake against the skin on Yunho’s hips as he chokes, and it really is getting to be too much as he pushes hard, but Yunho pulls harder, unwilling to let him escape. Yunho’s moan is downright sinful as he holds San there with two large palms digging into his head. Something warm and wet catches at the back of San’s throat, and he isn’t given even a second to register that Yunho is coming because the tug at his hair pulls him off his cock completely.

Cum splatters across his tongue in the process, then his lips and his nose as Yunho jerks the rest of it off on his face. He winces when it catches his forehead, the runny substance dripping to his lashes. It’s so filthy, the way Yunho manhandles him around to do whatever he wants with him, like say he’s going to cum in his mouth only to paint most of it on San’s face, or when he pulls San up from his position onto shaky legs and cramped quads only to push him back onto the bed.

Yunho moves so fucking fast, he doesn’t even get to really process what’s happening until a weight pushes down on his back, a large hand splayed over his spine as it drags down to the curve of his ass slowly. The cum on his face wipes off against the sheets before San lifts his head to catch a breath. The taste is salty and bitter at the back of his throat as he swallows what’s in his mouth to say, “What are you doing?”

The palm stills, so San turns to glance past his shoulder, only to find Yunho tilting his head back with a confusion that matches his own. “Did you think we were done?”

A breath catches at the back of San’s throat. “Yunho, it’s… it’s so late.”

“So? You sent that shit to me at 4AM, you didn’t think that was late?”

San hears it before he feels it, a resounding smack slicing through his room as a sting on his ass settles in slowly. He gasps, thigh muscles clenching from the impact as embarrassment floods his veins.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to do that,” Yunho muses with a hum.

San swallows the lump in his throat. “Do what? Hit me?”

“Spank your ass,” Yunho corrects, massaging into the spot with slender fingers. “Such a shame it took me this long. You have such a nice ass. Fuck, your whole body is just…”

This time, it’s the praise that gets to San’s head. He never knew Yunho had these thoughts about him. He knows his body looks good, but not in the way that entices Yunho. Everyone loves a muscular body sometimes, but Yunho’s appreciation feels like more than that.

Yunho takes one ass cheek into his hand and spreads it, massaging it to watch San’s hole pull with the stretch. “Fuck, it’s so pretty,” he says it like he’s talking to himself, then spits right down onto his hole. San gasps at the feeling, his hole winking back at Yunho who presses his thumb against the wetness to smudge it. But then a second later, Yunho’s presence shifts.

“I need to get lube,” he tells him, patting his butt on his way off the bed.

San turns, pushing himself onto his side. “Do we really need to?”

Yunho pauses, turning to face him with a cocked brow. “Yes?”

“But—it’s not like I needed it when I—when—”

“Trust me, it’ll be a lot better with lube,” is all Yunho gives him before rounding the corner and exiting his room. He’s back in seconds, though, with a clear, tube-shaped bottle in his hand. The bed dips with his weight when he sinks a knee into it, and San observes him quietly as he pops the cap on it and squeezes so much onto his fingers, it makes San sit up properly.

Yunho glances up. “Why? You wanna watch?”

“No, I—”

Yunho grabs San’s ankle and fixes it around his hips, then he pushes San onto his back. “Watch, then.”

San’s breath stutters when Yunho pushes a leg up and grazes a cold, wet finger to his hole. He clenches out of reflex, unfamiliar with something that’s not his own fingers touching him there. He remembers the sensation, calls the memory back to him, and tries to relax.

It’s almost like Yunho knows, waiting patiently as San slowly eases up before circling his rim gently. Then, he pushes against it, testing its resistance, before slipping the digit inside. Instead of watching his hand, San focuses on Yunho’s expression instead. The way his bangs fall across his forehead, the scrunch of his eyebrows when he’s concentrated on something, and the deep hollow of his collarbones as he works his finger deeper into San.

He’s so hot, San knows this—has known for so long—but he still can’t believe he’s here between his legs wearing that long-sleeved black shirt he’s been obsessed with. The cut on his neck is so low, the first two buttons are never done up, and the display of his forearm muscles from the sleeves pulled up is seriously the sluttiest look a man can have on him.

It’s so devastating, San thinks it might be easier if he were naked.

“Oh,” San gasps out, his body jolting when Yunho brushes against his prostate. He finally peels his eyes off Yunho, head tossing back. “Ah, feels good.”

Yunho says nothing. When San looks forward, Yunho is observing him with eyes so intense it should scare him but it turns him on instead, his cock dribbling precum onto his hoodie—Yunho’s hoodie. He gets it now. Maybe it’s not the same kind of appeal as earlier, from when San was on his knees with Yunho’s cock down his throat, but he gets it. That look—seriously, if he keeps looking at San like this, he thinks he might come from having just one finger in him.

He thrusts it a few times, massaging into his prostate insistently, like he can’t stop now that he knows where San feels best, and San is so lost to the pleasure, he hardly registers the second finger prodding against his hole. It isn’t until the stretch does San tighten up slightly. He forces his muscles to relax when he realizes, but the third finger is much bigger stretch than what he’s used.

His thighs quiver, eyes tearing up as an unfamiliar sensation builds in his chest. It’s a pressure that can’t be released, one he doesn’t know how to alleviate, but when he cries out, he sounds more pathetic than he thought it’d sound, “Kiss me.”

Yunho wastes little time, leaning forward to catch San’s mouth into a bruising kiss. His fingers between them move slowly but consistently, drawing sweet, little noises from him that Yunho swallows up right away. The swipe of his tongue is soothing but with enough pressure that it’s grounding. San sucks Yunho’s lip into his mouth, biting down gently on the soft flesh as he drinks in his taste.

“Feel good?” Yunho asks against his lips.

San nods, his arms looped loosely around the back of Yunho’s neck.

“Want more?”

“Yes,” San exhales into his mouth.

“Fuck, you feel so good around my fingers,” Yunho mumbles into the corner of his mouth.

“You feel good,” San moans, his eyes rolling to the back of his head when Yunho thrusts his digits deep into him. “Your fingers…”

“Yeah? You like them?” He can hear the smirk in his words. “I’ve been told I’m good with my hands.”

The imagery that flashes behind San’s eyes is vivid and torturous. The thought of Yunho’s fingers, long and slender, reaching places San can never reach himself, no one else can reach, makes his toes curl and his mouth run dry. He’s thought about those hands way too many times for it to be considered healthy, and they’re inside him.

Yunho isn’t even done. When the fourth finger comes, San’s heart lurches to his throat, but when he thinks about how big Yunho’s dick is, he keeps himself silent, breaths quick in an attempt to calm himself down. It feels so good, he knows he wants it. Maybe he’s just a little impatient.

Fuck, he wants it so bad.

He rocks his hips down on Yunho’s fingers, no longer minding the sting from the stretch. “Please,” he whispers, holding Yunho close to him. “Please, please.”

“What is it?” Yunho asks with too much sweetness in his voice. His head tilts, watching San closely like he wants to see every twitch of muscle on his face, every flutter of his lashes, and every shape his lips make when he moans.

“I’m ready,” San insists hastily, “please.”

“I like it when you beg,” Yunho answers, completely unfiltered. “I knew you’d sound good like this.”

“Please, Yunho, I’m not joking,” San whines, rolling his hips down hard on his fingers.

“I’m not, either.”

With an incredulous look on his face, San chokes out, “I’m begging for it now, aren’t I?”

“What do you want? You want to come?” Yunho asks, then crooks his fingers upward to thrust them hard into San’s prostate.

He can’t help it when he clenches down around all four of Yunho’s fingers, sparks going off behind his eyes. “Yes.”

“Then why don’t you? I’m not stopping you,” Yunho encourages, and then his fingers are picking up speed, relentless as they fuck into San. The headboard shakes from the force, hitting the wall repeatedly, and that alone should scare San how rough he likes it, but it doesn’t. He hates how good Yunho is with his hands, he hates that Yunho’s words can get him off so easily, he hates hearing his voice at this octave like he wants to tease him until he’s crying for it.

San shakes his head, gasping around a moan. “No, no! Not—not like this.” The thrusting slows down and San is so sad about missing it, he lets a sob rip from his throat.

“Then, what?”

“Please,” San cries, so humiliated the first tear slips from his eye. “Why are you making me say it?”

“You were so good at it before,” Yunho tells him, slipping his fingers out all the way before pressing them back inside in one steady stroke. “You can say it again, can’t you?”

San sniffles, the sound ugly to his own ears, before pressing the heels of his palms into his wet eyes. “I don’t want to come on your fingers.”

Yunho really does pull his fingers out of him this time, but he closes them around San’s leaking cock instead. “I didn’t ask what you don’t want,” he grits out, stroking him once, then twice to raise an arch into San’s back.

San’s hand flies down to grip at Yunho’s wrist, holding him still. His hole clenches down around nothing, a terrible feeling, truly, as they wait in silence, their breaths the only thing audible between them. Yunho looks at him like he’s expecting something from him, but San has to focus his attention on the silver chain dangling from Yunho’s neck to actually get his words out properly.

“I… I want…” he turns his head, closing his eyes, but Yunho pulls him right back with a kiss to his ear, and then to his cheek, before finally finding the corner of his mouth, where he entices San into a kiss.

“You want?”

“I want you to fuck me,” San blurts the moment their lips disconnect. The shock of his own words is quickly overcome with something else when Yunho finally grins down at him like he’s proud of him.

“Good job,” he praises sweetly, then pushes himself off. “I have to leave you again.”

“Why?” San exclaims, annoyed.

“I forgot to get a condom,” Yunho answers while sitting back up on his heels.

San’s face twists into one of disapproval, a pout resting on his lips. “Don’t go,” he whines. “Just do it without it, can’t you?”

Yunho stares at him with an expression that’s hard to read—maybe something between shock and arousal—but those eyes are so terrifyingly dark, not even light can penetrate through. San is so fucking hard, he doesn’t give a fuck about whether Yunho puts on a condom or not. Fuck, honestly, he thinks about Yunho filling him up with his cum so much, he can’t believe he’s unafraid to tell it to his face he doesn’t want him to use one.

In a split second, San finds himself pressed hard into the bed, fingers around his cheeks as Yunho leans his forehead into his with a heated, dangerous flint reflecting off his irises. This close, he can see how Yunho’s pupils are blown wide with obsession. “You can’t fucking say that to me,” he grits out.

San makes a muffled noise against the web of his hand, but Yunho shakes his head gently, shutting him up. San sinks his teeth down into it thinking he’ll let go, but he doesn’t, resistant to the pain.

“You have no idea what you just asked for,” Yunho continues, his voice bordering irritation. “You don’t know how fucking crazy you make me.”

When he finally lets go, San takes the first breath to gasp out, “Cum inside me. I don’t want you to use a condom. Please.”

“Fuck,” Yunho scoffs, stripping his shirt off and tossing it somewhere to the side, “you really are just a dirty little thing. What, that’s how bad you want it? You can’t ask me to fuck you without me coaxing it out of you, but you can somehow demand me to fill you up with cum?”

San flushes at his words, his hands fisting at the fabric of his hoodie as he hides the lower half of his face in it.

“Well, I’m gonna do it,” Yunho speaks with a sort of finality that goes straight to San’s gut.

It only takes a few moments for Yunho to get his dick wet with lube and into a comfortable position between San’s legs. Then, he can feel the blunt head of his cock prodding against his stretched hole. San’s breaths are shallow as he waits, but nothing could have actually prepared him for when Yunho finally begins to push inside. He thought that he may have gotten used to the stretch by now but clearly not.

San clenches down out of reflex, all the muscles in his body going taut as Yunho pushes in deeper. It draws a hiss from the man above him, whose fingers grip bruisingly at his waist.

“Relax, you’re so fucking tight,” he manages to get out through his heavy breathing. Yunho takes his cock in the other hand and pulls out to stroke himself a couple of times before pushing back in.

San has to focus all his energy into relaxing so Yunho can get himself in far enough for it to actually feel fucking good—and god, does it feel good, and he doesn’t even think he’s all the way in yet. A moan slips from his lips when Yunho thrusts right into his prostate, dragging against his walls, filling him so deeply and more.

Yunho pulls out a little, then rolls his hips to press even further into him. It takes a few repetitions of that before he can fully bury himself in to the hilt, balls pressed right up against San—and San feels so full it’s almost an impossible feeling. He didn’t think it could feel so ecstatic, being filled up all the way like this.

There’s no way to explain it except for the fact that it feels crazy fucking good. It must be from knowing they’re connected like this, that it’s the roommate he’s been crushing on for so long, flirting with, sexting with, that’s raising this sort of euphoria. It’s the built up tension from the past few months that got them here, and now that they’re finally fucking, it feels fucking phenomenal.

The pace is slow, like Yunho is really taking his time fucking San, like he can’t get over how good San looks under him, legs spread, muscles flexed, head tossed into the pillows as his eyes roll to the back of his head. A large hand catches the fabric of San’s hoodie, bunched at his midsection, and pulls it further up to expose the rest of his body. His chest is flushed red, nipples hard, biceps bulging when he clamps a hand down around Yunho’s wrist.

“Fuck, you look good like this,” Yunho groans, pulling back to thrust his hips back in hard. San’s back arches off the bed, a drawn-out moan falling from his lips naturally. Another hand presses down on his abs, fingers tracing the valleys of his muscles there, up and down, back and forth like he wants to leave his engravings there.

“You have no idea what you do to me. That fuckin’ shirt you wore today, it was so fucking sexy,” Yunho continues, unable to take his eyes off of the way San’s body moves and twitches. “You don’t even know how good you look when you’re drunk, baby. You were so cute. Seriously, I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted to rip that shirt off you.”

He knew it. He knew Yunho was trying to undress him back there, and the thought of it turns him on so badly, his mind goes fuzzy. San peers up at him, his expression seductive in a way it’s pliant and docile, and Yunho completely and absolutely loses it. He draws his hips back and snaps them forward, the sound of skin slapping echoing through the room. The pace is much faster now as his thrusts turn near punishing while he drives his cock quickly into San.

It knocks moan after moan out of him, little ah, ah, ah’s punched from his throat. The headboard knocks against the wall, but neither of them can give a fuck considering how lost they are in pleasure. San feels like he’s in the clouds, his brain like putty as every thought escapes him from the way he gets railed into the bed.

Yunho lifts the fabric higher and shoves it into San’s mouth, where he instinctively bites down on it to muffles his moans. “Ha-ah, you make me fucking crazy, seriously,” Yunho babbles. “Fuck, you’re seriously just… Teasing me for months like this from this very fucking room. Do you enjoy it? Testing me? This what you wanted?”

San can’t even form proper thoughts, so dizzy from how filthy Yunho’s words sound falling from his lips.

“Fuck, yeah, you wanted this. Look at you, taking me so well for someone who claims he’s never taken cock before. You like it, right? Being fucked hard like this? You never wanted me to be nice,” Yunho spits, his cocking pummeling in and out of San’s abused hole. “You just wanted to get fucked like a bitch.”

San chokes on his own sob, his hole clenching around Yunho’s dick at such humiliating accusations. A particularly harsh thrust punches a whimper from San’s mouth, still muffled around fabric now wet with spit, and he gazes up at Yunho with teary eyes, a silent plead behind them.

“Wanna come now?” Yunho asks, reading him without even having to question it. His hand finds San’s cock between them, holding it there without moving. “Got what you wanted, so you wanna come now, right? Why? Did that turn you on?”

San hums around the fabric, but then Yunho is tugging it out from between his teeth. Before San can say anything, Yunho plunges two fingers into his mouth, pressing down into his tongue. San gurgles, his tongue gathering spit as Yunho reaches so far back, it makes him cough.

“Fuck,” Yunho curses while looking down at him with unbridled lust. Every time San chokes and coughs around his fingers, he’s involuntarily clenching down on his cock, stomach tensing with the noises.

“Wa-ah cuh,” San attempts, his voice pitchy, words punctuated with Yunho’s brutal thrusting.

Yunho’s fingers slip out of him, glistening in spit where he rubs it into one of San’s nipples. “What was that?”

San arches forward, cheeks dusted in pink when he pants out, “Wanna come, I wanna come.”

The corner of Yunho’s lip quirk upward, wicked and evil. “What do you do when you want something?”

San’s so out of it, he has no idea what Yunho is even talking about. “Please?”

“Not that,” Yunho chastises, his hips slowing down. He strokes San’s cock slowly instead, his thumb running along the tip on every upstroke. “If you want something, what do you do?”

San’s head rolls to the side, his eyes fluttering at the sensation deep in his gut. His bottom lip quivers when he releases it from the bite of his teeth. “M-meow,” he whimpers, barely audible.

“Good girl,” Yunho praises with heavy emphasis on ‘girl.’

San’s head whips forward to glare at him. “I’m not—”

“Ah, but you’re pretty like one,” Yunho cuts him off, then tightens his grip over San’s waist—tiny, fucking waist—and snaps his hips hard to pull a pitchy whine from San. “Fucking sound like one, too. Fuck, seriously, you’re better than I thought you’d be, Pudding-chan.”

San can’t take it anymore, really, he can’t. Everything Yunho says, no matter how untrue, how perverted—all of it—it just turns him on so bad, it almost hurts. He reaches for Yunho’s wrist, tugging at it. “Please, please,” he begs, bucking up into Yunho’s fist. “I need to cum…!”

Yunho seems to finally want to give in as he strokes his cock in time with his rough thrusting. Perspiration drips down his neck to gather in the dip of his collarbone, and his bangs have amassed at the ends from the sheen of sweat on his skin. Fuck, he looks like a dream.

“I think, hah,” San starts, unable to take his eyes off the knit in Yunho’s eyebrows, “I’m gonna come.”

Yunho doesn’t stop, hands trailing lower to push right up against the underside of San’s thighs as he fucks him hard like he can’t get enough of how San squeezes around his cock, tight and delicious and everything he’s ever fantasized about.

San warns him, his eyes beginning to roll back as Yunho hits that bundle of nerves dead on, “I think I’m—I’m gonna come. I’m gonna co-ome.” He forces his eyes back onto Yunho’s face, and when Yunho grunts, his silver chain swinging to smack him in the chest with the force of his thrusts, his eyebrows anchoring low with the exertion, he comes so hard he thinks he blacks out for a few seconds.

A sob rips from San’s throat as he allows his head to hit the pillows, stars exploding behind his eyelids as his orgasm hits him through the large hand stroking his cock. Cum paints his abdomen, flexing and clenching with his release, and he shoots so far it stains the dark hoodie in white.

“Fuck, fuck, I’m gonna come,” Yunho says following San’s orgasm.

San can’t even lift his head, so blissed out from his release his body has grown limp in Yunho’s hands.

“You look so fucking good,” Yunho babbles mindlessly, “fuck, so perfect for me. You feel so good around my cock, baby, so good for me. Gonna let me come inside you, right? Ah, fuck…!”

San can feel it so unquestionably when Yunho comes, spurting his release deep inside him with every twitch of his cock along his walls. He holds him there for a good few seconds, his legs flopping over only when Yunho lets go of them to slide out slowly. The last of his cum squirts against the underside of San’s balls, causing him to flinch, sensitive from his own orgasm. Still, he’s too out of it to really move.

They take a minute to catch their breaths as Yunho readjusts San’s legs into a more comfortable position. He doesn’t expect it, not really, when Yunho finds him again with a warm palm on his cheek to make sure he’s still with him. He tilts San’s head, curious doe eyes staring down at him as San blinks himself back to reality.

“Good?” he asks, his face inches from San’s.

San mumbles, then nods his head once. Something warm meets his lips and he kisses into Yunho’s mouth like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He tastes sweet like he did before, sweeter, maybe, now that they’re not so overcome with pent-up arousal.

Yunho licks into his mouth slowly, kissing him so deep it almost lulls San to sleep. He doesn’t know how long they make out for, but it’s long enough for San’s cum to start feeling gross on his skin. Yunho’s release seeps out of his hole slowly, and he’s not sure what to do about it now that they’re all done.

Honestly, he fully expected Yunho to get up and leave after, not engage in something like this—whatever this is. Hands climb up San’s body slowly and sensually, brushing against his nipple before tucking underneath the hoodie he’s still wearing. It takes him a while to realize Yunho’s trying to undress him.

Neither of them say anything as San lifts himself upward, bumping into Yunho while stripping himself of the last piece of clothing he has on him. Yunho takes the fabric once it’s over San’s head and flings it somewhere out of reach, and instead of giving kisses to his mouth, he dips down to attach his lips to San’s jaw, where he nips and bites and sucks.

San lets him, his head rolling with the consistent on and off pressure of his mouth. The teeth trail lower to his neck—somewhere Yunho gives way too much attention to. His tongue is wet and warm, and when he sucks, instinct kicks in and San tilts his head to give him more access.

It feels good in a way San has never experienced before. Yunho’s hands are warm where the rub up and down San’s body as though he wants to remember him like this through touch alone. He thinks he might really fall asleep. It’s not going to be gross, is it?

Unfortunately, San has too much discipline to really let himself knock out like this, so he cracks his eyes open slowly and forces the sleepiness out of them. “What time is it?” he croaks just as Yunho moves his lips to his collarbone, where he bites down gently.

Instead of giving him an answer—honestly, San doubts he even knows—Yunho hums against his chest.

“Why do you keep doing that?” San mumbles through his fatigue, then yelps when Yunho sinks his teeth down pretty hard over his pec. Now, he’s fully awake. “Why did you bite me?!”

Yunho looks up with a lopsided grin, his chin resting comfortably on San’s chest, right where he bit him. “I like it.”

San frowns, but the pout is evident on his lips. “You’re like a dog.”

Yunho’s eyebrows lift nonchalantly and he makes a ‘whatever’ face but still refuses to lift himself off. “So I’ve been told.”

“And that’s a good thing?” San gawks.

“Maybe,” Yunho responds before finally rolling off San’s chest and into a seated position. He grabs San’s phone, tapping on the screen a couple times to wake it up. He turns it over to show him. “Six twenty-one.”

“Oh my god,” San breathes out in disbelief. “We had sex for an hour?”

“Longer,” Yunho adds with a yawn and a big stretch.

San sits himself up with a wince, his hand flying to the newfound soreness at his lower back. “Ow,” he hisses, “my back hurts.”

Yunho doesn’t say anything, and when San glances over at him, he’s wearing this silly smile on his lips, almost like he’s proud.

San tilts his head. “What?” he demands.

“Sorry… Was I too rough with you?”

“Huh?”

Yunho pauses. “It hurts?”

San blinks, rubbing gently at his lower back. “This is normal?”

Yunho worries his lower lip between his teeth. “Mm, well, let’s just say the sex would not have been that good if you’re not sore after.”

“Are you seriously bragging right now?” It comes out more as an accusing statement rather than a question. San flings a pillow at him, and he’s mad that Yunho catches it easily.

Slowly, Yunho peeks his head out from behind it, his eyes crinkling despite San’s obvious scowl. “Want breakfast?”

They learn the hard way that taking a shower together as two large, adult men is a terrible experience. Their apartment is average, and that includes the size of the washroom, the length of the bathtub, and the spray of the water. First, San gives him shit for leaving all those marks on his neck and chest, then they struggle in the tiny space together, and San is pretty sure Yunho has made three soap-dropping joke for the fifteen minutes they’re in there together.

At least, Yunho helps San clean his cum out of him, but not without teasing him with a little more fingering under the water that seems to turn cold way too quickly on an early Sunday morning. Add a handjob in there, and San is certain he’s had enough orgasms to keep him satisfied for the entirety of next week.

It’s interesting, the way they’re almost unable to keep their hands off each other after what happened. San didn’t think that nothing would change, but neither did he expect things to turn out like this.

Yunho’s smiles look more genuine when he leans in to peek over San’s shoulder while he rolls the omelette over in the pan. Their conversations are lighter, funnier, and rawer, like there’s nothing hindering their thoughts. Honestly, he’s never seen Yunho like this—maybe a little bit around Mingi, but never with San. He couldn’t have even imagined it.

And the same goes for himself too. The shyness he used to always carry with himself whenever he spoke to or hung around Yunho seems to have melted away for something warm and saccharine. For him, he knows this side of him comes out when Wooyoung is the only one around.

It’s weird to think this should’ve taken much longer, and definitely in a less roundabout way, but everything seems to fall into place so naturally. When Yunho leans over to squeeze ketchup into a smiley face onto San’s piece of the rolled omelette, San isn’t afraid to giggle when he otherwise would’ve thanked him quietly.

When San asks about Yunho’s latest 3D printing projects, he doesn’t expect Yunho to admit he has something for him—has had something for him for months.

“Would you have ever given it to me?”

Yunho hums around a spoonful of kimchi-jjigae while pondering it over it seriously. “Maybe not.”

It’s just a figurine of a muscular cat, at least, that’s what it is according to Yunho, but it means more to San than he could ever know. It fits in the palm of his hand and would probably look perfect right under his monitor. The more San looks at it, the more he thinks it actually looks like him.

“Coffee?” Yunho asks while San places their plates in the sink. He usually washes them right away, but he’s too tired to think about it right now, so he just gives it a quick rinse and tells himself he’ll revisit them after he wakes up.

San gives Yunho a look of incredulity. “What? No! Aren’t—aren’t we sleeping?”

Yunho blinks, then clicks the kettle off. “I can stay up.”

“And do what?”

The expression on Yunho’s face is unreadable. He turns, leaning his hip into the counter to face him with his arms crossed over his chest. “Talk.”

San’s heartbeat is loud in his ears. “About?” It comes out a whisper.

“Why did you pretend to not know me on Discord?”

San looks away. Maybe he should do the dishes. “I didn’t want you to know.”

“Why?”

“I was only going to tell you after I got better at the game.”

“But why?”

San sighs, turning with exasperation to finally land his gaze back on the taller man. “Does it matter? I… I feel like you’re only asking because you want to hear me say it.”

“Well, can’t you?”

“Can’t I, what?”

Yunho’s throat bobs when he swallows. “Say you like me?”

San’s body goes rigid, his blood running cold. He doesn’t know why hearing those words is so jarring. He’s known for a long time, but he doesn’t think he’s ever said it out loud or have someone confront him with it to his face—much less from Yunho.

It takes only a step and a half for Yunho to close the distance between them. “Say it.” San’s head dips down, a flush on his cheeks, but Yunho guides his chin back up with a steady hand on his jaw. “Please.”

He can’t meet Yunho’s eyes when he says it, but he doesn’t pull away, either. “I like you.”

“I like you so much, San,” Yunho whispers against his mouth. This time, San does look at him when Yunho captures his lips in a soft kiss. Yunho has his eyes closed, but San doesn’t. He watches, lips moving slowly, how Yunho’s lashes lay like a bed across his cheeks, his hair, longer now, rests across his forehead prettily, the way it always does after a fresh shower.

He’s quiet as Yunho pulls away with hesitation, almost like he doesn’t want to, and flutters his eyes open. There’s a swelling in San’s chest that he can’t explain, but his body knows, so his heart follows. The embrace that San pulls him into is warm and solid and grounding, the space around them silent observers as they share a vulnerability that otherwise would’ve been impossible if it wasn’t for them.

“I’m sorry I lied to you,” San speaks with his chin resting on Yunho’s shoulder. “I wanted to impress you.”

Yunho’s hands are comfortable around San’s body. “You liked me that much, you did all that?”

San’s sigh is of resignation as he tilts his head to press his cheek into Yunho’s shoulder instead. “Yeah. I didn’t know how to tell you.” After a beat of silence, he asks, “Did you know? That it was me?”

“I suspected it, but I wasn’t sure until you actually spoke.”

San pulls away, confused. “The hoodie?”

“Anyone could have that hoodie, really,” Yunho says with a shrug. “I didn’t even know you had it. I just thought I lost it somewhere.”

“My moles…?”

Yunho sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, his expression twisting as though he’s fighting against himself. “That one was kinda hard. I tried not to think about it, but seriously—I seriously believed it could be you.”

“What else?” San continues.

“Mm… You mentioned you knew Wooyoung. You knew I drank tonight, and—actually, when you were in my room watching me play Valorant, I heard a Discord notification go off. Honestly, I chalked everything up to little coincidences. I can’t really assume unless I actually know.”

“I see…” San mumbles.

“But I feel like somewhere in my heart, I started imagining you whenever I was talking to Pudding. Sometimes, I can hear you masturbating while I was on call with Pudding. You’re not as quiet as you think you are, by the way.”

San’s jaw drops in shock. “What?” he squeaks. “I—I thought you were wearing your headset.”

“Not all the time. Pudding doesn’t talk,” he pauses, then winks, “you do, though.”

“Oh my god,” San gasps out while dragging a palm down his face. “That’s so embarrassing.”

“Is it? I thought it was hot,” Yunho teases, but then he’s flinching away with a yelp when San slaps the back of his hand into his chest.

“Are we done talking?” San asks, side stepping the taller man. “I need to sleep.” Before he can walk away, Yunho reaches forward to take his hand, pulling him back.

“Let’s go on a date. I’m not tired,” Yunho declares with a cheeky smile on his face. He shakes his shoulders to beg childishly. “Pleaseee, can we go on a date?”

San tugs on Yunho’s hand, pulling him out of the kitchen. Still, he can’t help it. He’s so weak to this new display of affection from Yunho. “Yes, but after a nap. Seriously, I need it. I’m going to walk into traffic.”

Yunho rushes past him, pulling him away from his bedroom to lead him to his own instead. “Okay, date after. Let’s sleep in my bed. Yours is wet.”

“Don’t say it like that,” San whines with a pout as he lets himself be pushed onto the bed, where Yunho climbs on top of him to snuggle into his chest. He’s so large it should be suffocating, but San can’t lie and say it isn’t quite comforting.

“Shh, sleep,” Yunho whispers with a grin, tugging the blanket over their bodies without moving any of his other heavy limbs. “We have a date after.”

San rolls his eyes but doesn’t force away the grin on his face. Sleep finds him rather quickly, but just before he fully succumbs to it, he soaks in the warm comfort of where he is right now. He still can’t quite believe it. He remembers how daunting it had been to even go up to Wooyoung with his carefully constructed plan—all to romance his gamer roommate.

Well, maybe not romance. More like seduce. Ah, well, perhaps both? After all, it seems San’s life will be full of both romance and seduction starting today.

When San wakes up, Yunho is still sleeping. He finds his phone somewhere on the bed when he had taken it out of his pocket before falling asleep, and his eyes nearly bulge out of his sockets when he sees the time on it. It’s late, but they can still have a dinner date if they wake up now and get ready quickly.

He decides to let Yunho sleep a little longer as he unlocks his phone to check on the Discord he got. It looks like it’s from Wooyoung, but that is the last thing San can focus on, because right there, in his and Yunho’s private chat, is a video that he apparently sent that he doesn’t even remember sending.

There, San is on his knees on the floor, back to the mirror, caged in by long, pretty legs, and his phone is held up by long fingers above his head. Yunho’s face is clear and visible and smug as he pushes San’s head down before tugging it back by his hair, then down again, and up. There’s nothing explicit in the video, but the implication is enough to have San turning off his phone and throwing it to the other end of the bed.

Of fucking course, Yunho just needs the last laugh.

But, with a dopey grin on his reddened cheeks, San supposes he deserves it.