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“This isn’t breakup sex,” Wangho snaps, wrestling off Sungu’s shirt anyway.
“Okay,” Sungu’s voice is muffled in the fabric. He’s in that mood, the one where he just agrees to whatever Wangho says because that’s all the blood he has in his brain left for.
“We’re not breaking up,” the older boy feels the need to assert this as he drops to his knees, for some reason. “So stop complaining.”
“Okay.”
Wangho glances warily around at the sound of footsteps, watches the shadowed footsteps under the door of someone approaching his room, remembering Sungu had gone in earlier, then wisely doing a 180 and walking away.
Then he turns around, sighing as he pulls down Sungu’s pants. “I’m going to miss you.”
Sungu makes a little noise, and Wangho glances up. “I’ll miss you too.”
There’s silence for a moment.
“I was talking to your dick,” Wangho replies plainly, before proceeding to go down on him.
*
It’s not breakup sex, Wangho repeats to himself as he rinses out his mouth later, except he’s packed up and moving out and Sungu’s watching him morosely from the balcony as he gets in the car and disappears from SKT, as quickly as he’d come in last year.
It’s not a break up.
Sure, they won’t be able to see each other for weeks at a time and Wangho might only get to hear his voice through his earbuds and his dick might just fall off and die from withdrawal symptoms, but they’ll be fine.
There’s a knot in his throat when he sees Jongin and Bumhyeon again, this time with four new siblings for him to vie for their attention (oh joy) - Boseong is pure, cute evil, Woochan is shy and sweet, Dongha is bald (which by default makes him funny), and Kwanghee is mischievous and a competitor idol.
Longzhu is kind to him.
And yet, once he’s all set up and unpacked (meaning he’s taken out one set of clothes and his peripherals) he takes out his phone, firing off a series of texts complaining about how cold it is and how much he misses the restaurant beside the SKT office.
Sungu replies with a picture of Yeujin sitting in his old seat, munching on chips and getting crumbs all over the desktop.
Wangho rolls his eyes and starts on soloqueue.
*
He tries to keep it a secret. Jongin and Bumhyeon already know, of course, but he doubts they would’ve spilled it to the rest of them.
“So,” Dongha takes it upon himself to blast out politely over brunch just a few mornings later, when Wangho’s barely functional. Despite his status as a new member he’s uncomfortably squished between the wall and Boseong, who seems to have zero regard for personal space, and they’re all scruffy and sleepy-eyed from just having woken up. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“He likes boys,” Boseong announces, apparently not so sleepy after all. “I saw him checking out Kwanghee’s ass this morning.”
“I did-… not," Wangho splutters through his soup. “What?”
“Yeah, what?” Dongha frowns. “Kwanghee has no ass.”
“I heard that!”
“I don’t-…I don’t like anyone,” Wangho says defensively. “Isn’t this a little soon?”
Woochan speaks over his soup quietly. “Yeah, guys, maybe we shouldn’t-…”
Boseong leans forward, almost knocking a water bottle over. “I saw him texting hearts at someone yesterday. And he changed his wallpaper on the first day he got here. I bet it was a selfie with his boyfriend before that.”
“You were watching me text-…? ”
“Who is it?” Dongha asks eagerly. “Do we know them?”
“Nah, I doubt so,” Boseong continues critically. “He kind of seems the type to go for rich old fat guys.”
“He’s not fat!” Wangho snaps. Then he realises what he’s just said.
Dongha and Boseong exchange identical glances of sinister triumph. Then Boseong leans in, blinking angelically. “So what’s he like, exactly?”
Wangho grabs his bowl and flees into the kitchen.
*
It gets harder to text over the days that pass. Not just because Boseong has a knack for breathing down his neck once he takes out his phone, but also because they’re both busy with streaming and scrims and practice for Kespa.
I miss you, Sungu texts one night. Wangho almost gets emotional, until Sungu sends him a picture of him fondling a cob of corn, and then Wangho doesn’t talk to him for the rest of the night.
He jumps when someone nudges him one afternoon, phone almost flying out of his hand, jolting him out of valuable time spent catatonically refreshing his chat log.
“So,” Boseong rolls up like he’s in a Maserati, blinking innocently. “Is he cute?”
“Ughh,” is all Wangho can get out, making sure to lock his phone before he tosses it aside. “This. This isn’t. I’m not-…”
“Where’d you meet him? Is he another progamer?” Boseong counts off his fingers. “Najin, ROX, SKT?”
“Nothing,” Wangho tries to control the flush in his cheeks. “Don’t you have soloqueue to play?”
“Of course~ But I wanna talk to Wangho hyung~” the younger boy drags out the syllables, tilting his head and pouting. “Don’t you think mid and jungle should build some synergy?”
Wangho rolls his eyes, making a face.
“Not Faker then,” Boseong looks reassured, and Wangho presses two fingers into his temple – how does he do this? “Well. At least tell me if we could be friends,” he pouts. “How old is he?”
“Why are you so interested? Shouldn’t you be asking me for Faker’s phone number?”
“What do you think I’m getting blackmail material for?” Boseong looks wounded, a hand to his heart. “Anyway, we’re all kind people here. Long distance relationships are tough, we want to be there to support you,” he says seriously.
Wangho grunts and goes back to his computer. “If this is your idea of support-…”
“No, I get it, I really do, hyung,” Boseong sighs, sinking in his chair a little. “Even with people who are just friends, you know? I miss Dongwoo all the time. We call sometimes but it’s difficult in China, you know? And even then with calling it doesn’t feel like they’re there.”
Wangho relents, heart sinking again at the thought of Sungu. “Yeah.”
“Sometimes I forget how soon it’s been since he’d left,” the younger boy muses. “Even then it feels like forever, you know?”
Wangho sighs, resting his chin on his hand miserably. “Yeah.”
There’s a moment of silence. Then Boseong leans in. “So, SKT then?”
The older boy blinks. “What?”
The midlaner scoots away on his roller chair, already on his phone. “Thanks, Wangho hyung~”
“What the he-…”
“Yeujin hyung!” Boseong says pleasantly into the phone, and Wangho springs out of his chair, about to die, because how the hell could he forget that Boseong was friends with Haneul and Yeujin-…
“Hey, hey!” He hisses, inadvertently attracting the attention of Dongha and Woochan. “You know I really don’t-…”
Boseong holds up a hand, before putting the phone on speaker. “Just wanted to ask, Yeujin hyung, is Wangho dating someone on SKT?”
“Talk and I’ll kill you,” Wangho says loudly.
“Oh,” Yeujin sounds tired and hungry and by default irritable. “Yeah, he’s dating Sungu, Blank, however you want to call him.”
Boseong gives a meaningful look at Kwanghee, who immediately returns to his computer and starts digging up receipts.
“Thanks hyung!” Boseong says chirpily, like he hasn’t just turned Wangho’s life inside out.
“Don’t call me anymore,” Yeujin grumbles. “Hey Wangho. Sungu misses you. It’s very annoying.”
Then he hangs up.
“That cow,” Wangho wheezes.
Boseong stands, then, placing a reassuring hand on Wangho’s back as he gets back on his Maserati, scrolling through his blackmail folder. “We’re all here for you.”
Then everyone returns to their nightly proceedings like nothing’s happened, and Wangho wants to die.
*
Thankfully, the looming prospect of the Kespa Cup scares them all enough to actually focus on practice over the next few days, and Wangho’s days become a blur of sleeping, eating and League.
He prepares for Jin Air well.
He does not prepare for Sungu.
“I didn’t prepare,” Wangho gasps as Sungu pushes him up unceremoniously against the wall of the bathroom, pulling his thighs apart.
“Take it off,” the other boy mumbles, pulling at Wangho’s jersey. “Let me pretend.”
Wangho’s heart clenches, but he obliges anyway, and the air is cold against his skin once he pulls the fabric over his head.
“Not much use preparing anyway,” Sungu laughs breathily, voice muffled in Wangho’s neck, and the cold is stifled by the warmth of his sweater against Wangho’s body. “Not like you have the time.”
Fuck, his match is in half an hour and they really don’t have the time to be doing this, but then Sungu pushes him down onto the closed toilet seat and kneels down, and now the match can go screw itself for all Wangho cares.
“I should be rewarding you for that clusterfuck of an SKT match,” he says dizzily as Sungu starts pulling his pants down impatiently, and the other boy pauses. “Well don’t stop," Wangho whines, kicking out in a temper tantrum.
Sungu laughs, a hand wrapping around his dick. “I thought so.”
*
Wangho stumbles into the waiting room five minutes after reporting time, out of breath and fixing his hair, and Bumhyeon tuts disapprovingly while Boseong whispers conspiratorially to Woochan.
“Where were you?” Jongin asks through a mouthful of hard-boiled egg, and Dongha lets out a high-pitched giggle.
“Loosening up for the match,” Kwanghee informs. “In case he has to take it up the ass later, you know-…”
“I was not,” Wangho snaps, hastily unpacking his peripherals, checking perfunctorily to make sure his fly is zipped.
Boseong’s about to make a comment on that, until head coach Donghoon walks in, not looking in the mood for joking around, and they start hurrying towards the booths.
“By the way,” Wangho whispers forcefully to Boseong on their way up. “Even if I-…we were doing that, I would be on top.”
He puffs out his chest for effect. Boseong stares at him for a while, then glances at Dongha.
Then they both laugh hysterically, for a solid five minutes straight, through their walk up the stairs, plugging in their peripherals and test runs.
“Okay hyung,” Boseong giggles while patting his head, wiping away a tear with his other hand. “Whatever you say.”
“I’m a man,” Wangho mumbles ineffectually.
This sparks another round of howling from Boseong, until Bumhyeon has to very sternly tell them all to quiet down and focus.
Wangho’d had grand visions of ordering around obedient dongsaengs in loving servitude upon his arrival to Longzhu. So far all he’s had are indulgent IGN changes from Boseong and Dongha, and his entire personal life thrown out in the open and laughed at.
Being a hyung kind of sucks.
*
Wangho is relatively okay with the idea of going up against Sungu in the next match.
By relatively okay he means he overthinks every single possibility of how this could turn out and feeds demandingly on reassurance from Sungu’s texts.
It’s nothing if not a harbinger of how much the coming season is going to suck, and Wangho can’t help but feel depressed through practice.
He’s back to entering stage 1 of vegetation, staring into the ceiling while his entire being wills his phone to vibrate with a message again, when someone taps his chair, and Wangho almost falls off the other side.
“What,” he says briskly, stowing his phone away and trying to look busy. Woochan holds out a plate of chocolate biscuits, chewing on one himself.
“Bumhyeon hyung prepared it for us,” he relays helpfully.
Wangho takes one, munching with grudging thanks. “He used to do it when we were on ROX, too.”
“It’s nice of him,” the other boy takes another biscuit. They’re both waiting in queue, it’s a slow night, a great opportunity to do some of the socialising Wangho hates so much. Oh man , he’s going to have to hold an actual conversation here, isn’t he?
“Sorry about Boseongie and Dongha-hyung,” Woochan saves Wangho from having to start the talking. His wide eyes are polite and honest – honestly, how does something as pure as him survive in this harsh environment? “They might get a bit overenthusiastic at times but they mean well. They’ve been really happy since you arrived.”
“Yeah, happy about successfully invading all my personal space bubbles,” Wangho grumbles through a mouthful of biscuit, vindictively grabbing another.
“They’re just happy because, well, they think Longzhu has a chance now, that we didn’t before,” Woochan shrugs. “With a bit of ROX reunited and everything.”
“Hah,” Wangho says lamely. That makes him think, spiral even deeper into thought. “No pressure to perform or anything, right?”
“Don’t worry hyung,” Woochan gives him a half-smile. “You should just prepare well for the next match.”
The older boy groans at the thought of it.
“It must be tough on you,” Woochan says, going a little quieter as Dongha parades by in his favourite orange pajamas. “Facing him so soon.”
A hundred possible ways to deflect that statement fly through Wangho’s head in a second. Then he gives up and sighs into his biscuit. “I don’t know what’ll happen.”
Woochan shrugs again, putting the biscuits on the table as his queue pops. “If he loves you and you love him, then what happens shouldn’t change anything, right?”
Then he scoots away to start on his game, and Wangho spends the rest of the night venting his mix-up of feelings on soloqueue.
Right, if Sungu really loves him, no matter the outcome, things should be fine, right?
*
Longzhu wins the semi-final match.
The stress of the match seems to burst out of Wangho’s chest in relief once the Nexus crashes, and for a moment he doesn’t think of anything else. As expected, Bumhyeon and Jongin are the only ones not yelling and bouncing on their chairs in the booth once the second and final game is over.
Wangho catches Boseong’s hand in a high-five as their coach walks in and claps him on the back, and Jongin turns to grin at him over the midlaner’s shoulder, and his heart swells along with the crowd’s cheers.
Until he catches sight of Sungu filing out with the rest of SKT, back straight and booth silent, not looking back once.
“Good job, hyung,” Boseong says conversationally, basking in the glory of his own Azir damage chart, and Wangho tries to laugh.
Things should be fine.
*
Things are not fine.
It’s been an entire sixty-two hours and twenty-seven minutes and they haven’t spoken once .
I should wait for him to text first, Wangho had thought after the match, because that’s how it’s always worked between them. He’d forgotten for a while, after celebrating with the rest that night. Then Longzhu had lost to KT, and Wangho’d had to deal with the disappointment from that for an entire night and morning.
And by then it’d been altogether too late and too early, and he’s written and backspaced about twenty messages to Sungu in this time.
Wangho hasn’t gone without a message from Sungu in an hour since they’d started dating, and kind of wants to die.
Miraculously, he holds it together, until that two days later finds him finishing his unpacking out of restlessness, and finding Sungu’s old black and white jersey at the bottom of his luggage, back from when his boyfriend had stuffed it in under his other things, joking that he’d need something to jerk off to.
Which predictably results in him sitting in the epicentre of his unpacking, clutching the jersey in both hands and bawling into it.
Boseong, Woochan and Dongha are skirting around uncomfortably outside the barely-opened door, peeking in occasionally and discreetly giving Wangho worried looks, like they’re afraid their pet hamster is sick but don’t know what to do.
I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot.
Then someone audibly shoos the crowd outside the door away, and sighs as he pushes the door open, closing it behind him with his foot.
Bumhyeon bustles over with a pack of tissues and a mug of something sweet and steaming hot.
“There there,” he coos, stepping expertly over piles of clothes and underwear and fan gifts, nudging the luggage aside with his foot to settle gracefully beside Wangho, handing him a tissue and the mug. “Want to tell me what happened?”
Wangho sniffs, dabbing at his eyes and taking a shaky sip. It’s hot chocolate with extra marshmallows, the way he’s always liked it. “I love him, hyung.”
“Ahh,” Bumhyeon conjures a woolly blanket out of thin air and wraps it around Wangho, like they’re back on ROX, and he’s counselling Wangho through his 5-day crush on Seohaeng. “And why does that make you sad?”
Wangho stares morosely into his hot chocolate. “What if he – hic – doesn’t l-love me anymore? B-because we won against SKT?”
He blows his nose into a tissue. Bumhyeon has magically tidied up a quarter of the room in this time, and pushes over a little cardboard box that used to hold a peanut-print mug from a fan.
“Well,” the reputed mom of Longzhu wraps an arm around his shoulder, the other hand delicately pinching used tissues into the box. “What makes you think he doesn’t love you anymore?”
“He hasn’t texted me in t-three days ” Wangho wails into a tissue. “And we used to text all the t-time, and he’s probably mad at me-…”
“Oh, Wangho, that’s a big conclusion to jump to-…”
“And he doesn’t love me anymore, a-and now I won’t get to see his face, or h-hold his hand, or touch his dick-…”
“Okay I didn’t really need to know that-...”
“There are a lot of things we didn’t need to know about you and Jongin-hyung either,” Dongha comments loudly from outside.
Bumhyeon whips around, glaring out through the crack in the door, and mimics a shaving movement with his hand. There’s a squeak, followed by hurried footsteps away.
“I love him, hyung,” Wangho bawls, returning Bumhyeon’s attention to him.
“Baby,” the older man tuts, pressing the blanket down gently around Wangho’s shoulders. “Sungu doesn’t hate you. Let’s get this out of the way first, okay? He’s probably as upset as you are right now.”
“Because I made him lose!”
“Wangho,” Bumhyeon says firmly. “What does a good progamer do when they lose?”
The jungler sniffs. “They-…they look for feedback and improve.”
“Right, because good progamers never blame other people for their mistakes, right?” Bumhyeon rubs Wangho’s back. “You and Sungu are good progamers. Of course he’s upset, he’s upset at his own mistakes and is probably doesn’t feel good enough about himself to text you. And after we lost last night he’s probably scared to text you because he knows you’ll be upset with yourself,” he showers Wangho with a few more tissues. “He’s just worried about what you think of him. As you are about him.”
“Really?” Wangho says tremulously, thinking it over as he inhales a mouthful of oversweet chocolate and marshmallow. It does make sense when put like that.
“I’m sure of it. So you see, it’s just a whole bunch of misunderstandings that could’ve very easily been cleared up with a few texts, right?”
“Well h-he should’ve texted first,” Wangho says stubbornly, retreating into his blanket. He does feel a lot better at this point, though – heaven knows how he’d been able to manage for a year without Bumhyeon settling all his meltdowns (right, he’d gone and wailed at Jaewan until he felt better).
“Ah, well, men can be a bit mulish sometimes,” Bumhyeon sighs. “Now, let’s get this room cleaned up and we can think of something to send to Sungu, okay? Please wipe up that hot chocolate drop over there, the ceramic stains easily.”
*
Park Yeujin hates being woken up in the morning.
Predictably, he hates it even more when he’s woken up at night.
“Wake up! ” Something cannonballs into the sensitive area below his ribcage and above his hipbone, and he bolts up gasping.
“Hyung! Hyung! You’ll never believe this!” Sungu’s waving something blindingly bright in his face, wide-eyed with terror. Yeujin looks around blindly for the apocalypse, until Sungu speaks. “ He texted me! Hyung wake the fuck up, he texted me two hours ago and I didn’t even realise, what do I say ?”
“What time is it?”
“What kind of text message is that? Don’t you think-…”
“No, asshole, as in what buttfuck-o-clock is it in the morning right now?”
“It’s five,” Sungu admits.
Yeujin stares at him, then pulls his blanket over himself and goes back to sleep.
*
They don’t have much time off, much less days off to spend with each other, but they manage.
“Don’t stare at the door like that, dear,” Bumhyeon tuts, patting Jongin’s shoulder with the air of a mother telling her husband to put the shotgun away (for now). “I’m sure they’ll be back on time this round, right Wangho?”
“Yes hyung,” Wangho mumbles, slightly red in the face as he grabs his wallet, hurriedly inspecting his hair in the mirror one last time before barrelling out the door. “I’ll practice hard when I’m back tonight!”
“Use protection!” Dongha bellows, in the tone one would usually use to say goodbye.
“Too late for that,” Wangho thinks he hears Kwanghee snicker.
Longzhu is kind to them.
Wangho feels a rush of gratitude as he hops down the last few steps, hurrying towards Sungu. “I hope you have something really good planned, because I’m starved.”
They’re actually dressed nicely, on a proper date, and Wangho’s still getting used to it. It feels like they’re doing things in reverse – checking off café hopping and couple selfies after takeout at two in the morning and rushed blowjobs in the office bathroom.
“You could eat my dick,” Sungu offers, then, looping his arm with Wangho’s.
And as Wangho slaps Sungu upside the head with his wallet, sparking a chase out of the complex and drawing the ogling stares of the MVP players on the way to dinner (though it’s not like they can judge – living a few floors away from them has enlightened Wangho to some things he could’ve honestly lived his life without knowing), he’s relieved to know that at least for now, despite everything, he can still call this his own.