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Sehun doesn’t really know what to expect. Last night was a wild night, and he’d woken this morning to see a rather impressive constellation of hickeys on his neck, some even dipping down past the curves of his clavicles. Jongin, that asshole, was supremely smug about it all, only sounding slightly apologetic when Sehun informed him (very hysterically) that he has practice later in the day.
He’d managed to go through all of his classes with the help of his swim team jacket – it’s got a collar high enough to hide most of the hickeys, and the rest he hid simply by keeping his head dipped low. Already awed over the hickeys they were able to see, his friends had a really good laugh over his misery, which is something Sehun would probably partake in himself if he didn’t have practice later in the day. He loves hickeys, loves that they’re a physical representation of the thought he’s mine, but not when he has practice later in the day. Hiding them during the day might’ve gone decently well, but it’s impossible to hide them during practice unless he wishes to swim in a goddamn scuba suit.
Now, a surge of apprehension is bubbling up inside of him as he heads towards the changing rooms and it feels even more overwhelming than his first day on the team. Yixing trails after him, Sehun somehow able to hear his friend’s stifled giggles despite the din in the hallways. He sighs for what seems like the millionth time that day and pushes the door open.
Making a beeline for his locker, Sehun grabs his swimsuit out of his bag and bolts right into a cubicle to get changed. It’s a brief respite, one that’s over in a mere minute.
With great reluctance, Sehun steps out and takes a deep breath, waiting for the inevitable. A few seconds of blissful ignorance pass, then someone glances over at him and lets out a long, low whistle. The sound brings out a spectacular flush of heat in Sehun’s cheeks and draws the attention of everyone else in the room.
“Dude,” someone says.
“God, I know,” Sehun groans, stuffing his bag into the locker.
“You’re going to give Coach a heart attack.”
Sehun winces. “Is it really that bad?”
“If I didn’t know what those were, I would be in serious concern over your safety,” Yixing says seriously. Everyone else echoes his sentiment and Sehun flops down onto a bench, cradling his head in his hands and exuding an air of utmost despair.
He stays in the changing rooms until the very last possible moment. Yixing turns traitor and brings his phone with him as the group of them make their way towards the pool. Sehun glares at his friend.
“I have to film this,” Yixing says with a grin. “Sorry. Blame Baekhyun, honestly. He wants the video really badly.”
It goes… well, just as weirdly as Sehun had expected.
His coach’s face went from its normal colour to an off-white, slightly sick shade of white, before transitioning to a startling flush of red all within the span of eight seconds.
“Coach,” Sehun begins, already thoroughly embarrassed. His teammates are in the water, sniggering to themselves as they watch a once-in-a-lifetime event unfold right before their very eyes. “It won’t happen again, I promise. I –”
He’s cut off by a raised hand.
“I was once a university student, Sehun. I understand how these things… are. Don’t promise me something you cannot keep. Just, for the love of God, please don’t show up to swim meets like that. I will actually have to bench you if you do.”
Sehun blushes hotly.
“I can promise you that, Coach.”
His coach pinches the bridge of his nose and nods stiffly. The poor guy definitely did not sign up for this. “Alright, get in the pool, Sehun. And Yixing, put your phone away. You know I don’t allow phones during practice.”
A few weeks after that traumatizing incident, Sehun decides to take revenge.
It takes a lot of effort – for Jongin doesn’t bruise as easily as he does –, but by the end of the night, they’re both fucked-out and Jongin has his own impressive collection of hickeys around the solid column of his neck.
“Explain that to your coach tomorrow, QB,” Sehun pants, unsticking himself from Jongin’s chest and flopping back onto the sheets looking much too pleased with himself. Jongin just smiles at him with a mixture of amusement and fondness before rolling off the bed and ambling over to the kitchen for a glass of water.
…Why does he look so unfazed? Ugh, whatever – Sehun’s too tired to give it much thought.
Buzzing with glee, Sehun jogs all the way from the pool to the football field, eager to see how Jongin’s practice session had gone. He makes it there just in time to see the team break from their huddle.
A flush creeps up his neck when Sehun notices that he can clearly spot the hickeys from several metres away. He also spots a grin on Jongin’s face, one that evolves into laughter at something his coach said. That is Clue #1 that something is definitely Not Right.
Too embarrassed to stay behind after two hours of practice with a neck full of hickeys, Sehun had booked it out of there the second his coach dismissed them. Hanging back to chat with his coach is something he would never do under those circumstances, not even if a million dollars dangled in front of his face.
Clue #2 comes in the form of high-fives from Jongin’s teammates as they file past him towards the locker rooms. Jongdae even gives him a comforting squeeze of the shoulder when he passes by. The only spark of hope comes in the form of Minseok, who asks Sehun a simple “Why?” that fails to get an appropriate response.
The excited buzz that once filled Sehun’s body fades away to an apprehensive thrum.
Clue #3 is huge. Sehun’s eyes widen minutely when the football coach catches sight of him and lights up.
“Sehun, my boy! I must say, you’ve done a wonderful job.”
Sehun’s mind goes absolutely blank.
“I have never seen such strategically placed hickeys in my life! In fact, we used them as inspiration and managed to come up with some great formations.”
What the fuck?
“What the –” Sehun begins to say.
“I look forward to more in the future!” With a loud, resounding smack to Sehun’s back, Jongin’s coach bids the both of them farewell and heads off towards his office.
“– fuck?” Sehun finishes weakly.
Jongin laughs and slings a sweaty arm across Sehun’s shoulders, leaning in to press a kiss to his temple.
“Hey, it’s okay. My coach might not have cared, but my team did give me a lot of shit for it. You should’ve seen Minseok’s face when he realised what he was looking at. Besides, I felt like I was the king of the world today, walking around with my battle scars on show. You won’t believe the number of ‘damn, dude’s I got in the span of an hour.”
“I can imagine,” Sehun sighs. It’s so hard not to pout. “Did your coach at least say something about turning up to games with hickeys?”
Jongin bites back a smile, brushing several strands of wayward hair out of Sehun’s eyes. “Well, he said that it would be a great tactic to show up with hickeys – it might distract the other team.”
In utter disbelief, Sehun stops in his tracks and gapes at Jongin. “You’re kidding.”
“I’ll buy you whatever you want for dinner,” Jongin says placatingly and leans in to kiss the pout off Sehun’s lips.
Unsurprisingly, the hickeys don’t stop happening. Sehun eventually learns how to deal with them, and by dealing with them he means accepting their presence on his body. Sometimes, when they’re really dark, he spends several painstaking minutes covering them up with concealer – yes, he actually went to Sephora to purchase some high-quality makeup that Jongin willingly paid for. He still wears collared shirts when needed out of respect for his professors, but he wouldn’t be surprised if they knew what they hid.
Over time, he realises that everyone else has also accepted their more-than-occasional presence on his body. Instead of dragged-out stares that he used to receive, he gets the barest flicker of gazes to his neck. Instead of his friends’ over-exaggerated exclamations and invasive questions about their sex life, he gets a fist-bump from Baekhyun and an “I see you guys had fun last night!” from Chanyeol.
His own coach seems to have accepted it as well. His eye doesn’t even twitch anymore whenever Sehun shows up to practice with a decorated neck. Once, however, he did say the following: “Are you sure hickeys are safe? I heard that they can cause blood clots. You should tell Kim to go a little easier on you.”
Speechless? Yeah, that’s an understatement.
When Sehun’s finally embraced it all, he realises that it’s really nice being the school’s Swimming Sweetheart.
While the pool is off-limits to the entire student body on Sundays after 3 p.m., Sehun gets special privileges to use it as long as he informs the cleaning staff beforehand. He does spend a lot of Sunday afternoons at the pool, and while most of his time is spent practising, there are moments where he indulges himself in ‘other activities’.
But the thing is, the pool isn’t a private place whatsoever – in fact, one wall is made entirely out of glass. Suffice to say, Sehun’s ‘other activities’ fail to go undetected for long.
The first time he sneaks Jongin into the pool, everything goes off without a hitch. They spend a full twenty minutes – the time usually used for Sehun’s warm-up – indulging in a make-out session, Jongin perching on the edge of the pool with his legs in the water as Sehun stands between them on a rung of the pool steps.
“This feels wild,” Jongin quips, biting lightly on the curve of Sehun’s lip to part them further. Sehun simply hums and deepens the kiss, tongue curling into Jongin’s mouth lazily.
In fact, it takes several months of sneaking Jongin into the pool every Sunday for someone to finally spot them. The unlucky person is Sehun’s economics professor, a friendly middle-aged woman who loves to give her students Reese’s cups after every lecture. Jongin’s got a solid grip on Sehun’s hair, mouth latched onto the curve of his jaw when she walks past with a sheaf of papers in hand.
She trips over her own feet at the sight, shoulder knocking into the glass and startling the couple inside. Sehun goes a bright shade of red and immediately rips himself out of Jongin’s arms, falling bodily into the water where he stays submerged for as long as his lungs are able to handle it. Jongin himself simply waves at the professor, a cheeky grin on his face, and shrugs his shoulders.
After that day, Sehun bans Jongin from tagging along on Sundays, even though he was the one who had originally suggested it in the first place. Jongin doesn’t really mind – he can always have make-out sessions with Sehun in the tub anyway.