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Johnny Suh and Nakamoto Yuta of Apartment Number 1027 are just friends.
It’s all they’ve ever been, and it’s a dynamic that’s worked for them since they first met in the dorms, when they found out that they would be living in rooms from across each other on move-in day.
It had been a quick friendship, one that had immediately started when Johnny had helped Yuta who had been trying to lug a massive bean bag along with an even more massive suitcase up the stairs, and had spiralled into them crossing over to each other’s rooms every night, much to the annoyance of their respective roommates Qian Kun and Dong Sicheng-- at least, until they had charmed their way into the hearts of the two stoic men and eventually won them over with bribery in the form of pizza and helping them out with their philosophy homework.
When Johnny had found out that Yuta was also going to major in communications, they had become inseparable. Everyone knew them as a package deal, and it was a brand they wore with pride.
Even when the questions started coming up.
Once in their second year, when Yuta had taken a really cute senior girl he had been seeing for a couple of months back to the dorm, her laugh soft as he whispered in her ear and lead her to his room where Sicheng was going to be out of since it was the weekend, some rude freshman had deadass stopped him in his tracks looked him in the eye and said, “Oh my god, I thought you were gay--” to which Yuta had replied, “I am bisexual, little dude, get with the program,” and proceeded to take the girl’s hand and closed the door in the guy’s face.
(Yuta has no idea, to this day, that the freshman had meant, “gay for Johnny.”)
Johnny couldn’t flirt with hot guys at parties or in the clubs near campus without someone stopping him and going, “Wait, aren’t you dating Nakamoto?”
Johnny would sigh, take a swig of lukewarm beer, and say, “No, man, we’re just friends.”
Because that was the thing: all throughout college, all Yuta had ever been to him was a friend.
It was after it that things started getting screwed up. Somewhere between Yuta asking him if he wanted to move in together to split their cost of living, and Yuta fracturing his right ankle during a particularly nasty game of football with his old buddies from varsity, Johnny had gone and started developing feelings for his best friend, and it was fucking him up to no end.
Johnny had it under control though. He was okay. Most days it really was just that—him and Yuta, going out to catch every single Marvel movie released, going out to choose furniture for their modest two-bedroom, going out to do the groceries. The usual best friend and roommate stuff.
Yeah, sure, Johnny had to work extra hard to not drool whenever Yuta dragged him out to the 5th floor gym and would insist on working out fucking shirtless in front of Johnny.
And yeah, sure, he had to work even harder to keep himself and his poor heart in check whenever Yuta did something like hold on to his hand when he got his first helix piercing, or when Yuta would kiss him on the cheek or the forehead or his hair whenever he wanted to be affectionate—even if they were in front of their other friends.
Johnny maintained that they were just friends.
He ignored questions about why he wasn’t putting himself out there to date and settle down. He ignored that gnawing sensation in his chest whenever he hooked up with someone and would have neither the nerve nor the inclination to text them for another go or for brunch or something because he knew that as big as an asshole that made him, it just wasn’t fair to get any feelings involved with someone else when in his head, Johnny knew that he already had settled down with someone, and that someone came in the form of Nakamoto Yuta, his boisterous, beautiful best friend.
🌝🌞
“Hey,” Yuta says, taking a seat next to Johnny on the couch where Johnny had been editing a new video on his laptop.
“Hey yourself,” Johnny says absentmindedly, eyes focused on the screen before him, one earphone pulled out so he can hear Yuta.
“I was thinking of going out,” Yuta says. “Maybe getting another piercing.”
Johnny’s hands pause over his touchpad. He’s used to Yuta’s habit of announcing plans in a grand manner, even the mundane ones. But somehow, Johnny knows that this isn’t one of those mundane ones.
“Which ear and where specifically?” he asks instead, bracing himself for the answer.
“When did I say I wanted it to be my ear?”
Johnny’s brain turns to static.
What the fuck.
“Where,” Johnny grits out. “Where were you thinking?”
Yuta turns his smile on Johnny and it’s blinding.
“Oh, you know where.”
“Nakamoto Yuta, why are you telling me this?” Johnny asks, as if he doesn’t already know the answer.
“Because you’re gonna pick the jewellery and you’re gonna hold my hand through it.”
🌝🌞
Johnny has no idea how Yuta manages to convince him to go out.
(This is a lie he tells himself. He knows exactly how, and it’s because Johnny is almost incapable of saying no to anything Yuta says, unless it’s particularly life-threatening, like the one time Yuta had tried to get behind the wheel drunk after Ten had thrown a rager in his house and Johnny had had to bodily pull him out and carry him to the backseat where Yuta had cried for a solid 15 minutes about how much he loved their European cinema professor, baked goods, and also Johnny for taking care of him.)
But well, here they are in some small tattoo parlour in the middle of Seoul, the neon lights from the signage in the window casting an eerie glow over Yuta’s mischievous face as he drags Johnny into the shop by his wrist.
The shop’s front is small but fairly lit, with an entire glass row running the length of the counter, stopping short only towards the right where customers can walk through behind the curtain to get to the back.
“Hello, good evening!” Yuta says cheerfully when someone steps out from behind a thick curtain.
“Hey guys,” the woman says, pulling black gloves off, a barrel in her right eyebrow glinting in the neon and yellow light. She smiles softly, peach-tinted lips curving upwards. “How can I help you?”
“I was looking to maybe get one of my nipples pierced?” Yuta says casually, like it’s not a big deal, like it’s not giving Johnny a fucking aneurysm to be here listening to him say this.
The lady nods, and says, “Sure! Here you can check out what jewellery you want. I’ll set up.”
She pulls out a few black cases and lays them on the glass counter. Yuta glances at Johnny who is staring at the wide velvet case that houses an entire array of barbells and rings like they’re about to bite him.
“Why do you look like that?” Yuta asks, laughing at Johnny’s expression before picking up a gold hoop and holding it to the light.
Johnny can’t exactly answer, because he’s equal parts aroused and terrified. Yuta is used to this, used to the aftercare of dealing with new piercings, used to saline solutions and antibiotic creams and the pain of it.
“Not sure really,” Johnny replies instead.
Johnny decides to busy himself with choosing which studded barbell or ring Yuta would like.
“Are you particular to anything?” Johnny asks, holding a rose gold barbell that has stones that mimic diamonds on either end.
Yuta leans in to check out the one Johnny’s looking at.
“I like that one,” Yuta says, taking it from Johnny to inspect it closer. “Pretty.”
“Like you,” Johnny mutters under his breath.
Yuta doesn’t hear it.
They’re ushered into the back of the tattoo parlour and the space behind the curtain turns out to be much bigger than the front of the shop implies. The room is brightly lit with black couches and bright yellow lighting.
It puts Johnny somewhat more at ease.
“So hey guys, I’m Seulgi,” the woman says, reaching a hand out for them to shake as they make their own introductions. “Are both of you getting a piercing done or—“
“No, just him,” Johnny says, nodding towards Yuta who is grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh, shame, you don’t want another one for yourself?” Seulgi asks, nodding at the dangling cross from Johnny’s left lobe.
Before Johnny can even begin to respond, Yuta is saying, “OOOH JOHNNY, GET AN INDUSTRIAL!”
Johnny wants to slap his hand to his face because now that Yuta’s said it, he won’t stop saying it. Yuta is bouncing on his heels, eyes bright and eager, megawatt smile firmly in place.
“I’ll choose it, I’ll choose it, come on, just say yes,” Yuta says, and Johnny is helpless.
With Yuta, he’s always helpless.
He rolls his eyes, sighs, and smiles. He only has just the one on his left ear so far. An industrial feels like a big step.
And yet.
“Okay, choose.”
Seulgi hands him a little pamphlet with the shop’s logo printed in neat black and red lettering on it while Yuta steps back out front to choose a barbell for Johnny.
“We don’t usually get many people to say yes to something like an industrial on whim,” she teases gently, laying out pointy tools onto a clean sheet pad that looks more like it belongs in a clinic than a tattoo parlour. At least this place looks like it would pass health inspection standards.
“Yeah well, my friend’s really convincing,” Johnny says.
He hopes that Seulgi hasn’t picked up on the fact that Yuta literally said two sentences before his resolve broke. He didn’t even have time to say no.
Seulgi hums while pulling out some antiseptic from the counter and says, “Wait, he isn’t your boyfriend?”
Ah, there it is again, The Question.
Johnny’s voice is caught in his throat, which he clears, before rubbing the back of his neck and saying, “No, no. Just a friend.”
Seulgi replies with, “Oh, oh I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“No, no you’re good, it’s okay!” Johnny laughs, just as Yuta returns.
“Okay so apparently it’s all boring silver surgical grade steel out front,” Yuta says, mildly disappointed. “I wanted to get matching ones.”
Johnny can’t help but look at him fondly, and place his hand on Yuta’s neck to give it a squeeze.
“Surgical grade steel it is, then.”
“Alright, who’s going first?” Seulgi asks from a high seat next to the black sort of bed in the corner of the room.
“I’ll go,” Yuta says, walking over and pulling his shirt over his head and folding it neatly on the couch.
Johnny, as usual, has to take a deep breath.
Johnny is pointedly trying not to look at Yuta’s nipples, or the dips where hip bones jut out into valleys, or the stupidly chiselled abs that rest between said hip bones, & takes a seat next to the bed on his own high chair.
“This‘ll hurt just a little more than your ear piercings.”
Yuta, the cheeky fucker, just waggles his eyebrows and turns to show off the multiple rings on his right ear.
“I’m no stranger to pain,” he says, winking at Johnny, who rolls his eyes again and recalls all the stupid injuries that he’s had to rush Yuta to the emergency room for.
“Yeah, yeah, shut up and get on with it,” Johnny says to Yuta, who smiles up at his piercer and holds his hand out for Johnny to grab.
Johnny doesn’t think this is necessary, but when Yuta had said he was there to hold his hand, he had meant it. Johnny’s held his hand through a lot.
It’s really not a big deal. Seulgi works incredibly fast, and in a matter of a few minutes, there’s a barbell in Yuta’s right nipple, and Johnny wants to sink to the floor and pass out, because the nipple is bright pink and hard and he cannot look away.
Yuta hasn’t let go yet.
Johnny isn’t paying attention anymore. All there is, is him and the rose gold barbell that he had chosen for Yuta, that he had agreed too. A piece of metal lodged into Yuta’s nipple that Johnny knows about now and will never not know about again. How the fuck is he supposed to go on.
Johnny is pulled back into reality when Yuta rises from the raised bed thing and swings his legs over to the side facing Johnny.
“How does it look?” Yuta says, kind of jutting his chest out, his abs flexing in the yellow light.
Johnny swallows around the desert that is his throat.
“H-hot,” Johnny says. “It looks hot.”
It’s the right answer, cos then Yuta is hopping off of the table and pressing a very, very wet kiss to Johnny’s temple.
“Your turn!”
Johnny gulps.
Johnny’s only ever gotten one piercing and it had been with a gun in some little kiosk in a mall when he was 16 and Ten had dared him to get one. Johnny has always been bad at backing down from dares.
But this feels different. Intimate. Ten hadn’t held his hand. Yuta’s about to.
“Your first cartilage piercing huh,” Seulgi says as Johnny attempts to make himself comfortable on the padded table.
He’s admittedly just a tiny bit scared. The piercing gun on his lobe had barely stung. This is a slower process, one that Seulgi is walking him through.
Yuta’s got Johnny’s hand in his, fingers threaded through like it’s natural, and Johnny doesn’t miss the way Seulgi glances at their joined hands before smiling to herself.
The air instantly hits the skin of his ear after she swabs it with antiseptic, and then dots the spots where she’s going to pierce through with a surgical marker.
The blue and green ink of the tattoo on her forearm disappears beneath the pair of black latex gloves she has on, and Johnny traces it with his eyes to help him calm down.
Seulgi is talking him through it, and he feels a pull on his ear before she counts under her breath. He’s squeezing Yuta’s hand, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough that Yuta squeezes back, & lays his other hand on top of it.
The first piercing stings, just on the outside of his helix. Seulgi’s hands are deft, and even if he can’t see it, he can feel that she’s working quickly.
“We don’t want you to swell up too much so I gotta move fast,” she says, and that’s when she pierces through the cartilage a second time.
“Okay, we’re done.”
The stinging comes in a throbbing ache after a few minutes, after which Seulgi has given them sea salt spray and strict instructions about aftercare and what to look out for.
When they pay up and say thank you, Seulgi says, “Thanks Yuta, Johnny.”
She’s smiling right at Johnny when she says, “You and your friend are welcome anytime,” before winking.
Yuta and Johnny step out into the cold night, the temperature having dropped further in the hour they spent inside the tattoo parlour.
Yuta’s holding his shirt out and away from his chest gingerly, and it makes Johnny laugh.
“I don’t know where you get your ideas, Nakamoto.”
“I don’t know why you go along with them, Suh,” Yuta fires back, lightning-quick.
“Yeah, I really wonder why,” Johnny laughs, his arm thrown over Yuta’s shoulders while they walk.
“Cos you loooooove me,” Yuta says, making a kissy face up at Johnny.
“Yeah, and what about it?”
Yuta stops in his tracks on the sidewalk, and turns his full body to look up at Johnny.
Time and tension stretch out like a rubber band pulled too tight.
Johnny’s heart races in his chest. He hadn’t meant for that to come out. Not tonight, anyway.
Yuta reaches his hand out, rests his forearm on Johnny’s shoulder, and touches his dangling earring, away from the new industrial, away from the pink skin.
“You mean that in a way that doesn’t just mean friendship, right?” Yuta asks quietly, finger stroking Johnny’s sore ear.
Johnny steels himself.
“Right.”
“You’re not just messing with me, Suh?”
Johnny lets out a breath.
“When have I ever, Nakamoto?”
“Many times.”
“Sure, but never about the stuff that mattered.”
Yuta makes noise like a whine, his face in a little pout.
“Debatable,” Yuta says, and starts to pull his hand away.
Johnny holds his hand in place.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Johnny asks.
Rubber band.
Stretch.
“It means that every time you say or do something that seems even remotely like you might feel something for me, you go around and make it out like we’re just friends,” Yuta replies.
Johnny frowns.
“So instead of coughing up the courage to actually say it, I just. Don’t.”
Johnny is taken aback. He runs through as many memories as he can in the few seconds he has, trying to read Yuta’s expression.
The number of times he’s actually said the words “just friends”, the number of times Yuta has been affectionate, times that stretch back all the way to the nights they used to spend falling asleep in each other’s bed, all the times that Yuta has dragged him into one plan and then another, saying “Look, who else am I gonna try this with?” with his smile turned up to a hundred, his eyes crescents, Johnny’s knees completely weak.
“I’m...” Johnny starts. “I’m a fucking idiot.”
Yuta smiles.
“I’m so fucking dense, I’m so sorry,” Johnny says.
Yuta doesn’t reply.
He tiptoes instead.
One time when Yuta and Johnny had first moved into their apartment, Johnny had plugged in a faulty wire into an old socket that had caused his entire body to jolt from the shock of the electrocution. Johnny’s fingers and lips had taken the longest to recover, for the tingling to stop.
Yuta’s lips feel like a livewire on Johnny’s.
It’s a kiss that starts out slow, slower than either of them are used to, but this is precious.
This kiss is 2 years of living together, and 6 of being friends.
This kiss tastes like Christmas morning.
It tastes like sunsets.
Johnny has his hand cradling Yuta’s head, just where the skull meets neck, and Yuta’s lips slide over his, smooth and agonisingly slow.
It registers briefly that they are making out on a sidewalk in Seoul with people walking past them at nearly 10 in the evening.
He doesn’t care.
When they pull apart, Johnny’s heart is a thunderstorm. Yuta knows now, and well, apparently so does Johnny. And they live together. Alone together.
“Now you know why I always let myself get looped into your ridiculous ideas,” Johnny chuckles. “That should have been obvious enough.”
“Actual adults have to communicate these things, Suh,” Yuta says, slapping Johnny on the shoulder before stepping back, and taking another step
Johnny wants to take Yuta’s smile, turn it into a quilt, and wrap himself in it.
“You’re right, I’m sorry, we already know I’m the dense one here,” he says.
“I mean I let you come with me to get my NIPPLE pierced, and I made you choose which one. That was like, a screaming billboard already,” Yuta says, his fingers slipping into Johnny’s easily, like they’ve been doing this this entire time.
Johnny snorts.
“Wait, was that meant to be romantic?”
Yuta throws him a dirty look. Johnny laughs, breathless and loud.
“How in the hell was that meant to be romantic?”
Yuta steadfastly ignores the question.
“Shut up already,” Yuta says, his cheeks stained pink. “Let’s go home.”
Johnny pulls his hand up to press his lips to the back of Yuta’s.
"Look, I thought it would be nice, something you chose for me, for a piercing I'd been thinking about for a while. I wanted it to be ink, but I feel like that was too big a step. Something a little too permanent, given how impermanent I thought we'd be if you found someone else to settle with."
That makes Johnny flush, makes him remember all the conversations he refused to have about doing just that, settling with someone that wasn't Yuta.
“Well I guess if that was meant to be romantic, then my reply was equally just as,” Johnny smiles. “No one gets an industrial on a whim.”
“Whipped for me already, Johnnyboy?” Yuta says, practically skipping home ahead of Johnny.
“Been whipped a while, Nakamoto,” Johnny throws back.
It’s worth it to see that smile. The sun should be so jealous, Johnny thinks.
🌝🌞
They grab takeout on their way home, and under the low light of the fluorescent in their kitchen, as they finish off their small meal, Johnny allows himself to watch Yuta in a manner that he hadn’t allowed himself to prior to the evening’s revelations.
He allows himself to stare, to let Yuta catch him staring. When Yuta asks him what he’s staring at, Johnny says, with voice full of wonder, “You’re really, really beautiful.”
Yuta flushes under his gaze.
“You’re really, really a sap.”
Johnny shrugs.
“Come here,” Yuta says.
Johnny goes, steps into Yuta’s embrace as he sits on the high stool by their breakfast island, something that isn’t entirely unfamiliar. He presses his chest against Yuta’s only to take a step back when Yuta hisses, teeth bared.
“Fuck, sorry, nipple,” Yuta says.
“You and your ridiculous ideas,” Johnny says, bringing his right hand up to cup Yuta’s jaw with it and angle his face upward.
“You love my ridiculous ideas, Suh,” Yuta fires back.
“Not the only thing I love,” Johnny whispers.
“I’m not a thing,” Yuta says, his back up straighter, his hands crumpling the hem of Johnny’s sweater.
Johnny kisses him.
This kiss is cliche, the kind you see in movies where the protagonists can’t keep their hands off of each other. This kiss is much more their speed: hungry, hurried and wet and with too much teeth and tongue to warrant actually falling under the category of kissing.
Johnny has Yuta’s jaw cradled in both hands now, angling his body down and keeping distance so as not to hurt him. Distantly he realises that perhaps them doing this right after getting new piercings isn’t ideal, but all Johnny can think of as Yuta’s tongue slides over his, is that under his thin white jersey, there is a rose gold barbell through Yuta’s nipple, and Johnny feels himself harden impossibly in his jeans.
Yuta breaks away from the kiss, breaths heavy, panting them out like he’s been running. He takes Johnny by the wrist wordlessly and takes him to the couch where Johnny’s laptop has been sitting all night. Yuta sets it aside gently on the coffee table, and makes Johnny recline on it, his long legs splayed open, hard-on visible through his jeans.
Johnny is shaking with anticipation, not knowing what Yuta’s next move is, until he settles in between his legs, his back to Johnny’s chest, and takes Johnny’s arms to wrap them around his small waist before he leans over and opens Johnny’s laptop to rest on his thighs.
“What are you doing?” Johnny asks, his voice a little strained from the fact that Yuta has his ass pressed firmly where his erection is, and Yuta’s making himself comfortable, even though Johnny knows that his best friend (boy? friend?) can feel it. “Are we not gonna--”
“Mind out of the gutter, Johnnyboy,” Yuta sing-songs, taking Johnny’s right hand and laying it on the track pad, his video editor open on screen.
Johnny is so, so horny right now, he can barely think, but instead Yuta wants him to do work?
“Look,” Yuta says, angling his head to face Johnny. “I am just as turned on as you are, but I want our first time to mean something--”
“I’m a little sad that you think it wouldn’t mean something tonight,” Johnny responds honestly, the tiniest bit hurt by this comment.
“Will you let me finish,” Yuta laughs, kissing Johnny’s jaw.
“For one thing, I really like having my nipples played with and I don’t want this,” Yuta says, gesturing to his chest. “To be a hindrance to my plan for you to make me come just by doing that.”
Johnny groans at the image of it, pressing his hips Yuta’s ass for some sort of purchase. Yuta laughs softly in his ear, and kisses Johnny’s cheek.
“And second of all,” Yuta continues. “I know this has been a long time coming, but I’d just like for us to do things slowly, if that’s okay?”
Johnny rests his forehead on Yuta’s shoulder, taking deep, calming breaths, because this is serious, and he doesn’t want Yuta thinking that he’s just in this for his (perfect, perky, absolutely delectable) ass.
“It’s okay,” Johnny says, tightening his hold on Yuta’s hips. “I get it. Even it already sort of feels like we’ve been dating this whole time, I get it.”
“You don’t think I’m being ridiculous? Or like we’re wasting time?” Yuta asks, fumbling with Johnny’s hand, something he’d always liked doing.
“There’s no time being wasted here,” Johnny says. “There’s still a lot about you I want to learn about.”
Yuta smiles to himself at this, and tips his head back to rest it on Johnny’s shoulder.
“So, I guess this means I can stop telling people we’re just friends now,” Johnny says, pressing his nose into Yuta’s soft hair, tickling his nape.
“About fucking time you did,” Yuta replies. “I’ve been waiting for a chance to call you something more than that for years now.”
“How long?” Johnny asks, taken aback, wondering exactly how dense he’s actually been.
“Third year, after Ten’s rager, when you carried me on piggyback for like, thirty minutes because you wanted me to sober up and it was the only thing I would agree to,” Yuta laughs. “Just a tiny bit, and then a little more every day after that.”
“What happened to ‘actual adults have to communicate these things, Suh’?” Johnny mimics, digging his fingers into Yuta’s ribs and making him giggle and wriggle away from Johnny’s grasp.
“You know I’m terrible at taking any of my own advice,” Yuta says, his laughter fading slowly as his breathing starts to steady.
Johnny runs his fingers through Yuta’s hair, strokes his pointer finger on the sun and moon dangling from Yuta’s right ear.
“I remember when I got you these,” Johnny says under his breath. “After waiting a month longer than usual to change them up because you had to take antibiotics for your stupid infected new piercings.”
Yuta grins sheepishly.
“They’re my favourite pair,” Yuta confesses. Johnny warms up all over, and he leans in to pull Yuta’s helix between his teeth, nipping at his ear affectionately.
“Down boy,” Yuta gasps. “I’m sensitive there, too.”
“Okay, okay, sorry,” Johnny laughs, cool breath ghosting over Yuta’s cheek.
There’s a stretch of silence that goes on, filled with their breathing and the ticking of the clock to fill the void.
“So, what do you say about getting matching tattoos?” Yuta chirps, just as Johnny starts dozing off.
Johnny sighs. Here it goes.