Chapter Text
Taeyong had about three more lines of code to type down when Doyoung, from the other side of the coffee table, chucked a pillow across the living room that hit Taeyong square on the side of the face. Doyoung had a pretty good arm for a web developer.
The pillow slid off the couch that Taeyong was lounging on, laptop on his stomach. He rolled his head to the side and saw his best friend slumped over the coffee table surface, legs stretched out underneath it. “Please,” he said, “hyung, I’m so hungry.”
“I told you to order food.”
“No, I wanna go out.”
“Then give me like,” Taeyong glanced at his invisible wrist watch, “five minutes.”
“Hyung, you said that five minutes ago. Let’s just take your laptop with us.” Doyoung also made sure to act like he was folding a laptop and slipping it into a bag, as if the impromptu charades would support his case.
Taeyong held up two fingers with one hand, while the other continued to type. “Okay, two minutes.”
“You’re impossible.”
A door opened from down the narrow corridor of the apartment, and soon a half-naked guy with copper-y brown bed hair was walking past them on his way to the kitchen. He paused by the doorway and rubbing his eyes before directing a sleep-clouded smile at two sets of curious eyes on him from the living room.
“Hey,” he croaked. “I was gonna make some coffee.” Yawn. “Do you want some?”
While it was eight in the evening and Taeyong thought coffee tasted like dirt, all he said was, “I’m good, thanks.”
“Me too,” Doyoung followed up, and Taeyong had to hide a smile behind his laptop screen when he noticed that Doyoung’s jacket was suddenly zipped all the way up to his chin.
You could hear his feet lightly tapping on the tiles as he disappeared into the kitchen and moved about. Doyoung took this time to crawl over to Taeyong, eyes still on the kitchen doorway as he asked, “that’s your new roommate?”
“Yep,” Taeyong answered, tapping much louder on his keyboard now, maybe in an attempt to make sure he doesn’t hear them. “Jung Jaehyun.”
Doyoung’s lips formed into a small O, nodding in the direction of the kitchen still. “When did he move in?”
Taeyong hit the back space key rather aggressively. “Uhm. Three days ago?”
“Do you know how old he is?”
“No?”
“Well, do you call him hyung?”
“No, I don’t call him anything. We don’t really talk that much.”
Jaehyun re-appeared from the kitchen sipping from a mug, offering them a curt smile before turning to the corridor. As if activated by the soft click of Jaehyun’s door closing, Doyoung finally looked at Taeyong as he concluded, “he’s hot,” which Taeyong layered over with his own agreement of “really fucking hot, yeah.”
--
It always just made sense to Taeyong to do what he was good at. The backend of websites was that for him. It was comforting to know that every error had a solution if you just looked further enough and tried. Everything had a process. And thinking outside of the box required minimal distance from the box because whatever you needed was just scattered somewhere around it, never far enough that you’d require a map to find your way back.
There were days when he would be wired in, just tapping away on his laptop, and the whole world around him would fade to white. Hours would pass and the only way he’d manage to separate himself from machines is whenever his stomach would grumble or his bladder was full.
This also meant that Taeyong slept anywhere that 1. Allowed his legs to stretch in full length and 2. Supported his head. And most of the time, he only needed the latter. Doyoung would find him under staircases, in the school library, backstage of the theater – they had a large bed there as a prop and the clinic smelled weird – just napping away like he was homeless. At least he was getting his tuition’s worth.
It had been exactly a six month gap between his last roommate and Jaehyun. In that time, Taeyong had gotten into the terrible habit of resting his eyes whenever he was about to shut down. That would quickly turn into an hour long power nap. He had a particularly good one in the kitchen dining table, eyelids fluttering, something calming and earthy filling his senses. It took his eyesight a couple of seconds to focus on a muted brown cup, some inches away from his face, steam rising from the top, a tea tag falling limply near the handle.
Taeyong pried the side of his face from the table, from jaw to temple like a piece of tape being peeled off. He used one hand to wipe the drool from the corner of his mouth, the other to re-adjust his glasses, staring at the mug of tea like it was an intruder. It didn’t take a scientist to make the connection between the magical brew that had appeared out of nowhere and the familiar soft click of a door in the corridor.
--
Jaehyun didn’t go to Taeyong’s school. In fact, upon being interviewed he was open about the fact that he dropped out of high school a little while back. The rest of the interview was fairly brief – Taeyong just tried his best not to stare. But Jaehyun had one of those faces, he reasoned with Doyoung later on.
Doyoung had asked what he meant by that and Taeyong couldn’t really put it into words without it sounding accusatory. Or predatory for that matter. But it was like Jaehyun had a face that was meant to be looked at. And Jaehyun didn’t seem to hate it? The few times they’d cross paths in the common areas of the apartment, Jaehyun would be in some variation of undress, greeting Taeyong’s non-staring with a hey or a good morning, which even at night, Taeyong didn’t dare correct him. He was so receptive to everything and so relaxed, and his voice was smooth with just the right scratch, like satin on sand paper. Some days Taeyong would hear him hum something in the kitchen as he made his coffee and he’d smile at his laptop screen before he could catch himself.
What caught Taeyong’s attention when they did the interview was when Jaehyun said that he kept to himself a lot. “I work from home,” he’d said, elbows propped on his knees, palms pressed together. He had terrible posture. “And even when I’m not working, I go out. When I’m home, I just stay in my room. I won’t get in your way.”
He was true to his word. In the week that they’d lived together, they barely spoke. But he’d always make his presence known somehow, in the edges of Taeyong’s naps around the apartment. It would be in the form of the TV being turned off when he didn’t remember doing so before falling asleep, or a blanket covering him when he’d wake up, his laptop being shut closed and resting on the coffee table.
In return, Taeyong didn’t talk to him. That was fair.
“How is that fair?” Doyoung asked, sat opposite him in the library. He also handed Taeyong a tissue and pointed at his own right cheek, signaling for Taeyong to clean himself up. When Taeyong did, he was surprised to find the tissue with spots of brown. He did just have a chocolate croissant that he inhaled without a second thought.
Taeyong pocketed the tissue when he was done, thinking that he should remember throw that out later. “Coz of the curse.”
“The what?”
“You know?” Taeyong pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Like with my other roommates? How I would start dating them and then it would get weird?”
“That happened once,” Doyoung responded flatly.
“It happened with Yukhei, too.”
“Who?”
“Yukhei? My roommate before the last one.” Taeyong continued when Doyoung just stared at him blindly. “The tall soccer player with the eyes?” Taeyong widened his eyes to demonstrate.
It seemed to have helped since Doyoung looked like he was hit with the realization of who that was. “The Chinese guy that didn’t speak a lick of Korean.”
“Yeah.”
“What did you guys even talk about?”
“Not much,” Taeyong winked and immediately regretted it.
After Doyoung had recovered from his disgust, he offered that Jaehyun was a separate human being from both of his previous roommates. “And he speaks excellent Korean.”
Taeyong waved his hand, then held up three fingers. “All bad things come in threes. Besides, I can’t afford to lose another roommate. You know how hard it is to find one in the city?”
“I actually don’t.” Doyoung supplied unhelpfully. “Dorm life is pretty comfortable. And that’s still an option for you, you know.”
“I don’t wanna live in a dorm.” Taeyong made a face. “With curfews and shared bathrooms,” he shuddered. “The horror.”
“Whatever, man. I have class.” Doyoung gathered his things and stuffed them into his bag. “Have fun not fucking your extremely attractive roommate.”
While getting back to his laptop, Taeyong added, “Have fun smelling someone else’s shit while you shower.”
--
Taeyong was nodding off, head bouncing back and forth as he fought off sleep one Sunday night, shoulders slumping, sinking into his chair, when he heard a knock on his bedroom door. He was uncertain as to whether he had dreamt it – that had happened a couple of times before – or if it was something that was actually happening. So he stayed in his spot, finger pads resting on his keyboard as he stared at the potted plants in his room, waiting. When the second knock came and confirmed that that was in fact not just in his head, he stood up and grabbed a shirt, managing to get half of it on as he opened the door.
Jaehyun was leaning against the frame, straightening up when Taeyong appeared, working his right arm into his shirt and tugging the hem down to cover the rest of his torso.
“Uhm,” Jaehyun started, sounding a little unsure. “Sorry, are you busy?”
Taeyong looked back at his laptop then at Jaehyun. “A little.”
“Oh,” Jaehyun’s smile widened and it looked to be out of embarrassment. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“No,” Taeyong interjected, stepping out of his room and closing the door behind him. “It’s fine. I was just taking a break. What’s up?”
“I, uhm, ran into an issue with my computer. Would you mind taking a look?”
Jaehyun, as per usual, didn’t bother with a shirt. He wore basketball shorts that were hanging on for dear life at the widest part of his hips and Taeyong needed to tear his gaze away before he started writing sonnets in his head about the V lines at the base of his stomach and the strip of hair at the center just peeking from the garter like hi, we’re down here.
It was the first time that he’d ever been in Jaehyun’s room since he’d moved in. Jaehyun had updated the location of the furniture, bed on the side of the wall next to the door, humidifier next to the closet, which came with the place, and he left the entire wall where the window was pretty much blank save for his desktop, which was a pretty decent set up. But what made it unrecognizable was the added décor, like the record player to the right and the bookshelves that were stacked with picture frames and random photos. The bottom shelf was lined with vinyl records that looked like a fan when it was folded, flecks of color showing, depending on what angle you were observing them from. The room had suddenly come to life and it was a struggle to keep your eye on just one thing.
Jaehyun pulled the seat out for Taeyong when they reached his computer, the gesture so small but enough to make Taeyong smile and thank him. Jaehyun seemed equally awkward in this setting, which put Taeyong at ease. It waved off some of the mystery around his roommate that he couldn’t shake off on his own. He stood next to Taeyong, promptly responding to any of his questions, hands remaining in his pockets when he wasn’t gesturing or pointing at anything, the weight of his fists in the slits causing the band of his shorts to ride down ever so slightly.
Taeyong actively shoved that thought aside as he rebooted the computer.
After some clicking around here and there, and Jaehyun trying his best to make sense of the errors he was experiencing, Taeyong had arrived at the conclusion that it was something to do with the last update he had installed.
“I could try to configure this for you, reset it back to before you updated,” Taeyong shook his fringe out of his eyes – it was getting too long – and re-adjusted his glasses. “And then just block the auto-update?”
Jaehyun pushed his lips to the side as he tried to understand. “But you don’t need to erase anything, right?”
“No.”
Jaehyun breathed a sigh of relief, one hand to his chest. “Holy fuck, that’s great.”
His excitement didn’t go unnoticed. In fact, it rubbed off on Taeyong too, who had spun back around to face the computer and get to work.
Jaehyun, unsure if that was his cue to leave, stood there for a few more minutes before walking backwards and disappearing from sight. Taeyong didn’t mean to be dismissive, but it did help that he wasn’t in the room. It was easier to breathe somehow.
He didn’t realize how long he’d been at it until he glanced at the clock. When he locked the computer and got out of the seat, he nearly jumped out of his skin when he found Jaehyun on his bed, right behind him, lying on his stomach, scrolling through his phone with earphones on.
Jaehyun simply looked up, realizing what had caused the look of shock on Taeyong’s face and smiling apologetically. “I thought you knew I was here.”
Taeyong was clutching onto his own chest, evening out his breathing. “Yeah, no. I didn’t? I should have. It’s just, it’s like I have horse blinders on when I’m wired in.”
“Wired in?” Jaehyun crawled out of bed slowly and adjusted the band of his shorts and Taeyong thought he’d burst into flames right then and there.
“Yeah, like, uh,” he pointed at Jaehyun’s computer. “Like when you’re really in the zone.”
“Ah,” Jaehyun said quietly. “I guess I can relate to that.”
Taeyong heard himself laugh, but it was clipped and odd and unlike any laugh that had ever come out of him. Doyoung would have shot him a WTF look if he were present. He loved his best friend but thank fucking God he wasn’t around.
“Anyway,” Taeyong jokingly patted the seat down and mirrored pocketing his hands in his jogger pants, shifting his weight around both his feet.
It was hard to tell which smile of Jaehyun’s was the most genuine because he did it all the time. That was it, he supposed. That was what he was trying to get at when he said that Jaehyun had one of those faces. He had a face that looked like it was built for a smiles, the way that certain combinations of food just felt right together. If Jaehyun wasn’t smiling with his lips and his dimples on full display, his eyes maintained equal amounts of mirth. And he looked back at you with no shyness or judgement – at most curiosity.
“Are you hungry?” He asked just as Taeyong was about to exit the room.
“Huh?”
Jaehyun rubbed his own tummy, bringing attention to it. Taeyong clenched his teeth and directed his gaze back up at Jaehyun’s face. “Hungry? Uhm. No. I mean, yes.”
This time when Jaehyun smiled, his teeth were showing, the tip of his tongue connecting with the point of his left canine. “I was gonna order dinner. Do you wanna join me?”
Taeyong of course said yes even when he was supposed to say no. But it wasn’t like that. Taeyong figured that since they were living together – and Taeyong had no plans of finding another roommate any time soon – that they might as well get to know each other? It wasn’t un-roommate-like to sit down and have take-out. For dinner. In Jaehyun’s room. On the floor with his foldable table.
While Jaehyun played one of his favorite tracks called K by Cigarettes After Sex.
And a few lit candles around them and between them. Lightbulbs hurt Jaehyun’s eyes, he said. And it made the food look unappetizing after a while.
Jaehyun preferred to eat with his hands. He picked up a lot of the side dishes with just his fingers and dropped them into his mouth, only ever using his spoon for rice or anything with soup in it, then his chopsticks for noodles. It was endearing. He thought everything was delicious and the best thing ever, that Taeyong should try this with this and don’t forget the sauce. The sauce is what makes it.
Taeyong did as he asked and while some of the combinations weren’t to his liking, Jaehyun’s pleased and accomplished little smile was. Jaehyun also opened up a bottle of wine that he’d been saving in the mini refrigerator in his room. He hid the wide behind his skin care products that needed to be stored in a cool place, taking them out and back in again after retrieving the bottle. He unstacked a couple of plastic glasses from the takeout plastic bag and poured them both a glass.
A few cursory cheers and sips of wine later, Taeyong noticed that Jaehyun had the kind of stare that you could feel on you. Even as Taeyong looked away, to study the height of the ceiling, the throw pillows on his bed, how the candle light made shadows dance along the walls, Jaehyun’s eyes were heavy on his neck, his hands, and when Taeyong looked back at him and smiled, his lips.
“I like what you’ve done with--” Taeyong used his wine-wielding hand to gesture about the room. “With the place. Really cozy.”
Jaehyun’s legs were stretched out as he leaned back on his palms. If he pointed his toes further, he’d be able to touch Taeyong’s knee from where he had them folded in an Indian seat.
“I think so too,” Jaehyun agreed, still looking at Taeyong. “I wanted to make it look inviting.”
Taeyong nodded, heart rate speeding up. It must have been the wine. “Good job.”
Jaehyun smiled. “Thanks.”
“Have you been settling in okay? Meeting people?”
“Yeah, it’s a nice place.” Jaehyun made his hand go in a circle as he added, “lots of bars around.”
Taeyong jabbed his thumb in the general direction behind him. “The strip outside is filled with them, yeah.”
“Do you like it here?” Jaehyun asked, pushing himself up from his palms, spine curving, skin on his tummy folding into small bumps at the new position.
“Yeah,” Taeyong answered simply. “Is that weird?”
“Not weird, just…” Jaehyun swished the wine around at the bottom of his plastic glass before taking another sip. “You just don’t seem like the type that would enjoy it here.”
“Well, wh, wh,” Taeyong’s tongue felt like it had doubled in size inside his mouth. This usually happened to him when the alcohol had reached his head. That and his gums would go numb. Jaehyun might have guessed as much, finding his little speech hiccup amusing enough to mimic. Taeyong tried again. “Where do you think I’d… enjoy… it?” Although it was too late to correct his sentence, Taeyong still tried to re-think it. It was what he meant to ask but why did it sound wrong?
Jaehyun understood his drunken question though, humming as he thought about his answer. “Probably… somewhere more quiet? Like a farm?”
“A farm?”
“Maybe not a farm, but like,” Jaehyun backpedaled, and Taeyong noticed how he had this mannerism of shaking his head a little? But it wasn’t a full shake, it was like those bobble headed animals posted on the dashboard of cars, but with half the enthusiasm. “Maybe like not the in the heart of the city.”
“Ah,” Taeyong sat up too, his knee now fully pressed up against the upper half of Jaehyun’s foot. “The internet here is better.”
“The internet here is better,” Jaehyun repeated. He did that a lot too, just repeating what Taeyong would say either to affirm him or make sure he heard him right. Taeyong didn’t understand why he liked it so much.
And once they’d stopped laughing and the record player had paused because the entire album was done, Taeyong wanted nothing more than to kiss him. But there were too many obstacles. The literal ones were the table, the food, and his own clumsiness. There was no way he was going to make it to Jaehyun with the kind of grace he had pictured in his mind. The mental obstacle was just a tiny voice in his head telling him that it was a bad idea. You can’t fuck this up again. This is going so well? You have a person to live with that you can mildly be attracted to but at the same time, none of the complications. You don’t have to try to fuck every single guy that walks into your apartment. Are you an animal?
Jaehyun cleared his throat after downing the rest of his wine from the glass. He failed at his initial attempt of perching it on the corner of the table, the plastic cup just toppling over, which they both found to be the pinnacle of comedy for some fucking reason. Jaehyun caught the cup and just stuffed it in the takeout bag.
“I’m glad…” Jaehyun said, and by the way he ended it, Taeyong wasn’t sure if there was more at the end of his sentence. He was glad? He nipped at the edge of his plastic glass, watching Jaehyun’s profile, the warm glow of his skin. “I’m glad you decided to stay here.”
The traffic light in Taeyong’s head was flashing red the same time heat crashed over him like a tidal wave. He stood up, much too quickly, but fought for balance with his arms out. Jaehyun did the same, looking at little confused.
“I’m gonna, I have to,” Taeyong kept pointing at what he thought was the direction of his room. It was close enough. “I just remembered that I have this thing.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, it’s like,” Taeyong made some vague hand gestures. “It’s like for school. And stuff.”
“Okay, uhm.” He looked down at the pile of food containers and the basket that it came in. But Jaehyun stopped him when he tried to bend over to clean up. “I’ll take care of it.”
--
And maybe it was all in Taeyong’s head, but after that things still got weird?
No more blankets covering him up when he woke up, no more tea when he napped in the kitchen, and he saw Jaehyun less and less. Their already minimal interactions had been reduced even further to the simplest of clipped smiles, just to acknowledge the other as a breathing and living thing in the same space.
He’d kept himself busy throughout and it wasn’t hard to do so what with him being in a time crunch as his finals was fast approaching. The problem was that he was so fucking efficient. And when he rewarded himself with little breaks in between, those spaces had suddenly been taken over by the memory of their dinner. He’d replay every single word he had said, thinking what he could have done differently. If anything had interrupted the state of comfort they had settled into, it must have been tucked somewhere in that night. Taeyong just couldn’t find the right wire that traced to the source. He was never good at that stuff to begin with. Mistakes in real life couldn’t be re-configured or fixed with a re-format, unfortunately.
Perhaps he just needed a different approach. So one morning, he walked into the apartment with plastic bags hanging off his arms and his hands, cellphone clipped between his lips. That morning, Taeyong cooked the same traditional Korean breakfast that his dad used to make for his mom during her birthday. As a kid, he’d watched his father, every year, get up at six in the morning and slave away in the kitchen. When Taeyong was old enough to be in there, he would memorize the process which was simple if not laborious. He even made the same mistakes his dad would make which was kind of weird.
In any case, seeing the kitchen table set and filled from all sides was gratifying. He was hopeful that Jaehyun would wake from the sounds or even the smell of the food cooking. By the time Taeyong was done and he hadn’t heard a peep from his roommate, he stood outside his door for maybe ten minutes, just pacing back and forth. The thing was what if he was sleeping? Taeyong wasn’t sure what he did. He didn’t know much about Jaehyun at all.
Fuck. He should have probably asked if he was allergic to anything before preparing the meal. Or no, should be fine. There wasn’t anything that he had prepared that morning that they didn’t have for dinner that night. Okay. So. Just fucking knock? Just say, good morning. I made food? I know you like food. Would you like food?
No, don’t say that.
Taeyong dragged himself to the living room, landing on the couch like a sack of flour. Or a sack of shit. He felt like a sack of shit. He took his laptop from the coffee table and pushed the screen up, thinking that he could just wait until Jaehyun naturally walked out of his room. And then he could do this thing where he pretended that he just was casually in the mood to make a meal. Or a feast. For just the two of them. For no reason whatsoever. It was a solid plan.
If only he didn’t end up falling asleep on the couch for the next six hours.
Taeyong didn’t sleep cutely either. Doyoung said that when he slept, everything about his face opened up, which made him sound like those aliens in Blade. “Close,” Doyoung replied. Because Taeyong slept with his nape bent in a weird way, mouth fully open, eyes not totally shut, fringe nowhere to be found, and nose oily. At least he was quiet.
And it always took him a few minutes to be all there as soon as he woke up. He’d look around, smack his lips like an old person with no dentures in, looking around with half-lidded eyes, not really seeing anything. Then he’d slip his glasses back on and try to regain focus. That day in particular, his senses came back to him much sooner when his eyes landed on what little he could see of the kitchen table from where he was sitting.
He made a beeline for the kitchen, raking his hair back, not knowing what to make of the fact that it was all cleaned up, dishes on the rack. Pitifully, he made his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth, only noticing the sticky note on his chest minutes later, as reflected through the bathroom mirror.
Thank you. I’ll eat this well~
--
Doyoung 1:01 AM
Hyung
Hyung
Hyung
Are you up?
Taeyong 1:02 AM
Jesus, what
Doyoung 1:02 AM
Click here
Taeyong 1:03 AM
What is that
Doyoung 1:03 AM
Just click it
Taeyong 1:04 AM
Doyoung wtf why am I on a porn site
Can you stop sending me weird Japanese anime
It creeps me out
Doyoung 1:04 AM
THIS ISNT THAT
Did you click?
Taeyong 1:06 AM
I did yeah. Still loading
Doyoung 1:08 AM
Still loading?
Doyoung 1:10 AM
HYUNG
HYUNG
Doyoung 1:15 AM
LEE TAEYONG
ARE YOU SEEING THIS
IS THIS HIM?
--
The first night Taeyong saw it, he shut his phone off and threw it under his bed.
It was an overreaction. But it was his second best option to screaming at the top of his lungs. Taeyong was faced with the timeless question: How does one act normally upon the discovery that their very attractive roommate jerks off on camera for living?
It was like re-watching reruns of your favorite show and catching all the foreshadowing; the fact that Jaehyun’s computer and therefore his camera was by the window that provided optimum lighting, that it was directly facing the bed, that Jaehyun was never too self-conscious about being clothed – was he trying to hide it? Taeyong never asked directly. It wasn’t like he lied. He was technically working from home.
Solution: just don’t watch it. Don’t watch his shit. Don’t be weird. Don’t stare at him extra long like he’s some science project in a fair.
Taeyong deduced that he could do all of these.
Which was why in the following days he succeeded…
In failing at every single one of those steps because he was who he was. It started with the staring, which he had already been guilty of, but lately Jaehyun would catch him more often. And he didn’t reprimand Taeyong or say anything back, instead proceeding to do what he usually did, whether it was making his coffee or just watching something on TV as they sat on the couch together.
Of course he was fine with it. He was probably used to the attention? What with the viewers he had amassed over the course of his profession.
“Taeyong?”
“Doyoung sent it!”
“What?”
Both boys just sort of sat there, blinking at each other. It took Taeyong a few beats to realize it was his turn to speak. Good thing he had the gift of gab.
“Hm?”
Jaehyun let it go, thankfully, opting to point at the TV and repeat whatever he was saying earlier. “I said I was going to turn in. Should I leave this on?”
“Yeah,” Taeyong answered. Was it took quick? Did he sound okay?
Jaehyun put the remote down on the coffee table, closer to Taeyong’s side, before he got up and headed for his room. Taeyong checked the clock, noting that it was still pretty early. He managed to stay on that couch, leg bouncing as he let the TV play in the background, typing a line of code in his laptop that he wasn’t even sure was meant to be in there.
It was when he heard the muffled music playing from Jaehyun’s room that Taeyong calmly switched the TV off and took his laptop with him to his room, double checking that his door was locked on his way in. He let his laptop rest on his bed, running his hands through his hair, slightly annoyed by the length of it. He should schedule a haircut soon. Yeah. He should go to bed. Get an early start tomorrow. Maybe he could even go to school a little earlier and get some work done there.
Or.
He could get in bed, under the covers, type in the website from Doyoung’s link, search for Jaehyun’s name…
It was difficult to hear Jaehyun without earphones on. Taeyong reached for his pair that were in his bedside drawer, sticking the jack in and turning the volume up.
Jaehyun was just getting started, shirt off and smiling at the comment section. He was in the middle of answering a question about music. Someone must have asked about what he kept playing all the time. Taeyong watched Jaehyun lean back in his chair, in the dim, warm light of the candles in his room, mixed with the light coming off of his dual screens.
“I think I just like music that is about love but…” Jaehyun turned his chair side to side as he formed thoughts in his head, nibbling on his bottom lip. Taeyong recognized the habit. It made him pinch his own bottom lip as he listened. “…but it’s also a bit dirty?”
Taeyong smiled at that, eyes trailing down to the comment section to watch it go crazy with lustful comments and the occasional “you’re like my soulmate.”
“I also have a roommate now? Since I moved?” Taeyong watched as Jaehyun pointed in the direction of his room. “So it just helps, uhm,” Jaehyun grinned, “with the noise.”
Jaehyun drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair, looking through the chat. “No, I don’t think he does.”
Taeyong’s brows furrowed as he scrolled through the chat to see what the question was. But before he could search for the comment, Jaehyun was suddenly leaning on the desk, face closer to the camera and the monitor, causing Taeyong to shrink back.
“I didn’t really tell him what I do. But that’s just because I don’t know if he’d be okay with it? Like we all know how my last roommate reacted, so…” Jaehyun shrugged.
Taeyong tilted his head to the side at that, wondering how long Jaehyun had been doing this. It felt weirdly natural, like he’d built friendships with these people or at least created a narrative that his followers were viewing like any other online personality. How interesting.
Jaehyun squinted at another comment in the chat, the tips of his ears going red as he read it out loud, smile on his lips. “Is your roommate cute?” And without missing a beat, on his way to leaning back in his chair, he nodded. “He’s very pretty. Like… delicate?”
Delicate?
“Yeah, like, maybe that wasn’t the right word. But he is beautiful. And he does this thing a lot…” Jaehyun used his index finger to push phantom glasses up his nose, smiling widely as he explained further: “He wears these huge, like, black-framed glasses? They don’t fit him well so they always slide down his nose.”
Taeyong’s hand froze as he tried to push his glasses up his nose, blinking at the screen, mouth dry.
“Buy him…” Jaehyun was reading from the screen again, “new glasses. I’d love to. I will if he decides to spend more time with me.”
Taeyong pouted at that statement, once again thinking back on their weeks together, a little paranoid now that he’d said something out of turn.
“Jaehyun has a crush,” Jaehyun used his finger, touching the monitor where he had read the comment, laughing with his mouth open. “A little bit, yeah.”
Taeyong shut his laptop then, right as he saw Jaehyun’s hand reach down to his shorts. He hid his face in his palms, trying to breathe evenly, and no matter how much he tried, the walls seemed to thin out between them. It was faint, but he could hear the music, that he now knew was more for his benefit. But now it was all he could think about. All of those records lined up, Jaehyun crouching by the shelves to select an album that he was in the mood for, his shorts riding low around his hips, his smile as he said a little bit, yeah.
--
“Just, okay,” Doyoung took a deep breath, forehead in his palm, his other hand bouncing on the surface of the table between them as he reiterated everything that Taeyong just told him to the best of his abilities. “If I’m understanding you right, you’re saying that your problem is that you have a hot roommate that’s clearly down to fuck you. And you don’t want to but you also want to?”
Taeyong stopped typing on his laptop to glare at Doyoung. “You’re simplifying to the point where I look like I’m being unreasonable.”
“You’re overcomplicating it because you are unreasonable.”
Taeyong rolled his eyes, pushing his glasses up his nose before bringing his attention back to his screen. Although he isn’t all there, most of his attention centered on his memory of the night prior. “There are no easy solutions to any of this.”
“Okay,” Doyoung sat up and extended his index finger. “Solution number one. Sleep with him.”
“We live together. That won’t end well.”
“How?”
“Last I checked, Doyoung, feelings are still a real thing. And they muddy everything up.”
Doyoung sighed, extending a second finger. “Fine. Sleep with him and then date him.”
“No, it’s all backwards now. It’s supposed to go dating, sex, and then maybe living together.”
“Oh. My. God.”
“There is a process to these things,” Taeyong explained matter-of-factly. “I don’t make up the rules.”
“Funny, because it sounds pretty made up.” Doyoung stuck his tongue out when Taeyong shot him a look. “You’re going off of assumptions. There is no scientific or logical basis to any of this.”
“Tell that to my two ex-roommates who fucked off the moment we had sex.”
“Okay, say you’re right.” Doyoung pulled Taeyong’s laptop just out of reach so that the other would look up at him. “For argument’s sake, let’s say that there is some sense to what you’re saying. You would still rather not date this guy – that you yourself have admitted to being attracted to – on the basis that two of your ex-roommates that you had weird sex with, didn’t work out.”
Taeyong opened his mouth to say something, a rebuttal that never saw the light of day. He didn’t know how to phrase it right. He didn’t know if it was stupid or if it was worth mentioning. Maybe he’d be able to decide if he tried saying it out loud. “There’s also… the other thing.”
“What’s the other thing?”
“He… the cam thing.”
Doyoung’s expression melted to one of disappointment in a matter of seconds. Taeyong wanted to laugh but understood well enough that it wasn’t the time nor the place. A smile did escape him though. “Lee Taeyong, are you slut-shaming him right now?”
“Okay, woah,” Taeyong raised his hands as if to physically block the very idea of Doyoung’s words. “It’s not slut-shaming. I don’t think I’m out of line here to think that… that stuff is a little out there.”
“That. Stuff?”
“Fuck off, Doyoung.”
“No, you fuck off.” Doyoung darted a finger at him.
“Okay, imagine that Jaehyun was into you—“
“I love it already.”
Taeyong pressed his finger to his own lips and started again. “Imagine that he was into you. But he also does this for a living. He treats his entire audience to sneak peeks of your relationship and your sex life and then pleasures himself for them, for money. That doesn’t bother you? Even a little bit?”
“Taeyong, here’s the problem,” Doyoung started, pointing at himself then at Taeyong, “this isn’t a conversation that we should be having. This is a conversation that you should be having with him, when the time comes. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Taeyong looked at his laptop then at Doyoung. He couldn’t believe that his best friend was actually making more sense. “I’m overthinking it.”
“You are,” Doyoung agreed. “Right now, you only need to answer one question. Do you like this guy?”
Taeyong half-shrugged, looking off to the side. “He’s not gross.”
Doyoung stifled a laugh. “So that’s a resounding yes.” He slid Taeyong’s laptop back over to him. “Just talk to him. And get a fucking haircut.”
--
Taeyong didn’t really know how Jaehyun did it.
All he knew was that he was standing outside Jaehyun’s door, stalling because it was what he did best. And Jaehyun opened the door, a small smile appearing on his lips when he saw Taeyong there, hands behind his back, sandwiched between his butt and the corridor wall. They’d exchanged pleasantries, what did you do today? School, the usual. What about you? Oh, you know.
How that turned into them getting tipsy and Taeyong sitting in one of the kitchen stools while Jaehyun wrapped a towel around Taeyong’s shoulders to act as a hairdressing cape would remain a mystery. Jaehyun had assured him time and time again that he had done this before, on others and himself. It wasn’t that hard to do a trim. As long as Taeyong sat still.
“I have a mirror in my room—“ Taeyong said, turning his head around, so Jaehyun grabbed Taeyong’s chin and turned his head back around, sit still, I said.
“You’ll get controlling with a mirror there,” Jaehyun said, along with the sound of snipping. One of Taeyong’s eyes was screwed shut, hands balled into fists on his lap. “Just… trust… me….”
Jaehyun’s hand on his scalp somehow eased the tension, Taeyong’s shoulders dropping ever so slightly at the warmth. “Why do you cut your own hair?”
“Because I can.”
Taeyong smiled at that. “You just do what you want?”
“Pretty much.”
Jaehyun moved to the hair on the side of Taeyong’s face, clipping strands between his fingers like they did at the salon and point cutting. He gasped in an exaggerated way and Taeyong completely fell for it, asking what what in a panicked tone. Jaehyun sucked in a breath through his teeth, saying, “I can’t believe how good I am at this.” Taeyong wanted to hit him.
Well.
Taeyong wanted to kiss him.
But whatever.
It was quiet for a few minutes with the exception of the sheers cutting away and Jaehyun’s house slippers as he circled Taeyong slowly, finally making his way to the front where he portioned parts of his fringe and continued to point cut. Taeyong discovered that when Jaehyun focused on something, his lips were slightly parted.
“What do you do…” Jaehyun started to ask, his face inches from Taeyong’s, his hand between their faces to hold the hair there in place while he snipped the ends, “when you’re on your laptop.”
Taeyong licked his lips when he saw Jaehyun lick his own. “I, uh, am working on this thing for my finals.”
“Right,” Jaehyun responded, moving onto another section of hair. “What thing?”
“It’s a website where…” Taeyong needed a second to remember what they were talking about. Jaehyun’s voice was softer than usual and it made thinking much harder. “It’s like for board games? You find… people to play with online.”
“What kinds of games?”
“Just simple ones. Snakes and ladders. Boggle. Chess.”
“I’m pretty good at chess,” Jaehyun admitted with a gentle tone of pride.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jaehyun nodded, shaking Taeyong’s fringe with his fingers so the loose hair would fall off, crouching just enough that they were at eye level and he could check the length. “We should play.”
Jaehyun bit his bottom lip, and it sent Taeyong back to that night when Jaehyun did that on his screen. He nodded dumbly, watched as his response yielded a smile from Jaehyun, a little disappointed when he backed away, more disappointed in himself for not trying to kiss him then.
“My laptop is charging in my room,” Taeyong explained after they’d finished cleaning up in the kitchen.
Jaehyun shrugged. “Send me the link.”
And Taeyong did just that, already pretty confident that the test site would run smoothly when Jaehyun signed in. He joined with his camera on, the little screen next to the chess board. “I can’t see you.”
Taeyong allowed access to his own webcam, and soon both their cam screens were showing on either side of the chess board.
“This is pretty cool,” Jaehyun offered truthfully, moving a pawn forward. “Smooth.”
“Thank you.” Then he thought to add, “Doyoung, my friend that you met? He designed the interface.”
Jaehyun nodded, testing the filters that you could use on your camera without Taeyong introducing the feature yet. “This is so extra.”
“I thought it was a nice touch,” Taeyong defended with little to no commitment, just enjoying the faces Jaehyun was making. He went through the lineup of filters until it was back to just his face, still smiling by the time it was done.
“Hey.” Jaehyun was the first to break the seconds of silence.
“Hey?” Taeyong said with a puzzled smile.
“I’ve made my move,” Jaehyun explained, in reference to the chess game. “It’s your turn.”
“I guess it is.”
It could have been the alcohol. It could have been the confidence of his new haircut. Whatever it was, he was grateful to have had it riding his back long enough to walk the distance between his seat and Jaehyun’s chair, straddle his lap, and press his lips to his. The initial kiss was a little embarrassing since Taeyong couldn’t sit quite right on Jaehyun’s lap, and Jaehyun had to hold him more to keep him on than to deepen the kiss. While Taeyong’s cheeks were burning, Jaehyun adjusted how he was sitting, pulling Taeyong closer so that he could sit comfortably, and one hand sliding up Taeyong’s side to cup his face and kiss him again.
The second time, for some reason, Taeyong couldn’t stop smiling? And it made for a pretty weird kiss that didn’t feel even remotely sexy. That all changed by the third try, when Jaehyun’s hands wrapped around Taeyong’s waist with ease, directing them to where he could feel Jaehyun press up under his ass, moan muffled by the other’s mouth.
--
Taeyong Roommate 2:21 PM
I wanted to tell you something earlier today
Jaehyunnie 2:21 PM
What?
Taeyong Roommate 2:22 PM
I know
Jaehyunnie 2:24 PM
You know?
Taeyong Roommate 2:24 PM
Yeah
And it’s okay.
Jaehyunnie 2:25 PM
What do you know?
Taeyong Roommate 2:25 PM
We can talk more later. I have to get to class~
Jaehyunnie 2:26 PM
Okay~ What do you want for dinner?
Taeyong Roommate 2:28 PM
I was thinking we could go out and talk. And you could get me those new glasses.