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Chapter Text

If you asked Matthew, he would tell you that his university experience was going pretty well so far.

He pays attention during lectures and studies well for exams, is will liked amongst his professors and peers, hangs out with his friends whenever he’s not working shifts at his part-time job at the local cafe, and contemplates pouring bleach into his eyes every time he arrives back at his shared apartment to see his roommate making out with his boyfriend on the couch.

Which is quite the norm these days, considering that Sung Hanbin and Zhang Hao are just as addicted to each other as Park Hanbin is to gaining the affections of Kim Taerae. 

Matthew doesn’t have an issue with his roommate’s relationship, per se, but he does feel like Hanbin should draw some lines when it comes to despoiling shared spaces and public furniture. He will never forget the one time he kicked open the door after a long afternoon of three-hour lectures to see his roommate’s long fingers inlaced into Zhang Hao’s cropped red hair as he straddled the older man down onto the living room couch, ferociously absorbed in a heated liplock as their bare skin pressed against the blue cushions. Matthew would sell his (very rare) signed Sam Kim album in a heartbeat to completely erase that specific memory from his mind.

He had also promptly slept on an inflatable mattress in Ricky and Gyuvin’s dorm room for the proceeding 2 days after, both too scandalized and disturbed to face the two older boys until Zhang Hao had kidnapped him after a lecture in the middle of the third day and apologized to him for his and Hanbin’s irresponsibility. Matthew had only accepted his apology after the older man had promised to sanitize the entire couch three times over and swore to only have sex in Hanbin’s room if they absolutely had to do it in their apartment, because, well, he’s not that evil. He knows that his hyungs love each other very much, and is more than happy that he no longer has to listen to his favorite hyung wax poetic about the handsome man who plays as first chair in the university orchestra, but there are just some things that he has to put his foot down on. 

Mainly, white-stained couches and the suffocating smell of sex.

Anyways, as Matthew was saying, his university experience was going pretty well to his standards. 

After graduating from a public high school in Canada with a 4.0 GPA and a dream, Matthew had received an acceptance email for a scholarship he’d applied for back during the start of his senior year just a week after graduation. He’d been absolutely overjoyed, immediately calling up his friends and classmates to tell them about the wonderful news, although not every one of them had matched his level of enthusiasm.

The catch?

The university was located halfway around the globe in South Korea. 

His parents had called it irresponsible, his peers had called it impulsive, but Matthew didn’t care, as the only thing he knew was that he wanted to move and study in Korea to chase his lifelong dream of becoming a music producer. He had always been quite a straightforward person, even as a young boy where his bluntness would sometimes get him into trouble with his teachers in elementary school, although the initial no-filter type of personality had eventually morphed into a straightforward sort of ambition later in his schooling years. In other words, Matthew knew what he wanted, and would let absolutely nothing get in the way of achieving a goal when he already had his mind set on it.

And, also with the fact that his sister had been absolutely ecstatic when she heard that he’d be moving to join her in South Korea. She’d quite literally almost blown his eardrums out by screaming through the phone speaker about how much she loved him and about how my baby brother is finally going to experience the world! Matthew had promptly flushed a pale shade of pink and hung up the phone on her after she’d started to go off on a rant about how Matthew might finally be able to find a boyfriend or girlfriend about seven minutes in, but not without confirming that she’d, indeed, still pick him up from the airport when he arrived. 

So off Matthew had went, boarding an international flight with three large suitcases and a half-decent fluency in the Korean language, ready to start a new life in a foreign university far away from home at the (international) age of eighteen. The nerves had been overwhelming, and he’d caught a case of the intrusive regrets mid flight when his anxiety had started acting up and he started wondering if it was all a horrible idea and if he’d just been better off going to a college back in his home country, but as soon as he’d stepped off the plane and caught a glance at his new home from the passenger seat of his sister’s car, Matthew immediately just knew that he’d made the right decision. 

Soon after arriving, he had quickly settled into a comfortable university life after a sophomore named Sung Hanbin (who also happened to be his roommate) had quickly taken him under his wing and officially made him his best friend in only a span of a couple weeks, who had also introduced the younger boy to the majority of his friend group. There he’d met Zhang Hao, Hanbin’s quiet but charming boyfriend who also happened to play first chair in the university orchestra, Kim Taerae, a boy in the same year as him with the dreamiest dimples and a PUBG addiction, a couple other members of Hanbin’s dance team, and two years later, a pair of 04s named Gyuvin and Ricky who argued like a pair of frenemies but were always attached at the hip. 

Following the path of his dream, Matthew had thrown himself headfirst into his handpicked major of Music Composition to prepare himself for his intended future of being a producer, and that’s how he’d spent his first few months in South Korea. Happy, intrigued, and only half-disgusted by his best friend and Zhang Hao’s PDA. 

———-

A twenty-year old Seok Matthew groaned as he threw his pen down onto his desk in frustration and buried the heels of his palms into his eyes, the fine-lined blue ballpoint rolling over itself a couple times on the polished wooden surface before coming to a rest on the side of his pencil case. The sun had just slowly begun to travel its timely descent from its highest point in the sky as the frustrated sound ripped from his throat, spilling out rays of golden light onto the scores and music sheets haphazardly scattered around the desk that Matthew had been slaving over for the past few hours, from where it peeked out from amongst the clouds. 

Digging his elbows harshly into the hard wooden surface in a way that was sure to leave a pair of bruises later, a flare of pain shot up the upper length of his arms from the impact and settled into his shoulders before dissipating out, only matched by the strained agony of his wrists from hours upon hours of tightly gripping a pen and the callouses presently rising along his fingers from doing so. Sparks of red and blue flew around under his shut eyelids in the mass of black exhaustion and voided focus, creating more shockwaves of color and bended light the harder and harder he pressed into his eyelids. He internally relished in the feeling of the steady pressure against his eyeballs being used as a distraction from the raging headache that was starting to split across his skull. 

Fuck, he was stressed. Matthew had been working on an assignment that was supposed to take an hour or so at max or so for at least four hours now, and had only completed about twenty percent of what was required in the rubric. It was infuriating, the way the creativity that was usually running through his veins like golden glitter had seemingly somehow completely dissipated out of his system, leaving him with absolutely zero ideas and a pathetically blank mind when he needed it the most.

“Matthew-ah!” A vaguely familiar voice floated into his ears, “are you okay?”

Opaque flares of dandelion yellow and lime green swam across Matthew’s vision as he hastily removed his hands from his eyelids and pulled the pair black headphones hooked over his head down from his ears, eyes wildly scanning the room behind in a hazy blur to find the source of the voice. His vision spun for a few moments before settling down and blurring out of its halo-edged tint to reveal a tall figure with dark red hair staring at him, a worried expression plastered across his features as his footsteps lightly thumped against the floor.

“Matthew-ah, what’s wrong?” Zhang Hao halted to a stop just before the younger man and immediately dropped to a knee before him, furrowed brows and anxious eyes peering up at him from under the light fringe that had fallen over his forehead in his rush. The random appearance of the older man in Matthew’s apartment had long since been a surprise, since, well, Zhang Hao basically lived at their apartment despite having his own because Hanbin lived with Matthew, and, well, no one had ever seen the two of them more than a couple miles away from each other since the day they’d met. And it wasn’t like the blonde boy didn’t like it, per say, as he did quite enjoy Zhang Hao’s calming presence in the apartment to offset the energetic energy that always seemed to follow Sung Hanbin around everywhere, along with the fact that the redhead was always a good listener and would never turn down any request made of him when it came to the well being of his friends. Always the caring hyung, Zhang Hao always seemed to know when one of his dongsaengs needed help or assistance, probably a skill practiced up by the many years that he had spent studying to be a music teacher back when he had still been trying to get his bachelors. 

Soothingly, a warm hand was gently placed on the edge of the younger man’s kneecap, a calming presence through the rough material of his jeans as his thumb started to rub small circles into the washed-out material. 

Matthew opened his mouth to reply but came up short when another wave of pain crashed through his brain and set his skull on fire, sending his head rocketing forward and down into his palms from dizziness as his mind went to static again. The heat was starting to get unbearable, mixing in with the pent up panic and frustration that had been brewing in the front of his mind for the past couple of hours where he’d been just staring at a blank sheet of lines, lacing all of his pressure-induced feelings into one big ball and sending it rocketing through his skull like an uranium-filled ping-pong ball. 

Yes, he knew that it was quite literally scientifically impossible to fill a plastic ball with radioactive uranium, but his mind was all but too-fried to think about the inaccuracies of his comparison. Chemistry would just have to wait. 

The blonde grimaced, pale lips pulling into a pained line as he started mumbling incoherent words toward the ground between his knees. 

“I don’t know, Hao-hyung, I really think my creativity’s run dry…” the words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them, syllables weakly hanging in the air in front of his face like a reminder, taunting him of the should-be easy assignment that just turned so, so hard for him. It was horrible, the way his unease seemed to rock and alter his entire world by simply just existing in his usually steadfast and ordinary life, one that he strived with all his might to fill with practiced ease and well-planned confidence. 

Without lifting his head, he could hear the sound of Zhang Hao shuffling around in front of him before a pair of bare knees appeared in his vision and steady hand was placed on the side of his arm, gently gripping the muscle underneath with a gentle handling and bringing him back down from his panicked spiral. 

“What are you working on? Can I help with anything?” The older boy asked in a quiet voice, keeping a hand on his arm as he gently started to rake through Matthew’s long blonde hair with the other, comfortingly scratching at his skull with blunt nails and a violinist’s roughed-up hands. The action did provide a momentary release from the throes of his slashing headache, smoothing out all the tangled and snarls running across his mind and letting him truly breath in a lungful of fresh oxygen for the first time in what felt like an hour. 

Matthew raised his head from his hands and nodded, taking one look at the softening expression on his hyung’s face before slowly spinning back around in his chair to face the never ending homework spread out across the large surface, taunting him with its blank pages and empty lines. He blinked. 

“So the professor wants us to create an entirely new piece by ourselves,” Matthew started as Zhang Hao stood back up on his feet and shuffled over beside him to get a better look, “with these guidelines.” The blonde man dug through a thin stack of stapled papers to tug out a particular one with the word RUBRIC printed across the top in big, bold letters, and slid it over to his side to where the redhead’s open palm lay. 

The older man’s eyes rapidly scanned over the lines and boxes of black-and-gray printed text before he set the paper back down on the table and slowly nodded, slightly inclining his head back at Matthew for more information. 

“But,” the blonde begrudgingly continued, “every single ounce of creativity in my body has somehow gone on an impromptu vacation to Jeju island or something,” Hao let out a small laugh at the frustrated joke, “and has completely left my head! Like all of it! And now an assignment that I usually would have finished in under an hour is not even a quarter of the way done in four .” He finished his rant with a wild wave of his arm gesturing towards the various loose-leaf pieces of paper scattered around the surface before falling back into his chair, closing his eyes again with a prolonged sigh. 

Zhang Hao stared at him for a couple more moments, large brown eyes trailing over his face like a metal detector trying to find the sources of his problems laying behind his eyes, before upturning his hands against the edge of the table and staring back out the window to look at the courtyard below. 

The older man let out a long exhale, leaning back to shift his weight onto the heels of his hands from where his fingers were loosely gripping the underside of the desk. His expression flickered for a moment, going from acknowledging to perplexed and back to acknowledging in a span of a few seconds, before they started to slowly drag along the edges of the windowsill and lower back into the room. It seemed as if he was trying to piece together the right advice to give Matthew but didn’t know how to word it, whether it be from complications or a language barrier, with the way he seemed to be deep in thought for a minute or so.

“I don’t think this is a ‘my creativeness went to Jeju’ problem, but a ‘I’m probably really stressed out these days’ issue,” he started in a low voice, slowly inclining his head to look at Matthew with a gentle gaze. Having not expected that particular type of question, the blonde furrowed his brows and slightly tilted his head to the side, as if to ask huh?

“What do you mean, hyung?”

Zhang Hao sighed and laid a palm out on the table.

“Matthew-ah, when was the last time you’ve had a day off?”

Matthew slumped over in his chair and pondered over it for a moment. He’d been shoulder-deep in library books for the past three days writing an essay on the evolution of music, and then the preceding four days before that writing another essay on the effects of the Renaissance on musical instruments, and then having nearly spent the entire week before that holed up in the music rooms-

Oh.

The realization must have been obvious on his face, because Zhang Hao’s smiling face was the first thing that crossed his vision when he snapped out of his thought bubble. The older man cocked his head to the side, lips pulling into a cheerful smile as he watched Matthew’s face morph into five different expressions at once as he began to realize the true cause of his problem, patiently waiting for him to put it all together.

“See, I would help you with it,” Zhang Hao held back a giggle when Matthew perked up in interest, “ but my major didn’t teach me a whole ton about how to compose stuff like this.” That made sense, seeing as the older man had graduated with a bachelors in education with the intention of teaching kids how to play string instruments, something that didn’t exactly require him to have an in-depth knowledge of creating a whole ton of music himself. But as far as Matthew knew, after Zhang Hao had gotten his teaching license the previous year right after graduation, the man had written a bunch of songs and compositions on his own. Matthew had attended the university showcase with Hanbin to watch him perform the said songs on his violin, along with a couple other ones that consisted of either popular K-pop songs or an entire orchestra. 

“But hyung, didn’t you write a couple of your own songs last year, for the showcase?” Matthew suddenly piped up at the thought, and to his surprise, Zhang Hao seemed a little taken back by the question.

“Well yes, but those songs…uh…I don’t think are the types of songs that your professor is looking for in this situation.” The slightly hesitant tone of the older man’s voice was a little bit confusing to Matthew, as why would he have comp-

Oh. 

“All those songs were for Hanbin-hyung, weren’t they? Those were all love songs, right?”

The bright red flush of Zhang Hao’s neck and ears confirmed his suspicions.

“Yeah, no, forget I asked, I can’t believe it hadn’t figured it out sooner” Matthew snickered as he turned back around to stare at his homework again, “I’d rather not submit a love song with Hanbin-hyung as the inspiration.”

“I didn’t think so,” Zhang Hao’s voice agreed from behind him.

“So you think I should like, relax, or something?” Matthew sat back in his desk chair and crossed his arms, a pout forming on his lips as he went back to staring at the menacing pieces of paper sitting in front of him. 

“Yeah, just relax for a bit. Go on a walk, go to an animal cafe, go take a nap, something like that,” Zhang Hao suddenly appeared at the back of his chair and folded his arms over the backrest, the tips of his elbows coming to rest lightly on top of Matthew’s shoulders. The younger man hummed and leaned back into his touch, letting the back of his head rest against the head cushion attached to the other side as the headache raging across his head slowly started to part away.

“Should I go on a walk, then? Maybe have a change of scenery, get some more inspiration?”

The older man shrugged. “That sounds good, just make sure to let yourself relax for a bit, alright? Don’t overwork yourself, let your muscles and mind relieve some stress,” he gently advised, soothing voice floating into Matthew’s ears like a soft gust of wind. 

“You should tell some of that advice to Hanbin-hyung, you know,” he piped up again as Zhang Hao started to walk away, making the older man suddenly stop in the doorway and turn around. 

“Oh, I have some good ways of relieving your Hanbin-hyung of his stress, don’t you worry.” 

“Hyung!”

———

“Bye, Hao-hyung! See you later!” Matthew called out into the silent apartment five minutes later, propping the door open with one hand as he bent down and slid his shoes on with the other, slightly struggling with the heel of his left sneaker from the awkward angle he was bending down and stretching the stiff materials of his jeans at.

“Have fun, Matthew-ah! Stay safe, and remember to relax!” Zhang Hao appeared back in the kitchen in his usual house-outfit of a faded university hoodie and sweatpants and waved at him, signature caretaker-like smile pulled across his lips as he bid the younger man goodbye. 

The sun was half-hidden behind a series of clouds when Matthew first stepped out of the apartment complex, its previously blinding rays now shielded behind a fluffy white blanket covering up the sky. The city was up and bustling around him, the usual chaos and traffic of the rush hour filling up his ears and eyes with the familiar sounds of honking horns and jam-packed streets as he rubbed his eyes and breathed in a gulp of fresh air, letting it fill and expand his lungs before slowly letting it all out through his nose.

Man, Zhang Hao really was right about the whole relaxation thing. Matthew’s headache was already almost completely cured just by the addition of the outdoor air into his system. 

The boy quickly plugged his earbuds into his phone, awkwardly missing the plug a couple times before finally finding it and jamming the silver end in, and randomly set his playlist to shuffle before pocketing the device and turning right on the sidewalk towards the subway station.

After some (thirty seconds of) consideration on his part after Zhang Hao had first suggested that he go on a walk, Matthew had almost immediately decided that he was going to the coast for his mini impromptu self-relaxation session. Soon after he had first arrived in Korea, the blonde boy had discovered that the subway line right outside his apartment complex ran all the way west to what was almost the coast of the country, and that the last station was only a half-an-hour or so walk from the beach itself. And obviously, as a newly-turned adult with all the freedom he could imagine in a foreign country with no parental control over his life, Matthew had absolutely abused the subway line to get everywhere and anywhere he wanted whenever he had had the free time during his freshman year, whether it be a convenience store, a museum, a friend’s apartment, or the coast, he went. 

It was the idea of a shiny new city laid out for him to explore, for him to travel across and find the hidden gems and not-so hidden hotspots, for him to let himself indulge in his natural childhood urge of curiosity and do whatever he wanted whenever he pleased, that had led him to the ocean side. And once he went one time, he kept going, again and again, albeit less as the months flew by and his schoolwork began to take up more of his time, but still kept going all the same. 

Back in Canada, he had only ever seen the ocean in YouTube videos and during that one time his family had taken a vacation to Florida, so the idea of the coastline being only a subway ride and a half an hour walk from him at all times was nothing less than heaven to his mind. The ocean was nice, with its salty blue waves and off-white sand, and the blonde man loved nothing else more than beautiful sights and the sound of nature, so he was naturally quite attracted to such a setting.

As usual, the subway traffic during rush hour was horribly congested as Matthew joined the large crowd of adults swarming about the station like a hive of bees, some busily yelling into their phones while speed walking to their subways while others tightly clutched their briefcases and purses in their hands and leisurely mulled about the platforms, all while staring up at the massive black screens above their heads depicting the arrival and departure times of the station. The man pushed the buds of his earbuds further into his ears and tried to not step on anybody’s feet as he swiped his subway pass through the reader and pushed through the turnstile, the jostling crowd slightly clearing up a bit on the other side as the station diverged into its separate pathways and tunnels. 

Turning right, Matthew headed towards the more empty tunnel heading West and found a space to lean against the back wall when he stepped onto the platform, leaning his head back against the cold stone perimeter as he stared up at the arrival display boards. 

Also per usual with rush hour subways, once the subway had arrived and the doors flew open, they revealed an already jam-packed compartment with the people inside tightly packed together like a can of sardines. The people in the front seemed to be trying their very best to not fall off the subway, clutching onto their overhead handrails with a fierce grip before a sudden push came from the inside of the cart and a young girl popped out from within the crowd, tightly clutching the straps of her backpack in her whitened fists as she tugged her bag out of the crowd. Matthew watched the girl, who looked no older than eleven or twelve, jump onto the platform before immediately taking off into a sprint towards the exit, and wondered if he could get away with doing the same thing she did.

Turns out he could, and about fifteen seconds later, the blonde man was tightly packed into a squished subway cart towards the very end of the section, desperately holding onto the metal handlebar above his head while trying very hard to not accidentally lean on the scary-looking businessman in a crisp suit and a pair of sunglasses to his left. 

The subway ride went by in its usual blur, as Matthew had the leisure of being able to space out and get lost in his music as he waited for the subway to reach the final stop on the route, the closest point to the coast that he could access from using public transportation. The train cart slowly started to clear out as it moved out of the central business district and into the more rural and residential areas, and Matthew was finally able to breathe out a small sigh of relief when the businessman got off a couple stops later and took his spot against the back door, resting his aching shoulder against a vertical pole and closing his eyes. 

The landscape surrounding the area was very different when Matthew emerged back up from the subway station twenty minutes later, the slight wind of a coastal breeze tickling his face and brushing through his hair greeting him as he climbed out of the underground. While his apartment was located in a very busy district, where most of the off-campus college kids rented out apartments and where a lot of night life was present in the downtown area, this particular station was located in the middle of a quaint little residential district. Two-story family houses with tiled driveways and wooden front porches lined the sides of the street as Matthew slowly trodded towards the beach, taking into account the many large oak trees dotting the edge of the nicely-paved sidewalk that he was walking on. The air was silent and serene, with only the occasional bird call or wind gust cutting through the silent sky around the houses, something that Matthew greatly enjoyed as a well-needed break from his usual surroundings. 

For while the blonde man’s usual day was filled from beginning to end with the unending honking of cars and the usual loud city sounds and sights of a booming metropolitan, this particular district seemed to be home to a demographic of standard middle-class families, the type one would expect to have dogs running around the front yards while school buses milled about the calm streets every weekday morning. Don’t get him wrong, Matthew loved city life and wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world, but sometimes, a little break from the headache-inducing chaos of the downtown district was greatly welcomed from time to time.

The scenery around him slowly began to mesh and change around him the closer to the coast he got, with the white-picket family houses slowly changing into city-suburb sort of small plazas and storage centers before they finally switched into luxury high-rise apartments about mile from the coast, standing tall with their massive sleek pillars and luxurious-looking apartments spanning up about twenty floors each. Men and women dressed in long black overcoats and holding luxury bags walked along the streets, high heels and polished leather shoes clicking along the smooth stone sidewalks as they looked straight forward through their glossy designer sunglasses and tapped at their trimmed modern phones. Matthew felt slightly out of place in his crème-white colored sweater and slightly washed-out pair of jeans paired with a pair of checkered converse, although there were a fair decent amount of college students and young adults like him strolling about the boardwalk and walking along the beach as he approached. 

The ocean was calm and restful when Matthew reached the boardwalk and leaned over the railing, its dark-blue waves stretching on like a placid slab of lapis lazuli out towards the horizon line where it met the gray-blue sky above. The sun was shining brightly down on the water from between the clouds, obstructed but not contained rays beaming over the slowly rippling waves, sparkling off the crests and dipping in the amplitudes with a series of white sparks and picturesque reflections. Groups of families and friends frolicked and trailed along the fluffy sand below the boardwalk as the seagulls hopped and flew around the edge of the water, looking for a little crumb of a chip or a dropped snack to nibble on from the beach goers. 

A light breeze tickled the edge of his jawline and swept through the tips of his hair when Matthew leaned over the wooden railing off the side of the boardwalk and closed his eyes, his forearms and elbows crunched beneath him from where they lay against the worn-out planks lining the top of the bars. Not preferring to get sand in his shoes or underneath his clothes, the blonde man decided that his preferred method of relaxation would be to turn on his relaxation playlist (titled Matthew’s Personal Spa in his Spotify) and sit on a bench while looking out at the sea, chasing the therapeutic sort of feeling that Zhang Hao had sent him off to feel while hopefully gaining some of his inspiration and creativity back from the sea.

Prof didn’t specify what type of song we had to write, the man thought as he leisurely strolled along the boardwalk in search of an empty bench, so it might be a good idea to pull some ideas from the ocean while I’m out here to kill two birds with one stone. 

The starting beats of Shaun’s Way Back Home drifted out of his earbuds as he sat down on an empty bench in a more secluded part of the walkway and leaned back onto the plastic backrest, his eyelashes fluttering under the force of a passing gust traveling through the air. Everything around him seemed to scream calm, relax , from the gentle blue hue of the ocean meeting the horizon line to the tranquil feeling of the sea filling up his mind, everything seemed to be set out to simply tell him to loosen up and set his mind at ease for a while.

Maybe Zhang Hao was right , Matthew thought, maybe I do need to let loose for a bit. I’ve been so wound up over the past week or so that I haven’t even had the time to go on a single walk or go to an arcade with Taerae, and maybe my creativity got so pent up that it just left to go have fun on its own. 

Matthew began to drift off into subconscious soon after his muscles began to relax along with his mind, the soft material of his sweater laying against his skin combined with the soft playlist dribbling into his ears lulling him into a state of halcyon dreamland without even him noticing. 

Between being half-asleep, the sound of his music turning into white noise, and the gentle grasp of the blue sea in front of him, the man didn’t know how much time had passed since he first sat down. It could have been an hour, or a few, or maybe a couple minutes, or even a couple long, sunlit seconds, he didn’t know, but what he did know was that by the time he broke out of his trance and was brought back to reality, the sun had completely disappeared and instead had been replaced by a sky full of angry gray cumulonimbus clouds, and that it was also starting to drizzle.

Wait, what?

Without warning, a heavy downpour immediately fell down from the sky and hit the earth with the force of a giant iron anvil, completely soaking him from head-to-toe in a matter of seconds. 

The sudden ice bath jolted Matthew out of whatever weird dimension he was in and made him jump straight up to his feet, his mind spinning at million miles an hour as his hands went on autopilot and immediately ripped the earbuds out of his ears and started to stuff them into his pocket along with his phone. 

Fuck fuck fuck fuck what is going on why is it raining why didn’t I bring an umbrella-

Before leaving the apartment, Matthew had double-checked the weather forecast beforehand to make sure that it wasn’t going to rain anytime that night before he could get back to his apartment, knowing that planning ahead was probably a good thing. But, he had missed one small detail in his rush before he had placed the umbrella back in the closet and left.

He had checked the weather in his area, not west by the coast.

Figures.

And now, he was seriously facing the consequences of his mistakes in the form of being trapped in the middle of a rainstorm with no umbrella and no close shelter to hide underneath. The rain all around him shot down from the sky like a massive wet blanket and encompassed him whole inside its reach, continuously soaking him over and over again from the roots of his hair down to the puddles quickly growing inside his shoes, never ending and never ceasing enough to let him even catch his breath or set his mind straight. 

“Fuck, shit, goddamn motherfucker!” A string of expletives left Matthew’s mouth once the reality of the situation had finally settled into his frozen mind, obviously about thirty seconds too late. He was already drenched to the bone from the cold rain, why the fuck was it so damn cold?!, and the hamsters inside his brain all collectively started freaking out at once and running around in a cold, crazed frenzy.

Under the blanket of rain, he could barely see the blurry ocean on the other side of the railing as his field of vision was simply just reduced down to a couple inches in all directions, and was quickly being made even worse by the dozens of raindrops quickly pattering onto his forehead and dripping down his eyelashes into his eyes. His sopping wet hair immediately started sticking to his head, and started to act as a pathway for raindrops to slide down the slick strands and fall straight into his eyes from where his bangs lay flat on his forehead, making him look like some sort of ungroomed dog that had been left alone with a running sprinkler for too long.

He could only imagine that his once nicely-styled blonde locks were now completely and utterly ruined into a mess of dripping moisture and near-brown tangles from the amount of rainwater they were currently holding, and definitely not sexy in the way that Ricky liked to style his own hair. The younger blonde always liked to rock the slick-wet hairstyle that gave him a cool, sleek look, and made all the girls swoon (although not his intention, as he already had Kim Gyuvin to do all the swooning), but Matthew was absolutely sure that the chinese man did not attain that hairstyle by getting fucked over by mother nature every morning. Whatever. 

The water stung his eyes, and Matthew truly started to panic when he realized that there was absolutely no place to shelter him from the downpour within his sight, tightly gripping the edge of the bench with a pair of whitened-knuckles as the freezing rain continued to fall around him, until an umbrella suddenly appeared over his head.

Wait, what?

Momentarily confused as to why he suddenly wasn’t being absolutely pelted by the rain, Matthew whipped around to find himself standing face-to-face with the single-handedly most handsome man he had ever seen in his life.

The first thing that crossed his mind was that this stranger was tall. Matthew knew that he himself was on the shorter side of his demographic, only standing at a height of about 170 centimeters, but when he turned around to find himself staring at a pair of plush red lips instead of a pair of eyes, the slow drift of his pupils up to meet the gaze of the man seemed to take longer than it should have as he raked his eyes over a sharp jawline and up a slim, pale cheek.

Matthew’s breath hitched when he finally got a look at the man’s full face. 

He could tell that the stranger was attractive, even from under the curtain of rainwater currently dripping into his eyes, handsomely attractive like the male leads in the kdramas Hanbin loved to watch so much, the ones that made all the ladies swoon and the men get jealous. The man’s raven-black hair perfectly fell over his forehead in a way that gave him a sleek, charming look while still gorgeously highlighting the rest of his facial features like a flashlight, giving way to a pair of straight, full brows and a strong nose line. A pair of cat-like brown eyes flanked either side of the bridge, lidded with a pair of camel-like eyelashes fluttering above a chocolate-brown eye that was currently staring down at Matthew with the gaze of a million-watt lamp, brown meeting brown in a line of surprised flurry and sparkling lights.

It was like a scene straight out of a kdrama, the one cliche part in all the corny dramas where the main character’s love interest would suddenly appear with an umbrella over her head to shield her from the rain right before it begun, and where a million angles of the two of them would be filmed as they stared at each other with a mix of shock and love under a single umbrella amidst the pouring rain. And with the way this beautiful stranger was staring at him while holding a black umbrella over his head with their bodies pressed chest-to-chest against each other, Matthew monetarily wondered if he was dreaming. Their faces were so close, and if Matthew would just go on his tiptoes little bit their lips would be close enough to meet, and perhaps-

A splash of rainwater hit the back of his sweater.

No, he was definitely not dreaming.

The blonde man yelped and instinctually jumped further into the stranger’s space, the painful feeling of the pattering rain pelting into his already-soaked clothes making him shiver and jolt around in an effort to find some sort of relief, relief which ended up being the warm feeling of a strong arm around his waist, steadying him against a broad frame and keeping him out of the grasp of the rain. 

Why was his heart beating so fast? Why was his face starting to flush with heat despite the freezing cold shiver of the rain, and why did his heart feel like it was about to pound out of his chest any second? Why did it feel like his simple ribcage wasn’t enough to contain the sheer intensity that he was feeling in his chest right now, like it was about to crack at the slightest touch? 

Matthew gasped at the feeling, and without thinking, instinctually placed a hand in the small amount of remaining space between them on the man’s chest and looked back up, a flaming-hot blush quickly starting to flare up the length of his neck despite his shivering body. He didn’t know what to do, and with the combined shock of the initial downpour and the sudden appearance of an angelic stranger holding an umbrella over his head, his mind went completely and utterly numb under the hold of the man’s steady arm around his waist. 

The hand on his chest stuttered, and Matthew closed his eyes and fiercely fought back the urge to just dig his fingers into the stranger’s thick hoodie and never let go as the hand around his waist tightened, trying with all his might to not accidentally give into one of the thousand intrusive thoughts currently racing around his head. It was any love-smitten teenage girl’s dream, to be saved from the pouring rain and hauled into the grasp of a tall, handsome man who coincidentally also fell in love with her, and Matthew was seriously starting to wonder why his body was starting to feel hot despite the freezing cold stick of his sopping clothes to his skin, and why he was currently feeling like a teenage girl absolutely losing her mind over an attractive man.

Matthew knew that he was attracted to men, that wasn’t the issue. Ever since that one fateful day, somewhere during his freshman year of high school, where Matthew had kissed a boy for the first time under the metal bleachers of the gymnasium, the boy had very much known that he was attracted to both genders, and hadn’t pondered upon it too much ever since. He had kissed his fair share of pretty boys, even went further with some of them, but those had all been under pre-planned or at least somewhat not out-of-the-blue circumstances, and definitely not when he was suffering from a bout of mental brain freeze while staring into the eyes of a man who’s looks could single-handedly rival every single one of the most popular actors and idols on the big stage. 

Oh, Matthew was truly fucked.

Just when the Canadian seriously thought that he was going to dissolve into a pile of blonde goo at his feet, the stranger seemed to realize their current position and quickly removed his arm from the blonde’s waist (Matthew bit back the strangled whine that threatened to escape his throat at the sudden loss of contact), an series of unreadable emotions flashing through his piercing eyes before he quickly seemed to make up his mind and take a gentle hold of Matthew’s arm. The contact made the shorter man jump before the realization of what the stranger inexplicably wanted to help him do, and momentarily recomposed and gathered the last of his rational mind before looking back up at him and nodding.

The taller man moved his arm up to lightly drape it across Matthew’s shoulder and turned him around to face a random direction, or a seemingly random direction as all the shorter man could see out in front of them was the heavy downpour of rain creating a blind shield, and moved the umbrella to his other hand so it was situated between their bodies to fully encompass both of them within its vicinity. The blonde man quickly turned around with him and instinctually grasped the other man’s hand with his own, sliding it slightly up on the umbrella handle to feel the cool metal on his fingertips while his wrist was pressed against the stranger’s knuckles. 

The stranger stilled, and for a terrifying, fleeting moment, Matthew thought that he had completely misread the situation and had overstepped some sort of platonic boundary, and was about to quickly retract his hand away when a smile flickered across the taller man’s lips, and he leaned down to whisper something into Matthew’s ears, barely audible over the roar of the rain.

“Let’s get you somewhere dry, shall we?”

Oh fuck, even his voice was attractive. Matthew was truly screwed.

Letting himself be gently maneuvered around by the arm around his shoulders and the heart in his ribcage that had somehow taken over the job of his brain, he splashed through puddles of dirty rainwater that sprang up to fall back down and soak into his shoes and socks over and over again the faster he walked. Matthew didn’t know where the stranger was taking him, or even where he had come from in the first place, but a little voice in the back of his head told him that this was not a kidnapping situation, but instead his very own real-life kdrama moment where his savior (stranger) would swoop in and save the damsel in distress (Matthew). 

The main character usually didn’t get kidnapped in romance K-Dramas, right? He sure hoped not.

Soon enough, he realized that the location that the man had led him to was a nearby convenience store not far away from the boardwalk. Covered by the mist of the rain, Matthew couldn’t make out the glowing orange characters displayed above the doorway and giant glass window, but he was almost certain that he had passed this place on his way to the boardwalk in the first place. How the taller man had successfully guided them to this place while practically playing a game of blind man’s bluff in the downpour, Matthew had absolutely no idea, but there was no time to ponder upon the answer to that particular problem when the man in question was currently using his own body to manhandle the blonde man into the small space under the store overhang to keep him out of the rain. 

The Canadian watched with wide eyes and a pounding heart as the stranger lowered the umbrella from above their heads and shook it out to his right side away from the younger man, the whippy black folds spraying rainwater everywhere as they whipped and shook around. After the man had deemed it dry enough, he gently leaned it against the concrete pillar on the corner of the store on its heel to set it upright, letting it dry under the edge of the overhang where the rain didn’t reach, before turning back around to face the younger man. 

That was the first time where Matthew had truly seen the entirety of the stranger in all of his visual, from a faraway standpoint that wasn’t exactly eight inches away from his face and with the sting of rainwater clouding over his eyes. The man wore a thick black hoodie with the signature Polo Ralph Lauren jockey imprinted into the top right corner along with a pair of skinny black jeans, the material stretching and hugging along his thighs and legs in a way that made them seem a million miles long despite his already lanky height, and capped off with a pair of jogging sneakers on his feet and a thin silver necklace peeking out from under his shirt. His thick black hair still looked as perfect as it had looked up close, resolutely dry as it fell over his tiny face in glossy-curled strands that seemingly only further emphasized the sharp cut of his cheekbones and the wide stretch of his lips, the lips that were currently pulled up at the corners into a small, gentle smile. 

Matthew’s heart rate increased tenfold. Fuck, if he had thought the stranger didn’t already look godly handsome with a blank resting face lined along his features, his smiling face was even more attractive. Most of the men that Matthew had met in his life that had had the same appeal as this stranger never had very comforting smiles, either as a way to keep up their “dark and mysterious” persona or just as a natural flaw, but this one might as well have been the prettiest grin that the Canadian man had ever seen. It was alluring, of course it was, but mostly all together just so comforting in a way that he couldn’t explain, like his lips and shiny white teeth held the sun and moon all together inside his body that pulled in a magnetic field of any person who was attracted to men of any sort. And Matthew was definitely no exception.

“Hey, are you okay? Sorry if that was a scare, you just looked like you needed help and I didn’t want to leave you out there,” the stranger spoke up, and Matthew’s eyes immediately snapped up from where they were focused on those goddamn beautiful plush pink lips , his face flushing even more (if that was even possible at this point) from both the words and the realization that the stranger had caught him red-handedly staring at his lips. 

“Yes, I’m okay,” the blonde was pleasantly surprised at his somewhat-steady voice, “just a little, uh, wet.” He internally facepalmed at his last statement, and was about to start mentally bashing himself for saying something so stupidly obvious in front of his real-life KDrama love interest before the said love interest just started laughing.

It was a melodic sort-of sound, the way small huffs and puffs of throaty laughs came out of the stranger’s mouth as crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes from smiling too wide, his entire face seeming to light up at the statement. Scratch what Matthew had ever said about the stranger at his most handsome, this was probably hands down the most gorgeously stunning a human could possibly ever look at any given moment. The way his eyes seemed to laugh along with the melodic sound coming out of his rising and falling chest was absolutely enchanting in Matthew’s eyes, and he could almost swear that the blood rushing to his ears literally started to turn into liquid gold just at the sound alone.

Was Matthew so desperately enraptured with the stranger that he was now having thoughts that completely disregarded the fundamentals of chemistry? Yeah, probably. 

“I can see that, no offense,” the stranger choked out after his mini-laughing fit and started to walk towards him, a wide smile still plastered across his face as he suddenly gripped the bottom edges of his hoodie and pulled it over his head. In the process, the long white t-shirt that he had worn underneath rode up along his stomach as it stuck to the inner material of the hoodie on its way up, lifting up just enough to reveal a sliver of the milky-white skin above the waistband of his pants and hips.

Matthew’s mouth went dry. 

Confused as to why the stranger was suddenly taking off his hoodie while it was literally raining cats and dogs just a yard away from them, the blonde man watched in uncertainty as he successfully pulled it over his head (and his hair somehow managed to settle perfectly back into place, what type of sorcery was this!?) and hold the piece of heavy fabric out to him. Matthew didn’t know what to do, was the man offering it to him, or did he just want him to hold it for a moment?

“Take it,” the stranger noticed his confusion and thrust the hoodie even closer to him, “you’re going to get sick if you stay only in those soaking clothes for long.”

Okay, now Matthew was seriously starting to wonder if he had somehow transported himself into a KDrama, or perhaps if the sudden brainfreeze of the rain had actually screwed with his perception of reality so much that his mind was seriously starting to make up romantic scenarios in front of his very own eyes. It was probably highly possible at this point, the Canadian man decided, as there was just absolutely no way that this random stranger who had saved him from the rain like a prince charming was now offering Matthew his hoodie because he was worried that Matthew would catch a cold. 

Absolutely no way. Nuh-uh, this was definitely not happening right now.

Except that it was. 

“W-what?” Matthew’s mind immediately short-circuited.

The stranger smiled again. “Just take the hoodie, please. It would be a shame if you fell sick now after being out of the rain.”

Who was Matthew to deny his prince charming of his offer when he was literally pleading him to do it? Being left without any other option, the blonde man gratefully accepted the hoodie and pulled it into his own hands, turning it around a couple times to find the front and tossing it over his own head. 

The hoodie was warm, so warm that it felt like a heater over the slowly-chilling temperature of his own, drenched clothes under the dropping temperature. His arms and upper body was immediately encased in a bundle of toasty heat and dry weight, the feeling of the heavy material of the hoodie pressing down on him giving the same effect as Taerae’s weighted blanket did on him whenever he borrowed it from the other man. It felt nice, and Matthew was about to move the hair out of his face and profusely thank the stranger for his hoodie before he took a single glance at the other man’s face, and all the words fell still off his tongue.

Instead of the goofy sort-of grin the stranger had bore for the majority of the past minute or so, the look on his face now was nothing short of scandalous . His eyes were very obviously blown wide with a mix of focus and embarrassment as they stared at something that wasn’t Matthew’s face, and as the blonde man trailed down to match his line of sight, all of a sudden the faint blush of the man’s cheeks and the bite of the edge of his bottom lip seemed to make a whole lot more sense.

One the first things that Matthew had ever realized about this stranger was that he was tall , significantly taller than he was. He hadn’t thought too much of it after that, having been too preoccupied with, you know, the whole why am I living out an irl KDrama moment thing, but now that he had calmed down a little bit and gotten ahold of himself again, it was coming back to him full circle. The taller man’s hoodie had fit his figure nicely, stopping at about his waistline like any normal hoodie should be worn and cuffing in at his wrists, but on Matthew, it was big. The hem of the hoodie only came to a stop at about mid-thigh on his  shorter body, with the sleeves hanging off his shoulders nicely (Matthew internally thanked his workout routine) but coming to an end way far past his hands, giving him a pair of long sweater paws that hung down at his sides. He couldn’t see what he looked like, but he could only imagine that it was something adjacent to a giant, fluffy human-sized Pom-Pom.

The blonde man awkwardly coughed, and unintentionally lifted a sweater paw up to his mouth to muffle the sound. The stranger’s eyes rose along with his wrist, pupils obviously blown a shocked sort of wide as they followed the trail of his hand up to his mouth. 

“Uh…” Noticing the taller man’s dilemma, Matthew trailed off and quickly started rolling the sleeves of the hoodie up to find his hands again, if not only for him but to break the suddenly weird atmosphere that had fallen over the two of them. The stranger seemed to realize what he was doing and immediately snapped himself out of it a moment later, looking quite embarrassed at himself as he nervously started to wring out his hands in front of his chest while shyly eyeing Matthew from under his camel-like eyelashes. It was a strange look on him, such a well put-together and masculine looking man trying to fold in on himself in embarrassment, although it was oddly fitting to him in the blonde man’s eyes. He was sort of cute in that way, a childish sort of response to something he didn’t even need to be embarrassed about in Matthew’s eyes, and the Canadian was not about to start lecturing him or anything of the sort about his attraction. Matthew didn’t feel uncomfortable nor the slightest bit weirded out by the other man’s gaze, but instead, fueled something deep inside the pit of his stomach, like a small flicker of a flame igniting a trail of gasoline that he didn’t even know existed beforehand. 

Deciding to be a little bold, the blonde took matters into his own hands and took a step forward, extending a (not swear-pawed) hand out in front of the stranger.

“Really, thanks for saving me from the rain. My name’s Seok Matthew,” his accent jumped out towards the end of the sentence when he said his name, but if it had affected the other man in any way, he definitely didn’t show it. In fact, the stranger didn’t even show any emotion on his face or in his body language other than badly-concealed shock as he quickly lifted his head to stare at Matthew with an unreadable expression in his eyes, staring at him for a few moments before reaching out and shaking his hand back. 

And damn, was the size difference in their hands massive. The stranger’s fingers neary completely engulfed the entirety of Matthew’s hands where they met in the middle and wrapped around each other into a handshake, which he realized, was a very weird thing to do when they’d been on the verge of kissing literally a minute ago. Go figure. 

“Kim Jiwoong. You can call me hyung.”

Matthew blinked. He knew from the get-go that the stranger was older than him, something about him looking far more like an adult that his own baby face ever did, but the sudden offer of using such a comfortable honorific did catch him a bit off guard.

“Jiwoon-hyung?” he tested the words on his tongue, and automatically decided that he liked it when the edges of Jiwoong’s lips turned up into a smile. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if he had pronounced it right, with his whole ‘hey I’m currently not in my right mind right now and defaulting to English’ situation going on, but it wasn’t like it mattered if he hadn’t, right?

The older man nodded and released their hands, only to slide them up and take a gentle hold of the middle of his lower arm. This time, Matthew didn’t jump at the sudden touch, but instead relished in the fact that Jiwoong hadn’t let go of him, a secret sort of longing that he definitely would never voice out loud. He should have felt uncomfortable, weirded-out, somehow, by the fact that a completely random stranger was now holding his arm while they stood barely two feet apart in front of a random convenience store, but there was just something about this man that made him feel safe, right , in a way, and a plethora of more words that he didn’t know how to say in Korean. It wasn’t uncomfortable, nor was it even negative in any way, shape or form, but in fact, he would even go as far as to say that he liked it. 

What was going on with Matthew? Like, seriously?

“Jiwoon-hyung, thank you for saving me from the rain,” Matthew put the man’s name and his previous statement together to thank him once again, wanting to express his gratitude for his actions with his name to make it more personal-feeling. Truly, he was extremely grateful for the older man’s sudden appearance, because he genuinely didn’t know if he’d still be out there, by the bench being beat down upon by freezing-cold rainwater, if Jiwoong hadn’t shown up and pulled him out. 

To his surprise, the taller man only flushed some more and slightly turned his head to tilt his face away from Matthew. Whether he was embarrassed or feeling some other emotion, the blonde couldn’t tell, but all he knew before both of his hands were being completely covered by a pair of larger ones, was that Jiwoong had gone through some sort of self-reevaluation before spinning around and stepping closer to him.

“It’s really no issue, I was just passing by and saw you,” the taller man began to explain, swiftly answering the lingering question in Matthew’s head without him needing to ask. “I swear I’m not a creep that was stalking you or anything, I was just rounding the corner when I saw a shadow inside the rain and thought I’d go help out.”

“Well, I’m very grateful that you did, hyung,” Matthew grinned and gripped the other man’s hands tighter, pressing the skin of his forefingers further into his palms to show his sincerity. Jiwoong seemed mildly surprised at his answer but didn’t pull away, only proceeding to look down at him with an attractive grin that would have made the younger man swoon if he wasn’t so hell-bent on maintaining his composure at the moment.

The two of them stood there, hand-in-hand and staring into one another’s eyes in front of the harsh glow of a random convenience store, not having a single care in the world for whoever saw or judged them, basking in the other’s presence. They could both feel it, the internal click that flipped on inside their bodies when their hands met in the middle and folded into one another’s, even if neither of them voiced it out loud. Matthew was sure of it.

“Matthew-ah, you’re shivering.”

The sudden shudder that racked through the blonde man’s body nearly sent him stumbling straight into the wall if not for the two arms holding him upright, keeping him in place as he shook through the freezing feeling that was currently running through the entirety of his nerves and bloodstream. It was common side effect of being stuck in wet clothes for an extended period of time, Matthew knew that, but even the thought didn’t help his case as he immediately retracted his hands away from Jiwoong’s and wrapped them around himself, desperately trying to huddle some of the warmth from the older man’s hoodie to warm his slowly freezing limbs up.

All the joy immediately left Jiwoong’s eyes as he watched Matthew desperately try to heat himself, a concerned expression flickering across his face. Worried, the older man furrowed his eyebrows and racked his brain for a solution that would get this cute, adorable young man in front of him warm and dry again, no matter what it might be.

“Matthew-ah, do you have your phone on you? Is there someone you can call to come pick you up?”

Zhang Hao’s face immediately flashed in his mind once the question had registered. Matthew knew that the Chinese man would drop everything and go running to his dongsaengs the second any of them needed any sort of assistance or help, that was just the way he was, but the older man also didn’t have a car, or a drivers license, for that matter. 

Dealing with the issue of somebody actually having a car, that only left Matthew with two options. He knew that Taerae was currently out on a date, an increasingly uncommon occurrence due to the approaching stress of exam season and the other 02’s tendency to be a perfectionist, and he didn’t want to ruin such a special time for him just because his own idiotic brain checked the wrong weather forecast. It was also too far of a trip back to his apartment for him to make himself in his current state, as the thought of another crowded subway line and horribly-conditioned underground station was already bringing back a horrible headache to his head, so that idea was quickly erased from his list. 

So, with a hopeful heart, Matthew pulled out his phone to call his Hanbin-hyung for help, only to find it dead. 

It wasn’t the rain that had broken his phone, he knew that because the device was waterproof, and as his eyes widened and his hands quickly started to frantically press at the power button and jam at the screen, the only logical conclusion that he could come to was that it was out of battery. Another stupid act on his behalf, forgetting to check his phone battery before leaving his apartment and listening to music the entirety of the time he was out, and Matthew was seriously contemplating smacking himself across the face for his severe lack of planning before something flashed before his vision. 

“Is your phone dead?” Matthew looked up from his blank phone screen to meet Jiwoong’s worried eyes, the cloud of concern drifting across his pupils nearly making the younger man feel bad about making him worried in the first place. After all, he was only a stranger that had helped him out of the goodness of his own heart with a mistake that Matthew had only brought upon himself due to a lack of preplanning, so it wasn’t like the older man needed to worry any more, right?

A hum escaped Matthew’s throat in confirmation, and he was about to open his mouth and start to spring into another apology when another shiver, larger this time, racketed through his body and sent his neck into a state of whiplash.

The older man’s body seemed to be thrown into a state of panic at the sight, as his shoulders immediately lurched forward and his arms quickly curled around Matthew’s waist just as they had under the umbrella a couple minutes ago, slightly shaking as they grasped into the fabric of his own hoodie on the shorter man’s body. Jiwoong seemed to contemplate something for a second, moving his head to stare back out at the rain still pouring from the sky on the street and giving Matthew a perfect look at his knife-sharp jawline and veiny neck (which he absolutely did not stare at, thank you very much).

“I know this is going to sound creepy,” the man spoke again in a quieter voice than before, a level of unsureness in his tone that Matthew didn’t exactly like. The older man had been the one to save him from the rain, lead him to a dry place, and offer him his hoodie after everything else he’d done for the Canadian, so what else was there to be unsure about?

Noticing his hesitance, Matthew eagerly surged forward to boldly step into Jiwoong’s chest, pressing their bodies together. “Hyung, just say it. Nothing you’d say anymore would sound creepy, not after all you’ve done for me over the span of the last five minutes,” he reassured him in a cute voice and slowly wrapped his hands around the older man’s waist, and at this close of a distance, Matthew could smell the faint fragrance of the older man’s perfume lingering on his body, covering his thick, white shirt and the firm chest that he could feel with the bottom of his chin hidden underneath. The thought made Matthew internally swoon, knowing that there was a body of a Greek god underneath the clothing, and it only made Jiwoong that much more attractive in his eyes when paired with the next thing the older male said. 

“You’re going to get sick if you stay out here any longer, would it be okay if I took you back to my place to keep you warm and charge your phone?”

The gentle tone of Jiwoong’s voice while basically asking Matthew if he could take care of him made the blonde’s head spin. Jiwoong, Jiwoong who Matthew met five minutes ago and basically knew nothing about apart from the fact that he was older than him and his last name, Jiwoong who had lended Matthew his own expensive hoodie after being unable to see him cold for any longer, was asking him if he could take him home to prevent sickness? 

Matthew could just marry him right then and there. Seriously. How could he have been so lucky to come across such a wonderful man in such a horrible situation? It was as if the stars above had aligned at a perfect angle to allow him to meet Jiwoong in the perfect romantic-movie setting, as if the universe just knew that they were destined to meet one another. 

Or he could just be getting ahead of himself, or perhaps not, judging by the way the older man was currently looking down at him like he held the galaxy in his eyes and the universe on his face.

The attraction between them was evident, both of them could feel it, so it wasn’t like it was only Matthew who was quite literally falling head-over-heels for the older man. But this wasn’t the proper time to act upon it, not while they were standing in front of a random convenience store knowing practically nothing about the other man, and definitely not while one of them was about to fall sick from the cold, so the decision had been quick. In his mind, he had completely forgotten about the fact that his Hao and Hanbin-hyung would soon be worried sick for his whereabouts if he didn’t arrive back to the apartment before nightfall, but hey, Jiwoong had said that he would lend Matthew a phone charger, so he could probably just text them once his phone turned on again.

That is, if he remembered to do so. Or wanted to do so. 

Matthew knew that he shouldn’t follow unknown strangers back to their houses, but hey, if he was going to die, he’d gladly do it at the hands of the most handsome man he’d ever seen. And plus, he was sure that Jiwoong wasn’t going to murder him, judging by the nervous twitch of the elder’s hands behind his back as he awaited a response.

“Yes please, hyung. If it’s not a bother to you, of course, you’ve helped me so much already.” It was the truth, as Matthew had been raised upon the social constructs of not overstepping welcomes or taking advantage of nice, caring people. In the case that Jiwoong was only offering because he felt like it was polite to, the blonde man didn’t want to accept it knowing that he was doing it out of politeness, and not because he wanted to. Matthew hated being a bother to other people, and tall, handsome men with kind personalities who looked like models were definitely no exception. 

Jiwoong almost immediately shook his head at Matthew’s question, and if Matthew didn’t know any better, he would almost guess as to say he was even hurt that Matthew would even ask such a thing. 

“No, never. You’re not a bother, please just let me take care of you. I know we’ve barely known each other for a few minutes, but it’s really not everyday that I come across someone with such good immediate chemistry, so…”

The older man quickly slapped a hand over his mouth at the last part of his sentence, as if he couldn’t believe that it came out of his very own mouth. Matthew, albeit also very surprised at the fact that Jiwoong was just as into him as he was to him, could only laugh at the embarrassed expression blooming across the taller man’s face as he desperately tried to provide a coverup for the words that had just left his lips, but alas, could not. It was good news to the younger man, knowing that he wasn’t delusional and that there was a spark between them that was not only felt by him, and only went on to fuel his sudden desire to get to know Kim Jiwoong better.

Matthew reached up and took ahold of both of Jiwoong’s hands that had went up to hide his flushing face, slowly bringing them back down to his sides while going on his tiptoes to bring their faces even closer together.

“Bring me home then, Jiwoon-hyung.” The sentence came out far more seductive than Matthew had originally intended, but based off of the suddenly hungry look that had appeared on the older man’s face, he figured that it wasn’t an issue.

“Y-yeah. Let’s get going, I don’t live far from here.”

So off they went, Matthew bundled up against Jiwoong’s side as the older man used one arm to hold the umbrella over their heads while the other was looped around the Canadian’s shoulders, back out into the pouring rain in the same position as they had arrived in but with a million times more warmth when they left. The blonde man began to feel drowsy as they walked, a very surprising thing considering the fact that he was literally starting to shiver all over while splashing through puddles of rainwater dotting the sidewalks, but with the steady sound of the rain pattering against the umbrella above his head and the comforting warmth of Jiwoong’s heat pressed against his side, all he could really do was resort to being a human zombie as he started to faze out and simply let the older man guide him to his apartment. 

The walk wasn’t very long, maybe about fifteen minutes or so under the horrible visibility distances under the rain, and Matthew started to regain some of his conscious thought back into his mind as Jiwoong pulled open a door and held it open for the younger man to walk through. Nodding, Matthew stepped through the doorway and was immediately hit with a wave of AC rippling through the indoor air and raising goosebumps along his skin, sending another series of shivers across his limbs as the coldness of his surroundings quickly mixed in with the water dripping from his clothes sticking to his body underneath the hoodie. 

Jiwoong shook out the raindrops from the outside of his umbrella and swiftly closed it before heading back over to Matthew and taking ahold of the crook of his elbow, holding the still-wet umbrella a considerable distance away from the both of them as to not get either of them wet. The older man was still pretty much completely dry despite all the hugging and waist-holding that had happened between them, Matthew noticed as he gave him a once-over, and was thoroughly impressed by it. It hadn’t exactly been raining straight down from the sky, so the fact that Jiwoong might have went out of his way to keep them both dry all while maneuvering the city blocks to get back to his apartment only further added to the warm feeling building up in the younger man’s heart about this stranger, this stranger who did so much for him out of the goodness of his own heart despite the pouring rain and chilling temperatures.

Matthew took the chance to look around at the apartment lobby as he followed Jiwoong across the floor, wet sneakers squeaking in unison across the tiles as they made their way across, leaving a trail of water behind them in their wake. It looked nice, not super up-scale like the rich-people beach apartments that he had walked past earlier, but nice enough looking that one would need to make a decent living to rent out, something that Matthew had guessed from the get-go that Jiwoong did. Nobody went around wearing Polo Ralph Lauren hoodies and Balenciaga shoes (yes, Matthew had noticed) while looking like a K-Drama actor without at least making the wage of an average middle-class family, so it had come as no surprise that Jiwoong would at least live in a decently upscale apartment building. What the other man even did for a living, Matthew didn’t know, but a sneaking suspicion in his gut told him that his original first impression of the man looking like an actor wasn’t too far off. 

The taller man shot him another worried look as they entered the elevator, his wide eyes giving Matthew a quick full-body scan before coming back up to meet his own. “Are you cold?” he asked as he clicked the 4 button on the floor panel and retreated back to Matthew’s side against the back wall, using his hands to prop himself against the wall banister. 

The blonde man couldn’t find it in himself to lie, not after all the other man had done for him. 

“Yes,” he quietly admitted, curling in on Jiwoong’s sweater hood that he had somehow thrown over his head while walking and burrowing into it. The older man didn’t look at him but slowly coddled closer to him in worry, trying to use his own body heat to keep Matthew warm until he could get out of his wet clothes. It was oddly affectionate in a way, and the Canadian definitely wasn’t complaining about it.

The elevator dinged and Matthew followed the taller man off as the doors opened to reveal a plain, gray hallway, keeping a tight hold of his hand as he let himself be guided down the hallway. Jiwoong stopped before a door towards the end of the hallway, labeled with a single metal plaque labeled 4-20, and took out a ring of keys from his pocket before jingling them around to find the right one. 

The lock clicked, and Jiwoong pushed the door a couple inches open with his shoulder blades before turning back to Matthew one last time with a teasing glint in his eyes and a foot wedged into the doorway.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he said in a low voice before pushing the door all the way open. 

The first thing Matthew noticed was that the apartment seemed to weirdly match the personality of its owner, in some unique, one-of-a-kind way. A small kitchen was boldly lit by a blocky light built into the ceiling towards the front of the entryway, bearing all the essentials that any normal household kitchen would have at max. Behind the kitchen lay a small but comfortable-looking living room, with a couple of colorful couches arranged in a u-shape around a TV laying inside a massive wooden bookcase against one wall, and Matthew even saw a large fluffy beanbag stuffed into one corner of an L-shaped couch that looked very inviting in his eyes. On the other side of the living room was a large floor-to-ceiling sliding glass door that led out to what seemed like a balcony, or what he thought was a balcony, while two doors to the left and right of the main room branched off into what Matthew assumed was the bedroom and study, possibly? Overall, it seemed large but cozy at the same time, a modest but warm-feeling apartment that perfectly matched the kind, warm man that lived in it. 

“I like your house,” Matthew joked as he toed off his shoes in the doorway, leaning a hand up against the walls to steady himself while detaching the sopping wet soles from his feet. Jiwoong let out a soft laugh as he did the same, except his were mostly dry, and slid him a pair of fluffy slippers from under the shoe rack. “I’m glad you do, because I like it very much too,” he smugly replied back, standing up and placing his hands on his hips to emphasize his point. Matthew snickered. 

Jiwoong slipped on his own pair of slippers and started to make his way into the apartment before suddenly coming to a stop by the kitchen counter, looking back at Matthew who was now standing in his doorway, dripping rainwater onto his doormat while wearing a pair of his blue fluffy bunny slippers. 

The older man bit his lip. “So, do you want a pair of dry clothes to change into or…” he awkwardly trailed off while he raised an arm to scratch at the back of his neck, unintentionally flexing his arm muscles that seemingly bulged up at the action underneath his shirt and strained against the fabric. Matthew gulped.

“If you don’t mind, I don-” his sentence was cut off by a loud sneeze escaping out of his system, one that came out with such force that it nearly almost hurt his vocal cords to let out. Man, he was seriously starting to get sick, maybe Jiwoong was right about the whole ‘you’re-gonna-catch-a-cold-anytime-soon’ thing. The older man startled, but then immediately spun on his heel and started trodding towards the door to the right of the kitchen.

“Yeah, I’m definitely going to get you a pair of dry clothes. I apologize beforehand if they aren’t your size, I don’t think any of my clothes will fit you very well but I’ll try to find the smallest ones,” he called out, not giving Matthew any time to respond while disappearing through the doorway of what was probably his bedroom, where Matthew then heard the creaking sound of a closet door opening and the shuffling of a bunch of clothes around. 

How amazing was his luck now? Matthew couldn’t believe it, standing in the doorway of a handsome man’s apartment while he waited for said handsome man to lend him a pair of his clothes to wear because his own were soaking wet (his fault), that the universe had been so kind to him as to let him meet the walking wonder that was Jiwoong. He seriously wondered if he’d have any good luck for the next year after this, as it must have used up a huge portion of his supply to pull off. 

The older man came out of his room a couple minutes later with a pile of clothes draped over one arm, picking through the pieces one last time before bringing them over to Matthew. 

“Here, I tried to find the smallest ones I could find, but I think they’ll still be a little baggy on you,” Jiwoong lightly apologized before handing the garments over. Matthew blinked up at him.

“Sorry? Hyung, you’re literally the best thing that could have ever happened to me in that situation, it should be me getting on my knees and begging you to tell me how I can repay you,” the blonde man insisted.

Jiwoong snorted. “Getting on your knees? So fast, now? Don’t you want to dry off, first?”

The not-so-appropriate implications of his poorly-chosen words hit Matthew with the force of a truck, making the tips of his ears flush a brilliant bright pink as he weakly threw a punch at the older man’s chest. Jiwoong laughed and played along with the blonde’s antics, fake-acting like he had been seriously injured with a hand clutched to his chest and heaving out a couple short, heavy breaths. 

“I’m just kidding, you can change in my room, I left a towel on the bed in case you need it. I’ll bring you a plastic bag to put your wet clothes in in a second, and just yell for me if you prefer some other sort of clothing!”

Jiwoong’s bedroom was just as cozy as the rest of his apartment, Matthew realized as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. A large, queen-sized bed was pushed up against the far corner near the window with a cute little bedstand by its side, adorned with silky-white sheets and a pair of comfortable-looking creme-colored pillows. On the other side, a dresser stood at the foot of his bed along with a long, blue couch spanning the entire wall on the other side, with a couple of sleek-looking lamps scattered throughout the room emitting a soft, yellow glow to the space.

He quickly stripped out of his sopping wet clothes (ew, they felt disgusting) and placed them into the plastic grocery bag Jiwoong had provided him with (seriously, how good of a host could this man get?), making sure to not drip any liquid onto the nice wooden flooring of the bedroom. He shucked off the hoodie first, folding up up neatly and leaving it on the bed like Jiwoong had instructed him to do, giving it a nice little pat before turning to the pile of dry clothing laying next to it.

It turned out that the older mad had provided him with a simple pair of clothes, a worn-out gray t-shirt with some French band name that Matthew didn’t recognize printed across the front and a pair of loose, black sweatpants to go with it neatly folded underneath. Despite the fact that Jiwoong had really tried to find the smallest pair of clothes he owned to give to Matthew, the sleeves of the tshirt still almost went down to the blonde man’s elbows and he had needed to roll up the bottoms of the sweatpants at least three times to find his feet, damn the older man’s long limbs. Seriously, it really looked like as if Matthew was a little kid drowning in his older siblings clothes as he looked at himself in the floor-length mirror propped up against the dresser, tilting his head at the way the collar of the tshirt loosely draped below his collarbones and the way the sweatpants seemed to loosely drag and trail on the floor. 

Jiwoong was sitting at the kitchen table when Matthew emerged from the bedroom, idly leaning back on his chair while two mugs of steaming liquid sat on the rounded wooden table. The older man looked up at the sound of the door opening and widened his eyes as they fell upon Matthew’s figure being absolutely engulfed by his own clothing, looking the same way he had ten minutes ago when Matthew had first put on his hoodie.

Matthew giggled and sat down in the chair across from the older man on the other side of the table, curiously peering over the edge of the steaming mug in front of him, which turned out to be a cup of hot water. How thoughtful of him, even providing warm liquid to help him heat up. Matthew didn’t know what he’d have to do to repay Jiwoong for all the trouble the older man had gone through to help him.

Matthew took a tentative sip from the mug and immediately let out a sigh as the warm liquid breached his throat, relishing in the feeling of finally having something hot inside his freezing body. Jiwoong smiled at him from over his own mug and raised his eyebrows, seemingly knowing how much it did for the blonde.

“You can charge your phone over there,” the taller man pointed towards a single white charger plugged into an outlet above the counter, “I think that charger should work.” Putting down the mug, Matthew thanked him and quickly trotted over to the wall while fishing his dead phone out of his pocket, internally sighing with relief when it started to turn on as he plugged in the line.

“What will I ever have to do to repay you for all of this?” The Canadian asked as he returned to his chair and sat back down to face the other man, placing his bare hands around the hot mug to warm them up. Jiwoong didn’t say anything for a few moments, only staring at him with an unreadable expression in his eyes.

“You don’t need to repay me, seriously, it was my pleasure. I wanted to do it, unless you absolutely insist on it,” he mumbled.

Mathew eagerly nodded. “Of course, hyung! I’ll do anything you want to repay you, this is really just so much for me not to.”

Jiwoong leaned back in his chair again, resting a hand over the backrest in a way that it loosely hung over the edge at the forearm. The warm glow of the apartment suddenly seemed to outline the shape of his figure like a full-body halo, making his already-perfect features seem that much more angelic to Matthew’s eyes. Despite only having known Jiwoong for not even half an hour, Matthew just knew that the older man was his ideal type, alas, with a heart that took care of a random stranger like his closest friend and a personality that never ceased to make the Canadian feel giddy inside, how couldn’t he be?

“Let me take you on a date. Or it doesn’t have to be, we can just hang out. Let me wine and dine you, and let me get to know you better.”

Wait, what?

“Hyung, that’s not a repay, that’s just another favor! Hell, I’ll have to owe you two after that!” Matthew spluttered out in shock, cheeks furiously heating up as the words slowly sunk into his mind.

“Matthew, getting to know you is all I’d ever need to consider the favor repaid.”

Half an hour later, Matthew left the apartment with a grocery bag of wet clothes, a sticky note with Kim Jiwoong’s number scrawled across the front, and a heart-stricken smile spreading across his face.

— Epilogue —

“Yah, Seok Matthew, where have you been? We’ve been worried sick about you!”

“Uh, I got lost, Hanbin-hyung.”

“Yeah ri- wait, why are those clothes so big on you? Seok Woohyun, WHOSE CLOTHES ARE YOU WEARING?”

“I swear I can explain, hyung. It’s not what it looks like.”

“Hey, I’m not judging. Perhaps our Seokmae-ah actually does have game.”

“Wha- Hao-hyung! I said that it’s not what it looks like!”

“I promise, me and your Hanbin-hyung will support you with an-”

“Said who?! Matthew, get over here right now.”