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Donghyuck doesn’t get the kick out of kissing.
Even when he’s way past being a single-digit old kid watching a couple peck each other across the street and having his face contort in that all-love-is-gross, icked-out feeling. Even well into the stage where friends and classmates and dude you don’t know but you should ‘cause he’s the shit and we all wanna be him keep tally marks of girls and guys and someone you don’t know but you should ‘cause they’re hot and we all wanna be with them that they pulled, the words hand stuff working like a magic spell to materialize a chorus of yelling and hands slapping you on the back.
Even then, for Donghyuck kissing is a lot of spit, heat, and mouth, all at once and for way too long.
If feeling weirdly experimental and overly empathetic, you could just as well put your eyeball to someone else’s, and you would get the same wet, bland feeling Donghyuck feels at thirteen for the first time. When he's got hands curled around the back of Lee Jeno's neck and lips pressed closed and tight to his, and the most he feels out of it is the undercut under his palms prickling the tips of his fingers.
He makes out with a vague, his name started with J (or wait! maybe G) kind of memory of a guy that Donghyuck wouldn't be able to pick out from a crowd today, too long gone by since he’s last been seventeen. But he still remembers J-or-G’s face at that microscopic moment when he had pulled away—having shrugged on red cotton over his cheeks and running out of breath, even with everyone’s dicks still safe and sound inside their pants—and Donghyuck remembers even better trying to imitate him, counting one-two-threes to try to match the klutzy tempo of his breathing and willing his temperature to rise into make-believe pink, all the while thinking will he let me give him a hand job? should I ask now? what about now? and now?
It’s not for lack of romanticism, because Jeno's name can be found inside Donghyuck’s notebooks in between perfect square binomials and synthetic analyses years before Donghyuck gets him alone at the lamest pool party known to man, shyness sunburnt out of him and drunk enough on a poolful of chlorine to give a try to that whole sparks-and-fireworks tale he’d watched and heard and every-other-sensed so much about, getting his personal equivalent to touching eyeballs instead.
And it’s not for lack of horniness, because Donghyuck runs hot with the most orthodox touch of a hand on his hip, every brush and graze electric even when buzzing low on frequency—but then someone tries to part his lips open and he feels himself begin to simply go through the motions. It just so happens to be the best way for whoever he’s climbing on top of to get their knees weakened and their hands pulling at Donghyuck’s shirt, the same way J-or-G-initials had once turned into eyes unfocused and a belt buckle loose after Donghyuck opened him up with his mouth alone.
Kissing is the overture to sex, he finds years later, and sex is the curtain fall for Donghyuck to point every guy bowing next to him to the exit.
Cue a random dating app swiping session while he's taking a dump, Donghyuck's pants pooling at his ankles when he taps through a new profile that constitutes of nothing but blurry pictures. He’s about to dedicate his tenth left swipe in a row to Jaemin, 23, just when he makes out the words this christian mom HATES garfield on the guy's t-shirt in it, and a blink later he watches as the It’s a Match! screen materializes into thin air from Donghyuck swiping right on him without realizing it, like a be-seven-watch-people-kiss-and-puke reflex. A night out in a two Yelp stars bar, another one at a slightly less dingy place, and then an offer to take it back to Jaemin's place.
It's Donghyuck the one being shown the exit, then, and for the first time in who's-counting-how-long, with his jeans’ fly halfway up and his Uber seven minutes away, he thinks he wouldn't mind a repeat of tonight. Would like it, even. To have another go at Jaemin, and his lack of restraint, and a conversation that is anything but easy when Donghyuck is fighting a blush that might as well have reached down to his toes, and that smile with enough teeth in it to blind Donghyuck or eat him whole. Yeah. Yeah, he'd really like that.
"Hey. So." He tugs his pants impossibly higher up by the loops, movement stiff where he still sits at the edge of Jaemin's bed. There's a lazy hum behind him, and Donghyuck bends down in hopes Jaemin hadn't clocked him tying his shoes a minute ago to tug one of his laces undone and busy himself crafting up bunny ears for a second time. An excuse not to look back when he asks, “Guess I'll see you soon?"
It's sterile still until Donghyuck straightens back up, chronic slouch cured with a single dose of awkwardness alone, and then Jaemin is making his way to Donghyuck’s spot across the bed, a lack of restraint, clothes and shame sliding on its knees to him. A hand gets Donghyuck leaning back, tips him from the crown of his head to angle his face down, and then he's meeting Jaemin nose-first before his lips land on him.
It's not the kind of kiss he'd gotten at the bar, filthy and wet and ninety percent tongue and teeth, and it's not the same kind from the last hour, ragged and broken-jawed and nothing more than heavy breathing into each other. Jaemin does little else than press forward, mouth barely slacked and lips parted, pulling Donghyuck into him with the palm he's got curled at the back of his neck.
And Donghyuck doesn't chase after it, but he finds he could stay just like this if he had to for a minute or two. It’s warm, and not the worst feeling in the world, and when Jaemin hums he feels it on the roof of his mouth, kinda, the same way he does when he sings close-lipped to himself.
"Meet me for lunch? It would be nice to see you in broad daylight. Make sure you aren't an actual vampire and all that." Jaemin swallows Donghyuck's premature yeah with another kiss, filling in the missing time and place Donghyuck had already agreed without when he parts again. "Sunday sound good?"
Sunday's great. No, really. Donghyuck finally gets to meet Jaemin’s eye for more than three seconds at a time, learns how years of babysitting during your teens can bleed into wanting to become a kindergarten teacher, and is made to witness Jaemin’s horrific spring-roll-eating technique as he cracks them in two to eat filling first, fried pastry second.
It’s only polite to not let Jaemin’s time go to waste, who’s sticking around after walking Donghyuck to his bus stop, deserted and in a street no four-wheeled anything has driven down in the last minute. Donghyuck leans in, a historical first, and Jaemin meets him on the way, as if he had been waiting for him two eager steps in front of the dotted line. He tastes of honey soy sauce, both holding Donghyuck’s cheek in place and going pliant under him, and there’s that humming inside Donghyuck’s mouth again.
It only takes a couple more weeks down the line for Donghyuck to find that to be Jaemin’s version of cooing mid-kiss, mouth apparently never too busy not to let it be known when he finds Donghyuck adorable, which is just about any time. A sweet gesture when it’s over Donghyuck stretching out the way only cats do first thing in the morning in bed, back arched, bare ass up to the ceiling and all. A demeaning one, when what Jaemin finds cute is Donghyuck’s pissed-off face, his chin wrinkled up in anger too close to a pout for Jaemin to hold back on his basic cheek-pinching needs.
He’s in somewhat of a sweet spot right now, going up in awws in the middle of a subway car over Donghyuck’s jaw cracking open wide with a yawn, a finger trying to stick itself inside his mouth getting slapped away even when Donghyuck’s lips won’t give up the Capital O shape they’ve taken on.
“Tired?” Jaemin asks, redundant if nothing else, and it’s not demeaning if only because this is also Jaemin, several weeks deep from having taken the plunge into dating Donghyuck. Picking him up from his Thursday night class for no other reason than the fact he could. Gripping the subway pole with no repair after having heard Donghyuck go on enough spiels about the number of germs on the thing, so he can wrap his hand on top of his and not directly on the steel minefield of microbes that goes from floor to ceiling.
Donghyuck stares back at him, a headache brewing under the surface from one perfectly-shaped piece of bad news and three hours of endless scatterplots shoved down his eyeballs. The subway doors beep when they open at a new station, and he takes it as an automated call to break the quiet.
"I got a forty-four," he states, hoping Jaemin can read between the lines. Without Donghyuck needing to say any lines at all.
A boy can dream.
Jaemin’s freaky like that, anyway. He wouldn’t put mindreading past him.
"Forty-four what?" Jaemin pushes when nothing else comes.
Or maybe not.
Donghyuck's eyes jump from the wrinkle on Jaemin's brow to the creased line on his shirt, left behind by his bag's strap that is now hanging from Donghyuck's shoulder. His palm is sweating overtime, sliding over Jaemin’s knuckles and off his closed fist with every stop and start of the line, but Jaemin’s other hand comes in to climb on top of Donghyuck’s and keep it at bay.
Donghyuck’s eyes take a last leap there, a meshwork of fingers, sweat and rings not enough to deter Jaemin’s grip, and he gives in at last, “Points. I got back my stats midterm today. That’s my grade. Forty-four."
Jaemin blinks.
"That's a lot of points."
The sheer amount of defeat in the sound Donghyuck makes would pass a distress litmus test with flying colors.
"I’m serious,” Jaemin insists. He does sound serious. Donghyuck will give him that. "Think of forty-four of anything.” His eyebrows raise, and Donghyuck regrets giving him anything at all right away. “Forty-four nuclear bombs. You wouldn’t say that’s too little.”
“Jaem. Please.” Donghyuck’s eyes close with a groan, forehead coming to rest on the pole, germs be damned.
“Forty-four spiders in this subway car right now crawling all over you. Tell me those aren't a lot," he keeps on. The hand at the top of the pile leaves its place to poke at the dip of Donghyuck’s hip instead, fingers wriggling like a spider climbing up his side. It’s fucking dumb. It’s also got Donghyuck biting back the weak pull of a tired smile, one that wins him over when he opens his eyes again and meets Jaemin’s face in full, his forehead leaned on the other side of the pole right next to his, now making a show out of whispering, "Forty-four of me all over you."
Donghyuck grins for a second, gesture dying down enough after that it looks earnest when he mutters back, "I liked the spiders better.”
Jaemin makes the most offended, most theatrical, least believable face Donghyuck has seen on him, mouth open in a gasp and hand held to the made-believe spot where his heart is, and Donghyuck—romance repulsed extraordinaire up to the age of ten and known for mentally filing making out right next to other fun activities, such as queueing up at the bank or filling out paperwork—wants to kiss him stupid.
The more accurate, technical description of his train of thought would be that he wants to haul Jaemin inside himself. Tuck him under his shirt and have him disappear under the cloth like a rabbit inside a magic hat. Pick him apart like a finished puzzle that needs to be put back in its box, twisting the bits of him one way and another until they unlock, and down Jaemin comes.
Public spaces, human decency, and basic physics won’t let him do any of those. A good kiss is as close as he can get.
And Donghyuck presses his lips together into a thin line now. Because they’re on public transport, and there’s a line of women in their sixties at the string of seats behind Jaemin’s back, and this sticky feeling inside his chest is already icky enough where it is tucked away between his lungs—but behind the nearest closed doors Donghyuck can get Jaemin past, he needs to kiss him like that. Like a thank you, or an I missed you, because he does that now. Kisses like an I’m sorry, or a you got me my favorite, or a you’re here, are you real? let me check, and it’s ridiculous, and did you know Donghyuck holds his breath now, sometimes? In between kiss and kiss, as if he’s diving underwater? And Jaemin is the one who never pulls away, never turns pink, laughs in his face when he feels Donghyuck’s chest go haywire underneath him.
It's still the best way to disarm Jaemin he’s got. The one that will get him to drop everything to put his hands at Donghyuck’s waist the moment he bites at Jaemin’s mouth. The most effortless test to pass. The easiest bomb Donghyuck’s ever had to defuse.
Forty-four of those Donghyuck could do any day.