Work Text:
He’s on the stairs again. Smoking a cigarette with his head tilted back towards the stars. There’s a small collection of butts littered around his feet.
Every night for the past week he’s sat on the same step, smoked a half pack of menthols, and stared at Chan as he passed. He never says anything, just stares long and hard as Chan takes the stairs to his apartment.
Chan is not easily frightened, really, but this man is frightening. He’s taller than Chan and always frowning and the black ink of a tattoo peeks out from beneath his printed button-down. He’s undeniably sketchy, everything about him screams ‘thug.’
He really wants to avoid him, find a way to circumvent him entirely, but there’s only one entrance to Chan’s place—a total fire hazard, Seungkwan has complained—and the man is right in his path.
He steels himself before moving but Chan only has to take a half step in the man’s direction for his head to snap towards him. His eyes, slit in vague irritation, zero in on him.
What Chan would like to do is greet him quickly and politely and then take the stairs measuredly and calmly up to his apartment. What he usually does is nod brusquely, take the stairs in twos, and slam his door behind him. What happens tonight is Chan gets about three steps away from the stairs when the other man blocks his path. He slides to the middle of the step he’s sitting on and meets Chan’s eyes squarely.
Chan feels a sudden urge to flee.
“You always get home so late,” the man says through a cloud of smoke, sudden and sharp and startling. Chan tries not to flinch away from him. “What do you do?”
Chan blinks, looking over his shoulder like he could be talking to anyone else. “Um. I’m a teacher,” he feels compelled to say, his fingers clenching around his messenger bag.
“Teachers work this late?”
“I work far away.”
The man nods, takes a long drag of his cigarette, and then tosses it on the ground between them and rises to his feet in one swift motion. He’s strangely graceful, closing in on Chan in a single step, the butt of his smoke crushed beneath his sole.
Chan doesn’t move, it’d be admitting defeat, cowering. If there’s one thing Lee Chan doesn’t do, it’s cower. So, he stands his ground and the man—his neighbour, really, because he must be, he used to smell this same cigarette smoke from the apartment below every night—nods a little.
“Want a ride?” he asks.
“Huh?” is all Chan musters in response, a little too loud, a little too rude. He hopes the man understands it as shock rather than disrespect.
“To work. I’ll drive you,” he says like it explains anything at all.
He seems so genuine. Stinking of cigarettes and looming over him and terribly sincere. Chan finds himself thrown entirely for a loop.
“I don’t even know your name,” he blurts out, even though it’s not what he had wanted to say.
The man’s mouth curls a little and he brings up two fingers to rub at his lips, like he forgot he already finished his cigarette.
“Jeon Wonwoo,” he says, still standing too close.
Chan steps back and lets the man, Wonwoo, win this time.
“I don’t need a ride to work,” he insists.
Wonwoo just shrugs. He doesn’t say anything else, just stands stone-still in front of Chan and stares. And stares. And stares. And Chan finally breaks, inching his way around him.
“Running?” Wonwoo asks, reaching for another cigarette.
It’s like he knows exactly what to say to make Chan indignantly plant his feet against his better judgement. Five years ago Chan would’ve bitten hard on Wonwoo’s bait but today, he straightens up and walks around him. Chan has spent the entire time he’s been working as a teacher tamping down the urge to respond to provocations. These days, he just knows better.
“Goodnight, Wonwoo,” Chan says before taking the stairs two steps at a time.
The following night he’s there again, already standing, leant up against a post.
“How was your day?” he asks, stubbing out his cigarette.
Chan almost scoffs. “It was fine,” he answers as vaguely as possible.
“Just fine?”
“Good,” Chan amends. “Tiring but good.”
Wonwoo’s lips curl up at the sides of his mouth like they did last night and Chan comes to the sudden realisation that he’s smiling. It’s cute, awkward like he doesn’t know how to do it right.
It’s cute.
His mouth moves before his brain and asks, “How was yours?”
The smile grows and Chan thinks he needs to leave quickly before either of them get any crazy ideas.
“It’s great,” he says. Chan tries not to hear the implied ‘now’ in that answer.
“I’m glad,” Chan replies. “Well. I hope you have a great night too, Wonwoo.”
He feels his eyes on him all the way up the stairs.
It goes like this for the better part of a month. Wonwoo trying to strike up mildly flirty conversation at 11 at night and Chan, exhausted from a long day, quickly realising that he’s not as scary as he thought he was.
It’s a Friday when the routine breaks.
Chan gets home early and Wonwoo isn’t there. It’s just their too old, too small, two-floor apartment complex and the setting afternoon sun and Chan. Just Chan.
It’s an uncomfortable feeling. Chan is not someone who needs to constantly be around people, he’s always been a person who can thrive in solitude, can focus in it. For him to feel… disappointed—because that’s what he is, he knows—about not seeing a man he barely knows? Something’s gone wrong here.
At the top of the stairs, Chan hears Wonwoo’s door creak open behind him.
Something will continue to go wrong here, he realises when he turns around to meet Wonwoo’s surprised eyes.
“You’re early,” he says, his cigarette pack in hand.
“Do you drink?” Chan asks instead of answering.
Wonwoo blinks and then nods and Chan is grinning.
“Wait there,” he orders, already pulling at his tie with one hand as he fumbles for his keys with the other.
When Chan reemerges, six pack in hand, Wonwoo is still standing in the exact same spot. He’s irritatingly cute.
He holds the beer up by his head with a grin. Wonwoo can’t seem to process the situation until he is in front of him, sitting down on the step he usually sits on. Wonwoo follows suit.
“What’s the occasion?” he asks, voice tinged with suspicion.
“It’s a Friday,” Chan says without offering anything else. Wonwoo can be the one sitting and pondering on their interactions for once.
He hums quietly and finally reaches for a beer. He must’ve decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Chan thinks, smiling around his bottle.
He glances at him, at his handsome profile and his fidgeting hands. He looks beautiful in the fading sunlight, his skin cast in orange. Chan takes a long swig.
“Why’d you get home so early today?” Wonwoo asks.
“It was a half-day,” Chan explains, leaning back on the step behind them. “Which means I finished around the time school usually lets out.”
“Do you like it? Teaching?”
“Yeah, I love it. It’s hard sometimes but it’s so rewarding too.”
“What do you teach?”
Chan smiles when Wonwoo leans back with him. His awkwardness, his 21 questions conversation style, the furrow between his brows, it’s all so charming. Chan finds Wonwoo unendingly sweet.
“I teach History mostly,” Chan says, trying not to stare at the way Wonwoo’s lips wrap around his beer bottle. "When I started studying, I taught dance but I had to quit to focus on my degree."
Wonwoo just nods like his questions have run out and Chan stifles a chuckle again. Ah, he really is cute.
“So, what do you do?” he asks, glad to take over the position of questioner.
“This and that,” Wonwoo obfuscates.
It’s sudden, off, Chan frowns before he can manage not to.
“What does that mean?” he pushes, eyebrows raised.
Wonwoo turns away, his hands wringing his beer. “It means this and that. I don’t have much of a stable job these days.”
Chan would sympathise if he believed him, instead, he finds himself strangely irritated. Why lie? he thinks trying not to scowl. It’s not hard to tell that Wonwoo isn’t exactly on the straight and narrow but why lie to me? It’s not fair. He gets to pry into my life but he won’t even tell me what he does for a living? What a joke.
Wonwoo doesn't turn back even as Chan stares daggers into the side of his face.
Fuck this, Chan thinks, his mood worsening even further. Is he being unreasonable? Does it matter? Chan isn't asking for much. He’s not. He never does.
Fuck this, he thinks again.
“What’s wrong?” Wonwoo asks, interrupting Chan’s stewing.
He musters up a smile, “Nothing. I just realised I got the wrong type of beer.”
Wonwoo looks like he wants to say something else but he just nods. Their conversation dies down, dull and monotonous again, the way it was that first week when Wonwoo was all glarey and Chan was afraid of him.
Chan retreats up the stairs after his second beer.
“You can have them,” he says without looking back.
He tries not to hope Wonwoo watched him go.
Two Fridays later, Chan gets home at 2 in the morning. He’s only a little tipsy but the week’s exhaustion has caught up with him. Wonwoo is leaning against his doorframe, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth.
“Have fun?” he asks and it’s weirdly indignant, like he has any right to be annoyed about how Chan spends his time.
It’s irritating. All of it. His demeanour and his sarcasm and the way he looks put together even in the middle of the night.
Chan just stares at him for a moment, at his handsome face and his tall frame and the chain hanging around his neck. He has so many buttons undone. Chan swallows.
“How was your night?” Chan fires back, just as indignant.
“I missed you,” Wonwoo admits.
Chan almost chokes. He’s so shameless. Fucking ridiculous, he “missed” him. They’ve barely spoken for the past two weeks, how could he have missed him tonight?
“Whatever,” Chan dismisses, feeling more and more sober.
“It’s true,” Wonwoo argues, standing up straight, his face irritatingly serious.
“You don’t even know me.”
That spurs him into action. Closing the distance between them in three long strides. Chan can’t hide his flinch this time.
Wonwoo frowns, taking a half step back. “I’m trying to. I’ve been trying to. You won’t let me.”
It’s frustrating that Wonwoo thinks this is Chan’s fault when it’s a shared misalignment at most.
“What do you do for a living?” Chan asks, point blank, no fuss.
Answer me. Answer me. Please, answer me.
Wonwoo doesn’t answer. He can’t. A flash of irritation passes over his face before he schools his expression again.
He thinks for a moment.
Chan lets him.
He still can’t answer.
Chan’s blank expression breaks into a derisive smile and he scoffs. He shakes his head, turning away from the other man. “Goodnight, Wonwoo,” he says with no small amount of firmness.
He makes it five steps before he feels a hand around his wrist. He’s tired enough that he lets himself be grabbed.
Wonwoo has this miserable look on his face, his brows all furrowed, mouth in a trembling grimace. Chan feels his thoughts moving into unadvisable territory. He feels that ‘pick-up-kitten-in-rain’ switch flick on in his head. Fuck.
“I’m trying to get out. Really,” Wonwoo tries to explain, holding onto Chan like a lifeline. Still, his grip is so light that Chan could pull away with little more than a tug. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t trying to get out.”
Chan doesn’t want to pull away.
Wonwoo is always so sincere. Always so obvious in his affections, always so straightforward in his words. He is genuine. And kind. And horrible.
Once a week, another gang member visits him with a briefcase and leaves as soon as he arrives. Once a week, he smells of booze more than cigarettes. Once a week, he looks up at Chan with watery eyes and asks a question too personal to be small talk, like he really does want to know him.
Once a week, Chan climbs the stairs in silence.
‘I don’t care,’ he wants to say. ‘I don’t know you, I don’t want to know you. I can’t know you.’
What he does instead is grab him by the collar of his stupid silk shirt and kiss him. Hard.
There’s no moment of hesitation from Wonwoo, no startled pause that would give Chan the second he needs to turn on his heel and flee in shame. Wonwoo kisses him back like he’s been waiting for it since the first time they met. Hot and heavy and unyielding. He lets go of Chan’s hand to grasp his face, his fingernails dragging soft against his nape. And Chan feels his way down Wonwoo’s chest, around his waist, against his flushed skin.
Wonwoo gasps into his mouth and Chan licks into it mindlessly before he regains a brief thought and pulls away an inch to say something.
“Don’t lie to me, Wonwoo,” he orders, nails in his side.
Wonwoo just nods, desperate, and Chan accepts it when he claims his mouth again.
That night, Wonwoo looks up at him with wet eyes, his hair a mess, and Chan can’t believe he tried to turn away from him.
That night, Chan digs his nails into Wonwoo’s skin so hard that he bleeds. “I want you to know me,” Wonwoo exhales.
That night they wrap around each other like snakes, coiled so tight they can’t breathe.
In the morning, Wonwoo says, “I’m sorry.”
In the morning, Chan smiles, “I thought you agreed not to lie to me.”
In the morning, they talk and learn and begin to know.