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Sion closes his eyes and dips forward to put his face under the open tap again. It must be the third or fourth time he’s doing this, his fingers are wet where they grip the edge of the sink and parts of his hair are too, blond darkened with it, clinging to his temples before the water drips from the strands down his jaw.
The bright flush on his skin doesn’t leak out down the drain, no matter how much he tries it this way. It will probably stay like this for a little longer and he’ll just have to accept sleeping it off.
Wonbin watches him turn his face below the stream, bluish veins and flutter on his eyelids, the cold mirror lights sharpening the hollowed out angles below his cheekbones.
He looks a little weary but soft. Wonbin’s not thinking deeper than that while he shuffles further into his own bathroom to lean against the wall by Sion’s side.
He tangles one of Sion’s ankles in the bracket of both of his, adjusting their bare feet on the white tiles so the two of them are cramped in front of the sink, hip bones digging against it. He doesn’t have to be here like this, really, but if he is then he can stare at the colors streaked over Sion from closer.
Touch it, too.
He pokes the corner of Sion’s mouth twice and Sion responds to it before Wonbin can do it again, smiling then opening his lips in the direction of Wonbin’s fingertip like he’ll catch him like that next.
Water slips through instead, the sound of it hitting the basin different after Sion's mouth.
Wonbin punches his shoulder lightly and Sion takes it as a cue to close the tap and wipe his face on his palms. It deepens the rush of blood staining him but doesn’t do anything about getting him drier.
Sion opens his eyes and his pupils are still dilated from the alcohol when they find Wonbin, slow and slippery to hold him properly.
“I don’t think Ryo ever saw me drunk,” he drawls, like all that washing up softened the borders between the syllables on his tongue. He doesn’t look or ask for the towel in the hanger. “Sakuya cornered me to the wall once, when I tried to hide because I didn't want him to see me. I don't even remember anything else, just waking up in Yushi's bed and Sakuya sleeping on a bed of blankets on the floor.”
His voice’s coarse, on the somber side of quiet, but there's no weight on the slope of his shoulders. Wonbin outlines the scene in his head and it seems like a big thing. “You blacked out?”
“No, nothing that serious,” Sion shrugs, the lazy focusing of his gaze falling to somewhere around Wonbin's collarbone. “Just tried something stronger at the bar with Jisung and it tasted so good but I didn’t handle it well. The whole thing was stupid.”
The mention of Jisung's name stings, more now than it ever did before. Wonbin hopes time has helped him build some walls to hide it from the surface of his expression, if nothing else. “Why did you try to hide from Sakuya then?”
Sion smiles silently and lifts two fingers to play them around the star pendant in Wonbin's necklace, identical to the one he has. He’s not wearing it today, there's nothing interrupting the patch of skin from his nape to the low collar of his top except the evidence of his inebriation, speckled and aglow.
“Curious Wonbinie,” Sion glances at Wonbin’s eyes then back to the center of his chest. The droplets of water glistening on his lashes look like tears he didn't let go of. “You're such a cat sometimes, like Yushi.”
“You're the one who started the story,” Wonbin tries to defend himself though it's heatless, surrounded by the cold wall on his back and the cool sensation of Sion's graze on his sternum. "You came here.”
It's late too, a placid hour sunk in the middle of the night. Sion hums almost muted, accordingly. “Have you ever seen me drunk, Bbin?”
That’s just offensive, Wonbin huffs. “What are you saying, we used to drink together all the time.”
“Oh, true,” Sion laughs, shameless, with a drunken sincerity that would be aggravating if it were anyone else. If it didn't scatter through him, over his cheeks and down his chest, gentle earthquakes.
It dies down but he keeps smiling. “I guess in my head we had so little time, not even enough to sit down and have a proper drink. We just got tipsy and headed home. To the dorms, I mean.”
It's a flash of a memory in a tainted backdrop. Wonbin ignores it to focus on Sion because Sion has no boundaries with him, no matter how many calendar rows and columns go by, no matter the landslide of days they spend without seeing each other.
He turns his feet between Wonbin’s to face him fully and then his hands are on Wonbin's clavicle, splayed and still clammy over the strips of his top, tips of his thumbs meeting where all the feeling in Wonbin suddenly rushes to, nearly sharp.
Sion presses his lips together, containing the remains of his smile, then blinks in the corners of Wonbin’s face.
He’s always had a way of doing this that made it look like he was waiting for permission or for a breach to do something, a kid about to do what he shouldn't, so Wonbin only slightly shivers when Sion steps impossibly closer and buries his face in the crook of his neck, nose brushing his pulse in a poorly traced trajectory.
“When was the last time we did that?” Sion mumbles, his flush and his warm breath on Wonbin's skin. “Why don't you call me more? I miss you.”
The inhale that Wonbin tries to manage sticks to the ceiling of his mouth before it grains down his throat, empties him out.
They never turned the overheads on, just the mirror lights, and the walls are strange with pooling shadows beyond the corner they're in. Wonbin closes his eyes to shut off the half-bright part of it, pretend it doesn't feel like a spotlight on him.
He doesn't remember the last time. It really has been a while, but that's barely an excuse to forget anything.
The first time he ever had a sip of alcohol he was at Sion's house, flat on his back on his childhood bedroom floor a few hours after the long, empty lull of taking the KTX on a holiday– after the early night silence around Sion’s drowsy profile on his shoulder, the dark contour of the railway fleeting past their reflections on the window glass then lighting up into Mokpo. Way later into the evening, after a lantern-lit walk on the barn and dinner at the living room table with Sion's family and the door to everyone else’s bedroom closing upstairs for the night.
Sion had straddled Wonbin's waist and tipped a soju bottle to his lips with a hand on his jaw to hold him still and in place. Wonbin's reaction to the sweetness and the bitter aftertaste had made him laugh before he brushed his fingers through Wonbin's hair soothingly, not drawing away until Wonbin swallowed all the resistance in his throat.
Sion had said it was his first time doing it too but when he took the bottle to his own lips he didn't flinch or groan or complain, like it was just sweet all the way through him, from the bottle rim that had been on Wonbin's lips to the inside of him.
Wonbin remembers that– so clearly that Sion's weight on him now makes it feel wrong to be standing up instead of lying down, on his back underneath him.
“I miss you too,” Wonbin croaks out, weird gravity on the back of his knees. He leans his chin on Sion’s shoulder because he can, because it feels nice to fit against him and erase some of the lingering distance. “You can sleep here today, right? I have painkillers, I think. Energy drinks and all the other things.”
Sion hums and nods, still all pressed against Wonbin– his forehead and the temperature of his skin, the dampness on his eyelashes that Wonbin could mistake for tears.
Wonbin could get closer. He could pull back and lean his forehead to Sion’s collar, ask space to mirror his position right now. Sion would let him put his lips on his cheek, he thinks. The corner of his mouth.
Before he can try, Sion sinks his palms to Wonbin's navel then tangles the drawstring of Wonbin's shorts on his fingers. Says, “I really need to sleep right now, but I’ll stay here tomorrow too.”
Something about it makes him giggle again though softer now, the sound filtering through the spaces in the tiles like they're underwater. Wonbin closes his eyes for one second and hears it echo before he needs to move away.