Work Text:
Taesan’s been idly scrolling on his phone for a while now, but Instagram Reels can’t seem to quell whatever it is that’s going on with him. Sungho is across from him drawing a landscape or something in his sketchbook. Taesan really doesn’t know what it is, and isn’t particularly interested. His brain is being occupied by a more pressing issue.
Taesan and Sungho hang out together all the time with the others, but not as much one-on-one. Not because they don’t like each other, but simply because they don’t feel the need to. They have an unspoken kind of closeness of sorts, that doesn’t really require them to be attached at the hip. A kind where Taesan knows Sungho understands him. He doesn’t get frustrated with his sometimes blunt and closed off demeanor, because he understands where Taesan is coming from. The oldest always treats him kindly, plays along with his bits, lets himself be teased if it makes the other happy, and is a source of peace if he’s ever overwhelmed by the remaining extroverts. He can confidently say that he enjoys true other’s presence.
But today, for an unknown reason, his presence seems to be unsettling.
The others are hanging out in the upper dorm, while he and Sungho settled with some form of silent parallel play with snacks on the couch in the lower dorm. It’s been a while since they hung out just the two of them, and Taesan figured it would be nice and peaceful.
Unfortunately for him, at some point during this hang-out Taesan fell into a Sungho-induced trance where he feels strangely compelled to stare at the older. Something about Sungho’s presence makes it difficult to look at anything else but his face, slightly furrowed brows and lower lip jutted out in concentration as his pencil scratches the thin sheet of paper.
At some point Taesan completely abandoned distracting himself with his phone, and had been fixated on the way Sungho chewed on his lip while scanning what he’d already drawn. Sungho’s lips were always very pink and shiny, as if he were wearing lipgloss, resting in a perpetual pout, something Taesan finds strangely endearing. He can’t help but think about what it would feel like to kiss Sungho, and cringes at his own train of thought because why the hell would he be thinking about that.
Shaking that off, Taesan chooses to look elsewhere to Sungho’s outfit today. A long sleeve plaid shirt over a tank top, and some blue jeans. Conveniently enough (or unfortunately, depending on which part of Taesan’s brain you ask), the overshirt was currently slipping off of one of his shoulders. Despite having seen Sungho in revealing clothes before (Taesan tries hard not to think about the crop tops too much), the sight felt a bit scandalous.
Everyone knows Sungho has broad shoulders, and, even if he pretends to be, he’s not shy about them either. But Taesan never gets to really look at his shoulders, and as he wonders how firm they are to the touch he thinks that it was probably for the better of his sanity that he doesn’t. He lets himself be a bit indulgent, and imagines what it would like to run his hands along Sungho’s smooth skin, grip his shoulders, taste them—
“Taesan, are you okay?”
He almost jumps out of his skin at the sound of the older’s voice and snaps his gaze up to Sungho’s, eyes housing genuine concern. In a far too late attempt to avoid suspicion, he looks back down to his phone, screen now off from how long it was idly sitting in his hands. He can feel his ears burning, and the lump in his throat makes it difficult to form an appropriate response.
“Uh, yeah. I’m fine. Sorry.”
He tries to shrink and hide behind his bent knees, and hopes that if he can’t see Sungho, he can’t see Taesan. He can feel that Sungho is still looking at him, but refuses to meet his gaze and opts to tap around on the weather app. It’s rainy and windy out, but later in the day it’s going to calm down.
A few minutes go by like that (though they felt more like hours, yet they could’ve also been seconds), before anything else happens.
“Are you bored? I won’t be upset if you wanna go upstairs with the others.” Sungho asks, sounding all too genuine, and Taesan feels a pang of guilt. He must’ve been mulling it over, thinking Taesan would rather be somewhere else.
“Ah, no, that’s not it, I just…” Taesan starts, looking at a really interesting bag of chips on the coffee table. “I was just zoned out. Sorry.”
Sungho stares at him for a beat, and then smiles. “If you say so,” and Taesan senses a level of disbelief and shuffles in his seat.
He turns back to his sketchbook, glancing back at Taesan once more before beginning to draw again. Taesan doesn’t know what he’s working on right now because he’s still too embarrassed to look at him right now.
This whole time, Sungho has been silently working on his sketch, humming here and there, but the two hadn’t said much until then.
Taesan knows Sungho is oblivious to what he was thinking about, but still feels uncomfortable as if he could read Taesan’s mind. He doesn’t even know where those thoughts came from anyway. Some kind of evil bacteria or something. Who knows.
Anyone with eyes to see can tell that Sungho is attractive. It’s not a secret, it’s not something that only Taesan believes. It’s a fact. However, he never really thought of it past that point; until now, that is. Perhaps it’s just the isolation from others, and the proximity getting to him. Or the bacteria.
After a few minutes of attending to very real and urgent matters on his settings app, he recovers, and curiously peeks over his knees at where Sungho’s hand rests on the sketchbook.
His grip on the pencil is light, grazing back and forth on a shape that Taesan can’t identify. His left hand looks a little bony, as it changes its grip to sketch out some other shape. Taesan notices the tendons in his hand tensing and relaxing as his fingers move the pencil around, something about it strangely captivating.
Mind wandering once more, (and not putting up one bit of a fight to it) Taesan wonders what Sungho’s hands feel like if he were to really touch them. Not just in passing, grazing each other during a walk or while performing. He wonders if his fingertips are still calloused from playing guitar when he was in a band, or if they’ve faded due to not practicing as much. He wonders if his hands feel as strong as they look, or if they become lighter when touching something— someone precious. What they’d feel like on Taesan, on the skin of his face, or the expanse of his back. More than anything, something in the depths of Taesan’s mind is screaming at him to reach out and grab Sungho’s hand. To pull him away from his drawing and keep his attention all to himself, this fucked up parallel play be damned.
“…Do you wanna see?” Sungho suddenly asks.
Taesan’s eyes reach Sungho, who’s not even looking back at him, a smile on his lips as he stares down at his sketchbook.
“…Sure,”
Taesan sits up and scoots toward Sungho, peering down at the book in his lap. A cat laying in a field of flowers. Pretty Sungho-core. Not to mention it’s insanely well drawn.
“Woah, that’s… really good, hyung.” Taesan states, leaning down to get a closer look, eyes wide and mouth slightly agape. “We haven’t even been here that long, you drew all that?”
“It’s really nothing, but thank you,” Sungho smiles.
Taesan continues gawking at the drawing, taking in every little detail. That’s just another thing about Sungho, he thinks, that he’s good at just about everything. He rationalizes the past half an hour of ogling by deciding that it’s hard not to admire Sungho, when everything he does is so impressive.
“…Hey,”
Taesan looks up and is met with a piercing gaze, long, cat-like eyes filled with something playful, and he bites inside of his cheek at the heat stirring in his abdomen.
“I was thinking, don’t you think I should get a turn?” Sungho’s eyes are almost siren-like, and Taesan feels powerless under them.
Before he can even question whatever the hell that means, Sungho cuts him off. “To stare, I mean.”
His voice is heavy, and dripping with something that makes Taesan’s mind go blank.
So he was aware of the staring.
“Can I draw you?” Sungho asks, sweet like honey.
“Yes.” Taesan replies almost instantly, before he could even process what he just got himself into.
And then curses himself for it right afterward.
“Great!” Sungho beams, expression back to normal, tension evaporated like it was never there. The only evidence being the strange feeling tickling Taesan’s insides.
“Let’s move to my room, the lighting is much better in there,” He says, standing up, “I’ll clean up the snacks really quick.”
Taesan’s still processing, jaw slackened, gears turning painfully slowly after hearing the words “my room”. All Sungho does is glance down at Taesan before he practically scrambles off of the couch and into Sungho and Jaehyun’s shared room.
He tentatively crawls onto Sungho’s bed, feeling more nervous than he ever has in the last twenty years of his life, wondering what the hell is wrong with him. His face heats at the thought of Sungho’s tone when he brought up the whole staring ordeal. The way he was asking if he could draw Taesan, but his eyes were saying they wouldn’t take no for an answer.
This situation feels made up, like it was conjured in a dream. The gorgeous and talented and intelligent Park Sungho wants to draw him? Like, he wants Taesan as his model? As payback for staring at him? He wants to stare back at Taesan? What the hell is that?
Honestly, no matter how Taesan looks at it, the only option was to fold instantly. No shot he turns that down, even if it most likely will take his life. At least he’d die happy. However, he internally curses Sungho, because he knew damn well what he was doing asking like that, with his stupid, undeniably beautiful face, and his voice dripping with some unknown intention.
He jumps at the sound of Sungho stalking into the room, smiling at Taesan, playful look in his eyes again. He crouches down and searches under his bed, pulling out a larger sketchbook, tapping on it with his fingertips as he sits across from Taesan at the edge of the bed.
“Ready?”
“Mm,” Taesan affirms, looking in his lap, picking at his fingernails. He can already feel his face getting warm.
“You’re gonna have to look at me, Taesan-ah,” Sungho says sweetly. “I need to see your face to draw it, you know.”
Taesan wants to scream. And die.
He raises his head, looking off to the side somewhere, because he knows if he looks at Sungho (who’s presumably looking back at him), he’s gonna pass the fuck out.
“Good,” Sungho smiles, and Taesan thinks he might pass out regardless.
When they’re with the others, Sungho usually owns the role of keeping the chaos to a relative minimum, and being the responsible, reliable, oldest member. But Taesan’s noticing that while alone with him, he becomes a lot more mischievous and intimidating, and it makes Taesan feel small. He’s done his fair share of teasing Sungho (it’s far too easy, in his defense), but now Taesan feels like he’s the one being messed with and and it makes his stomach churn with bile and intestines twist into knots. Worst of all, he can’t even say he fully hates it.
Sungho draws quietly, the only sound being the scratching of his pencil, his eyes flitting between Taesan and his sketchbook. To his own torment, Taesan can feel when his eyes are on him, and the way they bore holes into his face. Not to mention how all He can do is sit there and shiver when Sungho’s eyes meet his. Taesan’s only getting more and more lightheaded with each passing minute while Sungho seems totally unaffected by whatever the hell this is.
Of course, Taesan can’t help but glance at him while he draws and sees that he’s completely absorbed in his craft. He already knew Sungho liked to draw, and has seen his doodles here and there but has yet to see him this focused on art. He’s sitting with his sketchbook placed between his knees and his chest, wearing the same face he had on the couch. His lips are pursed, eyebrows knit together, bangs hanging in around his eyes, looking way too attractive when all he’s doing is drawing. As if Taesan needed to be tormented any more.
He’s been subjected to this fever dream for what feels like eons and they haven’t spoken a word. It’s stressing him out, enough to make him feel the need to fill the silence.
“…How’s it going?” Taesan mumbles, testing the waters.
“Good so far,” Sungho replies not looking up, “but,” He taps the blunt end of his pencil on the paper and waits a beat before placing his sketchbook in front of him.
He looks dead into the younger’s eyes, completely serious, “I might need a closer look.”
Suddenly, he starts crawling forward, and Taesan seriously has no clue what the hell is going through this guy’s mind.
Sungho reaches forward to support himself with his right hand next to Taesan’s crossed legs, and reaches for his face with the other. He creeps closer until his face is inches away and Taesan is 99.9% sure his heartbeat is loud enough to be heard by anyone in a 5 mile radius.
His eyes pick apart Taesan’s face bit by bit, peeling off his layers like a fruit, digging out the seeds and tasting them on his tongue. Searching every feature, every inch of skin like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world.
“You’re really pretty, y’know,” Sungho muses, left hand ghosting Taesan’s cheek. His face flushes as he blinks rapidly trying to grip what little composure he has left. Any kind of response dies on his lips, only able to muster a small nod.
“Seriously, you are, Taesan. I’m honored you’re letting me draw you— see you. I wanted to do this for a while now.”
Sungho’s got that mesmerizing look in his eyes again and Taesan doesn’t know how much longer he can play this game.
He carefully places his hand on Sungho’s waist, and stares at the man hovering in front of him. He looks back and forth between his lips and his eyes, knowing full well he looks desperate and impatient but honestly that’s what he is.
Sungho’s still carefully studying his face, flicking hair out of his face, tilting his chin every which way, playing with him.
“Hyung,” Taesan speaks up, almost pleading. Sungho just smiles at him, full of fondness, and a hint of mischief. Daring him to do something.
Taesan, only getting more frustrated and reaches a hand into Sungho’s long hair and decides he’s done being messed with and finally fucking kisses him. It’s impatient and needy and everything Taesan has been feeling for god knows how long, and Sungho gladly accepts it as he does with every other part of Taesan. He pulls Sungho even closer, bringing him to straddle his lap. Sungho’s lips part just the slightest at the sudden movement and Taesan takes the opportunity to slip his tongue in, swirling it against the other’s. He swears he hears Sungho giggle as he wraps his arms around Taesan’s neck, and kisses him even harder.
The whole scene feels unreal, making out with Sungho. The older slowed them down to something a little less excited and a bit more tender, and he knows for sure that he really likes it. It feels like something that’s just been stirring and stirring between them has finally settled, and now Taesan’s mind is completely clouded with thoughts of the man in his lap. All he can think is Sungho, Sungho, Sungho, and More, More, More, his head spinning. Between Sungho lazily tonguing into his mouth, and the fact that his fingers almost touch as they wrap around Sungho’s waist, Taesan can’t decide what’s more dizzying.
They finally break apart and Taesan finds that Sungho looks impossibly prettier like this, with glazed over eyes and swollen, red lips. It’s unreal how beautiful he is, and Taesan feels compelled to worship him with his entire being. Sungho glows like the sun, a staple to sustaining life, and unquestioningly someone Taesan would follow to the ends of the Earth. He wants to express it somehow, his innate admiration, but all he can do is stare.
Taesan watches a smile play on Sungho’s lips, and wonders if he knows how much he adores him. (He doesn’t know that Sungho can see the stars in his eyes, illuminating the sky when it’s dark. Beautiful and luminous and powerful even when they’re gone. Comforting without even trying, capable of filling the Sungho with warmth just by existing.)
Taesan’s heart aches just from the look on his face and leans to mouth at Sungho’s jaw. He trails down his neck to Sungho’s collarbones, slowly peeling off his outer layer and sliding his fingers under the hem of his tank top.
“Yah, Han Taesan…” Sungho groans, sitting up straight, “I’m not done drawing.”
“Forget the drawing,” Taesan pauses to mumble, “This is more important.”
Sungho clicks his tongue at the response and places a hand on the back of Taesan’s head, who’s currently tonguing into the curve of his shoulder.
“I’m happy you said I could draw you and I want to finish it.” He tries, stroking Taesan’s head, “Can you wait just a little longer? I promise we’ll do something fun if you do.”
Taesan halts at that. He really wants— needs Sungho now. But, if the drawing makes Sungho happy, he wants that too. And, to be honest, this talk about something fun makes Taesan want to give in.
“…It better not take more than 10 minutes.”
“Only 10?”
”15 max.”
“Okay, okay. 15 max. I promise.”
Sungho climbs out of Taesan’s lap, and sits crisscrossed in front of him, closer than before, their knees bumping against each other.
He stares at Taesan with that intense gaze yet again and smiles a bit, “You look even more handsome now, after getting all worked up, Taesan-ah.” Sungho teases, and Taesan regrets giving in so easily.
“I came up with a fun idea just now, so I hope you’ll let me draw you again sometime.”
Taesan swallows. “…Sure. Whatever you want.” he replies, hoping Sungho can’t hear the shakiness in his voice.
Fifteen minutes feel more like five hours until Sungho finally places down his pencil, and Taesan feels the most aware he’s been all day when Sungho flips around his sketchbook to show off his work with a smile on his face.
He sees a portrait that is unmistakably himself, details clearly executed by someone close to him. His features are drawn as if they were admired with each stroke of the pencil. The curves of his lips detailed as if they were studied religiously, the texture of his hair was as if they had personally played with it, and shape and glint of his eyes full of so much love it’s seeping off of the paper.
“…Hyung this is… fucking insane, what the hell?” “This is how you see me?” not quite able to escape Taesan’s voice box.
Taesan reaches out and grabs the sketchbook, bringing it closer to his eyes, like it might pop out and start speaking to him.
“Can I keep this?”
“Of course,” Sungho replies, cupping Taesan’s cheek, leaning in, “I’m glad you like it. You did me a huge favor, so it’s all yours.”
His kiss is slow and drenched in honey, so Sungho that it’s sickening. It’s addicting and intoxicating and everything Taesan is craving and Sungho is more than glad to provide. Taesan pulls away, already feeling dazed, drunk off of Sungho himself, who giggles again and he knows he’s doomed.
“Thanks for waiting for me to finish,” Sungho starts, placing a hand on Taesan’s chest, “You did a good job, so I'll do well on my promise.” He says, slowly pushing the other down onto the mattress. Taesan’s head hits the pillows, and he looks up while the older stares down at him, a playful but soft look in his eyes. Any confidence Taesan had earlier has been completely sapped away by the man above him, but he’s content with feeling powerless to Sungho.
“You’ve got all of my attention now, okay?” Sungho affirms, rubbing the younger’s sternum.
Taesan’s throat bobs as he stares up at him, “…Mhm,”