Chapter Text
“What are we?" Sieun asks, hands clasped like some fucking sparrow in that stupid hoodie of his.
Seongje chokes on his ramen.
"Huh?"
From Sieun, he expects decent headlocks, League matches. Maybe something better than instant noodles when it's his turn to cook. On good days — a sloppy balcony makeout after said headlocks and matches.
A relationship talk? Nah. Not this one.
"Mother asked who you are to me," Sieun says like that explains everything. "What should I tell her?"
"How the fuck should I know?" Seongje genuinely blanks. Does he look like someone who cares? "Say whatever you want."
Sieun nods.
The topic seems closed, Seongje throws it out of his head — but of course, this is just the beginning.
***
They move in together because it's easier.
The apartment's nice — two rooms, cheap: right by the highway. Perfect midpoint between their universities. Lucky fucking break. When Sieun suggests it, Seongje agrees almost instantly without asking questions. He couldn't give less of a fuck where he lives — a back alley would do if rain was not a thing. Super convenient when you don't need to commute for beatings or blowjobs tho.
They understand each other surprisingly well, in this too: living with Sieun feels like your place is haunted. Shit moves on its own, sometimes you hear footsteps, and if you really push it, you might make contact and catch these ethereal hands.
They meet in the kitchen, knees knocking under the tiny table until Sieun crawls out to eat on the balcony — only for Seongje to corner him there, stealing sweet-and-sour chicken straight off his plate, dripping sauce on Sieun's favorite home tee. Gets pinned broken nose-first against the windowsill, head buzzing, cicadas screaming in his ears. Domestic bliss, just like he imagined.
They meet in Seongje's room when he drags Sieun in by the collar and plants him at the laptop — you jungle, I top, let's show Korean servers how to press buttons. Sieun hates it here — too smoky, too messy, light either insufficient or blinding, Seongje looms over him barking orders during his death timer. But letting Seongje into his own room is even worse. Seongje only breaks their unspoken truce to enter when he wants a fight. Or when Sieun's out — just for laughs, always moving the desk lamp to the other side to prove there's no safe space here for him, nowhere on Earth, really, because Seongje's already grown accustomed to Sieun’s presence in his life.
They meet at the subway station when it rains — Seongje refuses umbrellas on principle, plus he gets sick easily, and a sick Seongje means 24/7 home Seongje, and that drives Sieun insane. So when it pours, Sieun waits for him — after Seongje’s uni or some bullshit errand for his mobster idiot of a boss. Lingers by the platform wordlessly shoving an umbrella into Seongje's hand. Seongje starts narrating his day. Sieun keeps his headphones in.
So that's how it is. The situation's simple and needs no definitions.
Then Sieun asks him that dumbass question, and one day Seongje comes home from the PC bang to find Park Humin, fucking Go Hyeontak, and even their snot-nosed romantic with glasses who looks like he's about to die of a heart attack all sitting at their kitchen table. Sieun stands by the wall, arms crossed.
“What the actual fuck,” Seongje doesn't so much ask as declare, though lazily — it's just bizarre seeing something in a place he's used to having empty. Plus he can't stand these losers.
“I didn't invite them,” Sieun says unpleasantly. Arms folded, face as expressionless as a dead fish's but slightly displeased. “They came on their own.”
“The fuck you mean "on their own"?” Seongje dumps vegetables and mushrooms from a bag, shrugs off his windbreaker, starts chopping with aggressive knife taps. “Like cockroaches, just spawned here?”
“Are you two really dating?” the snot-nosed romantic cuts in, and Seongje files away the thought of punching his teeth out for later. Looks at Sieun with both eyebrows raised.
“We're what?” he says, genuinely fucking curious.
Sieun nods with the face of a goddamn Buddha. “You told me to define our relationship category. I defined it. "Dating" was the closest fit.”
Seongje stares silently. Almost laughs.
“The term "domestic partnership" has fallen out of use. It would be more accurate,” Sieun adds. Again, like that explains everything.
His idiot friends gawk like they expect Seongje to wipe mushroom bits off the knife and plunge it into Sieun's pale throat. Humin, unusually quiet, is already coiled to spring.
The thought is appealing. In an abstract way.
Seongje shrugs. “Ok,” he says, returning to cooking. “Not feeding this dickheads though — they can fuck off.”
“No fucking way. Not a prank? Sieun, have you lost your mind? Does Suho know?” Humin finally bursts out. Hyeontak kicks him under the table — the rickety furniture shakes, nearly collapsing.
Suho, by the way, is tolerable: doesn't invade their home, tells decent jokes, throws fast, painful, well-placed punches.
Wish they were all like that.
If it were up to Seongje, he'd beat every one of these “friends” into disability and purge them from Sieun's life — they serve zero fucking purpose — but Sieun comes with compromises — is a compromise : don't punch my face, don't leave dirty dishes in the sink and bruises on my neck, don't put my friends in wheelchairs. And what do you get? My glorious mug.
Moments like this make Seongje reconsider if he's getting his money's worth, but after wrecking a few random faces — so weak his teeth ache — he remembers why he's here.
“He knows,” Sieun says. His expression grows more fucked up by the second. Answers a few more cross-examinations, then silently retreats to his room. The lock clicks.
“Audience's over,” Seongje concludes.
A few crude jokes about Sieun's ass later, he manages to provoke Baku into a brief hallway scuffle — so at least this useless visit is somewhat funny.
He sometimes reads Sieun's messages, so he knows Hyeontak later proposes Sieun moves in with him аnd Bаku — all three of them into a one-room apartment. He laughs and closes the chat without reading the reply.
***
“My mother wants to meet you," Sieun announces while Seongje nibbles at his stomach and yanks down his boxers. Eyes wild, voice wrecked, yet still delivering bullshit with perfect timing. "I told her no."
"Why's that?" Seongje snorts. Drips blood from his split lip onto Sieun's abs, then licks it off. "You ashamed of your boyfriend? Know that's toxic as fuck, right?"
Sieun grimaces, dragging him away by the hair.
"Domestic cohabitant," he says with absurd conviction. "Privileged roommate. Sparring partn—"
"Jesus fucking Christ, shut your hideous mouth," Seongje cuts him off with a desperate kiss, using it as a mute button.