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The air is stale with sweat and loathing.
Dongmin almost wishes he was angry. His sneakers stick a little to the kitchen floor but he can’t even bring himself to think about the spilt beer now adhering itself to the linoleum. Someone bumps into his shoulder as they try to squeeze past him into the living room, and he doesn’t so much as react. Someone messed with his speakers, so the music is far louder than he thinks is safe for human ears, and he doesn’t fucking care. He wishes he could be angry. Anger would be easier to deal with than this.
Across the kitchen, through a dense crowd of drunk partygoers, Woonhak is perched on Dongmin’s counter top. He looks good. Handsome. Grown up. It makes everything Dongmin’s feeling in his chest impossible to ignore.
An oversized t-shirt hangs off his body, black, a little distressed around the collar and the sleeves and a faded band logo on the front. It’s not Dongmin’s shirt, but he had helped Woonhak pick it out, encouraged him to buy it, insisted it makes him look cooler.
And it does— it suits his messy dark brown hair and the thin silver accessories he’s started wearing (necklace, bracelets, a few rings) ever since Dongmin said they suited him. The necklace itself was actually a gift from Dongmin— well, half from him. He’d picked it out, paid for some of it, but it was expensive, so Sanghyuk helped him pay for the other half. Still, when they’d given it to him for his birthday, Sanghyuk had said, “it’s from him, mostly.” and Dongmin didn’t even say a word.
It’s one of the many reasons why what he’s seeing is fucking killing him.
Because Woonhak isn’t alone. He’s sitting on the counter, with a boy next to him. A boy. And that just makes it so much worse.
Dongmin’s dealt with this before, watching Woonhak with someone else— and it always sucks, hurts his chest, makes him feel like he’s dying. But usually it’s a girl. Usually he’s watching Woonhak swipe smeared lipstick off the corner of his mouth and trying not to think about where it came from. Usually he’s tearing his eyes away from long, manicured nails dragging their way through Woonhak’s hair. Usually Dongmin can get over the acid bubbling in his throat when someone gets too close to Woonhak, because Dongmin can reason that it never could’ve been him anyway. Because he’s not a girl. And Woonhak likes girls.
But this, the person that’s hogging all Woonhak’s attention that Dongmin is so insanely desperate for, is a boy. A boy Dongmin doesn’t recognize, but is awfully pretty, with a nice smile and teeth brighter than the moon when he laughs at something Woonhak says. He leans closer, and his hand reaches out to rest on Woonhak’s knee, and Dongmin almost throws up.
Woonhak doesn’t pull away. The music is too loud and someone bumps into Dongmin again and Woonhak doesn’t pull away. In fact, his palm settles right over the other boy's hand, fingers curled around the back of it, and his nose wrinkles like it always does when he’s teasing someone, when he’s flirting.
Woonhak doesn’t like boys. He’s never liked boys, at least not outwardly. Even back in highschool, Woonhak always had girlfriends, even if it never lasted very long, his focus always given to other things (baseball, exams, Dongmin.) When Dongmin had come out, started dating other guys, Woonhak had never been anything but supportive… but he also never gave Dongmin any impression that he himself was anything other than straight.
Funny.
Now he’s looking at this stranger like he wants him. His eyes are dark with something Dongmin’s only seen painful glimpses of, something he’s only ever yearned to be the recipient of. He tilts his head, and his eyes drop to the boy's mouth, making his intentions very clear. Dongmin should look away. He wants to, but he doesn’t. A torture chamber of his own fucking making.
The boy’s pointer finger curls around the chain of Woonhak’s necklace. The one Dongmin picked out for him, the mostly-from-him gift. He tugs Woonhak closer with it and then they’re kissing, just like that, lips fitting together like puzzle pieces. Dongmin can feel his heart crack like an egg and seep out of his chest to drip onto the sticky floor.
Woonhak is kissing a boy in Dongmin’s kitchen. At Dongmin’s party. The one he’d thrown last minute, mind you, exclusively because he missed Woonhak and needed a good reason to get him to come over.
And Dongmin still can’t even be angry. Why can’t he be angry? He wants to be, so badly, because this sharp ache piercing through his chest is so much fucking worse than any seething anger. It’s not bitter, it’s pathetic. It’s entirely all-consuming. Dongmin might drown in it.
The air is sharp with frost and regret.
Dongmin is sitting on the curb outside his house. He didn’t grab his jacket from his room before stumbling outside, so the chill settles on his skin like a rude reminder. His hands grip his knees, and his eyes sting with tears that have been begging to fall for minutes now, though Dongmin refuses to let them. He doesn’t cry, especially over boys, especially over his best friend.
He feels stupid. Like a fucking idiot. He’s cold and miserable and he can’t get the mental image of Woonhak with a boy’s tongue in his mouth out of his goddamn head. It keeps replaying like a shitty boomerang.
He hears footsteps behind him and Dongmin fucking prays, which he never does anymore, that it’s anyone but Kim Woonhak. That maybe Donghyun saw him come out here and took a break from trying to fuck Park Sungho long enough to check on his friend. Slim chance, but Dongmin crosses his fingers.
“Thought I might find you out here, hyung. I haven’t seen you all night.”
Of course. The world hates Dongmin, as does the universe.
Woonhak sits beside him, too close, leaning forward so he can look at Dongmin’s face. There’s no lipstick on his mouth, but his hair is still mussed, and he’s still got that slight flush to his cheeks that he only gets when he’s flustered. Dongmin looks away, shifts his gaze down to the pavement. He doesn’t speak— some sick part of him hopes it drives Woonhak crazy.
“Are you okay?” Woonhak asks next. Something sour rises in Dongmin’s throat.
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Just fine.”
Woonhak is still looking at him. Dongmin can feel his eyes on the side of his face, heavy and daunting. It’s funny— all Dongmin has wanted all night is for Woonhak to look at him. He’d put on makeup, worn his favorite outfit, fixed up his hair. And now Woonhak is looking at him, and all Dongmin wants to do is to run away.
A car passes, and then another, beams of ivory light making the street brighter for fleeting moments. The silence is stiff and oppressive, surrounding him on all sides.
“So,” Dongmin starts, voice quiet. “You kissed a boy.”
Woonhak is quiet for a moment. When Dongmin meets his eyes, he looks almost sheepish.
“Ah, yeah…Actually, um, I’ve been meaning to introduce you to him. He’s who I’ve been seeing,” he fiddles with his sleeve as he talks, fingers picking at the loose threads of his jacket.
Dongmin frowns, eyebrows drawing together. Then his heart drops. He vaguely recalls Woonhak mentioning the newest person he was seeing, some cafe date or museum or something. Not many details. “He’s Hyunji?”
“Yeah,” Woonhak clears his throat. He’s avoiding Dongmin’s eyes now, just as Dongmin is begging for it. He wishes he could be angry about it. “I know I should’ve said something, but you just assumed he was a girl when I told you about our date, and I… I dunno.”
“You didn’t wanna tell me,” he finishes for him. It comes out too raw. Too honest, too vulnerable. Dongmin forcefully shuts his mouth before he can spit out something equally as soul-baring.
Woonhak gives him a sad smile, lips just barely curling at the corners. “I didn’t want you to be upset.”
Dongmin wants to be stubborn. “Why would I be upset?” almost comes out of his mouth all too naturally. It’s a stupid question, really. They both know. Maybe Dongmin’s been stupid this whole time to assume there was a world Woonhak didn’t know.
It hits him, then, fully, the reality of this situation he’s trapped himself in. Woonhak knows. He has known.
“Oh,” Dongmin folds in on himself, arms wrapping around his legs, voice cracking. “Right.”
The quiet stretches. Dongmin blinks rapidly to stop the sudden well of tears, but they start to slip down his cheeks anyway. His throat burns with words he’s never said, words he could never say, all burned into his flesh like a brand.
“I’m sorry, hyung,” Woonhak starts. Dongmin can’t even look at him anymore. He thinks if he did, the world might end.
“Go back inside Woonhakie,” Dongmin mumbles. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Just go back inside.”
More quiet. He hears Woonhak sniffle, and Dongmin’s hands start to shake.
Tears sting and start to blur Dongmin’s eyes until he closes them. He hears Woonhak stand up, and the faint rustling of fabric. Wordlessly, Woonhak drapes his jacket over Dongmin’s shoulders, and then he just walks away.
Dongmin swallows. He twists his fingers in the fabric, pulling it further over him, cocooning himself.
Woonhak’s warmth still lingers— it still covers Dongmin like a blanket, even after he breaks his heart. Woonhak is too good to ever be vicious, and yet Dongmin still feels like his chest has been ripped open, his lungs punctured, the blood turning stagnant in his veins. It’s a sick kind of torture, to be loved, but not in the way he craves.
Dongmin decides, right then, that he hates parties. He hates spilt beer and too-loud music and strange boys with nice smiles.
“Fucking stupid,” he mutters, the words drifting off into the blackened sky.
Dongmin buries his face in Woonhak’s jacket, and he cries.