Work Text:
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Sex was a dirty thing that happened in the dark, on sodden mattresses with men whose names he never bothered to learn. It was about having a need met, shameful in the way he’d been taught it was shameful for him to want anything.
He doesn't know what to do with this, lights on, soft kisses, murmurs of appreciation in a language he doesn’t speak. It feels wrong, makes him feel exposed and seen, splayed out and vivisected, a taxidermied animal before they’d shoved the stuffing in.
Pa had taught him taxidermy when he was ten.
He’d taught him how to kill when he was eight.
Kim is pressing lips and tongue to his thigh, unhurried, adoring, so this is the worst time to think of Pa, but that doesn’t stop him picking at the memories like scabs, the praise when he held the knife, the first time he hesitated and how Pa made sure it was the last—
“Hey.” Kim derails the intrusive train of his thoughts by wriggling up to lay on his belly, the pressure doing a good job of sinking him back into the present. “Where’d you go? Because I’m right here and I can’t imagine you have anywhere better to be than with me.” You’d better not, his tone implies. What more could anyone want, really?
Kenta lifts himself up on elbows, blinks the memory of crimson mist from his eyes—arteries always spray more than you think—and meets Kim’s eyes.
We shouldn’t do this, he wants to say. You must have friends, family, people who like you. You don’t know where to cut to kill a man quickly or what it sounds like when you do it slowly.
You shouldn’t be near a thing like me.
What he says instead is, “Why?”
And he expects Kim to laugh it off or shrug and give the traditional masculine answer ‘why not’, because it isn’t like sex needs a reason, but instead the other man’s face wrinkles like he’s working through a math problem, then he slithers up Kenta like a snake until they’re almost nose-to-nose.
“I like you a lot. …I’m kind of hoping the answer is the same for you,” Kim says it soft and serious, and Kenta wishes that were true, but he’s never liked himself at all.
He does like Kim, though, enough that it’s long since tipped over from attraction into terror.
The connection between that and what they’re doing in bed—mostly what Kim is doing—is tenuous at best. No one he’s been fond of has ever touched Kenta like this. For a while, the dregs of Pete’s affection were enough—a pat on the shoulder, a big hand ruffling his hair, the scraps of pity tossed to a junkyard dog—until even those were gone.
“Hey,” Kim is sitting up, pulling back, getting farther away, a rare hint of uncertainty in his eyes. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
No one is more surprised than Kenta by how fast he moves, lunges to wrap Kim in a hug akin to a headlock, constricting around him. “I want to,” the words spill out of him, quiet but firm.
There’s no future in this. When they’re done here, Kim will go back to Korea, back to family and friends who will welcome him with smiles and open arms, back to a world he fits easily into. And Kenta will continue on existing, whatever that looks like now.
But he can grab onto this moment, hold tight to a memory of someone warm and kind who looks back at him like he matters, someone shaking his head and muttering under his breath as he kisses Kenta like it means something, like he’s trying to keep the taste lingering on his tongue.
He won’t, he promises himself, sinking back onto the bed without breaking the kiss, make the same mistake he'd made with Pete. He won’t fall in love.
He can hear Pa’s rancid little chuckle and that familiar, paternal voice repeating the words 'liar, liar, liar' in his head.
He grips Kim tighter, bruising, holding on until he’s forced to let go.
Afterwards, Kim lies in a sprawl, aching like he’s gotten a deep tissue massage, all from Kenta holding on so tight he’ll feel those fingers in his skin for days, and it occurs to him that he should say something nice, something reassuring.
Something like ’I’m right here’ or ‘I’m not going anywhere’, except the latter isn’t true, he’s got tickets for Korea and a contract with a racing team already in place, along with a five and ten year plan he decided on when he was eight years old.
So what he says instead is, “My aunt runs a restaurant back home.”
The strength of Kenta's reaction surprises him. The other man rolls onto his side to stare at him, hungry, like this boring, everyday fact is a secret treasure. “Is that why you know how to cook?”
“Yeah. That and my mom insisting it’s shameful when men can’t feed themselves. When I told her I was gay, the first thing she said was, see, this is why I raised you not to need a wife!” The memory makes him smile, but it crushes something in Kenta, makes his lips press together and eyes blink too fast. “Anyway. It’s a nice restaurant. I’ll take you if you’re ever in the area.”
Kenta stares, his forehead wrinkling, puzzled. He mouths the words back to himself. ‘In the area’.
Just when Kim is wondering if he needs to be even more obvious, Kenta’s shoulders sag and he goes ragdoll limp. “I’d like that.”
“You will,” Kim agrees. “And my aunt will feed you enough that even you’ll be full.”
“I don’t eat that much. Do I?”
“You do. Goes toward all that muscle, I guess. And your pecs.” He yawns, worn out and lax in the best way. “You’ve got killer pecs.”
Kenta stares down at his own chest for a moment like this is news to him, then shimmies closer, tentatively flops an arm around him and Kim leans up to steal a closemouthed kiss.
He suspects he’ll have to keep doing that, the initiating, the kissing, the hinting, the directly saying how much he likes him out loud. It’s like trying to coax out a shy water deer, one that could kill him with its bare hands.
But the arm around him is slowly growing tighter. There’s a nose against his shoulder, breathing into his skin, and he’s got this warm, protective weight in his chest, seeing Kenta ever-so-carefully expressing affection.
Still, he’s got to push a little. “Hey, you never said you liked me.”
He’s briefly worried he’s overshot, because Kenta goes as stiff as a board against him, but he's rewarded with a single, tight nod against his shoulder and a murmured, “...I do. Like you”
“Good. Don’t know why you wouldn’t, really.” His eyes are falling shut in a post-coital crash. “Gonna nap for a bit…”
“I’ll keep watch,” Kenta says, and sometimes Kim sees it, the pit of circling sharks between them, the past he knows only scant details about and isn't sure he's ready to know more yet.
Is that necessary, he wants to say, but then, with all they've been through, maybe it is. And maybe this is the best way Kenta knows to show affection. So all he says is, “Thanks,” which gets warm lips brushing his forehead and Kenta shifting around him, laying so he’s between Kim and the door.
It’s somewhere between sexy and really weird, but he falls asleep having never felt safer.
Liar, liar, liar.
Kenta lays still and quiet in the dark, conjugating Korean verbs in his head, making the same mistake again.