Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Aren’t you supposed to be a lightweight?”

San jumps at the noise, unexpected, right up against his ear, enough to spill a bit more Pink Whitney into his cup than intended, and some onto his hand.

Okay, he was pouring it quite heavily anyway, but Jongho was truly no help.

“When did you start coming to these things anyway?” San shoots back, licking the extra vodka off his hand before it gets sticky, and Jongho just shrugs, but he isn’t even looking at San.

He’s obviously distracted, and San doesn’t have to ask why but he follows his gaze anyway, landing on Kang Yeosang— expected.

San had spent years trying to get Jongho into his friend group, because it only makes sense— he spends about half of his free time with Jongho at home and the other half out with them, so it makes sense. But it never worked— Jongho is too much of a homebody, parties aren’t his vibe, and San was almost beginning to be convinced he was a haunting spirit confined to the property lines of the two Choi houses that sit next door to each other, but of course, he accidentally got a to glimpse of Yeosang over at San’s a couple months ago and that changed everything. They’re texting buddies now, apparently, and Jongho shows up to every event where he might get a chance to look at her. It’s disgusting, but he’s a self-proclaimed romantic.

Less expected, Yeosang is wearing a short skirt, sitting at the very top of her thighs and leaving her entire leg exposed.

San feels like just standing here, watching this happening, he’s proving Jongho’s point.

“You know she’s only here because it’s Mingi’s party, right?”

“Obviously.” Jongho rolls his eyes, like San doesn’t get it. Maybe he doesn’t.

Jongho moves with such confidence that San really isn’t sure all the time if he’s just an idiot, a masochist, or playing at some big-brain, long-term plan that San can’t possibly even fathom.

Likely, it’s a combination of all three.

“She’d want to talk to me about whatever Mingi does tonight, anyway,” Jongho adds.

“And you’re happy about that?”

“Yeah,” Jongho says, shrugging.

San just sighs, for good measure grabbing the bottle of vodka again and adding a dash more into his cup.

He definitely needs it. He has enough issues, he can’t deal with Jongho’s weird situationship, and lest of all Jongho’s situationship’s situationship.

Like Jung Wooyoung.

San is headed back in the direction he came, coincidentally right in Yeosang’s path, and by the time he lifts his head up from the duck he took to chug some of his drink in one go, she’s moved out of the way a little bit, revealing him— Wooyoung.

He’s also dressed to impress tonight, immediately apparent in the way his jeans are more hole than jean, Chrome Hearts boxers showing at the top of his thighs. Fuck, he might have more leg out than Yeosang does. It doesn’t help, either, that the white t-shirt he has on is almost entirely sheer, showing not only the boxers’ brand name on the waistband, but exposing his only tattoo, on his ribcage. His long hair is pulled back into a slight ponytail, a hairstyle San hasn’t seen on him before, and he’s wearing a little bit of eyeliner to compliment it.

Yeosang is similarly dressed up, a basic fit of white denim and a holey black sweater, but her hair has been freshly re-dyed her iconic green and black and she has neon green fake eyelashes on to match it, little black hearts drawn near her eyes.

But the two of them are in the middle of a seemingly serious conversation, whispering to each other in the back of a hallway, and San has to remind himself not to ogle. He doubles back to the kitchen to top his liquor off once again, preparing for the looming threat that is Wooyoung’s outfit.

By the time he heads back downstairs, where the real crowd is at in the basement, Jongho has beat him there, somehow midway in a Just Dance battle with Yunho.

“Thank god he’s here,” Seonghwa says to San as he sits down next to him on the couch facing the TV. “Yunho kept making Joongie play with her and he is tuckered the fuck out.”

San looks to the wall just past the TV, where an outlet sits with a phone charger, and Hongjoong is laying next to it, starfished face-down on the ground, phone sitting inches away from the plug.

“You aren’t gonna, like, move him or something?” San asks, and Seonghwa just shrugs.

“He’s fine there. He’ll move in time.”

San raises an eyebrow, watching as Yunho delicately follows the choreography to step over top of him, still earning 5 stars on the screen despite it.

Sure. Why not.

Jongho and Yunho exhaust every Britney, Rihanna, and One Direction song the game has to offer before finally giving up on it, and that’s when Wooyoung makes his appearance, jumping into the action like a cat.

“Come on, someone do Umbrella with me!”

Jongho has fallen back already on the couch, taking Seonghsweating, and Yunho has manuevered herself around Hongjoong to charge her own phone instead, and they both just glare at him.

“We already did Umbrella, Wooyoung, you’re too late,” Jongho argues, and San chuckles at the sight, especially when Wooyoung pouts at him.

Jongho may not have been close with San’s friends for too long, but San is pleased to discover he’s taken up the annoying little brother role with them already— mostly because it affirms he isn’t being rude to San particularly, he’s just like that.

“Incredibly homophobic for you to do Umbrella without me.”

Dramatically, he falls into the middle of the sofa.

The couch is more than big enough to comfortably fit three people, but in his dramatics, he falls onto San a little bit, resting his ass on San’s thigh and sighing as he throws his head back to be in San’s shoulder. San accommodates it, lifting his arm and shifting his drink to his other hand, taking a moment to sip from it in the movement. Wooyoung only uses that as invitation to get more comfortable, nuzzling his face up near San’s armpit, and San cringes a little bit, not at the contact but because of how sweaty of a room it’s being done in.

It only lasts a few moments until there’s music suddenly blasting from a phone somewhere, and Yunho is pulling Wooyoung towards herself.

“Come on, you wanted to dance so bad…”

Jongho perks up at it, too, but he doesn’t stand up, just watches them, probably waiting for one of his pop girls to come on instead of the R&B, more Wooyoung’s speed, that Yunho decided on.

San glances behind himself just in time to catch the outsiders, Mingi and Yeosang standing against the opposite wall, having a quiet conversation on the outskirts of Mingi’s own party. Yeosang is leaning on her shoulder against the small, looking up at Mingi and with a tiny smile and Mingi seems to mostly be on her phone, but she has a small smirk. San watches as Yeosang lifts on her tiptoes a little bit to whisper to Mingi, making a side eye to the rest of the group as she does, and that’s when San abruptly looks away— he isn’t scared of either of them, per se, but, well, they are a little intimidating. He doesn’t know the two of them that well, and that goes back to the Jongho’s-situationship’s-situationship thing.

“I’m gonna step out for a second,” Hongjoong says.

It seems Seonghwa had managed to peel him from the floor and he stands up, holding his dab pen up as an offer.

San nods, deciding to follow them outside, just as Wooyoung is trying to grab Jongho’s arm and pull him off the sofa.

He follows Seonghwa and Hongjoong outside, listens to them quietly bicker as Seonghwa makes fun of his Just Dance performance and they pass the pen back and forth a couple times, San just using the time to breathe in the fresh air and finish off his drink, taking solace in his hyung and noona.

Of course, serenity is fleeting, and Wooyoung is outside a moment later pestering Hongjoong for a hit of his pen.

It’s welcome chaos, though apparently less so to Seonghwa and Hongjoong, who are quickly headed back inside. San is less quick to act, taking a second to finish off the very last sip of his drink.

As soon as he pulls the cup down, Wooyoung is pressing himself against him, nudging their shoulders.

“Choi San.”

The words are a little pointed, a little formal, but it’s in line with Wooyoung’s usual dramatics, so San just responds, “Jung Wooyoung,” back to him.

“It’s nice to finally catch you,” Wooyoung says, he’s laughing, but it’s a little bit of a tease.

“Ah, yeah,” San responds, a little awkardly.

“You can talk to me outside of these things, you know?” It’s said with another nudge, harder this time.

“Ahh…”

San awkwardly scratches the back of his neck because, ah, Wooyoung might have got him there.

It isn’t like San has avoided Wooyoung per se, it’s just, well, maybe he has. Maybe just in their classes.

On the first day, he’d chosen to sit next to Jongho instead, who’s a year younger than them but advanced enough to be in their classes. And sure Jongho was also in their classes the year before, and maybe that time, San hadn’t even noticed that for several weeks, too preoccupied with Wooyoung and other distractions— there were certainly others at the time— but this year San had seen Wooyoung and scanned the entire room first before deciding on a seat.

It isn’t his fault Jongho was in the entire opposite side of the room, but it is his fault he darted in that direction before Wooyoung can wave him down.

Look, he isn’t gonna sit in class next to someone he kissed over the summer— certainly not. Certainly not when it’s the same person San’s crushed on for as long as he can remember, and certainly not when Wooyoung’s mere existence has gotten to be a distractingly bad problem for San since springtime.

He isn’t sure he’s even had a one-on-one conversation with Wooyoung since before then, except for maybe now; maybe last year, but that hardly counts when Yunho was sat at the table with them.

“Just because I’m yapping with someone else doesn’t mean, you can’t come up to me, you know,” Wooyoung continues. “I just do that. But you know me, I like to play favorites.”

San swallows hard again and nods, trying to take a sip of his drink out of habit, but alas, it’s empty.

Wooyoung seems to notice, taking pity.

“Come on, we need to get you a refill.”

Usually San would argue against it in his best interest, but he can probably use all the help he can get right now.

When they get back to the basement, a drink for himself and one for Wooyoung later, they don’t have a moment to think before Yeosang is grabbing them by the hands and guiding them to a circle formed halfway between the floor and the couch.

Yunho is already there, so it Seonghwa, with Hongjoong sitting behind them leaning on their back lazily. Jongho is also just on the outskirts, on part of the couch seemingly reserved for non-players (as in, just him) and Yeosang sits down right in front of his feet, close but not touching. Notably, Mingi is nowhere to be found, missing at her own party, and San doesn’t know what happened in his fifteen-minute absence, but he’s sure Jongho will catch him up if it’s anything he wants to know— Jongho will probably catch him up either way.

San sits down next to Wooyoung and the party is already starting, Seonghwa drawing a dare card from a deck that has them exposing their last Google search— something about Nintendo characters. Wooyoung argues that that’s boring, and Seonghwa argues that that’s the game rules. Yeosang decides to side with Seonghwa, and Yeosang gets the final say.

They play through the circle with some more stupid ones. Yunho has to do five animal sounds and Yeosang has to whisper dirty talk into Yunho’s ear— making the taller girl squirm and push her away, both of them laughing hysterically. San side eyes Jongho through that entire interaction but he doesn’t notice, he’s focusing on it too hard. San sighs.

Wooyoung’s turn comes around and he argues that it hasn’t been interesting enough, so he pulls three cards. Yeosang argues her dirty talk segment was interesting and Seonghwa scolds Wooyoung as he reaches for a fourth card, saying that this one is it, he has to do it.

San is expecting more protest but the fourth card seems to be interesting, up to his standards, given the way he smirks.

“Choose someone in the circle…” He starts reading the card, before pausing to look around. “Jongho.”

“Nope,” Jongho is quick to argue. “Not in the game.”

Wooyoung pouts. “You’re no fun. You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Not doing it. I don’t like your face.”

“Uncalled for…”

If Jongho isn’t a party person, San really isn’t either, but he loves his friends. This small group is his maximum limit, but he understands the urge to shy away. San can deal with attention, but barely, after practice.

He’s gotten good at it, though, of course, and it’s made obvious when Wooyoung is turning back to face him.

“My trusty San-ah…”

“Okay.”

Wooyoung lifts the card, reading it out.

“Transfer an ice cube from your mouth to another persons.”

Jongho groans, whining about why he was even in the question, and Wooyoung just laughs, saying of course he was teasing. Of course, Jongho still grumbles about it, and San notices one of Yeosang’s hands pat his knee.

Of course, that’s hardly of note, not when San is processing the situation he’s in.

“Luckily, we just got refills,” Wooyoung says. “How do we want to do this, San-ah? Do you want to kiss me or do you want me to, like, mama-bird it to you?”

“Oh my god,” San can’t help a groan. He feels a little flushed, but that’s certainly not new, he gets red from a single drink.

Yeah. He decides he’ll go with that.

He looks back up with renewed confidence, facing Wooyoung and deciding on, “Do what you gotta do, Young-ah.”

San closes his eyes. It’s an easy out.

He feels Wooyoung’s pointer finger rest on his lower lip and instinctually he opens his mouth, further guided by Wooyoung’s palm fitting to his chin. Fuck, what a feeling to have.

He feels Wooyoung leaning in close, smells his perfume on him, and feels the radiation of his body heat, the movement of the way he turns his head, as his face is just centimeters from San.

Against his better judgment, San peers his eyes open for just a second, quickly shutting him again as soon as he assesses the situation.

Wooyoung doesn’t fully kiss him. But it’s as if he’s about to. Just as he leans in, though, he opens his lips enough for an ice cube to fall out of his mouth, and directly into San’s.

Fuck.

Somehow, San isn’t ready for it. He blames it on being drunk, or something.

He ends up choking on the ice cube, coughing it up where it landed in the back of his throat as everyone starts to laugh at him.

But Wooyoung leans in, granting him a kiss on just the corner of his lip, thanking him for his participation.

San only takes a few seconds to recover from that before he’s being yelled at to pull his own card, Wooyoung, who’s somehow shifted to take a place damn-near in San’s lap, being the one to grab the card for him.

He ends up having to try to push his elbows together, getting wolf whistles and a few compliments on his “great boobs.” He thinks Wooyoung makes a grab for them at some point, but there’s too much going on, honestly.

They get halfway through another round until the next time, on Yeosang’s turn, they end up fighting about the rules hard enough that it’s a total distraction.

Someone breaks out Just Dance again and San doesn’t see Mingi for the entire rest of the night.

Yeah. Typical.

*

It was the next Friday night and San had already told Jongho he was busy with homework to get out of potential plans, immersed in a fantasy book he’d just started reading and ready to stay up until four a.m. to get as deep into the series as possible.

But, of course, San comes when Wooyoung calls, and it’s a little unusual getting a call from him like that, so out of the blue, so of course San had to pick up.

So by nine p.m., he was instead sitting in his car in Wooyoung’s driveway, waiting for him to finish getting ready so they can go to Hongjoong’s.

It isn’t a party, or anything of the sort, really, just a Super Smash Bros tournament with Seonghwa and Hongjoong— a game no one is really good at, apparently, but Seonghwa’s recent hyper fixation. It isn’t really San’s speed, he knows why he wasn’t invited in the first place being both bad at gaming and a sore loser, but he can’t help but to come whenever Wooyoung calls him. Especially when San is able to play as Princess Daisy for the task.

But then there’s the elephant in the room.

It isn’t often Wooyoung calls San like this— certainly not recently. And maybe San should’ve expected it, remembering just enough from the last time he saw Wooyoung to remember he’d acknowledged that San had been avoiding him, at least outside of parties. This is a little more of a safe zone than passing each other in the halls, for sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is the first time San is seeing Wooyoung without any alcohol in his system in months.

The phone call earlier might’ve been their first fully sober conversation since then, and now San is here, driving, and Wooyoung is approaching his car.

He’s wearing gray sweatpants with a slightly darker gray Fear of God t-shirt underneath of a leather jacket, his hair is slightly damp, falling just below his ears where he has no piercings in except his top one, and otherwise the only jewelry he has on is a chain with a cross on his neck. San doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone try to wear gray sweatpants with a leather jacket before, and doubts anyone else would look so good in it.

“Yah, are you trying to cook something in here or what?” Wooyoung’s complaining the second he slides into the passenger seat, fanning his face, and San rolls his eyes and laughs as he reaches instinctively to turn the heating down.

San, for his part, is wearing just a black tight-fitting t-shirt and wide-legged blue jeans— he wasn’t sure what the vibe was and feels a little overdressed when he sees Wooyoung, but the perks of a signature outfit is that it isn’t noticeably extra of him. He’s a little less equipped for the outside weather, though, and he tells Wooyoung as much, who just scoffs at him.

“So you’re underprepared, is what you’re saying?” He says, though moving to take his jacket off, finally, so San keeps the heat on at just a slightly-lower level than he’d been blasting it earlier.

“Does Hongjoong live in a refrigerator or something?”

Wooyoung shrugs. “Have you ever seen him without an extremely big hoodie on?”

“I guess…”

The car falls quiet after that, Wooyoung settling out of his jacket before reaching for his phone, staring at it before spending a full minute typing intently. San is mostly focused on the road, but the first five minutes of the ride is down neighborhood roads with a stop sign on every block, and he uses each opportunity to glance over at him. He isn’t snooping, just gauging.

Alcohol aside, San doesn’t really know the last time they were alone together, always in a group. It’s been different since they were kids, spending most of their time in the presence of Seonghwa and Yeosang-shaped buffers.

San could talk to fill the space— he doesn’t really feel like he has to, it’s just something to do— but Wooyoung looks a little focused on whatever he’s doing. Suddenly, San feels a little conscious of the Blink 182 CD he’d left playing through in the background, and he eventually decides to turn the heating off all-together.

The drive passes fairly quickly, all things considered, and Wooyoung eventually puts his phone down just a couple minutes outside of Hongjoong’s house to start complaining otherwise, about his serving job and how they keep giving him week night shifts just to cut him, and San listens, humming along and nodding instead of adding his own insight— he helps his grandfather in the summers, just setting up produce for the farmers markets in town every other Saturday morning, and his father’s business, too, cleaning kid sweat off dojo mats every time his dad sees him or Jongho looking a little too relaxed at home, but it’s not nearly enough of a grind to give him applicable commentary on the situation. In exchange for his bare minimum physical labor, he was handed the keys to a pretty red Toyota Corolla for his seventeenth birthday— that hardly involves the kind of work ethic of Wooyoung’s job.

The conversation is natural, but San is a little on edge through the whole thing, and he’s worried it’s showing in his quietness. Wooyoung, for his part, seems a little unfazed by the conversation, but keeps glancing at his phone with a small pout. San probably could ask, but he doesn’t.

He lets out a held breath as soon as they’re out of the car.

Seonghwa is standing there greeting them in the doorway, in thematically-appropriate Animal Crossing pajama pants with matching leaf-shaped slippers and a white sweater. Behind them, Hongjoong is wearing ripped jeans that make San feel a little better about being so overdressed, under his own zip-up hoodie. His split-dyed hair is parted messily, the black and blond bleeding into each other’s side, looking comfortable, and he wears bunny-rabbit slippers that are the same shade of pink as Hwa’s hair.

Wooyoung gives Seonghwa a hug as a greeting, trying the same with Hongjoong who runs away from it. San stands awkwardly to the side and watches the whole interaction until Seonghwa takes pity on him, grabbing his hand and leading him into Hongjoong’s bedroom himself.

It’s decorated minimally, with LED lights along the top doing most of the heavy work for lighting, save for some dim lamps in the corner that match the cool-tone of the blue lighting overhead. The TV is already geared up to go on the game’s loading screen and there’s pizza from Domino’s waiting on a side table, next to some soda.

Hongjoong’s house is nice as fuck, San realizes, belatedly putting together that he’d never been in his bedroom before before. He wonders if it has anything to do with him not being invited to these things.

The gaming goes smoothly… as much as it can, considering they’re all considerably bad at the game.

The first round is absolutely shit, starting with a match of Seonghwa as Isabelle up against Wooyoung as Wii Fit Trainer— because she’s ‘cunty’— and Wooyoung manages to win just by a hair. San beats Hongjoong, who played as Kirby, and that’s when they started rolling the drinks out. Seonghwa switches to Rosalina for the rest of the night, and San ends up beating all of them. He got accusations of cheating by being sober, but he drove. And he was the only one who was starting to get a sense of where the buttons were and what they did by the end of it, instead of just smashing things— a skill Jongho has unfortunately drilled into him.

They’re there for less than two hours before Wooyoung taps out because ‘Seongjoong are getting gross’ and they run off to make out in Hongjoong’s bed as quick as they can say goodbye.

All in all, a fine time.

It’s a change of pace from what he’s used to, and it sets in when he’s turning the keys in his ignition with a tipsy Wooyoung sitting in the passenger seat, rambling.

“Honestly Hongjoong should’ve been way more upset about losing, especially to Hwa, but he’s a simp,” Wooyoung recaps, already knee-deep in a conversation as San is pulling away from the curb. “Do you remember how he was after the Rainbow Road incident? Or, ahh, you weren’t here for that, huh? Well it was bad, let me just say.”

San laughs a little awkwardly at the mention, not wanting to let the awkwardness of the mention set in but struggling in a response. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he lands on, but the delivery falls flat.

“Sorry,” Wooyoung is quick to apologize, suddenly leaning over the middle console, resting a hand on San’s thigh as he faces him, very seriously. San barely catches it, looking at the road, and he’d push back some more if any part of their drive back were over twenty five miles per hour, but instead he takes it, as tense as he is to the touch and trying to focus. “Thank you for coming with me tonight.” The words are rushed, like they’re running from his mouth before he can even think about it. San doesn’t doubt it.

It’s the most physical affection Wooyoung has shown since San had picked him up earlier and San tries not to waver under the intensity of it.

Just as quickly as he drew in though, Wooyoung is pulling back with a soft sigh, leaving his hand with a delicate touch.

“Yeosang was supposed to come with me tonight,” Wooyoung confesses, pulling away and looking towards the window of the car. “I don’t want you to think you’re, like, my second choice or anything, but you have Jongho, you know?”

San exhales shakily at the mention, suddenly the feeling of being left out replaced with guilt.

“Her and I used to just come as a set, you know?” He asks, looking back at San. “Like Seonghwa and Hongjoong— you wouldn’t invite one of them without the other, the other would show up anyway!

“And, like, you don’t always bring Jongho around, but you always can, you know that,” Wooyoung says. “I’m glad I’ve been seeing more of him recently. But I don’t know…” He trails off, taking a deep sigh before looking back to San, making eye contact briefly at a stop sign. “It just feels like she’s pulling away from me.”

It’s heavy enough of a confession that San instinctively looks away under the weight of it, focusing back on the road in front of him.

He tries to respond, but it’s a little difficult to as guilt washes into him.

He hadn’t even thought of Jongho like that— he’s such constant of San’s life he wouldn’t have even made the parallel; he’s more like a brother, or maybe a house fixture, unmoving. Jongho hasn’t been coming around for San, either, but San figures pointing that out wouldn’t help— especially when Jongho’s crush on Yeosang has done nothing to affect San’s friendship with him, but could easily be the driving force in him getting Yeosang’s attention over Wooyoung.

It isn’t San’s fault— or anyone’s, really— but it’s a matter of unfortunate circumstances.

San can’t admit that he’d always choose Wooyoung, either, because he can’t answer the follow-up questions. Why he sits next to Jongho in class. Why Jongho has been coming around more often.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” San is quick to correct, forgetting the road in front of him for a minute and turning to look at Wooyoung with sincerity, who just smiles back at him. “I just… I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what that feels like…”

He grips the steering wheel hard enough to leave fingerprint indents in the foam cover, gritting his teeth. It’s a shitty response.

“No, it’s okay. Yahh, I’m drunk and rambling.”

Wooyoung cracks the window as he turns back towards it, autumn weather be damned. San never turned the heating back on after they got back into the car and he feels a little chilly, but Wooyoung’s wearing his leather jacket and drunk flush so he doesn’t want to impede on the vibes, even as he rolls the window down further.

“Think you can go any faster in this thing?” He asks, sticking his head a little bit outside the window and San laughs and shakes his head. Wooyoung is laughing, too, though, and that lightens the mood even as San presses on the gas a final time, arriving on Wooyoung’s block. Slowly, Wooyoung pulls his head back inside and rolls the window up, looking right ahead as he does.

With no cars on the road at this time of night— maybe eleven to midnight, much earlier than San is used to coming home but still dead by suburbia standards— San just pulls his car to the sidewalk on the curb instead of into Wooyoung’s driveway, his dad’s car blocking the spot San had been in earlier, anyway. He doesn’t say anything as he slowly puts his car in park, turning the radio down to match the way the engine quiets, and he looks at Wooyoung, who isn’t saying anything, just looking ahead.

It’s quiet for a minute. San isn’t in a rush and Wooyoung’s unmoving. It’s peaceful, and it’s the first time San doesn’t feel awkward in the silence, but he seems to be alone in that thought, if Wooyoung’s shifty hands and pointed lack of eye contact speaks for anything.

“Sorry,” he says again. A couple minutes have passed and the last song played through; the CD loops— the same Blink 182 one that was on earlier. San isn’t that worried about it anymore, not as Anthem fades out.

“I didn’t mean to say too much,” Wooyoung says. “And it might be a little shitty of me to complain about my best friend after calling you up to take her place, huh?”

“No, I get it,” San confesses. “I have Jongho. I get it. It’s not the same, but I get it.”

Wooyoung smiles wearily and looks to his door for a moment, still in the night with just a path of small garden solar lights leading the way in. He looks back to San, then back to his hands. San clears his throat, pushing at the words but knowing that now is the time to say them.

God, he understands why he’s usually drunk for these things— not that even then any moment feels so intimate. He’d probably act the same, either way, but he likes the fall back excuse if he says something wrong.

“You don’t have to go in just yet,” he decides, choking a little on the words. Wooyoung looks at him wide-eyed and San cringes at himself but knows enough to tell that that’s a good response.

San eyes his dashboard, gas tank almost empty.

Wooyoung doesn’t say anything but leans over the middle console to take San into a hug by surprise.

Oh. Okay.

San doesn’t really know how to react, he didn’t have his guard up, so his hands instinctually land over Wooyoung’s waist, but he pauses before landing them there, hovering between his jacket that falls overtop of him, cape-like, and the loose fabric of his t-shirt underneath.

But the moment is too long and Wooyoung doesn’t let go, so San touches, his heartbeat rising as he does.

It’s nothing they haven’t done before.

He pushes the fabric until it sinches around the dip of Wooyoung’s waist, just under his ribs where his only tattoo sits. San’s hands are small and don’t wrap nearly all the way around it. He wonders if Wooyoung would prefer it if he could, or if he likes that San’s a little feminine. He knows Wooyoung is bisexual, he wears the label proudly, posting it on his Instagram, but San doesn’t know if that means anything about his type.

When they’re close like this, San can smell Wooyoung’s perfume strongly— spicy, like cardamom.

And maybe it is different than usual. San is less focused on how he feels, and more focused on what Wooyoung is like underneath him— under his hands with his face tucked into San’s neck. It’s a dangerous thing to be able to study in such intense detail.

San is the first to pull back, but only after Wooyoung stops pressing his face into his neck. He finally unbuckles his seatbelt, twisted up in it in the awkward angle, and doesn’t think Wooyoung had worn one the whole time.

“Let’s take a walk,” San decides, smiling at Wooyoung as he pulls the keys from the ignition casually.

Suddenly eager, Wooyoung is immediately opening the passenger side door, jumping out of it with a smile and a small giggle.

San does the same, ignoring the bite of the fall cold.

Wooyoung seems to notice this, and they’re just starting their way down the block when Wooyoung pulls his leather jacket off and wordlessly wraps it over San’s arms, baggy enough on Wooyoung to end up fitting San perfectly.

San swallows a lump in his throat as soon as the action happens, with Wooyoung continuing to hum as he walks just as he had been before. He doesn’t acknowledge it, but it weighs on San, and San has to say something after a minute of quiet.

“Are you sure?”

It’s asked timidly, just enough for Wooyoung to stop humming and look at him for a moment, almost trying to process if a question was being asked.

“Huh?” Wooyoung asks, a little confused, mouth dropped open. It’s a little kid-ish, adorable. “Oh, yeah,” he follows up. “I’m hot anyway.”

With that he’s back to humming, almost skipping ahead of San.

They didn’t discuss any destination, but automatically, they’re heading towards the playground, a little ways away. They’d been there a few times when they were kid kids with Wooyoung’s older brother accompanying them, but it’s nothing too special. San drives past it sometimes, there’s a tennis court with no net up and a basketball court with hoops rusted to death, next to an empty wooden pavilion all on the sidelines of a small playground, fitted with just a couple of orange plastic slides. Oh, and some swing sets— that’s the real hitter.

Wooyoung is a little ahead of San but stops in place when his feet are just about to hit the rubber tarmac, turning back as San slowly approaches beside him. Wooyoung takes out an Elf Bar from his sweatpants pocket, hitting it and scenically letting the smoke blow out in front of them, quiet, taking in the scene of their destination, and letting it all evaporate before he turns to San.

“Well,” he starts, waiting for San to meet his eyes before continuing. “Wanna swing?”

San just smirks, running after him as Wooyoung laughs, making a run for the swing set.

The middle swing is broken, leaving just the two on each end and a couple of baby swings on the opposite side. San gets there first and takes the swing closest to the baby set, and Wooyoung runs up from behind him and instead of going for the opposite side, tries climbing into the baby swing. Between laughing at him, San manages to ask what the hell he’s doing, and Wooyoung just answers through a soft pout that he wanted to be next to him. It’s enough to make San’s heart flutter, but he just laughs through it.

Eventually, Wooyoung calms down and takes the swing on the opposite side, reaching for his vape again and taking a few hits as he looks up at the stars. San notes, while he’s reaching into his pocket, that Wooyoung hasn’t touched his phone at all since they left Hongjoong’s house. A minute later, he’s readjusting Wooyoung’s jacket on him so it doesn’t fall off, still lazily slung over his shoulders, as he swings, and that’s when he feels the weight of it, in the jacket pocket. Oh. It’s a level of trust San feels a little flustered on.

“This is nice,” Wooyoung confesses, sometime into the quiet shake back and forth of the swings— it’s silent, other than the light clashes of metal and an occassional car somewhere distant. “I used to walk here sometimes, it makes me feel nostalgic. I’d get high as fuck in that pavilion til they put cameras in.”

San laughs at the story, shaking his head. It’s a memory he wasn’t there for, but he doesn’t feel bitter about being left out, rather like he’s being let in now and he’s grateful for that. They don’t do much talking about important stuff, and San isn’t fully sure this qualifies, but it feels like a piece of Wooyoung. Like sharing something. That’s hardly trivial.

“Jongho used to do that at the cemetery in our neighborhood,” San tells back, and Wooyoung immediately bursts out laughing, high and sharp.

“A cemetery?”

“There’s a gazebo in the back of it, like, bordering on woods, and I’m pretty sure it’s abandonned back there,” San explains. “But still. Fucking stupid. He’s so stupid.”

It’s said lightheartedly and Wooyoung is happy to laugh along with him.

“And he got caught, too, I’m sure?”

“Yeah, ‘cause the guy was doing it mid-day.” Wooyoung laughs again. “Couldn’t even wait for the gardener to get off shift.”

“Well, Jongho was doing some gardening alright.”

“Yeah,” San agrees, shaking his head with a smile.

“You were smarter about it, I’m assuming?” Wooyoung asks, egging him on with a smirk, inquisitive. San has never really been questioned like this, by him, about anything of substance, so he instictively flusters, not only at the topic at hand but at the feeling of it all. “Or did you just luck out that day?”

“Ah, I never really got into it…” San confesses. It’s embarrassing, for some reason. It isn’t like he’s some DARE poster boy or anything, but…

“Smart boy, Sannie, I should’ve known,” Wooyoung smiles back. He’s jumping off the swing, not that he had enough momentum on the up to make an impact as he lands, but enough to circle back over towards San’s space, opting to twirl around the broken swing this time instead of taking the baby one. “You didn’t even have a drink tonight because you were driving. You’re such a good influence, San-ah. I like that about you. You don’t change who you are for anyone.”

The lack of stability on the lone chain has Wooyoung stumbling a little towards where San is at, though he’s so delicate on his feet, coordinated always, it almost looks intentional. Eventually, he lets go of the metal and instead chooses to brace himself on the collar of the leather jacket San has one, pulling it together to almost restrict around San’s neck as he rests his fingers in the metal eyelets. He looks San in the eye.

San’s heart rate is rising immediately, but he doesn’t break against the eye contact. Instead, he recognizes the moment as a time to say something, say anything, but he ends up just stuttering a few starts of syllables, unsure where they’re going, before he doesn’t have to.

Wooyoung looks up to the sky, just in time to see a crack of lightning, not far, but not distant. Immediately, there’s a crack of thunder, and in less than ten seconds, it goes from serenity to pouring.

Instinctively, San jumps from his own swing, pulling the jacket to cover his face, running after Wooyoung who’s already darting back in the direction of his own house.

San manages to catch up with him, can hear his hysterical laughter echoing through all the raindrops, and as soon as he’s in range to, he pushes the jacket to cover Wooyoung’s face instead. It’s a little late, the damage has already been done, but it’s the gesture that counts, just as Wooyoung had given him the jacket before.

It turns into a fight in the air. Wooyoung is pushing the jacket back towards San, and they’re still running, if a little slower, as they take turns trying to stretch the fabric above the other’s head. At some point, San remembers Wooyoung’s phone in the pocket and maneuvers it out, sliding it into the back of his own jeans, before continuing the fight, Wooyoung getting the victory of shielding San for slightly too long for San’s comfort.

By the time they make it back to Wooyoung’s, soaking wet just a couple blocks later, it’s clear that neither of them had really won, but they’re both smiling, even as they take deep breaths trying to comedown from the sporadic marathon.

They take a rest under a tree in his front yard, which doesn’t do too much to shield them, but it’s not like it matters anymore. The rain starts to calm down anyway, just on queue; just their luck.

San ends up holding the jacket in the end, and ends up standing face-to-face with Wooyoung, close, but suddenly, when it’s midnight and they’re soaking wet, it doesn’t feel too intimate, it doesn’t feel scary. He leans forward to wrap the jacket around Wooyoung’s shoulders, just as Wooyoung had done to him earlier. It brings their faces close together in a way that isn’t unfamiliar, but it’s different. It isn’t uncomfortable, but San feels the weight.

Wooyoung looks up to San as he does it, with flushed cheeks in a shy smile, and tucks some of his long hair behind his ear, easily clumping the bang to the other wet strands. San feels his heart skip, but it doesn’t make him falter.

“You keep it,” Wooyoung says. There’s a little less conviction and a little more shyness than San has come to expect from him, but it’s getting late. “It looks better on you, anyway. I have more.”

San frowns at him, but removes his hands from the collar, resting them in the air just at height for Wooyoung’s weight.

Wooyoung leans back in to wrap it around San’s neck, as he’d done earlier, but their face to face this time, and San instinctively grabs his waist again. Wooyoung pulls back and smiles at his work, adding a little pat of San’s shoulder, to compliment his work.

“There,” Wooyoung smiles.

Neither of them make any move to break the contact.

San smiles back before remembering something, drawing just one hand back to reach for his back pocket. Wooyoung frowns at the loss but watches curiously, intently, following San as it pulls back, before San reveals what he’s grabbing.

“At least let me give you this.”

Wooyoung giggles, accepting the offer as he takes his phone into his hand, clicking the power button just once to glance at the screen. San doesn’t look too hard, but notices the time, past twelve-thirty now. Underneath it, he sees Wooyoung has several texts, and a missed call. He doesn’t look too hard at it, trying not to snoop, but he doesn’t miss the two emojis next to the contact name, a green heart and a black heart, like Yeosang’s signature hair color.

San frowns at it for a second, knowing his distraction for Wooyoung doesn’t last forever, but Wooyoung doesn’t seem to mind it, still smiling as he takes the device back, sliding it into his sweatpants pocket. “Ah, I didn’t even notice.” As soon as his phone is away, he pulls his arms back out to steady them on San’s wrists, meeting his eyes again.

San, once again, doesn’t have words, but he doesn’t want to move. He knows he should do something. Thankfully, Wooyoung decides for him.

“Well, thank you again, San-ah,” Wooyoung says, genuinely, and San’s happy at the gratitude but a little distraught at the way it feels like a goodbye. “For my phone. For taking a walk with me. For coming with me when I called.”

“Of course,” San says, even though his breath hitches. “Anytime, Young-ah. You can always call me.”

“Thank you,” Wooyoung says, in a whisper.

He brings his face closer to San’s, to match the volume in his voice. With the way they’re so interconnected right now, San can feel his movements, can feel the weight shift in Wooyoung as he pushes himself up on his tip toes, as he starts to fall forward.

In a moment, something snaps.

San pulls away.

Not fast enough for Wooyoung to fall off his feet, but he stumbles. So does San, a step back on unsteady terrain over a tree root, and San immediately feels sorry for causing it, but doesn’t say as much, instead just awkwardly scratching the back of his neck.

Wooyoung doesn’t say anything either, immediately freezing, in contrast to his relaxed state in San’s arms, he stands with his back straight.

“Ah, it’s late,” Wooyoung says, first to break without even giving it a second. He’s back to the tone of voice he’d been using when he first got in the car and San hadn’t noticed the contrast. It’s a little upsetting.

He hasn’t noticed he hasn’t responded until Wooyoung is speaking again, with a “Thank you again, San-ah,” and a light touch to his hand.

He thinks he’ll leave it at that, already turning around again, until Wooyoung turns to face him, giving San a kiss on his cheek before San even notices it’s happening.

Just like that, Wooyoung scurries away, into his front door without looking back, and San hears it slam shut.

He wipes his cheek where Wooyoung kissed, bringing it up to his nose after, and San catches the hint of Fireball in it, the whiskey a stark yet complimentary contrast to Wooyoung’s perfume in his jacket San had been left with.

All of a sudden, there’s a sinking feeling in San’s stomach.

It’s not unfamiliar entirely, but it’s a lot easier to handle when he’s drunk.

*

The next day, Jongho asks him to hang out, looping a new Nirvana vinyl he got and trying to figure out the bass part by sound. He says he can’t get it down, wants San’s opinion on it, but San knows Jongho has a better grasp of it, anyway.

He tells him he might have a cold, feels like shit— which isn’t entirely untrue, though he doubts he’d feel this way if he hadn’t been up all night overthinking and doom-scrooling.

Jongho responds surprisingly understandingly, says something must be going around, Wooyoung had canceled on Yeosang for the same reason.

San feels a little guilty at this, being the reason Wooyoung had to cancel on Yeosang when Wooyoung only hung out with San to lament about to Yeosang, but he brushes it off. The anxious nausea at the thought blends together with all the other anxious nausea he’d been feeling since Wooyoung first kissed him, so it’s easy to blend that into every other feeling.

The next time San sees Wooyoung is a weekend later, a party at Seonghwa’s house.

He wears the leather jacket Wooyoung had left him with the week prior.

He’s with Yeosang when San arrives, which San had already prepared for, that’s how he knew to come with Jongho. There’s something a little uncanny about Wooyoung and San eventually places it: he doesn’t have a drink in his hand, and he isn’t wearing a jacket.

Yunho instigates a game of truth or drink and Wooyoung, initially sitting on the opposite side of the circle to San, ends up kissing his cheek, then settling on him like a lap cat for the rest of the game.

San isn’t any better than Wooyoung is, ends up wrapping a an arm over Wooyoung’s shoulder for as long as they’re sitting still there for— twenty minutes, top, until Yunho ditches them to go smoke with Mingi. The move is instinctual, initially, but something’s shifted in the air.

San is thinking about it way more.

If they had already passed the point of return before, San isn’t sure what this is.

He ends up going home rather early that night, not before catching Wooyoung on the way out, by himself but not looking disgruntled about it. Still, there’s something a little bit off, about the way he’s standing alone with a smile, hitting a vape in Seonghwa’s back yard in the late-night autumn weather, so San decides to fix it, walking up behind him and setting the jacket over his shoulders before greeting him.

Wooyoung looks up at the contact, initially caught off guard, but smiles when he sees San there.

“Returning the favor,” San explains, and Wooyoung smiles back.

When San gets home, rather early all things considered, he admittedly sleeps easier without the jacket on the chair across from him, no longer having to wonder if it means something.

*

San is at home when there’s a knock on the door.

When he answers it and it’s Jongho, the most surprising part is that he bothered knocking at all.

Of course, he steps right inside when San opens it, but his demeanor is a little confusing. San closes the door right behind himself, planning to just get back to what he was doing and let Jongho run amuck with whatever plans he wanted to do in this house, but he pauses when Jongho starts talking.

“I was gonna just text you this, but I’m not typing all that,” he starts with, and San can immediately tell from the way his jaw shifts mid-sentence that Jongho is pissed off at him.

Alright.

“Alright.”

Jongho doesn’t acknowledge it and throws himself onto the living room couch, where San was just sitting, and San grumbles a little bit but accepts it, taking his place on the adjacent loveseat and managing to hit his knee on the coffee table as he does. Great. He’s great.

“I don’t know what Wooyoung’s deal is, but you need to tell him to get it together,” Jongho says, and San just raises an eyebrow

“He isn’t my responsibility,” San immediately says, and Jongho just sighs.

“Well maybe you need to get it together because if you would just ask him out already he’d be kissing you instead of kissing Mingi last night.”

Oh, that makes San pause.

“He what?”

“Yeah, and Yeosang saw the whole thing,” Jongho says back. As soon as Jongho looks back at him, San fixes the instinctual frown on his face, trying to be something a little colder, matching Jongho who’s trying to be all macho-man right now.

“Well,” San responds, his words not fixing themselves as fast as his mind is, but he clears his throat, pulling it together. “I mean, that isn’t really my problem,” he decides on. The words themselves are a little uncertain but he manages to level his tone enough and look Jongho in the eye to come across as serious.

“How the fuck is it not your problem? It’s Wooyoung,” Jongho argues. “Wooyoung has always been your problem. I don’t even care about whatever petty relationship is happening between you two, honestly, but Wooyoung and Yeosang have been fighting recently and it’s fucking up the balance of things! Then Wooyoung goes and decides to kiss Mingi.”

“Why do you care? I’ve been in this friend group longer than you have,” San responds. He can drop the intimidating act, he’s starting to get a little genuinely pissed— not sure if it’s at the situation himself or Jongho deciding to involve him in this. San never had to even know this happened.

“I care because it’s Yeosang.”

“If you’re so obsessed with Yeosang go talk to Mingi about it since she obviously cares more about that than she does about you.”

It’s a dirty blow, and San knows that as soon as he says it, watching the way Jongho takes a deep breath in and doesn’t respond right away.

San tries to ease the situation, to talk about something else to brush past it, but fuck, he’s still upset. He goes for a lighter dig, but he’s not gonna try to make Jongho feel better about something stupid they don’t need to talk about in the first place.

“And know what? Yeosang cares about so much, and yet have you even thought about how she treats Wooyoung?”

Jongho side eyes San at this, opening his mouth with words on his lips, but San decides to speak first, to stop it.

No, he doesn’t want to hear whatever bad Jongho has to say about Wooyoung, and he knows he already went too far by mentioning her.

“Never mind,” San says. “Fuck, sorry, I’m not gonna start fucking spreading their personal drama.”

Jongho’s mood seems to lighten, but he’s still annoyed, certainly.

But he’s softer in his delivery when he continues, looking at San, a little pitiful.

“I mean, I’m already involved in it enough,” he confesses.

San laughs lightly at it, but he shakes his head, making sure to be stern in his own response.

“Well, I’m not,” he decides. “And I’m not getting involved, so if you want something figured out, you do it.”

Jongho looks at him for a moment longer before wordlessly sighing, pushing himself off the couch and heading right back out San’s front door.

“See ya,” San calls out behind him, but he doesn’t respond. The door slams shut behind him.

San’s left a little dazed, wondering what the fuck all that was about.

*

It’s a heat of the moment mistake for San to text Seonghwa, but by the time Seonghwa has decided plans for them, San can’t cancel on his noona like that— their eyes are too big and as much as San teases, he won’t break her heart.

He gets flashbacks to Wooyoung’s ramble when Yeosang canceled on him— not that Seonghwa is so dependent on San, it might be the opposite actually, but either way, he can’t imagine bailing.

Which is how he ends up in Seonghwa’s car, reluctantly bouncing along to them and Hongjoong singing their hearts out to Mamamoo in the front seat.

He’d texted Seonghwa in a moment of passion, pissed off at Jongho but unable to sit still, asking if they were up for anything, and they had excitedly told him to be ready at nine. By the time it came around, his anger had calmed and gave the chance to turn towards the more lonesome type of mopey, but it’s too late.

They arrive to a house San hadn’t been to before, and it’s a reminder that his inner and outer circle isn’t the only people in the entire world— refreshing, quite honestly, after inadvertently being tied up in so many things. He takes a step from Hongjoong’s car and lays eyes across a few faces he doesn’t recognize on the front porch, along with some vague acquaintances, and he smiles.

“Hey man,” someone says approaching him. “Haven’t seen you in a minute.”

“Oh, shit,” San says, immediately leaning into the dap-up-into-a-hug, exchanging pleasantries.

They fall into an easy conversation, reminiscing on a middle school classroom where they’d sat in the back corner together in a table that ended up being a rowdy group. Yeonjun— as San eventually recalls— brings his other friend into the conversation, explaining to him what they got up to back then, before the two of them switch to telling San about some more stupid shit they’ve been up to as of late.

It’s a pleasant conversation. As an introvert, whatever little social battery San has is usually being eaten up by the same two people.

They pass a White Claw San’s way, at some point, and he’s just started on the second one when suddenly, the two guys are looking behind him.

San pauses in his words but doesn’t get the chance to ask before he feels hands around his waist, catching him entirely off guard.

It’s a Wooyoung, if anyone, type of move, but it’s something Wooyoung has never done to him before.

That, and the arms don’t feel quite right, a little bigger up top and lither in the wrists and forearm.

San tries to look down to start piecing it together, but before he can, the presence makes themself known by stepping around him, and that’s when San gets a whiff of the egregiously floral-vanilla perfume.

Yeosang. It’s Yeosang.

San blinks a couple times, and, yep, it stays Yeosang.

“San-ah!” She greets cheerfully, like it’s casual. San doesn’t think he’s ever heard her say his name in a sentence that hadn't started with ‘Wooyoungie’ and certainly never this cheerfully. “And Yeonjunnie. How are you guys!”

“Ah, we’re good,” Yeonjun responds. “Just catching up with this guy. We haven’t seen him in a minute, you gotta tell him to get out more.”

“Ah, I know!” Yeosang responds. She still hasn’t fully let go of San’s waist and is getting closer to him, pressing her face close to his neck where it’s almost a perfect fit, her being barely shorter than him. “We’ll work on that,” she says, planting a kiss to his cheek.

San can’t help a reaction to that, finally breaking and turning to fully face her, eyes wide.

She’s just as pretty up close, unfortunately. She doesn’t have a single pore. I’m desperation to find a single flaw of hers, he notices her concealer is fading in the corner of her left eye to reveal the slight hint of a birthmark peaking through. It’s next to a perfectly sharp eyeliner wing and naturally long eyelashes. Her eye twitches when San looks at her, a little irritated, and San breathes at the show of her being human.

“Not right now though,” she continues with a smile that’s becoming increasingly clear to be a mask of some sort. “Mind if I steal him, boys?”

Yeonjun makes his exit with a sly whistle and his friend gives San a look that reads oh, someone’s in trouble.

It’s a straight guy thing that San is suddenly thankful to not be apart of, but that still leaves just one problem.

He looks back at Yeosang’s face, finally meeting it, and her smile has dropped.

Oh, she’s intimidating like this. He can see how’s that’s a bit of a turn on, but he can’t fully commit to it.

Still looking unimpressed, Yeosang reaches for San’s chin, painted fingernails delicately scratching right underneath.

“Wait!” He says, a little panicked. It’s his first words to her, and it makes her falter.

She looks at him, waiting on an answer, and he follows up with a quieter yet just as frantic, “I’m gay!”

She looks at him for another full second before just rolling her eyes.

“Obviously.”

She pulls him in for a kiss.

San doesn’t know what to do.

Immediately, his hands are fumbling at his side trying to reach for something, to push back maybe, he isn’t sure, trying to ground, but Yeosang seems to have expected that if the way she sauvely captures his wrists in between her large fingers, pinning them together, says anything. He makes a surprised sound against her lips, but she also doesn’t seem to regard that.

She moves with such confidence that it’s humbling, and San resigns to a few more long seconds of being kissed by her.

She pulls back.

San just looks at her face for another moment, maybe looking for words, a question, something, but of course, she’s quicker than him, looking away from him the moment they break and letting go of his wrists as if she never held them in the first place.

Yeosang’s eyes land somewhere past San’s head, to the left, and of course, he turns to see what it is, immediately turning back when he sees Mingi, and she’s looking at them.

Fuck.

San’s hands finally fall from where he was holding them stupidly in the air and Yeosang, still not looking at him, grabs him by the back of his hair, hand at the base of his neck.

“I have to go,” she says, before finally turning to face him. All of a sudden, her tone is serious, pleading, almost, as she tells him, “But I need to talk to you more. Seriously. Please don’t leave without talking to me.”

She waits for San to nod before walking away, before letting go at all, and when he does, Yeosang just gives him another sweet smile, looking as innocent as she did beforehand. She nods back at him, a little sign of understanding somehow, and San takes it graciously.

As soon as she walks away, San pointedly avoids the direction she was headed in.

He needs another drink for this— whatever this even is.

He doesn’t know the layout of the place, he lost track of Seonghwa and Hongjoong as soon as he got here, and he has no idea what impression of him Yeonjun is under right now, but San can figure it out, as long as he doesn’t have to see Mingi— not that he expects the girl to talk to her, but San didn’t want to get involved with this in the first place, let alone answer for that display.

San spots Seonghwa in the distance, easily identified by their pink hair and standing a little taller than a lot of the crowd, but as soon as San does, he freezes in place.

Because between them and San, stands Wooyoung.

Staring dead at him.

Fuck.

Wooyoung’s biting his lip as he does, standing alone. God knows how long he’s been looking for.

And then it gets worse.

Because Mingi stands up next to him.

Fucking fuck.

She leans into whisper something to him, and he turns his head just a little bit to lean into it, and San takes the opportunity to turn in the opposite direction, trying to walk wherever else with no plan in mind.

*

San takes a few laps around, stands in place for a few minutes, and even goes inside the house into every bathroom he can possibly find to pass some time before Seonghwa eventually finds him on his third drink.

“Oh, San-ah!” They say sweetly, and San smiles, taking comfort in the familiarity of his sweet noona. Of course, that hardly lasts, why would it. “Come on, Youngie was looking for you! They’re playing a game or something, let’s go.”

Seonghwa, for their part, has managed to stay out of the drama miraculously. And San isn’t going to break her streak now. So of course, with no defense, he follows.

His heart is racing, but he’s quite drunk at this point, and because of that, he can let his guard down.

So, he lets himself be guided into a corner of the home’s basement he would’ve never thought to look himself, right into a circle and next to Wooyoung.

Fuck— he’s so pretty.

San notes it off the bat, drunk enough to ogle for a second before catching himself, but how could he do anything else when Wooyoung’s there, long hair, light makeup, wearing a baggy zip up hoodie that makes him look soft over a tight tank top that highlights his body lines? His bangs are grown out to the point where they fall in his face— surely a nuisance, San imagines, keeping his own hair short mostly because he’s so hyper-aware of it all the time— but the soft black of it compliments his nearly-black irises perfectly.

On top of that he looks all-too-pleased to see San there, wearing a smirk and a side-eye that feels lethal to be under. San wonders what that’s all about and— oh, oh yeah.

He should be scared.

“Just in time,” Wooyoung says with a smirk.

There aren’t any extra chairs and San is standing there dumbly, a little dazed and definitely a little drunk, but as Wooyoung stands up, he guides San back down to where he was sitting previously and San just follows.

Just as San takes his seat in the chair, Wooyoung stands in front of him, giving a nod to another corner of the room where someone turns up music that was already playing lowly.

Immediately, “Cyclone” by Baby Bash is playing and San doesn’t really think the lights are dimming, but he narrows his focus in front of him where Wooyoung doesn’t move.

Instead, he’s dancing.

And, fuck, San almost blacks out.

He’s seen Wooyoung dance before. He was a cheerleader for years and still has the muscle tone and casual fitness to show for it. He’s seen Wooyoung dance by himself, twerking on tables in Yeosang and Seonghwa’s faces just to hear them whistle at him, and has seen Wooyoung dance on all of their friends, grinding against Hongjoong just to watch him try to squirm away from it just to skip San when it got to his turn.

But this. This is new.

It’s a little hazy. Part of San wishes he was more lucid, to be paying more attention right now, but he’s smart enough to know that wouldn’t be good for him.

He just tightens his grip on the edges of the plastic lawn chair he’s sitting in and grits his teeth, feeling his face flush shades darker than it already was from the alcohol.

He looks up just in time to see Wooyoung look over his own shoulder, looking at him with a smirk.

San doesn’t remember much after that.

*

Okay, he ends up throwing up in the bathroom.

It wasn’t his proudest moment, not by far, but it had to happen.

Hongjoong is the only one who notices, and he takes San outside, gently feeding him corn chips and petting his hair as Seonghwa keeps bringing cups of water.

It’s enough to make him feel better, and with that, his head is clear(ish) for the first time in hours and it’s enough to make him believe the entire twelve hours beforehand was a weird fever dream.

Seonghwa calls it soon after that, deciding they’d go home and just take San back to Hongjoong’s with them, and the three of them are walking to the car, Seonghwa and San linking arms with Hongjoong trailing behind, when all of a sudden…

“Wait!”

Yeosang runs up to them, looking just as San had remembered. Winged eyeliner, smudged in the corner, freshly dyed red-brown hair, and a white denim jacket. She smells as strongly as she had, the scent of vanilla almost making San gag as she approaches with his already-sensitive stomach, but he suppresses it, he can’t imagine she would take kindly to that reaction.

“I need to talk to San-ah real quick, can I steal him for a moment?”

She grabs his hand, and San just looks at her as she directs her own big, pleading eyes towards Seonghwa. Seonghwa looks skeptical and when San looks back at them and their raised eyebrow, they only settle on it when San gives his own small nod, if a little unsure.

“I’ll make it quick, unnie!”

With that, Yeosang blows a quick kiss in Seonghwa’s direction, pulling San away by the arm until they are standing by themselves in a garden. Granted, in a more well-lit, crowded area, but they’re alone.

“Alright, what’s up?” San asks, and it’s the most level-headed he’s sounded all night, which he tries not to be too proud about. Yeosang smiles a little at his sudden confidence, with the politeness of a business woman, but there’s still an intensity to her aura.

San always thought she was intimidating because she was pretty, but it turns out those traits co-exist, maybe bounce off of each other a little bit, but she’s certainly intimidating either way.

San wouldn’t want to be on her bad side, and he gulps a little at the realization.

“I need you to be my boyfriend.”

San pauses, furrowing his eyebrow, but as he goes to respond, she cuts him off again.

“I know you’re gay,” she quickly adds, and San blushes a little bit— not because he’s gay, but because of how she said it like he was about to say something stupid. “But just pretend. For a little bit. Please.”

San is still standing there, mouth slightly agape stupidly.

“Just for a week,” she quickly adds. Her voice is increasingly desperate. “I just am in a sticky situation and you’re the only one who can really help me.”

Her eyes shift a little as she says the last part and San follows the movement of it, just to catch a glimpse of orange hair, not too far off. Of course. Mingi and Wooyoung are sitting on the stairs of the house’s side porch, each with a cigarette, each with a cigarette and looking only at each other.

Wooyoung smiles, starting to turn his head and that’s when San looks back.

“Please, San-ah,” she continues. “I can’t ask a straight boy, he’d read too much into it…”

His mind flickers to Jongho, and he feels a little pity for that, for whatever kind of situation they’re in, but mostly for Yeosang.

Jongho is very well San’s closest friend, he’s like his brother, and Jongho likes Yeosang.

But with the words that fall like a confession from her lips, he pieces together that she doesn’t want his attention— not like that.

Plus, Jongho was the one who involved San in this mess in the first place.

And San is drunk.

It’s hard in the best of circumstances to say no to Yeosang— not that San has ever said no to before, nor has he talked to her under good circumstances, but he’s already unpracticed and the pressure’s on.

So, with another glance towards Mingi and Wooyoung— getting up from their spots and headed inside of the house— San holds his breath.

And then he agrees.

“Yes.”

“Yay!” Yeosang says, entire demeanor immediately brightening as she almost jumps to take him into a hug. With the height she has for a second, she plants a kiss on San’s cheek, and he immediately feels something sticky on his skin leaving the shape of her lip-gloss. “Thank you so much, Sannie-yah! I’ll text you.”

She starts to run off again. San frowns at her.

“Don’t you need my number?”

“Oh, I have your number,” she says like it’s obvious. She just shrugs. “Bye, San-ah!”

She disappears from there, leaving San standing there.

He looks to Seonghwa as he finally wipes the lipgloss of his cheek. It leaves a glittery residue on the top of his hand and spreads the stickiness rather than cleans it. Seonghwa raises an eyebrow as San walks back towards them, and San just shakes his head.

“Wooyoung’s friend,” he explains, ducking his head down where he spits on the collar of his shirt before bringing it up to try to better wipe his cheek.

“Right…” Seonghwa says.

They seem a little skeptical and they’re looking at San when he looks back up, but as soon as they realize they aren’t getting more info they just turn away with the huff.

“You take the front this time, San-ah, we can’t risk you getting carsick.”

*

San doesn’t really have to think of it for a couple more days.

He occupies his time with other stupid shit. He has a little more homework than usual, and puts a little more effort than usual into it. He rearranges his furniture. Learns most of the Legend of Zelda soundtrack on his guitar. At some point, his dad asks how Jongho’s doing, he hasn’t seen him in a while, and San just groans. His sisters there and just laughs it off, shaking her head and saying “teenagers,” and San takes to hibernation at that point.

The time passes eventually and he finds himself at Yeosang’s house.

It’s a smaller thing, all things considered, and Yeosang’s parents are a little bit on the stricter side, even if they’re away tonight. Because of that, when San arrives Yeosang is immediately meeting him at his car, taking him by the bicep to drag him into a play room of sorts in the basement, but also immediately notable, is the wealth dripping from every inch of it.

They enter through the back door of the garage, which is wide enough to fit two cars in— the Jeep Yeosang drives, a pristine white except for quite a few scuffs on the front which San makes a mental note of, to maybe not take a ride from the girl, and a matching black Bronco that belongs to her sister, in mint condition aside from some pink stickers and the Sanrio figurines lining the inner dashboard. It extends further than that, though, and the entire back wall has neatly-hung sports equipment, from skis to hockey gear to an entire treadmill and weight rack at the end of it. On the other end is a fridge— not a grimy, white, basement fridge, but a silver one, with double doors and a pull-out freezer on the bottom and a water dispenser in the center of it. That’s how San knows he’s in outside territory.

Still, Yeosang parades him through it easily and her confidence is fooling enough to make even her hand on his arm feel natural.

He feels a little bad for the impression he got of her last time, for gagging at her perfume when she was sick. She’s wearing something different tonight, San notices, a fresh scent not dissimilar to Old Spice. Her make-up is done simpler, too, skipping the winged eyeliner and going all in on brown eyeshadow, and her outfit is simple and cozy, too, black baggy cargo pants and a black tank-top over tennis shoes.

San had contemplated dressing up tonight, to try to match her perfect image, but didn’t want to give the impression he cared too much. He settled on a white t-shirt and light wash jeans and it feels appropriate.

“Cute fit, by the way,” Yeosang compliments as she finally steps away from him, opening the door to lead them inside properly.

“Thanks,” he says shyly, ducking his head so he doesn’t have to touch her arm as he enters the doorway.

Inside her basement is much bigger. There’s a ping-pong table in the corner, a foosball table in another, with a TV in front of a large sectional couch on the center. There’s another fridge in here, and Yeosang gets them fitted with drinks from it, two cups of boxed Sangria, because that’s what she’s drinking. She confesses to being a lightweight and San immediately feels relaxed in her presence, settling in and chugging the drink despite not really enjoying the taste.

She quickly gets caught up in talking to Yunho, and San doesn’t really follow it, too busy wondering if he was just supposed to keep following Yeosang around or not. At some point, while stupidly standing there, he makes eye contact with Hongjoong from across the room, who raises an eyebrow at him, making him feel like he was caught in the act of something. He watches Hongjoong lean into Seonghwa’s ear, whispering while referencing towards him, and that confirms the suspicion. San decides to look away at that point, downing some more of the wine.

He zones off a little, and the conversation eventually grows, one of Yunho’s friends coming up and joining it, and it slowly shifts to more of a conversation between those two than one involving Yeosang. It’s around then that Yeosang reaches for San’s wrist again, snapping him out of his dissassociation, saying, “Okay, let’s go.”

San looks up a little dazed but doesn’t fight it at all, simply following along.

They land somewhere around the ping-pong table where he immediately sees a game of beer pong in progress, Seonghwa and Hongjoong up against none other than Wooyoung and Mingi.

They’re at the latter section of the round, and of course Mingi and Wooyoung are winning— if San can beat the two of them at Super Smash Bros, that says a lot more about their abilities than San’s. There’s only a few cups left and Yeosang joins in on the whistling as Seonghwa lands a ball in, making the third dent in the opposing team’s cups, but of course, that isn’t enough when their team only has two playing.

When they inevitably take the win, Hongjoong is pouting as Seonghwa just giggles, and Yeosang is immediately interjecting into the winner team ask them to play another round.

Wooyoung raises an eyebrow at San as soon as she makes the suggestion. Fuck. It feels like consequences are beginning to set in, and he isn’t loving it. It might be the first eye contact he’s made with Wooyoung in weeks and he just smiles half-heartedly, trying to play cool.

“Sure,” Wooyoung eventually decides. “Do you want to switch teams or anything at all orrr…”

He’s looking at San as he asks the question, but Yeosang steps in front of him, like a physical barrier between the two boys, and San wants to cringe, but he allows it.

“No, you guys should protect your crown,” she responds back with a smile, and Wooyoung’s gaze drops a little bit to look dumbfounded at her now, but she’s unfazed. “Well, try to. Come on, San-ah.”

San follows along but not before looking at Wooyoung again, who looks skeptical about the entire situation. He looks back to Mingi and they seem to have an unspoken conversation in jaw clenches and eyebrow wiggles, and San feels his chest tighten at it, but they eventually look back at Yeosang and San in sync and nod.

Alright then.

San starts to realize that he maybe, at some point, should have asked Yeosang what her master plan entailed, if not before agreeing to it at least when he walked through the door tonight so he knew what he was doing, but it’s too late now, and he has to go along with it.

About halfway through the game, it becomes clear that it’s pretty much just Wooyoung against San.

Mingi doesn’t seem to really care, trying a little more at first, and with that, she isn’t losing but she keeps drinking anyway and it’s clear in the way she’s swaying a little between turns. Yeosang is… doing her best, San gives her credit. She made one in.

But otherwise, amongst themselves, Wooyoung and San have cleared half of the table. They’re drinking on each others hits— not properly, because that’s gross, but taking sips of the drink they already had— and they’ve both had a full drink by now. The taste isn’t the best, but San is suddenly grateful for the lower alcohol content in the stuff Yeosang has him on tonight; he’d usually go for efficiency, but reconsiders in light of recent events.

Expectedly, Wooyoung ends up being the one to get the final ball in the cup and with it, San ceremoniously finishes off the rest of his own drink, feeling much-needed when the entire game was just weird eyes and tension from both sides.

The celebrations are a lot more subdued this time and there’s no spectators to join in on the celebrations, Seonghwa and Hongjoong wandering off just a couple turns in likely due to aforementioned whatever was wrong with their vibe, and Mingi is quick to do the same, saying “I’m done with this” and making quick word to get to Yunho’s side, wherever she’s at.

“Yeah,” Wooyoung agrees with her, even as she’s a little too far off to hear, reaching for his own pocket to take a hit of his vape and immediately look down at his phone, not bothering to look at them any longer.

San frowns but it’s obviously not what Yeosang is looking for.

She grabs San’s hand, pulling him away, and Wooyoung barely follows the movement through a side-eye, that San meets to face him with his own concerned smile.

She takes him out the back door, and he feels a little unprepared for the weather, but he doesn’t have much time to dwell on that because as soon as the chill is hitting him, so is Yeosang’s arm, on his chest, making him stumble back towards the door they just came from so she can kiss him.

She makes it quick.

When she pulls away her first move is to wipe her lips off with the heel of her wrist, as discreetly as possible, making a bit of a sour face. San doesn’t take offense to it, but doesn’t watch her, instead looking past her and seeing Mingi, looking completely unbothered.

San frowns a little, feeling like this isn’t playing out how Yeosang wanted. But he doesn’t know that. So he starts to ask.

“So, I probably should’ve mentioned it sooner, but what exactly are we doi—”

“What the fuck is your problem?”

Of course, he’s cut off by Wooyoung.

He hadn’t even seen him come outside, but he stands right next to San, suddenly grabbing his wrist

And he looks pissed— if his tone weren’t enough to go by.

“Both of you,” Wooyoung spits. “You’re both being fucking weird and I don’t know what the fuck this thing is.”

He waves his hand to reference vaguely in between them, and in a moment of desperation, San suddenly tries to explain it to him.

“Wooyoung—”

“What the fuck is your problem?” Yeosang asks back, grabbing San’s belt loop.

Suddenly, he’s stuck, standing between the two of them, and he makes another start at a syllable, not really knowing what he’s saying this time, but it doesn’t matter cause he’s being cut off again. He decides just to stop trying there.

“My problem is can you stop fucking touching him for one second?” Wooyoung says, suddenly pushing Yeosang’s hand away, and unexpectedly, she follows, but she doesn’t seem to.

“Why do I need to stop touching him when you’re all over him all the time?”

“It’s San,” Wooyoung responds pointedly, only at Yeosang, like those words alone mean something. San doesn’t know what to think.

There’s too much going on right now, he doesn’t know what to make of any of it.

“Him and Mingi.”

“What does Mingi have to do with anything?”

Instinctually, San looks up at her from across the yard where she’s sitting peacefully, and she seems to hear the mention of her name, but doesn’t seem to really care, looking up for a moment before quietly looking back down and continuing whatever she was doing beforehand.

Of course she somehow avoided getting involved, when that’s what sparked this in the first place. Of course San’s sorry ass got dragged into this before hers is and now San is, quite literally, standing in the center of it.

“Of course you don’t know,” Yeosang responds. It’s quieter, a little hurt, and she withdrawals from her offensive stance to instead cross her arms over her chest, looking down with a little pout as she does.

“I don’t know anything, Yeosang!” Wooyoung argues back, not cooled in the slightest by her shift in demeanor. “You don’t tell me anything anymore! I don’t even know what’s happening in your life, then all of a sudden you’re trying to act like things are normal and the next weekend you’re parading around Choi fucking San and being cold to me?”

Yeosang doesn’t respond to that, shifting her weight between her feet awkwardly as she continues to pout.

“And, you,” Wooyoung turns to San now, and, ah, he almost forgot he was part of this.

He fucked up. He can admit that much.

But Wooyoung doesn’t give him the chance to immediately.

“I tell you this and you’re being sooo understanding, and now here you are? With Yeosang?” He yells and San flusters at it, instinctually reaching to lace his fingers in between Wooyoung’s, trying to give some comfort, something, to the situation, which Wooyoung is surprisingly accommodating to, but he doesn’t stop yelling at him.

“What else do you have to tell me, then? Because you were already avoiding me for months before that, San-ah,” Wooyoung continues. “I just don’t understand why no one is telling me anything.”

Wooyoung pauses for a few seconds, pausing to look between the two of them. San’s head turns to Yeosang and Yeosang is doing the same.

In that time, neither of them reply and that seems to be enough for Wooyoung, who just releases San’s hand a bit aggressively and starts to walk away.

He looks back at Yeosang for a second, who looks at Mingi before huffing and resigning to staying still. She looks like she’s about to cry and San feels bad. But there’s a lot going on and he’s quick on his feet, figuring Mingi can get a handle on it— the one fucking time Jongho stops coming to these…

But San has other concerns.

Wooyoung ran off in the direction around the house, towards the front, rather than heading back inside, and San makes himself quick to follow, running to try to catch up with him and yelling out, trying not to fuck this one up for once.

“Wooyoung, wait!”

San rounds the corner and Wooyoung doesn’t stop, but San notices he’s walking, so he’s able to catch up with a run.

“Wooyoung,” he repeats, finally catching up by his side and slowing down to match him, and Wooyoung doesn’t stop. “Wooyoung,” San repeats, trying to step in front of him a little bit, but it doesn’t work. Wooyoung doesn’t even look him in the eye.

San stands there dumbly for a second and Wooyoung gets impatient with it, sharply asking “What is it, San?”

“Why did you kiss Mingi?”

He blurts it out before he even has time to think about it and of course, he instinctively cringes at his own delivery, but it’s too late to pull the words back now and this isn’t the time to lose focus, so he pries them open to look at Wooyoung and see his dumbfounded reaction.

“What?”

Wooyoung responds like it’s a stupid question. It might be. And still, San pouts.

“Did you not know?”

“Not know what, San?” He responds, before huffing and switching tones. “Obviously I don’t if I’m not explaining myself. Unlike some people, I say what’s on my mind.”

He tries to start walking again but San stops him, with a gentle yet firm hand on his shoulder.

“Wait,” San calls at him. Wooyoung looks up at San with more anger than San has ever seen from him and that’s enough to push him into rambling. “Do you have feelings for Mingi?”

Another stupid question.

“What? No. And if I did, what would that do with anything?”

“Wait, wait, wait.” He has to stop Wooyoung again. “Fuck, sorry, just— that’s what Yeosang is upset about! She thinks—”

Suddenly San remembers something he’d said to Jongho just a couple days prior, about not going around telling other people’s business. He could use the advice from himself, obviously having been much wiser before this whole thing begin.

“Shit, sorry, but you have to talk to Yeosang.” Wooyoung just glares at him, and it feels a little deserved. San doesn’t make it better for himself. “Wait, if you don’t have feelings for her, why did you kiss her then?”

“Are you kidding?” Wooyoung immediately scoffs, though he doesn’t try to move, standing steady across from San with his arms crossed over his chest. “It was a dare.”

Oh.

The silence that falls down after that is heavy, and Wooyoung stares at San like he’d wronged him.

“Oh,” San says, and Wooyoung raises an eyebrow with him, his face finally something other than a pout as he takes in San’s dumbfounded expression.

And they rest like that for a moment.

Until San continues.

“I thought you only did dares with me.”

Wooyoung’s mouth immediately drops open at the statement, forming a few different syllables before settling on none of them, instead opting for hysterical laughter.

San frowns at this, brow furrowing sadly.

“No, I’m serious Wooyoung.”

He can’t help the pouty lilt that takes over his voice, one his noona and Seonghwa both accuse him of using when he’s ‘trying to be cute’.

Wooyoung seems to soften at it a little bit, but he isn’t fully charmed.

His stance is less defensive and he loosens the tension in his muscles a little, but still, he shakes his head. “That’s stupid, San-ah.”

San blushes but doesn’t waver, looking directly at Wooyoung as he just says, “Sorry.”

Wooyoung shakes his head again before finally meeting San’s eye.

“San,” he starts, and his voice sounds a little pained, but he releases his crossed arms entirely and takes a step forward, into San’s space that he was already close to. San smells the familiar cardamom, from last time he’d worn Wooyoung’s jacket, and smiles at the scent. Wooyoung continues, “It’s been a long night. I need to go home. And I need to talk to Yeosang.”

San swallows hard, nodding, suddenly serious.

“But,” he continues unexpectedly. “If you have something to sort out with me, we can do it another time.”

San nods very small, swallowing again.

Wooyoung looks like he’s about to walk away but before he does, he doubles back, leaning closer into San’s space and resting a hand on his shoulder as he continues.

“And for the record, San-ah—” San looks up again to meet their eyes as he finishes. “It’s always been different with you.”

He drops his hand.

“Obviously,” Wooyoung finishes.

He slaps San on the bicep as he leaves and San gives himself just a few moments to stand there alone in the dark before calling it a night, heading home without saying goodbye to anyone.

*

The next time San sees Jongho, it’s in his bedroom.

“Um, hey.”

It’s less of a greeting and more of an acknowledgement. Playing it off casually, San just turns around from where he’s sat on Jongho’s floor flipping through the crate of his vinyls.

“Who the hell has Lil Skies on vinyl?” San asks, turning back to keep looking at the records. “I didn’t even know they made those…”

“Way to act normal, by the way,” Jongho says sarcastically as he drops his backpack onto the floor, falling heavy next to where San is sitting. That’s enough to push San to finally acknowledge Jongho properly, or something like that, so he weakly smiles back at him.

“For sure, bro,” San responds. Jongho side-eyes him with a nod and it seems like he’s just going to carry on with his evening as normal, but when Jongho goes to take a seat in his computer chair and clicks League open, that’s enough for San to break.

“Hey,” he starts, making sure he gets Jongho’s attention, watching him turn around with a skeptical look before San continues. “I’m sorry, for the record.”

The words honestly feel a bit foreign on his lips, and he cringes through them— not even because he has to apologize, but because he knows this is abnormal from him and it probably shouldn’t be.

But of course, this is Jongho he’s talking to, and he watches San struggle through it for a second before just snorting a laugh.

“Yeah, for sure.”

He doesn’t seem bothered at all and San frowns at that, brow furrowing. “What? That’s it?”

Jongho shrugs, sauvely spinning himself around in his gaming chair.

“We’re both kind of idiots,” Jongho decides. San can’t disagree there. “So let’s just call it even.”

“What?” San asks sharply. He’s a little bothered that San isn’t bothered. “But I kissed Yeosang?”

Jongho just chuckles. “More like Yeosang kissed you.” He pauses for a beat, looking down, before a tiny smirk and a blush take over his face. “Besides, it all worked out, didn’t it?”

San doubles up at that last line

“Did it?”

“Yeah,” Jongho says smugly. Suddenly he’s pulling back his sweatshirt collar, showing off a lipstick kiss mark. It looks fresh, and San’s eyes widen.

“What?” He’s immediately asking, hopping up to get a closer look at it. It’s a matte color, darker than anything San has seen her wear, and she must’ve either chosen it just for the kiss mark, making sure Jongho could wear it all day without feeling sticky, or, she was dressing up for him.

Huh.

The realization makes San’s stomach turn in an uneasy way and San just laughs at him, pulling his collar back up and hitting San on the wrist as he’s a little dazed by it.

“Yeah,” Jongho repeats. “It worked out.”

“But— Mingi?”

“They were just having fun,” Jongho shrugs. “For like a year, and they were both tired of it already. Yeosang just wanted to have the final blow because it was already really messy.”

San just blinks at him. That’s a lot to process.

Suddenly, Jongho is reaching for an americano that San hadn’t realized he’d walked in with, casually taking a sip.

Huh. Jongho on a Sunday morning coffee date with Yeosang. Barely eight days after she kissed San.

What an interesting development.

“Most her issues were with Wooyoung, anyway,” he adds with another shrug, sipping so hard San can hear the air coming up through the straw. “So I’m guessing you haven’t talked to him.”

San just laughs, shaking his head on instinct, but that isn’t a real answer.

He’d talked to Wooyoung, but not about them. They’re certainly nowhere near Jongho and Yeosang’s level, as it seems, but judging by the insight Jongho has on the entire thing, maybe they’ve had it closer to together for a while than San has given them credit for.

“Ah, well,” San scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. “He wanted to figure out things with Yeosang first. It was overwhelming for them. But, um, I’m seeing him tonight.”

“Ah, I see.”

The air between them falls quiet and San awkwardly looks around. He’s said his part, he isn’t sure if he should leave now, orrr….

“Well, what time are you seeing him?” Jongho asks. “If you stop criticizing my records for a second, I just got this new Champion that I gotta show you.”

“Shit, yeah, bro,” San says, immediately hopping to get closer to the screen, intrigued by this as Jongho smirks at him proudly. “I’ve got nowhere to be til four.”

*

It’s nearing sunset when San is sitting in Wooyoung’s driveway, waiting for him with coffee.

Wooyoung had worked a lunch shift earlier in the day and San had arrived early to meet him at his house after he’d finish washing up, and he didn’t mean to rush him, but fuck, daylight savings time has been a real damper on the move.

He’d gotten Wooyoung an iced americano, stealing a page from Jong-Sang’s book for that one, and was waiting patiently as the drink’s condensation began to numb his inner thighs when all of a sudden, Wooyoung is there, opening the door without any warning.

San jumps at the sudden movement but Wooyoung doesn’t react, just calmly sitting in the passangar seat.

“Hey.”

San brings one hand up to his heart to ease the way it sped up getting scared, and Wooyoung finally has the sense to laugh at him, graciously taking the coffee San’s other hand lifts to gift to him.

As he calms down, the first thing San notices is that Wooyoung is wearing a leather jacket. No— not a leather jacket, but the leather jacket, that they’d worn that one night when it rained.

It feels like symbolism of something.

The rest of his outfit is a little more dressed up this time, even though his hair is still damp, freshly cleaned and falling in the back all the way to the bottom of his neck now. He’s wearing it over a black shirt and black jeans, with a touch of eyeliner to match, and San feels bad that he looks so beautiful just to sit in his car and talk for a little bit. He wonders if he can scrape together a better plan real quick, but Wooyoung is admittedly more of a mastermind there.

Instead of thinking too much about it, San settles with his own short response the same way Wooyoung had greeted him.

“Hey.”

“Let’s take a walk,” Wooyoung suggests, and San should’ve known he’d have something in mind. “Not here. We can go into town first, take the path by the river.” He looks down at the coffee in his hand then looks back up to San, with something like a delighted smirk. “I was gonna suggest coffee, San-ah, but you’re a step ahead of me. Good job.”

He emphasizes the last two word with some pats on San’s thigh. San blushes immediately, and simply puts the car into drive, going as he’s told.

The ride is quick, mostly quiet with a few passing comments about their days, and San eventually parallel parks in front of a little knick-knack shop that they stop into for a few minutes just for fun before heading the two blocks over towards the river.

It’s a little chilly outside, and San had at least worn a sweater, but he definitely wasn’t ready to be outside for so long. Maybe he should’ve asked. Whenever they step outside the shop, Wooyoung immediately holds San hand, and it’s clear he planned this like it’s a date. It certainly feels like one.

They’re a few minutes into a peaceful walk when Wooyoung finally asks the question.

“So, Choi San,” he slows his pace to fully look at San as he asks, joining both of their hands. “What are your intentions with me?”

“Ah, Young-ah.”

San flushes and Wooyoung smiles, seemingly endeared, but he squeezes San’s hands again, shaking his head.

“I have some ideas. But I want to hear it from you, San-ah,” he says. “And, honestly, I’m kind of tired of communicating my feelings right now.”

“Ah, I’m sure, Young-ah,” San assures with a nod. They’re stopped under one of the street lights and San can see his breath in it, the sun having fully set, and in the stillness, he nearly whispers, “I really like you.”

“I am also somewhat favorable of you, San-ah.”

“I like this. Holding hands,” San says, squeezing Wooyoung’s for emphasis.

“Good to keep warm,” Wooyoung nods.

“Wooyoung.”

“Choi San.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“God,” Wooyoung says, a little bothered in tone, but he’s giggling a little uncontrollably, giving him away. “Do I have to tell you to do everything?”

San gets the hint at that point, pulling one of his hands away to rest it on the bottom of Wooyoung’s chin, less guiding and more just resting, before he leans down and kisses him.

It isn’t the first time they’ve done this.

He could’ve said before that Wooyoung’s lips are soft and what his shampoo smells like— coconut.

But it’s different.

He’s never tasted Wooyoung’s lip before without the taste of liquor there and cigarette smoke all over him. This tastes like mint and coffee, and Wooyoung’s perfume flooding San’s nose makes it warm and cozy and comforting even against the chill outside.

It isn’t rushed, not with any watchful eyes or noise pollution outside. Not with the pressure or expectation of it being a dare, that they didn’t have to linger.

But it isn’t drawn out either, patient and forgiven.

San pulls back eventually, just a moment later, and Wooyoung is smiling up at him in a way that makes it easy for him to confess.

“I want to be your boyfriend,” he says quickly. “Not right now. I think we need time. But my intention with you is to be your boyfriend, Jung Wooyoung.”

“I agree,” Wooyoung says, a little breathless. He leans in closer to wrap both his arms around San’s neck, having the conversation face-to-face. “I think you’re quite stupid, San-ah. And I don’t like my loyalty being played with. I’m very direct in what I want and I don’t like keeping secrets.”

“Understood,” San repeats back to him, and Wooyoung leans in for another tiny kiss before letting San continue. “I also care about loyalty. I don’t want you this close to anyone else. Even if it’s a dare. Even if I’m not first in your life, I want to know where I stand.”

“Deal,” Wooyoung agrees.

“Can I take you out Friday?” San asks. “Properly, on an actual date.”

Wooyoung frowns a little.

“Friday?” Wooyoung asks to confirm, and San nods. “I don’t think I can do Friday. Did you read the group chat?”

It’s San’s turn to frown, fumbling for his phone with his nearly-numb fingers. He finally finds it and presses the power button and notices a new group chat had been created, by Yeosang, with eight members total, asking for a movie night. The message had been hearted by Seonghwa and Yunho already, San doing the same, and he notices two likes, being from the newest additions— Jonhgo and Mingi.

He has some questions there, about how all of that played out, but he and Wooyoung have quite the walk back to the car and that isn’t his priority yet.

San raises an eyebrow at Wooyoung who smiles back at him.

“So, I’ll be seeing you Friday?”

*

‘Movie night’ is a bit of a loose statement, as it seems.

Wooyoung and San arrive together, and when they walk in, Yunho and Mingi are mid ping-pong match with Yeosang and Jongho on either side, rooting against each other— Jongho coaching Mingi and Yeosang with Yunho. Jongho and Mingi end up in a petty spat quickly where Jongho looks to Yeosang and asks, “You seriously like this guy?”

She just replies, “Yeah, I do,” with a little bit of frustration in her town, but she skips to the other side of the table to give him a quick kiss.

‘Scream’ is playing in the background which must be where the whole movie thing came from, but it takes San several minutes to even notice.

San had been anxious the whole ride there, anxious on the way to Woo’s and anxious once Wooyoung entered his car, even as Wooyoung just calmly rested a hand on his thigh and started talking to him, and had been anxious as Wooyoung was leaning into him as they walked in together, huddling for warmth when they both have jackets on— both in leather jackets belonging to Wooyoung, specifically, San in the one Wooyoung had left with him Sunday night.

It seemed they had nothing to be afraid of in the ‘coming off as disgusting’ front, JongSang unabashedly in pursuit of that crown, and it relaxes San a little bit.

He isn’t drinking anything tonight, deciding beforehand he’d drive them both home, and he’s noticeably overthinking already. Luckily, Wooyoung is just as chaotic without it, and the original movie is off soon enough, La La Land on with Wooyoung and Jongho giving a live performance of it.

San watches proudly, if a little embarrassed, and next to him, Yeosang seems totally unphased, watching starry-eyed and cheering. Yeosang catches San looking at her, at some point, and meets his eyes to share a head-shake with him, a sign of solidarity in whatever those two are getting up to together. San’s glad him and Yeosang are cool now, no discussions needed, and he’s glad Wooyoung and Jongho are getting along, as consequential as it may end up being.

At some point, Seonghwa asks San when Jongho and Yeosang got together, saying they didn’t even know those two knew each other.

San says it’s a long story, cringing at the thought of it already. Seonghwa seems to accept that, at least for now, sparing San the details of retelling it.

After all, it worked out in the end.

They make it through another movie after La La Land, though San doesn’t really know what happens in it— doesn’t know if it was a movie, even, because the shots were all weird and there didn’t seem to be a plot in any of the moments he’d caught, but Yeosang, Yunho, and Jongho seemed to have some commentary on it amongst themselves.

It’s a little earlier than they’d usually be saying goodbyes, but it comes to a close naturally, Seonghwa sleepy on Wooyoung’s shoulder and Mingi half-asleep with Yunho’s calf as a pillow on the long end of the sectional sofa, curled up into a ball despite her height. San and Wooyoung are the first to walk outside, SeongJoong and Yunho and Mingi not far behind, but a little drowsy with it.

Wooyoung and San might have a little too much energy.

San isn’t all the way through his final goodbye when Wooyoung is grabbing him by the wrist, laughing as he drags him to skip all the way to the door of his car and instead of pulling away, Wooyoung shoves San against the back door, kissing him hard.

Oh, okay.

San gasps a little surprised noise at the hard contact with the door, and Wooyoung uses the opportunity to push his tongue into San’s open mouth.

San returns the favor.

They stay like that for a few minutes, maybe just one, San isn’t really sure, but he knows he isn’t pulling back until there’s no air left in his lungs.

Wooyoung seems to be on the same thought, panting the second he pulls back, but as red-faced as he is even in the lack of lighting, he smiles at San, giddy, and San smiles back.

It’s then that they hear a discussion behind them.

“What, WooSan are together?” Mingi asks. “I thought you guys told me that was a bit?”

“I don’t know anything,” Seonghwa says through a yawn.

“Nah, bro, they’ve been together, I’m pretty sure. Since, like, spring or something,” Yunho adds, and Mingi accepts it with a hum.

The two of them look back at their friends and smile at them, but they all look unimpressed.

Wooyoung is about to call out something, but San doesn’t let him, grabbing his chin and pulling him back for another kiss.

Mingi had parallel parked behind them and ends up flashing them with her high beams, to which Wooyoung just raises a middle finger, still kissing San.

It feels natural. It feels like they were meant to be here.

They might’ve had the pieces wrong the first time, but it feels like they were all meant to be here. It feels like they’re finally getting it right.