Chapter Text
Yunho presses a napkin to the drip of his nose.
It's one of the cafeteria napkins, feels coarse and starched, but he's not about to sloppily drivel all over his squid and tofu stew. Not that Yunho can stomach much more, every hot slurp of the soup more bland than the last. His metal spoon sits glum and lonely, wading in the untouched meal, among tofu cubes and wilting green shallot strips.
He takes out the spoon and places it back on the lunchtray. Scoots back his chair, white napkin still held to his nose with one hand to stop any sluice of mucus that might put off the staff and dancers from their own lunches.
"Finished already?" asks Changmin, the usual punctilious hand over his chewing mouth, glancing up from where he's sitting.
They sit a safe two seats apart on the cafeteria table—their manager and one of their staff wedged in between—and Changmin speaks diagonally across the pickled cucumbers and licked utensils.
Yunho rarely sits with Changmin during meals, a small and necessary intermission from one another in a schedule that has them perpetually plastered together.
Perhaps there is a silent sweetness to it: a mutual admission that they want to keep what they have, maintain it, for as long as possible. That they don't want to be worn down to weary co-workers but, rather, they both want protect the tender friendship that's still there, will always be there—
Because his friendship with Changmin has always been particularly tender, almost soft to the touch. There's never been reason for it, perhaps they don't know it themselves, but Yunho does think there's a certain frailty to them, and he's not sure why. They handle and measure each other carefully, and it's always been that way. Like flour levelled and shaken from a spoon, even tentatively adding a fraction too little.
Sometimes it's two chair spaces away like today, sometimes it's separate corners of the break room. Never too close, but never too far either.
Just enough space to keep a soft eye on one another, just in case.
Even the staff in between pay them no mind, continuing to chat about album projections or whatever, as Yunho and Changmin have their strange, half-a-step too far conversation across the table.
Changmin looks up at him, stray hair curling into an eye. "You must be getting worse."
It's true. It had started with a mild cough that startled but, of course, still endeared fans at the album release party a couple days ago. Made Yunho even cuter, they had gushed from their seats. Then, yesterday, his words were more swallowed and sore at the press conference, until Changmin plucked the microphone from him and said Yunho's lines for him.
But today, Yunho had been pink-nosed and snuffling throughout the whole performance, and he can't have that again. He feels an urgency to get better fast and, preferably, before tomorrow. Impatience wriggles over the nausea.
Briefly looking Changmin's way—more than enough for the both of them—Yunho just nods, collecting his lunch tray and leaving the table.
When he's finished disposing of his poor lunch, Yunho decides there's not enough time to go find a dressing room to lie down in. He slinks into a hard, fold-out chair sidling the cafeteria, and leans his head back on the wall, languishing for just a moment of rest before they set out on the bus to the next city.
The chatter of the staff drones like a widening lull, and he's asleep for about eleven minutes before his manager nudges him awake. Everyone is slowly filing out of the room, disposing of crumpled napkins and sweaty plastic container lids on their way, and Changmin is already gone.
On the seat next to Yunho, someone has neatly placed a paper cup there, plastic lid firmly fixing down the cotton string and little square tea-tag. Steam faintly talks from the mouth of the lid: it's hot.
Yunho picks it up, and it keeps his hands warm as he half-skips to catch up with his staff.
The paper makes a pleasing rumpling noise as Changmin unfolds the directions leaflet from the thermometer carton.
Yunho had been slower at the practice session earlier that evening, an unusual step behind everyone else, and had even collided shoulders with the dancers several times.
After the fourth bump, his manager had promptly left and returned from the pharmacy with a plastic bag, advising that Yunho monitor his temperature overnight. Said he'd pick up a certain antiviral medication the next morning depending on whether or not Yunho's fever worsened. They had a packed schedule of rehearsals the next day, after all.
He had stuffed the cough syrup and boxed thermometer into his backpack, nodding and insisting that he'd remember to use it and, yes yes, he'd read the directions and message his temperature reading before bed and once more in the morning.
Perhaps Changmin had been having some long-winded, tortured inner dialogue the whole drive home, because when they both stood in front of their neighbouring hotel rooms, Changmin had just quietly muttered out of nowhere, "Won't read the directions; won't even get an accurate reading." Then Changmin was pushing past him, into Yunho's room and onto Yunho's sheets, fishing out the thermometer box for himself. Changmin insisted that he just needed to gauge how sick Yunho is to know if he has to read his radio script lines for him tomorrow.
Changmin flattens the creases of the thin, inked sheet of paper over Yunho's hotel sheets.
He's holding the thermometer in one hand and squinting at the tiny lettered instructions.
Propped up against the pillows, Yunho has a blanket over his legs and cough syrup still cloying on his gums. He feels himself slinking limp and slow into the sheets, drowsiness splurring inside him.
"Up," says Changmin, still half-reading the directions and undoing the plastic sealed over the tip of the thermometer. "Sit up."
The metal tip of the thermometer under his tongue is cold, feeling like a little icy misplaced tooth in Yunho's mouth. Yunho can do it himself, but Changmin's gone to the effort of reading the directions, and he can't deny that a small part of him likes being fussed over this way. There's also something funnier—sweet and strange and rare—when it's Changmin doing it.
With his hands clasped in his lap, one over the other, Yunho feels like an unwell child in the nurse's office as Changmin sits on the edge of the bed, so still as he holds the thermometer in Yunho's mouth.
Changmin would make a good nurse, Yunho finds himself thinking. Certainly has the patience and punctatim for it. Has the suppler command on words and the firmer, steadier hand.
He's also always taken care of Yunho over the years, in his own little, backseat way. Rolls the splinters from single-use wooden chopsticks for Yunho before meals or double-checks the flight tags are securely looped through Yunho's luggage handles.
Never things Changmin is asked to do, and never quite enough for Yunho to outright thank him for, for that would make it strange and mean too much.
He takes it seriously when Changmin cares for him this way and he wants to show that he really is thankful. This feels like just a little more than the usual de-splintering of his chopsticks.
In fact, Yunho's so serious about it that he lets a little too much saliva pool in his mouth, and when Changmin withdraws the thermometer from his mouth, an indecent string of Yunho's saliva draws out with it. Stretches like pulled taffy and dribbles onto the blanket.
Yunho's hands clap to his mouth, trying to catch some of it. He blubbers, "Oh, it's—ungh."
There's really not much he can say, nothing to explain, so he just stops mid-sentence. It's unseemly, embarrassing, and really makes Yunho feel like a slobbering infant or a suckling puppy.
Watching the whole scene play out, from the stretch of saliva to Yunho's feeble attempt to salvage it, Changmin just crimples his eyes with that slightly peeved look, all of it sighing, oh, hyung.
Changmin texts their manager the reading and tells Yunho he'll take another in thirty minutes, just in case. Wants it to be accurate. It's what the directions suggested.
"You don't have to." Yunho sniffles and pulls a tissue from the bedside table. He gestures his head to Changmin's room keycard, sitting by the television in its paper sleeve. "Go to your room. Rest."
"I'm not sleeping yet," says Changmin, getting up to wash his hands in the bathroom.
Then, Changmin goes to his own bag left by the door, comes back with the boxed buildable Gundam kit he's been working on. Sits at the hotel desk and switches on the lamp.
Yunho remembers when Changmin bought the robot model kit. Yunho had been waiting by the lurid capsule toy vending machines and claw games with his staff somewhere in Akihabara. Saccharine pop hits flared loudly in the harshly-lit space and frenetic game displays pulsed like neon cinders. Yunho watched the electric colours gloss over the white floors and absentmindedly twisted some of the capsule machine knobs as they all waited for Changmin to scour the anime figurine store upstairs.
Eventually, Changmin had jumbled down the stairs, eyes blown big and ecstatic, victoriously holding up the muted brown paper bag stuffed so full that Yunho could see Changmin's fingers straining to pinch together the corded cardboard handles.
During water breaks or instead of eating lunch, Yunho would watch Changmin find himself a private corner, taking a flimsy sandwich bag of plastic parts with him. Changmin would sit there, assembling a leg or shield of the elaborate robot figure, a focused dent always pressing into his cheek. Sometimes Changmin would even bring his metal nippers to cleanly trim and pop out tiny joints and armour pieces from the moulds that looked like winding plastic branches.
Tiny sealed satchels of fiddly plastic parts smatter over the hotel desk.
That's that: Changmin is staying in his room for now. And from the intentional, silent view of Changmin's back turned to him, it's an occasion for which Yunho is without invitation.
Besides, the thought of component W1 being fixed into number 5 of XB Parts, but not before leaving some margin for the A4 left side hatch (feeling left out, Yunho skimmed an instruction manual once before)—all of that has Yunho feeling drowsier.
"Wake me up in half an hour then," resigns Yunho, folding himself under the sheets.
"Mm."
As Yunho falls asleep, he sees Changmin already huddled over the desk, cautiously testing the ball joint of a fiddly mechanical elbow.
The room is dark and silent when Yunho wakes, jolting slightly in a fright.
He's laying on his side, and he blinks to adjust to the room swaddled in darkness, desk and bedside lamps off.
His drool has saturated a part of the pillow, cotton sticking to his cheek, the hot damp making him hyperaware of the fevery-sweat slicking over his back. Yunho shudders.
Changmin never woke him up to take his temperature. Or maybe he did and Yunho doesn't remember, likely too soused with sleep. It humours him to imagine Changmin perched over his sleeping body, feebly attempting to swab his slackened tongue with the pre-packaged thermometer.
Thinking about it for a moment longer, perhaps too long, Yunho briefly pictures Changmin handling his limbs the same way he handles those plastic figurine parts, pinning and holding a half-asleep Yunho in place, pushing the thermometer into his mouth, forcing it down until saliva wells. Playing with Yunho. It's a strange thought, so he plugs it short.
Breaths trace across the back of Yunho's neck, slow and warm. Oh.
Changmin has fallen asleep on his bed.
He looks over at the hotel room desk and sees the sombre moonlight glancing off the plastic parts left there.
Must've been tired, thinks Yunho. Too tired to go back to his own room. It also saves the trip Changmin usually makes to Yunho's room in the mornings, knocking at his door when Yunho sleeps through his alarms. Maybe their manager insisted Changmin keep an eye on Yunho overnight after seeing the temperature reading Changmin texted earlier.
Or maybe Changmin left and came back. They do always have each other's room keycards, after all, just in case.
Yunho's not sure which option he prefers, if there is one he should prefer.
A wheeze of body heat gasps onto Yunho's spine as Changmin shifts beneath the blanket. Changmin's even gotten under the sheets, the winter cold probably nipping at his ankles.
They haven't slept like this for a long time. Not since the early days where youthful fat swelled both their cheeks and when Changmin called him hyung in an entirely different way. It's been a while, but it all still feels recognisable. Comfy, in a familiar and homespun way.
Changmin's nose presses into the back of Yunho's neck.
Yunho pauses and stifles a smile, warm and smug. It wasn't unheard of for Changmin to do things in his sleep, to get into fisticuffs with wall plaster and blather profanities out loud during naps.
It's all familiar until Yunho feels Changmin shift closer, sidling right up behind him—spooning Yunho entirely. Intimately.
A breath clogs in Yunho's throat. He stops smiling.
Hands slip around his waist, and Yunho feels Changmin flatten a palm on his breastbone, drawing Yunho back into his chest until they really fit, flush and secure. Until he's just a scoop in Changmin's hold.
Perhaps Yunho's too surprised—the frozen feeling in his nerves certainly says that—but he doesn't shrug Changmin off of him. He feels Changmin's heartbeat speak against his spine.
The breath is still stapled somewhere in Yunho's chest, kept there, unsure.
Yunho stays right there, so still as if held underwater, unmoving in Changmin's embrace.
It's quiet. Down the hall, there's the click of someone opening a door, and Yunho waits to hear it close. He keeps waiting. The spaces between the seconds seem to thicken, time slowing as if trudging through marshy waters.
The door opens, letting so much in, and nothing back out.
He's not sure how long he stays like that, waiting to hear the door shut, suspended in Changmin's hold.
But the seconds begin to play again—this time too fast, too quick—when Yunho feels Changmin's hand move underneath his shirt. Feels Changmin splay a palm over Yunho's naked stomach, pushing down on the flesh a little. The skin-on-skin feels like fire, sears like icy fractals on a hot iron.
Changmin's fingers urge slightly at the dip in Yunho's lower stomach, insistent. Makes desire squirm from his navel down to his cock.
That's when Yunho gasps and lets out a small noise. His hand shoots down to grab at Changmin's wrist to stop him. Enough.
Yunho quickly understands that Changmin is likely hankering for someone in his sleep, hands searching dreamily for the touch of someone that isn't Yunho.
Fingers clinched around Changmin's wrist, Yunho considers wrenching Changmin off of him, is about to say something, but then mucus slugs in his nose and throat too heavily. Yunho just sort of makes a gurgling noise.
Snuffling, all wet and thick, Yunho tries to clear his throat to wake Changmin up. "Ngh—"
But then he feels Changmin's hand leave his stomach and reach over to pull a tissue from the bedside table, placing it on Yunho's pillow for him.
Changmin is awake. Has been awake.
Dread coats Yunho, feeling absolutely exposed, watched. He feels shame smear inside him all slippery and hot. Like he's been caught doing something wicked, and maybe he has.
They're both awake, both sure of it now, and yet Changmin hasn't moved away, is still thoroughly snug behind Yunho. The moment is fraught with so much newness, so much he doesn't quite understand—
And when Changmin slips his hand back beneath the sheets, Yunho doesn't try to stop him. He lets Changmin rest his palm on Yunho's stomach once more, and an unusual delight pours over Yunho.
Yunho feels the need to speak, to say something, perhaps to try soften the strangeness.
"It's warm—your hand," says Yunho, voice frailer than he intended. "Thanks."
He's unwell, after all, and Yunho wants to give reason to it. All of it needs an excuse.
"Mm." The familiar voice tucks into the back of Yunho's neck, so intimately that Yunho isn't quite sure if it really is Changmin anymore.
But then Changmin's fingers move down over Yunho's underwear, clamps right around Yunho's soft dick, over the material, heavy and firm—and there's no reason for that. No reason at all.
Yunho swallows, painfully hard, and he grabs at Changmin's wrist again. But he doesn't yank it away, just holds it. Unsure just what he wants to do with it.
The room seems so dark now, even moonlight is somewhat missing. Yunho feels like he's losing sight of where the lines are drawn, between daylight and dreams, between Changmin and the familiar stranger spooned against him. Between what Yunho should and shouldn't let happen.
Those familiar, spoon-levelled boundaries Yunho knows so well stagger and melt. They get lost and confused in the dark and in Changmin's hold and in the oddness of it all. Everything slips and slides, and he's unsure of where it all goes.
Until, to his own surprise and discomfort, there's only one thing left behind.
All Yunho's left with is the single, filthy craving to be touched. Played with.
He wants the waistband of his underwear to be pushed down, wants his cock to be lifted out. Wants to be jerked and squeezed until it's swollen red and swathed with pre-come and—
Yunho wants Changmin to do it.
But that frightens Yunho. Perhaps Changmin senses it, because he doesn't do anything more. He pushes his hand back up, like a driving river, sets his palm against Yunho's chest, and rests it there, gentler now. Changmin is trying to calm him down.
Except the lust is already stamped. Burns like a brand, ironing and marking him. Indelibly.
Panted breaths expel from Yunho onto the pillowcase, short and clasped. Fresh drool leaks from the side of his mouth, and the hot smell of cough syrup is heady in his saliva, knocking back at him all sweet and saturated. It spins his head in a dazed sort of sopor, as if he's taken another dose.
Maybe Yunho runs into overdrive, the confusion and nauseated vertigo and the strangeness of it all tangling and stirring. It absolutely disorientates him, making him lightheaded.
Before Yunho's able to decide whether or not it's all some erotic, frenetic fever dream, his head tips.
As he collapses back into sleep, he realises he never heard that door down the hall close.
The concert arena has a hollowed-out quiet to it. The rows of empty seats like teeth, the half-dome ceiling like an unearthed mouth, and the air inside the huge space like one expectant, gulped breath.
Yunho ordinarily enjoys sitting on the edge of the stage, setlist and stage plan folded next to him, watching the staff set up camera rigs and wheel around stage props. The seats and stage and even the air seem somewhat excavated, waiting to be filled with screams and red fanlights and noise—a placid sort of stillness.
It's usually peaceful, but today, it seems to poke fun at him, the concert hall's emptiness so at odds with the thoughts toiling inside Yunho. The thoughts which are loud and deafening and flocked to the barriers. At capacity.
His syrupy breaths against the pillow. Changmin's body scooped up against his. The hand splayed out, hot and firm, on his stomach. The melting, immeasurable feeling of Changmin's nose pressing into his nape. Gasping as Changmin's palm kneaded into his dick.
Yunho folds the paper setlist in half, then halves it again. Puts it down on the edge of the stage where he's sitting. He looks over to Changmin, who is walking up a stair platform toward the back of the stage, making gestures to its height.
Still talking to the staff, Changmin looks back at Yunho, jerks his head, beckoning, get over here already. He looks at Yunho the same way he did that morning: naturally, unchanged, familiar. Well, not as if nothing happened, but as if it doesn't matter that it did, that it demands no explanation for what happened.
Because it certainly did happen. Yunho knows it, even though he had woken up alone that morning.
Changmin didn't leave behind a stray, clipped plastic figurine part on the desk nor a smell in Yunho's sheets; Changmin wouldn't be so uncouth.
Earlier that morning, sitting up on the pillows, Yunho knew that Changmin had been there because the luggage rack had been unfolded into the corner of his room, out of the sunlight, and Yunho's suitcase neatly placed on top, the weight straining on the webbed nylon straps. Changmin hates when Yunho leaves his belongings on the hotel floors.
Then, over toast triangles and cornflakes in cold milk, Changmin had just looked at Yunho like it was any other morning when Yunho came down to the hotel lobby. Handed him the laminated breakfast menu and said he'd already asked for oat milk instead of full-cream for Yunho's macchiato.
Why would it be any different? There is, indeed, an excuse for it: Yunho is sick, and Changmin was just a convenient bed companion. The details and frivolities, such as a touch dipped too far, can be ignored.
A lot of things go unacknowledged between Yunho and Changmin, after all.
Vitriolic arguments where they never apologised to each other. Changmin's brief but dangerous consumption of beautiful women after a particularly bad break-up a couple years back. The time they ignored each another for an entire week somewhere in southern Spain (by the end of it, neither of them knew whose fault it had been, who had even started it, and who should be forgiven).
What makes this any different? They've ignored worse, and they can ignore this now. Time will pass, they'll wriggle back into their soft, easy moulds, and nothing will have really changed. It's simply not enough.
Changmin will just order Yunho's warmed oat milk like he always does and will look at Yunho the same way.
Like he's looking at Yunho right now, waving him over to test the stage platform height with him.
Walking across the stage, Yunho decides to forget about it; Changmin already seems to be half-way there.
They're rehearsing a stage exit for one of their songs.
Both on elevated platforms, they'll sing their final lines and fall backwards and off the stage, landing on crash cushions out of sight.
Collecting his composure, as if he's had some of it stolen, Yunho walks up his staircase platform and stands with his back to the stage, heels over the edge, the drop behind him looming.
Changmin goes first, collapsing backwards off the ledge and landing with a tidy thump on the cushions.
But as Yunho tries the fall, plunging his body backwards, something happens.
For a fleeting moment, the plummeting movement makes him think of arching back into Changmin, spine catching against chest, just as he did the night before. Heartbeat speaking against his spine and all. He may have decided to forget, but his body certainly doesn't want to, deciding otherwise for him. Uneasiness drags through him, like a slow slug.
Mid-air, Yunho's body instinctively jerks away from the feeling, an awkward disjoint of limbs. Flustering, his arm unnaturally bends at his side to catch himself, and Yunho's weight crushes down on his wrist and elbow as he lands.
Yunho sprains his arm.
Sick with the flu and now maimed. Just great.
He's thankful, at least, that no performances are scheduled for the next couple of weeks, just general promotions and fan meetings.
"Good timing, I guess," says Yunho, swaying his arm in the bandage sling.
It's just him, Changmin, and their manager in the van, on the way back to the hotel, and he says it to no-one in particular, but he knows Changmin is listening.
Their manager is turning through some medical documents and, for a while, it's the only response given to Yunho's idle remark no one quite asked for.
He flexes his fingers in the beige neoprene wrist and elbow splints compressed around his arm, all swaddled in the sling.
"There's no good time to—oh, nevermind," says Changmin, turning back to look out the window.
Yunho can guess what he was going to say: that there is no good time to sprain your arm, that Yunho's glass half-full disposition serves no purpose here, that he really ought to be more careful. That Yunho's always thankful for things that deserve no thanks at all.
The usual way Changmin showed he cares: veiled, coy, and always a cute reproof in there, too. Just for good measure.
It's the first thing Changmin's said to him since the whole falling incident that afternoon, and it's usually enough.
Except as they part ways with their manager in the hotel lobby, silently going up to their rooms, Yunho notices Changmin looking at his arm sling in the elevator.
The elevator moves with a dreary noise and the occasional metallic squeak of the elevator car swaying on its wiry ropes. The noise is somewhere in between white noise and the sound of Yunho's rickety laundry machine on the slow wash cycle.
It really feels that way, like he and Changmin are in a quiet, muffled whirl of ozone. Sometimes it's just like this when they're entirely alone, saying nothing because they've said it all or because maybe there really is something else that's gone unspoken. They usually reach their floor before there's time to decide, anyways.
Yunho lets them sit in the slow cycle, the sad croon of the elevator.
Except Changmin is looking at his arm sling for a second time now, at the folded eucalyptus tissues Yunho's comically decided to store there.
And to Yunho, that means more than the interns who flapped over to Yunho's aid when he fell, more than the downpour of are you okay and does it hurt from his staff. He appreciates all of them, too, but what matters to Yunho—what's always mattered—is who cares for him when the day is over. When they're not asked to.
It shouldn't mean so much more to Yunho, but of course it does. It means more by principle, and it means more because, well, it's Changmin.
In this moment, Changmin is caring beyond the sarcastic quip or soft reprimand of how clumsy Yunho is. He's giving Yunho a little more today.
But now Yunho needs more, too. He's had Changmin give it to him once, and he needs it again.
A raw, unexplained urgency grabs at Yunho. It reaches up inside and rends him apart.
Yunho needs Changmin in his bed again. Needs Changmin to care for him, just that little bit more. The way he did last night.
Except maybe once really is a write-off, and once is more than enough for Changmin.
They go to their separate rooms, and Changmin doesn't even hesitate when he swipes his keycard, quickly retreating to his own room like it's any other night.
The careful click of a door unlatching.
Night wind slicing between a gap in the open window, warbling there.
Slippers padding across the room, softly scrunching on the stiff carpet.
Yunho only realises he's been listening to it all when he feels the mattress dip behind him.
His eyes are open now, staring at the faint outline of the foil sheet of his medication on the bedside table, slightly bent out of shape from the tablets pushed and burst through the seals. If Yunho was dreaming, it's forgotten in seconds, no longer important.
Lying on his uninjured side, Yunho keeps very, very still.
The bedsheet lifts; sounds like parched autumn leaves rustling over concrete.
Body heat slinks against Yunho's spine, making him tense up, swallow. The anticipation sits in Yunho like heavy oil. Has been sitting there all day, he now realises.
Even just the feeling of body heat purring against Yunho's back makes him shudder. Changmin hasn't even touched him yet. His nerves feel hypersensitive, the hairs feathering on his back scorched hot and the skin cold. It's too much, too fast, no—
Changmin pushes up right behind him, curves his body around Yunho's spine, enveloping him. So close that he can feel the thick shape of Changmin's soft dick fixing against the base of his spine.
He's not ready for it. It feels as if he's been sliced in the gut, all the oil-heavy feelings pouring out of him like entrails, lust flooding and soaking all around him.
The moment Changmin presses in close, Yunho makes a soft noise and can't help but lean back and melt, tilting his head back, and oh, Changmin is kissing into the back of his hair.
It's a strange sensation. It feels like Changmin is searching for untouched places, finding them, taking.
Every kiss, each breath in between them, injects like a slow dart into Yunho's skull, and he's shaking as a velvety kind of desire gushes over him, tranquilised.
He feels Changmin mouth at his nape, suckling at the side of Yunho's neck and at his ears, too. The noises crowd in his ears, wet and filthy and far too close, creep up the slope of his skull and back down again. It has Yunho choking, gulping for air.
The wind is screaming against the windows now, shaking the hinges.
Changmin shifts behind him, stops kissing at him for a moment, and just cups his hand under the elbow of Yunho's injured arm, still in its sling, tender and soft. Please be more careful, hyung, it seems to say.
The sweetness turns Yunho on more, swells him in his briefs. A bluish-black light sinks over the room, over the bedside lamp and the medication sheet and the walls.
"Please," says Yunho, voice hot and faint. He's not quite sure what he's begging for, but all he knows is that he has to beg for it. Wants to.
Letting go of his elbow, Changmin doesn't spend a moment warming at his belly button this time, just shoves his hand right under the elastic of Yunho's underwear, grasping immediately for Yunho's half-hard length.
Changmin doesn't say anything, hasn't said a single thing. Just has his hand gripping over Yunho's cock, unmoving, as if weighing the heft of it.
Yunho hasn't even turned over to look back at Changmin.
Voiceless and faceless, Changmin's left out just enough, the gaps distending between them until they're both new, different. And Yunho's inhibitions—any thought of withholding—they begin to slip away, vanishing into the blank spaces that Changmin has left.
It almost makes it easier for Yunho to let it happen and to unravel in front of this half-stranger.
Lust splits Yunho, and he can't help but buck forward into Changmin's hand. As his body jerks forward, Changmin follows, surging up after him, and, even through the cotton of their underwear, Yunho can feel Changmin's dick nestling slightly between the cleft of his ass, urging there now.
He thinks of Changmin stuffed inside of him, right to the baseline, fucking him violently, using him. He tries to bottle the thought, wedge a stopper in and twist the cork, tries and tries, but he's coming undone too fast. Feels the lust teeming, the seams straining and fraying.
"Please, I..." Yunho hears himself saying, "ngh—please."
Yunho is leaking, profuse and slippery, and then Changmin does move his hand. Rubs the slick down with his palm so Yunho is soaked in his own pre-come.
A moan unbends from Yunho, keening for more. He's thawing in Changmin's hold, all of him—
And that's when he feels Changmin's other hand roughly grip into his hair, yanking Yunho's head back. One hand seizing his hair and the other around his length, Yunho feels his body curve like the arc of a bow, tightly-strung and bound. Changmin pulls harder at his hair, and tears jump in Yunho's eyes as pain springs in his skull.
"You like that," says the voice behind him, "don't you, you little bitch?"
Bolts shoot, plunging right through.
He's frightened now, feels the low parts of him quavering in fear, excitement. This doesn't feel like a half-stranger anymore, just a complete one.
Changmin's voice sounds so different, rough and dark and unfamiliar. Seems to weigh like hot wind and grit, not exactly deeper but heavier. He's not even sure if it's really Changmin anymore.
He's never heard Changmin speak this way, and maybe he doesn't want Changmin to sound like he usually does, because he's not sure he wants Changmin to see him like this.
Doesn't want Changmin to see him keening and gasping, so desperate to be made a mess of.
It's not just Changmin that feels like a stranger, either. Yunho knows he's losing himself too when the rough play makes the desire clamp harder, and he's writhing back against Changmin now, trying to feel more, more.
Both of them are so different right now, it's hard for Yunho to understand what's left.
Holding Yunho's head in place by the hair, Changmin takes his other hand off Yunho's dick and Yunho can hear it's sticky with slick. He's mid-gasp when Changmin's fingers reach up and push quickly into his mouth, the heady taste of himself saturating.
Fingers splay in his mouth, forcing Yunho's jaw to open more, pressing down on his tongue. Tests the heat and give of Yunho's mouth, like he's taking Yunho's temperature reading again, and a splur of saliva pools in Yunho's mouth at the thought.
He's slavering all over Changmin's fingers now, and Changmin pushes down a little too hard, a little too far. Yunho gags, a swallowed filthy noise, and he hears Changmin breathe in, sharp and restless.
Evulsing his fingers from Yunho's mouth in webs of saliva, Changmin's hand floats back down and he only has to squeeze at the tip of Yunho's cock with an indecent squelching noise.
"Come like the good little bitch you are."
Desire flares and rolls, and it's the soft snarl of the voice, the firm order, that has Yunho coming too quick. He doesn't moan, can't—just squirms and makes a choking noise as the pleasure sparks and veers.
Yunho's body is already feverish and weak, and when he comes, it's as if he can barely handle it. He goes entirely limp as sex and sunlight fling together inside him, reeling out an orgasm all over Changmin's fingers.
Tears blur his eyes and he's half-lidded as he slips into sleep, but before Yunho does, he registers Changmin gently positioning him onto his back, propping a pillow under his maimed arm.
Then, Changmin—who's nothing more than a blurry, shapeless form through the teary glare—leans over Yunho, as if he's about to kiss him. But he doesn't, and perhaps they both knew that, because Yunho just opens his mouth once more, almost on instinct.
Changmin hovers his mouth over his, their lips just barely touching. He slowly spits into Yunho's mouth—and Yunho swallows, as if it's all a reward for being so well-behaved.
The lull of sleep and his medication grab at him, and Yunho can still taste his own pre-come in his mouth as he drifts.
Yunho wakes up alone to his first alarm, his body wiped clean and no smell in his sheets.
When he gets up and looks in the bathroom mirror, there aren't even any suckled bruises purpling his neck. Changmin has always been careful and measured with Yunho, after all.
A certain uneasiness whirrs inside Yunho as he shaves, hissing when a part of his skin pinches on the blade. He staunches the drip of blood with a square of toilet paper, sits on the edge of the bathtub, and thinks.
The overhead fan hums, parting way for his thoughts, roiled with sex and rough play and the Changmin who doesn't sound like Changmin at all.
How he let himself be handled the night before, there has to be a reason for it—an excuse.
He's sitting there for so long that he eventually discards the square of toilet paper mottled unevenly with blood, and he tears off another square. Leans against the bathroom counter now, back to the mirror.
Shame, dread, and something he can't quite pinpoint gather up inside him, surging.
He thinks about himself keening, moaning, exposed. Thinks about Changmin watching him.
Nausea surges. Yunho vomits into the sink, and all that comes out is old warm water and the antiviral medication he took moments before.
Of all days, Yunho wishes there were windows.
Not all passenger boarding bridges do, and ordinarily, he isn't too fussed about the interior of the elevated, cramped tube that feeds passengers from the airport to the plane's door.
In fact, he ordinarily prefers the kind he's waiting in this morning.
They so often walk through those modern, tidily constructed bridges with glass windows wiped sterile and clear so that flight passengers can enjoy watching over the pinch-sized workers garbed in fluorescent yellow vests and ground vehicles whirling over the tarmac and luggage being loaded into plane bellies with too little care. All of it something of a rare spectacle as passengers wait in line to board.
Changmin nearly always looks out at the spectacle too, a kind of languish blinking in his eyes and, in those moments, Yunho will wonder just how much Changmin yearns for a life more ordinary. He wonders, slow and sad, if he still has a place in that brief figment that Changmin cobbles looking out at the airport tarmac.
So, Yunho prefers the more antiquated type of bridge, closed-in and windowless like this one. Shakily-lit and made of shipping container metal shoddily glued to an oversized funnel that looks like the grey stretchy bellows of an accordion. Looks like something he'd fashion together from plastic straws and bottle caps and putty adhesive backstage during rehearsals when an inventive vision flashes, much to his staff members' delight and to Changmin's polite disdain.
But, as Yunho queues in line to board today, none of the space feels quaint at all. None of it is cute or amusing. The air feels too pre-ventilated and stale, the lights dim and a spoiled yellow, the unstable carpet bending beneath his feet.
It feels as if he's standing in a too-narrow hallway, slowly being wound up until the walls might just clamp and flatten him.
If there were windows, he might feel less stifled.
And if there were windows, he'd have somewhere else to look than at the back of Changmin's neck.
Yunho swallows, the nausea from that morning unrolling inside once more.
As expected, Changmin drifts and moves the same way, unaffected. Took and held Yunho's boarding pass for safekeeping after check-in as he always does. Turned through glossy magazines at the airport convenience store with their staff whilst waiting for Yunho to finish using the bathroom. Tested new perfume releases in duty-free on thin slivers of cardboard, passing the ones he liked for Yunho to smell, too. Even smiled faintly at the lame joke Yunho made as they waited for their coffees in the food court.
It makes Yunho wonder if Changmin really did yank at his hair, snarl degrading things, and handle Yunho the way he did. After all, Yunho's never actually turned around to see if it is Changmin, but he knows. He knows.
He stands behind Changmin, lingering on the long, sylph-like slope of Changmin's neck. Curious not in what Changmin knows, but what exactly Changmin wants.
There's a delay in the queue, and passengers begin to squirm impatiently in the confined space, muttering to one another.
That's when Changmin finally turns, sort of studying the corrugated walls for a moment. Yunho looks with him and wonders if Changmin is comparing the walls to the even folds of origami paper.
Perhaps Changmin was waiting to, or perhaps Changmin is just bored in the line, but he glances over at Yunho. "Did you sleep okay?"
Even the brief glance seems to smelt like hot coal over him, burning another layer off. Yunho feels the nausea double over.
The question alone is also a soft prod at what they did the night before. Innocent to their surrounding bystanders, but absolutely violating Yunho for all it really means. It dredges to the surface what they both know, and Yunho thinks that Changmin is getting too bold. Too brash for Yunho's liking.
Irritation whispers hot and hoarse against the back of his neck. He shifts and breathes.
"Yes." Yunho straightens. "Fine."
Perhaps he says it too sternly, his voice tuneless and rigid, and he looks down at the sapped grey carpet.
He knows Changmin is giving him a strange look; hadn't expected Yunho to speak to him like that. Certainly not in the morning, where Yunho's energy is usually the brightest and charged a sunbeam-yellow. He considers offering Changmin an apologetic look, just to quell them, but he thinks he might just let Changmin flounder a little, too.
And indeed Changmin does seem to flounder. Looking downward, he can see Changmin's feet and legs still pivoted to him. He can feel Changmin staring.
Still dribbling with sick, Yunho sniffles, and lifts a tissue stored in his arm sling to his nose. Holds it there with one hand.
"You're bleeding."
Yunho blinks up. "Huh?"
"You cut yourself shaving. It's bleeding."
Changmin grabs Yunho by the wrist—the one holding his slimed tissue—and guides it down to Yunho's jaw. Makes Yunho press his tissue to an empty space of skin where his beard pricks.
Manhandles Yunho right in front of everyone.
Shame wraps him in ribbons, tightening until the skin throbs pink.
Yunho sways back. Jerks his hand away, infuriated now, and holds the tissue square to his shaving nick himself. He says, very quiet, hushed, and hot, "Watch it, Changmin."
He rarely speaks to Changmin in this way. In fact, Yunho doesn't think he's ever quite snapped at Changmin like this and certainly never for something so trivial and small. It feels unusual and tipped-over, and Yunho hates treating Changmin anything less than tender—
But the emotions are spinning and skirling in Yunho, all of them so new.
Where there had been nothing there before, Yunho feels poured through with dreamy coils of Changmin sucking dirty bruises into his neck and being thrown and held into the mattress by Changmin and what Changmin's cock might just taste like.
Even his wrist—where Changmin had grabbed him by moments before—still feels cuffed with heat, and he's imagining Changmin pinning him down, crucifying him to the bed and fucking him in the most ungodly way possible.
It's all so stifling and strange and wrong.
The queue is beginning to move, and a gap begins to form in front of Changmin.
"I can't do this," says Yunho, still quiet. He gives Changmin a meaningful look. "Stop this."
Stop the late night visits. Stop touching. Stop unsheathing wicked desires that ought to stay kept.
The air between them twists, wrung tight like a cold cloth. Drips.
Changmin is quick, he always is, and just says, "Sure."
During the flight, Changmin peers out the tiny, oblong window, and—
For once, Yunho doesn't try to see what he's looking for.
Changmin does as Yunho asks.
Doesn't visit or touch him. Even talks to Yunho less than usual.
Yunho's nights are sleepless, sheet-tousled, and, for the first time in a long time, they feel lonely.
A fortnight washes past. Yunho begins to recover, his voice clearer on most days, and he no longer needs his polycotton elevation sling, but his wrist remains bound tight in bandages.
The desire is dampened, quieter now, but it still swims strong. Continues to lap at Yunho as waves do. Relentless and eroding.
Every single night, no matter how hard he tries to strangle the feeling, Yunho hopes that Changmin will violate his wishes, and come to his room without invitation.