got me up all night (all I'm singing is love songs)
EXO
Jongin/Sehun
PG-13
10K
Tumblr!AU: Tumblr famous ulzzang Sehun and b-boy Jongin meet.
Warning for drug use (marijuana), mentions of other drugs, and one homophobic slur used in an ask message. Written for a collab with leader hyung's favorite dongsaeng ♥
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Anonymous asked you: Ur so good looking :(
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Sehun sighs and presses the tiny x over each anon message. He should study for his physics test tomorrow, but World’s Wildest Home Movies is almost on and he promised Jongin he'd stream it with him.
jus a sec! is the last message Jongin had left in his ask box. He probably had to take his sister's dog for a walk or something. That’s usually what he’s doing around this time of day.
There isn’t much Sehun does as he waits. He clicks over to his dashboard a few times, hoping to reblog something of interest, but nothing catches his eye. He’s still getting notes for his recent selfie, with the occasional, all capslock WHO IS HE, and when he refreshes his dashboard for the third time in two minutes, more spam messages pop up.
twerkingstylle asked you: SEHUN!!!
Anonymous asked you: Where do u buy ur clothes? ;3
Anonymous asked you: how old are you?
It’s really enough to make Sehun want to make another FAQ but “faqs r so pretentious.” That’s what Jongin had said while they were playing WoW one night and then Sehun had quietly deleted the post he had been collecting questions for his FAQ.
Playing with his shark tooth necklace, he privately answers all the ones he can and thinks about deleting the rest of them. The redundancy of most of the questions bug him and lately he’s been thinking about disabling anon all together, but Jongin has a habit of spamming him with anon messages after he’s taken a trip to through his brother-in-law’s alcohol cabinet and that's too fun to miss.
Sehun is actually about to die of boredom and open his physics textbook so he can begrudgingly get some work done when his instant messaging client pops up and Jongin is yelling at him.
THE DOG ALMOST RAN AWAY FROM ME IT WAS TERRIBLE FUCKING ANIMAL
Sehun laughs and sends back a “that’s what you get for threatening to kick it the other day.” Jongin launches into an in depth play-by-play of his evening, including the part where his older sister’s Doberman almost jumped the fence and snapped at a neighbor’s tiny “fluffball”
“I hate animals, man,” Jongin is still saying an hour later, interrupting a scene on WWHM where the father of an American family gets whacked in the nuts and falls into his own pool. He still laughs so Sehun guesses he’s paying attention.
Sehun isn’t, not really.
It’s fine, though. He doesn’t really like this show, but Jongin does. Jongin makes most of their streaming decisions; Sehun only comes along for the ride. Watching imbeciles record their humiliations is a bit funny, but even funnier is the dip in Sehun’s stomach when Jongin gets too close to his laptop camera and it feels like he’s close enough to touch.
He feels like this every time they webcam, but recently he’s been feeling it a little more. Jongin is distracting in his white tank top. It’s dark in his room and the monitor light is bright on his face, highlighting his cheekbones and his pretty lips. Recently dyed inky black hair casually falls onto his forehead, soft and curling a little at the ends, and every time Jongin laughs, teeth white against the darkness surrounding his haloed laptop, something inside of Sehun tightens and simmers.
The feeling is a little stronger than what he had felt when he had accidentally clicked his way into a porn manga site and seen lithe drawings with strong hands touching each other. When they’re talking like this, it’s hard for Sehun to remember they don’t actually know each other.
Jongin’s collarbones and his happy eyes and the way his little drawl curls around his words all make Sehun's tummy bubble with nerves. It’s enough to make him space out for a few minutes, staring straight ahead, and imaging how it would feel to have Jongin next to him, so close their elbows touch.
“Sehun?” Jongin grumbles. He’s tapping on his screen as if it were Sehun’s bedroom door. “Hello? Earth to Pretty Boy. Come in, Pretty Boy.”
In another clip from WWHM, a teenager on a swing has jumped off and fallen into a gigantic mud pit. Only her legs are still up in the air. The laugh track plays. “Oh, she’s such a dirty girl!” says the host, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Are you falling asleep on me?”
“Nah,” Sehun shakes his head. His ears are warm. “Just got a distracted a little. I’ve been thinking too much lately, it’s really starting to be a pain in the ass.”
“Ah,” says Jongin. “Is this about school? Because I really can’t help you there.” He pauses and then hums. “Unless someone is giving you shit, then I can help you by kicking their asses.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Sehun drops his head on his crossed arms. The surface of his desk is cool against his warm face. Oddly colored images of how Jongin’s arms look in his sleeveless shirt cling to the backs of his eyelids.
There’s a beat of silence, a familiar one in its awkwardness, and when Jongin speaks again, his voice is a little louder than a whisper. “This... This isn’t a busy weekend, right? You still want me to come over on Friday, right?”
“Yeah, I do,” and Sehun means it.
Jongin is coming over on Friday. Jongin, taking a bus for six hours from SoCal all the way to San Francisco to sleep on Sehun’s floor for the weekend. They’re not only meeting for the first time in person, but they’ll be living together for a few days. After Jongin had randomly brought up the idea, and it had been too tempting to ignore, Sehun had agreed to meeting him in person.
The day is almost here and there’s a tightening in Sehun’s belly, a nervous gush of energy to his arms and legs, and he wants to hide his face in his hands, because he shouldn’t feel like this. We’re friends, Sehun thinks. Jongin knows things Sehun has told anyone else, and yet it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
This person, who lives hours away, who Sehun has spent hours talking to and laughing with, will soon be realer than he has ever been. Sehun is nauseated.
On the other end of the stream, Jongin messes with his hair, fluffing it up with his fingers. “Cool. I thought you were going to spazz out on me and then I would have to find somewhere else to stay for the weekend. Like a hostel. Hey, have you ever seen the horror movie Hostel? We should watch it.”
Sehun rolls his eyes. “When we watched Insidious--”
“Don’t talk about that movie!” Jongin half yelps, dropping his hands from his hair and shoving himself away from his laptop. He almost disappears from view. “I thought we agreed to never--”
“Since you almost pissed yourself when we streamed it, I don’t see why you would want to see another scary movie. I don’t want you to cry on me or anything.” Watching a movie with Jongin the dark. Their sides pressed together. Jongin starting at every little lump. Jongin hiding his face in his too long sweaters. Jongin, close. “Chicken.”
“Sounds like you’re the one too chicken shit to watch it with me,” says Jongin as he rolls himself back to the screen. “Insidious...was a special case, okay. I didn’t know it was going to be so...” He grabs his own neck and spasms, breathing heavily.
Sehun stares, lips parted. He’s still not immune of Jongin’s physical gags.
Neither is Jongin. He breaks out into a laugh, dark color flooding his face, and hides a little behind his hands, muttering “how embarrassing” and “I’ll be right back.”
It’s late. There’s homework to be done. Sehun has school in the morning. He shouldn’t find this charming; he shouldn’t wait for Jongin to get over his own embarrassment and come back. He’s done this a lot, Sehun notices when Jongin’s been away for a few minutes. He had never known Jongin could be so frazzled until they started webchatting and then figured Jongin embarrasses himself more than anyone else does. It’s cute in ways Sehun isn’t too comfortable thinking about.
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3.04am. Jongin has his chin in his arms, eyes closed. Sehun thinks he’s finally, finally, fallen asleep, and right when he’s about to pull away for the night, Jongin stirs and picks up his head again.
“Whaddaya wanna watch?” He leans forward, so close to his webcam Sehun can see the pinkness of his eyes. Exhaustion clings to every line of Jongin’s face, but he doesn’t want to sleep. He doesn’t ever want to sleep.
And Sehun, foolish Sehun, doesn’t want to leave him alone. The longer he stays up, the less sense it makes. Jongin won’t die if Sehun goes to bed. Nothing will happen to him. He’ll stay up as long as he always does and Sehun will wake up to incoherent asks.
“There’s a rerun of Ridiculousness on,” Jongin squints at his screen. “Wanna watch that?”
Sehun’s head feels too heavy for his body. “Sure,” he says. His ass hurts from sitting too long.
Jongin looks at him and for a second, Sehun thinks he’s going to say something or tease him for his droopy eyes again, but Jongin seems to think better of it. The stream buffers for a few seconds and then a familiar warning pops up.
Sehun’s eyes are too heavy for him to make out the actual words. Clips play and he feels nothing but the oppressive push of sleep hanging from his shoulders. Through his earphones, he hears Jongin’s soft, tired laughter.
He smiles.
It’s not the first time Sehun has fallen asleep at his desk, but it is the first time he wakes up to their webchat still in session. Jongin’s room is dimly lit but Sehun can make out his shape lying down on his bed, his hood pulled up over his hair. Even with his messily styled hair in his face, Sehun can make out the curves of his lips and the roundness of his left cheek.
Jongin had taken his laptop to bed with him when Sehun had fallen asleep.
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Anonymous asked you: Are you single? If not, who is your boyfriend/girlfriend?
bboyjkr asked you: yo ma bus leaves at 2 on fri
bboyjkr asked you: no it’s 6 hrs. fun rite?
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On Thursday, Jongin posts a new dance video. It’s set to Justin Timberlake’s “Suit and Tie” and Sehun only knows he’s posted it because his dash is suddenly flooded with Jongin answering messages containing “OH MY OVARIESSSSSS.” Whatever that means.
Jongin answers all kind messages with “aw thx ;)” and goes over his technique with a few of the more curious anons. When an anon points out his turns aren’t as crisp as they should be (and when Sehun rolls his eyes because of course someone always thinks they can do better), Jongin takes it all in stride. “haha rly? ill see if i can make them better nxt time. thx!”
Instead of entertaining his English homework, Sehun clicks the link to Jongin’s YouTube channel and watches his latest video. The top comments, as always, deal with someone wanting to fuck him or complimenting his face and/or body, and that’s all fine with Sehun because, hey, if you’re good looking, you might as well hear it, right?
"I'm trying out this new dance style and I need you to tell me if it sucks."
"I don't know anything about dancing,” says Sehun, opening his English book. Maybe if he stares at the inside cover long enough he’ll absorb what’s written inside.
“But you know what sucks and what doesn’t, and that’s good enough for me.”
After some shuffling and shifting his laptop camera angle, Jongin stands in the middle of his brightly lit bedroom, dressed in what Sehun calls his “dance pants.” He wears the same gray sweats with the hole in the knee in almost every dance video and he won’t throw them out, no matter how many times anons point out they’re falling apart.
The dancing isn’t as funny as the time Sehun dared him to record himself dancing to Beyonce’s “Love on Top,” but it, as always, is entertaining to watch. Jongin moves effortlessly, as if music’s invisible hands direct his movements and he’s only going along for the ride. As if he has the music inside of him, the beat is his own heart, the harmony and melody sing through his veins and muscles. He’s not a person, he doesn’t have feelings or thoughts -- he’s only an extension of the music. He’s a wave bowing to the moon.
Sehun has never studied dance so he doesn’t know anything about technique or form, but he knows Jongin dances well. He’s about to tell him as Jongin walks up to his laptop when--
“So? How was it?” Jongin is panting. He tugs the bottom of his shirt up to wipe his forehead and Sehun loses his perception of time.
A blurry glance at his nipples. Smooth, sweaty skin, and there’s so much of it and it all looks so tantalizing. Classic California tan. Calvin Klein boxers.
By now, Sehun knows Jongin’s face -- his eyes, his nose, his lips -- and his shoulders, his collarbones, and his arms, but sometimes he forgets about the rest of Jongin’s body. Out of sight, out of mind. Now it’s in sight and all he can think about.
Jongin probably looks fantastic naked.
(And that’s not something Sehun wants to think about his friend.)
“If you were one of Snow White’s dwarves, you would be Spacey. Seriously.” Jongin pretends to knock on Sehun’s forehead. “I’m gonna shower. Be back in a little bit.”
Jongin in the shower. Bad. So bad. Worse than the fantasy of an old upperclassman sucking him off in the locker room. Worse than the night Sehun found links to a porn star who looks suspiciously like Jongin, who even sounds like Jongin, and even if he had felt guilty touching himself, another part of him had reveled at the thought of Jongin under him, Jongin moaning.
Sehun drops his forehead onto his desk and hits himself a few times. His head hurts, he’s half hard, and he’s still thinking about Jongin in the shower.
He decides, then, that knowing people is dangerous and risky but knowing avatars isn’t.
Avatars are mirages of people and mirages are cool. They have perfectly timed jokes, know how to take selfies from good angles, and are down with the latest Lil Wayne song. They’re everything you want them to be; they’re everything you want to hear.
Regular everyday people aren’t cool.
Jongin’s shower gives Sehun a little time to work on his English assignment. He’s a little more than halfway through his The Great Gatsby reading for the night when Jongin plops down on his chair.
Sehun doesn’t look up. He knows what Jongin tends to look like after his shower, but he won’t think about it. At best, he’s wearing a tank. At worst, he’s half naked and Sehun will have to excuse himself and maybe try not to suffocate later on his pillow.
It’s hard to maintain a normal semblance of friendship when his attraction is this strong and it’ll only get worse. If he reacts like this when Jongin is miles away, what will happen when he’s actually in Sehun’s room and there’s nowhere for Sehun to run?
Well, he guesses he could always stuff himself in his closet, but he’s sure Jongin would follow him in there just to be a dick.
“Don’t you have homework to do?” says Sehun, eyes on his book.
“Did it already. It was so--”
“Jongin!” It’s Jongin’s sister.
The Great Gatsby falls a little down Sehun’s face.
Jongin sits up and looks behind him, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Come here!”
“She better not be giving birth right now,” Jongin grumbles and stands up. “Be back in a bit again. Sorry for leaving you hanging like this.” He’s wearing the thinnest tank top Sehun has ever seen. His nipples stand out dark against the white fabric.
Sehun is reminded of the familiar “the Lord is testing me” response gif he’s seen on his dash a few times.
Jongin scrambles away again and Sehun finishes his English reading, along with a typed up response to the passage. On Tumblr, one of his old selfies is going around again and Sehun distracts himself from new inbox messages by checking out the trailer of Quentin Tarantino’s latest flick. It looks good in a Tarantino sort of way with its gratuitous ass kicking and fancy effects, not to mention Scarlett Johansson is the lead and it’s hard to go wrong with Scarlett Johansson. He sends Jongin the link through fanmail and then, after eating some bites of jerky, starts on his Physics homework.
It’s boring but not too complicated, and Jongin returns just as Sehun is working out the spring constant for the last problem.
“Pregnant sisters, man,” he says as he sits. “Everything is too hot or too cold or too salty or not salty enough. This is going to be the most demanding child in the history for the world.” He clicks around on his trackpad. “What’d you send me anyway?”
“Movie trailer.” Sehun turns his laptop so that the camera is pointed at his face again. Jongin has picked up an earphone and stares at his screen, eyes narrowed. “We can watch it when you’re here or whatever.”
It’s not a date. Jongin likes watching movies. Friends watch movies together all the time. After Jongin has pissed his pants watching Hostel, he’ll want a distraction. They can go to the theater and have the classic movie theater experience with too buttery popcorn, giant “gulps” of soda, and long boxes of candy.
“Cool. I’d watch it. You making a schedule for our weekend or something?” He grins, as if he wants to say Sehun is “cute” and Sehun wants to punch him.
“Nope,” he shakes his head. “We’re going to do homework and cloud watch all weekend.”
“Liar,” says Jongin. “Come on, what do you usually do? Or are you just too cool to tell me?”
Sehun thinks about how annoying it is to mop the floor of the fast food joint after a toddler has spilled sticky soda all over it and how he feels when coach tells him he’s not working hard enough. He thinks about cleaning up his mother’s puke or holding her hair back as she blows chunks onto her own chest.
Images, distant images, of playing in his grandparents’ backyard and chasing little sparrows and trying to fly away with them because, at least with them, then he’d have a momma bird who cared, right?
But, in the end, it all comes back to staring at his computer screen at the day and basking in the attention of avatars, multicolored celebrity avatars, gray avatars, Jongin’s skateboard avatar and Jongin’s voice in his ear, whispering goodnight.
“Oh I’m definitely too cool to tell you,” says Sehun, forcing himself to finish plugging in the numbers for his last homework problem.
Jongin laughs, spinning a little in his chair. “I see how it is.”
Do you? Sehun bites his lip.
“Gonna try to sleep early tonight so I’m not dead when you pick me up from the station tomorrow.”
And no matter how many times Jongin says it, Sehun still finds it hard to believe they’re finally meeting. In person. Not “in computer” or however else they’re communicating has been defined.
Now, Jongin doesn’t only exist as an avatar on a social networking platform. He’s not a random “someone” in a tiny corner of the internet Sehun can ignore without repercussions; he’s not a person who only exists when Sehun sees him on his dashboard, answering messages or reblogging from his favorite soft porn sites.
Now, he has a place in Sehun’s mobile contacts and in all of Sehun’s inboxes, and Jongin’s Tumblr is one of the first Tumblrs Sehun visits when he wakes up. He knows what Jongin sounds like when he speaks, he’s seen pictures of his house, his family, his annoying dog, the scar he has on the back of his leg from when he fell off his skateboard in sixth grade. He knows what Jongin sounds like when he’s sick and congested, when he’s happy and bubbling with energy, and when he’s tired and lonely, and he wants to fall asleep with his cell phone pressed against his ear.
Now, they’re finally going to meet, and Sehun can’t believe it. He never thought this day would come.
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bboyjkr asked you: dont forget to pick me up
Sehun knows it’s Jongin before they’re introduced. He's the kid around Sehun’s age sitting on a bench with his legs spread wide. He’s fiddling with an iPod Touch and putting an earphone to his ear when Sehun is close enough to really looked at him. Dark jeans, dark sweatshirt. The top of his face is partially obscured by a Dodgers cap and old acne scars linger around the curve of his jaw and chin. A giant black Northface backpack stands between his legs and, right on the backpack, is a blue Digimon pin.
It’s weird because... this is Jongin. The barriers between them have been erased. There’s no ask button, no inbox, no ‘bboyjkr liked your photo,’ no having to wait by a screen for Jongin to reply to him. Jongin is real, Jongin exists. Sehun has been talking to him for months and he’s seen him talk back, but standing only a few feet away and trying to understand this is the person he’s been talking to, it’s hard to realize this is who had been on the other end of the screen all along.
Jongin isn’t a figment of Sehun’s imagination -- he’s real and he’s here.
Sehun pulls out his cellphone. He steps back as he presses his most recent contact. The chorus of Justin Timberlake’s “Suit and Tie” blasts from Jongin’s pocket and he leisurely slips it out of his pocket. Jongin pulls an earphone out and says, “Hello?”
He sounds about the same. Maybe his voice is a little deeper or maybe Sehun’s hears are finally hearing him without the use of his computer speakers, but his drawl is still there.
“Hello? Sehun? You there?”
His voice. Sehun doesn’t respond; he hangs up.
Jongin frowns at his phone and clicks on its screen, dialing back.
Then Sehun steps up to him, a torturous rumbling in his belly, and he says, “Hey. Jongin, right?”
Jongin looks up, tipping his head back to see under his cap bill. “Sehun? Oh, uh, hey.”
God, what are they supposed to do now? Shake hands? Hug? They technically don’t “know” each other, but they obviously do. Three dimensional Jongin, with his broad shoulders and pretty fingernails, is a lot more visually pleasing to Sehun than his two dimensional self had been, and that’s a little frightening. He’s tall, too, when he stands up and there’s something equally charming about how he doesn’t know what to do either. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, sticks his hands into his pockets, and pulls them back out.
“Uh...” Jongin forms his hand into a fist bump and then a high five. “What’s the... proper way to do this? I’ve never actually... met someone from online before.” He looks as if he’s playing rock-paper-scissors with himself.
Sehun shrugs, smiling a little. “I haven’t either...”
With a laugh and a pretty redness spreading across his cheeks, Jongin says, “We’re so awkward.”
Sehun mock scoffs. “Speak for yourself.” He’s only a little distracted by the shape of Jongin’s bicep when he picks up his backpack and slings it over his shoulder. “This is going to sound dumb, but it’s nice to know you exist. Like, you’re real. I mean, you always were real but--”
Jongin laughs. His smile is even more disarming in person. “It’s weird that I know exactly what you mean.”
Sehun’s room feels smaller. He can’t turn to walk somewhere without almost tripping over Jongin’s long legs or bumping into his arm. When they finally settle down, Jongin is at Sehun’s desk and Sehun on his bed. They open their laptops. It seems as if they should do something or go somewhere, but Sehun is fresh out of ideas. He really should have done a little research before inviting Jongin over. They’re both on their laptops and Sehun opens Tumblr for a quick second, more out of habit than anything else.
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He knows he’s kidding himself when he thinks Tumblr will grab his attention when bboyjkr is sitting at his desk, looking at what seem to be dance videos. Every few minutes or so, Jongin turns around to look at Sehun, only to find Sehun is already looking at him.
“What?” Jongin says after the third time he’s caught Sehun staring. “I guess I’m not what you expected, right?” He looks down at himself -- plain white tee, loose blue jeans, socks with holes in them -- and then back up to Sehun’s face.
“I don’t really know what I was expecting,” Sehun confesses, turning back to the stacks of DVDs under his bed. He can’t find his Shawn of the Dead DVD and it’s pissing him off. He can’t find Transformers either. “I was sorta just expecting you, whoever you are.”
“I kinda thought you’d be a little disappointed,” Jongin continues. “Stupid, right? But once I saw you lived up to the picture I had of you in my head, I wondered if I matched up with yours or something like that, you know?”
Sehun looks up, interested. “I do?” Transformers can wait.
“Well, yeah.” Jongin does his little half laugh thing. “Kinda quiet. Literal hypebeast. Those are the tightest pants I’ve ever seen anyone wear. You have Lil Wayne, Drake, and A$AP Rocky in your iTunes but your most played song is fun.’s ‘We are Young.’ Classic hipster.”
“I’m not a hipster.” Sehun scoffs. Gross.
“Only hipsters think they aren’t hipsters,” says Jongin, as if he’s the authority on these kinds of things. His smirk has a certain asshole-ish glint to it.
Sehun almost wants to hit him with an empty DVD case, but he doesn’t think they’re that comfortable with each other yet.
“Don’t you think it’s a little weird, though, how people get close on Tumblr?” Jongin’s picking at a hole in his jeans and Sehun is caught by the bob of his Adam’s apple. He wants to kiss him there. “We see pieces of each other. Mostly the good pieces, but never the whole. I had a lot of time to think on the ride here and I think it’s really a lot like diet Coke.”
Sehun has a mental image of a tiny Jongin coming out of a soda bottle at him, waving. “Diet Coke?”
“Yeah. Diet Coke and Coke are sort of the same, right? But not really. So if you know Diet Coke, you kinda know Coke too. They’re more similar than different, but still different.” Jongin finally looks up and throws his phone beside him on the bed. “That’s why Tumblr famous guy Sehun and McDonald’s cashier Sehun have the same shitty sense of humor but you’re a lot less talkative in person.”
“Talking in person is...” Sehun tries to look for the right word. “I don’t want to say harder, because we’re talking right now, but it’s...different.” Different in that it’s harder to look at Jongin while Sehun is talking to him. Jongin’s eyes are there, dark and a bit probing, and Sehun feels naked. Exposed. Under a microscope. Screens protect against eyes. He wouldn't mind a screen right now.
“Online, you have some time before you can reply. You can take as long as you want, you can think about what you really want to say and you probably won’t end up saying the wrong thing. In person, there’s no time to think and there are more chances to fuck up.” He opens his White Chicks DVD and finds Honey instead. Christ, what did past Sehun have against putting DVDs back in their rightful cases? “I don’t know, I think there’s more control in how we act online and that’s sorta why we like it so much. We don’t want to fuck up.”
He gives up looking for Shawn of the Dead and falls down on his bed. They can look up the link for it later or something. Sehun knows he’s not going to find anything.
The tables have turned and now it’s Jongin who won’t stop looking at him, looking down at Sehun with a pensive gleam in his dark eyes. He’s picking at a dark spot under his chin, lost in thought.
Sehun tears his eyes away so fast he thinks he hears a ripping noise. “It’s still good to know you’re not a serial killer, though. Or a forty five year old WoW nerd who lives in his mom’s basement.”
“There’s nothing wrong with WoW nerds,” Jongin playfully rolls his eyes, dropping his hand from his face. He would play that game. “So what are we gonna do now?”
They could sit around on their computers all night or -- “Wanna go see the Tarantino movie?”
It’s not a date.
But Jongin pays for Sehun’s ticket (“Seriously, it’s not a big deal.” He smiles at the lady behind the glass. “Sorry, my boyfriend gets a little stubborn at times.” He takes Sehun’s open mouth to mean anger and says Sehun can pay for the popcorn, never once explaining why he called Sehun his boyfriend) and he buys Sehun an extra box of sour worms so Sehun can “take them home and remember how awesome I am.”
Sehun rolls his eyes and elbows Jongin’s gut, but it doesn’t hurt him much. Asshole.
They sit in the backrow and devour half of the popcorn before the previews are even over. Jongin is struck silent by the preview for Avengers 3 and his little Iron Man fanboy heart almost breaks in half when the final scene shows Iron Man exploding into nothingness.
“What the fresh fuck--” His voice borders on hysterical rage.
Sehun stuffs his hand into the popcorn and shoves kernels into Jongin’s open mouth. His fingers brush his lips as he drops his hand back into the bucket.
“That better be a dream sequence,” Jongin huffs before he takes a sip of his soda. “They seriously can’t kill Iron Man.”
“Hasn’t everyone been killed in the comics by now anyway?” Sehun offers him a sour worm.
Jongin pulls on the worm, stretching it twice its normal length, until it breaks in half. “Sort of. There are a lot of universes involved so it depends on which universe you’re talking about.”
“It’s kinda amazing to me how much you like this stuff,” says Sehun. “You don’t really look like the type to read comics.”
“Who are the kind of people who don’t read comics?” Jongin sounds curious, not insulted.
Hot people, Sehun thinks but he doesn’t say. It’s childish enough for him to still believe television’s definition of a comic book nerd but to almost admit to Jongin’s face that he’s hot in a movie theater of all places.
“Sehun?”
Sehun chokes a little on his soda. “Just forget I said anything,” he mutters, chewing on his straw. Heat floods his face. He turns back to the big screen to see the preview for a “love of a lifetime” kind of movie playing and tunes it out in favor of Jongin’s chuckling into his hand.
“You’re so funny, Sehun,” he says in a voice that implies he thinks Sehun isn’t funny at all.
Sehun contemplates stuffing Jongin’s face with sour worms when Jongin beats him to the punch and lobs flurries of popcorn at his face. A kernel squeezes down the front of Sehun’s shirt, still warm, and Sehun elbows Jongin in the ribs again, this time making him wheeze.
“God,” Jongin coughs.
Sehun settles back in his seat. “It's ‘Sehun,’ but I think I might prefer ‘God.’”
When the movie ends, Jongin is grinning broadly. “I feel like I can rob a bank right now,” he says just as they pass by the cinema security station.
A portly security guard gives him a wary look and Sehun snorts. Jongin hides his face in the back of Sehun’s shoulder, laughing too hard to stand up straight. His breath tickles Sehun’s neck, making him flush. “I’ll try not to get us arrested,” Jongin promises when he’s regained his composure.
“You do that,” says Sehun. He feels a little pink around his ears and cheek, but luckily, the summer night is cool enough to soothe his blush.
“What now?” asks Jongin, swinging his arms as he walks.
Sehun purses his lips. “In-n-Out?”
Jongin nods, “Sounds good. And after?”
“We’ll see.”
As Sehun will later tell it, the plan had not been Get High and Talk About Life, but that’s what happens. Friday night. Jongin is sitting in the middle of Sehun’s floor and suddenly asks, “Got some weed?” And Sehun, because they’ve talked about this before, pulls out his --
“‘Box of Bad Things’?” Jongin cackles as he reads what’s written on top of the shoe box. “Seriously? Can you make it any more obvious?” Sehun would shove him but, again, he doesn’t think they’re that cool yet.
“Shut up,” he says instead, pulling off the lid. Weed, cigarettes, lighter, a fake ID, a few pills of E he doesn’t remember getting.
Jongin picks up a pill and looks at it, “Didn’t know you were so hardcore.”
“Nah, I’ve never done it,” says Sehun as he rolls a blunt. “I don’t even know how they got there. They could be my mom’s, for all I know.”
“Your mom does E?” Jongin places the pill back into the box.
Sehun coughs, “Anyway.” He lights up, takes a drag, and then passes it to Jongin. They go back and forth until it’s gone, their tongues and lips loosening the longer they smoke. Jongin talks about his pregnant sister who moved back home after she caught her husband cheating.
“She’s fucking crazy, man,” he says, leaning against Sehun’s bed. “She’s really bossy and demanding, but I really wish she wasn’t going through this alone. When she told me what he did, I wanted to kill him. Fucking cheaters.” He shakes his head. “But whatever. It’s okay. I’m never going to let him see my nephew. Never, ever, ever.”
“When’s the baby coming?” Sehun has been staring at Jongin for about half an hour now, looking down at him from his bed. Jongin is so fascinating when he talks. Weed makes him jittery, he can’t stay still, and he’s constantly either playing with his hair or pulling on his lips.
Sehun wants to pull on his lips with his own lips.
“Next month,” says Jongin. His head lolls back and he’s looking at Sehun upside down.
Sehun imagines that this is the correct orientation of his head -- that his eyes are near his nose and his eyebrows are his beard -- and starts laughing.
Jongin joins him, his forehead wrinkling cutely.
“Do you--” Sehun holds a hand over his mouth. “Do you even know what’s so funny?”
Jongin shrugs, a dopey smile on his face, “Fuck no,” and keeps laughing.
The topic of family doesn’t come up again. Instead, Jongin asks Sehun about his dreams, his aspirations.
“I don’t really have any,” says Sehun, looking up at the ceiling. “That’s bad, right? I just. I don’t know what I want to do, I don’t have a favorite topic in school. I don’t know what college I want to go to, either. I’m kinda just...cruising, I guess.”
Jongin has joined him on the bed and he’s fiddling with his phone. “Nah, I get it. I don’t really know what I want to do. I was thinking about majoring in dance but--”
“Your parents,” interrupts Sehun.
“Yeah,” Jongin whispers. “My fucking parents. ‘It’s not practical, Jongin.’ ‘What kind of career can you have if you major in dance, Jongin?’ ‘Why can’t you be a doctor like Taemin?’”
The name is familiar. “Taemin?”
“Best friend,” says Jongin. He holds his phone over his head, opens his gallery app, and goes through his pictures. Most of them are solo selcas, but a few of them have another boy with styled dark brown hair and a wide smile. He looks like he could be Jongin’s brother. In all of the pictures of them together, they’re sitting closely, their shoulders or thighs pressed together, and it makes Sehun’s stomach dip. Suddenly, he has to know.
“Um, is he your--”
“What? Oh. No. He’s.” Jongin bites his lip and pulls his phone back. “He’s not... like that. We’re just friends.”
“Oh.” It’s not like they’ve never talked about their interests. They have. Jongin’s ideal type is somewhere between Megan Fox, Rihanna, and Justin Timberlake. He’s talk about his girlfriends and boyfriends on Tumblr, and Sehun thinks he has to scroll by one of Jongin’s “interested” anons at least once a week. But they’ve never talked about it on Sehun’s bed, with the last pulls of marijuana dying away. Sehun might already be too sober for this conversation.
“Taemin wants to meet you,” Jongin says then. His phone is on his chest, screen down. “I guess I talk about you a lot.” He laughs a little. “I haven’t realized that I do. When I told him I was coming up to meet you, he wanted to come because ‘I gotta meet the Tumblr friend you like more than me, you little shit.’” He laughs again, eyes closing.
Sehun’s stomach dips again and he squeezes his eyes shut. He suddenly feels like he’s on a rollercoaster going over the first hill; looking at Jongin is making him so dizzy.
“Hey. Sehun?”
Sehun opens his eyes. Jongin is suddenly lying right next to him, his phone over their faces.
“Something for Tumblr?” Jongin’s sleepy, high eyes and his permanently bright smile are so close, so dangerous.
But Sehun has never been one to reject a picture. “Come closer,” he says instead, pulling on Jongin’s arm until he’s almost on top of Sehun, his ass against Sehun’s crotch. “Say cheese~”
Jongin says, “Mozzarella,” and is still laughing when Sehun shoves him off his lap.
They fall asleep around two am. Jongin claims it’s “jetlag” even though he came by bus, “so it’s really buslag, I guess,” and tries to drop himself down to the floor.
Sehun grabs him, “Sleep here. It’s fine.”
His bed isn’t big enough for the two of them, but Sehun can’t bring himself to let Jongin sleep on the floor.
“Are you sure?” Jongin mumbles, rubbing his eyes. He’s in a pair of gray sweats and a thin WWE tank. When he turns to the side, Sehun can see into his shirt -- the ridges of his abdominal muscles, the shapes of his nipples -- and it’s. All very painful for Sehun, who actually murmurs, “The Lord is testing me” when Jongin turns his back. Alert, awake Jongin who dances when he walks is attractive, but sleepy, heavy eyed Jongin who sways on his feet is terrible.
“It’s cool,” says Sehun when he’s found his tongue. Yes, words. Words mean stuff. He should use his words.
“Thanks,” Jongin smiles and then he’s crawling onto Sehun’s bed, his tank falling forward and exposing more of his chest.
Sehun rolls over and turns off the light. “Goodnight.”
Jongin is already snoring, his arms acting as his pillow.
For an hour, Sehun lies there, hyper-aware of how close their bodies are. Jongin snuffles in his sleep in between his sleepy snores, and when he shifts, sometimes moaning, Sehun crosses legs and tries to suffocate on his pillow.
In the morning, Sehun is the last one to get up. Jongin is already at his desk again, on Tumblr, from what Sehun can tell, and he must’ve made some noise, because then Jongin is turning around. He smiles when he sees Sehun, giddy, his bottom lip between his teeth. “Hey.”
Sehun smiles back, “Hey.” He sits up, rubbing a hand across his face. “You been up long?”
“Not too long,” says Jongin. His hair is wet and he’s traded his night sweats and tank for dark skinny jeans and a “Fuck JJ Abrams” tee. Spock is giving Sehun the finger. “I put our latest pic up on Tumblr. Now people want to know if we’re fucking.”
Sehun trips on his way of his bed and almost faceplants on his bedroom rug. “Um.”
Jongin is still looking at him, “What should I tell them?”
That I would love to be fucking you. “Whatever you want. How does the picture look?”
Jongin scrolls down on his dashboard, showing Jongin the picture he had taken of them in bed. Yep. It definitely looks like a bed. The phone caught Sehun mid-laugh, when Jongin had say a cheese instead of “cheese,” and Jongin is grinning so widely one eye is bigger than the other. He looks maniacal, but happy, Sehun leans over Jongin, closer to the screen. That’s his hand around Jongin’s arm, holding him. “Well?” Jongin looks up at him. His breath smells like peppermints.
Sehun’s mouth waters. “Looks... like we might be fucking, yeah.” He forces a laugh and pushes himself away from Jongin and the desk, and starts looking for clothes to take with him into the shower. “I have work today, so you might want to stay here.”
“Oh,” says Jongin, his eyes on his computer screen. He’s chewing on his bottom lip. “I’ll think about it.”
An hour later, after ignoring his half hard cock in the shower and not thinking about how Jongin had been right in this shower a couple of hours before, because jerking off to the thought of someone else jerking off seems a little excessive, Sehun leaves Jongin in his room. He has a full day of work and he’s not looking forward to any of it. But, if anything, he wants to get through it sooner, because then he’ll go home and Jongin will be there. He doesn’t have any plans for tonight, but since they’ve already seen the Tarantino flick, they could check out Hostel. Or Sinister, Sehun has been meaning to bring that one up.
He has just finished an order in which a little girl wanted a specific toy that they had run out of it and she wouldn’t leave, much to her mother’s embarrassment, until she got that toy (Sehun had finally tracked one down after throwing himself into the large box of kiddie toys in the basement and fishing one out) when he sees his next customer.
“May I take your order?”
“Yes,” says Jongin. He makes a show of looking at the menu overhead, but then, with a glint in his pretty eyes, he continues, “I’d like to have you. Are you on the menu?”
The cashier, one of Sehun’s older friends, looks over. “What...”
Sehun chokes on his laughter. “It’s okay, Gina,” he tells her and then turns back to Jongin. “Funny. What’ll it be?”
“Cheeseburger and fries, and when do you get off for lunch?” Jongin is oblivious to the strange looks he’s receiving. Gina hasn’t stopped giving him the stank eye and the man in line behind Jongin looks very uncomfortable.
“In an hour. Half an hour long lunch break.”
“Cool,” says Jongin. “I’ll be back then. I finally get to hang out with my favorite cashier.”
“Dumbass,” Sehun playfully rolls his eyes and steps away to fulfill Jongin’s orders.
Gina stops him when he’s filling up Jongin’s fountain drink, her back to the customers. “The hell was that? Are you okay? We can kick him out, you know.”
“It’s fine, really. I know him. He’s a friend.” Sehun caps the drink. “Thanks, though.”
Gina, now staring at Sehun more critically, doesn’t look convinced. “Okay,” she says after a while. “But. You know, I’m here if you need anything.”
“Thanks Gina,” he tells her. “But, really, he’s okay.”
“She looked like she wanted to kill me,” Jongin is saying later. He’s making a mess of his fries and ketchup, using the ketchup as paint and attempting to draw a Sehun portrait on his cheeseburger wrapper.
“She’s really cool,” Sehun replies. “I’ve known her for a long time. She used to babysit when I was younger, she lived down the street. She’s, um, protective, I guess.”
“Are you she’s not interested in you in a, you know, kind of way?” Jongin glances from the ketchup to Sehun’s face and then back.
“She’s engaged,” says Sehun, idly munching on apple slices. “I’m like her little brother.”
“Oh,” Jongin looks down at his cheeseburger wrapper. “I think I’m done!” He turns the wrapper around. It’s a “: |” face drawn in ketchup with hipster glasses and a skinny neck tie.
“Is that supposed to be me?”
Jongin is already pulling out his phone to take a picture. “Going on Tumblr. I didn’t know I was so artistic! I should go to art school, right?”
Sehun throws an apple slice at Jongin’s face. It hits him in the nose.
“Hey!” Jongin yells back, grinning. “I’ll get you for that.”
Sehun picks the apple slice up from the floor and then looks at his phone. He has five minutes before he has to get back to work. “Check out this movie called Sinister,” he says, before he forgets. “We should watch it tonight.”
“Sinister?” Jongin nods, looking at his phone. “Is this you finally having a plan? Or do most of your plans just involve movies and then finding other shit to do?”
“It’s more of the second one,” Sehun concedes. Jongin has a wet spot on the tip of his nose where the apple hit him. He hasn’t noticed yet.
Sehun gives Jongin his house keys and tells him to wait for him at home. “Alright,” says Jongin. “Don’t eat anything, though. You’ll see why I say that.”
So Sehun doesn’t. He’s starving by the time he rings the doorbell and hopes his mother isn’t home. She isn’t (but, then again, is she ever?) but Jongin is. Jongin is also in an apron. “Welcome to Kim Jongin’s Italian restaurant!” he says, holding up a pasta drainer.
Sehun tries to see over Jongin’s shoulder to the kitchen. “You didn’t--”
“But I did,” says Jongin. “I mean, I’m not the best cook and I can only make, like, three things, but luckily for you, I made you all three of those things!”
The three things are spaghetti, string beans, and fried rice. “I know they don’t exactly... match,” Jongin looks down at the table he set. “But, it’s food, right?” He laughs, a little nervously, and Sehun wants to punch himself in his own face. He’s not sure how much more he can take of Kim Jongin and his smiles. They go through all of the food together and then, right when Sehun is battling his last squeaky string bean, Jongin asks, “Where’s your mom?”
Sehun pauses and then exhales. “Probably with her boyfriend, I guess. My dad left when I was a kid and she’s never really... gotten over it.” This is his least favorite topic. This is his least favorite topic. “I don’t really...” Talk about this. “I think she’s getting better.” So far this year, Sehun hasn’t had to call poison control. Things are... looking up. Sort of. “I’m--”
“Sehun,” says Jongin. He looks serious. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I asked--”
“No,” replies Sehun. “No, it’s just... she...” His mouth tastes like tar. He puts his fork down. “It’s hard,” he says, finally, and his shoulders sag. “It’s really fucking hard.”
Sehun thinks he’s going to cry and he’s such a fucking embarrassment, then Jongin’s hand touches his across the table and Jongin is out of his seat, pulling Sehun into his arms. It’s stupid because something like this shouldn’t make Sehun feel like he’s going to cry more, but he does and it sucks and it hurts. He doesn’t remember the last time he hugged someone like this.
Jongin smells like tomato sauce and cooking oil, and he’s the perfect height, their shoulders fit together and, pressed against his body like this, Sehun feels like he’s drowning.
Tumblr user bboyjkr has made Sehun feel warm and comforted before, but Kim Jongin in person, who is still fucking apologizing like it’s his fault Sehun’s mom is never around, is more than Sehun could have ever asked for. It feels like Jongin had been made for him and Sehun knows that it’s silly, and that he’s letting his infatuation getting out of hand, but he buries his face in Jongin’s shoulder and allows himself to pretend. Jongin holds him for a long time and when Sehun finally pulls away, he’s not the only one with wet eyes.
“The fuck are you crying about,” Sehun pushes at Jongin’s chest and forces a laugh.
Jongin says nothing and sniffles.
They need to break this gloomy atmosphere, so Sehun suggests they watch the movie now “before it’s too dark and you shit your pants.”
Jongin playfully rolls his eyes, “Like that’s going to happen.”
Sehun is pleased to discover Jongin watches movies in person the same way he does during a livestream: very animatedly. He jumps and he swears, he partially hides behind Sehun’s shoulder and chastises the protagonist for “being a fucking dumbass, stop watching those fucking tapes!”
During the last ten minutes of the movie, he’s sitting directly behind Sehun, his chin on Sehun’s shoulder, and he’s muttering, “No, no, no, no.” Sehun feels his jump, his fingernails digging into Sehun’s arms, when the movie ends and the ghoul’s face flashes across Sehun’s screen for the last time. Then Jongin is quiet.
“I think...” he says after a while. “I think I need to go lie down now.”
Sehun laughs as he minimizes the screen. While Jongin is spread out on his bed, Sehun checks Tumblr for the first time that day (a personal record) and he sees he’s flooded with messages.
Anonymous asked you: is that really you in bboyjkr’s picture??????
Anonymous asked you: I didn’t knew you know bboyjkr irl
jcolesmamichula asked you: I KNEW YOU WERE DATING I KNEW IT
Anonymous asked you: wash ur ass u fag
Anonymous asked you: i thought u said u were single :’(
Anonymous asked you: CONGRATULATIONS :D
fuckmeshia asked you: he’s in your lap???? what???? ??? how????
Anonymous asked you: GAY BOY
“Oh boy,” he says, squinting at his inbox. “Jongin, you don’t know what you’ve done.”
Jongin snorts. “Maybe now some people will stop trying to send me their nudes.”
Sehun gives his inbox a once over, decides it’s not even worth answering any of the questions, and opens a new tab for Facebook. “You ever get tired of Tumblr?”
“Honestly? I was going to quit Tumblr before I met you. Like, the day before I met you, I was going to delete my account. It’s fun in the beginning, really fun, but then, it’s like, people get too comfortable with you. They think they can tell you anything they want, but you can’t say anything back, like you’re an actual celebrity and you’re supposed to give a crap about what your ‘fans’ think. It’s Tumblr. We’re all losers. God.” Jongin sits up.
“But then I stumbled onto your blog. I don’t even remember how I got there, but I remember thinking you were so cool. It used to make me so mad when you got anon hate. I found a way to track IP address so I could send live scorpions to their houses, but then I chickened out. A man in Rio was disappointed as hell when I backed out of that order.”
Slowly, Sehun turns around. A weird emotion bubbles in his chest. He was going to send scorpions after my hate anons? “Are you serious?”
“It wasn’t my finest moment, okay,” says Jongin, turning his face away. “I don’t really care about it now. It sucks when you get hate--”
“You get hate too,” Sehun reminds him. “And a lot. Recently, too.”
Jongin shrugs, “It’s one of those things where... if someone says shit about you, you let it go, but when they start on your friends, you just want to go Super Saiyan on them and fuck up their entire lives, you know? We’ll probably get more hate because of the pictures but... I really can’t bring myself to care this time around.” He shrugs again. “I’m too happy to care.”
“You can always send live scorpions to their houses,” Sehun chimes in, laughing when Jongin reaches for a pillow and throws it at him.
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you--”
“Hey, did you know there’s a movie about your life called ‘The Scorpion King’?”
They get high on Saturday night (again) and eat their way through the little food in Sehun’s kitchen. It’s not the best of Sehun’s ideas (that had been getting kicked out of the movie theater and out into the rain) but it is one of the few that feels this nice.
“Where’s all your food, man?” Jongin asks through a mouthful of whipped cream. “I’m starving.”
“We ate most of it for dinner,” is all Sehun says. He’s looking into an empty cereal box and wonders what would happen if he thinks about this cereal hard enough. Will the box suddenly overflow with cereal forever? Whoa, that’d be sweet. He’d never have to go shopping for cereal ever again!
“Oh!” Jongin suddenly says, standing up straight. “I have, like, the best idea ever. I know what we’re doing tonight!” He grins, all wide and pretty, and Sehun half stumbles into him.
Jongin drags him back to his room, stumbling over his clown feet, and half an hour later, they’re playing Call of Duty and yelling obscenities at each other.
“God, Sehun, you’re just--you’re such a fucking dickbag!” He makes a grab for Sehun’s game controller and swipes his hands too close to Sehun’s lap.
The touch has quite the sobering effect. Ears red, Sehun shouts, “Why don’t you quit whining already? Move out of my way if you don’t want to get hit!”
“Ugh!” Jongin throws his, well Sehun’s, controller away from him and shoves at Sehun’s shoulder. “How can a hipster be better than me at Call of Duty? This goes against the laws of the universe!”
“The hell do you know about the laws of the universe?” Sehun, sitting down, tries to shove Jongin back, but the push is so weak it makes Jongin laugh and, damn, Sehun is stunned again.
They fall into an odd wrestling match that ends with Sehun pinning Jongin to his bed and then everything is terrible. Sehun’s mother bangs on the door of his bedroom and tells him to “keep it down in there or so help me” and Sehun shushes Jongin, who’s about to explode in a fit of giggles, until she inevitably disappears. Jongin hasn’t seen her once in his stay here; Sehun never thought he’d be so lucky.
Jongin shoves him off and Sehun rolls, a bit unwillingly, until they’re lying on the bed together. Sehun’s legs dangle off the side and he feels like he’s going to fall off so he doesn’t move. Jongin stretches his arms up, content little moans leaving his mouth, and when he drops his arms to the bed again, it shakes.
“You know, Sehun,” he starts, turning his head a little. “I thought you would be like one of those popular kids in school who think they’re hot shit and all when they’re really lukewarm shit at best but you’re really...awesome. Like awesome enough for me to wish I didn’t live six hours and one very uncomfortable bus ride away because if I’m Batman, you’re definitely Robin. Or Catwoman.” He pauses and then sits up a little, his eyes now on Sehun’s face. “Well, maybe not Catwoman...”
Sehun’s head is spinning. “I’m not even sure what you just said.” He looks up and Jongin is looking down at him, almost hovering over his face. Oh. Sehun doesn’t remember how they had gotten onto the bed in the first place.
“Ha, me either,” Jongin shrugs a little. He doesn’t move away. He’s so close, too close, and Sehun knows that if he hadn’t thought about it he would have already had Jongin’s shirt twisted in his hands and Jongin’s tongue in his mouth a whole five hours ago.
Either this thing between them has always been here or the pot had been laced with something intense because, as much as he wants to believe this is real and could be happening, this could also be a very painful hallucination. If it is a hallucination, then there will be no consequences to Sehun pulling Jongin down for a kiss, but if it isn’t.... if this is real...
Then Jongin leans closer, as if contemplating. Sehun feels his breath on his cheek and his fingers itch to hold Jongin’s sides, but he can’t. This. He’s not sure what this is or what’s happening. “Jongin,” he mutters, lips barely moving. He wants, he wants more than he has possibly ever wanted anything or anyone, but Sehun has had so little instances of achieving his wants that he doesn’t believe this can happen.
He doesn’t trust the image of Jongin’s face so close to his or the creak of his bed as Jongin shrugs again and says, “I don’t know.”
I don’t know.
And then they’re kissing. It starts off slowly, partially because Sehun can’t believe this is finally happening and partially because Jongin has frozen, but then, at the touch of Sehun’s tongue swiping across his lips, Jongin’s body thaws and he curls down on Sehun, fitting their bodies together.
“Oh god,” he whispers in between their kisses. “Are we making out? Is this okay?”
Jongin’s body is touching him from knee to chest, Sehun has never felt so lucky. “It’s more than okay,” he replies, his hands on the back of Jongin’s neck, pulling him closer, closer. He isn’t close enough.
Jongin loses his balance and falls on Sehun’s chest, breaking their kiss, and then he’s laughing, squirming up Sehun’s chest. “I know this isn’t the time for a cheesy confession--” Jongin pulls Sehun into a kiss again, teasing him with his tongue. “But I really do think you’re awesome and I want us to--”
Sehun’s chest against Jongin’s chest. His heart is beating so fast he thinks it’s going to break out and run away from him. “Want us to?” The inside of Jongin’s mouth is just as soft as he had imagined, Jongin’s hands feel as good as they look.
“Can we date?” whispers Jongin, breaking their kiss again. “We live six hours away and that sucks, but I think about you all the time, your Tumblr is the first one I go on every day, and this has one of been the best weekends I’ve ever had. I like you, I’m not... I’m not fooling myself when I think you like me too, right?” He softly knocks their foreheads together, cupping Sehun’s jaw.
There’s nowhere for Sehun to run. “I like you,” says Sehun. “I like you and your dance videos and your nerdy, fanboy references I never understand--”
“You are the Faye Valentine to my Spike Spiegel--”
Sehun rolls his eyes and kisses the side of Jongin’s mouth. “Like that one.”
“Seriously?” Jongin’s eyes widen. “You don’t know Cowboy Bebop? No boyfriend of mine is not going to know Cowboy Bebop. We’ll watch it tomorrow.”
“You’re going home tomorrow.” Sehun has been keeping track. “Besides, who says I’m your boyfriend anyway? I don’t remember agreeing to anything.”
Jongin stares at him, “Haven’t I embarrassed myself enough? I cooked you dinner. I let you beat me at CoD. I took you out on a date--”
“That wasn’t a date,” says Sehun. He smiles, is embarrassed that he’s smiling, and kisses Jongin again to distract him.
“I am going home tomorrow,” says Jongin in between their lazy kisses. “But we should, um, do this again. Another weekend. You can come up and visit me, and we can... watch horror movies, get high, and make out over and over again.”
“You’ll get tired of doing the same things all the time--”
“Okay,” Jongin nods. “I might get tired of horror movies and getting high, but kissing you?” He then closes his mouth and flushes so hard Sehun can feel it on his own skin. “So embarrassing,” Jongin mutters, cheeks glowing bright red.
Sehun kisses each of them in turn so they can stew in their embarrassment together.
Jongin doesn’t want to sleep. “I don’t want to go home,” he says, clicking away at his laptop.
Sehun’s head is in his lap and he’s exhausted. Jongin’s fingers comb through his hair and it’s making him sleepier and sleepier, but he doesn’t want Jongin to stop. He doesn’t want to fall asleep either. Jongin is going home in the morning and all Sehun will have to remember him are the hickeys on his neck and chest, and the one on his lower belly. That had been one he hadn’t expected Jongin to give him mutual blowjobs later--
“Ugh,” Jongin had said, making a face as he tasted his own mouth. “Your diet needs work, man.”
“Your cum doesn’t exactly taste like lollipops, jerk,” and then Jongin had kissed him because he “wanted a taste.”
That had been around eleven PM. Now, Sehun doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t want to know. If he could stay here forever, with Jongin on Tumblr and Jongin playing with his hair, and Jongin wearing his shirt and his head in Jongin’s lap, that would be perfect.
The sudden flash of a camera makes him wince and glare up. “What are you doing?”
“I need a private collection of boyfriend pictures,” says Jongin, as if that’s a thing people actually have.
Sehun grumbles, “Sounds like you want my nudes.”
Jongin laughs in that nervous, cute way he does. “Well, if you’re offering--”
Sehun rolls over to look up at him, eyes sleepy. “Okay, but I want some of yours too. No Tumblr.”
“Hell no,” says Jongin. “I’m not sharing you with anyone. What’s Tumblr, anyway? Sounds like a thing you put hot coffee in.”
Smiling to himself, Sehun drops his head back down. Jongin’s hand resumes its stroking, his camera resumes its flashing, and Sehun doesn’t mind. He falls asleep before he even knows it.
The next morning at the train station is tense. Jongin is dressed in the outfit he came in, except now he’s wearing Sehun’s shark tooth necklace and he can’t stop touching it.
“Phone calls are--” he’s saying, making a face.
“No one calls each other anymore,” says Sehun, digging his hands into his high school sweatshirt. “We can video chat.”
“We have to stream Cowboy Bebop,” Jongin says with conviction. “We are. We’re watching it.”
“And then we have to watch--”
“The Walking Dead, yeah, I know.” Jongin smiles.
The distant rumble of the oncoming train pulls Sehun’s attention away from him. “It’s coming.”
“Yeah,” says Jongin, softer. He steps closer to Sehun and Sehun looks up at him. Jongin makes no move to kiss him. They stare at each other, Jongin half-smiling and Sehun devoid of emotion, and then, just as the train is pulling into the station, Jongin kisses him. He stabs Sehun in the forehead with the bill of his cap; Sehun grunts as he spins the bill around and pulls Jongin a bit closer--
That’s when Jongin drops his arms. The train is here. “See you around,” he says, a pretty, red color high in his cheeks.
“See you,” Sehun replies. The world suddenly moves at a sluggish pace. He watches, painfully, as Jongin steps into the train, takes a seat by the window, and smiles at Sehun from other side of the window. Sehun watches the train until it disappears and tries not to think anything cliche like “my heart is on that train” or “how do I live now?”
When he gets home, he has a new fanmail from Jongin.
bboyjkr.tumblr.com/tagged/you
If Sehun’s selca of the day is extra pink faced, no one on his dashboard mentions it. What does come to their attention is --
Anonymous asked you: whoa what happened to ur neck? :o
Anonymous asked you: IS THAT A HICKEY?!!?!
Anonymous asked you: wth is on your neck
bboyjkr asked you: i see my hickey hehehehe
-- and Sehun vows to never take errant selcas without checking the condition of his neck ever again.
Jongin/Sehun
PG-13
10K
Tumblr!AU: Tumblr famous ulzzang Sehun and b-boy Jongin meet.
Warning for drug use (marijuana), mentions of other drugs, and one homophobic slur used in an ask message. Written for a collab with leader hyung's favorite dongsaeng ♥
Anonymous asked you: Wait your gay??????
Anonymous asked you: Ur so good looking :(
bands2makeherdancee asked you: Follow back pls!?
Sehun sighs and presses the tiny x over each anon message. He should study for his physics test tomorrow, but World’s Wildest Home Movies is almost on and he promised Jongin he'd stream it with him.
jus a sec! is the last message Jongin had left in his ask box. He probably had to take his sister's dog for a walk or something. That’s usually what he’s doing around this time of day.
There isn’t much Sehun does as he waits. He clicks over to his dashboard a few times, hoping to reblog something of interest, but nothing catches his eye. He’s still getting notes for his recent selfie, with the occasional, all capslock WHO IS HE, and when he refreshes his dashboard for the third time in two minutes, more spam messages pop up.
twerkingstylle asked you: SEHUN!!!
Anonymous asked you: Where do u buy ur clothes? ;3
Anonymous asked you: how old are you?
It’s really enough to make Sehun want to make another FAQ but “faqs r so pretentious.” That’s what Jongin had said while they were playing WoW one night and then Sehun had quietly deleted the post he had been collecting questions for his FAQ.
Playing with his shark tooth necklace, he privately answers all the ones he can and thinks about deleting the rest of them. The redundancy of most of the questions bug him and lately he’s been thinking about disabling anon all together, but Jongin has a habit of spamming him with anon messages after he’s taken a trip to through his brother-in-law’s alcohol cabinet and that's too fun to miss.
Sehun is actually about to die of boredom and open his physics textbook so he can begrudgingly get some work done when his instant messaging client pops up and Jongin is yelling at him.
THE DOG ALMOST RAN AWAY FROM ME IT WAS TERRIBLE FUCKING ANIMAL
Sehun laughs and sends back a “that’s what you get for threatening to kick it the other day.” Jongin launches into an in depth play-by-play of his evening, including the part where his older sister’s Doberman almost jumped the fence and snapped at a neighbor’s tiny “fluffball”
“I hate animals, man,” Jongin is still saying an hour later, interrupting a scene on WWHM where the father of an American family gets whacked in the nuts and falls into his own pool. He still laughs so Sehun guesses he’s paying attention.
Sehun isn’t, not really.
It’s fine, though. He doesn’t really like this show, but Jongin does. Jongin makes most of their streaming decisions; Sehun only comes along for the ride. Watching imbeciles record their humiliations is a bit funny, but even funnier is the dip in Sehun’s stomach when Jongin gets too close to his laptop camera and it feels like he’s close enough to touch.
He feels like this every time they webcam, but recently he’s been feeling it a little more. Jongin is distracting in his white tank top. It’s dark in his room and the monitor light is bright on his face, highlighting his cheekbones and his pretty lips. Recently dyed inky black hair casually falls onto his forehead, soft and curling a little at the ends, and every time Jongin laughs, teeth white against the darkness surrounding his haloed laptop, something inside of Sehun tightens and simmers.
The feeling is a little stronger than what he had felt when he had accidentally clicked his way into a porn manga site and seen lithe drawings with strong hands touching each other. When they’re talking like this, it’s hard for Sehun to remember they don’t actually know each other.
Jongin’s collarbones and his happy eyes and the way his little drawl curls around his words all make Sehun's tummy bubble with nerves. It’s enough to make him space out for a few minutes, staring straight ahead, and imaging how it would feel to have Jongin next to him, so close their elbows touch.
“Sehun?” Jongin grumbles. He’s tapping on his screen as if it were Sehun’s bedroom door. “Hello? Earth to Pretty Boy. Come in, Pretty Boy.”
In another clip from WWHM, a teenager on a swing has jumped off and fallen into a gigantic mud pit. Only her legs are still up in the air. The laugh track plays. “Oh, she’s such a dirty girl!” says the host, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Are you falling asleep on me?”
“Nah,” Sehun shakes his head. His ears are warm. “Just got a distracted a little. I’ve been thinking too much lately, it’s really starting to be a pain in the ass.”
“Ah,” says Jongin. “Is this about school? Because I really can’t help you there.” He pauses and then hums. “Unless someone is giving you shit, then I can help you by kicking their asses.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Sehun drops his head on his crossed arms. The surface of his desk is cool against his warm face. Oddly colored images of how Jongin’s arms look in his sleeveless shirt cling to the backs of his eyelids.
There’s a beat of silence, a familiar one in its awkwardness, and when Jongin speaks again, his voice is a little louder than a whisper. “This... This isn’t a busy weekend, right? You still want me to come over on Friday, right?”
“Yeah, I do,” and Sehun means it.
Jongin is coming over on Friday. Jongin, taking a bus for six hours from SoCal all the way to San Francisco to sleep on Sehun’s floor for the weekend. They’re not only meeting for the first time in person, but they’ll be living together for a few days. After Jongin had randomly brought up the idea, and it had been too tempting to ignore, Sehun had agreed to meeting him in person.
The day is almost here and there’s a tightening in Sehun’s belly, a nervous gush of energy to his arms and legs, and he wants to hide his face in his hands, because he shouldn’t feel like this. We’re friends, Sehun thinks. Jongin knows things Sehun has told anyone else, and yet it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
This person, who lives hours away, who Sehun has spent hours talking to and laughing with, will soon be realer than he has ever been. Sehun is nauseated.
On the other end of the stream, Jongin messes with his hair, fluffing it up with his fingers. “Cool. I thought you were going to spazz out on me and then I would have to find somewhere else to stay for the weekend. Like a hostel. Hey, have you ever seen the horror movie Hostel? We should watch it.”
Sehun rolls his eyes. “When we watched Insidious--”
“Don’t talk about that movie!” Jongin half yelps, dropping his hands from his hair and shoving himself away from his laptop. He almost disappears from view. “I thought we agreed to never--”
“Since you almost pissed yourself when we streamed it, I don’t see why you would want to see another scary movie. I don’t want you to cry on me or anything.” Watching a movie with Jongin the dark. Their sides pressed together. Jongin starting at every little lump. Jongin hiding his face in his too long sweaters. Jongin, close. “Chicken.”
“Sounds like you’re the one too chicken shit to watch it with me,” says Jongin as he rolls himself back to the screen. “Insidious...was a special case, okay. I didn’t know it was going to be so...” He grabs his own neck and spasms, breathing heavily.
Sehun stares, lips parted. He’s still not immune of Jongin’s physical gags.
Neither is Jongin. He breaks out into a laugh, dark color flooding his face, and hides a little behind his hands, muttering “how embarrassing” and “I’ll be right back.”
It’s late. There’s homework to be done. Sehun has school in the morning. He shouldn’t find this charming; he shouldn’t wait for Jongin to get over his own embarrassment and come back. He’s done this a lot, Sehun notices when Jongin’s been away for a few minutes. He had never known Jongin could be so frazzled until they started webchatting and then figured Jongin embarrasses himself more than anyone else does. It’s cute in ways Sehun isn’t too comfortable thinking about.
caliswaggie asked you: why won’t you reply to me? :(
Anonymous asked you: Where are you from?
cardcaptorlisa asked you: where can i by that snapback????? pls help;!?
3.04am. Jongin has his chin in his arms, eyes closed. Sehun thinks he’s finally, finally, fallen asleep, and right when he’s about to pull away for the night, Jongin stirs and picks up his head again.
“Whaddaya wanna watch?” He leans forward, so close to his webcam Sehun can see the pinkness of his eyes. Exhaustion clings to every line of Jongin’s face, but he doesn’t want to sleep. He doesn’t ever want to sleep.
And Sehun, foolish Sehun, doesn’t want to leave him alone. The longer he stays up, the less sense it makes. Jongin won’t die if Sehun goes to bed. Nothing will happen to him. He’ll stay up as long as he always does and Sehun will wake up to incoherent asks.
“There’s a rerun of Ridiculousness on,” Jongin squints at his screen. “Wanna watch that?”
Sehun’s head feels too heavy for his body. “Sure,” he says. His ass hurts from sitting too long.
Jongin looks at him and for a second, Sehun thinks he’s going to say something or tease him for his droopy eyes again, but Jongin seems to think better of it. The stream buffers for a few seconds and then a familiar warning pops up.
Sehun’s eyes are too heavy for him to make out the actual words. Clips play and he feels nothing but the oppressive push of sleep hanging from his shoulders. Through his earphones, he hears Jongin’s soft, tired laughter.
He smiles.
It’s not the first time Sehun has fallen asleep at his desk, but it is the first time he wakes up to their webchat still in session. Jongin’s room is dimly lit but Sehun can make out his shape lying down on his bed, his hood pulled up over his hair. Even with his messily styled hair in his face, Sehun can make out the curves of his lips and the roundness of his left cheek.
Jongin had taken his laptop to bed with him when Sehun had fallen asleep.
bboyjkr asked you: you fell asleep on me haha you lookd like a cat
Anonymous asked you: Are you single? If not, who is your boyfriend/girlfriend?
bboyjkr asked you: yo ma bus leaves at 2 on fri
bboyjkr asked you: no it’s 6 hrs. fun rite?
bboyjkr asked you: i aint bringing you shit lol i’m bringing u me that’s all u need
On Thursday, Jongin posts a new dance video. It’s set to Justin Timberlake’s “Suit and Tie” and Sehun only knows he’s posted it because his dash is suddenly flooded with Jongin answering messages containing “OH MY OVARIESSSSSS.” Whatever that means.
Jongin answers all kind messages with “aw thx ;)” and goes over his technique with a few of the more curious anons. When an anon points out his turns aren’t as crisp as they should be (and when Sehun rolls his eyes because of course someone always thinks they can do better), Jongin takes it all in stride. “haha rly? ill see if i can make them better nxt time. thx!”
Instead of entertaining his English homework, Sehun clicks the link to Jongin’s YouTube channel and watches his latest video. The top comments, as always, deal with someone wanting to fuck him or complimenting his face and/or body, and that’s all fine with Sehun because, hey, if you’re good looking, you might as well hear it, right?
"I'm trying out this new dance style and I need you to tell me if it sucks."
"I don't know anything about dancing,” says Sehun, opening his English book. Maybe if he stares at the inside cover long enough he’ll absorb what’s written inside.
“But you know what sucks and what doesn’t, and that’s good enough for me.”
After some shuffling and shifting his laptop camera angle, Jongin stands in the middle of his brightly lit bedroom, dressed in what Sehun calls his “dance pants.” He wears the same gray sweats with the hole in the knee in almost every dance video and he won’t throw them out, no matter how many times anons point out they’re falling apart.
The dancing isn’t as funny as the time Sehun dared him to record himself dancing to Beyonce’s “Love on Top,” but it, as always, is entertaining to watch. Jongin moves effortlessly, as if music’s invisible hands direct his movements and he’s only going along for the ride. As if he has the music inside of him, the beat is his own heart, the harmony and melody sing through his veins and muscles. He’s not a person, he doesn’t have feelings or thoughts -- he’s only an extension of the music. He’s a wave bowing to the moon.
Sehun has never studied dance so he doesn’t know anything about technique or form, but he knows Jongin dances well. He’s about to tell him as Jongin walks up to his laptop when--
“So? How was it?” Jongin is panting. He tugs the bottom of his shirt up to wipe his forehead and Sehun loses his perception of time.
A blurry glance at his nipples. Smooth, sweaty skin, and there’s so much of it and it all looks so tantalizing. Classic California tan. Calvin Klein boxers.
By now, Sehun knows Jongin’s face -- his eyes, his nose, his lips -- and his shoulders, his collarbones, and his arms, but sometimes he forgets about the rest of Jongin’s body. Out of sight, out of mind. Now it’s in sight and all he can think about.
Jongin probably looks fantastic naked.
(And that’s not something Sehun wants to think about his friend.)
“If you were one of Snow White’s dwarves, you would be Spacey. Seriously.” Jongin pretends to knock on Sehun’s forehead. “I’m gonna shower. Be back in a little bit.”
Jongin in the shower. Bad. So bad. Worse than the fantasy of an old upperclassman sucking him off in the locker room. Worse than the night Sehun found links to a porn star who looks suspiciously like Jongin, who even sounds like Jongin, and even if he had felt guilty touching himself, another part of him had reveled at the thought of Jongin under him, Jongin moaning.
Sehun drops his forehead onto his desk and hits himself a few times. His head hurts, he’s half hard, and he’s still thinking about Jongin in the shower.
He decides, then, that knowing people is dangerous and risky but knowing avatars isn’t.
Avatars are mirages of people and mirages are cool. They have perfectly timed jokes, know how to take selfies from good angles, and are down with the latest Lil Wayne song. They’re everything you want them to be; they’re everything you want to hear.
Regular everyday people aren’t cool.
Jongin’s shower gives Sehun a little time to work on his English assignment. He’s a little more than halfway through his The Great Gatsby reading for the night when Jongin plops down on his chair.
Sehun doesn’t look up. He knows what Jongin tends to look like after his shower, but he won’t think about it. At best, he’s wearing a tank. At worst, he’s half naked and Sehun will have to excuse himself and maybe try not to suffocate later on his pillow.
It’s hard to maintain a normal semblance of friendship when his attraction is this strong and it’ll only get worse. If he reacts like this when Jongin is miles away, what will happen when he’s actually in Sehun’s room and there’s nowhere for Sehun to run?
Well, he guesses he could always stuff himself in his closet, but he’s sure Jongin would follow him in there just to be a dick.
“Don’t you have homework to do?” says Sehun, eyes on his book.
“Did it already. It was so--”
“Jongin!” It’s Jongin’s sister.
The Great Gatsby falls a little down Sehun’s face.
Jongin sits up and looks behind him, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Come here!”
“She better not be giving birth right now,” Jongin grumbles and stands up. “Be back in a bit again. Sorry for leaving you hanging like this.” He’s wearing the thinnest tank top Sehun has ever seen. His nipples stand out dark against the white fabric.
Sehun is reminded of the familiar “the Lord is testing me” response gif he’s seen on his dash a few times.
Jongin scrambles away again and Sehun finishes his English reading, along with a typed up response to the passage. On Tumblr, one of his old selfies is going around again and Sehun distracts himself from new inbox messages by checking out the trailer of Quentin Tarantino’s latest flick. It looks good in a Tarantino sort of way with its gratuitous ass kicking and fancy effects, not to mention Scarlett Johansson is the lead and it’s hard to go wrong with Scarlett Johansson. He sends Jongin the link through fanmail and then, after eating some bites of jerky, starts on his Physics homework.
It’s boring but not too complicated, and Jongin returns just as Sehun is working out the spring constant for the last problem.
“Pregnant sisters, man,” he says as he sits. “Everything is too hot or too cold or too salty or not salty enough. This is going to be the most demanding child in the history for the world.” He clicks around on his trackpad. “What’d you send me anyway?”
“Movie trailer.” Sehun turns his laptop so that the camera is pointed at his face again. Jongin has picked up an earphone and stares at his screen, eyes narrowed. “We can watch it when you’re here or whatever.”
It’s not a date. Jongin likes watching movies. Friends watch movies together all the time. After Jongin has pissed his pants watching Hostel, he’ll want a distraction. They can go to the theater and have the classic movie theater experience with too buttery popcorn, giant “gulps” of soda, and long boxes of candy.
“Cool. I’d watch it. You making a schedule for our weekend or something?” He grins, as if he wants to say Sehun is “cute” and Sehun wants to punch him.
“Nope,” he shakes his head. “We’re going to do homework and cloud watch all weekend.”
“Liar,” says Jongin. “Come on, what do you usually do? Or are you just too cool to tell me?”
Sehun thinks about how annoying it is to mop the floor of the fast food joint after a toddler has spilled sticky soda all over it and how he feels when coach tells him he’s not working hard enough. He thinks about cleaning up his mother’s puke or holding her hair back as she blows chunks onto her own chest.
Images, distant images, of playing in his grandparents’ backyard and chasing little sparrows and trying to fly away with them because, at least with them, then he’d have a momma bird who cared, right?
But, in the end, it all comes back to staring at his computer screen at the day and basking in the attention of avatars, multicolored celebrity avatars, gray avatars, Jongin’s skateboard avatar and Jongin’s voice in his ear, whispering goodnight.
“Oh I’m definitely too cool to tell you,” says Sehun, forcing himself to finish plugging in the numbers for his last homework problem.
Jongin laughs, spinning a little in his chair. “I see how it is.”
Do you? Sehun bites his lip.
“Gonna try to sleep early tonight so I’m not dead when you pick me up from the station tomorrow.”
And no matter how many times Jongin says it, Sehun still finds it hard to believe they’re finally meeting. In person. Not “in computer” or however else they’re communicating has been defined.
Now, Jongin doesn’t only exist as an avatar on a social networking platform. He’s not a random “someone” in a tiny corner of the internet Sehun can ignore without repercussions; he’s not a person who only exists when Sehun sees him on his dashboard, answering messages or reblogging from his favorite soft porn sites.
Now, he has a place in Sehun’s mobile contacts and in all of Sehun’s inboxes, and Jongin’s Tumblr is one of the first Tumblrs Sehun visits when he wakes up. He knows what Jongin sounds like when he speaks, he’s seen pictures of his house, his family, his annoying dog, the scar he has on the back of his leg from when he fell off his skateboard in sixth grade. He knows what Jongin sounds like when he’s sick and congested, when he’s happy and bubbling with energy, and when he’s tired and lonely, and he wants to fall asleep with his cell phone pressed against his ear.
Now, they’re finally going to meet, and Sehun can’t believe it. He never thought this day would come.
Anonymous asked you: n00dz?
summergirl698 asked you: I know you want to see me naked! Go to bigbootybitchesses.com and click on the profile that says ‘Miranda.’ Your login in fo is USERNAME: tyywwofj2 PASSWORD: 3492liwhgtbe. Hope to see you there sexy***
bboyjkr asked you: dont forget to pick me up
Sehun knows it’s Jongin before they’re introduced. He's the kid around Sehun’s age sitting on a bench with his legs spread wide. He’s fiddling with an iPod Touch and putting an earphone to his ear when Sehun is close enough to really looked at him. Dark jeans, dark sweatshirt. The top of his face is partially obscured by a Dodgers cap and old acne scars linger around the curve of his jaw and chin. A giant black Northface backpack stands between his legs and, right on the backpack, is a blue Digimon pin.
It’s weird because... this is Jongin. The barriers between them have been erased. There’s no ask button, no inbox, no ‘bboyjkr liked your photo,’ no having to wait by a screen for Jongin to reply to him. Jongin is real, Jongin exists. Sehun has been talking to him for months and he’s seen him talk back, but standing only a few feet away and trying to understand this is the person he’s been talking to, it’s hard to realize this is who had been on the other end of the screen all along.
Jongin isn’t a figment of Sehun’s imagination -- he’s real and he’s here.
Sehun pulls out his cellphone. He steps back as he presses his most recent contact. The chorus of Justin Timberlake’s “Suit and Tie” blasts from Jongin’s pocket and he leisurely slips it out of his pocket. Jongin pulls an earphone out and says, “Hello?”
He sounds about the same. Maybe his voice is a little deeper or maybe Sehun’s hears are finally hearing him without the use of his computer speakers, but his drawl is still there.
“Hello? Sehun? You there?”
His voice. Sehun doesn’t respond; he hangs up.
Jongin frowns at his phone and clicks on its screen, dialing back.
Then Sehun steps up to him, a torturous rumbling in his belly, and he says, “Hey. Jongin, right?”
Jongin looks up, tipping his head back to see under his cap bill. “Sehun? Oh, uh, hey.”
God, what are they supposed to do now? Shake hands? Hug? They technically don’t “know” each other, but they obviously do. Three dimensional Jongin, with his broad shoulders and pretty fingernails, is a lot more visually pleasing to Sehun than his two dimensional self had been, and that’s a little frightening. He’s tall, too, when he stands up and there’s something equally charming about how he doesn’t know what to do either. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, sticks his hands into his pockets, and pulls them back out.
“Uh...” Jongin forms his hand into a fist bump and then a high five. “What’s the... proper way to do this? I’ve never actually... met someone from online before.” He looks as if he’s playing rock-paper-scissors with himself.
Sehun shrugs, smiling a little. “I haven’t either...”
With a laugh and a pretty redness spreading across his cheeks, Jongin says, “We’re so awkward.”
Sehun mock scoffs. “Speak for yourself.” He’s only a little distracted by the shape of Jongin’s bicep when he picks up his backpack and slings it over his shoulder. “This is going to sound dumb, but it’s nice to know you exist. Like, you’re real. I mean, you always were real but--”
Jongin laughs. His smile is even more disarming in person. “It’s weird that I know exactly what you mean.”
Sehun’s room feels smaller. He can’t turn to walk somewhere without almost tripping over Jongin’s long legs or bumping into his arm. When they finally settle down, Jongin is at Sehun’s desk and Sehun on his bed. They open their laptops. It seems as if they should do something or go somewhere, but Sehun is fresh out of ideas. He really should have done a little research before inviting Jongin over. They’re both on their laptops and Sehun opens Tumblr for a quick second, more out of habit than anything else.
pinkcherrisweet asked you: follow back?? :D
Anonymous asked you: are you from cali?
Anonymous asked you: do you have a personal tumblr?
He knows he’s kidding himself when he thinks Tumblr will grab his attention when bboyjkr is sitting at his desk, looking at what seem to be dance videos. Every few minutes or so, Jongin turns around to look at Sehun, only to find Sehun is already looking at him.
“What?” Jongin says after the third time he’s caught Sehun staring. “I guess I’m not what you expected, right?” He looks down at himself -- plain white tee, loose blue jeans, socks with holes in them -- and then back up to Sehun’s face.
“I don’t really know what I was expecting,” Sehun confesses, turning back to the stacks of DVDs under his bed. He can’t find his Shawn of the Dead DVD and it’s pissing him off. He can’t find Transformers either. “I was sorta just expecting you, whoever you are.”
“I kinda thought you’d be a little disappointed,” Jongin continues. “Stupid, right? But once I saw you lived up to the picture I had of you in my head, I wondered if I matched up with yours or something like that, you know?”
Sehun looks up, interested. “I do?” Transformers can wait.
“Well, yeah.” Jongin does his little half laugh thing. “Kinda quiet. Literal hypebeast. Those are the tightest pants I’ve ever seen anyone wear. You have Lil Wayne, Drake, and A$AP Rocky in your iTunes but your most played song is fun.’s ‘We are Young.’ Classic hipster.”
“I’m not a hipster.” Sehun scoffs. Gross.
“Only hipsters think they aren’t hipsters,” says Jongin, as if he’s the authority on these kinds of things. His smirk has a certain asshole-ish glint to it.
Sehun almost wants to hit him with an empty DVD case, but he doesn’t think they’re that comfortable with each other yet.
“Don’t you think it’s a little weird, though, how people get close on Tumblr?” Jongin’s picking at a hole in his jeans and Sehun is caught by the bob of his Adam’s apple. He wants to kiss him there. “We see pieces of each other. Mostly the good pieces, but never the whole. I had a lot of time to think on the ride here and I think it’s really a lot like diet Coke.”
Sehun has a mental image of a tiny Jongin coming out of a soda bottle at him, waving. “Diet Coke?”
“Yeah. Diet Coke and Coke are sort of the same, right? But not really. So if you know Diet Coke, you kinda know Coke too. They’re more similar than different, but still different.” Jongin finally looks up and throws his phone beside him on the bed. “That’s why Tumblr famous guy Sehun and McDonald’s cashier Sehun have the same shitty sense of humor but you’re a lot less talkative in person.”
“Talking in person is...” Sehun tries to look for the right word. “I don’t want to say harder, because we’re talking right now, but it’s...different.” Different in that it’s harder to look at Jongin while Sehun is talking to him. Jongin’s eyes are there, dark and a bit probing, and Sehun feels naked. Exposed. Under a microscope. Screens protect against eyes. He wouldn't mind a screen right now.
“Online, you have some time before you can reply. You can take as long as you want, you can think about what you really want to say and you probably won’t end up saying the wrong thing. In person, there’s no time to think and there are more chances to fuck up.” He opens his White Chicks DVD and finds Honey instead. Christ, what did past Sehun have against putting DVDs back in their rightful cases? “I don’t know, I think there’s more control in how we act online and that’s sorta why we like it so much. We don’t want to fuck up.”
He gives up looking for Shawn of the Dead and falls down on his bed. They can look up the link for it later or something. Sehun knows he’s not going to find anything.
The tables have turned and now it’s Jongin who won’t stop looking at him, looking down at Sehun with a pensive gleam in his dark eyes. He’s picking at a dark spot under his chin, lost in thought.
Sehun tears his eyes away so fast he thinks he hears a ripping noise. “It’s still good to know you’re not a serial killer, though. Or a forty five year old WoW nerd who lives in his mom’s basement.”
“There’s nothing wrong with WoW nerds,” Jongin playfully rolls his eyes, dropping his hand from his face. He would play that game. “So what are we gonna do now?”
They could sit around on their computers all night or -- “Wanna go see the Tarantino movie?”
It’s not a date.
But Jongin pays for Sehun’s ticket (“Seriously, it’s not a big deal.” He smiles at the lady behind the glass. “Sorry, my boyfriend gets a little stubborn at times.” He takes Sehun’s open mouth to mean anger and says Sehun can pay for the popcorn, never once explaining why he called Sehun his boyfriend) and he buys Sehun an extra box of sour worms so Sehun can “take them home and remember how awesome I am.”
Sehun rolls his eyes and elbows Jongin’s gut, but it doesn’t hurt him much. Asshole.
They sit in the backrow and devour half of the popcorn before the previews are even over. Jongin is struck silent by the preview for Avengers 3 and his little Iron Man fanboy heart almost breaks in half when the final scene shows Iron Man exploding into nothingness.
“What the fresh fuck--” His voice borders on hysterical rage.
Sehun stuffs his hand into the popcorn and shoves kernels into Jongin’s open mouth. His fingers brush his lips as he drops his hand back into the bucket.
“That better be a dream sequence,” Jongin huffs before he takes a sip of his soda. “They seriously can’t kill Iron Man.”
“Hasn’t everyone been killed in the comics by now anyway?” Sehun offers him a sour worm.
Jongin pulls on the worm, stretching it twice its normal length, until it breaks in half. “Sort of. There are a lot of universes involved so it depends on which universe you’re talking about.”
“It’s kinda amazing to me how much you like this stuff,” says Sehun. “You don’t really look like the type to read comics.”
“Who are the kind of people who don’t read comics?” Jongin sounds curious, not insulted.
Hot people, Sehun thinks but he doesn’t say. It’s childish enough for him to still believe television’s definition of a comic book nerd but to almost admit to Jongin’s face that he’s hot in a movie theater of all places.
“Sehun?”
Sehun chokes a little on his soda. “Just forget I said anything,” he mutters, chewing on his straw. Heat floods his face. He turns back to the big screen to see the preview for a “love of a lifetime” kind of movie playing and tunes it out in favor of Jongin’s chuckling into his hand.
“You’re so funny, Sehun,” he says in a voice that implies he thinks Sehun isn’t funny at all.
Sehun contemplates stuffing Jongin’s face with sour worms when Jongin beats him to the punch and lobs flurries of popcorn at his face. A kernel squeezes down the front of Sehun’s shirt, still warm, and Sehun elbows Jongin in the ribs again, this time making him wheeze.
“God,” Jongin coughs.
Sehun settles back in his seat. “It's ‘Sehun,’ but I think I might prefer ‘God.’”
When the movie ends, Jongin is grinning broadly. “I feel like I can rob a bank right now,” he says just as they pass by the cinema security station.
A portly security guard gives him a wary look and Sehun snorts. Jongin hides his face in the back of Sehun’s shoulder, laughing too hard to stand up straight. His breath tickles Sehun’s neck, making him flush. “I’ll try not to get us arrested,” Jongin promises when he’s regained his composure.
“You do that,” says Sehun. He feels a little pink around his ears and cheek, but luckily, the summer night is cool enough to soothe his blush.
“What now?” asks Jongin, swinging his arms as he walks.
Sehun purses his lips. “In-n-Out?”
Jongin nods, “Sounds good. And after?”
“We’ll see.”
As Sehun will later tell it, the plan had not been Get High and Talk About Life, but that’s what happens. Friday night. Jongin is sitting in the middle of Sehun’s floor and suddenly asks, “Got some weed?” And Sehun, because they’ve talked about this before, pulls out his --
“‘Box of Bad Things’?” Jongin cackles as he reads what’s written on top of the shoe box. “Seriously? Can you make it any more obvious?” Sehun would shove him but, again, he doesn’t think they’re that cool yet.
“Shut up,” he says instead, pulling off the lid. Weed, cigarettes, lighter, a fake ID, a few pills of E he doesn’t remember getting.
Jongin picks up a pill and looks at it, “Didn’t know you were so hardcore.”
“Nah, I’ve never done it,” says Sehun as he rolls a blunt. “I don’t even know how they got there. They could be my mom’s, for all I know.”
“Your mom does E?” Jongin places the pill back into the box.
Sehun coughs, “Anyway.” He lights up, takes a drag, and then passes it to Jongin. They go back and forth until it’s gone, their tongues and lips loosening the longer they smoke. Jongin talks about his pregnant sister who moved back home after she caught her husband cheating.
“She’s fucking crazy, man,” he says, leaning against Sehun’s bed. “She’s really bossy and demanding, but I really wish she wasn’t going through this alone. When she told me what he did, I wanted to kill him. Fucking cheaters.” He shakes his head. “But whatever. It’s okay. I’m never going to let him see my nephew. Never, ever, ever.”
“When’s the baby coming?” Sehun has been staring at Jongin for about half an hour now, looking down at him from his bed. Jongin is so fascinating when he talks. Weed makes him jittery, he can’t stay still, and he’s constantly either playing with his hair or pulling on his lips.
Sehun wants to pull on his lips with his own lips.
“Next month,” says Jongin. His head lolls back and he’s looking at Sehun upside down.
Sehun imagines that this is the correct orientation of his head -- that his eyes are near his nose and his eyebrows are his beard -- and starts laughing.
Jongin joins him, his forehead wrinkling cutely.
“Do you--” Sehun holds a hand over his mouth. “Do you even know what’s so funny?”
Jongin shrugs, a dopey smile on his face, “Fuck no,” and keeps laughing.
The topic of family doesn’t come up again. Instead, Jongin asks Sehun about his dreams, his aspirations.
“I don’t really have any,” says Sehun, looking up at the ceiling. “That’s bad, right? I just. I don’t know what I want to do, I don’t have a favorite topic in school. I don’t know what college I want to go to, either. I’m kinda just...cruising, I guess.”
Jongin has joined him on the bed and he’s fiddling with his phone. “Nah, I get it. I don’t really know what I want to do. I was thinking about majoring in dance but--”
“Your parents,” interrupts Sehun.
“Yeah,” Jongin whispers. “My fucking parents. ‘It’s not practical, Jongin.’ ‘What kind of career can you have if you major in dance, Jongin?’ ‘Why can’t you be a doctor like Taemin?’”
The name is familiar. “Taemin?”
“Best friend,” says Jongin. He holds his phone over his head, opens his gallery app, and goes through his pictures. Most of them are solo selcas, but a few of them have another boy with styled dark brown hair and a wide smile. He looks like he could be Jongin’s brother. In all of the pictures of them together, they’re sitting closely, their shoulders or thighs pressed together, and it makes Sehun’s stomach dip. Suddenly, he has to know.
“Um, is he your--”
“What? Oh. No. He’s.” Jongin bites his lip and pulls his phone back. “He’s not... like that. We’re just friends.”
“Oh.” It’s not like they’ve never talked about their interests. They have. Jongin’s ideal type is somewhere between Megan Fox, Rihanna, and Justin Timberlake. He’s talk about his girlfriends and boyfriends on Tumblr, and Sehun thinks he has to scroll by one of Jongin’s “interested” anons at least once a week. But they’ve never talked about it on Sehun’s bed, with the last pulls of marijuana dying away. Sehun might already be too sober for this conversation.
“Taemin wants to meet you,” Jongin says then. His phone is on his chest, screen down. “I guess I talk about you a lot.” He laughs a little. “I haven’t realized that I do. When I told him I was coming up to meet you, he wanted to come because ‘I gotta meet the Tumblr friend you like more than me, you little shit.’” He laughs again, eyes closing.
Sehun’s stomach dips again and he squeezes his eyes shut. He suddenly feels like he’s on a rollercoaster going over the first hill; looking at Jongin is making him so dizzy.
“Hey. Sehun?”
Sehun opens his eyes. Jongin is suddenly lying right next to him, his phone over their faces.
“Something for Tumblr?” Jongin’s sleepy, high eyes and his permanently bright smile are so close, so dangerous.
But Sehun has never been one to reject a picture. “Come closer,” he says instead, pulling on Jongin’s arm until he’s almost on top of Sehun, his ass against Sehun’s crotch. “Say cheese~”
Jongin says, “Mozzarella,” and is still laughing when Sehun shoves him off his lap.
They fall asleep around two am. Jongin claims it’s “jetlag” even though he came by bus, “so it’s really buslag, I guess,” and tries to drop himself down to the floor.
Sehun grabs him, “Sleep here. It’s fine.”
His bed isn’t big enough for the two of them, but Sehun can’t bring himself to let Jongin sleep on the floor.
“Are you sure?” Jongin mumbles, rubbing his eyes. He’s in a pair of gray sweats and a thin WWE tank. When he turns to the side, Sehun can see into his shirt -- the ridges of his abdominal muscles, the shapes of his nipples -- and it’s. All very painful for Sehun, who actually murmurs, “The Lord is testing me” when Jongin turns his back. Alert, awake Jongin who dances when he walks is attractive, but sleepy, heavy eyed Jongin who sways on his feet is terrible.
“It’s cool,” says Sehun when he’s found his tongue. Yes, words. Words mean stuff. He should use his words.
“Thanks,” Jongin smiles and then he’s crawling onto Sehun’s bed, his tank falling forward and exposing more of his chest.
Sehun rolls over and turns off the light. “Goodnight.”
Jongin is already snoring, his arms acting as his pillow.
For an hour, Sehun lies there, hyper-aware of how close their bodies are. Jongin snuffles in his sleep in between his sleepy snores, and when he shifts, sometimes moaning, Sehun crosses legs and tries to suffocate on his pillow.
In the morning, Sehun is the last one to get up. Jongin is already at his desk again, on Tumblr, from what Sehun can tell, and he must’ve made some noise, because then Jongin is turning around. He smiles when he sees Sehun, giddy, his bottom lip between his teeth. “Hey.”
Sehun smiles back, “Hey.” He sits up, rubbing a hand across his face. “You been up long?”
“Not too long,” says Jongin. His hair is wet and he’s traded his night sweats and tank for dark skinny jeans and a “Fuck JJ Abrams” tee. Spock is giving Sehun the finger. “I put our latest pic up on Tumblr. Now people want to know if we’re fucking.”
Sehun trips on his way of his bed and almost faceplants on his bedroom rug. “Um.”
Jongin is still looking at him, “What should I tell them?”
That I would love to be fucking you. “Whatever you want. How does the picture look?”
Jongin scrolls down on his dashboard, showing Jongin the picture he had taken of them in bed. Yep. It definitely looks like a bed. The phone caught Sehun mid-laugh, when Jongin had say a cheese instead of “cheese,” and Jongin is grinning so widely one eye is bigger than the other. He looks maniacal, but happy, Sehun leans over Jongin, closer to the screen. That’s his hand around Jongin’s arm, holding him. “Well?” Jongin looks up at him. His breath smells like peppermints.
Sehun’s mouth waters. “Looks... like we might be fucking, yeah.” He forces a laugh and pushes himself away from Jongin and the desk, and starts looking for clothes to take with him into the shower. “I have work today, so you might want to stay here.”
“Oh,” says Jongin, his eyes on his computer screen. He’s chewing on his bottom lip. “I’ll think about it.”
An hour later, after ignoring his half hard cock in the shower and not thinking about how Jongin had been right in this shower a couple of hours before, because jerking off to the thought of someone else jerking off seems a little excessive, Sehun leaves Jongin in his room. He has a full day of work and he’s not looking forward to any of it. But, if anything, he wants to get through it sooner, because then he’ll go home and Jongin will be there. He doesn’t have any plans for tonight, but since they’ve already seen the Tarantino flick, they could check out Hostel. Or Sinister, Sehun has been meaning to bring that one up.
He has just finished an order in which a little girl wanted a specific toy that they had run out of it and she wouldn’t leave, much to her mother’s embarrassment, until she got that toy (Sehun had finally tracked one down after throwing himself into the large box of kiddie toys in the basement and fishing one out) when he sees his next customer.
“May I take your order?”
“Yes,” says Jongin. He makes a show of looking at the menu overhead, but then, with a glint in his pretty eyes, he continues, “I’d like to have you. Are you on the menu?”
The cashier, one of Sehun’s older friends, looks over. “What...”
Sehun chokes on his laughter. “It’s okay, Gina,” he tells her and then turns back to Jongin. “Funny. What’ll it be?”
“Cheeseburger and fries, and when do you get off for lunch?” Jongin is oblivious to the strange looks he’s receiving. Gina hasn’t stopped giving him the stank eye and the man in line behind Jongin looks very uncomfortable.
“In an hour. Half an hour long lunch break.”
“Cool,” says Jongin. “I’ll be back then. I finally get to hang out with my favorite cashier.”
“Dumbass,” Sehun playfully rolls his eyes and steps away to fulfill Jongin’s orders.
Gina stops him when he’s filling up Jongin’s fountain drink, her back to the customers. “The hell was that? Are you okay? We can kick him out, you know.”
“It’s fine, really. I know him. He’s a friend.” Sehun caps the drink. “Thanks, though.”
Gina, now staring at Sehun more critically, doesn’t look convinced. “Okay,” she says after a while. “But. You know, I’m here if you need anything.”
“Thanks Gina,” he tells her. “But, really, he’s okay.”
“She looked like she wanted to kill me,” Jongin is saying later. He’s making a mess of his fries and ketchup, using the ketchup as paint and attempting to draw a Sehun portrait on his cheeseburger wrapper.
“She’s really cool,” Sehun replies. “I’ve known her for a long time. She used to babysit when I was younger, she lived down the street. She’s, um, protective, I guess.”
“Are you she’s not interested in you in a, you know, kind of way?” Jongin glances from the ketchup to Sehun’s face and then back.
“She’s engaged,” says Sehun, idly munching on apple slices. “I’m like her little brother.”
“Oh,” Jongin looks down at his cheeseburger wrapper. “I think I’m done!” He turns the wrapper around. It’s a “: |” face drawn in ketchup with hipster glasses and a skinny neck tie.
“Is that supposed to be me?”
Jongin is already pulling out his phone to take a picture. “Going on Tumblr. I didn’t know I was so artistic! I should go to art school, right?”
Sehun throws an apple slice at Jongin’s face. It hits him in the nose.
“Hey!” Jongin yells back, grinning. “I’ll get you for that.”
Sehun picks the apple slice up from the floor and then looks at his phone. He has five minutes before he has to get back to work. “Check out this movie called Sinister,” he says, before he forgets. “We should watch it tonight.”
“Sinister?” Jongin nods, looking at his phone. “Is this you finally having a plan? Or do most of your plans just involve movies and then finding other shit to do?”
“It’s more of the second one,” Sehun concedes. Jongin has a wet spot on the tip of his nose where the apple hit him. He hasn’t noticed yet.
Sehun gives Jongin his house keys and tells him to wait for him at home. “Alright,” says Jongin. “Don’t eat anything, though. You’ll see why I say that.”
So Sehun doesn’t. He’s starving by the time he rings the doorbell and hopes his mother isn’t home. She isn’t (but, then again, is she ever?) but Jongin is. Jongin is also in an apron. “Welcome to Kim Jongin’s Italian restaurant!” he says, holding up a pasta drainer.
Sehun tries to see over Jongin’s shoulder to the kitchen. “You didn’t--”
“But I did,” says Jongin. “I mean, I’m not the best cook and I can only make, like, three things, but luckily for you, I made you all three of those things!”
The three things are spaghetti, string beans, and fried rice. “I know they don’t exactly... match,” Jongin looks down at the table he set. “But, it’s food, right?” He laughs, a little nervously, and Sehun wants to punch himself in his own face. He’s not sure how much more he can take of Kim Jongin and his smiles. They go through all of the food together and then, right when Sehun is battling his last squeaky string bean, Jongin asks, “Where’s your mom?”
Sehun pauses and then exhales. “Probably with her boyfriend, I guess. My dad left when I was a kid and she’s never really... gotten over it.” This is his least favorite topic. This is his least favorite topic. “I don’t really...” Talk about this. “I think she’s getting better.” So far this year, Sehun hasn’t had to call poison control. Things are... looking up. Sort of. “I’m--”
“Sehun,” says Jongin. He looks serious. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I asked--”
“No,” replies Sehun. “No, it’s just... she...” His mouth tastes like tar. He puts his fork down. “It’s hard,” he says, finally, and his shoulders sag. “It’s really fucking hard.”
Sehun thinks he’s going to cry and he’s such a fucking embarrassment, then Jongin’s hand touches his across the table and Jongin is out of his seat, pulling Sehun into his arms. It’s stupid because something like this shouldn’t make Sehun feel like he’s going to cry more, but he does and it sucks and it hurts. He doesn’t remember the last time he hugged someone like this.
Jongin smells like tomato sauce and cooking oil, and he’s the perfect height, their shoulders fit together and, pressed against his body like this, Sehun feels like he’s drowning.
Tumblr user bboyjkr has made Sehun feel warm and comforted before, but Kim Jongin in person, who is still fucking apologizing like it’s his fault Sehun’s mom is never around, is more than Sehun could have ever asked for. It feels like Jongin had been made for him and Sehun knows that it’s silly, and that he’s letting his infatuation getting out of hand, but he buries his face in Jongin’s shoulder and allows himself to pretend. Jongin holds him for a long time and when Sehun finally pulls away, he’s not the only one with wet eyes.
“The fuck are you crying about,” Sehun pushes at Jongin’s chest and forces a laugh.
Jongin says nothing and sniffles.
They need to break this gloomy atmosphere, so Sehun suggests they watch the movie now “before it’s too dark and you shit your pants.”
Jongin playfully rolls his eyes, “Like that’s going to happen.”
Sehun is pleased to discover Jongin watches movies in person the same way he does during a livestream: very animatedly. He jumps and he swears, he partially hides behind Sehun’s shoulder and chastises the protagonist for “being a fucking dumbass, stop watching those fucking tapes!”
During the last ten minutes of the movie, he’s sitting directly behind Sehun, his chin on Sehun’s shoulder, and he’s muttering, “No, no, no, no.” Sehun feels his jump, his fingernails digging into Sehun’s arms, when the movie ends and the ghoul’s face flashes across Sehun’s screen for the last time. Then Jongin is quiet.
“I think...” he says after a while. “I think I need to go lie down now.”
Sehun laughs as he minimizes the screen. While Jongin is spread out on his bed, Sehun checks Tumblr for the first time that day (a personal record) and he sees he’s flooded with messages.
Anonymous asked you: is that really you in bboyjkr’s picture??????
Anonymous asked you: I didn’t knew you know bboyjkr irl
jcolesmamichula asked you: I KNEW YOU WERE DATING I KNEW IT
Anonymous asked you: wash ur ass u fag
Anonymous asked you: i thought u said u were single :’(
Anonymous asked you: CONGRATULATIONS :D
fuckmeshia asked you: he’s in your lap???? what???? ??? how????
Anonymous asked you: GAY BOY
“Oh boy,” he says, squinting at his inbox. “Jongin, you don’t know what you’ve done.”
Jongin snorts. “Maybe now some people will stop trying to send me their nudes.”
Sehun gives his inbox a once over, decides it’s not even worth answering any of the questions, and opens a new tab for Facebook. “You ever get tired of Tumblr?”
“Honestly? I was going to quit Tumblr before I met you. Like, the day before I met you, I was going to delete my account. It’s fun in the beginning, really fun, but then, it’s like, people get too comfortable with you. They think they can tell you anything they want, but you can’t say anything back, like you’re an actual celebrity and you’re supposed to give a crap about what your ‘fans’ think. It’s Tumblr. We’re all losers. God.” Jongin sits up.
“But then I stumbled onto your blog. I don’t even remember how I got there, but I remember thinking you were so cool. It used to make me so mad when you got anon hate. I found a way to track IP address so I could send live scorpions to their houses, but then I chickened out. A man in Rio was disappointed as hell when I backed out of that order.”
Slowly, Sehun turns around. A weird emotion bubbles in his chest. He was going to send scorpions after my hate anons? “Are you serious?”
“It wasn’t my finest moment, okay,” says Jongin, turning his face away. “I don’t really care about it now. It sucks when you get hate--”
“You get hate too,” Sehun reminds him. “And a lot. Recently, too.”
Jongin shrugs, “It’s one of those things where... if someone says shit about you, you let it go, but when they start on your friends, you just want to go Super Saiyan on them and fuck up their entire lives, you know? We’ll probably get more hate because of the pictures but... I really can’t bring myself to care this time around.” He shrugs again. “I’m too happy to care.”
“You can always send live scorpions to their houses,” Sehun chimes in, laughing when Jongin reaches for a pillow and throws it at him.
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you--”
“Hey, did you know there’s a movie about your life called ‘The Scorpion King’?”
They get high on Saturday night (again) and eat their way through the little food in Sehun’s kitchen. It’s not the best of Sehun’s ideas (that had been getting kicked out of the movie theater and out into the rain) but it is one of the few that feels this nice.
“Where’s all your food, man?” Jongin asks through a mouthful of whipped cream. “I’m starving.”
“We ate most of it for dinner,” is all Sehun says. He’s looking into an empty cereal box and wonders what would happen if he thinks about this cereal hard enough. Will the box suddenly overflow with cereal forever? Whoa, that’d be sweet. He’d never have to go shopping for cereal ever again!
“Oh!” Jongin suddenly says, standing up straight. “I have, like, the best idea ever. I know what we’re doing tonight!” He grins, all wide and pretty, and Sehun half stumbles into him.
Jongin drags him back to his room, stumbling over his clown feet, and half an hour later, they’re playing Call of Duty and yelling obscenities at each other.
“God, Sehun, you’re just--you’re such a fucking dickbag!” He makes a grab for Sehun’s game controller and swipes his hands too close to Sehun’s lap.
The touch has quite the sobering effect. Ears red, Sehun shouts, “Why don’t you quit whining already? Move out of my way if you don’t want to get hit!”
“Ugh!” Jongin throws his, well Sehun’s, controller away from him and shoves at Sehun’s shoulder. “How can a hipster be better than me at Call of Duty? This goes against the laws of the universe!”
“The hell do you know about the laws of the universe?” Sehun, sitting down, tries to shove Jongin back, but the push is so weak it makes Jongin laugh and, damn, Sehun is stunned again.
They fall into an odd wrestling match that ends with Sehun pinning Jongin to his bed and then everything is terrible. Sehun’s mother bangs on the door of his bedroom and tells him to “keep it down in there or so help me” and Sehun shushes Jongin, who’s about to explode in a fit of giggles, until she inevitably disappears. Jongin hasn’t seen her once in his stay here; Sehun never thought he’d be so lucky.
Jongin shoves him off and Sehun rolls, a bit unwillingly, until they’re lying on the bed together. Sehun’s legs dangle off the side and he feels like he’s going to fall off so he doesn’t move. Jongin stretches his arms up, content little moans leaving his mouth, and when he drops his arms to the bed again, it shakes.
“You know, Sehun,” he starts, turning his head a little. “I thought you would be like one of those popular kids in school who think they’re hot shit and all when they’re really lukewarm shit at best but you’re really...awesome. Like awesome enough for me to wish I didn’t live six hours and one very uncomfortable bus ride away because if I’m Batman, you’re definitely Robin. Or Catwoman.” He pauses and then sits up a little, his eyes now on Sehun’s face. “Well, maybe not Catwoman...”
Sehun’s head is spinning. “I’m not even sure what you just said.” He looks up and Jongin is looking down at him, almost hovering over his face. Oh. Sehun doesn’t remember how they had gotten onto the bed in the first place.
“Ha, me either,” Jongin shrugs a little. He doesn’t move away. He’s so close, too close, and Sehun knows that if he hadn’t thought about it he would have already had Jongin’s shirt twisted in his hands and Jongin’s tongue in his mouth a whole five hours ago.
Either this thing between them has always been here or the pot had been laced with something intense because, as much as he wants to believe this is real and could be happening, this could also be a very painful hallucination. If it is a hallucination, then there will be no consequences to Sehun pulling Jongin down for a kiss, but if it isn’t.... if this is real...
Then Jongin leans closer, as if contemplating. Sehun feels his breath on his cheek and his fingers itch to hold Jongin’s sides, but he can’t. This. He’s not sure what this is or what’s happening. “Jongin,” he mutters, lips barely moving. He wants, he wants more than he has possibly ever wanted anything or anyone, but Sehun has had so little instances of achieving his wants that he doesn’t believe this can happen.
He doesn’t trust the image of Jongin’s face so close to his or the creak of his bed as Jongin shrugs again and says, “I don’t know.”
I don’t know.
And then they’re kissing. It starts off slowly, partially because Sehun can’t believe this is finally happening and partially because Jongin has frozen, but then, at the touch of Sehun’s tongue swiping across his lips, Jongin’s body thaws and he curls down on Sehun, fitting their bodies together.
“Oh god,” he whispers in between their kisses. “Are we making out? Is this okay?”
Jongin’s body is touching him from knee to chest, Sehun has never felt so lucky. “It’s more than okay,” he replies, his hands on the back of Jongin’s neck, pulling him closer, closer. He isn’t close enough.
Jongin loses his balance and falls on Sehun’s chest, breaking their kiss, and then he’s laughing, squirming up Sehun’s chest. “I know this isn’t the time for a cheesy confession--” Jongin pulls Sehun into a kiss again, teasing him with his tongue. “But I really do think you’re awesome and I want us to--”
Sehun’s chest against Jongin’s chest. His heart is beating so fast he thinks it’s going to break out and run away from him. “Want us to?” The inside of Jongin’s mouth is just as soft as he had imagined, Jongin’s hands feel as good as they look.
“Can we date?” whispers Jongin, breaking their kiss again. “We live six hours away and that sucks, but I think about you all the time, your Tumblr is the first one I go on every day, and this has one of been the best weekends I’ve ever had. I like you, I’m not... I’m not fooling myself when I think you like me too, right?” He softly knocks their foreheads together, cupping Sehun’s jaw.
There’s nowhere for Sehun to run. “I like you,” says Sehun. “I like you and your dance videos and your nerdy, fanboy references I never understand--”
“You are the Faye Valentine to my Spike Spiegel--”
Sehun rolls his eyes and kisses the side of Jongin’s mouth. “Like that one.”
“Seriously?” Jongin’s eyes widen. “You don’t know Cowboy Bebop? No boyfriend of mine is not going to know Cowboy Bebop. We’ll watch it tomorrow.”
“You’re going home tomorrow.” Sehun has been keeping track. “Besides, who says I’m your boyfriend anyway? I don’t remember agreeing to anything.”
Jongin stares at him, “Haven’t I embarrassed myself enough? I cooked you dinner. I let you beat me at CoD. I took you out on a date--”
“That wasn’t a date,” says Sehun. He smiles, is embarrassed that he’s smiling, and kisses Jongin again to distract him.
“I am going home tomorrow,” says Jongin in between their lazy kisses. “But we should, um, do this again. Another weekend. You can come up and visit me, and we can... watch horror movies, get high, and make out over and over again.”
“You’ll get tired of doing the same things all the time--”
“Okay,” Jongin nods. “I might get tired of horror movies and getting high, but kissing you?” He then closes his mouth and flushes so hard Sehun can feel it on his own skin. “So embarrassing,” Jongin mutters, cheeks glowing bright red.
Sehun kisses each of them in turn so they can stew in their embarrassment together.
Jongin doesn’t want to sleep. “I don’t want to go home,” he says, clicking away at his laptop.
Sehun’s head is in his lap and he’s exhausted. Jongin’s fingers comb through his hair and it’s making him sleepier and sleepier, but he doesn’t want Jongin to stop. He doesn’t want to fall asleep either. Jongin is going home in the morning and all Sehun will have to remember him are the hickeys on his neck and chest, and the one on his lower belly. That had been one he hadn’t expected Jongin to give him mutual blowjobs later--
“Ugh,” Jongin had said, making a face as he tasted his own mouth. “Your diet needs work, man.”
“Your cum doesn’t exactly taste like lollipops, jerk,” and then Jongin had kissed him because he “wanted a taste.”
That had been around eleven PM. Now, Sehun doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t want to know. If he could stay here forever, with Jongin on Tumblr and Jongin playing with his hair, and Jongin wearing his shirt and his head in Jongin’s lap, that would be perfect.
The sudden flash of a camera makes him wince and glare up. “What are you doing?”
“I need a private collection of boyfriend pictures,” says Jongin, as if that’s a thing people actually have.
Sehun grumbles, “Sounds like you want my nudes.”
Jongin laughs in that nervous, cute way he does. “Well, if you’re offering--”
Sehun rolls over to look up at him, eyes sleepy. “Okay, but I want some of yours too. No Tumblr.”
“Hell no,” says Jongin. “I’m not sharing you with anyone. What’s Tumblr, anyway? Sounds like a thing you put hot coffee in.”
Smiling to himself, Sehun drops his head back down. Jongin’s hand resumes its stroking, his camera resumes its flashing, and Sehun doesn’t mind. He falls asleep before he even knows it.
The next morning at the train station is tense. Jongin is dressed in the outfit he came in, except now he’s wearing Sehun’s shark tooth necklace and he can’t stop touching it.
“Phone calls are--” he’s saying, making a face.
“No one calls each other anymore,” says Sehun, digging his hands into his high school sweatshirt. “We can video chat.”
“We have to stream Cowboy Bebop,” Jongin says with conviction. “We are. We’re watching it.”
“And then we have to watch--”
“The Walking Dead, yeah, I know.” Jongin smiles.
The distant rumble of the oncoming train pulls Sehun’s attention away from him. “It’s coming.”
“Yeah,” says Jongin, softer. He steps closer to Sehun and Sehun looks up at him. Jongin makes no move to kiss him. They stare at each other, Jongin half-smiling and Sehun devoid of emotion, and then, just as the train is pulling into the station, Jongin kisses him. He stabs Sehun in the forehead with the bill of his cap; Sehun grunts as he spins the bill around and pulls Jongin a bit closer--
That’s when Jongin drops his arms. The train is here. “See you around,” he says, a pretty, red color high in his cheeks.
“See you,” Sehun replies. The world suddenly moves at a sluggish pace. He watches, painfully, as Jongin steps into the train, takes a seat by the window, and smiles at Sehun from other side of the window. Sehun watches the train until it disappears and tries not to think anything cliche like “my heart is on that train” or “how do I live now?”
When he gets home, he has a new fanmail from Jongin.
bboyjkr.tumblr.com/tagged/you
If Sehun’s selca of the day is extra pink faced, no one on his dashboard mentions it. What does come to their attention is --
Anonymous asked you: whoa what happened to ur neck? :o
Anonymous asked you: IS THAT A HICKEY?!!?!
Anonymous asked you: wth is on your neck
bboyjkr asked you: i see my hickey hehehehe
-- and Sehun vows to never take errant selcas without checking the condition of his neck ever again.