Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was July, and the weeks felt suspended outside of time. Weeks that seemed to begin without ever deciding to end. Hanbin had come to think of this one as such: a long, indistinct hour stretched thin across his days featured with a kind of waking blur between practice rooms, muted hallways, and the stale scent of studio air. The lights never changed there, nor anywhere in Seoul; day or night, everything shone with the same electric pallor, as if refusing to let anyone rest. Hanbin was no exception.

During one of those late hours after practice and long after the others had gone, that small epiphany came to him.

Hao hadn’t exactly been fucking around much. To be fair, he was as absorbed as Hanbin himself, both of them lost to the hours of rehearsals for KCON LA; Hanbin with Youngji on the first day, Hao with Yuqi on the day after. And since that unguarded memory where Hao had come clean about his side ventures during those weeks when Gyuvin had been staying elsewhere, and Hanbin’s eager, lingering encounter with the other, older woman Hao had once taken to bed with Hanbin watching, nothing more had happened with their sex lives. Except for the regular ones persisted out of habit: the late-night hand between legs, the kisses exchanged under the dim of light before bed, and on rarer mornings, the reliefs given to each other before the day went.

Yet, if one were to look closely, one might have only wondered what could have transpired in those margins of time with Yuqi. If one watched the way Hao sometimes checked his phone at home, long after practice, and how he hung that half-smile that tugged at his mouth whenever Hanbin asked How was the practice today with Yuqi? as he took a glass of water before bed, one could not escape pondering. One such person was Hanbin.

And Hanbin, for all his efforts not to, could not help but ask it of himself. Perhaps it wasn’t suspicion so much as curiosity turned inward. Yuqi was a little bit older than Hao and the rest of her was unstudied, matching Hao’s own manner. It seemed only natural, then, almost just as fated as them, that they should find each other in those late night practices at Cube, that they should have rehearsed not merely a stage routine but something… else. 

And perhaps it was no wonder that Hanbin began to dream of them. If ‘dream’ was even the right word. Hanbin tried to name it. Fear? No. Jealousy? Not exactly. It was more of a persistent awareness, and it was pale, like light filtering through thin curtains at dawn. In those hours before waking, one week prior to their schedule in the US, he would wake hearing their voices, indistinct, until it became impossible to tell who was touching whom, or whether the touch had ever happened at all. 

Paranoia. The company-assigned doctor had suggested as much, though Hanbin wasn’t sure he believed it. It wasn’t as if he went into the details about the filthy, half-formed images that lingered after sleep, but the doctor said he dreamed far too much about a thing yet to happen, or perhaps, he thought, in his defense, they already had. In the end, Hanbin would rather call it foreshadowing.

—

Had Hanbin registered the fact that he would be MC-ing for all three days, including both on which he and Hao would perform their respective collaborative stages? He must have, or at least he reckoned so. He had been practicing for everything, after all. But it was the irony of hindsight that the thought seemed as if only striking him now, on the second day.

Because day one had passed him in a blur. The group performed the hit Feel the Pop, and he, with Youngji, You Should See Me in a Crown. He’d done well, frankly, a little better than expected, though it left him empty, because there was neither self-doubt nor any satisfaction. And it wasn’t because he wasn’t thankful enough. He’d thanked Youngji many times, and Youngji had been just as gracious before and afterward. In one Instagram story post, she thanked the dance crew and him, in which he quoted: to the one I’m really grateful for, Hanbin-nim. There was a sort of emotional distance in the camaraderie but it wasn’t in any way ingenuine. Nonetheless, he had left it all in yesterday.

Today, though, was Hao’s day. Hao and Yuqi’s day.

And though it should have been no different from his own, there were some kinds of things that were undeniably dissimilar. Like the way their song choice, Now by Trouble Maker, had already drawn whispers from the staff. The choreography was sexy, to describe it in the very least of words. An old-fashioned kind of sexy, too, that it was unabashedly close and physical. And as much as Hanbin would like to convince himself that it was a concept of sultry duet—the way it was written on a page reviewing the song from years ago that Hanbin definitely hadn’t looked up out of nowhere—the thought had turned sticky when he’d finally glimpsed the rehearsal from the monitors. Hao’s hands were in Yuqi’s waist, and she tilted her head just slightly as though giving more access, as though offering more access. And it did. It bypassed Hanbin's mind that he was, under all his pretense of composure, dizzy and unmoored.

Now, backstage on day two, everyone was occupied with some matter of preparation they must each responsibly do. Hao stood before the mirror, fixing his mic, and Hanbin sat nearby with the cue cards balanced on his knees. The glossy lamination on the back caught his reflection, doubled and faintly warped. He looked silly, and he only looked at it long enough to avoid gazing at Hao directly, even though Hao had personally asked him to stay with him while he prepared.

Hao adjusted his collar, smoothing the line of his long leather outerwear, and with the motion, a smell of cologne rose. “I don’t know, Bin-ah,” he said after a pause, eyes still on the glass. “I feel… a little strange. It’s something new for our fans.”

Hanbin looked up at that. “You’re gonna do well, Hao-hyung,” he said compactly, and too quickly, perhaps, to sound as sincere as he meant it to be.

A muffled chatter carried through the hallway. Hao tested his in-ear again, flexing his shoulders once to see whether the cord pulled anywhere, then looked at Hanbin through the mirror. “You think so?”

Hanbin nodded easily. “Yeah. You always do.”

Hao’s mouth curled upward in the mirror. “She’s surely got a lot of energy,” he said. “Yuqi. I want to match her.”

Hanbin hummed in response. “You will, though,” he said, and even he himself wasn’t sure if it meant to reassure Hao or himself.

Hao chuckled a little at that. “It’s… a bit of a boundary-pushing stage,” he paused shortly. “They said we could improvise near the end. I think she’ll take it there,” he continued.

Hanbin looked down at his cue cards, pretending to straighten the stack. “Take it where?”

Hao didn’t answer right away. “You’ll see.”

A brief pause landed in between. 

He adjusted the mic pack at his hip, then added, almost offhandedly, “She said she might stop by our room after. To chat, or just hang out. I told her it’s fine.”

“Ah.”

Hao glimpsed toward him in the mirror, as if to confirm he’d heard, furrowing his brows and inspecting if they were to his liking yet. “She’s easy to talk to,” he said simply, and once he seemed satisfied with the brows, he added, “professional, too.”

He turned from the mirror as he was done, and under the pretext of checking something on the table beside Hanbin, he moved closer, as did the scent of his cologne, and when Hao straightened again, he was half-leaning over Hanbin’s shoulder that he could see the reflection of them in the glossy cards on his lap. They looked absurdly small and intimate, doubled together, like a photograph skewed at the edges. The overlap of faces was disorienting. For a moment he couldn’t tell where Hao ended and where he began, and the thought lodged somewhere uncomfortable until it scratched out a thought. Oh, he knew what this was about.

The cards slipped slightly under Hanbin’s thumb.

“So,” he said at last, “you’re gonna fuck her later?”

“Would you rather I didn’t?” Hao asked at last, the question unfeigned, as if Hanbin’s opinion mattered to him. And it was true; Hanbin’s opinion did matter to him, because if Hanbin told him not to, Hao would consider setting the matter aside. The matter was that Hanbin could not make the words, or any, leave past his mouth—unless when he intentionally bent them into the other’s favor. Hao must have known about it, too.

“Okay, let me word it differently. Have you?”

“No. Well, not yet all the way. Surprisingly enough.”

“You’re going to fuck her, anyway,” Hanbin said, not quite bitter, though the bitterness was there, submerged.

Hao smiled, murmuring, “I’d stop,” and as if it were a humble offering, his voice fell into a hush, “if you told me to.”

From somewhere beyond the door, a stage cue rang out. Hanbin gripped the cards a little harder, the corners pressing faint crescents into his fingers. In the brief interstice of Hao’s reply and the call outside, Hanbin had only registered that Hao said not yet all the way, which meant something already happened, didn’t it? Even if it was still half-completed or half-consummated, but—

“Hm?” Hao prompted, tilting his head slightly, as though waiting. Hanbin’s thoughts shattered in an instant.

“You can decide that for me, hyung,” Hanbin murmured at last, voice falling into that obedient register, however much he might have tried to school himself against it, could never despise himself for. “I—” His tongue pressed briefly against the back of his teeth, the rest of the sentence folding inward before it could be born.

“I suppose you have no problem with that, then.” Hao said, without looking away from his reflection. He was fixing his earpiece, the wire trailing down over the long cut of his stage outfit. He made a small sound in the back of his throat, almost assent. “And you should come, baobei. I’ll let you watch as you please this time.”

The staffer’s voice called out the standby, and Hao’s hand was already at the knob, his shoulder angled toward the corridor where Yuqi stood waiting in her own gleaming costume. Hao glanced back at him. Corridor light brushed at the edges of his features, flashing briefly on the gloss at his temple where the makeup artist had smoothed the last of the powder.

“Don’t think too much, Hanbin-ah. Watch the stage first.”

It should have been read as it was, a dismissal. But Hanbin could not help pondering even more, the arrangement that would unfold beyond the stage and the act itself, the unspoken part of the later evening that did not belong to cameras and audiences—except perhaps, Hanbin himself. He nodded once just to show agreement, and Hao smiled in satisfaction before he stepped into the corridor.

Hanbin stayed behind, the cue cards still in his grip, the sound of Hao’s footsteps meeting Yuqi’s voice a few paces away, her laugh ringing as she walked alongside Hao.

A knock came on the frame. “Hanbin-ssi, standby for MC in five.”

“Ah—yes. Thank you,” He steadily answered, smoothing the cue cards as he left the room.

The corridor was rather narrow and cramped but very alive. The whirr of machinery and the strung sound of bass resounded faintly underfoot, and leaked through the ceilings. Staff members brushed past him and each other with headsets and clipboards. Hanbin walked through it all, offering quick nods and small smiles to everyone he saw. Ahead, the passage opened slightly where he could scarcely make out the crowd pressed near the barricades. Ricky was already waiting near the far end, mic in one hand, and his cue cards in the other. 

“There you are, hyung,” Ricky grinned. “We’re up after this.”

Hanbin returned the grin, slightly breathless from the rush of light and noise. 

“I saw Hao-hyung pass by just now,” Ricky added, lowering his voice a little. “With Yuqi. That outfit’s so cool.”

Hanbin huffed a clipped laugh. “Yeah, that’s totally your style.”

The staff gave them a signal, so the two of them began to move, making their way past the connecting passage. The noise swelled as they advanced, the audience only a few feet away, cheering and calling their names from the sides. Hanbin made an effort to be pleasant, smiling, pointing out at a few banners and Zeroni dolls, while Ricky kept his usual cool yet amiable demeanor. At the end of the passage, another staff member gave them a nod, before gesturing them forward toward the short stairs that led up to the stage. 

As they stepped into position, the crowd’s roar broke over them. The open stage already glowed under the lights itself, but even brighter now with the countless lightsticks surrounding the arena.

“Hey everyone, are you having fun at KCON LA 2025?” Hanbin called out first, his voice echoing back startlingly close though the earpiece. It was a relief that he sounded fine and confident as intended.

A thousand lightsticks waved gleefully at once, and the sound of the audience was as if folded back into a single, unified cheer. Ricky motioned them to raise their lightsticks high up, and Hanbin caught one of the cameras panning across the sea of colors.

“Yes, your cheers give so much energy to our artists on the stage tonight!” Hanbin said, smiling wide into some glare of lights, excruciatingly aware of how little he could actually see past them. 

They continued through their scripted lines—the Mnet Plus plug for the Worldwide KCONers Choice voting that would end on August 4th—with the QR code flashing on the overhead screen in a bright green background. Hanbin glanced up briefly, pretending to look at it like everyone else, even though the brightness stung his eyes.

“And don’t worry, this event will come back later, too,” Hanbin added. He couldn’t help the smile that hung on his face after noticing someone near the front waving a Haobin sign. 

“Don’t worry!” He repeated, now with a chuckle.

A loud ripple of sounds rolled all the way to the back rows after that. For a brief second, Hanbin tried to resist the urge to look toward the sides, for Hao and Yuqi must have already walked or stood by, ready to go on next. But, of course, it was only a passing thought, quickly buried as he went over his next cue. 

“Ricky, you’re from LA, right? This moment must be extra special for you,” he said, turning to Ricky with a grin. 

Ricky nodded lightly. “Totally, it feels amazing to be hosting this KCON in my hometown!” he exclaimed, earning a wave of cheers from the crowd.

Hanbin smiled, trying to keep his expression bright while his thoughts caught up with anticipatory… unease—he decided so, although didn’t quite know what exactly the feeling was. “So, how about you, the hometown hero, introduce the next stage?” 

“Of course!” Ricky lifted his mic, grinning widely. “Up next are two powerhouse idols, bringing one unforgettable collaboration,” he made some pause for effect, then continued. “Ever since the collab was announced, fans have been buzzing about it. Can you guess who?”

Hanbin could already hear several voices screaming Zhang Hao and Yuqi loud and clear from the front rows. He shivered, a small current of tremors running underneath his composure. Even something as simple as the sound of their names thrilled him this much.

“Oh yeah,” Ricky said enthusiastically. “I’m hearing the right answer.”

“That’s right—the queen of charisma, Yuqi, and the all-rounder of ZEROBASEONE, Zhang Hao!” he finally announced with excitement.

Hanbin smiled, smiled, and smiled—but all he could feel inside was his heart thudding in such an erratic manner, stuttering off-tempo against the pace of the crowd’s cheering, strangely so. 

“These two are the stars of the show,” Ricky added as he gave his final cue. “Get ready for this gorgeous performance.”

The lights dimmed as they descended the narrow steps offstage. The intro VCR began to play on the massive screen above not long after. The crowd erupted once more, and before Hanbin could even stare at the screen, the sound had filled Hanbin’s ears even more as he found himself standing among the shadows at the edge of the stage, the noise as if swallowing him whole as he waited, watching as the screen lit up in red and black. 

—

The hotel room did little to chase away the lingering perfume of hairspray and stage smoke clinging to their clothes. For some reason, the company almost always assigned the two of them to the same room for any Western schedule. Hanbin had already stripped down, almost bared from most of his stage fits, leaving only the boxer briefs, a plain white undershirt, and a bandage still taped neatly across his collarbone, hiding the tattoo beneath. Hao, on the other hand, remained fully adorned in his splendor. He even kept the long leather coat, its hem pooling across the carpet. To be fair, Taerae had requested it, since he wanted to film a Taeraeshow with him—and Hanbin as well, though separately. But even after that, here, he still wore it, his shirt now hanging open, the last few buttons undone so that the chest was exposed, and it caught on the low light like lacquer.

Hanbin let his head drop back for a moment, eyes focused on the shadows Hao’s coat casted on the carpet. He belatedly realized how deeply he was still affected by the performance of Hao and Yuqi. It thrummed in his chest just as the crowd had wildly roared when his fingers skittered Yuqi’s arms, even more when he twisted her whole figure to make an intimate ending pose together. It wasn’t a full memory, not quite; Hanbin couldn’t really tell which fragments were real, and which were only his impressions, they all scattered like the confettis that came after.

“How was the stage today, hyung?” Hanbin’s voice cut through the quiet as he sank onto the carpet beside Hao.

Hao cocked his head as if considering Hanbin. “The stage?”

“The one with Yuqi,” Hanbin clarified, gulping because the mental images crept back in, again. “I mean, I was there, and I heard from the staff that you even apologized to a fan because it was too intim—”

Hao only chuckled softly. “It was just a stage, Bin.”

“But—” Hanbin hesitated, his pulse stuttering as it all returned in a flash, “—was it kind of… thrilling? Because I was. Thrilled, I mean. Seeing you like that—um, doing it with her.”

Hao’s eyes softened at him. He leaned forward a little. “I thought you might mind, dear.”

“I… didn’t,” Hanbin said quickly, surprising even himself. “Not really. I mean…” His hands flexed in the carpet, gripping at the fibers harshly. “It was all in a good way, Hao. You’re a very good performer, and you know it.”

Hao reached out, brushing a small collection of hair from Hanbin’s forehead. “But you are, too. What’s the worry, hm?”

“Nothing, hyung,” Hanbin sighed. He let his shoulders slump and his chest loosen just a fraction that the tension in his jaw eased just with Hao’s touch. He leaned back just slightly, too, so that his shoulder brushed against his. The tension in his chest hadn’t fully eased, but this quiet with Hao strangely offered a counterpoint to the storm of images in his mind. 

They both sat on the carpet for a while, sated with simply having each other’s silence. Hanbin watched as the fabric of the coat partially unfurled and settled around him every time Hao shifted at the slightest, like dark water, the tanned scent mingling with the excess of perfumes, and wondered—half-idly, half-guiltily—why Hao hadn’t yet changed his clothes, which was a pointless ponder since Hanbin already knew why. It stirred an unrest in him that neither dared to pluck on it—the unspoken—as if both of them were forgetting, but it was too naive for one to assume that he or Hao would. 

The door clicked open.

Oh, well. Speak of the devil. 

Yuqi appeared there, standing in the doorway. The hotel hallway’s light spilled over her and Hanbin could see her clearly. She had on a black tee and shorts, the two pieces did so little to conceal her thighs, calling to mind her stage outfit with Hao earlier. Her hair was slightly damp, grazing her collarbone where it settled in curls. 

“Ah, sunbaenim! You’re probably looking for Hao?” Hanbin asked, quickly rising from the carpet. 

“Not exactly,” Yuqi said, brushing by Hanbin easily as he made her way to Hao. “Actually, Hao’s the one looking for me for—” she trailed off, before wrapping up lightly, “the arrangement.”

Hanbin laughed weakly. “Right. Of course. I’m just—uh—here by coincidence.”

Hanbin opened his mouth to reply, but Hao beat him to it. “Don’t be silly. He’s here because we’re sharing a room, anyway,” Hao drawled, his tone languid. “Isn’t it perfect? We can all just unwind together here.” 

He said it as his hand drifted along Yuqi’s bare thigh, fingers sketching the exposed strip of skin beneath the hem of her shirt. Those slow, teasing lines that somehow made Hanbin shiver instead. Even if this had happened before, he still wasn’t completely used to it. But Hao found that hesitance of his endearing in its own way, the way he never seemed entirely hardened to it even when he had never objected to anything. 

He liked, even, in some obscure corner of himself, that Hao would do this in front of him, and that his initial jealousy wasn’t in any way irrational—that it eventually molded into something darker yet tender at once, something that felt almost like pride. Pride in being the one Hao could step away from and still return to at the end of the day.

His eyes then flicked up to Hanbin. “You don’t mind, do you, love?”

Hanbin shook his head. “No,” he said thinly. He meant it, though. He even made a small gesture as though to welcome her further into the room, awkward. “Of course, not. Make yourselves comfortable.”

“Good,” Hao murmured, his mouth curving faintly. He extended a hand toward Hanbin, wordlessly asking him to help him up. Hanbin’s grip on Hao’s wrist was almost an instant, fingers circling around the carpals as he dragged him up, feeling the cold thrum of the pulse in his grasp.

“Sorry. Our space’s a bit cluttered,” Hanbin remarked. He shifted aside toward the corner, gathering the things that scattered—two empty bottles of mineral water, a crumpled towel he had used earlier, Hao’s iPhone charger still half-coiled on the carpet—and set them a neater pile on the desk. Satisfied, he crouched by his small bag on the same desk, retrieving a small bottle which he tucked discreetly into his pocket.

“You can sit over there once you’re done,” Hao said softly, nodding toward the sofa chair in another corner.

Wordless, Hanbin did as he was told, sinking into the chair. He knew what was about to happen, and yet he couldn’t help a small flair on the back of his mind. When Hao turned back to Yuqi, his eyes flared as though an ember giving way to fire. Hanbin thought of the stage earlier, and of how many times Hao had rehearsed—actually looked at her—with that very look. How easy he could slip himself into it, even now.

His hand rested in the back of his neck, and the other he used to press against and cradle her waist, pulling her forward and drawing her a few inches closer. Yuqi closed the distance herself, fingers curling around the open lapel as she drew forward. Hao didn’t resist. The sound of their mouths meeting flared Hanbin’s mind like a spark against kindling, a match strike, and all he could do was watch as the smoke emerged.

Their mouth moved in tandem, slow at first, them deepening. Hanbin watched with a thudding heart as Hao shrugged off his coat, the garment heavily tumbling and pooling at his feet. Yuqi roamed and traveled up his chest, prying his shirt further open without fully removing it. In return, Hao slid a hand under hers, lifting until it was just below her ribs. 

Both of them were equally insistently mouthy. One after another whimper escaped past their barely-parted mouths. Hao’s left palm now pressed firmly against Yuqi’s back, gripping the shirt so hard it could constrict her at any moment, while his right teased her nipples through the sheer, elastic fabric before pulling the tee over her head. Her bra followed almost instantly, undone with a deft tug before it fell into the growing pile under. Only then did he begin to strip himself off his clothes completely. 

In a swift motion, he guided Yuqi backward toward the mattress mid-kiss as he kept pressing on her chest. There was a muted thud as her knees struck the edge before she folded onto it with a startled laugh spilling down as their mouths broke apart. The sound softened into a long moan as Hao chased, hunted her down from above, the movement pressing her upper half to sink into the sheets. 

They kissed for what felt like forever to Hanbin before Hao’s fingers slipped under the waistband of her shorts. He dragged them down along with the thin delicate layer beneath, pressing wet kisses along her skin as he peeled the fabric away. Once that was done, he lowered himself, crouching low between her legs on the carpet, and Hanbin saw how her thighs had already parted around him.

“Fuck,” Hao shrilled when he plunged in. There, he pressed, nipped, licked, and flicked over the flesh of her pussy with his tongue hungrily. “God, Yuqi. I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he simpered.

Yuqi wrenched his hair until Hao’s head tipped back, seemingly forcefully. “Thinking about me?” Her gaze glinted like she had him pinned even when Hao was the one kneeling between her legs, “or him?” She glanced at Hanbin for a mere second. 

Hanbin froze in place. The question wasn’t his to answer. He didn’t know where exactly to rest his eyes, or shame—whether on Yuqi, spread open with her whole being laid bare, or on Hao, whose shoulders tensed and released just as his fingers did. The sight of his lover working on and under another body no longer bore any resentment, and even if some remnant of it lingered, Hanbin would have deemed it misplaced because there wasn’t any other place where he had ever felt this particular, unsatisfying kind of satisfaction.

A guttural growl rumbled from Hao’s throat as he pushed forward, burying his mouth against her cunt as if in an attempt to shut her up from below. Yuqi’s laugh was ragged bursts. She held him tighter by the hair, grinding against him and smearing slick over his chin. “That’s what I thought,” she panted, smug even as it cracked with, seemingly, a good load of pleasure.

Hao pulled back just long enough to glare up at her, and Hanbin saw how wet he was—his lips, his jaw, the shine on his chin. “Shut the fuck up, Yuqi,” he snapped before plunging back in, visibly harder this time, as if to strip her of the upper hand.

“Me? I’m literally here to indulge you both,” she taunted. “But mostly you, Zhang Hao. You should actually be grateful that I love myself some good fucking—ah!”

Yuqi’s fingers traced lightly along the slope of Hao’s shoulders, toying with the top of his chest and the verge of his collarbones. “Just like that. Hh–ah–”

Hanbin’s gaze was fixed as Hao growled low, lips and tongue enveloping her folds, roving, coaxing over every sensitive ridge to exist in there. When he claimed her outer labia, he took it into his mouth, sucking and tugging rapaciously, which made Yuqi gasp, fingers tangling into his hair even harder—and Hanbin felt equal parts fascination and raw desire.

“Mhm. That’s better. Use that mouth. You’re not the only one who gets to fuck for fun, you know,” Yuqi grinded down on his tongue. Hao’s hands gripped her thighs, thumbs pressing in until little dents appeared, and he answered by almost forming a laugh. There hadn’t been any giving in so far, nor would there be—Hanbin thought. It seemed that they loved the fight itself.

“Enough, Zhang Hao. Just fuck me now,” Yuqi demandingly pleaded as she caught him by the hair. Hao’s face glistened with juice when Hanbin saw him. He rose, unhurried, lowering his pants to mid-thigh just as Hanbin heard what he thought to be Yuqi’s breath’s hitch.

“No, not yet,” Hao crooned from under, nuzzling the sides of her thighs.

Yuqi tossed herself against him once more, fingers raking and shaking his shoulders. “Come on! I’m not letting you toy with me like this.”

Hao made her fast in one hand, keeping her in place. “Patience, Yuqi,” he purred, trailing his index finger over her cunt before pressing in slowly.

Her fingers clawed at him uncompromisingly. “I–don’t—care! Just—hh—do it!”

“No.”

“Ah, but you always do this until I break,” she shot back. “Admit it, Zhang Hao. You like when I fight back, like those tim—” 

Hao didn’t let her finish. Swiftly, he rose and then pinned her beneath him, his mouth claiming hers in a kiss rough enough to swallow her incomplete word. He did so while grunting something between their mouths that were beyond Hanbin’s comprehension. When he pulled away, a combustible grin dangled on his mouth. The sort of thing was hot, and the rushedness sent adrenaline racing even through Hanbin.

“Cooperate,” he insisted, “or else you’ll learn exactly how much I enjoy taking over control when I want to.”

But Yuqi was a defiant case, and she was undeterred. “Only if you can make me work for it, Zhang Hao.”

“Is that so?” Hao smirked. “Fine, then. I’ve warned you.”

He ran a hand along his cock, then plunged it in without any preamble. He pressed brutally, then drew back just as unsparingly so as to make Hanbin ache all the more.

He could almost feel the give of the fruit when Hao finally pressed in completely at last, and for a moment, he imagined what it might be like to receive that kind of attention. He thought of being opened, like how Hao would split open a durian like the other mornings at home, thumbs pressing against the rough, thorned shell until it yielded to the soft gold within. After all, what was Hanbin if not hard on the surface but heavy and sweet on the inside? It left him light-headed, the imagery of it, more so with his own addition of the analogy that he started smelling durian out of nowhere and he began to feel moisten and ripening somewhere. 

Sure, he had known Hao’s body before. They had touched so many times, yes, but Hao had never gone past… some certain lines—among them, one namely ‘fucking Hanbin in the ass’. It had always been the other way around. And if Hanbin hadn’t ever questioned it before, then he just started questioning it now: why had Hao never crossed that line with him? 

“So tight, Yuqi. So good. How I missed getting inside someone’s pussy. It’s such a shame that I haven’t fucked girls in a while because of our schedules—ngh—” 

He pulled Yuqi upright, making her jolt. He caught her by the waist and guided her toward the desk beside the bed, pressing her forward until she fumbled briefly for purchase. It seemed harsh, the disembarking, and even more so with the report of her palms striking the wood, yet Hao only grew more unrelenting from there.

Watching them, a realization came to him. Hao could only let himself go like this when it was with a girl. It wasn’t a matter of want—Hanbin knew Hao wanted him—but wanting, he understood now, wasn’t merely enough, and it made his stomach lurch in ways that startled him, of what he had been desiring, and in that same lurch, an epiphany flared. What drew this raw, unthinking hunger out of him was this thing Hanbin could never quite offer. 

His chest heaved at the thought. He felt it like the absence of breath following a quiet collapse somewhere inside his ribs. It wasn’t jealousy exactly—he no longer cared who else found themselves at Hao’s mercy, or Hao’s at theirs—but something more corporeal. Envy, perhaps. Not of Yuqi herself, but of whatever it was in her that could draw Hao out this way. And yet, in that moment, there was no one else for this envy to land upon. Because there really was a threshold only she could cross. Because her body was cut from a different kind of flesh. Because his body was not one that could yield and open in ways hers could.

Yuqi was moaning. She hissed, breathless. “Girls really are better, you know,” she said. “Or maybe you’re just very inclined to dating men, which I’ll never understand.”

“Better?” Hao’s voice dropped into a growl, tilting his head. “No one’s better than Hanbin.” His hand came down hard on her hip, forcing her still as he drove into her again. “But you,” he exhaled, teeth bared and breath brittle, “you’re just enough to satisfy my occasional craving for girls.” 

He bent forward, aiming for the shell of her ear. “You really should be grateful that I even agreed to this at all.”

“If Hanbin had said no,” he added smugly, “you wouldn’t be here—and I’d ask him to fuck me instead.”

Hanbin felt his pulse stutter, a strange current ran through him morbidly. He had thought Hao wanted this more than either of them. That it was Hao who’d insisted Yuqi come here. Yet hearing that conditional—If Hanbin had said no—he felt something else entirely, one close to pride, though it confused him to admit so.

Yuqi laughed incredulously. “You really think that’s love?” she cooed, her voice lilting like a taunt. “You should go and ask yourself again if that’s really convincing.”

Hao’s hand slid up her stomach, fingers spreading against the base of her throat. “I don’t need convincing,” he strained his voice until it nearly became soft. “I love him. Every time I close my eyes—” he let them fall shut as his breath snagged on the last word, “—it’s Hanbin I see.”

“If you love Hanbin so bad,” she snarled, “why don’t you just fuck him, then?”

Because Hao only wanted to fuck a pussy, Hanbin answered in silence. Nonetheless, the five-letter word surfaced in his mind again, and he dully realized that he didn’t have one. He would never have one. What he had instead was… a cock? an anal pore? Both of which Hao possessed as well, he absurdly thought to himself. The sameness of them suddenly felt unbearable to him, when once, that sameness had thrilled him; it had seemed like proof that they belonged to the same kind of something, mirror to mirror. But now, the more Hanbin thought of it, the more he saw how mistaken he had been in his methodical way of approaching Hao. To call it incorrect would’ve been too cold to his liking. So, no. It wasn’t that—just, perhaps, a little… unfavorable. It was as if the architecture of his body conspired against the form of his desires. Some had no aperture through which it might be fulfilled, unless by lending a substitute that wasn’t quite his own.

“You know what, Yuqi. By your logic, why don’t you act like Hanbin? I actually want you to act like him,” Hao carelessly tossed off the words, audaciously indulging a point.

Hanbin blinked. He could feel his breath sorely catching in his throat. Oh, me? he thought. He had never doubted Hao’s words, for the record. But even if Hao turned at his back on him and fucked every girl he wanted because he simply liked them—well, he didn’t really see a problem with that either. He would only be jealous, not resentful, certainly not enough to ever let him go. And somehow, he knew Hao wouldn’t ever let him slip away, either.

So, it impressed Hanbin, perversely so, how much Hao committed to the half-confession, half-indictment from the kitchen that day—that he couldn’t fuck anyone without thinking of Hanbin. It was one thing to admit it, or perform it in jest, but another entirely to go so far as to insist someone else to embody him. It was—God, what was the word again?—derangedly romantic. Or just deranged. It was unbearably attractive to him nonetheless.

“You want me to—what? Have you been out of your mind?” Yuqi snapped, hands lifting in protest, cheeks flushed with incredulity. 

Hao only smiled. A dangerous, lopsided smile that somehow made it impossible to tell if he was almost breaking character or utterly in love with the game—or simply both at once. 

“I don’t care if you resist,” he uttered, cupping her face with one hand and locking her eyes with his. The hold wasn’t rough, but Hanbin knew better that it was with his eyes that he tried to unmake her defiance. “I want to fuck my girlfriend. Right now.”

“No… I—” she started out a protest, but Hao cut her off. 

“Don’t whine. You’ll do exactly what I tell you,” he pressed. With a hand, Hao slid up to her chin, tipping her face toward him. This time, it was rougher, firmer. Then he pivoted her to fully face him, gripping hard on her waist as if she might slip away otherwise.

“Say it,” he dictated. “Say gege.”

“Ugh… fine,” she scoffed. “Gege…”

The word rolled out reluctantly from her mouth. Hao’s features softened just enough to reveal a fleeting but genuine smile. 

“Good girl, Hanbinnie,” he praised and kissed her cheek, and mouth, before she could ever protest.

Heat flared in Hanbin’s chest and cheeks, a blush kindled purely by hearing himself named by his lover, and on top of that, kissed tenderly. Yuqi had gone still as if her struggles finally subsided under Hao’s guiding hands. Hao never wavered from her; even as his hand scrambled for one of the pouches on the desk, his focus remained and unblinking. Hanbin caught him smirking just before he unzipped it and drew out the thing from the soft-lined compartment.

A small pink vibrator.

Hanbin’s eyes widened at that. Wait what, did he really carry that all the way here from Seoul? Wait, no—since when, he—no—how many times had he actually used it? Had Hao used it on himself too, or…? The thoughts tumbled over one another in his mind until a low throb cut through his spiraling mind: Hao had turned it on.

Yuqi’s eyes flicked toward the small device, squeaking when she found out what it was. “Is that… really necessary?”

“Of course,” Hao murmured as he gently put both of Yuqi’s hand behind her and kept them there with one hand. His dominant hand then carelessly guided the toy against her cunt. He adjusted it in small motions like a doctor listening for a heartbeat.

“A-Ah!” 

Yuqi helplessly stuttered when Hao locked in on a place, holding it there. She gasped, whimpered, then cried out his name in broken succession. God, it must’ve felt so good. He kept it up for several seconds—long enough to turn her frantic and near hysterical—before upping the vibration. The tremors then came to Yuqi gradually. First as small, involuntary twitches, then as something beyond her control. When Hao finally stepped back at last, the toy was still pulsing in his hand, even as she crumpled to her knees, collapsing and trembling, undone on the floor. The worst—best—thing was that Hao did nothing about it, only looking down from above for mere seconds.

The sight made Hanbin’s pulse skitter in echo.

“Oh, look at you, baobei. You’re really such a mess under me, aren’t you?” Hao stepped forward again, his cock slapping lightly against her forehead before he caught her chin in his hand, angling her face up toward him. He pressed forward, letting the tip drag against her lips. “Open up.”

Yuqi’s lips parted just a fraction, seemingly still in shock and trembling, but Hao wasted no time to shove his cock inside.

“Ungh–ff-fuck! Arf!” she gasped, half-protest, half-panic, her hands flinching uselessly at her sides.

“That’s not it,” Hao growled. “You’re sloppy. Hanbin wouldn’t fight this much—”

Smack! A slap cracked across her cheek; Hanbin saw it landed before he heard it.

“—or at all,” Hao continued. Yuqi’s lips remained parted in a startled squeak, gagging slightly around him. 

“I don’t even know his—his bedroom habits, you freak!”

Another smack! hit her cheek. 

“Shh…” Hao tendered. “Why do you even think about it, hm? No—just feel. Easy there, baby,” he murmured, nudging her chin just enough to correct the angle.

Yuqi dug her knees on the floor, bracing them to support her upper body, hands gripping Hao’s lower waist. Hao began guiding her, moving with an ease that made her mouth wrap around his cock as he pleased. Hanbin’s pulse quickened at how effortlessly Hao could command another, and yet the thought that it was still Hanbin who consumed Hao’s mind made the scene all the more infuriatingly arousing.

“So responsive now, hm?” He murmured teasingly.

Yuqi let out a shudder while still working around his length. Her eyes shimmered with tears; her bangs clung damply to her forehead; her jaw looked sore from the effort of keeping pace with Hao; and it made Hanbin realize just how much focus and control it took to please someone like him. Hao’s cock was neither as long nor as massive as Hanbin’s but its girth made challenges on its own to maintain a smooth blow, and it seemed to make Yuqi pause and adjust constantly.

“Ah, not too stiff!”

She acclimated to him gradually, her lips easing around him bit by bit until the strain in her jaw began to fade. It seemed almost easy now. Each adjustment flowed into the next with such effortlessness that one might think she had never resisted at all. Hanbin’s chest throbbed with a heady mix of heat and awe; his lover had worked her over like sewing threads of a homespun cloth in the making.

“See?” Hao assured, pressing a little more insistently. His thumb caressed the tensed mass along her cheeks as he tried to ease her deeper onto him. “It really isn’t hard.”

“Mhm–mmh—” she croaked in defeat.

“Much better, isn’t it?” Hao praised her warmly, withdrawing and tapping his cock lightly against her cheek. “Soft and pliant there, Hanbinnie.”

Hanbin felt a tight coil of nerves knotted in his guts. Hao might as well call Yuqi with his name every time, and it would still yield the same effect on him. A thing shifted, though; if he had been able to feel and imagine it before, but now he could almost inhabit it fully. He was the girl Hao described: soft and yielding, pliant and unbearably tender beneath him. And as if attuned to Hao’s words, Yuqi had finally tuned herself and effortlessly slipped into the role, uncannily, like a parody of him. If it was meant to ridicule him right now—which he doubted, anyway—it failed spectacularly, because the imitation aroused him even more. And if the point was to make him jealous, it was oddly generous instead, counterproductively so because somehow he was included even if by proxy.

After what seemed like Hao finally satisfied enough with her mouth, he shifted and brought Yuqi along with him onto the mattress. With only a push, he pinned her onto her back and lined himself against her pussy. It all happened so fast that merely watching kept Hanbin on edge. The muffled sounds from Yuqi as Hao drove into her set his blood alight as if his chest were to combust if he weren’t ever going to be touched at any time now—nor be allowed to touch himself. Anything.

Hanbin was twitching despite his effort to stay still, his chest warming with a flush that must’ve spread to his neck, if only he could see that himself to be sure of that. He was on the verge of crying, of being overstimulated, and then… as if damned, his ankles hit the sofa’s leg out of exasperation. The sound was unexpectedly louder than what he thought it could make. That could make Hao turn to him anytime soon.

Sure enough. Hao did turn and look at him, and as if sensing his frustration, he smirked. “You can touch yourself, Hanbin. Don’t make me feel sorry for you, just sitting there doing nothing.”

At that, Hanbin did as he was told. He quickly shrugged off his pants and boxers, hand immediately wrapping around his cock. It was unsurprisingly damp even with the least of touch and friction given. So, he gave to it what it had been deprived of: just a few strokes at first, tentatively. Yet even as he touched, something in him recoiled; it felt off, hollow, too alike to what Hao already had. Too alike to what Hao truly desired. His breath stuttered, and the motion faltered halfway, until Hao’s voice broke through again—raw, half-gasped, his name a wound in the same breath.

“Ah… Hanbinnie. Yes! Clench on me just like that. Ngh—”

Hanbin could scarcely name what exactly had consummated in his chest except for how it poised between surrender and wonder. Hao had actually gone there, yes, and had imagined him not merely as he was, but as something else, someone else—and yet no one other than Hanbin himself, only transfigured in a new mirage of becoming. To be seen that way, to be remade beneath another’s vision, to be thought-worthy as the vessel of someone’s impossible longing—what could be more exposing, and yet more holy? 

But it wasn’t only that. 

Seeing Hao derive pleasure from his reimagined self while using another person had given him a taste of possession—not over Hao in particular, but over the image Hao had made of him. A sense that the fantasy itself belonged to him now, that the girl Hao saw, the one through whom his desire was realized, lived not in Hao’s keeping but in his own. The thought ran through him like a quiet reversal of power, the recognition that he could choose to inhabit that image, to perfect it, to make it answer back however he could.

What Hao likely hadn’t realized was that Hanbin had come prepared this time. And it wasn’t solely for his own indulgence; there was a thrill brimming in Hanbin in knowing that, for all his evasions, Hao was never an outright liar. His lies, if they could be called that, were most of the times disingenuous at best, as though he were never concerned that the truth would later come to light. He simply pretended otherwise, that certain things hadn’t happened, but barely denied them when simply asked. 

So, Hanbin, in turn, attempted the same art of avoiding honesty. He had thoughtfully brought the lube he retrieved from his smaller bag, knowing it might come in handy—and it did. And Hao supposedly didn’t know that, or if he knew, Hanbin hoped Hao hadn’t yet anticipated what he intended to do with it.

As Hao was seen busying himself with her, his hand drifted lower as though seeking a different kind of relief all the way down. He adjusted his posture on the chair, finding the angle and curve just ideal for entrance. Moments like this had proven to him that it really was useful to have the body of a dancer. When his fingers reached the soft threshold of himself, they hesitated only briefly as they smeared some lube with the pre-cum gathered from his cock before. Then, with a breath that caught in his throat, dubiously, he pressed inward.

Ah!

Hanbin wasn’t very sure whether he exclaimed it out loud or if the sound was the loudest it had ever been in his head. The ache that followed was exquisite—how it bloomed through as if to prove to him the body’s capacity for feeling. It hurt so much in actuality. It hurt in the particular way he craved: sharp, and then, a slow, rippling pressure that teased shivers down his spine. His breath came unevenly, broken in staccato gasps. 

He wasn’t particularly embarrassed by the act itself—He had long since accepted Hao’s escapades—but he was instead damned by the sheer possibility, or rather, as what the antithesis to his usually-optimistic public persona suggested, the impossibility of it. Would Hao ever actually fuck him at all, even if he managed to make the best of a scraped-together pussy and stretched out perfectly for him? Would it even matter, if the shape, the texture, the timing—everything—still fell short of what Hao truly craved? Could he ever bridge the gap between what he had and what Hao wanted? And if he tried, would the effort alone be enough, or would it crumble into just nothing?

The self-consciousness—the acute knowing of what he lacked, and of what Hao would never quite take from him—tugged at him even as he dared to push all his edges. Yet even with that knowing, or perhaps because of it, he pushed further, his fingers working in small patterns, in and out, up and down, until the ache ripened and folded in on itself, so that pain and pleasure dissolving into one another until he could no longer tell which it was that he wanted more since both consumed his attention and sense entirely.

Beyond him, Hao and Yuqi moved as if sealed within their own world, and it was as if Hao didn’t pay attention to him at all except for a series of Hanbin, Hanbin, Hanbin that woven through the air as Hao drove into her, pinning her down in his relentless pace. The sight by itself was maddening, and delectable, even, but mostly because Hanbin knew how beautiful his lover became when he was demanding and messing with a trace of meanness. Hao’s body pressed hers hard against the mattress, and the way she arched back was in an almost perfect mirror of how Hanbin imagined he would be beneath Hao.

At one point Yuqi croaked, “Hao-gege,” and it was followed by a tangle of Chinese that Hanbin couldn’t quite make out yet, though it wasn’t really hard to figure out what it could mean from her tone. Hao laughed, answering in Korean as if taking Hanbin’s real presence into account. “Faster? It feels good? Sure, baby.” His hips drew back almost all the way, then drove forward again with a deeper pace that made Yuqi jounce, her breath breaking into a cry. “You’re so—ngh—so greedy for it, aren’t you? Say it again. Tell me how it feels.”

Her voice came high and uneven, the words tumbling out. “It’s—ah—so deep, Hao-gege, I can’t—” Her breath broke again, half-laugh, half-moan, and Hanbin felt it reverberated and passed through him, too.

He felt not himself but the imagined figure that Hao’s mind had made of him, even if the barrier of what was his and hers really began to dissolve and cease to exist at all. He tried tracing her contours, the imagined curves and acquired them like an inheritance, as if they had once belonged to him in some forgotten lineage of yearning—and understood, with a sinking thrill, why Hao wanted it so. Not the crude act alone, nor the brief, vanishing pleasure, but the surrender it could signify, the yielding of the self, the artistry and precision of Hao’s desires, which Hanbin had regarded highly.

Hao bent lower then, his mouth grazing the hollow between Yuqi’s breasts, his voice a hoarse whisper lost against the sheen of her skin. She caught at his shoulders, nails gnawing at his flesh, her breath stammering out in small, fractured pleas. Hao murmured something back, but it was too low for Hanbin to catch from a distance, though he could imagine just what was said. And when Hao drew her nipple into his mouth and bit down, Hanbin felt it too, as if it were all but conduit of his own wanting.

“Gege—please—” she gasped, the word blurring at its edges.

“Yeah?” Hao rasped against her throat, his teeth catching her skin.

Yuqi tried to answer, but only air escaped her, and whatever she meant to say was swallowed whole when Hao thrust deeper, the sound of it wet and relentless. The pace broke apart at one point into a fevered one, the bedframe straining. There was now only the rough syncopation of need—the slap of skin meeting skin, the slick slide of bodies, the animal that tore itself from Hao’s chest each time he drove back into her.

Hanbin couldn’t breathe. His hands were helpless, trembling and feverish. From the chair, there really wasn’t any discerning access to the point of his torment, not from the front, and the frustration twisted through him. All he could do was fold into his desperation: sliding, scraping, stroking—doing anything he could—which of all only left him both teased and unsatisfied. He hunched forward on the edge of the seat, tilting his pelvis, hips jutting in minuscule arcs, doing all but contenting himself properly, because however he tried, Hanbin just couldn’t bring himself to do it the way he meant it to be.

He had already used the lube earlier, and it had actually done so little for him, only lent some ease for the initial insertion. But when Hao lifted her legs and pulled back for only a few seconds, Hanbin caught a glimpse of how wet Yuqi’s cunt was, and it fractured him on the inside. He went for the small bottle again and poured more than necessary onto his fingers, except for how it was actually essential. For he wanted to be as wet as she was, wanted to be made ready for Hao. Not just prepared, but soaked through and through. So he spread it along the flesh, letting it trail down his wrist, and how it stained the sofa chair went uncared for, even when he could not reach as deeply as he longed to.

Hao’s voice wound tighter around the room and brought Hanbin’s attention back to the bed. “I’m coming inside.”

“No! N-No, don’t! Gege, please, no…” Yuqi’s voice cracked. 

Her hands flailed briefly, brushing at his chest and shoulders, but Hao was already mounting her. “Oh? You say no, and yet your body says yes. Can’t you feel that, hm? That’s telling me exactly what you want,” his rasped words pressed into her ear and reverberated in Hanbin’s chest.

“No, that’s not—”

“Shhh,” Hao murmured, leaning even lower, teeth grazing her neck. “Come on, Bin-ah. We’re going to have three daughters, aren’t we?” His words twisted Yuqi’s protests into something cruelly intimate, as if Hanbin were the one being invoked. Oh, but he was. Hanbin froze where he sat, blood surging, breath caught in his throat. His fingers moved and moved before he could stop them, tracing lower, trembling, helpless to the sound of Hao’s voice.

“H-Hao, please don’t—”

Yes, please, Hanbin thought fiercely, his fingers slick with lube-cum moving faster, pressing, curling, stroking, desperate for the matching burn of Hao’s body against him. His body trembled and chest constricted; each breath ragged with a rapid sweep of his hand. Then, a deep shudder rolled through—he came. It wasn’t so much about how much came out as the intensity of the pleasure. Because, it felt unbearably, really good, and relieving, and yet there was something uncannily alien in the release itself—how it came through his cock rather than where he wished to feel it, where he imagined Hao might fill him.

He was high on the image, the sound, the illusion of being the one pinned down beneath Hao’s body. The room swam with it, that molten sense of being opened from within by someone who wasn’t even touching him, and of being pleasured in a place he didn’t even have. For a moment, he could almost taste Hao’s humid exhales against Yuqi’s skin, soothing him in the wake of the fantasy.

“Don’t fight it,” Hao cooed, sliding deeper and holding her still. His hips froze at a spot, letting every nerve along her body sing as he came rather calmly with nothing more than a low groan. The tendons along his neck stood out—he must have emptied fully inside her—that the movement in his throat was visible as he swallowed the sound. “Ah…”

“You feel that? Soak it in,” Hao breathed, rough and frayed with the afterglow.

Yuqi shuddered beneath him, powerless, nails biting into the sheets as she tried to meet Hao’s renewed thrust again. “We need to make sure it takes, baby,” he said, gathering the slick along her folds and pushing it back inside alongside his cock.

“Hao—ah, oh, fuck!” she sobbed as her climax finally broke through her.

Her eyelids fluttered, and then she seemed to disappear into the void, surrendering completely into the aftershocks. Hanbin could only imagine how her soft muscles inside contracted against the hard lines of Hao’s cock, which had probably begun to soften, then he realized how sinful the image was, intruding unbidden into his mind, and as he had since cooled down, he could now feel heat rising to his cheeks.

Hao and Yuqi lingered like that for quite a while; Hao still sheathed inside her and Yuqi lied engulfed with her eyes closed. When she finally opened them, they were hollowed out as if she only discerned what had just happened with the three of them in the hotel room. Her hands came up very weakly at first, pushing against his chest. 

“You’re unbelievable,” she said at last.

Hanbin couldn’t place her feelings, whether it was anger, fear, or something else entirely.

“You actually believe you can get away with it?”

She seemed angry, more so than fearful, Hanbin finally reckoned.

Hao’s gaze hardly flickered. His hands, which had been braced on either side of her, unclasped but he didn’t move any further off. “I do, actually,” he shrugged plainly.

Yuqi winced low when she pulled away from him. Hauling herself up, she snatched a handful of tissues from the desk. She tried wiping herself even as the sheets were stubbornly clung to her skin. It wrinkled everywhere, even. She had that look of disgust before straightening shakily on her feet. 

“I can’t even look at you properly right now!” She spat toward Hao, then flitted her eyes to Hanbin across the room for the briefest instant, before darting away again. “Zhang Hao, I really hope you’ve done enough bullshit for the both of you! Can’t believe I let you drag me to your place late at night for weeks!”

What now? 

That left him momentarily stunned, but Hanbin filed it away to think over later.

She began to move after that, gathering her scattered clothes on the floor, her body drooping a little to reach for them. The snap of fabric and the rasp of her zipper that followed were the only sounds left between them; Hao stayed silent, perhaps the fatigue might have got to him, or perhaps he no longer saw any use in arguing. When she finally dressed, albeit a little hastily and half-done, she stood and turned toward the door.

“And Hanbin, I hope you really know what kind of sick man Hao is!” Yuqi exclaimed, glancing over her shoulders before slipping out.

Oh but Hanbin understood perfectly—

What sort of man Hao was: one who demanded and took, yes, but not without seeing him, really seeing him, in the quietest, most exacting ways. A man whose touch could wound, or consume whole, and whose restraint was rarely gentle, yet worth every ache. Hao could be fierce, or mean, or even egotistical, but beneath all that was a love so particular and all-encompassing reserved for Hanbin, and never in a way he believed that it could be replicated or just given to anyone else. 

So now it was just him and Hao. And Hao—he remained where he was. He did not move at all. He did not speak either. Perhaps tired. Slowly, it was Hanbin who moved, making his way toward the bed. He settled carefully beside him, hands reaching forward, tentative, pulling the other in a half-hesitant embrace.

“Hao?” He called.

“Mm?”

Hanbin pressed closer. He let his body brush against the older’s back, and without quite realizing it, he also ground himself against Hao’s ass. Hao’s sharp inhale came instantly, a new spark igniting as he pressed subtly from the front against Hanbin’s cock. “So… eager,” he murmured.

Hanbin’s fingers tightened slightly against Hao’s shoulders. The subtle shift of his hips made Hao groan and flip into his direction. For a heartbeat, surprise flashed across Hao’s face as he looked down and leaned into the contact, probably because Hanbin had made himself unnaturally wet.

“Look at you,” Hao breathed, voice husky. “Always tempting me, aren’t you?”

“Gege, I want to show you something,” Hanbin mumbled, pressing lightly against Hao’s chest to make space, voice trembling as if the syllables might collapse in his throat.

Hao shifted, leaning slightly on his elbow beside Hanbin, curious. “Sure.”

Suddenly, Hanbin felt a jolt at the thought of it. It wasn’t as if Hao had never seen him in more exposed or desperate states, but the anticipation—the electric thrill of revealing himself so willingly—always made his heart thump and almost splurt. He eased back, regardless, until his spine kissed the bed frame and his legs fell open.

“It’s wet…” 

His fingers trailed a path down the tender slope of his inner thighs, and lower, until they found the refuge in that sore and aching rim. A little, humiliating little squelch emerged as he pressed a finger and clenched on it.He looked up through his lashes, his face flushed a deep red, and his bottom lip swollen and bitten, because Hanbin had already tasted one sip of his want, and it shamed him to dip his fingers again and again into that hunger, but he still did it nonetheless.

“I-I got so wet watching you,” Hanbin murmured, nearly inaudible now. “I couldn’t help it, gege. I was touching myself so much while you fucked her...”

Hao only stared, did not answer at once. Hanbin watched as Hao’s chest rose, and the muscles in his jaw pulled tight, and he watched again that Hao’s eyes dropped to the place between his legs and fixed there without blinking.

Hao’s voice was as if he dragged gravel over his tongue and teeth. “You… fingered yourself?” 

Hanbin nodded, shy yet so proud, and not ashamed, or if ashamed then in the delicious way that made his toes curl. The contradiction of both rang hot and heady even to his own ears. “I wanted to be ready. I thought maybe… if you saw it was already like this, already—” Hanbin couldn’t quite finish. He swallowed, lips trembling around an inexact, unsaid word, “—you’d want it too.”

Hao muttered an unsound fuck under his breath, like he was trying to keep control even though it never really left him, and Hanbin caught the twitch of his cock where it hung, half-hard but rousing fast. He felt the littlest of pride of it settle in his chest as though his sin had finally borne fruit.

“I finally figured it out,” Hanbin whispered, and as he said it, his hands reached behind him to spread the soft flesh open. “You don’t want to fuck a boy, gege. So—”

There was silence for one breath, and the second, and then Hao’s hands were on him, gripping his ass hard, spreading it wider.

“You’re such a little slut,” Hao growled, his tone low and mean and wanting. He crawled onto the bed. One hand wrapped around Hanbin’s ass, and the other pressed him open still further, and his breath, when it landed on his wet hole, made it flutter. “You made yourself into a girl just so I’d fuck you?”

He nodded frantically, chest rising and falling as Hao’s thumb pressed and kneaded against his rim. “Yes,” he gasped. “I do. I do—I want it in me. I want your cock in my—,” his words caught on a breath, before whispering again, softer, “—pussy.”

Hao went still. For the briefest inch of a moment, Hanbin wondered if he had broken the deal, or even ruined it, like if the word was too filthy and whether it had snapped something in the spell.

But then, Hao spoke again.

“You’re a boy, Hanbin.” 

“I know,” he held his undershirt in both fists, bunching it like a child would do a blanket. “But I want to be your girl, gege. If you let me.”

“Sweet,” Hao murmured, a dark smile pulling at his lips. “Then come closer, baby. On your hands and knees for me. Let me see you… and don’t peek. Just feel it, okay?”

Hanbin’s knees hit the mattress first, then his hands, chest dipping slightly into the valley of sheets. He obeyed instinctively, shivering at the suggestion, closing his eyes as Hao’s presence loomed behind him.

He heard a small scrape of something being moved on the desk, and then a pause, before a sting hit him all at once from behind. The shock of it threaded through his spine that he yelped. A dildo? The thought barely formed before the pain flared, and the next thing was that he gasped for air. The unprepared stretch sending heat and panic spiraling together in him. It hurt. Hao didn’t even prepare him, but Hanbin gave it a doubt that he probably thought Hanbin had fully stretched himself before. It hurt, regardless.

“Gege, it hurts,” he cried out in tremors.

“Shh… I know, baby,” Hao murmured, soothing him. His hand rested lightly against Hanbin’s hip. “You’ll be a good girl for me, right, Hanbinnie?” 

The thing inside him didn’t move at first, holding still, as though only measuring how much he could take. Then, slowly, it did, and strangely, not with an in-and-out thrust, but with an expansion instead, like a fit that was molding itself to his walls. It couldn’t have been just a dildo, or perhaps it had never been one to begin with. But, what was it, then? 

“Gege, what’s this?”

“Your new pussy.” Hao said softly. “How do you like it, hm?”

Shock flared through him first—how could something so artifice and impossibly foreign, feel so intimate? Hao’s hand pressed from above as if doing the slow molding of him into shape. It hurt, yes, but in that pain there was something tender, a confirmation, however strange, that he was, at long last, exactly what Hao wanted.

“You’re so tight… so good for me,” Hao breathed. “Can you feel me? Can you take it?”

Hanbin pressed his face into the bed, small whimpers spilling between his lips. He trusted, trembled—surrendered. “I-I’m trying, gege…”

Every movement of the fleshlight pressed him further into the illusion: that he was a girl, that Hao’s desire was sculpting him into the very body of his fantasy. The outlandish feel of the toy bit by bit faded, becoming less and less object, and more extension for the arousal and affirmation he had craved.

“That’s it, my girl. Take it all, Hanbinnie,” Hao murmured amusedly.

One after another, Hao insisted on his movements, pressed, pressed him more, into the mattress, into the sheets, into himself. Then a ragged, guttural exhale ripped from Hao. “Fuck,” Hao groaned, his voice wrecked and breathless as he pushed deeper. 

“Your pussy is so good, Hanbin-ah.”

The words—the ones he had already heard before they were just spoken now—reverberated through and ignited every fine thread of his nerves. He clenched so suddenly with it that it stalled the motion Hao had been giving him.

Hao paused tentatively, easing his thrust. “Hanbin?”

“Sorry, I… I’ve heard you say that before,” Hanbin breathed heavily. The words cascaded down the slope of his spine, that fine, tremulous quiver that came when he was painfully aware of himself, of being watched and being so wholly seen—known. “It was already in my head somehow.”

“It was that day,” he admitted, words catching in his throat, as if they were waiting for Hanbin’s private recollection to flower. “When you left the toy.”

Hao kept his mouth so near that the warmth of his breath gathered at the tender hinge of Hanbin’s neck, and he stayed there, not moving except for the faint shift of his chest against Hanbin’s back. Hanbin, the man himself, was caught somewhere between lying on his side and being bent forward, pinned open, and Hao’s hips fitted to him as if the shape of his body were meant to hold him there, unmoving.

“You knew I used it after you,” Hanbin whispered, not lifting his eyes because the words would otherwise be impossible. “And while I did… I thought about you fucking it. I thought about you fucked me. And me fucking you. Then I thought maybe it was for someone else… a girl.” 

The last word seemed to hollow Hanbin out even as he spoke it, and he could feel his pulse quicken with it. His voice became almost threadbare as he went on. “I imagined her. And then I imagined I was her. That it was me you were using. That I had… that I had a pussy. My own.”

“Did you?” Hao asked, tilting his head so that his lips brushed the shell of Hanbin’s ear, the question almost warm enough to pass for breath alone.

Hanbin swallowed, feeling the slide of Hao’s length shift fractionally inside the plastic, the movement so small it could have been nothing, and yet the ripple it sent through his body was so immense it felt as if it had reached into the centre of him and pulled something loose, breaking him open. “Yes. But I began thinking only just now… if I had a pussy, would you want me… more? Would it be easier to fuck me?”

Hanbin expected nothing for an answer, and Hao gave none in words. Instead, he shifted lower, the full weight of his body settling between Hanbin’s parted thighs, contained by the fleshlight, and even so, Hanbin could still feel the outline of Hao’s cock dragged through the cleft where all his need lumped together into one unbearable point inside.

Hanbin shrieked at the sudden contact against his prostate; he couldn’t stop the sound from rising, nor the involuntary arch of his body in an attempt to meet each of Hao’s thrusts.

“Even if it’s harder now,” Hao groaned. “I’ll still find a way to still fuck you either way.”

His hand slid down, cupping him between the legs, the warm pressure settling over that hidden seam just in front of where he had breached him, moving against the plastic that covered it at the top. His thumb stroked in half-circles there, gliding through the residual lube, and then he adjusted the plastic slightly. With that, he resumed motion, rutting his cock through the plastic. “You’re soft here,” he groaned. “Clenching around me like you’re trying to milk me dry. Fuck—”

Hanbin gasped then, his own body tightening as though to confirm Hao’s words, the small involuntary clench answering in place of any speech. He had known about this, but only now admitted that it had been one of his own impulses far before he knew Hao’s, to imagine himself as Hao’s girl—whether or not it coincided with whatever Hao privately wanted—that in this moment, even as he was pressed into the artifice, he could finally almost feel the soft, wet give of folds that were not there. 

Their imagined tenderness washed over him more real than the factual absence, so real that the recognition of it—what his body was incapable of—spilled over into a grief that had neither clear beginning nor end. A mourning for something that had never been and never could be. And yet, all was tremendously felt, as if each were taken away from him. 

The bodily pleasure, however, pressed so hard into the loss until there was no relief from either, and before he knew it, his eyes were wet, the tears falling helplessly to his temples, unknowing whether from the sorrows or a single joy—or modestly both.

The overlap was too much for Hanbin to carry dry-eyed. So was the thought that perhaps he had never been so close to the truth of himself as he was now under Hao’s weight, with Hao’s breath in his ear, with this impossible body and the girl’s body he would never have superimposed—yet simulated in plastic—perfectly in the same place.

“Hanbin…” Hao moaned, lowering himself further, the slow descent of his mouth marking a red trail over Hanbin’s throat, his collarbone, the curve of his shoulder, each word gritted out against skin as though he meant them to permeate the flesh.

“You don’t know what you’ve been doing to me, Hanbin.”

And perhaps that was true, Hanbin thought dimly, though it seemed equally possible that he knew exactly, that the knowing had been planted in him long ago. Like how one could come back into an abandoned courtyard and expect to find it overgrown with weeds and the stone steps with moss, yet still be startled by the way a single stubborn shoot thriving in the cracks.

—

“Hanbin-ah. I have to admit something.”

It was weeks after KCON. Hanbin had heard from colleagues that Yuqi had been out for a while, dealing with complications. And Hanbin had been, well, for the lack of better words, thoroughly ‘fucked in the ass’ plenty these days. 

“When we were practicing for KCON, I didn’t want you awake… while Yuqi and I were together. In our bed,” Hao continued. “I didn’t want it to interfere with your practice. I put something in your drink to help you stay asleep. But I should’ve told you.”

Hanbin’s eyes widened, and then a small, mischievous smile tugged at his lips. “It’s… fine,” he said. “It’s nice that you always think of me.”

Hao’s shoulders slumped. “I—yes. I didn’t want to hurt you. Can’t risk you being distracted. But they said it some side eff—”

“Honestly, I barely noticed, hyung,” Hanbin cut him off.

He thought of the doctor’s note and decided—

“I trust you.”

Hao exhaled, a little tension leaving his shoulders.

“And—” Hanbin added halfway. 

“You can just do it, really. Drug me or anything.”

It was Hao’s eyes which blinked rapidly now, half-amused, half-mortified. “Oh. I like that you think about me like that.”

Hanbin laughed softly, pressing his forehead against Hao’s shoulder. “I just know you’ll take care of me,” he whispered.