Pairing: KyuHae [Kyuhyun/Donghae]
Rating: R [NC-17 in future chapters]
Genre: Romance
Disclaimer: I don’t own anyone.
Summary: He didn’t want Kyuhyun to just take his breath away. He wanted him to snatch it away, take it by force. Smother him.
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Chapter Eight
When Donghae woke in the unfamiliar but intoxicatingly comfortable bed to a foreign warmth and a sense of not being alone, he almost forgot who was next to him, snoring lightly with an arm across Donghae’s pillow next to his head. Even as he began to piece everything back together, he snuggled back down into the blanket and sighed.
But then he remembered school and shot straight up to frantically look around for a clock. On the nightstand, he found Kyuhyun’s cell phone and read ten twenty-three with utter dread before flopping back down.
“We’re kind of late,” Kyuhyun mumbled sleepily.
“You forgot to set an alarm,” Donghae said.
“Let’s skip.”
“I can’t.”
“I’ll have my mom forge you a note,” Kyuhyun grumbled and rubbed Donghae’s pillow with a lazy hand, “or something.”
And as much as he loved his mom and didn’t want to disappoint her again, he figured what the hell and pulled the blankets back up, turning on his side to go back to sleep.
“Why don’t you sleep on this side of the bed?” Donghae asked, halfway back to dreamland but for some reason feeling talkative.
“I like being different,” Kyuhyun replied.
“Why aren’t your parents ever home?” Donghae inquired, opening his eyes barely enough to see Kyuhyun looked already asleep again, face squished into the pillow and mouth slack.
“They are, you just don’t hear them,” Kyuhyun said quietly, shifting a bit under the covers.
Donghae knew Kyuhyun wanted to go back to sleep, snooze until noon, but this was one of the rare civilized conversations he was able to have with Kyuhyun and whether he admitted it or not, it was nice. Nice in the same sense as the bed he laid in, the perfect darkness of the room, the cool air from the ceiling fan, the silence of the household. Nice in an addicting way. “Where’s your sister?”
“In college,” Kyuhyun replied.
“Do you miss her?”
“No, she’s a brat.”
Donghae laughed lightly, not fully understanding relationships between siblings but having seen enough from afar to know they can be unruly. “Have you ever had a girlfriend?”
“What is this – twenty questions?” Kyuhyun griped, rubbing his hand on his face before letting it stretch out over Donghae’s pillow again.
“You’ve never had a girlfriend,” Donghae said mockingly and poked the arm in front of his face.
“Not because I can’t get one,” Kyuhyun stated. “High-schoolers are all dumbasses.”
“Gee, thanks,” Donghae mumbled, pulling at the hairs on Kyuhyun’s arm. “Have you always lived here?”
“Yep. I was born right here in this bed,” Kyuhyun said, patting the pillow. “Probably on this very pillow case.”
Chuckling and scrunching his face in disgust, Donghae pushed Kyuhyun’s hand away. “I’m out of questions,” Donghae admitted after sobering up a bit.
“My turn. What happened to your dad?”
“Next question.”
“No skips allowed.”
“He died,” Donghae breathed, picking at the hem of the blanket.
“I know that already. How?” Kyuhyun inquired.
“Car accident.” With a resigned sigh, Donghae collected his thoughts to tell the story. “He was an alcoholic. You know, the kind that comes home and beats their wives. Only he wasn’t that bad. Just kind of… angry all the time. He never hit my mom, not ever. He was driving home from a night with his friends and crashed.”
“He never hit your mom, but did he hit you?”
“When he remembered I existed,” Donghae said with a bitter, short laugh. “After a few drinks, it was like it was before they got married and I wasn’t born yet, not even a thought yet. If he did ever pay me attention, it was because I tried to make him shut up and go to bed.”
“Did it make you feel better?”
Donghae furrowed his eyebrows and stared at Kyuhyun. “Why would that make me feel better?”
“I’ve heard when a person feels neglected, any form of attention is worth it,” Kyuhyun replied simply. His eyes looked glazed over and he had a red line on his face where he’d slept on a crease of the pillow.
“No,” Donghae said, though he did contemplate it further than just that. “It didn’t make me feel better at all.”
“What was your old school like?” Kyuhyun asked. “Were you Mr. Popular with a huge clan of groupies and followers?”
Donghae shook his head. “Definitely not. At one point in time I had a lot of friends, but they kind of went away after a while.”
“You must have driven them away with your eye-rolling. Nobody likes that,” Kyuhyun said.
It almost felt like Kyuhyun was trying to lighten the mood, like he wanted to make Donghae feel better after spilling about his dad. “I only roll my eyes at you.”
“I’m special.”
“You’re an ass.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“We’re never going back to sleep.”
Kyuhyun rolled over onto his back and yawned. “Now that you’ve woke me up with all your stupid questions, I’m hungry. Go make breakfast.”
“You do not want me trying to cook,” Donghae stated.
Kyuhyun sat up and leaned over Donghae, stretching to grab his phone off the nightstand.
Donghae would never admit that the warmth radiating from Kyuhyun’s body and the brief press of his chest on Donghae’s side was a feeling one could get used to.
“Damn, it’s way too early,” Kyuhyun stated. “I’ll sleep more. You go call someone and ask them questions.”
“I thought you were hungry,” Donghae grumbled, still coming around from the slight daze the contact had pushed him into.
“Oh, yeah. I’ll sleep, you go make food and bring it here when it’s done.”
After just a few more moments of savoring the soft sheets and cushiony mattress, Donghae slid out of bed and hobbled into the kitchen. He made some toast because it was the only thing he could find, grabbed two sodas from the fridge, and carried it all back to Kyuhyun’s room. When he made it to the doorway, he stopped and silently took in Kyuhyun’s perfectly relaxed face, his splayed arms, and the milky pale skin he’d never seen when Kyuhyun was wearing a shirt. It was another thing he could get used to.
He mentally slapped himself across the face and set the plate on the nightstand while he found the TV remote and flipped it on.
“I was hoping for pancakes.” Kyuhyun glared at the offending plate of food.
“You’re lucky I didn’t burn anything,” Donghae stated and picked up a piece of toast. As he ate, he noticed Kyuhyun drifting back and forth between awake and asleep, his eyelids fluttering open now and then. He had some damn long eyelashes.
“Stop staring at me,” Kyuhyun suddenly said, shocking Donghae.
He averted his eyes back to the television and finished off the slice of toast. To keep himself busy, he started on another of the pieces of toast and flipped through channels.
Kyuhyun’s hand appeared almost out of nowhere and grabbed the piece of toast, bringing Donghae’s hand and all down to his mouth so he could take a huge bite.
“Ew,” Kyuhyun said as he chewed a mouthful of food. “Why are you eating this?”
“Why are you eating it?” Donghae asked, still amazed that Kyuhyun had actually just took a bite like that.
“I got jealous because you have food and I don’t,” Kyuhyun mumbled under his breath.
Donghae grinned and offered the rest of the toast to Kyuhyun, who grabbed it and took another bite despite his previous “ew” at it.
“It’s strawberry jam,” Kyuhyun said and Donghae’s finger froze on the remote control as he looked away with complete mortification. “I knew it,” Kyuhyun went on, nudging Donghae’s thigh with his elbow.
“I got it from your refrigerator,” Donghae argued, slapping the elbow.
They went quiet and watched TV, whatever the show was, and while the time passed and school went by quickly, time in Kyuhyun’s house went slowly, languidly. Donghae eventually got up and dressed just past noon, leaving Kyuhyun half-asleep in bed. When he’d fixed his hair a bit and brushed his teeth, he put a knee up on the edge of the bed and stretched out to pat Kyuhyun’s cheek a bit roughly.
Kyuhyun’s hand darted out at him and got his hand. “Go away.”
“I can’t. You have my hand.” Donghae tugged against Kyuhyun’s grasp just to show him.
Kyuhyun’s eyes barely opened, glaring at Donghae’s hand. “Shut up.” He let go and sat up, pulling himself out of the bed. “No more football. No more cross-country. What to do with ourselves…”
Donghae thought about suggesting the arcade again, but really didn’t want to risk something happening like the day before. “Basketball season starts soon.”
“Yeah, their first game is tonight,” Kyuhyun said as he pulled on a pair of jeans. Not that Donghae really noticed how he filled out the jeans or anything, despite that he looked scrawny in some perspectives.
“Teachers go to the games.” Donghae leaned against the bed.
“It’s not like they’d care if we went,” Kyuhyun stated and pulled on a t-shirt. “That’s not until later, though. My XBOX is in the living room.”
“Why isn’t it in here?” Donghae asked, following Kyuhyun out the door and to the living room to sit on the couch and wait for Kyuhyun to dig through a shelf of unorganized DVDs and games.
“The couch is comfortable.” Kyuhyun wiped a disk off on his shirt and put it into the XBOX, handing Donghae a remote. “I’m going to teach you how to play so you won’t look like such a dumbass at Eunhyuk’s next time.”
Donghae didn’t mention he never planned to go back there again. Friends be damned. He waited while Kyuhyun set up the game, the screen moving from menu to menu so fast he couldn’t keep up.
“Now,” Kyuhyun said, “the object is to find me before I find you. This is to move your screen.” He leaned over and covered Donghae’s hand with his own, moving his thumb to a toggle and wiggling it to show him how the screen moved. “This is to move.” His thumb pressed over another button, his hand still over Donghae’s. “And this is to shoot.” His index finger fluttered over Donghae’s, almost too quickly for Donghae to remember the controls, and eventually he was back in his own space.
“Got it.” Donghae nodded to the screen and waited.
“Run for it.”
He tried. He really did. He managed to make it to another area as he was experimenting with the controls and practicing with the gun, but his character suddenly collapsed and Kyuhyun had won.
“Better luck next time.”
“Is there something else we can play?” Donghae asked with a slight pout.
Kyuhyun nodded, humming to himself as he clicked around the screen, feet and toes wiggling under his crossed legs. “In this, we’re a team, so don’t try to shoot me. If you see a monster or an alien, kill it. If you see a human and he tries to talk to you, they don’t like it if you hit them.”
“Wonder why.” He mostly followed Kyuhyun’s character, shooting every now and then without hitting anything while Kyuhyun took out everything in one sweep. Every now and then the screen would stop and a video would play. Donghae took those times to try to memorize the buttons on the controller. Eventually he could actually fend for himself, though Kyuhyun enjoyed stealing his thunder and showing off.
“Here, you can either drive or shoot while I drive,” Kyuhyun said as they approached several vehicles. “Just kick that guy out and try to shoot stuff.”
By the time they made it to the next level, Donghae was fairly addicted, twisting around and aiming the controller like it affected how the game went.
“Ah, shit!” Donghae kicked towards the television as his character died and let his hands fall into his lap.
Kyuhyun chuckled from his side, elbowing him lightly. “Way to go.”
“Well, how do you run up and hit them? What button is that?” Donghae asked, scowling and pushing buttons. As Kyuhyun’s left hand predictably slid onto the controller over his, Donghae’s eyes fluttered unconsciously to his face, catching a glimpse of a smirk that gave more than just amusement, perhaps endearment of some sort. He had lips that smirked so often they seemed to only mold into one shape, except when Kyuhyun’s tongue gently swiped over his bottom lip or he pursed them just a bit in thought. Or when he was mad and the upper lip dragged upwards just slightly, scorn and fury marking every word that flowed from his mouth.
“You can throw a grenade with this one.” Kyuhyun’s finger pushed his downwards to depress the button. “This one is duck.” His arm slid on the back of the couch behind Donghae. “Shoot.” His breath spread over Donghae’s cheek, as if trying to coax him to turn his face, tilt his head just a bit. “Switch weapons.”
His breath left him as the mouth touched his jaw, just barely, probably unnoticeably so if he hadn’t been waiting for it, expecting it.
“I already know those.”
“Just refreshing your memory.”
The words went two ways. Just as Donghae started to instinctively turn his head in the right direction, just as he thought he was seconds away, it was all gone.
“Now let’s see if you can stay alive this time,” Kyuhyun said as if absolutely nothing abnormal had just happened, though Donghae’s heart was beating rapid fire, his breath silent but labored, his face hot and flushed, his body tingling slightly, his palms damp, his lips wanting.
He was able to draw out of the jumble of nerves and hormones long enough to finish playing the game without acting awkward, but when he got home and he lay alone on his own bed, the feelings came back and devoured him. The bed wasn’t soft enough or warm enough, and it was so lonely. He could feel that swirling, constricting breath on his jaw, his neck, his cheek, his collarbone, and everywhere else like a rash had spread from the contact point.
Girls, he thought, rolling over onto his back and splaying a hand over his face. They didn’t feel like that. He’d given girls the chills, made them giggle, but any time they whispered in his ear or kissed his cheek, nothing happened except their lips left behind a damp, sticky spot from their lip balm. He’d hated the stuff when he’d been in his glory days, getting girls left and right.
Kyuhyun didn’t wear lip balm.
Donghae squeezed his eyes shut, hand flopping over onto the bed.
That smirk - those full lips wouldn’t be sticky. They’d roll against his like silk, plump and warm. His tongue wouldn’t be shy, restrained, but intruding and demanding. He’d taste nice, like mint, and he’d smell like his body wash or cologne.
Donghae shook his head to disperse the thoughts and the imaginary sensations. This person that he’d just been fantasizing about had slapped him, scorned him, made a fool of him, stole his hat, helped him on a test, given him a tattoo, bought him a stupid doll he still had on his dresser, helped bring his grades back up to passing, and almost kissed him.
Why did the positive outweigh the negative? Only in numbers, Donghae told himself. If he really thought about it, slapping a person tipped the scale. But then again Kyuhyun had almost kissed him… had very nearly succeeded because if he’d just stayed a moment longer, a tiny second, Donghae would have cracked. They’d have kissed and… gone back to the game like nothing had happened? Kyuhyun would have made fun of Donghae? Donghae would have left?
Despite all that shit and that accursed smirk, Donghae wanted to do it. He couldn’t convince his body to listen to his advice that Kyuhyun was a bad person with no morals and a fake personality. He couldn’t shove away the memory of those lips so delicately touching his skin even though Kyuhyun was a liar and rude, vicious enough to slap a person, manipulative enough to get Donghae to go to a party and drink, addictive enough to make Donghae stay.
His cell phone suddenly went off, ringing through his room like a fire alarm and jolting him out of the bed and across the room to dig in his jacket. It was just a text, the bright screen harsh on his tired eyes and the words hard to read until he blinked a few times to clear his vision.
See you in the library tomorrow.
Donghae dropped the phone onto his jacket and dove back into bed without replying. He could do this, he thought. He could withdraw, put a stop to this before he was engulfed by the maelstrom that was Kyuhyun and he drowned in the lies and falsities and hurt.
“Bring it,” Donghae whispered aloud, grinning just a bit as he remembered the little girl at the arcade.
.-.-.
A/N: Sorry this is pretty late. My internet just got turned back on today. I hope you like it. Haha I guess you could call this chapter the quiet before the storm, maybe?
