don't ever erase me

They dance together and apart, undressing each other with their eyes from across the dancefloor, Sanghyuk making sure to lick and bite his lips because he knows Hongbin loves the way his mouth looks. Hongbin dances with a girl in retaliation, laughing into the skin of her neck when he sees Sanghyuk glaring. It’s fun, as it’s always been; he has a buzz running through his veins that has less to do with the vodka and more to do with the way Hongbin looks at him, his eyes speaking volumes more than his voice ever could.

“Drink?” Sanghyuk yells in his ear at about half two, knowing he’s probably had enough but not caring.

Hongbin nods at him so he makes his way to the bar. There’s the same people working tonight that were there last night: a tiny girl with a million piercings in her ears, grinning and laughing with her tattooed coworker who isn’t much taller than she is, a teardrop of ink on his cheek. In comparison, the tall, lanky bartender with his hair falling in his face and pouty lips looks straightlaced, especially as he’s wearing a suit—albeit with the tie loosened considerably—and has resting bitch face the likes of which Sanghyuk has never seen before. He looks up when Sanghyuk waves at him and makes his way over, leaning over the bar to hear the drinks order that Sanghyuk yells in his ear. He’s even more beautiful up close, his almost feline-like features underscored by the flashing lights; Sanghyuk feels his heart start racing and realises that between this boy and Hongbin he most certainly does have a type. Even though they don’t look alike they’re both angular and lanky and thin and pretty, and he stares at the bartender’s lips as he mixes the drinks.

“Your friend?” he asks as he hands Sanghyuk the drinks, nodding over his shoulder at Hongbin.

Sanghyuk turns to see Hongbin dancing with someone else—a guy this time. He looks up and catches Sanghyuk’s eyes, winks, and Sanghyuk sticks out his tongue. Hongbin is a shameless flirt, but it’s harmless; ever since they’d fallen into bed with each other two years ago in university, neither of them have slept with anyone else. It’s fun to watch, actually.

“You could say that,” he replies, smiling to himself as he turns back to grab the drinks.

The bartender, who clearly doesn’t miss a thing, looks between Sanghyuk and Hongbin with an arched brow. “Ah,” he says, and hands Sanghyuk back his card. “I see.”

It’s the most emotion he’s showed all evening—and Sanghyuk’s been watching, simply because he finds it interesting to people watch, even as drunk as he is—even if Sanghyuk can’t tell what emotion it is, so he simply nods and heads back to Hongbin, pressing the glass into his hand and leaning in to kiss him in full view of everyone. “Mine,” he mutters possessively against his lips, and smirks when Hongbin sighs into him.

*

This time they go to the bar together. Sanghyuk stands there for a solid five minutes trying to wave someone down—the girl has gone, disappeared upstairs to the private party, and the tattooed one is chatting to someone, and the tall one is pouring drinks—before tall and lanky makes his way over to them, three shots of tequila in his hands, complete with slice of lemon and salt-rimmed glasses. He puts them down on the bar in front of them and flicks his hair out of his eyes nonchalantly. It’s an invitation, and it’s one Sanghyuk cannot refuse.

“What is he doing?” Hongbin murmurs, leaning into him.

Shrugging, Sanghyuk hands him his shot. “I think he likes us. Kinda hard to tell, though.”

He sees the moment Hongbin turns his critical eye on tall and lanky, looking him up and down. He also sees, however briefly, the flicker of interest in his eyes—he knows to recognise it because Hongbin’s been staring at him that way for so long—before he raises the shot, an acceptance, and they all clink glasses. “I’m Hongbin, and this is Sanghyuk,” he says, and then tosses his shot back.

The tequila burns like hell going down and Sanghyuk screws up his face before remembering these are free and he shouldn’t appear ungrateful, so he sticks the lemon slice in his mouth instead. “I’m Taekwoon,” the bartender replies, and smiles around his lemon.

His face is transformed so much when he smiles that for a moment Sanghyuk actually has to grab onto the bar—he nearly swoons, and god, he’s being ridiculous. Hongbin doesn’t miss it, either, and elbows him sharply in the side as he learns over to yell his drinks order in Taekwoon’s ear. “Can I get two midori sours?”

The moment Taekwoon turns away to reach for the bottle of midori, Hongbin turns to him with accusing eyes and sneaks an arm around his waist, pulling him close. He doesn’t look angry, though. He looks thoughtful. “You like him,” he says, and it’s not a question.

“I just think he’s pretty.” Sanghyuk slides his hand down to settle on Hongbin’s ass, feels Hongbin’s hand tighten on his waist, and longing slides neatly into his chest, sharp and hot. “Not as pretty as you, but pretty nonetheless.”

He’s shocked to see his own desire mirrored in Hongbin’s eyes—over a few glances across a bar and free tequila shots—and even more shocked to realise he’s getting hard. All of a sudden he realises what a dangerous situation they’re in. Hongbin likes to flirt, and Sanghyuk likes to watch, and now that there’s a real, human focus of all that heated wanting he knows things could escalate very, very quickly if he’s not careful. When Taekwoon returns with the drinks and hands them over, his fingers lingering on theirs for longer than strictly necessary, Sanghyuk looks at him and deliberately doesn’t allow himself to think anything lewd. He tries to hand over his card to pay, but Taekwoon waves him away with a smile, and, even if nothing happens, Sanghyuk knows they’ve found their new favourite club.

*

Taekwoon keeps them imbibed with free drinks whenever they want them, even handing over bottles of water when Hongbin makes dramatic gestures indicating he’s about to die of thirst, and every time they do shots he has one too. By five the club is nearly empty—he and Hongbin are the only two left on the dancefloor, off in their own worlds and not caring that the other patrons are just sitting on the sidelines watching them—and the staff start to scatter. Tattooed girl comes up to them and asks for a light, and Hongbin digs his zippo out of his pocket and lights her cigarette for her, laughing as she joins them in dancing. She’s great fun and they laugh at nothing together; Sanghyuk is so drunk that everyone and anyone is his new best friend, and at one point she wraps both arms around their waists and squeezes them into a hug before wandering off.

“I think the DJ has given up,” Hongbin points out sometime later, and Sanghyuk turns to watch as he plugs in his macbook.

“Clicking through his itunes library,” Sanghyuk replies with a snigger. “To be fair, there aren’t many of us left.”

As if on cue, Taekwoon slides across the floor towards them, a small smile playing on his lips. He’s an interesting dancer; it’s almost like he doesn’t know what to do with his arms or legs because they’re so long. It’s terribly endearing, and Sanghyuk has to dig his nails into his wrist to bring himself back down to earth forcefully—they’re strangers and Taekwoon’s job is to bring people into the club, after all. But, as Taekwoon’s arm snakes around his waist and pulls him flush, he knows there’s more to it than that. Lust like this, unfettered by the awkwardness of expectations, is the purest kind, and that’s what makes it all the more difficult for Sanghyuk to hold himself back from kissing Taekwoon as much as he so badly wants to. Hongbin’s next to him, so close Sanghyuk can feel the warmth of his body, and three has never seemed such an appealing number until now.

“What are you playing at?” Sanghyuk asks Taekwoon, figuring they’ve come this far by being coy, knowing he’ll need to be blunt to move things along.

Taekwoon shrugs, his eyes flicking between the two of them—but his nervousness is reflected in the way he’s chewing at his bottom lip. “Both of you,” he says simply, pulling Hongbin in towards him.

Leaning in so his nose brushes Hongbin’s hair, Sanghyuk says into his ear, “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. We can just go home.”

He’s doing the chivalrous thing even though it’s a farce because Hongbin is turned on and has been for quite some time—he’s practically vibrating with need, his fingers clutching at the fabric of Sanghyuk’s shirt—but also because they’ve never done this before, and taking home complete strangers doesn’t come naturally to either of them. Instead of replying, though, Hongbin kisses him, one hand twined with Taekwoon’s, and in his lips Sanghyuk tastes the desire running through his own blood. It’s a promise and hope all at once, and he understands. Yes, Hongbin whispers into his mouth, yes yes yes.

They’ve been fucking each other with their eyes for hours so when Sanghyuk pulls away to drag Taekwoon into a kiss (stopping just before their lips touch, waiting for Taekwoon to push in that last little bit, nearly groaning when he does) it’s the most gratifying feeling. He loves Hongbin in so many ways, but Taekwoon is exhilarating, a shot of adrenaline straight to his heart; his hands, roaming over Sanghyuk’s body, feel so right that he does groan, shameless. If that wasn’t bad enough, when Taekwoon pulls back and kisses Hongbin he feels like he may actually die. The sight of that—the both of them leaning into each other, Taekwoon’s long arms wrapped around Hongbin’s back, Hongbin tangling his hands in Taekwoon’s hair—is almost too fucking much. He knew he liked watching Hongbin, but not like this, never like this.

Why, he thinks as he kisses Hongbin, locking eyes with Taekwoon as he does, did we wait so fucking long to do this?

“Your place our ours?” he mumbles to Taekwoon when he breaks away from Hongbin.

Taekwoon shrugs. “I live pretty close by, that might be easiest?”

Wordlessly they make their way out, Taekwoon speaking briefly to his coworkers as Hongbin and Sanghyuk pull on their coats and wrap their scarves around their necks. He catches the other bar staff staring at them as they leave, and wonders what they must think. Does Taekwoon do this often? The thought of that just makes him even more turned on, stupidly, although when they get outside the cold smacks any feelings that aren’t freezing from him. “Please tell me it’s not a long walk,” he says to Taekwoon, reaching for his hand.

Smiling, Taekwoon shakes his head. “Five minutes. Come on.”

It’s late enough that there’s no one in the streets, so they walk the entire way there holding hands, all three of them. This is plainly the most absurd thing Sanghyuk’s ever done (and he’s done some ridiculous shit, simply because Hongbin dared him to) and he keeps catching Hongbin’s eye, wondering if they’re really going to do this. But then they’re turning into a side street, clattering up steps, spilling into a lift, and then Taekwoon kisses Hongbin, pressing him against the wall, and Sanghyuk realises that yes, they really are doing this, and he’s never wanted anything more in his entire life.

Taekwoon doesn’t even offer them a drink when they get inside, although, to be fair, he doesn’t get a chance to. They fall on him in unison, pulling off his coat; Sanghyuk yanks at his tie while Hongbin slides his jacket off his shoulders, reaching for his shirt buttons. They back him through the apartment until they reach a bed, and he sits on it and watches as Sanghyuk yanks Hongbin to him, possessive even now, kissing him fiercely and making him moan.

Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that, when Taekwoon undoes his shirt and lets it flutter to the floor, he’s covered in tattoos. His arms are littered with intricate blackwork and he has an owl on his chest in colour, its yellow eyes staring up at them. He looks, somehow, more vulnerable like this, sitting shirtless on his bed covered in ink that looks like a deterrent to the general populace but just makes Sanghyuk’s heart race all the more. The only blank spot he has, apart from his neck and hands, is his belly, and when Sanghyuk hovers over him and presses a hand there he can feel Taekwoon is trembling.

“Fuck,” Hongbin breathes as Taekwoon reaches for him, undoing the button on his jeans and letting his hand brush deliberately over his cock as he does so. “Fucking—God.”

It’s a testament to how turned on he is that he’s swearing like that, Sanghyuk knows. He himself isn’t far behind as they strip each other slowly, exploring each other’s bodies; when Taekwoon is naked and spread out underneath them, most of body covered with tattoos, he wonders, faintly, how he will survive this.

He makes the sweetest, breathiest moans when Sanghyuk kisses his way down his chest, planting one on the owl as he goes, to take his cock into his mouth; it’s heavy and hot and damp with precome and just what Sanghyuk likes. The garbled noise he makes when Sanghyuk takes him deep makes his head spin, and he realises that he wants to fuck Taekwoon, wants to make him come apart. Not that that’s hard. When Hongbin joins him and Taekwoon props himself up on his elbows to watch as they both suck him off, his eyes roll back in his head and he thrusts his hips upwards, wanting more of them.

“Do you want to fuck us, or get fucked?” Sanghyuk asks, making his way back up the length of Taekwoon’s body (he’s not sure he’ll ever get over those tattoos, really; they’re so stunningly beautiful he wants to touch every single one of them) to kiss him.

It’s a few moments before he responds, mainly because Hongbin is still sucking his cock and Sanghyuk knows just how good he is at that. “Both?” he gasps with pleading eyes, and Sanghyuk’s heart skips a beat.

Taekwoon produces lube and condoms from the drawer beside the bed, his hands shaking with eagerness, and together they roll Hongbin onto his front and work him open. Hongbin, slut as he is, keeps begging for more and more, writhing underneath them and forcing Sanghyuk to press him down into the mattress the way he knows he likes it. He and Taekwoon have fingers sliding in and out of Hongbin as they kiss, wet and sloppy, nothing but the slick sounds of lubrication and, over that, Hongbin’s moans colouring the air. There’s an urgentness that wasn’t there before, suddenly, borne of the way Hongbin sounds so fucking desperate—so Sanghyuk rolls a condom onto Taekwoon’s cock and watches as he fucks into Hongbin in one smooth, gentle stroke. It’s worth it for the noise that Hongbin makes. He sounds so fulfilled, so content, that Sanghyuk closes a slick fist over his own cock as Taekwoon fucks Hongbin into the mattress, the both of them moaning and swearing, a cacophony of voices that sounds so right.

He knew that Hongbin wasn’t going to last very long (he never does after they’ve been out. It’s like all the sexual tension of the night gets to him. Oftentimes when they get home he’ll come untouched, just from Sanghyuk kissing him, and he gets embarrassed but Sanghyuk thinks there’s nothing on earth hotter than that) and before long his voice starts shifting up an octave, his whines ringed with something that Sanghyuk recognises as the want, no, the need to come. Taekwoon leans down to bite him on the shoulder, his hair trailing over his skin—and Sanghyuk will never forget that mental image, the black of his hair against the pale of Hongbin’s shoulderblade, of the sounds of their moans and of the reverent expression on Taekwoon’s face—and he comes, keening wordlessly, his fingers clenching in the sheets.

Sanghyuk leans down and kisses him through it, stroking his hair the way he knows Hongbin likes. He tends to get boneless and floppy after coming, and this is no exception. When he looks up at Sanghyuk through half-lidded eyelids, a small smile on his lips, he realises that it’s been a long time since he’s seen Hongbin looked this fucked out. That thought sends a jolt of lust down his spine, and he turns to Taekwoon with hunger in his eyes.

They move slowly, some of the urgency having faded. They lie on top of each other and kiss, enjoying the slide of their bodies together, just exploring. Sanghyuk bites at a tattoo on Taekwoon’s bicep and feels him shudder wordlessly. It’s delicious and hedonistic and messy and everything Sanghyuk didn’t realise he needed but does. He sits up and leans against the headboard—Hongbin moves so he’s lying next to them, touching both of them in some way as he just watches—and pulls Taekwoon on top of him, leaning up to kiss him. Taekwoon understands. He reaches for the lube and slides a finger inside himself, splaying a hand on Sanghyuk’s thigh to keep himself upright. Hongbin recovers enough to take over, fingering Taekwoon deliciously slowly, exchanging heavy, weighted glances with Sanghyuk that are tinged with lust and love, intertwined, before he reaches for a condom and hands it to Sanghyuk.

The world seems like it’s going in slow motion as he rolls the condom over his cock before Taekwoon sinks down onto him. His lips part, a silent oh, and they lock eyes and all of a sudden Sanghyuk can’t breathe; that longing is there again, neat and sharp in his chest, but it’s so hard to focus on when Taekwoon is so hot and wet and tight around him. He starts fucking himself on Sanghyuk’s cock, undulating his hips so slowly that Sanghyuk feels like he’s having an out of body experience. Like this, in the dim light with his back arched and his hair falling in his face and the tattoos on his arms, Sanghyuk thinks he’s one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen, superseded only by the way Hongbin looks like this. It’s all he can do to hold still and let Taekwoon set the pace, as much as he wants to fuck into him furiously.

He knows he’s probably not going to last very long, but then neither is Taekwoon; he doesn’t even care because this whole evening has been perfect, lovely, wonderful, every other word that he can’t think of right now. Hongbin closes a hand over Taekwoon’s cock, grinning at Sanghyuk, and within a minute he’s coming on Sanghyuk’s chest, a string of expletives falling from his kiss-swollen lips. Sanghyuk lasts only a moment longer before coming, too, and the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes is Hongbin leaning up to kiss Taekwoon and—god—he’s never needed anything more in his life than he needs these two now.

For the longest time afterwards they all just lie there, sticky and sweaty and panting, before Sanghyuk mumbles something about a shower and they all start reluctantly making moves towards the bathroom. Instead of taking turns, Hongbin drags them all into the shower together, laughing as he sprays Taekwoon and Sanghyuk. When they all stand in front of the mirror the differences between them are so stark it’s almost shocking: Sanghyuk is the tallest but not by much, and more muscular; Hongbin is too but he carries it differently, somehow appearing smaller than he really is. And Taekwoon—Taekwoon is long and lithe and, in the middle of the two of them with his tattoos and his hair falling in his face, Sanghyuk thinks he, strangely, fits right in.

“Stay?” Taekwoon asks, hope bleeding through in his voice even as he tries to sound nonchalant and fails.

Hongbin and Sanghyuk, standing with their arms looped around each other, turn to exchange glances. They don’t even have to speak; they know each other too well for that. The answer is written in their eyes.

Taekwoon’s voice is quiet—ever-quiet, too-quiet, quiet. He’s playing with his gun. Wonshik knows that means he’s nervous. Knows that he likes the heavy weight of it in his hands, knows that it’s comforting. He can’t understand, but he tries to. Tried.

“Are you going, or are they sending you?”

There’s a long silence, broken only by the distant sound of waves and the cries of seagulls overhead. Wonshik looks up at them and wishes, although for what he’s not sure. Wishes for another life, maybe. Wishes he’d never met Taekwoon. He takes that one back as quickly as he thinks it.

“They’re sending me.”

Wonshik waits for him to say something more—“I’ll miss you”, perhaps, or “I’ll come back to you”. But this thing that they’ve had has never been about useless platitudes—about lies—and so Taekwoon continues staring out at the sea, his gaze unflinching, unwavering.

Wonshik never pictured he’d be the one turning and walking away from this. When they’d started this thing he’d always known, in the pit of his stomach, that Taekwoon would be the one to leave. But that’s exactly what he does, feeling a sick sense of satisfaction as he goes. One up that, he thinks, and turns and walks away from Taekwoon.

The heavy weight of his gun, holstered to his side, is a reminder that there is only one thing he can rely on in this life.

And it’s sure as hell not Taekwoon.

//

He’s still covered in blood—he hates that, hates it. The messiness is nice, sometimes, when he’s in the mood for it. But tonight he’s stroppy and pissed and the first thing that he wants to do when he gets home is shower, so that’s what he does, heading for the bathroom. He makes it halfway before he hears a noise and turns, his gun in his hand before he can even think about reaching for it, finger on the trigger.

“Wonshik.” It’s Taekwoon, and he drops his gun. The light switches on and Taekwoon’s standing there, looking just the same even though it’s been months. Longish hair that falls over his forehead. Silver earrings. Wearing all black, of course; their uniform. He has a healing cut on his cheek and his lips are so pink that Wonshik has to remind himself to breathe, goddamn it. His gun is holstered to his side, and from here Wonshik can see the dark crimson of the grip. “Wonshik,” Taekwoon says again, taking a step forward.

He turns away. “I don’t recall ever inviting you in.”

A moot point, since Taekwoon could break into any place blindfolded, as could he. “I thought you’d be happy to see me,” comes the reply as Wonshik’s heading into the kitchen.

That makes him pause. Taekwoon sounds—he almost sounds like he cares. He sounds put-out. He sounds like he’d expected Wonshik to be pining after him. He turns and sees Taekwoon standing at the head of his table, shoulders rounded. Oh, how the tables have turned. “I am,” he lies, and takes a step closer. “It’s been months. You never sent word.”

Taekwoon opens his mouth, closes it again, grimaces. “They sent me to—to—”

Wonshik takes another step closer. Close enough to touch, so he does, reaching out and trailing his hand across the side of Taekwoon’s face, shutting him up. This had started as a distraction from work, from the bodies they left in their wake. He’d never expected it to evolve. “Did you miss me?” he asks, keeping his voice carefully empty.

Dark eyes flick up and meet his. An impossibly pink tongue wets equally pink lips, and Wonshik shifts. “Of course.”

Come and get me, his eyes say. Wonshik does. He closes the distance between them in a kiss that he’d intended to be soft, but morphs into heated halfway—he meets Taekwoon’s lips with a ferocity that they both get lost in, reaching for each other. They strip and fuck right there on the kitchen floor like animals, taking turns to grind into each other, making each other hoarse.

Wonshik almost catches himself wishing they’d met in another life, at another time; they could be so good, so so good. But when Taekwoon twists under his touch, his back arching on the tiles, and the scar across his heart catches the light—he stops. They are what they are, creatures of circumstance and nothing more. Meaningless. They are meaningless.

//

“If someone ordered a hit on me,” he says later, when they’re sweaty and sticky and still haven’t moved from the kitchen floor, “would you do it?”

He sees the indecision on Taekwoon’s face, and it frightens him. He’d expected a swift no—Taekwoon is job first, always. But he chews his lip and doesn’t speak for a while, and the fear in Wonshik’s heart grows. Don’t give in, he thinks, silently begging Taekwoon not to speak. Don’t be vulnerable. I can’t handle it if you’re vulnerable.

The answer is a jolt to his heart, worse than the day they’d cut him there: “No,” Taekwoon says quietly, unable to meet his eyes. “I—I couldn’t. Could you?”

Wonshik gives himself a moment to pause. “No,” he lies, and turns away to reach for his clothes.

//

This time it’s him sitting on the beach, gun in hand. He unloads the magazine, reloads it, cocks it. The design of the cross on the grip is usually a balm to his soul, a reminder that he’s doing the right thing; today it just makes him feel sick.

“They’re sending me away,” he mutters when he feels Taekwoon approach from behind him.

Silence. The waves, the scream of seagulls. Products of circumstance. Is this all they are doomed to be? “Oh.” A heartbeat of indecision, and then Taekwoon touches him on the shoulder. “Don’t get killed.”

A useless platitude. And what they have is, of course, not about useless platitudes. He shrugs Taekwoon’s touch off and slams the magazine back in his gun once more. “If I’m lucky,” he replies hoarsely, deliberately being vague. It would be nice if one of his targets managed to take him out. He feels nothing, these days; the end calls.