Chapter Text
The exact moment they meet is a lost memory, one buried under thousands of new ones that formed not long after. It happens during the period of time when his brain is still learning how to create them, to record the events going on in front of him, and store them for later.
His mother tells him that their encounter hadn’t been the best, and she was surprised he’d decided to be friends with Jongho after he’d taken a bouncy ball from outside and, at point-blank range, thrown it down onto Wooyoung’s head as he lay on the ground using cut citrus fruits as stamps to paint something that vaguely resembled a dog for her and dad.
At least that’s the events relayed to her from the daycare workers. Surely it hadn’t been that bad if Wooyoung had later decided to make Jongho his best friend. The guy that looked after them had claimed that it took some time to console him but Wooyoung thinks that’s a lie made up by his mum to embarrass him when she retells the story.
Jongho’s mum had apparently called up Wooyoung’s mum that evening to profusely apologise on behalf of her son after the incident. Jongho was only four at the time, as was Wooyoung, and kids did that sort of thing all the time without understanding the consequences, Wooyoung’s mother had graciously said, so she accepted the apology and told her not to worry about it, assuring her that Wooyoung was absolutely fine and didn’t seem at all affected by it.
At the end, Jongho’s mother ended up baking some cookies and when she arrived to deliver them she had brought Jongho along to issue a face-to-face apology to Wooyoung since, to her, a verbal apology wasn’t enough.
It’s a strange way to make friends, but it’s how they made friends nonetheless, and in the process had brought their families together. Their mothers had bonded over having two extremely rambunctious gremlins for sons, and their fathers had bonded over the fact that they enjoyed the odd fishing trip here and there and the same dry sense of humour.
Wooyoung had no siblings of his own, and so having Jongho was sort of like having a brother, and what was even better was that Jongho himself actually had an older brother, so that was cool, because now he essentially had two.
Except they weren’t his brothers, because he’d seen the way San sometimes treated Jongho, calling him names and shutting him out of his room for being too loud and irritating. He watched the way they’d sometimes yell at each other, especially when San wouldn’t let Jongho play on the Playstation when their mum had clearly said that it was his turn. And honestly, Wooyoung couldn’t imagine yelling at either of them the way they did.
So maybe he didn’t have two brothers.
Not that he’d consider San close enough to call him that, when he actually really thought about it. The older tended to ignore him when he came around, probably not wanting to waste time humouring his annoying little brother’s annoying little friends. Not that it stopped him from trying to play with San or at the very least he would hover behind him and breathe down his neck as he tried to concentrate on beating the level, before the older would swat him away.
San wasn’t always mean though. When he was in a good mood, sometimes he’d take Wooyoung and Jongho down to the convenience store and buy them some candy or some ice-cream. Sometimes, he’d even hand the controller over to Wooyoung and let him have a go or tell him what the game was about, and Wooyoung would sit next to him and listen and stare at him with eyes filled with awe.
Because when you’re seven years old, a ten year old is pretty much an adult and someone who knows everything. Wooyoung would go home those days and beg his parents for a console, though it would be years before he received one under the christmas tree.
—
Their friendship had always been strong, from as young as when they graduated from kindergarten and entered primary school. Wooyoung remembers crying when he found out that he and Jongho were going to be in different classes for his first year, and Jongho asking his parents if they could call the school and ask them if they could swap.
“It’ll be good to make new friends,” his dad said.
“But what if Jongho doesn’t want to be my friend anymore?”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” and he’d ruffled his hair, “you’re his best friend. You can’t replace best friends like that.”
Wooyoung had only sniffled and wiped the snot away with his sleeve.
—
His dad had been right.
Throughout primary school, Wooyoung was well-liked amongst his peers. He was bright, energetic, and outgoing, and all the other kids swarmed to him like moths to a flame. It was even safe to say that he didn’t even have a particular group of friends that he preferred to hang out with, he was comfortable flitting around from group to group, and he was happy doing so. Jongho was the only constant fixture in his social life, though Jongho himself was quite content with the little circle of friends he’d managed to create for himself, Wooyoung included.
It was lucky that their families always seemed to enrol them in the same schools, because Wooyoung couldn’t really imagine being separated from him like that.
He couldn’t imagine not walking into the Choi abode on any random Saturday and straight into Jongho’s room to ask if he wanted to join him on his trip to get ice-cream down the road, or seeing the way San would roll his eyes when he heard Wooyoung call out for Jongho and slam his bedroom door shut before Wooyoung had the chance to even say hi. He never held it against him though, it seemed like that was just what older brothers were like, and he’d just make a mental note to bother him later when he’d surfaced from his bedroom. Maybe he was doing work and Wooyoung was being a little too loud.
His mum did always say that he was loud enough to wake the dead, and there was a point in time, when he was about six years old, that Wooyoung only spoke in whispers because he was afraid the ghosts were going to get their revenge for being woken up. That only lasted for about a week.
Jongho would also make sure to pay him and his family visits every so often, and Wooyoung thinks maybe he just enjoyed the way his parents would spoil him when he was there. They would always make sure to take advantage of it, so it was always Jongho’s job to ask if they could have pizza for dinner, or stay up late watching movies, and his parents would pretend to hesitate for a moment before they finally gave into Jongho’s puppy dog eyes.
“Okay, but just this once,” they would say, “and don’t stay up past midnight.”
And of course, they would stay up until 1 o’clock in the morning and his parents would be none the wiser.
(They knew.)
—
The beginning of their formative years crept up on them until all of a sudden it smacked them in the face like a ton of bricks. They could never have been prepared for just how many changes would be brought about in the upcoming years, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
He remembers his aunty and uncle from Busan coming around to visit one day and his uncle had made a comment about how tall he’d gotten.
“You’re almost as tall as me now!” he said, placing a hand on top of Wooyoung’s head and Wooyoung had beamed and promised that the next time he saw him he’d be at least a head taller.
He had been growing pretty quickly, to be fair, and from the age of twelve to thirteen he seemed to shoot up like bamboo. He’d also made a bet with Jongho to see who would be taller by eighteen, which is why the supply of milk in their household started to deplete at alarming rates and he would go to the playground every weekend and just hang on the bars to “stretch himself out”. At the moment he was beating Jongho by about 3cm so he just needed to maintain this lead to receive his $50 cash prize in five years’ time.
Easy.
—
The first time Wooyoung’s voice cracked, Jongho had almost peed himself laughing in the middle of the shopping mall, almost dropping his can of Monster, and Wooyoung and delivered a swift kick to his shin in a futile attempt to silence him. It had come literally out of nowhere, with no warning.
“It just means that I’m maturing faster than you,” he defended, when Jongho wouldn’t stop trying to mimic what he sounded like as they walked around, except he just sounded like a snapped violin string and nothing like Wooyoung, at all.
Jongho had even brought it up at the family dinner that night, when his family had invited Wooyoung’s family over and Wooyoung had turned redder than the roasted pepper on his plate. He tried to shut Jongho up by slapping a hand over his mouth and when he called out for him to shut up it happened again and at that moment Wooyoung could feel his soul immediately leave his body in a cold rush. His and Jongho’s parents had chuckled at that, but it was good-natured and Wooyoung knew that they didn’t do it to be mean, especially because they had coo’d afterwards about how it was okay and all a part of growing up.
It was when he looked over at the usually stoic and aloof San, and the older had a smirk on his face like he was trying really hard to hold in his laughter...for some reason that he didn’t quite understand just yet, that was what made Wooyoung want to sink into the ground and disappear forever.
—
Wooyoung takes great pleasure at the look on Jongho’s face when they’re sitting in his room as Jongho sings along to the song he’s got blasting from his speakers when his voice suddenly breaks.
—
“She likes you.”
“Like…like like?”
“You have a crush don’t you?”
“Did you hear? He likes her. But we don’t know if she likes him back.”
—
“She’s okay.”
Jonhgo’s eyes widen, “What do you mean ‘okay’? Just an ‘okay’? Dude you’re fucking blind.”
“I mean, she’s pretty but…she’s nothing special. That’s just my opinion.”
“Okay, well, who do you think is the prettiest girl in the school then?”
“Uh, well…”
Wooyoung can’t really think of anyone in particular. Jongho puts it down to him just being too shy to say.
“I won’t tell anyone, I promise,” Jongho says, making a zipper motion across his mouth.
“No, I—you’re putting me on the spot, okay? I can’t think that quick.”
“Lame, whatever,” Jongho says as he shoves a handful of chips into his mouth.
Wooyoung tries to hold in the breath of relief when Jongho finally drops the subject.
It’s not that he’s not a fan of the topic, it’s just that all his friends are talking about the girls in their class and how pretty they are and how they make them feel and, well…
Wooyoung just doesn’t get it.
What he does get though, is a knot in his chest when he and the other boys get changed in the locker room, and a heart that beats faster than a rabbit’s when they rough-house in the locker room, high on adrenaline after a close win, throwing their arms around his neck and jumping up and down. What he gets is sweaty palms and goosebumps when the captain of his baseball team claps him on the shoulder and tells him how amazing he played.
And it’s not that he thinks Jongho would think any different of him, he’s his best friend after all. He just doesn’t know if he’s ready to tell him just yet.
—
He gets through middle school without ever experiencing his first kiss. It’s not a big deal, since a lot of their other friends are also in the same boat.
He wishes though, that Jongho would for one second shut the fuck up about it. It’s at their middle school graduation dance, and Wooyoung and a few members of their friend group are crowded around the punch bowl talking about how lame it was that there wasn’t even alcohol in their punch (never mind that they were only fourteen), when Jongho saunters up to them with a smug smile on his face.
“What’s up with you?” Wooyoung asks, and Jongho preens like he’s been waiting for Wooyoung to ask.
“Well,” he leans forward, and they all follow suit, “not to brag but, you know Jiyoon?”
“No…” one of their friends breathes out.
“You didn’t!”
And Jongho just lifts a single eyebrow and they all erupt into cheers, clapping Jongho on the back.
“Nice going!”
“How was it?”
And they bombard him with questions about the experience. Wooyoung throws a couple in here and there, just so he can be a part of it, but he’s not that interested in the answers. Wooyoung imagines it’s not as great as Jongho describes it, not that he wants to imagine how Jongho would kiss someone. It was probably less a kiss and more a clashing of teeth and a smushing of lips and a quick exchange of saliva. It was his first kiss after all, there was no way Jongho was going to be good at it, surely.
He tries his best not to think about Jongho’s kissing technique and how it would feel to kiss him because the idea of doing such a thing made Wooyoung feel, honestly, quite ill.
They spend the rest of the night dancing together while Jongho keeps bragging about the fact that he’s the first out of all of them to get his first kiss, until everyone tells him to shut the fuck up. They’re about to collapse from exhaustion when one of the teacher’s gets up on stage after deafening everyone with the microphone’s screeching feedback, to announce that the event was coming to an end, and that if anyone needed help arranging transport home then they should find a teacher straight away.
Wooyoung and Jongho’s parents had gone out for dinner, taking the opportunity of having their two sons at the dance to actually take some time out for themselves, and so they had tasked San with making sure that the two boys were home safe that night, since they were probably not going to get home before midnight.
Their little gang is standing outside the hall, shivering in their cheap suits, when San pulls up in his shiny black car. In retrospect it was nothing special, but to a bunch of early teens it looked pretty slick.
“Your brother is so cool,” one of them says.
Jongho just makes a face to say, ‘ew, no’, before they all say their goodbyes and he and Wooyoung run over to get in the car.
“How was it?” San asks them both.
“It was okay,” Wooyoung says, “punch could’ve done with more alcohol though.”
“Alcohol? You guys are, what, fourteen?”
“Yeah, so?”
And San laughs, and the sound of it makes Wooyoung feel warm. He thinks it’s because he likes making people laugh.
“Well guess what I did?” Jongho says, turning his body to face San, puffing out his chest.
“Succeeded in not getting kicked out for being a menace?”
“Uh no,” Jongho says, “I kissed a girl!”
“Oh, that poor girl,” San says, and Wooyoung lets out a shrill laugh at that.
“Hey! At least I got a kiss,” Jongho says, throwing the second part in Wooyoung’s direction.
And that successfully shuts Wooyoung up in the back seat, and he crosses his arms and pouts in Jongho’s direction. He meets San’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Kissing’s overrated anyway,” San says, in what Wooyoung thinks might be an effort to make him feel better.
Wooyoung wonders how many kisses San has had to have come to that conclusion. And just like he did when Jongho kept bringing it up, now Wooyoung is thinking about how San would kiss, probably with experience. Surely at his age he would be good at it by now…and…
Something feels tight in his chest and hot in his gut, and when he lifts a hand to his face he can feel it getting warmer. It’s nothing like the icky feeling he had when he thought about Jongho, not at all. Jongho and San continue chatting in the front, and for the rest of the ride, he tries—and fails—to not think about San and the way he’d stand over whomever he was kissing—stand over him, with a hand next to his head maybe, pressed against a wall or, or perhaps curled around the back of his head, and he’d lean forward and—
“Wooyoung!” Jongho’s voice cuts through his thoughts and Wooyoung jumps, “What do you want?”
They’re at a McDonald’s, and Wooyoung’s voice is rough when he croaks out his order.
It’s that night that he realises that the captain of his baseball team actually, maybe, looks a little bit like San.
—
In Wooyoung’s humble opinion though, he does a really good job at hiding the fact that he perhaps, maybe, possibly could have a crush on San, and to be fair, it might not even be that. Maybe it’s just that San is an objectively good-looking guy and Wooyoung is currently going through that phase of his life where a change in the direction of the wind was enough to get him going.
He doesn’t think Jongho suspects anything. Sure, he thinks he’s hot, and Wooyoung is becoming increasingly aware of how hot he is, but he only really stares when Jongho isn’t around or when he’s pre-occupied with his phone. He’s also never done any ogling that is obvious, and he’s pretty sure San has no idea. Wooyoung is respectful after all.
He is looking respectfully.
But perhaps San should keep a shirt on when he walks around the house, has he ever thought about that?
And yes, maybe his ability to string a coherent sentence seems to decline whenever San addresses him, but that’s just a part of puberty, or something, surely. Their bodies are changing and their brains are growing and changing and—look, it’s normal, okay? It has nothing to do with San. Besides, Jongho called their chem teacher ‘mum’ the other day and couldn’t put one word after another afterwards then, so there.
But whatever the case, he wasn’t going to let it discourage him from turning up at the Choi’s abode and being an annoying little shit. He wasn’t a loser, nor was he a coward.
“Oof, that was bad,” Wooyoung says around the straw in his mouth. His capri sun is almost empty but he sucks even harder, if only to make a loud, irritating, slurping noise to punctuate his statement and rile San up more.
“Just dodge his attacks,” Jongho says from a safe distance on the other couch, “I mean, why are you letting him hit you so much?”
“Can you both just shut the fuck up and let me concentrate?” San says as he respawns at the bonfire.
It’s been about an hour since Wooyoung had arrived, and San was already in the middle of this boss fight so he knows for a fact that he’s been trying for over an hour. He and Jongho had even made a trip down to the local store 10 minutes away, taken some time to pick out what snacks they wanted to bring back, and when they returned, he was still stuck. Since then, Jongho and Wooyoung had been so helpfully providing what they think were tips to ensure his victory.
“Have you thought about not getting hit?” Wooyoung manages to twist away just in time, and San ends up slapping the couch cushion where had been sitting instead.
“Shut up.”
“I think the goal is to hit him so that his health bar goes down, you see that big red line at the bottom of the screen?”
“I’m going to slam both your faces through the TV.”
“We’re just trying to help,” Jongho says, offering San a chip that he reluctantly accepts.
“If it was me playing, I’d have beaten this boss like, yesterday.”
“Wooyoung, shut the fuck up, you didn’t even make it past the first mob.”
“Oh please, I just didn’t want to embarrass you.”
San doesn’t even bother replying and instead he makes the same trip all the way to the boss, the same trip that he’d done about a fifteen, maybe twenty, times before. He gets two hits of his own in before one hit from the creature clears his health bar in one fell swoop.
Without a word, he places the controller down on the couch by Wooyoung’s legs and stands up. He runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath.
“I’m going to get a drink,” he announces, “nobody touch anything.”
“I’ll beat him for you!” Wooyoung says as San makes his way past him, and he gets up from his reclined position to grab the controller.
Then there’s a grip on his face, stopping him in his tracks. San is holding onto his cheeks with one hand, and he forces Wooyoung to look up at him as he almost growls,
“Don’t you dare.”
Wooyoung only lets out a squeak and he nods which is difficult with San holding his face. When San lets go, Wooyoung hardly moves from where he's frozen in his spot even after San has left the room. His pulse is racing and he can hear it in his ears, loud as his heart beats harder and faster and the touch.
“Dude, you okay?” Jongho asks, chewing loudly, “You know he’s not actually mad.”
“Uh, yeah, I know,” he replies meekly, and he settles back onto the couch.
Wooyoung pulls a cushion onto his lap, and he sits like that silently until his body calms down again.
—
“By the way, you wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Wooyoung furrows his eyebrows.
“About what?” he asks before he takes his glass from Jongho and throws his head back.
“You know, your massive hard-on for my brother.”
Wooyoung chokes. The bitter muscat-flavoured liquid burns as it shoots up his nostrils and his eyes are watering as he thumps his own chest with a closed fist, spluttering all over the kitchen counter.
“Jesus Christ,” Jongho says, patting his back, “calm down. It was just a question.”
Their friends are waiting in the living room, with the Chamber of Secrets ready to start and a list of rules for their drinking game stuck on the table next to their bowl of popcorn. His parents are away for the weekend so he’d invited his friends around for a boozy movie night. They weren’t old enough, but one of them had convinced his older sister to provide a couple of bottles of soju for this, and besides, they weren’t going to get stupid drunk, just fun drunk. And it’s not like they did this often.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wooyoung finally says once he’s recovered, voice hoarse.
“I’m not blind, dude, and I'm not stupid either,” Jongho pauses, “but we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
And with that he takes their bottles of alcohol and makes his way to the living room, leaving Wooyoung to clean himself up.
“Oh,” Jongho calls out from the doorway, “don’t forget the chips.”
—
When Wooyoung had mentioned not getting stupid drunk, just fun drunk, he may have had a little too much faith in his friends. The credits had finished rolling long ago, but Wooyoung and Jongho were still dealing with the aftermath.
He’d only just managed to clean up the puke in the sink and dragged Hyunbin onto the air mattress he’d set up when Sungcheol had decided that he was overheating and Wooyoung found him lying amongst his mother’s spring onions outside, saying that he felt much better there. Seungho had already passed out on the couch, but on occasion would groan in his sleep so Jongho lined a bucket with a plastic bag and placed it next to him on the floor.
He’d paced himself pretty well, only taking a little sip when the rules said to “take a drink”, whereas many of the others took that as instructions to take a huge swig. Jongho himself was part of that, but it would appear that he had, at the tender age of fifteen, already developed a liver of steel.
“I think that’s them,” Wooyoung grunts as he unceremoniously drops Sungcheol next to Hyunbin on the air mattress.
“I think so,” Jongho said.
“Didn’t realise they’d get that fucked up,” Wooyoung says and even though his head is swimming he knows he’s not even close to getting to that level.
“Look at them,” Jongho says fondly, “so weak.”
And Wooyoung laughs.
Once they’re confident that there will be no more drunken shenanigans, Wooyoung and Jongho stumble into his room after clumsily brushing their teeth. They’re lying on Wooyoung’s bed together and his head is swimming now that he’s stationery. It feels like the world beneath him is a rollercoaster and he’s not even strapped on. They’re lying in the dark, but Jongho’s phone next to him casts a dim light over the room.
It’s dead silent, except for the snoring sounds from Hyunbin from all the way in the living room.
“You might be right,” he starts, “I think I have the hots for your brother,” he says before he can stop himself. The alcohol has dulled his senses and inhibited his ability to think of the consequences of what he was saying.
“I know,” Jongho just slurs, and Wooyoung can tell he puts his phone down because the light disappears and the darkness engulfs them.
“It’s not anything serious though,” Wooyoung says, and he doesn’t actually know if he’s saying this to Jongho, or to himself, or if he’s saying it at all, he can’t really feel his mouth.
“You want me to tell him?”
The speed at which Wooyoung whips his around is a mistake and he feels something rise in his throat before he forces himself to swallow it back down, “Fuck no.”
“Why not?” Jongho pushes.
San stares at him in disbelief.
“What do you mean ‘why not’? Because it’s embarrassing. And he’s your brother.”
“So?”
“So? We’ve been friends since we could barely talk, it’s just—it’s weird. It’ll be so fucking awkward,” Wooyoung really wants to throw up now, “you cannot fucking tell him. Besides, it’s not like anything could ever happen, even if by some miracle he’s not totally grossed out by the whole thing.”
“It’s not like it will matter anyway, since he’s leaving in like a month to go study in Seoul,” Jongho says.
Wooyoung was aware that was the plan. His parents had talked about it before and they’d mentioned it during their family gatherings before. While Wooyoung and Jongho were preparing to enter high school, San was preparing to start his college life.
“You know that’s like, only a few hours away, it’s not like he’s leaving the country,” Wooyoung sighs, “just don’t tell him.”
And suddenly the nausea swelling up against his diaphragm gets a little bit too much. Luckily, he had the foresight to bring himself a bucket lined with a plastic bag into the room with him, because he can’t hold it in as he turns to the side and throws up. He rolls back over after wiping his mouth with some toilet paper he’d also pro-actively left on the bedside table.
“If I want him to know, I’ll tell him.”
Wooyoung doesn’t even register that this is also his official coming out to Jongho. He doesn’t seem at all surprised, so he suspects Jongho had already had his suspicions long before today.
—
The next morning, he tries to pretend last night’s conversation never happened as the others help clean up before they make their way home.
“Wanna come over again tonight?” Jongho asks as they wave Seungho goodbye as he gets into his mum’s car.
“We literally just spent all weekend together,” Wooyoung laughs, “but sure.”
—
Jongho never brings it up again, at least not verbally.
San still refuses to wear shirts around the house on the warmer days, and Wooyoung feels Jongho’s toe poking him in his calf muscle when they’re watching TV, lying on opposite sides of the couch. He throws Jongho an annoyed expression, and he's about to ask why he was pestering him like this when San walks into his field of vision, in all his shirtless, muscled glory asking Jongho if he ate the japchae that was in the fridge. Wooyoung just kicks him back, and they engage in an epic battle before San interrupts them to ask again,
“Jongho, stop playing footsies with Wooyoung and tell me, did you or did you not eat my japchae?”
“Fine! I did, but Wooyoung had a little bit of it as well!” Jongho answers, pointing at Wooyoung as if it was his fault.
“What—you told me I could have some!” Wooyoung argues back. He didn’t even know the japchae was off-limits. If he knew he wouldn’t have touched it.
San just shakes his head, muttering something about having scavengers in the house, and leaves the room again. When Wooyoung looks over at Jongho, he wiggles his eyebrows in a way that makes Wooyoung get up from where he is to relentlessly beat him with the couch cushion.
—
When the day comes for San to leave for Seoul, Wooyoung’s family visits them to see him off. Wooyoung’s mum hands him a little basket of miscellaneous things that she thinks he’ll need when he’s living alone in a dorm, including some sleeping socks, a portable phone charger, gloves, some snacks for the trip, and a little envelope with some money.
“You didn’t have to,” San says as a formality, and he pulls her into a hug and thanks her for the thoughtful gifts.
They each say their goodbyes, and good luck wishes, and after Jongho reluctantly gives his brother a hug, it’s Wooyoung’s turn.
“Uh, good luck, I guess?”
San smirks, “That’s it?”
Wooyoung knows that he turns bright red when his mum pushes him forward and tells him to give San a hug as well. He doesn’t even have to look in Jongho’s direction to see the shit-eating grin the other has got on his face right now, he can feel it burning into the back of his head.
It’s brief, but it’s enough time for Wooyoung to breathe in his warm, woody scent as his cheek presses into San’s chest, to feel the way his strong arms wrap around his shoulders to pull him in tight, and subconsciously commit both senses to memory. He hopes San doesn’t feel Wooyoung’s heart beating through his own chest, with the way it threatens to burst out of his ribcage.
—
It’s not like he’d ever gone over to specifically hang out with San, but it is different now that he’s not there.
Wooyoung is lying against Jongho on the couch as they share a blanket, watching a horror movie about some people investigating an abandoned asylum.
He feels like he should expect San to saunter in and make some comments about them being scaredy-cats, but instead they get through the movie in relative peace, without any interference.
He doesn’t really know if that’s a good or a bad thing.
—
Then high school rolls in like a storm.
And just like a storm, it was scary, but it excited him all the same. New experiences and opportunities awaited him beyond the horizon. Granted, it was really just high school—it wasn’t even the final frontier, but it was new uncharted territory for Wooyoung, and he was ready to get stuck in.
The two of them wasted no time signing themselves up for extra-curriculars as soon as the school year began. Jongho joined the choir, and Wooyoung had replaced baseball by taking up dancing. It was something that he hadn’t really considered before but the guy handing out the flyers for their club was cute so Wooyoung had taken a flyer from him without even checking what it was for. The guy had also flashed him a beautiful smile, and said “looking forward to seeing you there”, and even though he said that to everyone who had taken a flyer (Wooyoung was sure), it made Wooyoung determined to at least show up for their first session of the year.
“I’ve never danced in my life,” Wooyoung said, when he finally read the words on the piece of paper he was holding.
“That’s okay! That’s why we’re here,” and then he smiled again, and Wooyoung’s mind had been made up there and then.
—
“Choir?” Wooyoung had asked incredulously when Jongho told him what he’d decided on, “ Since when did you sing?”
“And since when did you dance?”
—
Turns out, they’d both made the correct choice for themselves as it didn’t take long for either of them to excel in their chosen extra-curricular, which, honestly was a bit of a surprise to them both.
Who knew that Jongho had the voice of an angel? Wooyoung knew that he had a set of lungs on him, with the prolonged yelling that he and San did, but he didn’t know he could actually make it sound good. Jongho should’ve known better than to demonstrate his abilities to Wooyoung, because thus began the incessant requests for serenades that Jongho never indulged him in, no matter how much he begged.
When it came to his dance, Wooyoung initially didn’t intend to return for a second session, or a third, but he found that—cute boy aside—it was actually far more enjoyable than he’d expected and each time he left thinking about their upcoming session.
The more he danced, the more it became more than just an extra-curricular. It was an outlet, a form of expression, and it kept his body and mind healthy. He enjoyed it so much that he’d decided that this was something he wanted to continue, even perhaps past high school, if he could.
—
He and Jongho entered high school with the plan of acing every class while maintaining their social lives—it seemed feasible in the TV shows that they watched after all. The characters seemed to have time to drink and smoke and fuck around while also getting their homework done on time, well, at least some of them did.
In the end, Wooyoung had sort of half-managed that. It wasn’t the exciting whirlwind of drama and romance that they’d expected, though it was their fault—they’d later admit—for believing what they saw on the TV. He’d taken up a small after-school part-time job at the local animal shelter, cleaning up after and feeding the animals, just to get a little bit of extra cash, and despite having that extra commitment, his social life had flourished, but it was all at the cost of his grades. They weren’t terrible—in fact they were actually pretty decent considering he’d developed a habit of passing out in people’s living rooms and building rapport with his friends’ toilet bowls—they just weren’t the grades that he nor his parents were hoping for.
But instead, throughout their high school careers they had the earned moniker of ‘The Dynamic Duo’ or ‘The Terrible Two’.
It wasn’t their intention to make a name for themselves by the beginning of their second year, but it was inevitable when in the year before, they walked into a party held by a friend of a friend of a member of Wooyoung’s dance group, and as newcomers he and Jongho blazed through flip cup, funnelled a couple of beers each, became the night’s beer pong champions, and Wooyoung then went on to do an exceptional keg stand that had people wondering if he had a second set of lungs and a black hole for a stomach, while Jongho shotgunned three beers in succession outside on top of a pool table that had somehow migrated onto the lawn.
By the end of the night Wooyoung had their school’s point guard’s mouth on his neck as they engaged in a heated encounter where he took Wooyoung’s first kiss in a drunken stupor. Jongho sat in the corner playing high and low with a group of people he’d met only five minutes prior, wondering where Wooyoung had disappeared off to until he noticed him stumbling out of the host’s bedroom with the unnamed boy trailing behind him like a lovesick puppy.
And then he’d made a beeline straight for the bathroom where he assumed Wooyoung was decorating the toilet with a lovely shade of cranberry vodka, locking the boy outside.
When Wooyoung hadn’t emerged from the bathroom after a good five or so minutes, Jongho had to excuse himself from the thrilling card game he had found himself in. The point guard was still standing outside the bathroom as if waiting for Wooyoung to finish, for whatever reason, since only a fucking sicko would want to make out with someone after an extensive vomit session.
Jongho looked at the tall boy standing near the door, “Is he good?”
“Uh…”
Jongho rolled his eyes and knocked on the door with a sigh, “Wooyoung.”
When the only reply he received was a weak groan, he tried the handle which, to his surprise, was unlocked. He remembers throwing as dirty of a look to the other boy standing uselessly at the doorway before he stepped into the bathroom, and annoyingly enough, the guy followed in close behind. Wooyoung was leaning against bathtub, head leaned back against the edge, and looking at the state of the toilet, he was surprised he’d managed to keep his clothes vomit-free. Jongho flushed the toilet before crouching down.
“Time for bed?”
Wooyoung only responded with a weak nod, and he reached out so Jongho could assist him in getting back on his own two feet. The other guy moved around to Wooyoung’s other side to help.
The host had been courteous enough to offer a couple of bedrooms for people to crash in for the night if needed, and so Wooyoung and Jongho had both told their parents they were at an innocent sleepover with members of Jongho’s choir group so that they could take advantage of that.
“Is he going to be okay?” the other guy asked as they make their way to one of the unoccupied bedrooms with Wooyoung flopping about between them, “Jihoon, by the way, I play on the basketball team.”
“Right…” Jongho replied, trying to think of a nice way to say that he didn’t give a shit about basketball, and coming up with nothing, “anyway, I think he should be okay, but that’s if you didn’t drain him of all his blood, you fucking vampire.”
Jongho nodded towards the smattering of bruises on Wooyoung’s neck and Jihoon coughed, refusing to make eye-contact with Jongho.
“I—uh—sorry.”
And Jongho could only snort as he dragged Wooyoung away.
—
From then on, Wooyoung seemed to be responsible for the gay awakening for half the male student body as if it were his second job, and Jongho was there to ensure Wooyoung didn’t need to get his stomach pumped every time they went out drinking.
Jongho might have had his first kiss first, but by the time they were entering their third year, Wooyoung’s body count had long since surpassed Jongho’s. However, while Jongho had gone through his fair share of relationships and break-ups (the worst one being the one where Wooyoung had to stop Jongho from going to her house and holding a boombox outside her window), Wooyoung himself had never found himself in a steady relationship that went beyond carnal pleasure.
It was after the sixth, maybe eighth, fling that Jongho had stood behind Wooyoung, watching as he re-applied bandaids over the new set of hickeys from the weekend on his neck in the school bathroom.
“Don’t you think you should…you know…”
“What?”
Jongho nods towards him, “Don’t your parents say anything?”
“Oh they have,” Wooyoung says, sticking the last plaster on and stepping back to admire his handiwork. It looked like he had been brutally attacked with the amount of band-aids covering his skin, “I just tell them that the cats at work maul me. I mean, we get a lot of feral cats there. And stray dogs. Wait, are you slut-shaming me right now?”
Jongho is pretty sure his parents know. They’re not idiots, after all, and they were young once.
“I’m not slut-shaming you, I just think you need to be a bit more careful,” Jongho warns, as he follows Wooyoung out, and he doesn’t want to imagine how Wooyoung managed to get the hickey on the back of his neck (though he has a pretty clear idea), nor does he feel like informing him about it, “you could get hurt.”
“Look, man, I appreciate your concern, but you don’t have to worry. I am careful,” Wooyoung says, “I use protection, I get tested, and most importantly…”
He turns to Jongho.
“I don’t catch feelings.”