Chapter Text
sungjae. fucking sungjae with his calculating eyes and sweet-talking mouth.
soobin had fallen for it once. let sungjae suffocate him in his jacket that left a cloying, disgusting sweetness in the back of his throat. closed his eyes and waited for it to be over. broad shoulders pressed over his back in a bar that smelled of gin and cough syrup, a roofied drink.
he’s standing in front of him, now. it’s been two years, almost three, and he hasn’t changed a lot. there’s a crooked scar over his left eyelid that wasn’t there before, and it ruins the pretty symmetry his face used to have. sungjae was always taller than him with a sturdier frame. instead of the maroon buckskin leather jacket he loved to wear, it’s just a black tank top today.
he’s fine. he’s fine.
soobin feels sungjae’s gaze boring holes in to the back of his head. but he looks out to the crowd, looking around for a familiar gaze. today’s match is in the dank underground of a bar though, and the impatient shuffling of feet kicks up the dusty sand of the fighting pit. it’s dark. he can’t see anything.
schooling his expression into something blank, soobin turns back to his opponent.
soobin never learned to read the black abyss of sungjae’s eyes, doesn’t want to know how even if he could. sungjae sizes him up.
he knows he looks pretty. before every match, he takes the time to doll himself up. it’s just a little eyeshadow and tint on his lips, mascara if he knows it’ll be a big crowd that night.
the audience is getting restless, pulsing and rumbling like a hungry creature. soobin is too, looks away from sungjae first. the ring is too small, and he doesn’t know if he wants to fight or run.
the referee’s whistle pierces through the noise.
soobin is faster than sungjae. his fist meets the underside of sungaje’s jaw with a satisfying crack, and aims another at his cheekbone to send him staggering backwards a little. a trickle of adrenaline goes down soobin’s spine, but he’s uneasy. he tries to imagine sungjae’s face as somebody else, wishes it was literally anybody else. tells himself he can win this match like he wins any other one.
sungjae surges forward like a snake coiled up to strike, and soobin curls away from the kick to his sternum that he knows is coming. sungjae is like that, he uses the same dirty tricks every time. he knows soobin never healed properly from that match in the parking lot two years ago.
except — it’s a knee to his ribs, and soobin goes tumbling down with sungjae’s heavy weight on top of him.
he sees red every time his head is bashed into the ground. his mouth fills with the taste of grime. nails are stabbed into his side or his back, he can’t tell, and the crowd jeers, starts to count down as sungjae laughs above him.
soobin can’t breathe. he’s choking, it tastes like cherry cough syrup and blood. his limbs don’t move.
three, two,
there’s hands on his stomach that press down until it feels like they’re in his guts. he wants to vomit.
one.
sungjae doesn’t let up.
then there’s hands everywhere, ripping the man off up and away from him.