Archive of Our Own

Hyunjin was always sure of his sexuality.

Since he was a child, despite family members telling his mother how effeminate he could be just because he liked delicate things like art and poetry, he always liked women. Not just women, but rather feminine women; he had even had a couple of girlfriends and dates throughout his adolescence and never had identity issues.

Until his first day of university—a nineteen-year-old Hyunjin with few social skills who arrived at the fraternity house where he would live for the next five years if he made it, and ran into the girl who was the most "his type" he had seen in his entire life.

She was sitting on the sofa in the common room, sipping what looked like a pink milkshake, probably strawberry, with her blonde hair pinned semi-up with a pink hair tie that matched the sports set she was wearing, and next to her was Chan, a second-year guy and the only fraternity brother he knew thanks to meeting in the registration line weeks before and realizing they would live together.

He walked in trying to relax his shoulders, shook his wet hair with its red-dyed tips, and approached the sofa, waving to Chan with one hand before reaching them.

"Hey, Hyunjin?" Chan stood up to give him a side hug.

Though Hyunjin’s eyes were more lost on the plump, glossy lips wrapping around the straw of the milkshake or whatever it was. It was another trait of Hyunjin's that didn't quite match his shy facade—he was a pervert. Except he would never admit it.

"Everything good?" Chan’s voice brought him back. Hyunjin barely nodded.

"Yeah, I'm all settled in." he replied, and then looked at the blonde, who hadn't even looked up from her cell phone, waiting with curiosity for a formal introduction.

"Ah, Hyunjin, this is Felix." Chan pointed to the girl, to the guy. To Felix. "Felix, this is Hyunjin, he'll be staying here too."

The blonde finally looked at him, smiling widely—a dazzling smile—his eyes looking massive as he stared up, and his face was bathed in a delicate and unique dusting of warm freckles that gave him an even more angelical appearance.

"Hi!" Felix spoke in a baritone that didn't match his face at all, but with a rather feminine enthusiasm.

For a few seconds, Hyunjin couldn't answer; his breath caught between the sound of the voice he had just heard and the face that was turning toward him, leaving him speechless.

"Hyunjin?" Chan touched his shoulder, laughing. "It's unbelievable, right? Don't worry, you're not the first one who thought he was a girl."

Hyunjin opened his eyes wide upon hearing him, and then saw Felix laugh with his whole body.

"It seems he likes it when people get confused, so don't worry." Chan said, winking at him, only to receive a smack on the arm from Felix.

"That's not true! It's just funny, but don't worry, seriously." Felix smiled at him, and Hyunjin lightened his shoulders.

After that first encounter, three things grew over the course of three years in the dark-haired man's life: his popularity, his group of friends, and his friendship with Felix.

To the rest of the university, Hwang Hyunjin was the epitome of the popular frat boy: handsome, athletic, always with a beautiful girl hanging off his arm and a charming smile; his confidence had increased noticeably compared to how he was in school.

Girls looked at him from afar, spoke to him shyly, and sent him requests on social media platforms that he never used, and it was an inside joke among his group of friends how Hyunjin didn't seem to settle down with anyone despite having several attempts throughout those first years of college. However, inside Hyunjin’s head, there was something that hadn't changed since the first day he arrived at the university: Felix, if he were a woman, would be his ideal girl.

And it wasn't a mere assumption; at the beginning it was, based on first impressions and pure physical attraction. But with the passage of years and the friendship they had forged, Hyunjin’s reality became a constant and obscene hell.

In his mind, however, there was still no identity issue; to him, the fact that Felix seemed attractive even though he was his best friend and was… quite a man, was nothing more than the simple fact that the blonde's appearance was different from that of any other man he had ever crossed paths with. And his attitudes even more so.

But as Hyunjin was also a pervert. Although nobody knew this, the tortures took many forms in his day-to-day life.

One Tuesday afternoon, they were sitting on the worn leather sofa in the common room. Felix was wearing short blue sweatpants that left his pale, toned, and smooth thighs exposed, and a giant sweatshirt of Hyunjin’s that fell off one shoulder. He was focused on his phone, swinging one leg.

Hyunjin tried to pay attention to the game on television, but his gaze kept dropping toward the exposed skin of his best friend. His mind betrayed him often, and he was no longer thinking about the game. He imagined how that skin would feel under his touch, what it would be like to squeeze those thighs until leaving his fingers marked… of course, if Felix were a woman.

"Jinnie, are you thirsty?" Felix asked suddenly, snapping him out of the daydream.

Before Hyunjin could answer, Felix was standing up and walking toward the kitchen with that sway of his hips that Hyunjin couldn't help but look at more than he would like. He watched him open the fridge, take out a soda and a cup of yogurt, search through the utensils for a small spoon, and return with that exasperating pace to sit by his side.

He received the soda offered to him, and Felix tucked his legs in to cross them, sitting up straight and arching his back a bit—or at least that was all Hyunjin could focus on.

He opened the soda to drink, noticing how Felix opened the yogurt by peeling back the foil and licking it to eat the residue stuck to it; Hyunjin swallowed hard the soda he had just drunk. The blonde plunged the spoon in and then stuck out his tongue before putting it upside down into his mouth, leaving all the yogurt on his tongue and sliding the spoon out in a movement that to anyone else would just be a guy eating yogurt—not to Hyunjin, and it drove him crazy.

"Do you want some?" Felix caught his attention, moving the yogurt a bit toward him, stretching over his own legs.

Hyunjin didn't answer, yet Felix was already very close, offering him a spoonful of yogurt with the same spoon. He opened his mouth and tried to hide how a strawberry flavor—which clearly didn't come from the yogurt but from Felix’s lip gloss—made his ears turn red and caused something in his gut want to boil.

He stood up abruptly, trying to shake the more than obscene thoughts accumulating in his head.

He's your best friend, and he's a guy, he repeated to himself, but deep down he knew it was useless. However, Hyunjin had never tried anything, not because it caused him any kind of repulsion that a man inspired such fantasies in him, but because that man was Felix; to him, Felix was sacred, almost an angel.

The relationship they had built was based on nothing but the pure trust Felix had handed him since they met; after that first confusion, it was as if Felix felt he could trust him completely. He was the one Felix turned to if things were going badly in his classes, the one he turned to if he argued with his parents, with a friend, or even with a guy. Or when he remembered that horrific clown movie they had watched with the whole group of friends and it wouldn't let him go to the bathroom alone at night, so he woke Hyunjin up to accompany him.

And Hyunjin had been with him every single time. The problem was that Felix was very, very affectionate. It couldn't be said that he was exclusive with him; many times Hyunjin had seen him turn to Changbin’s strong, muscular arms when Changbin sat next to him, or climb onto Chan’s back so Chan would drop him off in his room.

But with Hyunjin it was a little different—at least that was what his mind wanted to tell him.

Another day, a Friday night after a long week of midterms, the fraternity common room smelled like pizza and beer. Chan and his boyfriend Minho, Changbin and Seungmin—whom half the university suspected were dating but never seemed to want to accept it—and Jisung were screaming at the television playing Mario Kart. Hyunjin, for his part, was lying back in the single armchair, trying to focus on the screen, though it proved physically impossible for him.

And the problem lay between his legs, literally and metaphorically. The blonde was sitting on the floor, right between Hyunjin’s open legs. He was wearing tiny cotton shorts that barely peeked out from under his oversized pastel sweater.

To the rest of the room, it was a normal scene; that was just how Felix was with his friends, even more so with Hyunjin.

But Hyunjin couldn't ignore the warmth of Felix’s back against the inner side of his calves. Every time the blonde moved to laugh at Minho’s complaints, the soft fabric of his sweater brushed against the dark-haired man's skin, making him curse not having worn thick fabric pants. Hyunjin had his jaw so clenched that his teeth ached. He used the cold beer can strategically resting on his lap as a way to hide the increasingly evident bulge forming in his jeans, and as a sensory anchor to cool his body down.

But Hyunjin was straight, and up until now, he had never had problems with that.

"Pass me a slice of pizza, Jinnie." Felix requested without turning around, simply raising a hand backward, brushing Hyunjin’s thigh in the process.

The dark-haired man swallowed hard, feeling a shiver run down his spine. He took a slice from the box on the table next to the sofa and brought it close. Instead of taking it with the hand he had stretched out, Felix threw his head back, fitting it directly into the small space of the sofa left between his neck and Hyunjin’s crotch. He ended up looking at him upside down, with his neck exposed, pale and vulnerable, and those massive eyes shining with amusement set in that freckled and so androgynous face.

He opened his mouth, waiting for Hyunjin to feed him directly.

Hyunjin's heart skipped a beat, but he maintained his composure and brought the pizza to Felix’s lips. The tip of his pink tongue peeked out to receive the piece of pizza—a habit of his—and take a bite, and Felix's hand went up to his own face to wipe away the drop of tomato sauce left at the corner of his lips, only to then lick his thumb.

Hyunjin had to close his eyes for a second; it wasn't the first time it happened to him. Normally he tried to avoid it at all costs, but other times his imagination won, just like that day.

He imagined that same wet, pink tongue, that same mouth in a different situation—kneeling on the floor of his bedroom, letting it travel along the length of his erection, and those eyes shining, full of lust. The image was so graphic and dirty that Hyunjin let out a choked growl, moving his leg sharply, faking surprise at what was happening on the screen so Felix would have to pull his head away.

🐤

That same day, Felix unscrewed the cap of his strawberry lip gloss slowly. As he glided the applicator over his lower lip, leaving a glossy, juicy layer, his mind traveled straight to the dark-haired boy in the common room, to his best friend. To the boy he had been secretly in love with since the first day he stepped into the fraternity.

Anyone who saw Felix would think he was somewhat clueless—a sweet, affectionate guy who simply didn't understand personal space. But Felix wasn't blind, and he definitely wasn't stupid.

He had noticed the change; he had noticed how in recent months, Hyunjin’s eyes lingered a second too long on his collarbones when he wore loose sweaters. He had heard the slight catch in his breath when Felix leaned too close to see his cell phone. He noticed how Hyunjin’s jaw tensed and how his knuckles turned white from gripping the cups when Felix sat on his lap with the naturalness that characterized him, all under the guise of friends.

Felix knew he was playing with fire, but the warmth Hyunjin radiated was too addictive to walk away from.

He rested his hands on the sink, lowering his head with a frustrated sigh.

"Should I stop?", he asked himself in the mirror, biting his lower lip and ruining the gloss he had just applied.

If he crossed the line and became too obvious in his hints, there was a possibility of scaring Hyunjin away—his extremely straight best friend who until that moment had only dated girls. Perhaps, if he pushed him too much and made him feel cornered, Hyunjin might put up a wall between them; he might stop hugging him in the mornings, stop sharing his food with him, or he might look at him with disgust. Losing his friendship was a luxury Felix’s heart couldn't afford.

But on the other hand… what if it wasn't disgust he would feel?

Felix closed his eyes, remembering the dark, hungry way Hyunjin had looked at his lips the day before when they had just gone out for ice cream. He wanted to convince himself that it wasn't the look of a friend, but that of someone who was starving.

A delicious shiver ran down his back. He wanted to provoke him. He wanted to be mischievous, to stretch that invisible rope binding them until he heard it creak, just to see what happened when it broke. He wanted to be able to become one of his girls, convincing himself that he was better than the arts and journalism girls who followed Hyunjin everywhere—girls whom, deep down, Felix knew Hyunjin didn't care about as much as he cared about him.

Just a little. He promised himself, flashing a mischievous smile that didn't entirely hide his own vulnerability. I'll be just a little mischievous, enough for him to notice, but not so much that he suspects. If he gets mad, I'll stop and pretend I lost my mind… but what if he doesn't?

His heart beat wildly against his ribs at the thought of those hands gripping his waist with other intentions, and something in his gut wanted to stir.

He walked out of the bathroom with a light step, heading toward the common room where he knew Hyunjin was waiting for him on the armchair, but he didn't sit next to him on the armrest as he had done before. He sat on the floor right in the middle of those long legs, brushed against his thighs, looked up at him upside down, and made him feed him pizza just to test—just to see how much longer Hyunjin could hold his breath before suffocating completely.

🥟

That night was the first time Hyunjin couldn't shake the thoughts. The first time denial wasn't enough, that his title as the campus's straight heartbreaker wobbled on its pedestal.

He leaned his forehead against the shower tiles, the warm water cascading down his back while his hand went up and down his erection, jerking himself off. But he was no longer thinking about pretty girls or sexual videos. He was thinking about that pink tongue emerging from those glossy lips, about those eyes looking at him from below with an innocence that anyone else would believe was totally feigned.

The weeks following that event—which nobody would ever find out about—were a bit strange. He tried to discard the memory; he even went out with a couple of girls who had been persisting in his direct messages for quite some time. But at the end of the day, it haunted him.

The worst part was that he didn't feel dirty, he didn't feel confused, and he didn't feel gay at all. He only felt a guilt that ate away at him every time Felix returned that innocent look and smile of his.

"Felix is like an angel, don't you think?" Seungmin had told him when they went to one of his dance performances—it was contemporary dance, and of course he believed Felix looked like an angel.

But to Hyunjin, this didn't just mean that if angels had a face, it would surely look like Felix’s. It also meant that if they spoke to him, they would speak like Felix. It meant they would literally be like Felix.

That was why feeling the things he felt, imagining the things he imagined, was like sinning against God Himself.

Despite that, everything seemed to get worse.

Winter arrived. And everyone knew Felix hated winter. Accustomed to the warm climate of his homeland, winter days with Felix were like living with a koala. He clung to anyone who radiated a bit of heat, but that winter felt different.

After Hyunjin had let himself go—just once, it was only once—everything Felix did seemed to carry a different tone. Hyunjin tried many things to avoid it, to avoid thinking about what he did and about how every action of Felix’s that involved being dangerously close to him was deliberate.

It can't be, he repeated to himself.

It was at least 8 degrees out, and the group of friends had agreed to have another horror movie night. Felix, surprisingly, had accepted despite everyone reminding him that they would be horror movies… "I'll be fine as long as Jinnie hugs me, right, hyung?" the blonde had said, twirling a lock of hair around his finger, and Hyunjin bit the inside of his cheek at the honorific Felix was using more and more despite him telling him not to, though he knew Felix loved to tease his friends.

The guys were scattered around the common room; Chan and Minho were shamelessly tangled up under a blanket on the rug. Seungmin and Changbin were next to each other sitting on a large beanbag chair, and Hyunjin and Felix were on the sofa, sitting up straight looking at the screen—that was until Felix couldn't stand it anymore and attached himself to Hyunjin like a leech.

"Jinnie, can we lie back? You're warm and I'm very, very cold." Felix was looking at him with those eyes, and Hyunjin took the time to think about it for a second.

It wasn't the first time; Felix’s safe and warm place on winter and movie nights was Hyunjin, not so much because he preferred him, but because he was always the only one available. But that time was different, and Hyunjin could never—ever—admit the reason, so he had no choice but to accept.

So, sharing the blanket with Felix, he rested his back against the backrest of the sofa, and the blonde rested his own against Hyunjin’s warm chest, who did everything possible so that it wouldn't affect him more than normal.

He couldn't help it; he couldn't get himself out of his own head doing improper things in the bathroom. And Felix’s warmth didn't help, and thinking about how he was a guy and that he was his friend hadn't worked for weeks.

"Hold me, Jinnie, I'm still really cold." Felix spoke without turning his face.

Hyunjin sighed; he knew that at any moment it would be inevitable, so he did it. He passed his arm over the blonde's waist, feeling the softness of the huge sweater he was wearing. But this time Felix took his hand to hold it against his own chest.

And then he arched his back, making his butt —round, firm, shaped by those dance tights— fit with precision against Hyunjin's crotch. Every time a jumpscare in the movie startled Felix, his entire body flinched, rubbing the fabric of his grey sweatpants against the dark-haired man's stiff denim. Hyunjin felt his mouth go dry.

It’s winter, he told himself, his mind hammering the same old mantra.

It's just because it's cold; he doesn't even realize it.

But Hyunjin's body didn't understand platonic justifications. His imagination, fueled by the scorching heat radiating from the blonde, began to play against him. He felt a tug in his gut when Felix jumped again, pressing—impossibly—closer to his body, and the latter, inevitably, began to react.

A choked growl got trapped in Hyunjin's throat. The friction was so direct, so fucking hot that he had to clench his fists until his knuckles turned white.

From that position, Hyunjin could only see the blonde crown of Felix's head and the subtle arch of his hip beneath the blanket. He looked so small, so innocent, covering his eyes when he felt a jump scare coming, so oblivious to the biological disaster he was causing just inches from his body. Hyunjin felt guilty, but even with the guilt, the hardness between his legs throbbed with force.

And that night, Hyunjin fell again.

🐤

The cafeteria was packed, plunged into the noisy chaos of a mid-season winter and complaining students. The long table they shared was at one side of the place, by the window. Minho and Chan argued over who had stolen the fries, Jisung laughed with his mouth full like a squirrel, and Changbin gestured exaggeratedly while telling the latest campus gossip.

Felix, however, only had eyes for the boy sitting right across from him.

Hyunjin wore a black hoodie with the hood up, which contrasted with his pale skin and covered part of his somewhat long and completely black hair; he played absentmindedly with the straw of his drink. He had that bored expression, the same unreachable popular-boy facade he used to scare away the curious, but one that Felix knew how to dismantle with a single look.

"Seriously, Hwang, your thing needs a clinical case study already," Chan let out, slapping the table with his palm while laughing. "The journalism girl was gorgeous; I'd say she's completely your type. And what did you do? You ghosted her because 'she was too dumb?' You're a lost case."

"We didn't have chemistry," Hyunjin replied, rolling his eyes in annoyance, though Felix noticed how his fingers tensed around the cup. "She just wasn't for me."

"None of them are for you, that's your problem," Changbin intervened, earning a chuckle from Seungmin. "You spend your time complaining that you can't settle down and stop being single, but you scare them away by the second date."

Felix saw the perfect opportunity blooming in the air. He felt an electric tingle run down his spine, that mischievous spark that dominated him every time he decided to stretch the invisible string between them. He crossed his legs under the table deliberately and rubbed the tip of his sneaker against Hyunjin's calf.

The dark-haired man didn't move, but his dark eyes instantly locked onto Felix, scanning him with an intensity almost imperceptible to the rest.

"Oh, leave him alone!" Felix said, resting his chin on the palms of his hands and making a fake pout before curving his lips into a sweet smile, the same one everyone in the frat associated with his supposed innocence. "Jinnie is just guarding his heart. Besides, he has good taste."

"Please, Lix, don't defend him," Seungmin scoffed from the end of the table, wiping his mouth with a napkin before looking at Hyunjin ironically. "At this point, even you have more potential as a girlfriend than any of the girls he goes out with; at least you two maintain longer conversations."

The table erupted in laughter. It was the kind of recurring joke in the group, an easy jest based on how androgynous Felix was and the ridiculous closeness he shared with the dark-haired man.

Felix tried not to show it when the idea sparked in his head, like a lightbulb turning on. He stared fixedly at Hyunjin, moistened his own lips with the tip of his tongue, and narrowed his eyes with a playful malice that only appeared when he decided to pull that invisible string.

"Well…" Felix began, drawing out his words in a falsely innocent tone that cut through the air at the table. "Maybe I should be one of your girls, Jinnie. That way you'd have a girlfriend you've known for more than two weeks; plus, when you arrived on the first day at the frat, you thought I was one, remember?"

The sentence hung suspended in the air.

The next second, the table erupted into loud laughter again. Jisung almost choked on his soda and Changbin slapped Chan on the back, who was making gestures showing how he remembered when Hyunjin froze upon hearing the blonde's voice for the first time. But Felix didn't look away from the dark-haired man, noticing how he went completely blank. The corners of his mouth threatened to fake a smile that didn't quite form, and his narrow eyes opened a few millimeters wider.

"God, can you imagine, Lix…" Jisung shouted between laughs, breaking the trance. "Dealing with this idiot just for him to dump you if you didn't understand the metaphor of the poem he recited to you for the tenth time."

"Ah, but I already understand them… don't I, Jinnie?" Felix said with an air of self-sufficiency, looking at his nails.

Hyunjin choked a little on the juice he was drinking to cover it up, and laughed, unable to completely hide the discomfort.

"Yeah, Lix, yeah," he murmured amidst his coughing, wiping his mouth.

Seungmin blinked; suddenly the atmosphere had changed and it no longer felt like a wild joke.

"Yeah, well…" Seungmin muttered, looking at both friends with a strange grimace. "Maybe it would be… weird, right?"

Chan and Minho exchanged glances, noticing the shift in energy; the laughter died down gradually until it was just a general clearing of throats and glances crossing fleetingly.

Felix, however, savored the victory. He felt a delicious warmth ignite in his gut upon seeing Hyunjin's ears turn a crimson red. He had pulled the thread enough to make it taut and creak, confirming what he suspected: his rather straight best friend might be about to discover that maybe he wasn't, and Felix was determined to be the one to make him realize it.

🥟

One of your girls.

Felix's words floated in his mind like a distorted echo, mixed with the voices of his friends around him, as if he were submerged underwater. His heart hammered so hard against his ribs that it took him a few seconds to process his breathing again.

It's a joke. It's just a stupid joke of his, he repeated to himself in a mental scream, desperate to regain control of his own body. Felix is a guy.

But that doesn't matter.

And he's your best friend.

It doesn't mean anything. It's a joke.

He contradicted himself as if he had two versions of himself speaking from each shoulder. And his eyes refused to look away from Felix's lips. Those plump lips that shone with the reflections of light coming through the cafeteria windows, with that subtle trace of strawberry gloss—the same damn flavor that had haunted him in his dirtiest nightmares since that afternoon with the yogurt. Felix looked at him head-on, with his dark eyelashes raised and a tiny, almost imperceptible smile that seemed to Hyunjin like the most sinful thing in the world.

The moment he heard it, he froze; Seungmin's comment and the subsequent awkward laughter of the group only made things worse. Hyunjin felt as if his dirty secret were written on his forehead. Had Seungmin noticed? Could everyone see that the mere thought of having Felix that way—kneeling in his bedroom, licking and swallo—

"I'm going to the bathroom," he managed to articulate with a fake laugh, making an attempt to downplay the silly, meaningless joke they had just heard.

And nobody seemed to notice it—or so Hyunjin thought.

Three weeks. Twenty damn days in which Hwang Hyunjin felt like a total ghost inhabiting his own body.

Since the afternoon of that lunch, Felix's words had turned into a constant white noise in the back of his brain. "Maybe I should be one of your girls, Jinnie." He repeated it to himself in the mornings while brushing his teeth, during his art history classes where the professor spoke of divine proportions, and especially at night, when the silence of the fraternity house made everything sharper.

He tried desperately to prove to himself that everything was fine, that he was still the same as always. Therefore, when a girl from the languages department left him a direct message on Instagram that same week, he agreed to go out with her immediately. And then with another one from third-year design.

It was a complete failure.

He had sat down in a bar with the language girl—who was beautiful, had long legs and impeccable brown hair—but Hyunjin couldn't even register what she was saying. While she spoke about her exchange plans, Hyunjin's eyes fixed on her lips, unconsciously searching for a strawberry gloss that wasn't there. When he tried to hold the other girl’s hand, her skin felt cold to him, strangely foreign. It didn't have that almost feverish warmth that the blonde radiated every time he clung to him on the common room sofa.

He ended the dates early with made-up excuses about classes and project deadlines, and returned to the fraternity feeling more miserable, emptier, and above all, hungrier. He was losing his mind. He found it unbelievable how now, after that wretched sentence, no woman seemed to ignite the fire that had sparked in that cafeteria surrounded by friends.

But everything had a breaking point; sooner or later the string would snap like a violin’s, causing both ends to whip their bearers, leaving indelible marks.

That break occurred on a Friday night. The fraternity house was unusually quiet; most of them had gone out to a party at another department, but Hyunjin had stayed behind under the pretext of finishing a canvas that had been stalled for days. In the end, going out would just mean finding some girl to kiss for most of the night and never speak to her again. Though he couldn't paint either; he was only a couple of brushstrokes away from finishing the eye and nose, in unusual colors, of a face that he could deny to the world, but never to himself who it was.

He heard light footsteps in the hallway, followed by a subtle knock on his door. He knew exactly who it was before it opened.

Felix peeked his head in. He wore one of Hyunjin's grey hoodies—the one that fit him like a dress—and his usual short shorts. His eyes shone in the dim light of the room.

"Jinnie… everyone left. Do you have the PlayStation so we can play Tekken for a bit? I'm bored," Felix whispered, entering without waiting for an invitation, with that blind trust that now made Hyunjin's blood boil a little.

Hyunjin set the brush down on the table with a sharp thud that resonated more due to the reigning silence. The patience, the facade, the fake straightness he had bragged about so much and been so sure of… it all evaporated. He stood up, his tall figure—larger than Felix—overshadowing the space between the bed and the easel, and walked straight toward Felix.

The blonde stopped in the middle of his way, blinking in surprise when Hyunjin planted himself in front of him, forcing him to tilt his head up to look at him.

"Jinnie, what…?"

"Why the fuck did you say that, Felix?"

Hyunjin's voice came out somewhat broken, low and stripped of any tone of superiority.

He didn't sound angry; it wasn't the rage of an offended friend. It was the desperate demand of a man who had been containing himself for months and dying of thirst for weeks in a purgatory he himself had chosen.

Felix remained quiet, but his breathing stopped almost completely. His massive eyes traveled over Hyunjin's tense face, dropping for a second toward his lips before coming back up.

"What are you talking about?" Felix asked, though the subtle tremor in his voice betrayed that he knew perfectly well what he was referring to.

"At lunch. With the guys," Hyunjin took another step, closing the distance until the heat they both gave off blended into the cold air of the room. His long arms hung at his sides, clenching his fists to keep from grabbing Felix by the shoulders and shake him. "You said you should be one of my girls. I've spent three weeks unable to sleep because of your damn joke. Without a single date with any damn girl working out, so tell me… why the fuck did you say it? Was it true? Was it one of your stupid jokes or were you serious?"

The sexual tension in the room became so dense that the air seemed to turn liquid, suffocating. The accelerated beating of Felix's heart against his ribs could be heard.

The blonde did not back down. Instead, he moistened his lips—that damn tic that mentally put Hyunjin on his knees—and the innocent-boy facade disappeared completely from his face, replaced by a dark, determined, and burning maturity. He took a step forward, practically pressing his chest against Hyunjin's, forcing the dark-haired man to feel the softness of his own hoodie.

"And what if I tell you it wasn't a joke, Jinnie?" Felix whispered, holding his gaze with an audacity that made Hyunjin's stomach flip. "What will you do about it? Will you keep going out with girls you don't care about even a little bit just to convince yourself you are not dying to touch me?"

The air vanished.

Hyunjin let out a growl, and the last mental barrier holding him in one piece pulverized upon hearing the blonde's confession. Nothing mattered anymore—whether he was a guy, whether he was his friend, or if he truly was an angel. Nothing mattered more than Felix's glossy mouth inviting him to destroy himself.

Without thinking for a single second more, Hyunjin stretched out his hands—those large artist hands that Felix had been secretly lusting over so much—and caught Felix's waist with a possessive strength, burying his fingers in the fabric of the hoodie and slamming him against his body. Hyunjin's crotch, already stiff and aching from the tension of the moment, pressed firmly against Felix's lower abdomen.

The blonde let out a choked gasp at the abruptness of the movement, but his hands immediately went up to Hyunjin's neck, tangling his fingers in his dark strands.

"I hate you, Lix… God, how I hate you," Hyunjin murmured, his voice completely broken, right before tilting his head and slamming his lips against the younger man's in a wet, hungry, and desperate kiss that tasted like strawberry and weeks of abstention.

The kiss was almost a destructive thermal shock. Hyunjin lacked any delicacy; his lips moved against Felix's with a dirty urgency, claiming every millimeter of his mouth as if it had belonged to him for a long time. Felix let out a whimper that Hyunjin swallowed, which made him give way to the dark-haired man's tongue, which entered deep, possessive, and charged with a desire bordering on madness.

The room smelled of oil paint, of Hyunjin's woody cologne, and of that raw tension that had finally exploded.

Hyunjin pushed the blonde, redirecting him without breaking the kiss. The blonde's steps were clumsy until the back of his thighs bumped against the edge of the desk, causing the brushes inside the jar of dirty water to tremble. Hyunjin wedged himself between his open legs, pressing his erection—completely rigid and aching beneath his jeans—directly into Felix's crotch.

"J-Jinnie…" Felix barely managed to articulate when they broke contact for a few seconds, panting and with his lips red and swollen, glistening with shared saliva. "Your hands… touch me, p-please."

It was almost a plea, and Hyunjin, his dark eyes injected with a fixed lust, obeyed. He released the tight grip on his waist to slide his hands beneath the fabric, sliding them upward along his sides, outlining the curve of his waist up to his ribs with a firmness that made Felix arch his back, burying his nails into the dark-haired man's shoulders.

The contact of his hands against the smooth skin sent shivers down Hyunjin's spine.

"Lix…" Hyunjin murmured, voice longing against the blonde's ear, lowering his lips to kiss the line of his jaw and then his neck, right where the younger man's pulse hammered wildly.

"Jinnie," Felix let out in an airy gasp, throwing his head back, granting him full access to his neck.

"You were driving me crazy," he whispered, catching his lips again, nibbling and inserting his tongue.

Hyunjin's hands dropped roughly toward Felix's hips, squeezing the pale thighs beneath the shorts. The visual contrast Hyunjin had imagined so much in his obscene fantasies was finally happening: his long fingers sinking into the flesh of Felix's thighs, squeezing with a force that would leave marks the next day.

Without breaking the kiss, Hyunjin lowered one of his hands toward the front of Felix's shorts. He slid his palm over the fabric, pressing firmly against the noticeable, hot bulge the blonde was already hiding there; the latter let out a sharp whimper, arching his body toward Hyunjin's hand at the direct contact. He was already completely hard, his own body betraying him from the pure adrenaline of having confessed the truth and feeling the physical possessiveness of his friend.

Hyunjin tucked his hand beneath the elastic waistband, wrapping around Felix's length and covering it all easily. His palm grew wet with the pre-cum Felix had been accumulating from anticipation, and Hyunjin let out a hoarse gasp feeling how hot and sensitive he was.

He had no problem touching his friend's hard member. For weeks, his mind had broken—in dreams and long showers—the barrier of what it would be like to have sex with a man. There was nothing he hadn't imagined at this point.

He looked Felix in the eyes, his jaw so clenched that the muscles in his face stood out.

"Since when, Lix?" Hyunjin whispered against his ear, biting his lobe and stroking his erection. "Since when do you react like this for me?"

"Al-always…" Felix confessed without a filter, his vision blurred and his cheeks covered in a feverish red dusting of freckles. "Pl-please keep going."

Hyunjin did so despite the surprise, and the flash of annoyance that slowly bloomed within him, but the desire was greater. He closed his fist firmly around him and began to give him slow strokes, using the natural lubrication to slide those long fingers from the base. Felix let out a choked cry, throwing his head back and clinging to Hyunjin's neck while his legs trembled.

Suddenly, Hyunjin stopped abruptly, breaking away from the kiss and letting go of Felix completely. He took steps backward, keeping his gaze fixed on the blonde, who looked at him confused and aroused. His breathing was a disaster, fast and loud in the silence of the room. The dark-haired man's dark eyes scanned his friend's trembling body: the red, swollen lips, the flushed cheeks, and Felix's hands holding himself up against the desk.

Hyunjin backed up two more steps until the back of his legs hit the edge of his bed. He let himself fall heavily onto the mattress, spreading his legs and leaning back, hands on the mattress behind him. The position left his rigid erection outlined grotesquely against his dark jeans.

The facade had evaporated completely; what remained was the pervert Hyunjin had fought to hide, now in total control of the situation.

"You wanted to be one of my girls, right?" Hyunjin's voice dropped an octave, sounding dangerously raspy, authoritative. "Prove it, Lix. Come here and get on your knees."

Felix's heart stopped in his chest. Hyunjin's words went in like a shot of adrenaline straight to his lower belly. He looked at the dark-haired man's dominant posture, the hungry fixedness of his gaze, and didn't hesitate for another second. He walked with trembling legs toward the bed and dropped to his knees on the rug, right between Hyunjin's open thighs.

From down there, Felix raised his head, offering him that androgynous and vulnerable view that had been torturing the taller man for weeks.

Hyunjin didn't hesitate. His hands immediately dropped to the button of his jeans, undoing them with a dirty urgency before pulling down the zipper. With a firm movement, he freed his length, which sprang out hot and completely rigid, pointing straight at the freckled boy's face. The tip already glistened with accumulated anticipation.

Felix let out a sigh, feeling the heat radiating from Hyunjin's intimacy so close to his face, seeing how large, truly large it was. It was madness; it was the very sin Hyunjin had wanted to protect himself from so much, materialized just inches from his mouth.

"It's all yours, Lix," Hyunjin demanded, stretching out one of his hands to entangle his long fingers in Felix's blonde hair, exerting a firm downward pressure, forcing him closer. "Don't make me wait. Be a good girl; I've spent a lot of time wanting to see that glossy tongue around me. Do it."

Felix moistened his own lips, tasting the last trace of the strawberry gloss, and opened his mouth slowly, letting the pink tip of his tongue peek out first to lick the base of the dark-haired man's length.

Hyunjin let out a hoarse growl, arching his back and sinking his fingers harder into the blonde strands upon feeling the wet, hot contact of his tongue.

"Damn it, Felix…" he articulated through his teeth, guiding the younger man's head forward. "Take it all in. Now."

Felix obeyed, opening his mouth fully and moving forward, letting Hyunjin's burning tip slide over his tongue. The taste of pre-cum flooded his senses; he settled his lips around the dark-haired man's length, absorbing the first half with a deep suction, hollowing his cheeks, making the walls of the room blur for both of them.

Hyunjin gasped—a sound he didn't even recognize himself—throwing his head back against the headboard of the bed. The fingers of his right hand tensed, burying themselves tightly into Felix's blonde hair to set the pace, while his left hand dropped instinctively to the mattress, fingers curling up against the sheets with brutal strength.

"God… Lix…" Hyunjin articulated in a hoarse voice, feeling the scorching heat of his best friend's mouth wrapping around him. "Fuck, how are you so perfect at this…?"

Felix looked up without stopping. His massive, dark eyes, framed by golden eyelashes, locked directly onto Hyunjin's face, which was dismantled by pleasure. He wanted to see him, to taste the destruction of the facade while he was on his knees devouring him. He began to move his head in a steady bobbing motion, swallowing the length inch by inch.

Hyunjin could feel his tip bumping against the back of the blonde's throat, forcing him to let out whimpers that sent vibrations through his erection. The tip of that tongue he had imagined so much over himself worked tirelessly, outlining the prominent veins that ran up Hyunjin's member with every pass. The wet sound of the suction and the blonde's ragged breathing filled the sepulchral silence of the room, shattering any trace of the supposed innocence that made him feel so guilty.

Hyunjin couldn't take it anymore; the game of dominance over Felix was slipping from his hands with the immense pleasure the blonde was making him feel. His long fingers closed tighter around Felix's hair and, yielding completely to the perverted instinct dominating him, he began to guide his hips forward. He started to thrust into the mouth driving him so crazy with a dirty, rhythmic, and almost desperate pace, searching for the depths of that wet, delicious warmth.

"Look at me… don't close your eyes, Lix," Hyunjin requested between gasps, sweat glistening on his forehead as he accelerated the thrusts, reaching the younger man's throat. "I want you to see what you did to me. Is this what you wanted?"

Felix maintained eye contact, tears from the stimulation gathering over his freckles, swallowing every thrust with a submission that confirmed what the dark-haired man was asking.

Hyunjin let out a hoarse moan, his entire body trembling and the spasms of the climax hot on his heels. The heat of Felix's mouth had him on the edge of the abyss, and right before losing control completely, Hyunjin reacted; he buried his fingers in the freckled boy's hair and pulled him back firmly, forcing him to spit out his length with a wet sound.

"Move, Lixie," Hyunjin panted, his eyes injected with lust and his breathing so fast he seemed to run out of air.

Felix remained sitting on his heels, his lips red, swollen, and glistening from the saliva trailing down his jaw. He looked up, bewildered, but before he could ask what was happening, Hyunjin grabbed him under the arms and lifted him from the rug with a strength that made his heart skip a beat. They swapped places and he pushed him onto the mattress, making his back collide with the bed.

With a heated urgency, Hyunjin climbed onto the bed, placing his hands on either side of Felix's head, who looked at him with those massive, bright eyes that seemed so innocent and yet were full of tears he couldn't release when he had it all of Hyunjin down his throat. He pressed against him, making his bare erection collide with the bunched fabric of Felix's shorts, causing the latter to let out a whimper.

He tucked his fingers between the blonde's smooth skin and the waistband of his shorts and boxers, pulling down the garments in one tug and freeing the erection he had been touching without any shame just minutes ago, then he stripped him of the hoodie, which was the only garment covering the blonde's white, toned torso. He stayed like that for a few seconds, looking down at him—that figure that had only existed in his imagination, the waist he was dying to squeeze until leaving his fingers marked—and then he got rid of his own clothes with clumsy movements and ragged breathing.

He leaned in, allowing himself to touch him at his whim, outlining his hips, caressing his waist with his large hands until his hand reached one of his nipples to pinch it while their lips joined again, both swallowing each other's gasps. One of his hands traveled to the inner part of Felix's thigh, lifting it until he opened his legs completely. The blonde broke away from his lips seeking for air; the heat of their bodies grew increasingly exciting. He grabbed Hyunjin by both shoulders, feeling how big he was, and made him stop.

"Jinnie… wait," he whispered, his voice lower than usual, panting. "Wait, Are you sure? Are you sure you want to go… this far?"

Hyunjin stopped, his chest rising and falling, feeling every inch of skin where his body connected with the blonde's. And damn it, he had never been so sure of anything. He knew it would be different, new, surprising, but he had imagined it so much…

"I've never been so fucking sure of anything, Lix. I'm losing my mind," Hyunjin replied in a raspy voice, lowering one of his hands to squeeze Felix's hip, locking him in place. "What should I do? Tell me and I'll do it."

Hearing him, Felix's chest filled with a burning warmth. His best friend, the one he had yearned for so much, wanted him, right now. However, he knew Hyunjin had no experience other than with women.

"D-do you have lube?" Felix asked softly, relaxing his grip on his shoulders.

Hyunjin moved just a little, opening the nightstand drawer blindly and pulled out a small bottle of lube he kept hidden in the back—something he never thought he would use with Felix of all people. He opened it with his teeth and handed it to the blonde, who took it and poured a considerable amount of the cold, clear liquid over his fingers, then brought his hand beneath the leg Hyunjin had made him lift, barely reaching his pink entrance, which was pulsing with anticipation.

Hyunjin stayed still, watching the scene with his jaw clenched and the veins in his hands standing out from the effort of avoiding coming just from what he was watching. Felix, with his back slightly arched to reach his entrance and the glistening pink fingertips making circles over his ring of muscles before inserting one of them slowly into himself, he let out a low whimper.

Hyunjin's erection reacted pulsing at the scene, hot and wet with Felix's saliva. His hands traveled to the blonde's inner thighs, making him spread his legs wider, leaving a close-up view of his short fingers trying to open his entrance a bit and his small but hard, pink erection still leaking pre-cum.

"Damn it, Lix…" Hyunjin growled, devouring the scene with his gaze, feeling his erection ache from the level of tension. "Let me do it."

He took the bottle of lube the blonde had cast aside and coated his fingers with the liquid. Felix pulled his fingers out, and Hyunjin's erection reacted again upon seeing the entrance clench around itself. He inserted his middle finger carefully, always looking at the expression on the freckled face to make sure he made him feel good, until he inserted it fully and his knuckles touched the hot, soft buttocks. After a couple of seconds sliding that finger, he introduced the ring finger, sliding it and flexing both fingers once inside.

He watched how the blonde rolled his eyes and knitted his brows in a sign of pleasure, wrinkling the sheets of the dark-haired man's bed.

"Hnnngg… they are… so long, oh… Jinnie," Felix bit his lip, choking back a ridiculous whimper. "An-other one, I'll need another… you're so big, Jinnie…"

Hyunjin growled, swallowing hard, and added his index finger, feeling how the warm walls of flesh clenched tightly around his three fingers. He moved them, making rotations with his wrist, and every time he curved them upward, deliberately searching for the most sensitive spot, Felix let out a sharp whimper, shuddering from head to toe.

"Is this okay? Does it feel good, Lix?" Hyunjin asked, accelerating the pumping of his fingers to force Felix's elasticity, devouring with his gaze the contrast of his own pale, veiny hand sinking into the blonde's reddened rim.

"Y-yes, now… put it in now, Jinnie… please," Felix begged in a broken voice, completely surrendered and with tears of stimulation running down his freckled cheeks. "I want you i-inside."

Hyunjin withdrew his fingers abruptly with a wet squelch that made Felix let out a whimper at the emptiness. The dark-haired man positioned himself between Felix's open thighs in a perfect missionary, leaning slightly forward. With one large, warm hand, Hyunjin caught one of the younger man's knees and pushed it against his chest to expose him under the dim light of the room.

His other hand helped his rigid, pulsing erection position itself directly at the entrance, which already glistened from the lube. Felix held his breath, clinging tightly to Hyunjin's tense biceps with his eyes shut in anticipation upon feeling the hot tip making its way.

"Lix, look at me," Hyunjin ordered, his jaw clenched, and Felix snapped his eyes open.

And then, he pushed.

Hyunjin sank his hips forward with a tortuous slowness, burying himself in him for the first time. Felix let out a sharp cry that ripped through the silence of the room, arching his back completely while his eyes filled with instant tears. Feeling Hyunjin's actual girth and length making its way inside him, stretching his walls with that firmness, was too intense.

Hyunjin felt the insides of the blonde react, squeezing desperately around his flesh, giving him a welcome so hot that Hyunjin had to close his eyes and let out a painful growl of pure pleasure.

"My God, Felix… you are so fucking tight," Hyunjin articulated through his teeth, staying completely still for a few seconds to let the blonde's body adjust to his size.

"Jinnie… you are so far inside, oh my God…" Felix whimpered against his neck in a trembling voice, raising his hands to Hyunjin's face to outline his tense jaw. Seeing the dismantled, obscene, and hungry expression of his best friend, completely lost over him, was the best aphrodisiac.

He withdrew his hips almost completely, dragging the skin with a wet friction, only to thrust back in, unable to contain himself any longer, sinking back down to the hilt. Felix let out a choked cry, catching Hyunjin's lower lip in a desperate kiss while his hips rose instinctively from the mattress, seeking to receive more of that dirty rhythm the dark-haired man began to impose on the bed.

The sound of bodies impacting against each other, skin against skin, flooded the room, mixed with the obscene squelch of the lube. Hyunjin increased the speed, delivering deep thrusts that made Felix's body slide over the disheveled sheets. The blonde's submission, his tearful eyes, and the way his inner walls squeezed him with every thrust finally unearthed all the frustration Hyunjin had swallowed during those weeks.

Hyunjin let out a hoarse growl and, without stopping the pumping of his hips, brought one of his hands to Felix's pale neck—not to hurt him, but to pin him against the mattress, forcing him to hold his gaze full of desire and frustration.

"You thought it was very funny, huh?" Hyunjin let out between gasps, delivering a thrust so deep and hard that it made Felix let out a small, choked cry from the slight pressure on his neck. "You thought it was a damn game to drop that sentence on me, in front of everyone."

"J-Jinnie..hhhnnnng!, ah– more, p-please," Felix could barely articulate words or process what the dark-haired man was saying to him; his brain was fried from the pleasure and he kept moving his hips upward, searching for more of the length pushing throughout him.

"Look at me when I talk to you, Lix," Hyunjin demanded, giving a sharp hit with his hips that wrenched a groan from the blonde, forcing his eyes wide open. "You knew… what you did to me, that you drove me crazy every time you clung to me in front of everyone in the common room. Did you like it? Seeing me suffer, you damn pervert?"

A small hit of guilt echoed in his lower belly; he knew the damn pervert was himself. But he couldn't help thinking about the blonde's confession, that surely, contrary to what he always thought, every comment and every action had been deliberate.

"N-no… Jinnie, I'm sorry… hhnnng- God, I'm coming," Felix whimpered, his legs trembling now over Hyunjin's shoulders, completely overwhelmed by the ruthless pace and the dirty words raining down on him.

"Do you even imagine the things you forced me to imagine in that damn shower?" Hyunjin let out a hoarse laugh, while accelerating —if possible— the pace of his hips, adjusting the angle to hit the blonde's sweet spot. "I thought about this, about having you like this, open for me, and on your knees, and from behind, and oh Lord."

Felix could only let out a sharp, broken cry, nodding weakly and burying his nails into Hyunjin's arms as he felt the orgasm reach him due to the friction against his prostate that the new angle gave him, and the dark-haired man's authoritative tone. His interior began to contract in violent and involuntary spasms, trapping Hyunjin's member with a force that almost made the taller man come at that exact instant.

"Then take me, Lix, you did this to me," Hyunjin sentenced, clenching his jaw as he felt Felix's contractions. He tightly grabbed the blonde's freckled thighs, sinking his fingers into the soft flesh, leaving marks that would surely stay for more than a day, and delivering the final quick, dirty, and desperate thrusts, completely surrendered to the hell Felix had unleashed and that he himself had allowed to ignite.

Felix could no longer coordinate. His head shook against the pillow with each thrust, and tears slid down his temples until they got lost among his blonde strands. The pleasurable pain of the friction, the weight of Hyunjin crushing him against the mattress, and that dirty, rough, almost resentful tone with which his friend finally reclaimed the weeks of torture had him on the verge of collapse.

"More… Jinnie, yes… I liked it, h-how you looked at me…" Felix managed to confess between gasps, handing him the last truth left in his chest. "I wanted… I wanted you to see me l-like this, hhnnnng!"

That confession shattered the piece of sanity left in Hyunjin.

Hearing from Felix's own mouth that it had all been a deliberate plan to drag him to his bed, that his "angel" was actually a fallen one, the one that had caused all his dirty fantasies, made the dark-haired man lose his sense of limits and forced him to reorganize even that which he had always identified with. Hyunjin let out a rough growl, an animal sound that vibrated directly against Felix's chest, and threw himself into the rhythm. His thrusts became fast, heavy, and deep, seeking to punish and claim that hot interior crushing him with incredible force.

"Fuck, Lix… I’ll make you feel the things you made me imagine, you damn psycho," Hyunjin sentenced in a choked voice, sweat dripping from his forehead directly onto the blonde's chest, marking the beat with a wet, constant impact that resonated within the four walls.

Felix arched his back completely, his eyes rolling back. His own erection, unattended between the two bodies, dripped pre-cum onto their hot abdomens due to the pure internal stimulation. The walls of his intimacy closed in a spasm so violent that Hyunjin had to bite his lip until drawing blood to avoid coming right then and there.

"I'm coming, Jinnie… I'm c-coming, don't stop, please!" Felix shrieked, his voice broken by the imminent climax.

"Come for me, whimper like a girl, Lix… wasn't that what you wanted?" Hyunjin demanded of him, lowering a hand to squeeze Felix's hip and forcing him to slot his length against his stomach with each stroke. "Together, Lix. Look at me."

Felix held his gaze as best as he could, his pupils dilated and his breath suspended. At the next impact, his body tensed like a violin string. He let out a cry that got swallowed by the room as his orgasm reached him with a delicious violence, spilling his cum between their two bellies in thick, hot spurts, while his interior contracted rhythmically around Hyunjin, trapping him in an unbearable vice of heat.

Seeing Felix come like that, completely destroyed beneath his body, was the definitive trigger for the dark-haired man.

Hyunjin grit his teeth, letting out a hoarse roar that dug into Felix's neck. He gave three blind, deep, and desperate thrusts, sinking to the root, and finally broke. His own climax hit him with a force that made him lose his sight for a second, spilling his heat into the depths of Felix in long, heavy pulsations that seemed to empty him completely.

The silence returned gradually to the fraternity room, broken only by the sound of two exhausted breaths trying to regain oxygen. Hyunjin let himself fall heavily over Felix's chest, his forehead hidden in his damp neck, still joined to him, feeling the blonde's last spasms beneath his body.

The three weeks of purgatory had ended, but both knew, as the shared heat cooled over their skin, that the fraternity game had just transformed into something they could never return from.

Hyunjin woke up on Saturday morning feeling much lighter than the last three weeks, but somehow scared. It was ten o'clock, and the pale winter light of Seoul filtered through the slats of the blinds, illuminating the disaster of his room: the bottle of lube tossed on the rug, the tangled sheets, and the smell of raw sex, sweat, and cologne that seemed to have impregnated the walls, like the dry paint of the brush he dropped the night before without thinking.

Felix was no longer in his bed. He had left at dawn, leaving an empty space in the mattress where his figure had been impressed as irrefutable proof that last night had not been another of his damn feverish hallucinations.

The real hell, however, began at twelve in the kitchen of the common room.

When Hyunjin entered, shuffling his feet and with his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans, he ran into a scene that any other day would have been normal, but not today. Chan and Minho were sitting at the counter arguing over some notes, and Felix was standing up, his back turned, pouring himself a coffee that was probably more cream and sugar than anything else. He wore black sweatpants and a grey hoodie three sizes too big. His grey hoodie. The same one he had ripped off his body the night before.

"Well, look who deigned to come down," Minho scoffed, without looking up from his tablet. "We thought you had died in your room, Hwang. And you look terrible."

"I didn't sleep well," Hyunjin replied. His voice sounded rougher than usual, and the subsequent clearing of his throat didn't help much to hide it.

Felix tensed visibly at the sound of his voice. He didn't turn around abruptly, but the flow of the coffee stopped for a second. When he finished pouring and finally turned around to walk—barely hiding his limp—toward the table, his massive, bright eyes clashed directly with Hyunjin's.

It was a millisecond, but the air in the kitchen seemed to be sucked out completely.

Felix's lips were subtly more swollen and his neck was covered by the high collar of the hoodie—an obvious attempt to hide the marks Hyunjin's hands had left. There was no trace of the bold, mischievous boy who had provoked him at the desk, but neither of the innocent one who feigned that what he did wasn't on purpose; Felix looked strangely vulnerable, almost scared. He held Hyunjin's gaze with a trembling pulse, swallowing hard before breaking contact and looking toward the floor.

"Hi, Jinnie," he murmured in a thread of a voice, passing by his side to leave the cup on the table.

The brush of shoulders was inevitable due to the size of the kitchen; it was barely a second but enough to send an electric shock running down the dark-haired man's spine. He scolded himself internally because his crotch tensed from a conditioned reflex born of the memory of the warmth inside the blonde.

"Hi, Lix…" he returned, static in his place, his jaw clenched.

"Did you two fight or something?" Chan asked, looking up with a frown, noticing the dense layer of awkwardness that had settled in the kitchen. "You're being super weird."

"Nothing's wrong, Channie," Felix intervened quickly, forcing a sweet smile that didn't reach his eyes. "We're just… tired from midterms. I'm going to study at the library."

Felix took his cup, turned around, and left the kitchen with quick steps, without looking back.

Hyunjin stayed standing in the middle of the place, feeling the curious gazes of the boyfriends pinned to the back of his neck. He realized, with a knot in his stomach, that it was no longer the same. That the game was over, that the thread had broken, and that maybe… just maybe, he had crossed the line, further than he thought.

The following week was, perhaps, worse than the previous three in which he could barely think of anything other than Felix. Now the same thing happened, but the blonde's presence had practically vanished from his life.

Felix had perfected the art of disappearing. He no longer sat on the common room sofa if Hyunjin was nearby, he no longer wore his hoodies, and what was worse, he had activated his social and cheerful butterfly facet again, but this time far from him. However, Hyunjin found it impossible to confront him; the fear of having done something wrong, of having said something wrong, of having driven him away forever when he had barely reacted to what he felt was consuming him.

He replayed the conversation they had while he was inside him, punishing him through the pleasure he gave him; he replayed it so many times that often his crotch ended up feeling it. Nothing made sense to him. Maybe he had crossed the line with a phrase; maybe it wasn't what Felix had expected of him.

Yes, maybe it's that; maybe he thought you would be better, more considerate, less rough, he forced himself to think, with a heavy weight in his chest that he couldn't avoid reflecting in the next artworks he had to make to present for his finals. He stopped responding to girls, he even stopped thinking about them; there was nothing else inhabiting his mind that wasn't Felix and his lips over his length, his beautifully shaped hips.

But it wasn't just that what he missed, and realizing it had led him to an entire afternoon of rediscovery. The thing which he had been avoiding so much. He missed his presence—the one that hadn't detached from him since day one. He missed seeing him wear his clothes as if they belonged to him, missed hearing him talk about social media trends, about viral dances, about Taylor Swift. He missed talking about his projects and having those massive, bright eyes so interested, so understanding with every thing he told him about his passion.

And then he realized that maybe Seungmin was right.

Maybe what he had been ignoring all this time wasn't that secret, dirty lust, that desire to have him in a carnal way. He desired him even spiritually.

Felix is an angel. Is he just an angel? Or is he your angel?

That voice from one of his shoulders made itself present; the thoughts piled up in his head, and meanwhile, the seat next to him on the sofa remained empty. Just like his chest; he wasn't just losing a friend. He was losing his angel.

And all that for being a damn pervert.

🐤

Felix had been a fucking disaster since that night. He thought—deep down—that he could control it, that he could be strong and bold enough to assume the role he had posed in his proposal.

Don't take him the wrong way; it had fascinated him immensely. Hyunjin fulfilled almost every sexual fantasy that had accumulated in his head for three whole years. But there was something in his words that didn't echo until the next day, when he woke up sticky and tired, with Hyunjin's arm over his waist.

“Be a good girl” “Come for me, whimper like a girl, Lix… wasn't that what you wanted?”

Those phrases had pursued him since that morning, throughout the week. While he took care not to hold the dark-haired man's gaze for more than two seconds. He felt stupid, so stupid… all that time, those years of silence and deliberate actions he had been dropping little by little, how he had pulled the strings so carefully so as not to "scare him away," only to end up being the one running scared.

It wasn't that he believed Hyunjin would be perfect—he didn't even have any expectations; he knew Hyunjin like the palm of his hand. He had not only allowed himself to desire him, he had also allowed himself to know him. The fear was within himself. In not being the girl he had promised he could be. In not being enough for what the dark-haired man expecting. It was all a whirlwind of absurd contradictions and the vivid memory of Hyunjin thrusting against his prostate while he moaned his name without any shame.

"Felix?" a familiar voice snapped him out of his thoughts, making him flinch a bit and turn around. "You looked distracted."

"Ah… Hi, Jeongin," Felix adjusted the strap of his backpack, looking back at the floor as he began to walk alongside the ginger-haired boy.

"Lix, are you still sad?"

"No… yes, I don't know," Felix didn't raise his gaze from the floor.

"You just need to talk to him; I don't understand what the problem is," the ginger-haired boy murmured the last part a bit irritated.

Felix knew it irritated him to talk to him about his eternal crush, when his own crush was Felix himself, but the blonde had set the boundaries a long time ago.

"Don't you think that if he were determined, he would have talked to me already?" Felix let out in an ironic tone, rolling his eyes. "What if he just wants me to… you know…"

"God, you really are being a girl."

"Jeongin!" the blonde protested, a flash of betrayal in his eyes.

"I'm sorry! I went too far… but I don't know, Felix, I think it's too much drama. If everything you told me is true, I don't think that idiot lacks the common sense needed to realize it."

"Realize what?" Felix stopped dead in his tracks.

"That he likes you beyond the sexual. Meaning… you homosexualized him," he said smiling, proud of the silly joke he had just made, and Felix rolled his eyes.

"Idiot, that's why I don't date you," the blonde snapped, hitting his own backpack against the other's chest for him to carry it and walking away from him.

"Hey! You're cruel!" he said between being offended and laughing, putting the backpack on one shoulder and quickening his pace.

🥟

On Saturday afternoon, Hyunjin was sitting in the fraternity dining room, pretending to clean his brushes while his mind was elsewhere, when he saw Felix approach the main door. He didn't come alone. He came laughing with a second-year guy, a taller fellow with broad shoulders, bright ginger hair and foxy eyes, who held his backpack with a familiarity that made Hyunjin's stomach churn as if he had swallowed acid.

He saw from afar how the guy touched Felix's shoulder to say goodbye, and how Felix gifted him that bright smile—the same one Hyunjin believed he had claimed completely the previous Saturday night over his desk.

He felt a pull of jealousy so violent and pathetic in his chest that he almost broke the handle of the brush between his fingers.

Hyunjin didn't realize it in that exact instant because he had already assumed it; only now did he have before his eyes the most vivid proof he could get of what he was feeling. He didn't want any girl, from any department, any damn date that only resulted in a kissing session and ended ahead of time because he couldn't stand it anymore. He wanted the freckled blonde who had always teased him, the one who right now walked through the door without saying a word to him.

On Sunday night, Hyunjin couldn't take it anymore; he stopped caring about the slightest excuse his mind could invent not to put on the pants he supposedly had. It was nine at night and a sepulchral silence reigned in the fraternity house—the kind that only reigned on nights before final exams.

Hyunjin knew that Felix usually vanished his dance clothes late on Sundays to have them ready, so he went down to the basement, where the communal laundry room exhaled a hot vapor smelling of detergent.

There he was, his back turned, putting some black tights into one of the dryers. The fluorescent light of the basement flickered slightly, tinting the place with a warm yellow halo. Hyunjin closed the metal door behind him with a thud that sounded sharper than he intended. The noise made Felix startle and turn around immediately. Upon seeing the dark-haired man, the blonde took a step back, bumping against the cold metal of the machine.

"Hyunjin…" Felix murmured, using his full name for the first time in three years. His voice sounded defensive, even scared. "What are you doing here? If you came to wash, I'm already finish—"

"I didn't come to wash, Felix," Hyunjin advanced with long, determined steps, closing the distance with an urgency he hadn't shown since that day. He planted himself in front of him once again, cornering him against the dryer, forcing the younger man to tilt his head to hold his gaze. "I came to talk to you. Stop running away from me."

"I-I'm not running away," Felix lied, looking to the side, his cheeks tinting a pale pink. "I'm just busy, it's midterm season and…"

"Look at me, please…" Hyunjin stretched out his hand and with delicacy, took the blonde's jaw, gently forcing him to lock those beautiful, massive, bright eyes back into his own. "A week, Lixie, a week acting as if what happened in my bed didn't mean anything. You're driving me crazy, worse than before. You can't just get into my pants, do this to me, and then disappear as if I were a damn stranger."

Felix tried to break free from the grip, but Hyunjin's chest was already very close to his, cornering him completely with his own heat. The frustrations the blonde carried finally exploded.

"And what did you want me to do, Hyunjin?" he demanded, his voice raspy and tears gathering in his eyes. "What you said to me… and before, you went out with girls as if they were pets, for what? To convince yourself that what you feel for me is a mistake? I saw you in the kitchen on Saturday morning; frozen upon seeing Channie and Minho, looking at me as if you had seen a ghost and not the friend you dismantled that night. I know you've only liked women, I know what your reputation is. Something in me told me that maybe if you felt what I felt… if I offered myself, then you'd have eyes for me. But I don't want to be an experiment. And I was scared and…"

The demand and the words full of frustration hit Hyunjin right in the center of his pride. Seeing Felix cry, the real fear on his face of being used and discarded, finished breaking the small barrier of denial lingering in his head.

"Do you really think I'm that stupid, Felix?" Hyunjin's voice dropped to a raspy whisper, charged with a desperate intensity. He moved his hand from his jaw down to his waist, squeezing the fabric of the hoodie with possessive strength and pulling him against his chest. "Do you really think I went out with them because I wanted to? I went out with them because I was terrified of how much you kill me. None of them meant anything, I didn't like any of them, none of them has been able to make me feel what you make me feel just by breathing near me!"

Felix stayed still, his breath suspended and tears frozen over his freckles. Hyunjin was very close, breathing raggedly; their hearts could be heard.

"You are not a damn experiment, Lix," Hyunjin continued, his dark eyes shining. "I've spent three years looking for your face in every person I go out with. But it's you, it's always been you. My boy. The only one I want to have in my bed, the only one I want to touch. The only one I want to listen to me, Lix… —he took his face in both hands, staring fixedly at him—. If you're going to belong to anyone, you'll be mine. Don't you ever look at me with fear again, because there is nothing I regret more than having taken so long to have you like this."

A sob escaped Felix, but this time it was out of pure relief. Hyunjin's honesty, stripped of any popular-boy facade, was everything his heart had been waiting to hear since the first day he stepped into that house.

"Jinnie…" the blonde whispered, raising his hands to cross his wrists behind the dark-haired man's neck.

Hyunjin didn't let him finish. He leaned down and caught his lips in a deep, hungry, and possessive kiss that sealed the promise—a kiss he had been waiting for so long, even before last Saturday. No doubts, no denial. They kissed against the cold metal of the dryer, with the salty taste of Felix's tears mixed with the urgency of two lovers who had finally discovered they were always right in front of each other.

On Tuesday afternoon, the fraternity common room returned to being the usual chaos after having submitted most of the final exams. Changbin and Jisung played on the TV, Minho devoured a bowl of cereal at the counter, and Chan checked his laptop while sitting on the main sofa.

The door opened and Hyunjin entered carrying his backpack along with another one, as he did not come alone, nor did he walk with the prudent distance of the last few days.

Felix came right by his side. And Hyunjin held him by the hand; it wasn't a timid grip. Hyunjin had his long fingers intertwined with Felix's small fingers, leaving it clear to whoever looked at them that he had no intention of letting go.

Upon entering the living room, silence took over the place gradually. Jisung dropped the controller, Changbin stopped talking, and Chan looked up from his laptop for the first time in three hours, fixing his eyes directly on the joined hands of the two best friends. Minho froze with his spoon halfway to his mouth, blinking with some surprise.

Felix tensed for a few seconds, but relaxed again upon feeling Hyunjin's thumb caressing his hand. The dark-haired man take a step forward, subtly pulling Felix to press him against his side, and looked at Chan with serenity.

"What?" Hyunjin let out a sideways smile, with that confidence he had gained in his first years of college. "Stop staring like that."

Chan looked at the intertwined fingers, then at Felix's face, and finally at Hyunjin. A smile of self-sufficiency and absolute relief spread across the fraternity leader's face.

"Well…" Chan leaned back on the sofa, letting out a chuckle, "it was about time, idiots. We've been enduring your existential crises and your hungry-dog looks for three years. We actually thought about locking you in a closet to see if you'd react."

[At that instant, Seungmin came running from the hallway and froze before the scene, only to then let out a shout full of superiority.]

"I TOLD YOU SO!" he yelled, pointing at everyone. "I told you Hwang wasn't straight. You owe me fifty thousand won, Seo Changbin."

The room erupted in familiar laughter and teasing, breaking the tension in a second. It was the same group as always, the same noisy fraternity, but for Hyunjin everything had changed. Nobody had to ask him anything; the only thing that mattered was both of them. He looked down, meeting the bright eyes on Felix's freckled face, who looked at him with a happiness so pure it made his heart flip.

He's my angel, he answered himself.

He leaned down in front of them, careless of Jisung's exaggerated complaints or Seungmin's laughter, and planted a short but firm kiss on the pink lips, keeping a bit of that strawberry gloss he liked him to wear so much.

"I told you, Lixie," he murmured close to his ear, making him shudder a bit. "My boy."

Felix laughed, hiding his face in Hyunjin's shoulder while wrapping his arms around his waist. The title of heterosexual had gone to hell, but as long as he had his angel's body firm against his own, Hyunjin knew he had won the best prize of his life when he decided to lose in Felix's game.