Work Text:
“Hi,” Hongjoong croaked through a thin smile, then grimaced, reaching for his water bottle. It was a far stretch, situated away from his keyboard despite its sealed cap, and Mingi watched as he had to roll and angle his chair a tad before his hand finally found purchase around the bottle’s body. He watched, too, Hongjoong’s fingers, thin and painted on the ends, carefully unscrewing the cap and setting it down on his desk. He watched the side of his face, the movement of his jaw as he brought the open mouth to his and swallowed once, twice, thrice.
He looked away.
“Hey.” He patted down the back of his hair. “Um, should I…?”
In his periphery, Hongjoong twisted his neck towards him and back again. “Give me a minute,” he said, clicking around a bit. “I just gott-aaa… send this demo off…”
The quick, rhythmic tapping of keys filled the studio, and Mingi took his cue to drop his bag, slide his shoes off, and settle onto the couch. He cleared his throat. “It’s the one you’re pushing for the title, right? You finally get it to a good place?”
“Mmm-hm,” Hongjoong hummed, rocking in his chair. “I mean,” he added, “doubt it’ll make it, but I wanna give it a chance. I like it.”
“Bullshit it won’t make it,” Mingi said. “It’s good. Really good, seriously.”
Hongjoong was silent through the next few pointed clicks of his mouse. Mingi pictured him—lip drawn between his teeth, brows furrowed, shoulders hunched, all vividly transplanted from innumerable memories—and sighed.
He longed for more capable hands, to melt, to soften, to mold Hongjoong into something more forgiving. He craved the permission to excavate what made Hongjoong so humble yet lacked the ability to produce anything but half-believed platitudes to fill its place. How could he when he carried so much of the same insecurity. How could he, when that mindset had infested the wiring of Hongjoong’s brain before they’d even met.
Case in point: Hongjoong slid his chair back and spun around, folded form facing Mingi. “Yeah, well,” he said, stretching out and standing up, a forced levity to his tone, “how many other songs have you said that about?”
Mingi, leaning back and not looking away, shrugged. “I’ve meant it every time,” he said.
Wordlessly, Hongjoong mirrored the movement. In full view now, he looked small—not in stature, as always, but small like some part of him had been erased. Small like the speck of Atlas beneath a vast sky. Small like he should just curl up into Mingi’s chest and stay there. He stepped forward until his shins hit the couch between Mingi’s legs. He couldn’t seem to stop blinking.
“I’ve got eye drops in my bag,” Mingi pivoted, knocking his leg against one of Hongjoong’s.
Hongjoong managed another little smile, one of those things Mingi couldn’t properly place on the spectrum between genuine and performed, followed by a curt expression of thanks. He stepped sideways over Mingi’s foot and crouched by the end table to unzip Mingi’s bag and root around for the vial. Mingi let his head fall back to stare at the ceiling.
A good minute of rummaging passed and a surprised laugh was sounding from the floor. He turned his neck along the backrest to see Hongjoong brandishing a thin tube of lube, eyebrows arched. “Eager?” he intoned, aiming for smug, ending up bashful.
Mingi scoffed. “You should be glad I remembered to be prepared this time. And they’re in the side pocket, by the way.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Hongjoong said dully, letting the bottle drop so he could reach into a smaller compartment and fish out the drops. Still crouched, he leaned back with a thoughtless ease to squeeze liquid into each eye, carrying on, “You know I keep some in here, anyway.”
Mingi grunted his acknowledgment.
Blinking again to absorb the liquid, Hongjoong capped the vial and stood. His socked foot rubbed at the inside of his other leg. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands; they settled, eventually, in the pockets of his sweats. “Thank you, again,” he said. “For this.”
Mingi’s eyes flitted over Hongjoong’s face—cheeks more filled out a with the months since comeback season; the pixie point of his nose, testament to a break in his first year of high school; lashes sticking out over the dark sheen of his constantly calculating irises; eyes underset by shadows unconcealed, courtesy of an unsound balance between work and sleep; a twitch between his eyebrows. He swallowed. “I haven’t done anything yet,” he professed.
“You’re here, so,” Hongjoong reasoned, shuffling back to his previous position. Shakily, he exhaled. “You…”
His hand lifted to stroke down Mingi’s jawline and it was like the tipoff to a Rube Goldberg sequence: he swung a leg over Mingi’s and then the other and lowered himself into his lap. His gaze reciprocally flicked across Mingi’s features before he scooted forward, leaned in, and kissed him.
Mingi, himself, though not as nearly as frayed this given evening, felt tired and warped in his core and could only surrender to the guidance of Hongjoong’s lips. Mouth strangely soft, kisses hungry from the outset, he tasted like old coffee and something oniony. Mingi had brushed his teeth before heading over and the thought almost made him laugh.
Hongjoong rocked in his lap and grabbed his wrists, mouth unceasing, to set his hands just over the jut of his own hip bones. Permission appreciated, Mingi curled his fingers in and tugged Hongjoong closer until he couldn’t anymore. His neck strained slightly in the effort to keep them attached.
Fingers weaved their way into the outgrown hair on the side of his head. Another hand came up to his chin—soft, firm, dainty, tugging just enough to have his lips unsticking from each other. Hongjoong knocked their faces together in his insistence to bite, to pull, to nip, breathing trebled against him.
“Um,” Hongjoong murmured, pulling back only to surge forward again, “I actually wanna,” he bit at Mingi once more, nudging their noses together, then, “you’re not busy tomorrow, right? Recording anything?”
Hongjoong hovered while he awaited a reply, eyes intense. “Uh.” Mingi racked his addled brain, brows pinched. “No. Not that I have planned.”
“Cool.” Hongjoong pressed his lips to the corner of Mingi’s mouth and then, closeby, to his jaw. “Might go a li’l hard on you, then.”
“Whatever you need,” Mingi granted.
Smiling that small, crooked smile at him, Hongjoong drew back, off his lap, to stand and step out of his pants. Pinned, rapt, whirling in his stomach and working to measure his breathing, Mingi adjusted and awaited further cues.
Hongjoong kicked his pants behind him without much thought; Mingi didn’t see where they ended up, either, busy tracing over the now-revealed skin of his thighs, visible by half under the hem of his shirt, the way they transitioned to the soft vee of his kneecaps, and his calves, tragically cut off by ever present ankle socks.
“Get on your back,” Hongjoong requested, breaking his reverie, with a click of his head to his right. His fingers curled in the fabric of his tee. “You might wanna take your clothes off,” he added, “if you want. You look a little warm already.”
“Go figure,” Mingi grumbled. Still, he took the permission in full stride, tossing his hoodie and shirt to the floor before rolling over so his back pressed against leather. Hongjoong settled atop him again easily. He brought his hands up to push through his bleach-blonde hair, exhaling slowly, sleeve slipping to expose the dark ink on his bicep. Mingi shivered.
The anticipation, still, could kill him.
Hongjoong wiggled forward to rest on his sternum. The weight was a pleasant anchor, warm, from his gently caging thighs to his clothed ass. The fabric of his shirt pooled at his hips and over onto Mingi’s stomach. His hands hovered—one, following a moment of consideration, rested upon Mingi’s shoulder, and the other snaked beneath his tee and into his briefs to pull out his dick.
Pretty. Familiar. Curved and flushed at half-mast. Hongjoong let it drop to drip saliva into the cup of his palm, which was then used as leverage to stroke himself lazily. “Are you comfortable?” he asked, inching closer just slightly.
Mingi licked his lips and nodded.
“You sure?” Hongjoong pressed. His thumb pushed up under the head of his cock, drawing out his subsequent blink. “I can grab a pillow.”
“I’m fine,” Mingi rasped, reddening with the evidence of his arousal, thighs twitching.
Hongjoong conceded, “Okay,” rocking into his hand.
All that was left for Mingi to do was drop his jaw, stick his tongue out, and wait.
———
The crux of it was inanely simple. Nothing anyone around him hadn’t heard before: running for too long on too little, pushing himself against the lip of his limits, tired of exerting himself so thoroughly for nothing but thin chances. Tired of slinking down the path of overthinking at minor decisions. Tired of feeling like every demo he developed had to be flawless. Stretched thin; tied in circuitous knots.
Only making matters worse, he had woken to a cumbrous pressure on his chest which only spread, weighing every inch of him down, as he attempted the motions of assuming personhood for the day. The task felt arduous. His body felt wrong in every possible way with his mind being its most nitpicky, strung-out version of itself. Nothing fit or felt right. Every movement was like that of a marionette with snipped strings. The urge to burrow under his blankets and reject existence was only just overcome by the threat of deadlines.
He powered through it, though, and did what he had to do, and he could sink into Mingi’s lax heat and let his thoughts drain to dregs in the back of his mind. All he could do now was wait and there was a sort of shaky inner peace that came with that knowledge. He did everything he could. He busted his ass and tweaked the thing to high heaven and really felt satisfied with where it ended up, even if that satisfaction was diluted, now, by sheer exhaustion.
But he got positive feedback from Maddox and Seonghwa and Yunho and Mingi, of course, an appreciated force of solicited criticism, as well. For the fact that Hongjoong always felt Mingi’s attitude towards his work was inherently biased, he wasn’t just a machine of praise and admiration; the impression that he offered those things out of mindless pacification came from Hongjoong’s doubt and that alone. Mingi saw no use in spinning lies. He respected Hongjoong too much as an artist to coddle him. He didn’t pull punches when it came to voicing his opinions no matter which way they leaned.
And he understood what it was to pour yourself into your work. Even distanced from personal subjects—they always giggled over how their vocabulary had become burdened with terms relating to fear and uncertainty and revolution since debuting—there existed a part of Hongjoong’s soul in every demo, every verse, every synth line he worked into one of the hyungs’ tracks, even. Even more pronounced was the essence of Song Mingi in everything the man in question brought to fruition. His first love, his outlet, his grace, with a bridge through it that brought him to Hongjoong, on equal ground, in common tongue.
Hongjoong was grateful for the dynamic in ways he felt unequipped to articulate. Funny, given that Mingi was often first—often only—witness to his vulnerability. Funny—as friends would taunt when he fumbled with his phrasing, his career revolved around capturing the inexplicable and sublime in the net of carefully woven language. Funny, because—
He threw his head back on a breathy moan as the base of his cock breached Mingi’s lips. Rocking back, rolling forward, he went deeper, slowly, letting Mingi, for all his mouthspace and all his receptiveness, ease into the intrusion. His eyes had quickly failed to stay open, giving Hongjoong full, unabashed reign to take in his strong features, reddened face, mouth stretched obscenely and ringed with spit already. His hair had been growing out for a few months; it tickled his ears and framed his face in raven-dark curtains. It was soft to the touch when Hongjoong brushed a strand away from his eye. Pretty. Pretty, pretty, pretty.
His eyes flickered open upon the near-cessation of Hongjoong’s movement and a garbled, questioning noise germinated in his throat. Hongjoong sighed. Eager indeed. He pulled himself out by half and thrust in with more force, intent, sucking in a breath between his teeth when Mingi moaned around him. He set a steady pace from there, feeling himself heating up, feeling a pleasant pinprick sensation skittering down to his toes, feeling tension slip away like meat pulled clean from the bone.
He felt Mingi wheeze and tremble and moan with the hilt of himself flush to Mingi’s lips, and a hand, fumbling, came to rest over his thigh. Mingi’s eyes were wide. He curled his fingers to tug on the fabric of Hongjoong’s shirt. Asking without asking. Swallowing, encouraging him. “Okay,” Hongjoong whispered, heart beating fast. “Okay, hold on.”
He pulled out slowly and then—
Deep into his throat. Tight. Fucking hot. Hold for as long as it took for Mingi to start scratching at his leg. Then, out to rest the tip of himself on Mingi’s tongue, shuddering at the image of him: catching his breath and bleary in the eyes and prone, pliant, willing, begging. Back in and blinking slowly. Out. Hongjoong felt just as breathless. He thrust back in with more vigor and reveled in the way Mingi’s eyes rolled back, his choked moan buzzing through them both.
It was this, that single-minded, simple control, that he needed when his feelings grew too big for his body. The amount of things he could not truly manage in full was numerous, and it was easy to feel helpless under the tug of outside influence. The group would always be beholden to their directors’ wishes. His music always ended up in the hands of others. He couldn’t dictate anybody’s opinions of him. He couldn’t indulge in the lavish, copious amounts of food he craved. He couldn’t shield the members from their doubts. He couldn’t guarantee them stability no matter how hard he pushed himself. He couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t—but this, he could.
Every nerve in his body locked on to the fine focus point of pleasure, Mingi the north star of it all. Here, every course of action was dictated by him; the snap of his hips, turning brusque now, his fingers threading into Mingi’s hair, his weight pinning Mingi down, legs containing him, shrinking him, divesting him of his power. His moans as they came were guttural. Just how Hongjoong liked them.
Mingi looked an awful mess down there, Hongjoong considered, pride a struck flame between his ribs, as his eyes squeezed shut repeatedly around burgeoning pools of saltwater. Hongjoong slammed into his throat. Let them spill.
Mingi gurgled and cried and his face, wet and getting wetter now, crinkled like paper. So breakable if you looked close enough or pressed your thumb in just so. Beyond facade, beyond holding himself up in public and beyond first impressions of a man hulking and sharp-eyed and stoic—fragile, docile, beautiful, needing a harbor to shelter the battered hull of himself.
Undone on his tongue, Hongjoong reckoned he was much the same.
He shuddered and rolled forward to rest there, exhaling shallow breaths, feeling himself held by the confines of Mingi’s throat. Mingi glanced up at him then, lashes laden and sclera tinged pink, and something kicked inside Hongjoong’s gut, a startled horse to force strained expletives from his lips and his hips, impossibly, further. It shouldn’t have been so alluring, the way Mingi gagged around him, body bucking upwards—Hongjoong gathered himself and slid out. His head rested just over the jut of Mingi's lip.
His hand untensed to card through the silken strands under it, really, it felt so generous for Mingi’s hair to be unimpaired by product, and the other brushed tears that still fell from his eyes so he would have a clearer view when Hongjoong’s eyebrows arched. "Sorry," he breathed. "You good?"
The responding nod was near instant, coupled with a hand brought to rub Hongjoong’s thigh. Sweaty, the both of them. He smiled.
Back in, not as deep but just as severe. Hands clutching at Mingi’s scalp once more. Rivulets of water ran down into Mingi’s hairline. He sniffed intermittently as he breathed to curb slow-leaking snot. Every inch of him radiated heat; every inch of Hongjoong that pushed into him was enveloped, lathered, suffusing him from his pleasure points up to his ears.
He didn’t shy away when he felt the rise in his core, humming like an elevator on its predetermined, practiced ascent. His thighs tensed, foot knocking against the couch, teeth biting down on flesh between them. He pulled slightly back. Short, harsh thrusts preceded his unraveling, stuttering a tad with the obscene velvet wetness of Mingi’s tongue, doing nothing itself yet everything for him.
And it was bad for him to think of the way Mingi lay susceptible, malleable, usable—it made everything in him tremble and tighten and soft, wounded moans crawled from his throat and there Mingi was, debauched and handsome and perfectly relaxed for Hongjoong to sheath himself and spill.
He sobbed on the crest of it and could not find it in himself to care for the preservation of his dignity. Let him be moved. Let him be altered. Let him be weak.
Once Mingi had sucked him past the point of emptiness, and, god, he kept on working his throat as if to rip Hongjoong’s seams open, he slid out, hissing with the air that hit his dick. Climax had brought his being back to himself—no longer was his body a sweater two sizes too small, rubbed holey around the middle from wear, fabric scratching his throat. He bent and splayed his fingers and rolled his shoulders and leaned back into the angle of Mingi’s mountained legs. It was like a switch had been flipped on a dying bulb—spent, sapped, but alive all the same, comfortably screwed in.
His new position brushed his ass up against Mingi’s erection. He blinked slowly. “Mingi-yah,” he chimed, low and breathy. His hand patted just over Mingi’s pectoral. “You were really good for me. Gonna take care of you now.”
Mingi whimpered in the back of his throat. Raw. Hongjoong scooted back up his torso to survey him, curling a hand over his cheek, the other tucking himself back in blindly. Mingi’s eyes were red-rimmed and lidded. “You doing alright?” Hongjoong asked, and he nodded, enthusiastic, tongue darting between his lips.
“Little hazy,” he admitted. His voice. His voice. Tires crunching over gravel and crackling flame and cardamom and cinnamon and rumbling thunder, rolling from his tongue. A rush of blood nearly knocked Hongjoong backwards.
With measured breath, however, he remained planted there, nodding, stroking a thumb over Mingi’s cheek and telling him to stretch out his legs. Unsure of the ability of his own body to stand at this point, he shimmied backwards and between them, situating himself on his knees with Mingi wrapping his thighs around his hips. He smiled at him and Mingi, head lifted in observation, returned the favor, if dopier and less toothy.
He let Mingi’s cock spring just free of its confines. Thick, heavy, hard, dripping already as Hongjoong wrapped a hand around it. Mingi’s head fell back with a soft thud and a low whine.
Though enthused by the idea, always so, Hongjoong wouldn’t drag this out. It was late, and a rarely rational, wholly animal part of him craved nothing but a good meal, a lengthy rest, and an end to this day.
That and to see Mingi unwind.
Wrist twisting, he leaned down to burrow his teeth into the soft skin of Mingi’s stomach, trailing upward in gentle bites. Mingi trembled beneath him, clearly falling fast, thighs straining and hips jerking into his hold. He tightened his fist and worked in steady upstrokes. The familiarity of this, the way he handled him as well as he knew how to wash his hands or tie his shoe, was a warming, gratifying force unfurling in his chest.
He nibbled beneath the delineation of a pectoral, enough to sting but not bruise, just shy of where Mingi wanted him. So maybe he wasn’t feeling entirely benevolent tonight. Maybe it was too tough an ask to resist playing with his food. With his hand playing out its well-practiced motions, his mouth and mind itched with intrigue. He slowly dragged his tongue up the muscle.
“Hyung,” Mingi rasped, “please, c-close.”
Hongjoong cut his gaze up towards the stretched, strained line of Mingi’s neck. Gorgeous and tragically unmarred. His Adam’s apple was a red flag to a bull. If using Mingi in the pursuit of pleasure was consolatory, this was maddening, provocative—to have reign over him yet still require restraint. Reducing him to something soft and sweet and not being able to indulge.
He wanted to eat him alive sometimes. But he could settle for digging his teeth into his nipple.
Mingi moaned, cracked and wanton. Hongjoong rolled his palm over his cockhead as his tongue flattened against the bud under it, licking and lapping, rubbing his hand in slow circles and relishing in the wetness that sprung up beneath it.
He attached his teeth again and pulled. Let it release. Pulled again. Nipping, sucking, encouraged by the broken moans he coaxed forth with the attention. Delightful, to rile Mingi up like this. A marvel of sensitivity.
He gave the area one last kiss, swiped his tongue in a circle, feeling himself warming with the way Mingi squirmed. Sloppy presses of his mouth led him to the other side of Mingi’s chest, tongue soon descending again to repeat the motion.
He looked up to see Mingi staring at him already, sweat rolling down his temple and brows knit together. His lips were swollen. His breaths were short through his nose.
And Hongjoong couldn’t help himself. “God, Mingi-yah,” he breathed, feeling like an animal salivating. He slid his free hand around the back of Mingi’s head to tug him up, closer, abandoning his post and heading for Mingi’s lips instead in loose, wet kisses. Indulgent after all. His fist tightened. “You’re so gorgeous.”
Mingi’s mouth hung open in overwhelm. “H-hyung, I—”
“You can come, baby.”
———
Post-orgasm Hongjoong was a relaxed, tender creature. Still in all of his clothes save pants, he stretched out, catlike, and settled against the back of the couch, face radiating content. He sank into comfort overtly, unabashedly. He wore satisfaction like he knew it was something he deserved. Loose, yet comfortable, like his oversized shirt, its collar dipping to reveal clavicle.
Sweat was drying on Mingi’s skin and his jaw had shrugged on a heavy ache but he felt thoroughly melted and pleased for that. Stress siphoned from his body, gentle hands having worked him over with care, conscious mind permitted to shut off for a while and now not in an awake enough state for much beyond rest.
He pulled his shirt on over his head and shook his hair out, aware of eyes on him. He met them. “Mm,” he swallowed, and his throat really was in rough shape. “You done in here for the night?”
Hongjoong, legs folded under him, grinned, head falling back. “Why do I feel like that’s not really a question?”
Mingi’s laughter came out in huffs. “Because I may care about you beyond just making you come,” he quipped. He turned and bent to retrieve Hongjoong’s discarded sweatpants, balling and tossing them towards the couch, where they landed in Hongjoong’s lap. Score. “Here.”
Hongjoong unfurled his limbs to pull the garment on, both legs at once, still sitting. His smile was unceasing as he teased, “Maybe?”
Mingi watched as he shimmied his hips to pull the waistband up and over his butt. He watched as he, then, stood, and brushed himself off. He watched him adjust his shirt. He watched Hongjoong watching him and smiled into his repetition of, “Maybe.”
His gaze held stagnant.
“Yeah, I was gonna call it a night, anyway,” Hongjoong said. “Fucking tired.”
Nodding, Mingi hummed his agreement.
They both moved to gather their things. Mingi's sweatshirt got tied around his waist, backpack slung over one shoulder. Hongjoong, officially shutting down his computer and shrugging on a puffer, fit his own bag diagonally over his body. He flicked off a floor lamp, grabbed his keys from his desk, and hooked his fingers through the handle of his water bottle before turning to Mingi.
“Think I can weasel my way into your place for the night?” he asked, fingers tapping against the metal of the bottle, keys jingling in their hold.
Mingi pressed an absent hand to his stomach against the feeling that bloomed there. Like a stomachache, almost. Like soft earth being dug into. It was a rare ask. Even rarer would he say no. He cocked his head in false consideration, hiking his bag up on his shoulder. “Maybe," in graciously unaffected tone. "If you grab me some lozenges on the way back.”
Hongjoong turned to his desk, slid a drawer open, and pulled out a pack, unopened, to hold out to him.
Eyebrows arching, Mingi accepted them. He swung his bag around to unceremoniously shove the package into its biggest pocket. "Alright. And dinner."
“Ah, fuck you,” Hongjoong bemoaned, his eyebrows slanting downwards. “The promise of home cooking is why I like to invade your guys’ space.”
Moving towards the door, Mingi laughed, “Just that?”
Hongjoong sidled up to his side to slip into his shoes. Mingi, tugging his own on lazily, glanced sidelong at him. Lips pursed, hair choppy, figure swallowed by his coat. His lips twitched. “Yep,” he affirmed.
Beyond the threshold, he linked their fingers together.