Archive of Our Own

“Congratulations, bro! You did it!” someone shouts in Mark’s ear, shoving a solo cup full of mysteriousness into his hand.

“Thanks.” Mark’s not nearly as excited—or drunk—because, unlike most of the people here, he’s not actually graduating on the 13th.

Because life is always doing its best to fuck with Mark’s chill, his “community college by way of Canada” credits didn’t quite transfer one-to-one, and he gets the privilege of spending his very first summer in Chicago. Mark always peaced out the earliest he could in June after the semester ended, when it was already almost unbearable, flying back to Vancouver to take long naps on his parents’ couch until they grumbled about housework and catching up with his friends. Then he’d fly back to Chi-Town, refreshed and having missed the most miserable months of the sweltering bog that passed for summer there.

But not this year. Mark’s so close to his degree, it feels like a joke that he doesn’t have it already. He’s about to turn 21; they should give it to him as an acknowledgement of his hard work and ignore that he’s still missing credits. But Mark’s family has officially put in Too Much Money for him to quit, nonresident tuition costs at a massively competitive university and all, and even if his mom cried when he said he def wasn’t making it home until August or later and made him feel like a failure of a son, it is what it is. Mark’s a big boy; he’ll drag himself through one hellish summer and a few classes come fall, and he’ll finally be free to do whatever he wants after. (Donghyuck keeps telling him to try out for American Idol after grad, even though Mark insists that’s the most cringe thing he’s ever heard and he’s not even American.)

Even if Mark’s not giddy with impending freedom, he is bored and wound up from his final earlier that day. Sehun’s invite to the house party was like, did Mark want to stay at home filming more John Mayer covers he never uploads, or did he want to get blitzed on punch and say goodbye to some people he’d likely never seen again? Primarily Sehun, because he was moving back to Seoul and extremely happy, if not smug and braggy, about it.

Now he’s here, at Sehun’s shitty house party, sweaty in his T-shirt because it’s somehow still a muggy 75 degrees outside sometime past eleven at night, and there are too many people for the A/C to make a dent. Mark watches drunk people yell about shots and argue about the party playlist and gives nods to people who wave at him. So far, he’s recognized a few faces, but no one from his own friend group or the LGBT student life crew. He should have known better than to show up alone.

Mark goes into the kitchen to trade his punch for a beer or something less dangerous. There’s a crush of people leaning on the walls next to the kitchen, but almost nobody in it—since there are folding tables set up with punch and bottles and bottles of mid-shelf liquor in the living room—and he’s about to dump his cup’s contents down the sink when he spots Johnny Suh, that hot TA he had last year for Intro to Computer Science. He’s unmistakable, in part because of his height but also because he’s hot as hell. Seriously. Mark for sure needed help in that class (he should have dropped day one and found something else to satisfy his reqs), but Johnny Suh, helpful and funny and basically co-teaching the entire thing despite the fact that he was just a Master’s student—well, Mark didn’t want to be rude and scamper out of the classroom in the middle of Johnny’s first day TAing. What if Johnny took it as commentary on his abilities? So Mark sat through the first class, the second class, and a whole parade of other ones, until he got a D on his midterm and asked Johnny for some help and actually got it.

Johnny is dope. He’s solely responsible for Mark’s C+ in CS. An enthusiastic “Ayyyyyy, man! Sup!” comes out of his mouth at a volume louder than needed to be heard over the music. Then he realizes that it’s been like six months and Johnny has probably helped hundreds of students. “Uh, I’m Mark.”

Johnny, who was putting chips into a bowl on the kitchen island before Mark apparently startled him into stopping, raises his eyebrow at Mark’s cup and jerks his chin at it. His hair is noticeably longer than the last time Mark saw him, sweeping over his forehead and down to his cheekbones. “What’s your poison?”

Mark holds it out to Johnny like this will somehow help. “Uh, I dunno, I was gonna dump it out because I don’t drink the weird shit people mix at parties.”

Johnny grabs the cup midway through Mark’s lack of explanation and sniffs it. “Yeah, this is rancid. Do you want a beer, Mark?” He says Mark’s name deliberately, like he’s burying a laugh inside it.

It’s also possible he knows Mark is not technically 21 yet and is fucking with him, but whatever. Johnny never seemed like a narc.

“My hero,” Mark says, still not quite nailing the volume, as Johnny dumps the brownish, purplish contents of the cup down the drain. “Anything cold?”

Johnny cracks open the fridge, digs around—he’s bent so far over to do so, it looks a little ridiculous—and comes up with two ales. He pops the tops off both and hands one to Mark, who settles his hips against the kitchen island to drink it. In here, with hot Johnny Suh, is a lot better than out there had been. The condensation on the bottle wets his hand, or he might be a little sweatier now because Johnny Suh is not only very hot but also confirmed queer. He ran into Johnny at a campus LGBT event wearing a pansexual pin, and he also had the pleasure of doing so a few weeks into his Comp Sci course, so Mark was like, Cool, a fellow queer who explains shit to me in a funny way and laughs at my bad puns! Love to have a community!

“Bet you’re glad to be done with the semester, huh?” Mark asks, after gulping down about a third of the bottle because it’s something to do.

“Yeah, can’t wait to run all over the city doing wedding gigs to afford rent for the summer,” Johnny sighs. He mock-cheers, butting his ale in Mark’s direction.

Mark doesn’t quite know what to do with the info about wedding gigs. Maybe Johnny is a waiter? He probably looks nice done up in an ironed dress shirt and slacks, and he’s painfully charming when he wants to be, so he likely makes shmoney in tips. But then he remembers that Johnny’s basically Insta-famous for his photography and he double-majored in CS and visual arts for undergrad or something else no mere mortal could be expected to do.

“I like weddings,” Mark says. “Everyone’s so happy, and there’s always so much dancing.”

Johnny laughs, his usual raspy “ha ha” that Mark totally forgot about until now. “You clearly haven’t been to enough weddings. Everyone’s the most stressed they’ve ever been, or crying and panicking about makeup, or the catering order got fucked up. I’ve been to three where people had to be bribed to dance.”

Mark blinks and hovers his open mouth above the neck of the bottle while he struggles to find something to say. This is the most Johnny has said to Mark about his life, or about anything negative, and while he’s aware that even hot TAs have rich internal lives, it’s a little strange to be suddenly confronted with the reality that Johnny isn’t an endlessly patient golden boy. Mark kinda likes that Johnny’s talking to him about more than compilers and what campus cafe serves the best coffee. “People have to be bribed to dance? What?”

Johnny smiles wide like Mark’s said something hilarious and not just squawked like a parrot. “One time, I witnessed a desperate groom giving one of the banquet hall staff fifty bucks to dance to Get Low,” Johnny says, leaning in and saying it in a conspiratorial tone—what would be a murmur if there weren’t EDM the next room over.

“Oh, that’s—illegal. Did they dance all by themself?”

“For most of it, yeah. I think a few people got up out of pity.”

Mark guffaws, he can’t help it, and Johnny smiles back and takes a leisurely sip, seemingly pleased Mark’s as easy to amuse as ever. Or maybe he doesn’t remember the time Mark, laughing, slapped the table they were working at hard enough that Johnny’s Americano fell over and stained his homework. “You’re a really great TA,” Mark says. “Like, I don’t know if I told you at the time, so I’m telling you now. I only passed that class because you dragged me through the trenches, man. Are you gonna teach?”

Johnny gives a dramatic shudder. “Fuck no. I do it for work-study money and the resume boost. I’m probably going to skip my Ph.D. just so I don’t have to be roped into teaching.”

Mark’s good, like notably good, at only a handful of things; he can’t imagine being as good at teaching, at understanding and helping, as Johnny is and not wanting to use it. But Johnny’s also apparently a, like, master photographer good enough to be booked for weddings, and he lands coveted TA spots; maybe he’s good at a lot of things. Like being unfairly hot, and unbreakable eye contact.

Mark tugs at his T-shirt and fans the fabric against his chest. “It’s close in here, huh? Whew.”

“So, Mark,” Johnny says, canting his hip and crossing one ankle over the other. He’s braced on the kitchen island with one hand, the kitchen island they’re standing at opposite ends of like bookends. “You’re a music major, yeah? You graduating next week?”

“I wish,” Mark groans. “Eugh, my credits from Canada were super fucked and I’ve got some time on my sentence still, so I’m here for summer semester too. My roommate is graduating, so I look forward to spending the summer slowly roasting to death in my dorm by myself.”

“Sehun’s leaving next week too”—Mark nods emphatically to indicate he knows Sehun and also the status of his gleeful self-yeeting out of America—“and I have no idea what I’m going to do when he does.”

Sehun and Johnny are close, basically BFFs, and Sehun’s Facebook friendship with Mark is also how Mark discovered Johnny’s Instagram. Mark is majorly bummed just thinking of Hyuck going back to Korea and leaving him alone, and losing Lucas as a roomie has him teetering on the edge of panic. He reaches out to awkwardly pat Johnny’s forearm, the closest part of him he can reach. “That blows. You’re welcome to hang out with me if you get lonely between all those wedding gigs, but, uh, I should warn you, I’m way less fun than Sehun.”

Johnny glances down at where Mark touched him, takes another long pull from his beer, and smiles after he swallows. “Yeah, cool. I’d like that.”

Whatever either of them might say next is cut off by someone running full-tilt into the kitchen. Mark’s never seen them before in his life. They stop at the sink and stare into its depths, which has Mark throwing Johnny a panicked look like Is this about to get really gross? Should we leave?, but then they hiccup, shake themselves out of it, and turn around. They grind to a halt again when they see the bowl filled with chips and backtrack to snag… the entire bowl. It’s cradled to their chest. Then they’re gone, moseying off, like the urgency that propelled them into running indoors never existed.

“I won’t miss Sehun’s friends,” Johnny says, droll. “That dude borrowed my Zelda game and never brought it back.”

Mark perks up at that. “Which one?”

“Ocarina.”

“Right on!” Mark’s about to enthuse about Zelda when he remembers that Johnny has been and continues to be deprived of Zelda. “Uh, but also fuck people who take shit and don’t give it back.”

“It’s fine, I got another copy.” The music in the other room has switched to something with a lot more lyrics, and it seems to have gotten louder too, so Mark doesn’t think anything of it when Johnny inches closer so they can talk at a more conversational volume instead of trying to half-shout like earlier. “You play?”

“I mean, when I have time. And money. I used to play Lucas’ XBone when he didn’t need it, and he had, like, a whole collection, but he’s moving back to Hong Kong, so I’m back to my phone, and I got a Switch two Christmases ago but only a couple games for it.”

Johnny nods like this is a meaningful contribution. “I’ve got a whole setup in my room. I splurged on a new gaming PC and a PS4 for my birthday—I’m all about that self-love, you know?” he says, and Mark can’t tell if he’s kidding but laughs regardless. “You play PUBG?”

“Yeah, uh, Lucas was gonna get it and I was gonna… watch him play or play it myself, but he forgot, and then finals…” Mark trails off, trying to seem like a cool adult and not someone who relies on his friends to facilitate his hobbies. It’s increasingly hard to stay focused on what’s coming out of his mouth and not that Johnny is nearly shoulder to shoulder with him now, so tall he’s basically eclipsing the overhead light. “You gotta tell me how it is.”

Johnny plunks his ale down on the island. “I can do you one better than that. You can use my setup.”

“Oh, worm?” Mark literally and factually says, so taken aback by the way Johnny is staring down at him with his pouty lips upturned in a beatific smile, dark eyes glinting, that his brain is just giving up. “You’re a fuckin’ real one.”

Johnny’s smile kicks up a notch, and he turns around so quickly Mark barely processes it, heading out of the kitchen without another word. Mark stands in his wake, confused and still holding his half-full ale. He’s still staring at the empty space Johnny used to occupy next to him when, maybe twenty seconds later, Johnny pokes his head back in and says, “You coming or nah?”

And then Mark remembers that Sehun and Johnny are roommates, something else he discovered on Sehun’s Facebook page in passing and apparently totally forgot about. Which also explains why Johnny was on snack duty in the kitchen. And now Johnny’s offering to let Mark play PUBG during the middle of this cliché of a party. He truly is a real one.

Mark sets down his ale and claps his hands together. “Yeah, I wanna check it out.”

There are still people on the outskirts of the kitchen like before and a few people making out against walls. Johnny cuts a path through the milling crowd and reaches back behind him to grab Mark’s wrist loosely, so he doesn’t lose him, and they go up a narrow set of stairs to a marginally quieter second floor. Mark can still hear conversation from somewhere up here, too loud to be sober, and realizes that Johnny still hasn’t let go of his wrist and they’re about to go into Johnny’s fucking bedroom.

Okay. Cool. Sure. So downstairs, that was a pretty generic, bro-y conversation. Mark was unprepared to hit on Johnny (like he has the nerve to hit on Johnny Suh after Johnny Suh found out, in detail, how bad Mark is at anything that isn’t music!!) and super extra not prepared for Johnny to be hitting on him, so none of that crossed his mind, aside from a constant, nagging awareness of how fucking… fire-emoji hot Johnny is. But now? He’s wondering if Johnny kept smiling at him, and inching closer, not because of the party noise but because he was putting the moves on Mark.

Mark’s hand, his whole arm, basically spasms in Johnny’s hold for no reason. It’s right when Johnny is opening the door to what must be his room at the end of the hallway, so Mark thinks maybe he didn’t notice, but then Johnny drops his wrist, turns around with brows furrowed, and asks, “You good?”

Beyond Johnny is his darkened bedroom, which seems like an abyss somehow. Mark peers into it, glances at Johnny’s cute-ass fucking face with his sharp angles and soft features, and tries to figure out if he’s reading this right, and if he wants to cross the threshold if he is. “Yeah, dude, I’m great.”

Scenario 1: Johnny is a nice dude offering Mark the chance to game on a sweet PC because this party sucks ass and doing literally anything else would be an improvement.
Scenario 2: Johnny wants to make out??? Hook up????? Oh Jesus????

Either way, Mark is down. He rolls some of the tension out of his shoulders and offers Johnny, who still hasn’t moved, a hopeful grin. “Show me your space, man!” he urges, nudging the small of Johnny’s back.

Johnny fiddles with a switch on the wall until a weird LED situation turns on, painting the room in moody, colorful shadows. That’s certainly an aesthetic, and Johnny’s committed to it; the black-and-white photographs hanging on his walls seem to move on their own, catching color from the slowly changing LED. Johnny’s bedroom is—well, it looks like a fever dream in this lighting, and Mark digs that, somehow. It’s also so much bigger than the dorms, and Mark has to really think about the last time he was in a proper bedroom instead of some cramped college accommodation. He forgot that people live in actual houses with room for full-size furniture.

Mark can feel bass under his feet as he walks deeper into Johnny’s room and does a lazy turn to take in all four corners, including the one with Johnny’s desk and PC setup and the one his bed is in. Johnny’s space is cool, mysterious, trying slightly too hard but getting away with it; it’s just like him.

He stands there, cold in his T-shirt now that he’s somewhere where the A/C is effective, colors moving around and over him in waves, gold into maroon and then a dark purple, a gradation from one to another. He’s waiting for Johnny to do something, to go over to the sleeping PC and wake it up or to walk over and kiss him, but Johnny is standing by the light switch, just looking at him.

“I feel like I need to disclose something,” Johnny says, as the room is painted blue. He frowns and fiddles with the switch, flipping through colors until he finds the purple again, and then he does something so it stays there. Mark immediately feels less like he’s tripping, now that the colors aren’t shifting. It’s still odd to be in someone’s half-lit bedroom shrouded by purple so deep it’s aping black, but Mark doesn’t mind it. “I thought we were flirting downstairs, but the way you look now, I think you assumed my video-game thing wasn’t just a ruse.”

“For real, I wasn’t sure.” Mark’s voice is about to crack with embarrassment. “But I—I’m down for whatever. Video games or like, making out.” He’s trying to rein in the babbling, he really is, it’s just he’s still adjusting to the reality that Johnny Suh invited him up to his bedroom for non-platonic reasons. “Just… are we sure no one’s gonna come in?”

“I mean, I can lock the door, but it feels creepy to do that without asking, you know?”

“Hahaha, right, well, you probably should or some freshie is gonna bust in trying to hook up.”

Johnny twists the lock on his doorknob and studies Mark. His expression is placid, but the purple lighting could be tricking Mark’s eyes. “You sure you wanna make out? You seem really nervous.”

Mark puts both hands out in front of him like he’s going to physically halt Johnny’s misconceptions. “Dude, no, I think you’re great and, like, woo, really hot, I always have, I just… wasn’t expecting it?”

The placidity recedes some until a more comfortable-looking smirk curves Johnny’s full mouth. “Yeah, well, I also think you’re great and really hot. What luck.”

Sometimes, Johnny seems to be operating on a level of subtext unavailable to everyone else; it’s like he’s having two conversations at once, and one of them is a little mean. It was far less noticeable when he was Mark’s TA, but now? It’s on full display. He’s still smirking at Mark, which honestly only makes him hotter, that he’s a nice, helpful person who also pushes against soft spots to see what will happen. Honestly, Mark would have actively tried to flirt with Johnny ages ago if he’d known Johnny was receptive.

And it’s not like Mark hasn’t made out with people at parties (he’s totally done it twice). So he digs deep for that Mark, the less shy version of himself who lets loose on occasion, and crosses over to Johnny. He might have to literally pop onto his toes if he’s going to kiss him. Mark is perfectly tall! Johnny is just ridiculous.

“You’re too tall,” Mark says, throaty, before going up on his toes and encircling Johnny’s neck with his arm, dragging him closer. The dark slashes of Johnny’s eyebrows and his pretty eyes are the last things he sees before he shuts his own.

It’s awkward because Mark’s glasses squish against Johnny’s face the second their lips meet, and Mark’s mouth was already kinda open, but Johnny just goes with it, hands settling at Mark’s hips. Johnny’s tongue is in his mouth in seconds flat, flirting with the roof and then sweeping over Mark’s tongue, slippery and bold, and it’s so good even if they both taste like ale. Mark is already feeling it, heady with the sensation of Johnny’s body pressed to his, the fist of his hair Mark’s secured without realizing it, and Johnny has started making these quiet, murmury moans that Mark feels in his fucking soul.

Except standing on tiptoes gets old after a few minutes, and Mark keeps shifting his weight, until Johnny breaks them apart, breathing hard. “You wanna sit on the bed?” he asks.

The bed sure makes a lot more sense than the half-thoughts Mark had to drag Johnny onto the floor or wrap himself around Johnny like an octopus. He nods and lets Johnny lead him over, taking his glasses off in the process. He’s at a loss for where to put them—maybe he can tuck them into the neck of his shirt? Unless Johnny gets up in his business, which could warp them?—until Johnny takes them and sets them on a nearby dresser.

Then he checks in, before even settling on the edge of the mattress with Mark, because all of Mark’s suspicions that Johnny is a rad dude keep proving to be true. “This okay?”

“Absolutely.” He wants Johnny to kiss him until he doesn’t have a mouth anymore, frankly.

Mark’s a little fuzzier with his glasses off, but it matches the ambiance. Johnny’s leaning in again, and there’s far more space between them like this on the bed than there was a minute ago, but that’s fine; maybe it’s for the best that Mark isn’t allowed to give into his instinct to climb Johnny like a tree.

Johnny starts kissing up Mark’s cheek to his ear, which he nips, before he ventures lower and finds a sensitive spot on Mark’s neck that usually takes some searching for. He’s flooded with a shivery, hot sensation, almost ticklish, almost unbearable, but Johnny keeps his kisses light, alternating with barely grazing Mark’s skin with his teeth. He’s light-headed so fast; he finds himself swaying toward Johnny’s mouth, Johnny’s body, and braces himself as best he can.

Johnny reclaims his mouth, but this time it’s slower, and less intense; Mark can memorize the shape of Johnny’s soft lips, his pointy incisors. The pressure of Johnny’s palm against the small of his back, warm through Mark’s thin T-shirt.

Since Johnny’s not working Mark into bonelessness by kissing his neck anymore, Mark regains full awareness of his body and notices that, when he was trying not to fucking swoon, he braced himself with a hand to Johnny’s hip and another high up on Johnny’s thigh. He’s leaning a ton of his weight like. Three inches? From Johnny’s dick. Yikes. Mark leans back and pulls his hand away. “I was kind of feeling you up, I’m so sorry.”

Johnny smiles at him, mouth wet, and leans right back in to nuzzle Mark’s cheek. “Feel free,” he says, in a rumble, breath against Mark’s ear nearly making Mark gasp. “I’m good.”

Johnny starts working his way back to Mark’s neck, so it’s only fair that Mark settles his hand (gently! Ready to flee at the slightest provocation!) on Johnny’s crotch. He feels up the area he assumes is his dick in those tight black jeans. To his relief, he guessed which direction Johnny dresses correctly, and to his delight, Johnny is already half-hard.

He quickly firms up under Mark’s fingers, even though the dulled friction through jeans and underwear can’t be great. Johnny is trying different spots on his neck to see if Mark reacts the same as before, and it’s a great coordination, finding ways to turn each other on. Mark isn’t even thinking about how stupid he must sound as sounds slip out of him; it’s just so good, and so improbable.

It feels like he’s astral projecting into his own fantasy, some random porny scenario brought on by loneliness and horniness. It’s an out-of-body experience to be secured in Johnny’s arms, giving the world’s least-effective handjob while Johnny moans under his breath, in this aesthetic bedroom above a party. This was everything Mark’s repressed little heart hoped for, thought college in America might be, as an awkward high schooler desperate to start over. He wanted to go to parties and experiment so bad—with beer, with adulthood, with his own confidence, and definitely with co-ed games of Spin the Bottle and Truth or Dare. In hindsight, all of Mark’s church-summer-camp, sweaty-palmed, praying-in-the-dark-for-clarity youth is an elaborate setup for the punchline of being extremely gay.

And here he is, in America, living out his closeted dream, and no one had to dare him into it.

He can tell Johnny’s dick is big even if their clothes-on situation leaves a lot to the imagination. He’s thick and long; Mark wonders if he can ask to take it out, if he can suck it. The mental image of it sliding between his lips (and not much further, to be honest, because Mark’s given head like twice and has no idea how to deep-throat) or slapped against his tongue is so potent it’s almost physical, and he groans.

“I really wanna blow you. That cool?”

The fact that Johnny just said that, not Mark, even though his mouth was open to ask basically the same thing in the same words, is so off-the-wall that Mark lets out an unhinged giggle. “Oh my God, what?” Johnny’s expression, which was way horny and intimate until Mark opened his mouth, sinks into that same placidity as earlier. Great! Just what Mark wanted! Laughing at someone when they offered to suck his dick! He’s thriving! “No, no, I’m sorry—I was just gonna ask if I could blow you! Dude, you fully surprised me.”

“Right,” Johnny says, sounding amused but luckily not offended or weirded out. “So is it a yes?”

Mark nods, smiling, and pulls his hand back from where he’s still been distractedly rubbing around the shape of Johnny’s erection. His fingers feel a little raw, actually, from the denim. He wasn’t aware his fingertips were able to feel much of anything, after so many years of playing guitar. “How do you wanna do this?” he asks.

Johnny smiles at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, and Mark feels warmth suffuse his chest. Getting smiled at like that, dead-on, is a whole lot for one body to take. “Honestly, it’s easiest if I just get on my knees for you right here.” He thumps the mattress with his hand. “The height should be perfect.”

“Uh, sure, yeah. Sounds nice.”

He kisses Mark’s mouth again, this time with a polite lack of tongue, and then kisses his forehead too, which is unexpected but sweet. Then he slides off the bed and drops to his knees as promised, looking up at Mark from under his hair like he knows how devastating he is. Mark finds himself stretching out a hand to cup Johnny’s cheek, thumb over his mouth, and Mark giggles—then squawks—when Johnny sinks his teeth into the tip of Mark’s thumb a little harder than he would have anticipated.

Johnny sucks Mark’s whole thumb into his mouth, soothing the pad with his tongue, hollowing his cheeks in a sloppy mimicry of what he’s gonna do once he gets Mark’s jeans off. Mark curses. His dick is already twitching from the preview of the hot wetness he’s going to slide into, the fact that he’s going to see Johnny’s cheekbones in stark relief as he works Mark over. “Johnny?”

Johnny hums around his thumb and lets it pop out of his mouth. He bends slightly to tug on Mark’s foot, working off his sneaker and then his sock. “Yeah?”

“I should, uh, warn you, I haven’t come in like a week because I got so in my head about finals and I was, like, way too tired to jerk off. So I might not… hold out. That long.”

Johnny tosses Mark’s other sock somewhere, and then both of his hands are touching Mark’s thighs, smoothing over them. “Oh no, you mean I won’t get a jaw-ache from trying to make you come for twenty-five minutes?” Johnny says, working open the button of Mark’s jeans. “How disappointing.” He shows his teeth when he grins, and the sound of the zipper going down—cautiously, over Mark’s raging hard-on—is somehow louder than the bad music playing downstairs ever was.

“Yeah, haha, I guess that’s a plus.” Mark attempts to get comfortable, dropping to his elbows and mouthing what the fuck?? at the purple-black ceiling. He feels the tug of Johnny working his jeans and boxers down and lifts his hips to help.

His instinct is to shield himself, cup a hand over his cock—already leaking, which is very cool of his desperate body—or even his vulnerable belly, but Mark just breathes heavy, working past it. Johnny wants him. Johnny is aware of Mark, like, as a person. He’s not gonna see Mark’s bony hips and lack of abs and relatively decent dick and be like, Oh no, there’s been a mistake, I was looking for someone less scrawny, sorry.

“Pretty dick,” Johnny comments, voice low. He presses what feels like a lone finger right under the head, tickling gently with his fingernail, and Mark gasps as his dick twitches and blurts out more precome. The soft chuff of Johnny’s laugh should be embarrassing, but it feels affectionate. “I was right.”

That gets Mark craning up on his elbows. “Right about what—oh my god, dude, oh shit, oh fuck,” because Johnny just slurped the entire thing into his mouth and is swallowing around him like some sort of—of sex snake. This position means Mark has a view of it, too, Johnny hunched over Mark’s lap, nose about to dig into Mark’s pelvis. He can see Johnny’s broad shoulders, some of his back.

Johnny makes an encouraging noise around his mouthful of dick. Mark’s already melting from pleasure and not sitting in the world’s most natural position, so he mentally flails between the options of falling back on the bed or sitting up completely. He decides on the latter, nearly dislodging Johnny for a second as he does, and pets his hair fretfully.

Johnny pulls off on a long slide and looks up at Mark as he sucks in air fast and hard, unselfconscious. “You can pull my hair, I like it, but don’t hold me down,” Johnny says, voice rough.

Mark’s jaw drops. “I’d never— Who just does that?” He’s still petting Johnny’s hair and switches to running his fingers through it, and while Johnny’s clearly got product in it, it’s not too sticky or tacky, and it’s like handling silk or something. Thick, dark silk. God, Mark’s drunk on how horny he is.

“People who aren’t you,” Johnny says, and before Mark can begin to process that, he looks Mark dead in the eye as he grips his cock and flickers his tongue out at it. He laps the slick at the tip and then guides Mark deeper to push against the soft inside of his cheek, until Mark can see the shape of himself bulging there.

Johnny’s showing off. And he deserves to.

“You’re a menace,” Mark says in a tone of wonder. Johnny takes him down deep again, throat working, and Mark tugs his hair gently as encouragement. “That’s really good.”

Johnny stays with Mark’s dick buried in his throat for way too long, until Mark can feel him start to twitch with the need to breathe.

“You—” Mark wheezes, when Johnny has pulled off for air again and is working Mark’s spit-slick cock with a relentless hand, as if to distract Mark from the way he coughs into his shoulder and clears his throat. Mark is simultaneously awed by his prowess and concerned for Johnny’s oxygen levels. “You really don’t gotta show off like that.”

“Oh, I don’t?” Johnny asks, sounding gravely and on the verge of another cough but holding it back. He polishes the head of Mark’s cock with his palm, and Mark’s hips kick up and he whimpers. “Huh.”

“Seriously, just seeing your face next to my dick is probably enough. I don’t need anything fancy, so, uh, please don’t black out.”

Johnny’s silent for a moment, but his big hand is still valiantly yanking Mark toward an orgasm. “Can you go twice?” he asks eventually, in a measured tone belied by his erratic breathing. “If I keep jerking you off after you come, can you come again, or do you need a break?”

It breaks Mark’s brain, and he’s able to consider it for two whole seconds before he feels it building in his gut, his balls tightening dangerously. “Oh, fuck, I’m—”

And Johnny ducks to take it in his mouth, even though Mark yelps and taps urgently at his shoulder. He comes in hard pulses with Johnny’s eyes firmly on his as he milks Mark’s load onto his tongue. It’s a slow, toe-curling orgasm for how fast and hard it hit him, and his body is jerking with aftershocks by the time Johnny’s gentled him through it and slipped him out of his mouth.

Mark pants, stunned speechless, his body wrung-out and sensitive and yet still tensed. Waiting.

Johnny trails fingers along Mark’s thighs to hear him hiss at the stimulation. “So,” he says, punctuating it with a kiss to Mark’s hip. “Can you?”

Mark considers his body and his options. He has no idea if he can come again so fast; he hasn’t tried in a few years, and even then, it was hit or miss. His cock feels tender, too, and he gets the feeling Johnny wants this second orgasm more than Mark does. But then there’s something in that, in giving Johnny another load because Johnny wants it, that is lighting him up inside. “Fuck, do it,” he breathes, securing a fist in Johnny’s hair and tugging harder than he dared before. “Can I come on your face?”

Johnny spits into his palm and wraps his fist around Mark’s only slightly limp cock. It’s already heady agony; Mark grunts as Johnny starts a leisurely up-and-down. “If you want.”

“I do. Thanks,” Mark says.

Johnny takes that as the pistol shot at the beginning of the race and starts absolutely destroying Mark with a handjob.

He jerks Mark’s sensitive cock, peeking up red and wet through Johnny’s fist, like he’s mad at it or like someone’s timing him to see how fast Mark can come. It’s on the edge of too much, brutally fast. At one point, Mark makes a sound that isn’t mostly pleasure, and Johnny murmurs an apology, kisses Mark’s trembling chest (and oh my God, Mark is still wearing his T-shirt, he must look so weird half-dressed with his dick out), and switches his grip. He spits on the head of Mark’s dick and spreads it until the glide is easier and less intense.

Then, when Mark’s not coming fast enough for him, he starts talking.

“Gonna come for me, Mark? Like you always wanted to?”

Mark shouts a scandalized “fuck” he hopes no one but Johnny can hear. He can barely keep his eyes open against mounting, horrible pleasure; he’s clinging to Johnny’s shoulder, digging into the material of his shirt, and just trying to hold on. Sweat prickles behind his knees, at his elbows, at the back of his neck, as his body tries to cope with what Johnny’s doing to it.

“Do you think anyone noticed how bad I wanted you?” Johnny continues, and his breathing is shot. “Fuck, I almost told you to drop so I could get my mouth on it.”

If Mark were still capable of speech, he would tell Johnny that one, Mark certainly didn’t notice that Johnny wanted him; and two, the only reason he didn’t drop was because he wanted to spend time with Johnny. Mark would have offered his goddamn dick up in the middle of the library if Johnny had asked for it.

The high-pitched whine he lets out between gritted teeth is probably answer enough. Johnny smirks at him, wide and unabashed, then pulls his lower lip between his teeth and groans when Mark starts fucking his hips toward Johnny’s hand, close to coming and desperate for it. Mark slips a hand up his T-shirt to play with his nipple, and Johnny’s got him so sensitive, overstimulated, that his own fingers feel like an electric shock.

“Oh, fuck, I’m close,” he manages to choke.

Johnny dips his head, slows his hand, and sucks the head of Mark’s cock into his mouth, tongue flirting with the slit like he’s trying to coax out his come. It works; Mark’s whole body tightens and he braces his heels on the floor as pulses of his come fill Johnny’s mouth and then—true to his word—he lets Mark come across his lips, his chin, even a streak on his cheekbone. It’s fucking squirting out of him, harder than he’s come in months, messy and a little humiliating.

Johnny’s hand keeps working him, squeezing in a slow slide, somehow working out more of Mark’s come until it drips over his knuckles. Mark whines and squirms until Johnny’s grip loosens and he can relax some.

While Mark’s trying to stop breathing like an overworked racehorse, Johnny rests his head on Mark’s bare thigh, mouth parted, and it takes Mark way too many seconds to realize that Johnny’s shoulder is moving, which means he’s touching himself as he kneels between Mark’s thighs. Before Mark can object and demand Johnny stand up and gag Mark with his dick, Johnny groans, guttural, and bites Mark’s thigh.

Mark yelps, a frisson of shock and amusement wracking his poor, overworked body, even if Johnny is deliberately being gentle, but he strokes Johnny’s ear, running over the studs of his many earrings, to do something while Johnny’s moans hit a peak and he leaves faint impressions of teeth in Mark’s skin.

He finds himself playing with Johnny’s hair, tugging his earlobe, scritching the back of his neck, while Johnny collects himself and sits up. His eyes are sleepy, lazy cat eyes, heavy with satisfaction, and he seems wholly unconcerned with the come on his face.

“Do you like it, huh?” Johnny asks, raspy, and swipes a thumb under his lip to collect some of it. “Was that what you wanted, to shoot all over my face?”

“Fuuuuuuuck,” Mark says, and falls back on Johnny’s bed because his nerves and his ab strength just won’t support him anymore. He can hear Johnny’s soft laughter, and then there’s a pat to his leg as Johnny stands up. He immediately misses the warmth of being so close, but Johnny’s knees must be screaming at him. “You can’t say shit like that after you’ve already broken my dick.”

He hears Johnny rustling around in the room, and Mark groans as he gathers the impetus to flip himself onto his side to watch him. Johnny’s already cleaning his face with a wipe, standing at his dresser and observing Mark

“I can’t believe you made me come twice and then jerked yourself off where I couldn’t even see,” Mark complains, to distract himself from the fact that he’s still wearing a shirt with his bare ass on Johnny’s comforter. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to start looking for his clothes and get dressed, but frankly, even if he is, Mark doesn’t have the energy yet.

Johnny actually looks sheepish. He makes a great production of tossing the wipe into his trash can. “Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t planning on coming in my pants, but you, uh, were really hot.”

A weird kind of pride suffuses him. Johnny didn’t even take it out? He was, what, frantically chafing his palm rubbing himself over his jeans because he liked Mark coming on his face?

“Man, you’re dangerous for my health.” Mark squints at him, at the way Johnny is still lounging casually against the dresser, like he didn’t just jizz all over himself Lonely Island style. “I can, like, scoot on out of here if you need to clean up?”

Johnny laughs. “That obvious, huh?” He shakes his head and wanders over to his closet, which is unsurprisingly impeccably organized even as it’s full to bursting. “No, don’t move, I’ll be right back.”

Johnny leaves the room with a bundle of clothes, the door opening to let in a burst of noise and then closing to muffle it again. Mark resumes his earlier position of staring up at Johnny’s ceiling, which remains an inscrutable combination of shadows and dark purple. But then Johnny’s gone for longer than a few minutes, and Mark’s awareness of his own nudity and the thump-thump of music below him overtakes his post-orgasm chill. He sits up, despite his body’s protests, and finds his boxers so at least he doesn’t have to face Johnny’s return with his dick just… out. He locates his jeans and socks and shoes too, putting them in a little pile for later.

Whatever later is going to be, anyway. Mark’s hooked up before, but never quite so intensely or with someone he’s so into, and he’s not sure of the protocol. Is Johnny being polite and Mark was supposed to take this as his graceful exit? Or is he really cool just chilling here?

When Johnny finally comes back, he’s wearing sweatpants and a faded, oversized T-shirt, with his hair pushed off his face; he looks ready for bed, not like someone who lives in a house with a raging party taking place downstairs. He’s also carrying two bottles of water, and he hands one to Mark, who proceeds to guzzle two thirds of it at once until he’s gasping for breath.

“Just for the record,” Mark says, while Johnny sits on the mattress next to him, sipping at his water like a normal person, “that was fucking mind-blowing.” He spreads his hands near his temples to mime an explosion. “I haven’t come twice in a row since, like, high school?”

“You’re missing out,” Johnny says. “When I’m not in the middle of finals week, I can go a few times.” When Mark gapes at him, Johnny grins. “You’ll have to take a raincheck if you’re interested in that, sorry. I’m running on four hours of sleep and the trenta iced coffee I had earlier.”

Mark doesn’t miss that Johnny has left an opening for a second time, and his heart is absolutely jackhammering in his chest over it, but right now, he’s preoccupied with Johnny looking soft and approachable and nothing like the demon who dragged Mark’s dirty fantasies into the light and made him come his brains out.

“Hmm, well, I wouldn’t want to give you a heart attack,” Mark says faux-contemplatively. Johnny laughs and takes another sip. “You look like you need to crash, dude. Are you going to be able to with Sehun’s shindig running all night?”

“Oh, there’s no way in hell this is going on past one a.m.,” Johnny says. “We have an agreement. I’ll call the cops on him myself if he doesn’t clear it out.”

“Word,” Mark says. Sometimes, Lucas would have friends crash for the night and not really care if Mark was trying to get his beauty sleep as they stayed up chatting or gaming until sunrise, but it was really the only weak point Lucas had as a roommate.

Fuck, he’s gonna miss Lucas. This party was an excuse to stop thinking about it, but it turns out he can only really stop if he has a boner. He’s going to go back to a mostly packed-up dorm room and stare at Lucas’ snoring form like a creep until he falls asleep, feeling hollow over how much things are changing and how he can’t do anything to stop it.

His mood shift must have been obvious; Johnny gently runs his fingers through Mark’s hair. “Hey,” he says, quiet, “can I kiss you?”

“Duh,” Mark says, surging up to meet Johnny when he leans over.

He closes his eyes and loses himself to it, the way Johnny sighs and strokes Mark’s collarbone through his shirt, just rhythmic sweeps of his thumb. Johnny tastes like toothpaste, and Mark chases that hint of tartness until Johnny muffles a yawn.

“Sorry, rude,” Johnny says, but Mark just shakes his head and sits up. This is nice and all, but he’s not keeping Johnny from necessary rest and potentially saying or doing something, in typical Mark fashion, to burst this afterglow.

“Nah, not at all. We put each other through the wringer, dude.” He cups Johnny’s face, the way it fits in his palm, the way he looks so angular sometimes but is really just so soft and sweet when he’s not bothering to project Smugly Competent Hot Guy with every cell. “Hey, uh, do you—I mean, I’m never taking another Comp Sci class in my life, so there’s no risk of you being my TA again. If you want, we should be good to hang out or… whatever. No pressure, though!”

Johnny wordlessly turns around and finds his phone on his bedside table, then unlocks it and passes it to Mark. “I’m holding you to that.”

Mark is busy trying to figure out how to work Johnny’s iPhone to add himself as a contact, muttering a distracted “Right, right.” Finally, he manages it and adds himself as “Mark (def not your student!!!)“ with the praying hands emoji next to it.

Johnny glances down at his phone when Mark passes it back, and he laughs so hard he ends up splayed on the bed next to Mark, their elbows crashing into each other, and of course Mark’s a sympathetic giggler, so he’s lost to it, too, until Johnny rolls on top of him, eyes lit with mirth and mouth eager.

--

After what feels like six hours of lazy kissing, when he’s left Johnny on the edge of sleep with an impossibly fond feeling bubbling in his chest, he comes downstairs to see that, true to the agreement, Sehun is clearing out stragglers. Mark checks his phone: 12:52 a.m. Incredible that so much happened in under two hours.

Sehun’s got a black trash bag in one hand and a beer in the other as he waves goodbye and makes sure people are requesting Ubers. There’s trash absolutely everywhere; that one bag will barely make a dent. Mark considers offering to help, but hanging out after he already said goodbye to Johnny feels like an intrusion, somehow, so he just walks over to Sehun until he stops picking up discarded solo cups and notices Mark’s there.

“Oh, shit,” Sehun says, and Mark gets an armful of his sweaty body in a quick squeeze of a hug. Sehun’s trash bag knocks against Mark’s side. “I’m so glad you made it, kiddo.”

Mark ignores that and gives into his wistfulness; he studies Sehun’s handsome face, imprinting it into his memory, because this is probably the last time he’ll see it in person. They were never super close, but Sehun treated him like a dongsaeng, inviting him to events and trying to get Mark out of his shell (and to practice his Korean). Sehun probably won’t visit Chicago. Hell, Mark doesn’t even know if he’ll be in Chicago after next year. Unless his family decides to do another trip to Seoul, he’s not gonna see him again, and that feels bad. Mark stuffs all that down and smiles. “Thanks for the invite,” he says. “Cool party.”

“I was sure you would be busy with grad parties, too busy for me, but Johnny said I should invite you anyway.”

Mark’s eyebrows rise. “Yo, he did?”

“Yes. And you came!” In more ways than one, Mark thinks somewhat hysterically, and more than once. Sehun goes in for another hug, this time actively foiled by his bag of garbage. He settles for a broad grin. “Thank you for leaving campus for me, Markie.”

Mark shrugs. “Like I’d skip out on saying goodbye, jeeze.” And it’s not like Mark’s bothering with any of the ragers during finals week. Sehun’s was his one concession, though Mark’ll probably end up shitfaced at karaoke with Lucas before he leaves, arguing about who gets to do T.O.P.’s parts in Big Bang songs and crying all over him by the end of the night. But there’s still one thing niggling at him, before he can finish up with the awkwardness of saying goodbye to someone when they’re drunk and probably won’t remember it. “So hey, what did Johnny say, exactly?”

--

Mark wakes up when it’s fully light outside, already sticky and resigned to a brutally hot day. Lucas is packing, wearing one of Mark’s shirts, and humming along to whatever he’s listening to on his headphones, seemingly unaware of how loud he is. Mark kicks off his covers and turns over, fumbling for his phone under his pillow. He’s not ready to get up and offer to help Lucas; he kinda wants to bask in what a wild ride the night before was.

But then he sees there’s a reply to the text he sent Johnny before he passed out last night. His heart is basically in his throat.

Johnny Suh: That snitch is lucky he’s leaving the country.

Mark laughs, heart settling back down where it belongs, and as if by magic, a second text appears.

Johnny Suh: Is inviting you out for coffee too desperate? Should I wait three days?

Mark laughs again. He manages to send off “fuck yea dude! coffee!” before Lucas notices that he’s awake and tackles him, grinning toothily and asking where he was last night, does he want to go get burgers, does Mark have any tape he can use?

“Hooking up with Johnny Suh; always; and you used the rest of my tape last week, loser,” Mark says, and watches Lucas’ eyes widen.

“What?” he yells, once in Cantonese and once in English for good measure.

“I don’t know what to tell you, dude! I’m living my best life!”

Lucas tries to tickle more details out of him, but Mark’s not gossipy about sex, and whatever he and his hot former TA have going on is brand new, undefined, and possibly just a pre-summer hookup; he wants to keep it close to the chest for now. Give it room to do its thing.

Mark wishes he could maintain that kind of chill; his text notification goes off when he’s in the shower, and he drips all over his phone checking to see if it’s Johnny.

It is, for whatever that means.

Johnny Suh: And for the record, I’ve had a thing for you since you spilled my Americano and offered to have my jeans dry-cleaned. :)