1. Top or Bottom?

“We! Are! So! Over!” Jessica’s shriek pounced all the way from the fourth floor to the main entrance and nearly knocked Hyukjae off his bike. The blonde groaned and rubbed his ear, squinting up at where he estimated the voice to have come from. It was no doubt Donghae going through his morning routine again. 

Hyukjae would have probably cussed Donghae out, having his delinquent reputation to protect and all, but didn’t actually know the boy enough to do so. He was aware that Donghae was popular, good-looking, and friendly (not to mention loaded), but that was generally insufficient for an insult. The blonde furrowed his brows, realizing how much of Donghae he had forgotten over the years. Hyukjae could recall distinctively that they used to be close friends—at least up until puberty came rolling around in the form of a hazy Thursday afternoon, when Donghae showed up on Hyukjae’s doorstep with a stolen copy of Bootilicious. Before Hyukjae knew it, his hand was on Donghae’s and Donghae was kissing him and it felt so strange, strange, strange.

Strange and really good.

They experimented with a little of everything—necking, rubbing, even ing into each other’s hands—trying to figure out what felt good and what felt bad. Except everything felt good. Hyukjae wouldn’t admit it back then, but he would’ve probably kissed Donghae down there, too, if Donghae had asked. But Donghae didn't.

It was unsurprising that Donghae didn’t, because the two would have both preferred experimenting with girls instead. Unfortunately Donghae’s father was a domineering prick and Hyukjae’s mother insisted on keeping anything with a as far away from Hyukjae as humanly possible, other than herself, and so there was just the two of them. Hyukjae and Donghae. Donghae and Hyukjae. and Hornier. During the subsequent days Donghae spent most of his time transiting to and between Hyukjae’s basement, kitchen, and bedroom. Hyukjae’s mother was so used to him that she would accidentally introduce Donghae as her son. She probably never imagined what her two offspring were off doing under the cover of homework.

The two of them never really thought about it being weird. They were just playing around out of necessity, due to a lack of girls and an overabundance of hormones; it didn’t mean anything. Even the , which came along after Hyukjae’s biology project. Donghae was hesitant at first, wondering if it was dirty or would stink, but he warmed up to it soon enough when Hyukjae began teething his s. Hyukjae decided that he’d receive the first time, since he was the one who brought it up. But then just as Donghae was beginning to gain pace, Hyukjae shoved Donghae off and started dropping giant globs of tears.

He said it hurt.  

Donghae wasn’t sure what to do. Hyukjae had never cried from pain before. He wondered if he should help Hyukjae to the hospital. Hyukjae insisted against it, “If my mom finds out, I’m going to really get it.”

“But you’re bleeding and…”

“It’s fine! Just get out of my room.”

“But—”

“Get out! Out! !”

Hyukjae thought that it was unfortunate that his first time using a big curse word was with his pants down and Donghae’s prick in his face, but it didn’t matter because his was on fire. He only hesitated about swearing Donghae out after the boy had wobbled away scared and near tears.

Shortly after they began hanging out less; Hyukjae felt embarrassed about the fiasco and Donghae didn’t know if he was supposed to apologize or be a sport about it and joke about blue balls, which wasn’t really a joke. Both waited for the other to make the first move. The wait became too long and they fell apart, like any other pair of best friends. New acquaintances wedged between them, mostly on Donghae’s side. Donghae had a warm personality and a magnetic laugh; those who didn’t like him pitied him one way or another. Hyukjae was different; nothing really stuck out about him, other than his awkward sense of humor. People sensed a riff between the two and somehow all deviated towards Donghae. He was friendlier and cuter and more handsome, after all.

Gradually, walking home solo became easier for Hyukjae.

Time passed. By high school, Donghae had grown remarkably handsome and was surrounded by girls. His father went overseas and the house rules became more lax; soon Donghae was juggling a girlfriend a week, sometimes two at once. Hyukjae wasn’t jealous. He was just lonely. His social circle had fallen apart with Donghae’s departure and, without friends, he became a prime target for lunch-money. Still, Hyukjae wasn’t one to go down without a fight and soon became the one on the hounding end. By the end of middle school, Hyukjae had become something of a scavenger. He wasn’t quite a bully, but he was close. At least on the violence end.  

He got into his first real fist-fight during the second week of freshman year, after accidentally ramming his bike into another's. The owner of the bike, an older boy, didn’t look menacing and would probably have let Hyukjae go if he apologized. But Hyukjae didn’t, because he spotted Donghae watching from afar, and he didn’t want to look like a wuss more than he already did.

He it up, “Hey man, you! The is your problem?”

“What?”

“Why the hell did you put your bike there? Did you want to kill someone?”

The older guy scoffed, said something in a foreign language, and picked him up by the collar. It was all blind instinct after that; fists, swearing, more fists, more swearing, and then Hyukjae ended up a pulp on the ground. The other bent down beside him, tugging on his shirt until Hyukjae looked up, “I’m Han Geng. Freshman.”

“Right. Hello.” Hyukjae was rather breathless and would have preferred to be left to deal with his broken limbs alone. He dug his face into the dirt and pretended to have fainted, but the foreign boy had other thoughts, “How old are you?”

“I’m fourteen,” Hyukjae squeaked, peering up at the other with genuine regret. He shouldn’t have gotten into the fight in the first place. Donghae seemed to have gotten bored and left a while ago with his throng of catty followers.

Han Geng ruffled Hyukjae’s hair with a wide grin, “Then you can call me ge. Meet me at the gates after school. Also, from now on, your name is Eunhyuk.”

If anyone were to have asked Hyukjae if he wanted to become a delinquent then, he would have said no. His mother had always taught him that delinquents and gangsters were at the lowest level of society and were better off dead. Han Geng seemed to have noticed Hyukjae balking when he presented him before a nightclub entrance later that day, “What’s wrong with you? Don’t know how to push open a door?”

“Where are we?”

“Paradise, course,” The Chinese (Hyukjae had picked that up after nosing around Han Geng’s friends) jerked his head towards the inside and swung an arm over Hyukjae’s shoulder, “Like ge’d let you go anywhere else.” 

Hyukjae happened to catch a glimpse of a gorgeous older woman then and lost all inhibitions. A nudge from his companion was all it took to bring him inside the door to a world of glass, leather, and lights and overpowering perfume. Han Geng kept him mostly in line and introduced him to faces hiding under wigs, tattoos, metal, and glitter. People there seemed not to mind that Hyukjae wasn’t as good-looking as Donghae. They did make fun of his neat uniform, but the neatness didn’t last long, as Han Geng had a thing for dragging him around by the tie.

Hyukjae soon grew fond of the taste of alcohol and blood. Before he really realized what he was doing, he was already sitting in the bathtub waiting for Han Geng to bleach his hair, “You sure this will look good, hyung?”

“Ge,” Han Geng corrected. Hyukjae rolled his eyes, “So will it, ge”

“I dunno, I’m pretty sure anything will look with that troll face of yours.” 

“ you,” Hyukjae spat, giving Han Geng the middle finger. Han Geng pummeled him with a comb and bleached him anyway. Hyukjae hated the sight of it. He looked like a freaky nerd with a bad bowl cut (and people kept asking if it was a wig), but the terror it gave to his mother was strangely thrilling and soon he began wearing it more for the effect it had on others than anything else. The neighborhood kids began calling him Eunhyuk the Blonde, which honestly sounded stupid, but at least it was a trademark. Plus Eunhyuk the Blonde sounded a lot better than Donghae Who Can’t Keep It In His Pants.

It wasn’t that Hyukjae cared what kind of trademark Donghae carried. If he could have, he would have preferred never thinking of Donghae, because doing so meant remembering that agonizing afternoon in his bedroom with a box of tissues and a bottle of painkillers. He’d honestly thought that he was going to die then, and the doctors were going to laugh at his corpse and his mother would be embarrassed to no end. And so every time he thought of Donghae, a nauseous wave of residual panic and shame washed over him.

But it was impossible screening out Donghae’s existence, since he was all anyone in Hanyoung Private could talk about. The brunette had permanent residency in the male half of ‘couple of the week’. No one hated him even when he was caught three-timing and double-crossing and making out with Heechul, the school drag-queen. It was as if Donghae was a walking-vortex for good sentiments and people were made to give in to his squinty smiles. 

Still, Hyukjae didn’t care what people thought of Donghae. He hadn’t talked to Donghae in years and the sense of awkwardness had grown more than mutual. It was somehow as if both of them wanted to forget they ever knew each other. Donghae was reserved when it came to Hyukjae. He probably didn’t want to get involved in Hyukjae’s new lifestyle. Or perhaps he was afraid. They were both afraid of each other, of themselves, of what would happen if that hazy Thursday afternoon were to repeat itself. They were older, after all, life had grown more complicated, and…

And they weren’t gay. They really weren’t. 

Hyukjae gave up trying to cuss out Donghae and tried rubbing away the frown on his face. It was silly of him to think of the guy at a time like this, when they were both months away from graduating and parting permanently.

The blonde dropped his bike at its usual spot by the tree, without a lock. It would have been stupid for anyone else at Hanyoung Private to attempt the same thing, as the school was a well-known flea market for rich kids and so thieves loitered by the door like flies on cow dung. But because Hyukjae had made an example out of the last moron who touched his baby, thieves in general made a constant note to keep five meters away from neon red bikes. Still, Hyukjae kept leaving his bike unlocked, subconsciously hoping that another moron would try to steal it so he could make another example out of him. 

Making examples, stirring up terror, was a status thing. Power. Hyukjae was unabashedly proud of it because it was the only thing Donghae didn’t have around Hanyoung. Donghae had money and fame and status, but Hyukjae had power. His life didn’t depend on gossip because, if all failed, he could always coerce them to say what he wanted.

Except Han Geng, of course; Han Geng was the only person in Hanyoung Private who Hyukjae genuinely dreaded. There was no coercing the Chinese into anything, because Han Geng was the one who did the coercing. He was sly, manipulative, affable, and lethal. He had no weaknesses, save for Heechul, from whom he fled like the plague and before whom he shrunk into a harmless package of Chinese blessings. He even called Heechul his Cinderella, and there was nothing alive or dead that he hated more than fairy tales.

Presently Han Geng was once again in his Chinese fortune cookie form, limping and all towards Hyukjae and his bike. The latter was not surprised to find a brunette, dressed in some sort of derivative Willy Wonka costume, tagging behind the fortune cookie. The two were juggling some sort of conversation about debt and repayment and retributions of the first order, barking and scoffing and snarling, as they made their way towards him. Hyukjae had formulated a plan to run away and was about to execute it, but Heechul’s hand latched onto his shoulder a beat too quickly. Hyukjae was dragged around to face two extremely exasperated scowls.

“I’m telling you! He knows nothing. Why won’t you—”

“That’s not what my sources say. Plus, you owe me.”

“You’ve got bad sources! I’ve known Eunhyuk for ages. He’s straight as a chopstick and, Jesus, Rella, he’s not the kind of—”

“You. Eunhyuk.”

The tip of Heechul’s forefinger sunk sharply into Hyukjae’s chest. Hyukjae felt the corner of his eye twitch, but Han Geng was pleading for him to let go of it with humongous, out-of-character puppy eyes.

Hyukjae sighed and propped himself up against the tree, crossing his legs and fixating his eyes on Heechul’s neck, “Eunhyuk, speaking.”

Hyukjae knew about as much about Heechul as he knew about Donghae. Heechul was an elitist drag-queen, gossip, and as cold as a nun’s . He ran Hanyoung’s gossip mill and people feared him equally as they feared Han Geng, which was a lot. Hyukjae hadn’t really considered Heechul’s existence before. He was simply another student at Hanyoung who couldn’t, wouldn’t, and simply won’t make a difference on his life.

Or so Hyukjae believed.

“You were a little more than friends with Donghae, weren’t you? Confirm.”

Hyukjae’s eyes snapped wide open. The familiar wave of nauseous humiliation crawled up his guts and he turned to Han Geng for help, though all Han Geng could offer was a helpless shrug. Han Geng mouthed for Hyukjae to just go along with it. But Hyukjae couldn’t figure out how, exactly, to do that, “I beg your pardon?”

“Anyway, I don’t give two s about you, but did you top or did he? Hurry. Chop-chop. I’m a busy person, Hyukkie. I’ve got to file my nails before class and you’re taking up my precious time.”

“We weren’t ever friends, really,” Hyukjae mumbled. He knew that Heechul knew that it was a lie, but at least—

Heechul produced a photo from his blazer. It took Hyukjae a moment to make out the familiar monkey-patterns on the familiar yellow-bed sheet, over which were sprawled two very familiar-looking figures and…

Hyukjae turned around and up-chucked a good four ounces of strawberry milk. Heechul’s highly entertained snort thundered through the air while Hyukjae emptied his bowels up the wrong end, “So it was you on the bottom. Well, I ought to say that I’m surprised.”

Apparently Hyukjae believed really, really wrongly. 

WHAT IS THIS THERE IS NO FLUFF. OTL.