“Make out!”

It wasn’t really a suggestion – more of a joke – but Hakyeon should have known better. He thought he might have gotten the hint too, when the room fell quiet.

After a long night of laughs and getting completely faced together, no one really knew what they were doing anymore. There was only that everyone was too close and breathing was mingled like the others’ breaths were the only thing they would ever inhale again. No one ever talked about it, what they were doing. The life that they were leading now didn’t have room – didn’t allow what they were doing, so if they never talked about it, it just wasn’t real and Judgment Day would never have to come.

Wonshik tilted his head to look over at Taekwoon and their chests were just inches away from touching while their legs were tangled with Hongbin’s. Wonshik was close enough that he could smell the alcohol on the older one’s breath, but there was a sweet quality to it, just like there seemed to be an unfitting sweetened quality about Taekwoon all around. The way his hair smelled, the way it felt, the softness of his skin, the way his lips looked delicate and so beautifully kissable slightly parted as they were . . . And the voice that could drip from those lips – not like Jaehwan’s honey, but more like a gentle flow of water that Wonshik thought he could drown himself in.

( He would be alright with that; drowning in Taekwoon’s water, choking on Jaehwan’s honey. )

Jaehwan snickers slightly as his body is closed up with Sanghyuk’s, but they’re watching.

So Wonshik leans in until their foreheads are touching and it’s almost electric, the contact.

He thought that if he inhaled too sharply, he might scare the other way – but that wasn’t right, was it? They all knew what they were doing, even if they were completely smashed. They all knew what they were doing, even they only ever did it when they were completely smashed by alcohol, smashed by tiredness, by exhaustion, by life. They were all okay, and any one of them could back out whenever they wanted.

But by the way Hongbin’s hand rested on his lower back, the way Sanghyuk’s eyes watch the pair so closely, his hand clasped tightly in Jaehwan’s, Wonshik thought the same that Taekwoon did, the same that Hakyeon did; there was no one else that was going to touch any one of them like that – they had no one else for that.

Their lifestyle was, he admitted it, scary. Nerve-wracking, the way they always had to watch what they were doing, what they were saying, how they were acting. Stressful, when they always had to present themselves as the unique group, VIXX, when they had to hash out their 4D-personalities . . . It got tiring, but they had to keep it up for the spotlight, for the cameras, for the fans. They had nights like this, drowned in alcohol and their own minds and each other, for their sanity. For each other. These nights made everything bearable.

( So even though no one ever said anything, it was alright. )

Taekwoon must have gotten impatient because he closed the distance between their lips himself and Wonshik drank the tall glass of water he was being given. It was sweet. Welcomed, comforting. Wonshik was firm on his thoughts that he could drown like this and it would be okay. The drunken chastity of the kiss was broken when Taekwoon’s hand reached to clutch at his shoulder ( desperately ) and pulled Wonshik in, like kissing Wonshik was going to be the last thing he ever did, or maybe that it really would – like any one of them could pull out at any moment.

It’s okay, he thinks. Why would that happen anyway? You wouldn’t leave something when it was all you had. His hands clasp at Taekwoon’s tightly and he swears that he could cry over this. But it was alright, Taekwoon was breathing into his mouth when their lips shifted messily ( desperately ) against each other.

( “I’m here. We’re here.” )

They both slowly pull back, lightly gasping for the drunken atmosphere that neither of them could care less about, as long as they could still breathe each other.

Hongbin had climbed over to the other side of their nest of blankets, curling into Hakyeon’s side like he needed something, but in reality, it was the other that needed something. As Jaehwan and Sanghyuk fell asleep on each other ( Jaehwan’s head leaning on Hakyeon’s chest, Sanghyuk’s in Jaehwan’s lap ), Wonshik and Taekwoon had curled together at the base of the others’ laps.

All of them ending up dozing off, clutching ( desperately ) together in their maybe-self-created hellhole that consisted of words gone unsaid because if they weren’t, it would be manifested and someone would get too hurt, someone would cry, someone would scream.

Someone would leave.

Hakyeon’s head was turned in the direction of the window. Under normal circumstances, he thought as his hand absentmindedly ( desperately ) ran through Taekwoon’s hair, he would have known better.