Another night out, a night of faux enlightenment found in sips of drinks and bubbled laughter, a night that was neither memorable nor forgettable. It was a euphoric blur of lights and lips he’d never kissed before—his favorite remedy for the emptiness he harbored. It was nothing more than a smear of glitter over his high cheekbones mixed with the smell of leather, booze, and cigarettes.

There was no remnant of that now, though. Not now that the morning light sought to shine its brightness upon the gilded grime of a life Kibum was coming to resent. Nothing left but another notch in his bedpost and a bruise in the shape of a full pair of lips etched onto the sickly pale skin of his skin. The pads of trembling fingers ran over purple splotches and the man couldn’t help but apply his artistic eye to find beauty where a third party member would have seen only pain.

What a sad mess he was—a glorious tragedy that no one would remember, save the unfortunate few designated drivers stuck stirring the ice around their cokes in the club the night before. They saw his sultry body grind on two others at once, and they were sure to remember the waves of desperation rolling just like his hips.

It occurred to Kibum that not even he remembered his existence the night before. How could any of the numerous one night stands recall a name they had never learned. And why should they have to, he mused. Kibum couldn’t blame the masses for not remembering his name. He was just another case of misguided youth grown out of his skin in all the wrong ways.

The blonde’s hand finally dropped from where it had been tracing the pretty outline of this latest mark, knuckles barely missing the bathroom counter’s ledge on its way down. His arm went limp beside him, lungs heaving a heavy sigh to rival the weight ever-growing in his chest.

The sheets of his bed in the room over rustled as a mostly unfamiliar man began to stir in his sleep. The third addition to their that had taken up temporary residency on his bedroom floor, he had stumbled out in a drunken tizzy some hours ago, leaving the sole conscious man to wipe at his mouth alone in the yellowed light of his bathroom.

Did Kibum regret having sunk this low? Most definitely. But, as far as he was concerned, the effort it would take to crawl out of the ditch he’d found himself burnt out in was too great. As unproductive as this lifestyle was, it was where he’d grown comfortable being. He equated it to Stockholm syndrome, where he knew it wasn’t right and yet fell in love with it anyway. The ditch had come to surround him with a blackness that seemed to fit his body perfectly—his own little niche in the world. Besides, having dropped out of the prestigious academy of arts, what was left for him now? There was no way he was going to be able to afford to go back without a scholarship and who would hand their money out to a man in such a state, Kibum wondered to himself.

There was a sudden lurching in his stomach and a lightness in his head that had him hunching over the toilet bowl, the nodules of his spine sticking out from beneath his skin as if they were spikes. It made him look like a monster, he bet. Because he certainly felt like one at that moment. A monster at best, anyway. A ing loser might have been closer to the truth, though.

After another few episodes similar to that one, in which he got his practice in to be able to belittle himself proficiently, and then he was crawling back into bed to hopefully sleep off the headache blooming in the back of his skull like a bloodied rose. In a perfect world, he would have passed out for the next year or so and woken up to find his bed empty, but the universe was a cruel mistress he had come to learn, so the man beside him began to groan before step one was achieved. There was a brief moment of silence as Kibum’s muscles tensed when an arm was slung around his waist and then there was a nose nuzzling into the base of the back of his neck. The tip of it sent an involuntary shiver up his spine as it moved to the top of the white column, resting into the shaved hairs of his hairline before a kiss was pressed there.

“Good morning, beautiful. Do you remember my name?”

This wasn’t how he imagined his morning would go. There were going to be a few more bouts of nausea, some stomach pains from further ignoring his need for food, and maybe the choking down of a few aspirin when he couldn’t stand his head throbbing anymore. But this… this was too rich.

Once he gathered his bearings from a touch like that, Kibum had to scowl.

“No,” he seethed from between his teeth. “Why are you touching me?”

Had he turned around, Kibum would have been face to face with the most childish pout in existence. But he wisely remained stationary, eyes still shut tightly and body turned completely away from whatshisface.

It seemed that the other man didn’t find their arrangement satisfactory, however, if the way his hand was pulling at the smaller’s hip was any indication of the fact. Kibum was reluctant to comply.

Why was this man still there? Why hadn’t he left like all the others did when they saw the mistake they made illuminated by that damn morning light shining far too brightly through a pair of sheer curtains? Kibum was nothing more than another mistake and when this guy wouldn’t relent with his hand, he found out that turning around angrily was a folly as well.

Even with his eyes full of sleep, he was handsome in that congenial kind of way where his eyes crinkled in pleasant little crescent shapes and his smile made you feel physically warmer. How his big eyes got that small, Kibum didn’t have a single clue. They were big and brown like he’d never seen before, giving off more light than the goddamn sun. It was almost enough to make him turn back around, but he was oddly transfixed there, frown lines softening until his face fell blank from a dulled sense of shock.

The man smiled again and the blonde felt himself relax against his will. For how long that would last, not even he knew.

“You’re a lot more feisty than you were last night,” the stranger commented with a sleepy chuckle. Strange. His breath didn’t smell like booze in the slightest. Kibum’s frown threatened to return. Something felt a little off about this morning. It wasn’t weird to have lured a good looking man into his bed. It wasn’t even weird to have taken on two of them, but the way this man stayed around to hold Kibum like he was precious—that felt wrong after an extensive history of waking up alone. “My name is Jonghyun, and if I remember correctly, you’re Kibum, right?”

The pad of Jonghyun’s thumb made intimate patterns over the place Kibum’s hipbone jutted out. Jonghyun’s voice was softer than the down pillow that his head rested on.

Kibum, yeah. His name was Kibum and this Jonghyun fellow—his name was sweet like sugar when the smaller of the pair dared repeat it aloud. He tried to jog his memory of last night’s true happenings to see if anything he said or did would have given Jonghyun special permission to treat him like this. All that came back to him was his usual routine: drink, grind, and then take a or two into his mouth. Nothing was out of the ordinary except this tight feeling in his chest where his heart had once bled.

Jonghyun’s big eyes bore into him from across the club and Kibum, like the crazed cat in heat he became when drunk, crawled on over to sit in his lap, unintentionally dragging his prey from a few seconds before along with him. He remembered someone petting his hair while sloppy kisses were trailed down his neck from someone behind him. But the whole time, his hazy vision had been trained on a sculpted face.

Kibum shook the memory away, sorely tempted to physically shoo the thought bubble away with his hands. Instead, he decided now was a good time to pry Jonghyun’s hands off of his body and roll the rest of the distance until he was at the edge of his mattress. There were parts of him that screamed in protest and other darker parts that cheered for this new victory against affection. Both were clashing mobs in his stomach, cautioning him against getting too excited, should he have to get reacquainted with the gleam of white porcelain. From somewhere between the frustration and the bad feelings, Kibum felt his temper flare up anyway.

“Can I ask what the hell you’re doing?” His eyes were dark, both pupil and the sickly spots below his matted lashes. He felt disgusting. How could this man still want to touch him when he looked half dead? “Why haven’t you left like all the others? I don’t remember giving you special staying privileges, so kindly find your way out.”

Jonghyun’s smile was becoming more infuriating the more he looked at it up close. It was so sure, so steady when Kibum couldn’t even manage a fake one anymore. It made him want to groan and hide his face in the covers all over again. Why him? Why today? His inner lamentations did nothing to chase off that dumb curve of perfect lips, though. In fact, the brunette made it that much wider when Kibum’s brows furrowed near the middle of his face.

“Are you sure you want me stumbling around your house? What if I steal something on my way out, hm? Why don’t you see me to the door at least?”

His points were valid. Kibum had been the victim of many a petty theft the morning after these escapades, of that he was sure. And yet he was still reluctant to follow the suggestion, even if it was on the basis of not giving this man the tiniest bit of leeway when his pride was feeling rather inflated this fine morning. With an audible huff, Kibum, in all his hung-over glory, ripped his blankets off, stood, and pointed to the opening of his bedroom. “See? Out,” he commanded, not minding that he was more than a little exposed to big, shameless eyes that chose to wander where they had once been welcomed, but where Kibum was too tired to care about at that moment. Still, there was warmth on his skin that lingered even after Jonghyun’s gaze flickered back up to meet sharp brown eyes.

With a to lips that the blonde subconsciously reciprocated, Jonghyun nodded once and stood across the bed from a form pretending to be more rigid than it actually was. “Yessir.”

And with that, he pulled his pants back on, searched for his shirt, and began to leave at a pace Kibum was largely dissatisfied with. Halfway down the hall, he turned to walk backward. “I have your cellphone number, Bum. I’ll get ahold of you later, yeah?”

A slam of a heavy wooden door met his question and the man laughed his way out of Kim Kibum’s apartment with wonderment running rampant in his head. A shivering lump beneath a gray duvet felt much more bitter about the whole ordeal.

As he lay there, the bruise he’d been admiring earlier etched further and further into his mind.

Jonghyun, he thought, was already overstaying his welcome.

Author’s note: I got sudden feels and then I did the thing. It’ll probably end up being my first actual chaptered fic, too. There’s no telling how long it’s going to take me to get subsequent chapters up though… I hope you like it and decide to be patient while waiting for me ;w;