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“You should come with me,” Johnny says, standing so tall that he blots out the sun behind him.
Taeyong’s hand rests on Ten’s waist, and Ten itches to shake it off. He doesn’t know what type of manic-pixie-dream-twink-double-trouble-twincest nonsense Taeyong is trying to pull, but from the way Johnny is grinning down at them, it seems to be working.
“To the beach?” Taeyong responds, sugar in his voice. His fingers dig into Ten’s side.
“Sure,” Johnny says. “I could use the company.”
“Hear that, Ten?” Taeyong stage-whispers into Ten’s ear, his warm breaths fanning hot over Ten’s neck. “He could use the company.”
Johnny stands a good head taller than either of them, his broad shoulders straining against his dress shirt while his fingers toy with the wine glass in his hand. He isn’t even that much older than them, maybe five, six years. His hands are large and beautiful, and Ten wonders what they would feel like wrapped around his thighs.
“I’m sure he could,” Ten responds finally. Johnny smiles at him, and Ten feels like Taeyong’s hand on his waist is the only thing keeping him from melting into the floor.
Johnny wants to head down the coast. Apparently he does it every year, though usually by himself. The wedding where they all meet (of Taeyong’s older cousin, who also happens to be Johnny’s good friend from university) is pushing his plans back by a few days, and according to what he tells Ten and Taeyong, he is only waiting for the cake to be cut before he would sneak away early to finish packing for the trip.
Johnny shows them a picture of the final destination on his phone, his fingertip tracing the route down the curved line of the country’s eastern edge.
“I’ve never been,” Ten admits honestly.
“Well, there you go,” Johnny says with a smile that makes Ten’s heart stop. “Now’s your chance.”
///
Their first stop takes them to a small city on the beach, its once-scenic dunes and bluffs long since covered up by condos and indoor mini-golf courses. But Johnny knows a nice spot, somewhere dark and crowded hidden in the back alleys of the old part of town. Johnny pays for their drinks, which are quickly forgotten as Taeyong and Ten start to dance first. This is familiar to Ten, the way Taeyong’s waist feels beneath his palms like it does when he tries to get Taeyong to learn their choreography properly, like the way Taeyong will laugh when he purposely messes up the footwork and they both end up doing the wrong thing on purpose, just because they can.
Ten almost forgets Johnny hadn’t joined them at first, until Taeyong whispers into his ear, “Go invite him to dance, silly.”
“Who, me?” Ten asks back, the taste of teasing familiar on his tongue.
“Yes, you. Don’t you want to know what he feels like?”
So Ten walks over to the spot at the bar where Johnny is watching them, a smile hidden behind his beer. Ten feels a little dizzy as he smirks up at Johnny on his barstool, reaching out to grab his wrists and twisting them back and forth in time to the music, mouthing along to the words he barely knows. Johnny’s face breaks out into an unselfconscious, painfully fond smile, before he sets the beer onto the counter and lets Ten pull him to the dancefloor. He spins beneath Ten’s raised arm with surprising grace then catches him from behind, laughing breathily into his neck as he wraps him up. Johnny presses up against Ten’s back as Ten pulls Taeyong towards him again, slinging his arms loosely around Taeyong’s shoulders and pulling him close, so close that their noses knock together when they move. Johnny’s chest is wide and solid against Ten’s back, his hands rubbing up and down his arms with so much reverence that Ten nearly loses his mind, and Taeyong’s lips are so close to his own. Too close. Close enough that their lips brush together, and Ten kisses Taeyong like that, too delicate for it to really mean anything.
As the song changes – now, something soft and slow – Ten pulls away, slipping out from between the hot press of their bodies to catch his breath. Johnny’s hands are on Taeyong’s hips now, spinning him around back-to-chest. Taeyong’s eyes are closed, his cheeks bitten pink from the alcohol and the close heat of the room, his lips slightly parted and his head tipped back against Johnny’s shoulder. Ten knows Taeyong is anything but fragile, but he looks so small in Johnny’s arms, his neck slender and unbruised. Ten wants to drink from his mouth again, to taste the warm, honey-sweetness for himself. He wants Johnny, too. He wants Johnny so much and he doesn’t even know what to do with wanting someone so much, but most of all, he wants Johnny to want him.
Johnny meets his eyes and smiles. Ten has noticed that Johnny’s smiles come easy, except when they don’t. Someone jostles up against Ten, tries to pull him into a dance, and he shakes them off with a noise of disgust to join Johnny and Taeyong again, Taeyong in the middle of them. Ten knows he’s getting hard, knows that Taeyong must be able to feel it pressing into the soft flesh of his stomach when Ten wraps his arms around Taeyong’s waist and kisses Johnny over Taeyong’s shoulder. “Kiss me,” Johnny murmurs, even though Ten is already kissing him.
They fuck in the hotel for the first time that night, buzzed on cheap beer and the heat of the night.
The moment Johnny emerges from the bathroom after rinsing the sweat from his neck, he dramatically drops to the floor and crawls on his hands and knees over the carpet towards the bed, and Ten can’t help but crack up at the half-goofy, half-hungry expression on Johnny’s face until he reaches the mattress and presses his face into Taeyong’s thigh, one hand gripping Ten’s knee. Johnny sucks Taeyong off as Ten kneels on the bed beside him, kissing Taeyong because Johnny can’t.
When Johnny takes off his pants, Ten can’t even look at Taeyong. He wants Johnny for himself, and the full weight of Johnny's gaze while he unwraps a condom and rolls it onto his cock makes Ten lose his mind with need, his fingers itching to touch and make Johnny feel good.
The alcohol makes his muscles loose and pliant for when Johnny works a finger into him, Johnny’s eyes locked on Ten’s mouth to watch the way Ten gasps when he increases the pressure, massaging around his rim then pressing back in again, spreading him apart on two, then three fingers until Ten sees stars behind his eyelids.
Johnny fucks him first, deep and slow on his back. Johnny is being careful, or maybe the beers are making him dizzy, making him need to control his imprecision. Or maybe that’s how he always fucks – restrained, with a metaphorical hand around his own throat to keep himself from going too far too quickly. Ten knows that Johnny could probably do it harder, could have his vision whiting out with each snap of his hips. Maybe he will, another time, but right now Ten feels like he is floating, and it doesn’t bother him, not really. He’s not sure he could even handle more if he wanted.
He tangles his fingers in Johnny’s hair and pulls Johnny’s mouth to his neck, tightens his grip and holds him there until Johnny’s fangs come out. He closes his eyes and wraps his legs around Johnny’s waist, clinging onto him as though he might pull out. Johnny doesn’t pull out, of course, just grinds into him like he wants Ten to feel every inch spreading him open. And even though Johnny is wearing a condom, Ten still wants to feel Johnny come inside him, to feel the warmth even though the mess is what he really wants.
Johnny fucks Taeyong with his fingers next, and Ten has to force himself to watch. It’s not jealousy, not exactly. He feels as though a boundary, something delicate and important that was always between him and Taeyong, has cracked, something that was never supposed to see the light of day spilling through the open gash. Ten watches Johnny lower himself between Taeyong’s thighs and nose into him, watches the look of surprise on Taeyong’s face, the way he scrunches up his eyebrows and arches off the bed with his hand tightly laced in Johnny's hair, one foot resting on Johnny's shoulder and the other planted on the bed to help him grind up against Johnny’s mouth, gasps of pleasure falling from his parted lips.
Taeyong just looks like he feels so good. Ten knows Taeyong rarely lets himself feel that good. But it’s not jealousy. Not yet.
///
It is the way Ten’s heart twists when he takes Taeyong into his mouth for the first time. The way Taeyong gasps above him, the way Taeyong’s fingers grip his own thighs and his hips jerk up off the bed, pushing him deeper than Ten expects. It is the way that he can taste the sharp coconut of Johnny’s sunscreen on Taeyong’s cock, the strong chemical scent that makes his eyes water and his throat itch.
They’ve been on the road for a while, maybe a week since the first night, though Ten has lost count of the days. But this is the first time he has been alone with Taeyong like this.
Johnny isn’t there. He had gone out to get them a few more sodas, leaving them in the hotel room with Taeyong still panting and hard on the bed, swim shorts around his narrow thighs. I’ll take care of him when you’re gone, don’t worry, Ten had whispered teasingly to Johnny, tangling his fingers in Johnny’s salt-dampened hair. Taeyong had already come once, from Johnny’s hand around his cock while Ten drank guilty kisses from his lips. Afterwards, Taeyong had lain on the bed, trembling from the aftershocks while he stared up at Johnny with a rapturous gaze, his lips bitten cherry-red. Ten’s gut had tightened to see Johnny looking back at Taeyong, and he had pushed Johnny to the side to lower himself between Taeyong’s thighs to lick the mess off his skin. He had closed his eyes so he couldn’t see the expression on Taeyong’s face. So, Johnny had left them to their own devices, though not before petting over Ten’s neck before slipping out the door.
Ten pulls off and wipes his tongue on the back of his hand, but the sunscreen taste lingers.
“What?” Taeyong asks, his soft voice unusually hoarse as he raises himself on his elbows to look down at Ten.
“Nothing.”
Ten stares at the flushed head of Taeyong’s cock, wet and shiny from his spit.
“You’re not going to do it if he’s not here?”
Ten glares up at Taeyong, who just blinks back at him. He doesn’t look angry, though, and guilt once again flashes through Ten.
“Do you want me to?” He asks, searching Taeyong’s eyes for an answer he might not say aloud. But Taeyong just exhales loudly and flops back down onto the bed, one hand coming to rest on his stomach.
“Of course I do.”
Of course he does.
Ten grips the base of Taeyong’s cock to guide it past his lips, filling his mouth with the warmth that Johnny had also tasted.
///
Ten awakens to a mosquito buzzing in his ear. He shakes his head and blearily sits up, blinking into the darkness. He glances at the clock - it is just past five a.m., the sun still yet to rise. Taeyong is tangled up in the sheets next to him, his mouth open against his arm as he sleeps.
Ten pulls the sheet off his legs then slips out of bed, taking a single step into the one next to theirs. The mattress squeaks as he sinks his full weight onto it, walking on his knees to the far side of the bed where Johnny sleeps. He is on his stomach, exposing the naked, muscular plane of his back. Ten lays down on his side and shifts closer to Johnny, his heart pounding in his throat. He can’t help but run his palm down Johnny’s ribcage, trailing his fingers down the dip of his spine. Ten curls up to rest his cheek against his back, his head moving up and down with Johnny’s slow, gentle breaths.
Johnny stirs above him. Ten lifts his head and watches Johnny rouse, his dark hair falling into his eyes as he cranes his neck to look down at Ten. He blinks, then immediately reaches down to pull Ten up the bed towards him. Ten’s heart swells with warmth as Johnny tugs him closer then wraps him up in his embrace. Ten smiles giddily into Johnny’s chest as Johnny’s arm cradles him against his body and his breaths stir up the hair on top of Ten’s head. Johnny smells like coconut sunscreen, like the saltwater of the ocean, like sweat and sex and Taeyong’s deoderant.
And if Ten slips a hand between them to grip Johnny’s cock, to feel the way it pulses and hardens the longer he strokes it, Taeyong doesn’t have to know.
///
They make their way down the coast. Johnny drives, with Taeyong and Ten taking turns in the passenger seat. Taeyong does offer to drive, once – he has a license, after all – but Johnny just grins and says, “It’s alright, I like doing it.” Ten lounges in the back, feet propped up on the center console while the salty evening air whips through the car, keeping one hand on the plastic bag of snacks to keep it from getting blown out the window. Taeyong is sitting cross-legged in the passenger seat, scrolling through the navigation app on his phone that shows the route to their next destination. They’re headed to a small fishing village known for hazy sunrises and throat-scalding octopus ramyeon (according to Johnny).
Ten sinks lower into his seat, pushing his leg farther forward onto the console. With a warm glance back at Ten over his shoulder, Johnny lifts a hand from the wheel and rests it on Ten’s foot, then presses with his thumb to rub deep circles into the curve of his arch.
“Gross,” Taeyong mutters without looking up from his phone, and Ten feels a walnut-sized lump of annoyance lodge its way into his gut. He sighs in exaggerated contentment as Johnny continues to massage his foot like that. It does feel nice.
“We’re almost there,” Johnny says, nodding out the window. Ten gasps when the press of Johnny’s thumb hits a particularly sensitive spot on the ball of his foot. “I recognize that bridge.”
“You’ve been here before?” Ten asks, even though he’s pretty sure Johnny already told them he had.
“Yeah, remember? I stopped over on my way to a funeral a few years ago.”
“Right,” Ten says quietly, flexing his foot in Johnny’s grasp and squirming in his seat from the surprising pleasure of it.
Taeyong glances up from his phone and cranes his head out the window. “The exit’s coming up. The next right.”
They end up not at the hotel Johnny had booked, but parked in an empty lot by the pier. Johnny was so sure the seafood place he had been thinking of is around this part of town, but all the shops are dark and shuttered by the time they arrive.
Ten’s stomach curls in hunger after having eaten nothing but rest stop snacks all day (mostly dried sweet potato, as Taeyong had been in charge of the cash). But still, he opens his arms and melts into Johnny when Johnny crawls into the backseat alongside him, Taeyong following soon after.
Johnny's car is really too small for all three of them in the backseat. But they are there anyway, Johnny sitting upright with his hands on Ten’s hips as Ten sinks down onto him, tears squeezed out of his eyes as Johnny gets pushed deeper inside him. Taeyong is curled up beside them, sucking lovebites into Johnny’s arms and shoulders and petting over his chest.
The lot is dark and empty. The rushing in Ten’s ears almost drowns out the sound of the waves from the ocean. Johnny is whispering praises into his ear, his voice deepening and cracking at the edges.
Ten’s thighs are trembling from the exertion, so he slows his bouncing to a near stop, savoring the feeling of Johnny inside him, stretching and filling him. Johnny pulls him down hard, his cock getting pushed impossibly deeper inside Ten, to hold him in place. Ten pants against Johnny’s shoulder, hips twitching involuntarily from the constant, maddening pressure of Johnny’s cock snug against his prostate.
“Do you feel good?” Johnny asks, petting over Ten’s hair. Taeyong had stopped what he was doing, now leaning back against the seat and staring out the window towards the ocean beyond.
“Yes,” Ten breathes in response. And it does, hot pleasure sparking through him from even the most minute of movements. Warmth seeps through his veins as he lets Johnny hug him closer, as Johnny’s hands trace slow circles into his sunburnt back.
Cool air from outside seeps in through the glass of windows, making Ten tremble in Johnny’s embrace. Ten rests his cheek on Johnny’s shoulder and lets his gaze fall to Taeyong, whose eyes are now closed, his head resting back on the seat and his chest rising and falling slowly. He really is so beautiful, his profile illuminated by the lone streetlamp at the edge of the lot.
“We can stop if you want,” Johnny whispers, though his breathing is unsteady, his hips twitching minutely beneath Ten’s thighs. Ten presses his forehead back into Johnny’s shoulder, nosing into the skin. He shakes his head side to side without lifting it up. Johnny chuckles softly. “Okay,” he murmurs, his hands coming to rest on Ten’s waist and his grip tightening, ten pressure points into the muscle. Ten starts to slowly rock his hips again, quietly whimpering into Johnny’s shoulder as he feels Johnny getting fully hard inside him again.
“That’s it, pretty,” Johnny breathes into Ten’s hair, sending a cascade of chills prickling down his spine. “Just like that.” Somehow Ten finds Taeyong’s hand on the seat, or maybe Taeyong finds him first, pressing palm to soft palm. He comes just like that, with his cock rubbing against Johnny’s shirt and Taeyong’s cold fingers laced into his own.
///
Taeyong was Ten’s first kiss. Ten can’t remember whose house it had been at (but it was probably Doyoung’s; they were always at Doyoung’s) and they were buzzed on cheap rum and shitty EDM. Taeyong had ended up in his lap on a dare, his bony hips pressing down on Ten’s thighs.
Except it wasn’t really a dare, it was Doyoung telling Taeyong, “You should sit in Ten’s lap, he won’t believe how good of a kisser you are.” If Doyoung had been in his right mind, he probably wouldn’t have said it. But he hadn’t been. So Taeyong was in Ten’s lap, and Ten’s heart was pounding, and only Taeyong knew that Ten had never been kissed before.
Taeyong’s lips were soft and his tongue was slippery, different than Ten was expecting. He didn’t really kiss back, didn’t know what it meant for a kiss to be good. He just knew that when Taeyong pulled away, he didn’t want him to stop.
///
The coast doesn’t go on forever. At some point the road stops, and a ferry carries them to one of the southernmost points of the country – a grassy, windswept island with not much on it besides a lighthouse and a strange-looking church. The whole place feels like something outside of time, and Ten can almost trick himself into believing the trip won’t ever reach its end. But Johnny has a real life – to Ten, at twenty-one, Johnny’s life seems more real than his own – and the coast doesn’t go on forever.
They wind up on the beach, sitting on the sand. Ten rests his head on Johnny’s shoulder and watches as Johnny plays with his and Taeyong’s fingers in his lap. “Why did you invite us, Johnny?” Ten asks quietly. His voice is almost lost beneath the sound of the wind blowing through the seagrass behind them.
Johnny doesn’t answer for a while. “I don’t know, honestly,” he says finally. “I was a little mesmerized.” He pauses, as though uncertain of Ten’s tone. “Are you glad I asked you?”
A seabird lands in front of them, pecking at a piece of seaweed beneath the sand. “I’m glad I came,” Ten says. “It’s beautiful here.”
“It is,” Taeyong agrees quietly from Johnny’s other side.
It’s not exactly what Ten wants to say. Maybe after Taeyong falls asleep, Ten will tell Johnny what he really means – that, yes, he’s glad he came, that when Johnny kisses him it feels like flying, and when Johnny kisses Taeyong, the wax melts from his feathers and he plummets into the sea, sinking below the waves to the dark ocean floor, powerless to do anything but open his mouth and let the heavy saltwater fill his lungs.
But yes, it’s beautiful here.
///
They take a different route back, and the miles start to drag behind them. When they stop for the night at whatever motel Johnny had booked, Johnny wraps both of them up in his arms, but it is Ten whom Johnny whispers to when he can’t fall asleep, when he thinks Taeyong isn’t listening, telling him things Ten knows he would never tell Taeyong. Ten laps up Johnny’s secret words, traces Johnny’s lips as he talks, pressing down on his cupid’s bow when he smiles. He knows what this is. Taeyong must know too. Really, they never should have come.
But here they are, Ten rolling carefully out of bed and pulling Johnny with him, Johnny disentangling himself from Taeyong’s limbs as he follows on silent feet into the tiny hotel bathroom. They never make it into the shower, which was where Ten wanted to go; instead, Johnny crowds Ten against the sink as soon as the door clicks behind them, groaning softly into Ten’s mouth when their hips press together. Johnny is warm from both their bodies and hard where his cock presses against Ten’s waist.
Taeyong doesn’t love Johnny like he does. And it is love, Ten is sure. A feeling that fills his mouth with smoke and his chest with cotton, something almost painful in its sweetness. Johnny knows exactly how far Ten likes to be pushed and how much he likes to be pulled back, how to light firecrackers with him then soothe him afterwards, how to drink kisses from his lips and smother his hunger with his own.
Taeyong doesn’t love Johnny. Taeyong has his own boyfriend at home. Over the course of the trip, Ten has seen Doyoung’s number flashing across Taeyong’s phone screen at least once a day, and saw the tightening in Taeyong’s jaw as he ignored call after call. Ten always pretended not to see, even though he wanted to pick up the phone and yell at Doyoung until his throat was hoarse, stop being so stupid, just apologize, you don’t know what you’re losing.
In a way, though, Ten knows he has no right to admonish Doyoung for anything. He knows the pain Taeyong is in, can see it in the way he gets quiet after midnight, yet still he steals those moments with Johnny out from under Taeyong’s nose. He can’t help it. Whatever pulls him towards Johnny is only a few shades away from desperation, though there is something real there, something so real and so reciprocated that it terrifies him. Johnny is just so good, and Ten is so afraid to lose him. He just doesn’t want to lose Taeyong, either.
///
Taeyong gets progressively quieter the closer they get to the city. Ten feels anxious and jittery himself, like something is trapped inside his chest and trying to claw its way out. Johnny had told them the night before that he wouldn’t be staying in the city for very long. He is planning on extending his trip, maybe quitting his job and subletting his apartment to live off his savings for a few months until he can find a new one up north. What Taeyong doesn’t know is that, in the solitude of the empty hotel hallway the previous night, Johnny had pulled himself away from kissing Ten’s neck just long enough to ask if he wanted to come with him. And Taeyong doesn’t know that Ten had said yes, the word caught up in a shaky moan as Johnny pressed his knee between his thighs and started sucking a bruise into his collarbone, just below the necklaces at his throat. Johnny must have whispered other things to him that night, but Ten wasn’t listening, too high on being wanted.
Johnny drops Taeyong off at his place first, with a soft kiss to his cheek. Ten helps him bring his bag up to his apartment, waving distractedly to Taeyong’s roommate before pulling Taeyong into a hug. It doesn’t exactly feel like the right thing to do at that moment, even though he’s been hugging Taeyong for almost as many years as he’s been alive. Ten should be telling him about Johnny, about the trip, about everything. Taeyong deserves to know. But when Ten pulls back, the weight of Taeyong’s gaze paralyzes him, and he bites his tongue. They’re young. There’s plenty of time for them to pull out the splinters in their friendship, isn’t there?
Johnny is waiting for him on the street below, leaning against the car with two coffees in hand, smiling that smile that he knows makes people nervous. Ten likes to be nervous around Johnny. He takes the coffee and tilts his head up for a kiss, which is easily granted. “Ready?” Johnny murmurs into his mouth. Ten nods, making a pouting noise when Johnny starts to pull away. Johnny laughs breathily and kisses him again, and his mouth tastes like coffee and everything Ten wants.