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Entry tags:
[FIC]: bespoke.
bespoke, nc-17, dongwoo/woohyun.
i just need to take some time to go figure out my life.
guess it's been a long time i don't even know
guess we fell in love when we tried to take it slow
oh i can even tell you by the way we touch
there's a lot of things that are dangerous
and i just wanna see if i can make it on my own
all my friends are telling me i'm different from before
well maybe i just need a little space to think
spend some more time doing my own things
jhameel, "white lie"
BESPOKE
dongwoo/woohyun
Dongwoo comes out of the back room with a mouthful of pins and almost swallows them all when he sees the man standing in the middle of the shop. They have a bell that’s supposed to chime when someone comes in the door, but Dongwoo’s fairly sure that Sungyeol broke it last week when he was fixing the display in the window—well, anyway. He’ll add that to his list of things to do, but for now he just takes the pins out of his mouth, being careful not to stab himself, and says, “I hope you haven’t been waiting long, I’m sorry, I was just—”
The man waves away the apology. “Only a couple minutes,” he says. He has a charming smile. “It gave me a chance to admire.”
Dongwoo stabs the pins into the nearest pincushion and dusts his hands off. “What can I help you with?” he asks, trying for cool professionalism despite his mild embarrassment. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“Yeah, actually.” The man rubs the back of his head, his grin turning a little sheepish. “My best friend’s getting married and I’m the best man, and I haven’t owned a suit since I was seventeen, so... I figured I was about due for a new one.”
It seems like a bad idea to take a stab at the man’s current age, even though he looks like he can’t be older than twenty-six. “Well, you’re probably right about that,” Dongwoo says instead, unbuttoning his sleeves so he can begin to roll them up. “You’re not wearing the same suit as the groomsmen?”
“I am the groomsmen,” the man says. “It’s a pretty small ceremony, just me and one girl as the maid of honor. Sunggyu and Soyu aren't really big on the whole... pomp and circumstance thing.”
“Ah.” That makes much more sense, Dongwoo thinks. Well, relatively speaking, anyway. “When’s the wedding?”
“Two months,” the man says. “It’s cutting it a little close, but the bride was having a hard time picking colors.”
Dongwoo laughs, mostly at the idea of two months being ‘cutting it close’—he’s done worse, in the years he’s had this job. “I’m pretty sure it won’t be a problem,” he says, sticking his hand out and bowing with the man takes it. “I’m Jang Dongwoo.”
“Nam Woohyun,” the man says, returning the bow.
“Okay, Woohyun-ssi,” Dongwoo says. “Uh, we could have you stand for a fitting today, or—is it more convenient if you come back later?”
Woohyun shrugs, leaning against the counter and offering Dongwoo a half-smile. “You’re the boss,” he says. “I’ve never done this before.”
That’s not particularly surprising either. Dongwoo nods, a little more confident—this is his realm, after all. After seeing so many customers who are dead set on what they want and refuse to consider Dongwoo’s suggestions, having someone who’s willing to let him explain is extremely refreshing. “Okay, do you want me to walk you through it?” Woohyun nods. “Well, there are steps... the first two are picking fabrics and taking measurements. I usually take measurements first, but it’s kind of up to you what order we do that in.”
“Picking fabrics?” Woohyun asks, eyeing the bolts of fabric stacked high in shelves against the far wall. “Man, what have I gotten myself into.”
“Hey,” Dongwoo says, pretending to be offended. “It’s not all that bad.” He crosses the shop floor to pull down a bolt of fabric, and after a moment’s thought, two more. “You have to pick at least your suiting and your lining. How often are you planning on wearing this suit? I’m guessing more than once, or you wouldn’t bother with bespoke.”
“It’s promotion season at work,” Woohyun says, leaning on the table and absently fingering the selvage of one of the bolts Dongwoo puts down. “I figure if I’m gonna have to impress a lot of head honchos, I may as well look good doing it.”
Dongwoo laughs. “Probably smart,” he says. “So you’ll probably want something wool, and more durable if you don’t want to have to replace it every year. If you were the type to get your suits remade again and again I’d recommend something with a higher thread count, but—well, that’s kinda jargon.”
“I trust your judgment,” Woohyun says. He looks up at Dongwoo, smiling again, and Dongwoo is once again struck by the realization that Woohyun is very attractive—dark eyes, strong arms, long fingers. He would be Dongwoo’s type, if he were to actually have a type beyond 450-thread-count superfine Merino wool. “I’m not going to wear it out, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good.” Dongwoo takes a step back, putting some space between him and Woohyun, and glances down at the table full of bolts of fabric. “What are the colors?”
“The colors?”
“That the bride picked. The ones she had trouble with.”
“Ah, right.” Woohyun sighs, the same kind of ‘I don’t understand any of this but I’m going along with it because I’m the best man’ sigh that Dongwoo has heard hundreds of times before, and digs a swatch card out of his wallet. “Here. The maid of honor’s dress is made out of this. Or will be, I guess.”
Dongwoo takes the card and examines it—the swatch attached is a silk charmeuse, high quality as far as he can tell, in a rich red color. “Pretty bold,” he comments absently, fingering the piece of fabric.
Woohyun laughs. “Yeah, Soyu’s like that,” he says, obviously affectionate. “Though I think Hyorin—the maid of honor, that is. I think she had some hand in choosing the color, too.”
“Hmm.” Dongwoo studies the fabric, then looks up at Woohyun, brow furrowed. He contemplates Woohyun’s complexion, then takes a step or two back and contemplates his body structure—he’s tall and fairly thin, but fit. The kind of body that any tailor would be thrilled to work with. “Okay,” he says after a moment, envisioning charcoal grey, a white shirt, a waistcoat made of the dark red silk in his hands. Woohyun has the kind of complexion that would go well with red. “Okay, I think this will work. Actually, it’s definitely gonna work.”
“You sound confident,” Woohyun says, shifting a little under Dongwoo’s scrutiny.
“Of course I do,” Dongwoo says, breaking his concentration to beam at Woohyun. “I’m the best in this city. But you already knew that, right?”
Woohyun returns his smile. “Yeah, I knew,” he says. “That’s why I’m here.”
Later that night, Sungyeol drops by the shop to pick up some paperwork he’d left behind and finds Dongwoo bent over the counter, sketching furiously. “Inspired?” Sungyeol asks, whacking Dongwoo lightly on the back of the head with a rolled-up catalogue. “I haven’t seen you design in months.”
“You could say that.” Dongwoo taps the end of his pencil against his sketchbook and sits up. “New project, that’s all.”
Sungyeol looks at him, then down at the sketchbook, then up at Dongwoo again. “He’s that hot, huh?”
Dongwoo throws an eraser at Sungyeol, who catches it easily, of course. “It’s not that,” Dongwoo protests, and at Sungyeol’s disbelieving look, revises: “It’s not that entirely. He just has a great... body. A great, uh, frame.”
“A great body,” Sungyeol repeats. “I see.”
With a frustrated groan, Dongwoo puts his head down on the counter. “Okay, so it’s mostly that he’s really good-looking,” he admits, his voice muffled into his still-rolled-up sleeve. “And I have to get intimate with his inseam in a few days.”
“I can take the job if you want,” Sungyeol begins, but Dongwoo cuts him off.
“I’ll do it,” he says. “I’ll just complain about it a lot.”
“How’s that any different from normal?” Sungyeol says, and laughs when Dongwoo can’t find another eraser to throw at him. “Hey, I’m kidding. Just... be careful. After last time...” Sungyeol shrugs, a little too casual to be real. “Anyway, nice to see you drawing again. Let me see them tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” Dongwoo says, catching his eraser when Sungyeol tosses it back. “Night.”
When Sungyeol is gone and the shop is quiet again, Dongwoo looks down at the sketches spread out in front of him. He’s not sure exactly what it was that caused the sudden rush of inspiration, besides a desire to see Woohyun in a suit, but in front of him are at least six designs—three-piece, two-piece, narrow cut, tapered, double breasted... It’s more than Dongwoo’s drawn at one time in months.
“Get ahold of yourself, Jang Dongwoo,” he commands himself, his voice too loud in the quiet shop. “You are not letting this happen again.”
Nine months ago there had been another customer, just as handsome and charming, and Dongwoo had fallen and fallen hard. Hoya had been great, and for four months Dongwoo had been deliriously happy, until Hoya had a crisis of sexuality—heterosexuality, as it were—and left him with little more than goodbye. Suffice to say it hadn’t been an experience that Dongwoo is keen to repeat.
With a sigh, Dongwoo shuffles his sketches back into order and tucks them into his book, leaving them under the counter for Woohyun’s fitting the following Tuesday. If he was going to get Woohyun into a suit, it was going to be the best damn suit that Woohyun had ever owned, Dongwoo’s personal feelings be damned.
“So how do you even get into this kind of business?” Woohyun asked, obediently raising his right arm at Dongwoo’s request. He was talkative, as Dongwoo had discovered, but more interested in asking questions than talking about himself. “I mean, is this like a fashion school thing, or...”
“I didn’t go to fashion school,” Dongwoo says, talking around the pen in his teeth. “My dad—keep your arm up, please—my dad owned this place before me, so... I don’t know, I started drawing using my dad’s old croquis when I was eleven.”
“What the hell is a croakey?”
“Croquis,” Dongwoo corrects, laughing. “They’re like... figures, pre-drawn figures that I trace over to design. It saves me the trouble of re-drawing a person every time.”
“Oh.” Woohyun lets his arm fall when Dongwoo pulls the measuring tape away. “So does your dad still work here?”
“Mm, no,” Dongwoo says. He writes down the measurement, then pauses, tapping his pen against the notepad. “He died a couple of years ago. Now it’s just me and Sungyeol—the other tailor.”
“I’m sorry,” Woohyun says. Dongwoo gets the feeling that he’s not only apologizing for the faux pas of asking, but also for the event itself—and beyond that, Dongwoo gets the feeling that he means it. It’s an unusual, too-intimate feeling; Dongwoo looks away. I am not letting this happen again.
“It’s fine,” he says, busying himself checking which measurements he still needs. “This isn’t very fair, though, you know all about me and I only know your name.”
It sounds so much like a come-on that Dongwoo winces, but Woohyun just laughs. “I’m not really that interesting,” he says, shrugging. “I work in advertising, which basically means I work in charming the hell out of people so they agree to let us take their money. Hence the suit—gotta look good to impress the higher-ups.”
“You seem charming enough,” Dongwoo says, sort of off-the-cuff, and then quickly follows up with, “but a good suit never hurt anything.” Good save.
Or not. The smile is back, the same sexy half-smirk that Woohyun had been wearing when he’d first come into the shop. “You think I’m charming?” he asks, and smiles wider when Dongwoo tries to make some excuse. “I’m flattered. But it is kind of in the job description, so...”
Dongwoo ducks his head, certain that he’s blushing to the very tips of his ears, and focuses his attention on taking Woohyun’s waist measurement. “So you could say you fake it until you make it, professionally,” he says.
Woohyun’s silent for a second, and when Dongwoo looks up, he’s watching Dongwoo with a curiously amused expression. “Yeah, you could say that,” he says. “I’m a professional faker.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Dongwoo says, rushing to apologize, but Woohyun just waves him off.
“I’m not offended,” he says. “It’s funny, because that’s how I’ve always thought of my job, but you’re the first one to say it to my face.” When Woohyun smiles, it’s wider, realer than the half-smile he was wearing before, and Dongwoo feels his heart sink a little. I’m screwed. “The problem is that ‘Nam Woohyun, professional faker’ doesn’t really have the same ring to it as ‘Nam Woohyun, acquisitions manager’.”
“That’s true,” Dongwoo says, fighting a losing battle not to smile. “Project manager does sound much more hoity-toity.”
“Trust me, in the advertising business it’s all about—uh,” Woohyun says as Dongwoo drops to his knees in front of him. “About... uh, seeming hoity-toity. What are you doing?”
“Hip and seat measurements, inseams and outseams, thigh and crotch,” Dongwoo says, checking his notes. “Then I’ll get your full back measurement and we’ll be done. Why?”
“Just curious.” Woohyun shakes his head. “Anyway, don’t get me wrong, I like my job. I just like making fun of it more.”
Dongwoo grins, wrapping the measuring tape around Woohyun’s hips. “That’s good, though,” he says. “My ex-boyfriend always used to say that was how he stayed sane, making fun of his job.”
As soon as the words leave his mouth he realizes that he’s said something stupid—that’s not the kind of thing you say to a client, ever, and Dongwoo should know better. He does know better, and he learned the hard way. Dongwoo freezes, prepared to apologize, to run if need be, but Woohyun just chuckles under his breath and says, “So did mine. Except I think he actually hated his job more than he pretended to.”
Dongwoo laughs, a little surprised but mostly relieved. “Sometimes I feel like there are more people in the world who hate their jobs than people who love them,” he says, scribbling down the numbers in adrenaline-shaky handwriting. “Okay, the inseam measurement might be a little—awkward, but try not to move or it’ll come out wrong and be uncomfortable.”
“I’m a statue,” Woohyun promises.
That’s what everyone thinks, Dongwoo resists the urge to say, and instead just smiles and slides his hand up the inside of Woohyun’s thigh to hold the tape measure at the top of his leg. It’s sort of gratifying, because Woohyun has been making him flushed and nervous for the entire fitting, and now it’s Dongwoo’s turn to return the favor—he’s professional about it, of course, but he can feel the way Woohyun tenses up under his hands. “Don’t move,” he warns, crouching to read his measurement.
“Not moving.” Woohyun, to his credit, doesn’t actually move, though Dongwoo’s pretty sure he’d like to. “This is all very intimate, isn’t it,” he comments when Dongwoo pulls the measuring tape away to write down the number.
“Woohyun-ssi,” Dongwoo says, looking up at him and, against his better judgment, grasping at the chance to tease a little. “By the time we’re done here I’m going to have memorized pretty much every inch of your body. So... yeah, I’d say so.”
There’s a long pause, and then Woohyun smiles that kind of flirtatious, slow smile that Dongwoo imagines is his all-kill when he’s wooing clients. “I can deal with that,” he says.
Dongwoo sighs inwardly. He’s really, really screwed.
Objectively speaking, the work that Dongwoo does on Woohyun’s suit is some of the best he’s ever done. In the end they’d agreed on a charcoal grey suiting with a lighter, silver-grey lining—they’d toyed briefly with the idea of sewing the lining in the same color as the waistcoat, the red that Soyu had chosen, but in the end Dongwoo had vetoed it under the assessment that if Woohyun was going to be wearing the suit for work, it was probably a bad idea to have it be so flashy. The waistcoat, on the other hand, was meant to be flashy—Dongwoo had held the swatch of red silk up to Woohyun’s throat and immediately fell in love with the contrast against his skin, and so they hadn’t even really needed to discuss the logistics of that part.
The second fitting isn’t for another week, so Dongwoo takes care not to cut corners—he checks and re-checks measurements, places and re-places pins. It’s strange, how enthusiastic he feels about this when the last few months have been mostly full of apathy.
“Hyung, you’re designing again?” Sungjong asks. Dongwoo had needed thread and another button, and so had wound up at Sungjong’s counter at the fabric store, sketchbook in hand. “That’s great! Can I look?”
“Sure.” Dongwoo flips his sketchbook open so Sungjong can look at the drawings. “They’re a little messy, I wasn’t really paying attention to the details.”
“Hyung, they’re awesome,” Sungjong says, smiling up at Dongwoo. “I’m really glad you’re drawing again. Your designs are totally the best.”
“I bet you say that to all your customers.”
Sungjong affects hurt, and Dongwoo smiles and leans on the counter to look down at the sketchbook. “I’m glad, too, though,” he says after a second, looking at the mockup drawing of the suit that’s on his form at the shop. It should probably worry him more than it does, the fact that Woohyun—his client Woohyun, Dongwoo reminds himself forcefully—has the ability to inspire him this much, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get.
“Did hyung meet someone?” Sungjong asks. It’s a very innocent question (or as innocent as Lee Sungjong can get, anyway), but it still makes Dongwoo blush fiercely, and Sungjong squeaks and claps his hands once. “You did! Who is it? Hyung, that’s great!”
“I didn’t meet someone like... meet someone,” Dongwoo says sort of lamely, avoiding Sungjong’s eyes. “He’s a client. It’s not like that.”
“Oh,” Sungjong says, nodding sagely. “A client. That’s pretty scandalous, hyung.”
“I said it’s not like that!”
Sungjong just laughs and pushes Dongwoo’s sketchbook back across the counter. “Well, whatever it’s not like, I’m glad you’re designing again,” he says, pushing his bangs out of his eyes to give Dongwoo a real grin. “You’ve been kind of... basically gone for a while. I was starting to miss you.”
“We’ll see how long it lasts,” Dongwoo replies, unable to keep himself from smiling back.
By the time Woohyun came in that Friday for his second fitting, Dongwoo is pretty confident that this suit is going to be one of the best he ever created. Then again, looking good on the form was one thing, but looking good on a person—well, needless to say he’s a little nervous when he hands the suit over to Woohyun and waits for him to put it on. They have plenty of time until the wedding, and Dongwoo’s almost positive he didn’t mis-measure anything—but there’s still the irrational fear that it’ll hang wrong or look silly, and he’ll have to start over. It’s never happened, but that doesn’t stop him worrying.
Dongwoo busies himself getting pins and a marking pencil, and knocks on the doorframe when he hears the sounds of clothes rustling stop. “Okay?” he asks, pushing aside the curtain.
Ah. Yes, he’d been right.
There were minor improvements to be made, of course, and the fine details still have to be smoothed out, but Woohyun looks good. He looks really good—the trousers hug his legs, not in a too-tight way but in a damn-he-has-a-great-ass way, and the jacket emphasizes the set of his shoulders and the narrowness of his waist without clinging or pulling. “Wow,” Dongwoo says, coming around to look at Woohyun from the front. “I did a really good job on this one.”
“I’ll say,” Woohyun says. He fiddles with the cuffs of the jacket, shrugging his shoulders once or twice and looking at his own reflection. “I gotta say, the suit I owned when I was seventeen has nothing on this.”
“Well, obviously,” Dongwoo says. With about fifteen pins between his teeth, it’s hard to seem appropriately cocky, but he figures Woohyun gets what he means. “Seventeen-year-olds always look awkward in suits, it’s just a fact.”
“I was an incredibly suave seventeen-year-old,” Woohyun protests. Somehow, Dongwoo doesn’t find it terribly hard to believe.
Still, as Dongwoo kneels to start pinning seams and adjusting cuffs, he can’t help but watch Woohyun watching himself in the mirror. Despite everything that he knows about Woohyun and his personality—his charming smile, his sense of humor, the slightly self-deprecating way that he talks about his job—Dongwoo still thinks he looks a little... nervous, in a suit. Maybe not nervous. More just like he’s not used to this kind of thing, hasn’t quite learned how to make his body move inside that encasement.
It’s endearing, somehow. Well, then again, lately Dongwoo seems prone to thinking that just about everything Woohyun does is endearing.
Woohyun glances down and meets Dongwoo’s eyes, and Dongwoo blushes and returns to pinning. Inappropriate, to be undressing clients with his eyes while he’s supposed to be working—Dongwoo can feel the flush to the very tips of his ears, and is pretty sure Woohyun can see it to. Damn him for always wearing his heart on his sleeve, huh?
“Dongwoo-ssi,” Woohyun says suddenly. Dongwoo narrowly avoids stabbing him with a pin. “Come get drinks with me tonight.”
“Excuse me?” Certain that he’s heard wrong, Dongwoo drops a couple pins when he jerks his head up to look at Woohyun. “I’m sorry, I thought—”
“No, you heard me right,” Woohyun says. “Come get drinks with me.”
Dongwoo isn’t really sure what to make of this. The flirting, that was one thing, but—he’d never expected this. This feels dangerously like actual interest, and that makes Dongwoo wary. “Is this a work thing?” he asks, feeling a little overturned. “Are you going to take me out for drinks and try to seduce me into letting your company advertise for mine?”
“Not entirely.” Woohyun’s smile is still charming, but it looks genuine. “I’m not asking you to let me wine and dine you. Well—the wine part, maybe. I just meant something casual. I’m sorry, did I overstep—?”
“No, no,” Dongwoo says, waving it off even though he’s not sure exactly why. He should be saying no. This is exactly how it started last time, too. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to attack your... intentions, or anything. I’d like that a lot.”
“Really?” There’s more surprise in Woohyun’s voice than Dongwoo finds strictly appropriate. Still. “That’s—wow, great. I’ll give you my number—there’s a bar near my apartment that has really good Friday drink deals.”
What have I gotten myself into? “Sure,” Dongwoo says. “But first, get out of my masterpiece.”
Dongwoo meets Woohyun at the bar, dressed down from the suit he’d worn to work into something more casual—Woohyun had said jeans were fine, so that’s what Dongwoo is wearing, jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and a sweatshirt. It’s a little weird to have someone else see him like this, someone he’s not that close with; normally the only people who see him dressed down are his parents and his best friends.
At least Woohyun looks similarly casual in jeans and a cardigan. “Sorry if it was a little hard to find,” he apologizes, bowing a little as he approaches Dongwoo. “I always forget how hard this place is to see from the street until I bring someone else.”
“It’s fine,” Dongwoo says. “Really, I only missed it once before I figured it out.”
“That’s better than me,” Woohyun says. “The first time I came here I walked by it probably... ten or eleven times before I worked up the courage to ask someone.”
The bar is set back, away from the street, which turns out to be a blessing—it’s cozy, not too busy, the kind of place Dongwoo could easily see himself relaxing. The bartender waves when Woohyun comes in, so Dongwoo figures he must be a regular, or something. “Here, let’s take a booth,” Woohyun says, gesturing to the comfortable-looking booths against the wall. “It’s quieter that way.”
Woohyun buys him a rum and Coke and refuses to let him pay, despite Dongwoo’s protests. It’s frustrating, how polite and charming and thoughtful Woohyun is—it makes it hard for Dongwoo to think of this as anything but a date, and the way Woohyun pays attention to him doesn’t help matters either.
“Is this how you treat your clients when you take them out for drinks?” Dongwoo asks, swirling his alcohol around its glass. Three drinks later, he’s feeling a little warm and tingly, his tongue a little looser. It’s easier to smile. “Like they’re a date?”
He’s not sure why he’s fixating on Woohyun taking his clients out right now. Maybe he just needs to know where he stands.
“No,” Woohyun says, laughing in a way that suggests he’s a little tipsy, too. “I take them out for lunch and the company foots the bill, and we make conversation about everything other than work. It’s not polite to talk about work during a meal.”
“Really?” Dongwoo asks.
“Yeah, really.” Woohyun leans back against the booth, arms crossed, looking incredibly suave despite the alcohol flushing his cheeks. “So we don’t talk about work ‘til the meal’s done, but after the plates are gone then the big guns come out.” He leans forward again, for dramatic effect, Dongwoo supposes, and braces his elbows on the table. “It’s a little like seducing someone, actually.”
The way that Woohyun’s mouth shapes the word seducing should be illegal. “How so?” Dongwoo asks, his voice a little weak as he leans forward as well.
“In acquisitions, it’s all about convincing the client that being with you will be the best they’ve ever had,” Woohyun says. His voice is pitched so low that Dongwoo has to strain to hear it. “That you can do things for them that nobody else can. If they agree to come with you, what you have in store will blow their mind, so much so that they’ll never want to leave.” He takes a sip of his drink, and Dongwoo watches as his throat moves. “You see?”
Oh yeah, I see. “And that’s where you come in?” Dongwoo asks, grasping for something that doesn’t make him feel weak-kneed and helplessly aroused. “You seem like you’d be good at that—” No, wrong. “I mean, you’re charismatic enough for it,” he finishes, then takes a gulp of his drink, trying not to meet Woohyun’s eyes.
“That’s where I come in,” Woohyun says with a nod of confirmation, sitting back a little. With more space between them, it’s easier for Dongwoo to breathe. “And in case you were curious—I’m good.”
Dongwoo chokes on his drink. “What?”
“At acquisitions,” Woohyun clarifies, though the smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth indicates that he knows exactly what Dongwoo had been thinking. “I’m good at acquisitions.”
“I’ll bet,” Dongwoo says. His glass is empty now, unfortunately, and his head feels light, like he can’t quite get enough oxygen. There’s a point of heat between them that’s pulling all the air out of the room. He should turn back now, should thank Woohyun for the drinks and claim heavy workload, sick sister, something—anything to get out, because if he doesn’t get out now, Dongwoo doesn’t think he’ll get out unscathed.
“Dongwoo-ssi,” Woohyun says. His hands are spread out on the table. He has nice fingers. “Let’s get out of here.”
So in that sense, at least Dongwoo sees it coming.
“And go where?” Dongwoo asks, even though he thinks he knows the answer.
As expected: “My apartment isn’t far,” Woohyun says, “if you want to take me up on the wine offer.”
I should say no. “Sure,” Dongwoo says, and decides he’ll regret it later.
Woohyun’s apartment is very chic, a one-bedroom with tall windows and a view of downtown Seoul that Dongwoo suspects he pays more for than Dongwoo makes in a month. Hoya’s apartment had been a shared two-bedroom in Yongsan that was always in need of repair—but why is he thinking about Hoya right now? Ah, yes—because he’s about to make the same mistake again.
“Here,” Woohyun says, handing Dongwoo a glass of red wine. Dongwoo glances at the way Woohyun’s fingers cradle the glass and spares a moment to be proud: Woohyun’s skin really does go well with red. “To... I don’t know. ‘New suits’ seems extremely... uninspired.”
Dongwoo laughs, more of a chuckle than anything. “Not very interesting, either, since new suits are my living.” But he can’t think of anything better, so instead he suggests, “Let’s just toast privately and drink.”
“All right,” Woohyun says. They clink glasses. Dongwoo thinks, To at least being aware that you’re about to fuck up bigtime.
The wine is good, though Dongwoo’s no connoisseur, but his mind isn’t really on it, and from the corner of his eye he can tell that Woohyun’s isn’t, either. “Woohyun-ssi,” Dongwoo says, swirling the wine around his glass. “When did you first know that you liked men?”
“Me?” Woohyun says. “I don’t know. High school, I guess.” He looks over and raises an eyebrow at Dongwoo. “Why?”
“Just curious,” Dongwoo says. At least he knows that when Woohyun inevitably fucks him and then leaves him, it won’t be because he thinks he might actually be straight and just confused. That makes this much more straightforward.
He takes another sip of wine and then sets the glass down on the side table to his left. “Woohyun-ssi,” he says again, turning to look at Woohyun. “Why did you bring me up here?”
For a second he thinks Woohyun is going to deny it, but then Woohyun smiles, loose and easy. “I wasn’t very subtle, was I?” he asks. “Though to be fair, I wasn’t really trying to be.”
That much had been apparent. Woohyun is the type to know exactly what he’s doing, all the time—that much, Dongwoo has been able to work out. “You were subtle up until the ‘acquisitions is like seduction’ part,” Dongwoo says, stepping closer and lifting the wineglass out of Woohyun’s hand. “After that, not really.”
Woohyun lets him take the glass, watches him set it on the table next to Dongwoo’s own. “Then I guess you don’t mind,” he says, and leans in for a kiss.
Woohyun’s mouth is sharp with tannins and spicy with the whiskey he’d been drinking at the bar, and he kisses Dongwoo thoroughly, until they’re pressed body-to-body with Dongwoo’s hands curled in the front of Woohyun’s shirt and Woohyun’s arms around Dongwoo’s back. The haze of arousal is back, pushing away the remainder of Dongwoo’s reservations—he makes a soft, breathless sound when Woohyun bites his lower lip, and presses his hips forward. “Impatient,” Woohyun murmurs against his mouth, bringing one hand up to drag his fingers down the front of Dongwoo’s pants, prompting a hiss.
“You started this,” Dongwoo says, dragging his fingernails along the nape of Woohyun’s neck. “You finish it.”
“And fiesty,” Woohyun adds. “I like you, Jang Dongwoo-ssi.”
By the time they make it to the bedroom, Dongwoo’s sweatshirt and shirt have been discarded on the living room floor, and Woohyun’s cardigan is hanging from a doorknob and his shirt on the hallway carpet. Woohyun’s body is, unsurprisingly, just as fit as Dongwoo expected it to be, yet somehow more yielding—he keeps doing things like catching Dongwoo’s hands from where they’re working at Woohyun’s fly, things like kissing the insides of his wrists all the way up to his elbow until Dongwoo has to look away because it’s making him blush. It’s too caring for a one-night stand. This is not quite as planned.
“How do you want me?” Dongwoo asks when they’re naked and sprawled out on Woohyun’s bed, touching in all of the places they can be.
“What’s do you want?” Woohyun rolls away to hunt in his drawer, comes back up with a half-empty bottle of lube and a condom. “You tell me, Dongwoo.”
The sound of his name with no suffix is startlingly intimate, enough to leave Dongwoo wordless for a moment until he remembers how to talk. “I want your mouth,” he says, shifting so he’s straddling Woohyun’s hips. The slide of his cock against Woohyun’s makes him feel like his head is going to explode, but in a good way, a sensory overload way.
“Fine with me,” Woohyun says, exhaling one long shuddering breath as Dongwoo rolls his hips again. “Stop that, let me—”
He fingers Dongwoo slowly, so slowly that it would be teasing if Woohyun didn’t seem so careful. It’s far from Dongwoo’s first time doing this, but he can’t bring himself to tell Woohyun that three fingers won’t hurt, not when those fingers are pressed up against the tender insides of him in the most uncomfortably full, intimate way. “Woohyun,” he gasps when Woohyun’s fingertip brushes his prostate, and doesn’t miss the way that Woohyun shudders beneath him.
“Enough,” Dongwoo says, his grip tightening on Woohyun’s ribs. “God, you’re a cocktease.”
“It’s one of my charm points,” Woohyun says. He withdraws his fingers and shifts a little, scooting down and propping himself up against the pillows at the head of the bed. “Come here.”
Dongwoo scoots closer, straddling Woohyun’s stomach, and Woohyun leans forward to take Dongwoo’s cock in his mouth. This is one thing Hoya would never do, in the four months that he and Dongwoo were together—he would touch Dongwoo, would fuck him, but he would never go down on him. Maybe that should have been a sign that something was wrong, some part of Hoya that he could never convince was really into it—
Stop thinking right now, Dongwoo thinks, threading his fingers through Woohyun’s hair.
Woohyun’s good with his mouth, like Dongwoo had been expecting judging by the way he’d been kissing. His tongue traces along the vein at the bottom of Dongwoo’s cock, and he sucks, which draws a strangled cry from Dongwoo’s throat—and then Woohyun slides two fingers back into him, deep-throats him, and Dongwoo loses his senses altogether.
He’s not sure what he moans as Woohyun goes down on him, something filthy and lustful and wholly inappropriate, but he does know that when he comes, it’s with both hands in Woohyun’s hair and Woohyun’s name on his lips. “Sorry,” he gasps, trying to catch his breath and loosening his fingers. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Come down my throat?” Woohyun asks. His voice sounds ragged, raw, and it’s enough to send another shiver of lust up Dongwoo’s spine. “I meant for you to.”
“God.” Dongwoo shakes his head and pushes sweat-dampened hair off of his forehead. “Then I guess I take the apology back.”
Woohyun laughs, and Dongwoo slumps down a little, pausing when he feels the insistent heat of Woohyun’s erection. “Ah,” he says, sitting back until he can feel the head of Woohyun’s cock against his entrance. “Do you want—?”
“You’re okay?” Woohyun asks.
Dongwoo nods. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, reaching for the condom and tearing the packaging open. “Kinda want you inside me anyway.”
Woohyun fucks him slowly, too, but this time it’s less out of consideration and more just because Woohyun is an awful human who likes to watch Dongwoo squirm. He’s still post-orgasmically sensitive, and the slide of Woohyun’s cock into his body, the sharp pressure forcing him open, is almost more than he can take—so of course Woohyun makes it last, makes him feel every inch of Woohyun as he thrusts.
Even without getting hard again, even without the goal of orgasm to work towards, Dongwoo still enjoys it. More than anything, he enjoys the solid presence of Woohyun’s body above his and the way that Woohyun’s skin feels against his. Woohyun hooks one of Dongwoo’s legs over his shoulder, and Dongwoo can feel the muscles of his back flex and relax. Woohyun must be stronger than he looks.
“Okay?” Woohyun asks. He’s braced over Dongwoo, sweat sticking his hair to his forehead.
“Keep going,” Dongwoo says, reaching up to push Woohyun’s hair out of his face. “Feels good.”
So Woohyun does, and when he comes, he turns his face into Dongwoo’s knee and stifles his moan against Dongwoo’s skin, keeps his face there until the aftershocks have subsided. When Dongwoo’s leg slips off of Woohyun’s shoulder, Woohyun pulls out to dispose of the condom, then flops back onto the bed, half on top of Dongwoo. “Mmgh,” he says.
“Okay,” Dongwoo says. He runs his fingers through Woohyun’s hair once, then pauses, remembering his place. Now that the glow is fading, this is beginning to seem like a bad idea again. “Do you know where my boxers are?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Woohyun says, mouth pressed to Dongwoo’s collarbone. “You can sleep here. If you want.”
It’s a tempting offer, because Dongwoo is lazy with pleasure and feeling sort of lackadaisical, but on the other hand, he knows this feeling won’t last longer than the night. Still—Woohyun is very warm, and close, and comforting. “Okay,” Dongwoo agrees, giving in to the temptation to put his fingers back in Woohyun’s hair. “I guess I can do that.”
“Can shower tomorrow,” Woohyun says, tugging the sheet up to cover them. The room smells like sex, but Dongwoo can’t really bring himself to mind. “Sleep now.”
“Lazy,” Dongwoo says, but there’s no real chiding in his voice. He lets his eyes fall shut and, lulled by the even keel of Woohyun’s breathing beside him, allows himself to fall asleep.
Early the next morning Dongwoo slips out from under Woohyun’s arm and dresses in the dark, haphazard. He gathers his clothes one by one—his boxers from the chair by the desk, his pants from halfway under the bed, his shirt and sweatshirt from where they’d been abandoned in the living room. The socks, Dongwoo figures, are a lost cause, mostly because he doesn’t want to stick around to find them.
Dongwoo hasn’t taken a real walk of shame since college, but somehow, Dongwoo can’t bring himself to stay and wait for Woohyun to kick him out.
It’s not even that he’s deluding himself, thinking that they have something more than they do. They fucked—that was all. Woohyun had never alluded to anything more, had made it plain to Dongwoo that he wanted him in bed—and that was all Dongwoo knew. But he wanted more. That was the problem: Woohyun had been tender and gentle and—he’d fucking let Dongwoo come down his throat, for God’s sake, what was Dongwoo supposed to do with that?
So he lets himself out of the apartment and takes the bus home, showers until his skin is pink and raw, and then falls into bed to sleep until he can’t anymore.
“Okay, what’s wrong,” Sungyeol says, pulling a stool up next to Dongwoo and looking down at where Dongwoo is doodling aliens on his sketchpad. “You haven’t drawn anything besides cartoons in three days. Last I saw you were back to designing, so what went wrong?”
Dongwoo pinches the bridge of his nose. “...I slept with him,” he says.
“You—God, hyung.” Sungyeol heaves a sigh, copying the nose-pinching gesture. “Why would you? You said this wasn’t like last time—”
“I know what I said.” Dongwoo scribbles over the alien’s feelers and then drops his pencil. “He’s—it was just a one-night thing, okay? It isn’t like last time. I never had any... delusions about that.”
“Then why are you so depressed?” Sungyeol demands.
Dongwoo stays silent for a long moment, but Sungyeol just looks at him, at once demanding and understanding—Sungyeol is hard to lie to, he always has been. It’s why Dongwoo likes him so much. “Because I wish it was,” he admits, sighing even as the words leave his mouth. How cliche. “Like last time, I mean. He’s—I mean, he’s way out of my league, but he’s something else.”
Sungyeol reaches out and pats his back, rubbing slow circles between his shoulderblades. “Hyung,” he says quietly, “nobody’s out of your league. I mean it,” he continues at Dongwoo’s disbelieving snort. “Hyung is jjang. I’m not just saying this as your best friend, this is totally objective.”
Dongwoo laughs. “Sungyeol-ah,” he says, “thanks, but I’ll be okay. Seriously, I just need a couple days and I’ll be fine.”
It doesn’t really look like he’s convinced Sungyeol at all, but thankfully Sungyeol is willing to let it drop. “Do you want me to do his last fitting?” he asks instead, looking back down at Dongwoo’s sketchbook. “In case things get awkward? I’ll be in on that day anyway...”
“I’m gonna be professional about this,” Dongwoo says, forcing decisiveness into his voice even though he’s not entirely sure he believes it himself. “I’ll just do the last fitting and he’ll go be the best man and we can put this whole situation behind us. I really have to stop getting involved with clients, though, seriously...”
“Let me amend,” Sungyeol says. “Hyung is jjang except for his really bad taste in men.”
“Depressing because it’s true,” Dongwoo agrees, and goes back to doodling.
When Woohyun shows up for his final fitting, Dongwoo can immediately tell that something is not going to go as planned. Woohyun is silent, almost stonily so, which is an alarming change from his usual charming, talkative personality. Dongwoo almost wants to ask what’s wrong, but somehow he thinks he knows, and—well. It’s a can of worms.
He hands the suit to Woohyun and leaves him to change, but there’s nothing to keep him busy—no sketching to do, no pins to get. So he just lingers awkwardly outside until the sounds stop, and then he knocks on the doorframe and says, “Ready?”
What Dongwoo is not expecting is for Woohyun to reach out from the curtain and haul Dongwoo inside by his sleeve. “Sorry,” Woohyun says, though Dongwoo can tell he’s not really at all. “I didn’t get the memo that said we were supposed to pretend like nothing happened and carry on.”
“You didn’t?” Dongwoo says. “I mean—what?”
“I woke up and you were gone,” Woohyun says. He’s keeping his voice low—he probably ran into Sungyeol on his way in—but Dongwoo can tell he’s upset. “I called you and you ignored it. I grew out of this shit in college, Dongwoo-ssi.”
Somehow, the suffix stings more than the words do. Dongwoo goes on the defensive. “I thought you made it pretty clear you just wanted sex and nothing more,” he says. “How was I supposed to know you wanted morning after cuddles, too?”
He’s being cruel, and he doesn’t mean to, but everything is fucked up right now—this isn’t how it was supposed to go. Woohyun wasn’t supposed to be angry, Dongwoo wasn’t supposed to feel stupid. This was supposed to be simple, straightforward—a one-night stand, uncomplicated by emotions and hurt feelings. Nobody was supposed to care.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Woohyun asks. It sounds like something between a demand and a plea, some of the anger softening out of him. “Did you really think I was that much of an asshole, that I’d want you to come over and sleep with me and then leave before I got up?”
The problem is that now that Dongwoo thinks about it, that’s not how Woohyun had been, not really. He’d been suave, sure, and charismatic, and aware of how he could manipulate people, but—save for the time in the bar—he’d never manipulated Dongwoo. He had never been anything other than sweet to Dongwoo, actually. And still, Dongwoo had assumed the worst of him.
“Jesus,” Dongwoo says, the beginnings of a headache pinching behind his eyes. “No. I just—it’s a habit.”
“What, running out after a night like that?” Woohyun’s brow furrows. “Is your taste in men really that awful?”
Dongwoo thinks about what Sungyeol had said and laughs, though not entirely in humor. “Apparently,” he says.
“Hyung?” Sungyeol’s voice, from outside the curtain. He sounds concerned. “Is everything okay?”
Dongwoo looks at Woohyun for a long moment, then says, “Yeah, everything’s fine, Sungyeol-ah.”
When Sungyeol’s footsteps retreat, Dongwoo shakes his head and says, “Then I’m sorry I left. I still can’t really work out how someone like you would be interested in someone like me as more than just a one-night stand.”
“You’re an idiot,” Woohyun says, reaching out and putting both hands on Dongwoo’s shoulders. “I think you’re adorable. And charming, and funny, and you have the best laugh I’ve ever heard. Should I keep going?”
“Please don’t,” Dongwoo says, resisting the urge to actually hide his face in his hands. “You don’t even know me, Woohyun. This is the fourth time we’ve met.”
“Well, you felt me up on the second time and we slept together on the third,” Woohyun points out, “so I’m pretty sure we’re not doing this in any order that you or I have ever heard of. Just stop second-guessing everything.”
They’re quiet for a moment. “Okay,” Dongwoo says after a moment. “Just—promise me you’re not going to suddenly realize you’re actually straight a few months down the line.”
Woohyun raises his eyebrows, then shakes his head. “And give up sex with you?” he says. “Are you kidding?”
“Hey, my ex did it,” Dongwoo says. “I’m just saying.”
“Don’t be dumb.” Woohyun ruffles his hair, then turns around and looks in the mirror. “Now tell me how hot I look in this suit.”
The wedding is a complete success, and Woohyun’s speech brings half the reception to tears. Dongwoo knows because he’s there—a last-minute (yet somehow indispensable) addition to the list as Woohyun’s +1. Soyu had been thrilled to add someone on Woohyun’s behalf—”We’ve been trying to get him to pay attention to something other than work for years,” she had told Dongwoo when he was in the dressing room, fixing a hem-related emergency on the bridal gown. “I’m not going to ask what you did, bu please keep doing it.”
In the here and now, Woohyun finds Dongwoo at his table and sits down, reaching out to interlace his fingers with Dongwoo’s. “Good?” he asks, reaching for a glass of water. His waistcoat is already unbuttoned and his tie already loosened—if they weren’t in public...
“You were great,” Dongwoo reassures him, squeezing his hand. “You and Hyorin-ssi looked like quite a pair up there.”
“Soyu’s mom asked me if I was going to be her date to the reception,” Woohyun says, sitting back in his chair and smiling. He really does look every inch the enthusiastic best man, and Dongwoo privately congratulates himself on a job well done. “I guess we matched pretty well.”
“What did you tell her?”
Woohyun laughs and leans over to kiss Dongwoo, soft and lingering. “Told her I had a date already,” he says, “and that I don’t think there’s anybody I match with better.”
“Cheesy,,” Dongwoo announces, in between kisses. “Cheddar. Gouda. Swiss. Brie. Tell me how I wound up with you again?”
“You fell for my dashing good looks and incredibly charismatic personality,” Woohyun says, stretching his free arm out along the back of Dongwoo’s chair. “Said you couldn’t live without me, that I should make you mine immediately. Something like that.”
“Uh huh,” Dongwoo agrees, laughing. “Something like that.”
--------------------
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Giving credit where credit is due: I don't think this fic would have been possible without this incredibly informative post by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hackthis. Also, I guess thanks to whoever invented Mad Men, because that show is literally the extent of my knowledge about the advertising industry (THEREFORE I APOLOGIZE IF I GOT ANYTHING WRONG OTL).
As always, constrictive criticism is welcome!
i just need to take some time to go figure out my life.
guess it's been a long time i don't even know
guess we fell in love when we tried to take it slow
oh i can even tell you by the way we touch
there's a lot of things that are dangerous
and i just wanna see if i can make it on my own
all my friends are telling me i'm different from before
well maybe i just need a little space to think
spend some more time doing my own things
jhameel, "white lie"
BESPOKE
dongwoo/woohyun
Dongwoo comes out of the back room with a mouthful of pins and almost swallows them all when he sees the man standing in the middle of the shop. They have a bell that’s supposed to chime when someone comes in the door, but Dongwoo’s fairly sure that Sungyeol broke it last week when he was fixing the display in the window—well, anyway. He’ll add that to his list of things to do, but for now he just takes the pins out of his mouth, being careful not to stab himself, and says, “I hope you haven’t been waiting long, I’m sorry, I was just—”
The man waves away the apology. “Only a couple minutes,” he says. He has a charming smile. “It gave me a chance to admire.”
Dongwoo stabs the pins into the nearest pincushion and dusts his hands off. “What can I help you with?” he asks, trying for cool professionalism despite his mild embarrassment. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“Yeah, actually.” The man rubs the back of his head, his grin turning a little sheepish. “My best friend’s getting married and I’m the best man, and I haven’t owned a suit since I was seventeen, so... I figured I was about due for a new one.”
It seems like a bad idea to take a stab at the man’s current age, even though he looks like he can’t be older than twenty-six. “Well, you’re probably right about that,” Dongwoo says instead, unbuttoning his sleeves so he can begin to roll them up. “You’re not wearing the same suit as the groomsmen?”
“I am the groomsmen,” the man says. “It’s a pretty small ceremony, just me and one girl as the maid of honor. Sunggyu and Soyu aren't really big on the whole... pomp and circumstance thing.”
“Ah.” That makes much more sense, Dongwoo thinks. Well, relatively speaking, anyway. “When’s the wedding?”
“Two months,” the man says. “It’s cutting it a little close, but the bride was having a hard time picking colors.”
Dongwoo laughs, mostly at the idea of two months being ‘cutting it close’—he’s done worse, in the years he’s had this job. “I’m pretty sure it won’t be a problem,” he says, sticking his hand out and bowing with the man takes it. “I’m Jang Dongwoo.”
“Nam Woohyun,” the man says, returning the bow.
“Okay, Woohyun-ssi,” Dongwoo says. “Uh, we could have you stand for a fitting today, or—is it more convenient if you come back later?”
Woohyun shrugs, leaning against the counter and offering Dongwoo a half-smile. “You’re the boss,” he says. “I’ve never done this before.”
That’s not particularly surprising either. Dongwoo nods, a little more confident—this is his realm, after all. After seeing so many customers who are dead set on what they want and refuse to consider Dongwoo’s suggestions, having someone who’s willing to let him explain is extremely refreshing. “Okay, do you want me to walk you through it?” Woohyun nods. “Well, there are steps... the first two are picking fabrics and taking measurements. I usually take measurements first, but it’s kind of up to you what order we do that in.”
“Picking fabrics?” Woohyun asks, eyeing the bolts of fabric stacked high in shelves against the far wall. “Man, what have I gotten myself into.”
“Hey,” Dongwoo says, pretending to be offended. “It’s not all that bad.” He crosses the shop floor to pull down a bolt of fabric, and after a moment’s thought, two more. “You have to pick at least your suiting and your lining. How often are you planning on wearing this suit? I’m guessing more than once, or you wouldn’t bother with bespoke.”
“It’s promotion season at work,” Woohyun says, leaning on the table and absently fingering the selvage of one of the bolts Dongwoo puts down. “I figure if I’m gonna have to impress a lot of head honchos, I may as well look good doing it.”
Dongwoo laughs. “Probably smart,” he says. “So you’ll probably want something wool, and more durable if you don’t want to have to replace it every year. If you were the type to get your suits remade again and again I’d recommend something with a higher thread count, but—well, that’s kinda jargon.”
“I trust your judgment,” Woohyun says. He looks up at Dongwoo, smiling again, and Dongwoo is once again struck by the realization that Woohyun is very attractive—dark eyes, strong arms, long fingers. He would be Dongwoo’s type, if he were to actually have a type beyond 450-thread-count superfine Merino wool. “I’m not going to wear it out, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good.” Dongwoo takes a step back, putting some space between him and Woohyun, and glances down at the table full of bolts of fabric. “What are the colors?”
“The colors?”
“That the bride picked. The ones she had trouble with.”
“Ah, right.” Woohyun sighs, the same kind of ‘I don’t understand any of this but I’m going along with it because I’m the best man’ sigh that Dongwoo has heard hundreds of times before, and digs a swatch card out of his wallet. “Here. The maid of honor’s dress is made out of this. Or will be, I guess.”
Dongwoo takes the card and examines it—the swatch attached is a silk charmeuse, high quality as far as he can tell, in a rich red color. “Pretty bold,” he comments absently, fingering the piece of fabric.
Woohyun laughs. “Yeah, Soyu’s like that,” he says, obviously affectionate. “Though I think Hyorin—the maid of honor, that is. I think she had some hand in choosing the color, too.”
“Hmm.” Dongwoo studies the fabric, then looks up at Woohyun, brow furrowed. He contemplates Woohyun’s complexion, then takes a step or two back and contemplates his body structure—he’s tall and fairly thin, but fit. The kind of body that any tailor would be thrilled to work with. “Okay,” he says after a moment, envisioning charcoal grey, a white shirt, a waistcoat made of the dark red silk in his hands. Woohyun has the kind of complexion that would go well with red. “Okay, I think this will work. Actually, it’s definitely gonna work.”
“You sound confident,” Woohyun says, shifting a little under Dongwoo’s scrutiny.
“Of course I do,” Dongwoo says, breaking his concentration to beam at Woohyun. “I’m the best in this city. But you already knew that, right?”
Woohyun returns his smile. “Yeah, I knew,” he says. “That’s why I’m here.”
Later that night, Sungyeol drops by the shop to pick up some paperwork he’d left behind and finds Dongwoo bent over the counter, sketching furiously. “Inspired?” Sungyeol asks, whacking Dongwoo lightly on the back of the head with a rolled-up catalogue. “I haven’t seen you design in months.”
“You could say that.” Dongwoo taps the end of his pencil against his sketchbook and sits up. “New project, that’s all.”
Sungyeol looks at him, then down at the sketchbook, then up at Dongwoo again. “He’s that hot, huh?”
Dongwoo throws an eraser at Sungyeol, who catches it easily, of course. “It’s not that,” Dongwoo protests, and at Sungyeol’s disbelieving look, revises: “It’s not that entirely. He just has a great... body. A great, uh, frame.”
“A great body,” Sungyeol repeats. “I see.”
With a frustrated groan, Dongwoo puts his head down on the counter. “Okay, so it’s mostly that he’s really good-looking,” he admits, his voice muffled into his still-rolled-up sleeve. “And I have to get intimate with his inseam in a few days.”
“I can take the job if you want,” Sungyeol begins, but Dongwoo cuts him off.
“I’ll do it,” he says. “I’ll just complain about it a lot.”
“How’s that any different from normal?” Sungyeol says, and laughs when Dongwoo can’t find another eraser to throw at him. “Hey, I’m kidding. Just... be careful. After last time...” Sungyeol shrugs, a little too casual to be real. “Anyway, nice to see you drawing again. Let me see them tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” Dongwoo says, catching his eraser when Sungyeol tosses it back. “Night.”
When Sungyeol is gone and the shop is quiet again, Dongwoo looks down at the sketches spread out in front of him. He’s not sure exactly what it was that caused the sudden rush of inspiration, besides a desire to see Woohyun in a suit, but in front of him are at least six designs—three-piece, two-piece, narrow cut, tapered, double breasted... It’s more than Dongwoo’s drawn at one time in months.
“Get ahold of yourself, Jang Dongwoo,” he commands himself, his voice too loud in the quiet shop. “You are not letting this happen again.”
Nine months ago there had been another customer, just as handsome and charming, and Dongwoo had fallen and fallen hard. Hoya had been great, and for four months Dongwoo had been deliriously happy, until Hoya had a crisis of sexuality—heterosexuality, as it were—and left him with little more than goodbye. Suffice to say it hadn’t been an experience that Dongwoo is keen to repeat.
With a sigh, Dongwoo shuffles his sketches back into order and tucks them into his book, leaving them under the counter for Woohyun’s fitting the following Tuesday. If he was going to get Woohyun into a suit, it was going to be the best damn suit that Woohyun had ever owned, Dongwoo’s personal feelings be damned.
“So how do you even get into this kind of business?” Woohyun asked, obediently raising his right arm at Dongwoo’s request. He was talkative, as Dongwoo had discovered, but more interested in asking questions than talking about himself. “I mean, is this like a fashion school thing, or...”
“I didn’t go to fashion school,” Dongwoo says, talking around the pen in his teeth. “My dad—keep your arm up, please—my dad owned this place before me, so... I don’t know, I started drawing using my dad’s old croquis when I was eleven.”
“What the hell is a croakey?”
“Croquis,” Dongwoo corrects, laughing. “They’re like... figures, pre-drawn figures that I trace over to design. It saves me the trouble of re-drawing a person every time.”
“Oh.” Woohyun lets his arm fall when Dongwoo pulls the measuring tape away. “So does your dad still work here?”
“Mm, no,” Dongwoo says. He writes down the measurement, then pauses, tapping his pen against the notepad. “He died a couple of years ago. Now it’s just me and Sungyeol—the other tailor.”
“I’m sorry,” Woohyun says. Dongwoo gets the feeling that he’s not only apologizing for the faux pas of asking, but also for the event itself—and beyond that, Dongwoo gets the feeling that he means it. It’s an unusual, too-intimate feeling; Dongwoo looks away. I am not letting this happen again.
“It’s fine,” he says, busying himself checking which measurements he still needs. “This isn’t very fair, though, you know all about me and I only know your name.”
It sounds so much like a come-on that Dongwoo winces, but Woohyun just laughs. “I’m not really that interesting,” he says, shrugging. “I work in advertising, which basically means I work in charming the hell out of people so they agree to let us take their money. Hence the suit—gotta look good to impress the higher-ups.”
“You seem charming enough,” Dongwoo says, sort of off-the-cuff, and then quickly follows up with, “but a good suit never hurt anything.” Good save.
Or not. The smile is back, the same sexy half-smirk that Woohyun had been wearing when he’d first come into the shop. “You think I’m charming?” he asks, and smiles wider when Dongwoo tries to make some excuse. “I’m flattered. But it is kind of in the job description, so...”
Dongwoo ducks his head, certain that he’s blushing to the very tips of his ears, and focuses his attention on taking Woohyun’s waist measurement. “So you could say you fake it until you make it, professionally,” he says.
Woohyun’s silent for a second, and when Dongwoo looks up, he’s watching Dongwoo with a curiously amused expression. “Yeah, you could say that,” he says. “I’m a professional faker.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Dongwoo says, rushing to apologize, but Woohyun just waves him off.
“I’m not offended,” he says. “It’s funny, because that’s how I’ve always thought of my job, but you’re the first one to say it to my face.” When Woohyun smiles, it’s wider, realer than the half-smile he was wearing before, and Dongwoo feels his heart sink a little. I’m screwed. “The problem is that ‘Nam Woohyun, professional faker’ doesn’t really have the same ring to it as ‘Nam Woohyun, acquisitions manager’.”
“That’s true,” Dongwoo says, fighting a losing battle not to smile. “Project manager does sound much more hoity-toity.”
“Trust me, in the advertising business it’s all about—uh,” Woohyun says as Dongwoo drops to his knees in front of him. “About... uh, seeming hoity-toity. What are you doing?”
“Hip and seat measurements, inseams and outseams, thigh and crotch,” Dongwoo says, checking his notes. “Then I’ll get your full back measurement and we’ll be done. Why?”
“Just curious.” Woohyun shakes his head. “Anyway, don’t get me wrong, I like my job. I just like making fun of it more.”
Dongwoo grins, wrapping the measuring tape around Woohyun’s hips. “That’s good, though,” he says. “My ex-boyfriend always used to say that was how he stayed sane, making fun of his job.”
As soon as the words leave his mouth he realizes that he’s said something stupid—that’s not the kind of thing you say to a client, ever, and Dongwoo should know better. He does know better, and he learned the hard way. Dongwoo freezes, prepared to apologize, to run if need be, but Woohyun just chuckles under his breath and says, “So did mine. Except I think he actually hated his job more than he pretended to.”
Dongwoo laughs, a little surprised but mostly relieved. “Sometimes I feel like there are more people in the world who hate their jobs than people who love them,” he says, scribbling down the numbers in adrenaline-shaky handwriting. “Okay, the inseam measurement might be a little—awkward, but try not to move or it’ll come out wrong and be uncomfortable.”
“I’m a statue,” Woohyun promises.
That’s what everyone thinks, Dongwoo resists the urge to say, and instead just smiles and slides his hand up the inside of Woohyun’s thigh to hold the tape measure at the top of his leg. It’s sort of gratifying, because Woohyun has been making him flushed and nervous for the entire fitting, and now it’s Dongwoo’s turn to return the favor—he’s professional about it, of course, but he can feel the way Woohyun tenses up under his hands. “Don’t move,” he warns, crouching to read his measurement.
“Not moving.” Woohyun, to his credit, doesn’t actually move, though Dongwoo’s pretty sure he’d like to. “This is all very intimate, isn’t it,” he comments when Dongwoo pulls the measuring tape away to write down the number.
“Woohyun-ssi,” Dongwoo says, looking up at him and, against his better judgment, grasping at the chance to tease a little. “By the time we’re done here I’m going to have memorized pretty much every inch of your body. So... yeah, I’d say so.”
There’s a long pause, and then Woohyun smiles that kind of flirtatious, slow smile that Dongwoo imagines is his all-kill when he’s wooing clients. “I can deal with that,” he says.
Dongwoo sighs inwardly. He’s really, really screwed.
Objectively speaking, the work that Dongwoo does on Woohyun’s suit is some of the best he’s ever done. In the end they’d agreed on a charcoal grey suiting with a lighter, silver-grey lining—they’d toyed briefly with the idea of sewing the lining in the same color as the waistcoat, the red that Soyu had chosen, but in the end Dongwoo had vetoed it under the assessment that if Woohyun was going to be wearing the suit for work, it was probably a bad idea to have it be so flashy. The waistcoat, on the other hand, was meant to be flashy—Dongwoo had held the swatch of red silk up to Woohyun’s throat and immediately fell in love with the contrast against his skin, and so they hadn’t even really needed to discuss the logistics of that part.
The second fitting isn’t for another week, so Dongwoo takes care not to cut corners—he checks and re-checks measurements, places and re-places pins. It’s strange, how enthusiastic he feels about this when the last few months have been mostly full of apathy.
“Hyung, you’re designing again?” Sungjong asks. Dongwoo had needed thread and another button, and so had wound up at Sungjong’s counter at the fabric store, sketchbook in hand. “That’s great! Can I look?”
“Sure.” Dongwoo flips his sketchbook open so Sungjong can look at the drawings. “They’re a little messy, I wasn’t really paying attention to the details.”
“Hyung, they’re awesome,” Sungjong says, smiling up at Dongwoo. “I’m really glad you’re drawing again. Your designs are totally the best.”
“I bet you say that to all your customers.”
Sungjong affects hurt, and Dongwoo smiles and leans on the counter to look down at the sketchbook. “I’m glad, too, though,” he says after a second, looking at the mockup drawing of the suit that’s on his form at the shop. It should probably worry him more than it does, the fact that Woohyun—his client Woohyun, Dongwoo reminds himself forcefully—has the ability to inspire him this much, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get.
“Did hyung meet someone?” Sungjong asks. It’s a very innocent question (or as innocent as Lee Sungjong can get, anyway), but it still makes Dongwoo blush fiercely, and Sungjong squeaks and claps his hands once. “You did! Who is it? Hyung, that’s great!”
“I didn’t meet someone like... meet someone,” Dongwoo says sort of lamely, avoiding Sungjong’s eyes. “He’s a client. It’s not like that.”
“Oh,” Sungjong says, nodding sagely. “A client. That’s pretty scandalous, hyung.”
“I said it’s not like that!”
Sungjong just laughs and pushes Dongwoo’s sketchbook back across the counter. “Well, whatever it’s not like, I’m glad you’re designing again,” he says, pushing his bangs out of his eyes to give Dongwoo a real grin. “You’ve been kind of... basically gone for a while. I was starting to miss you.”
“We’ll see how long it lasts,” Dongwoo replies, unable to keep himself from smiling back.
By the time Woohyun came in that Friday for his second fitting, Dongwoo is pretty confident that this suit is going to be one of the best he ever created. Then again, looking good on the form was one thing, but looking good on a person—well, needless to say he’s a little nervous when he hands the suit over to Woohyun and waits for him to put it on. They have plenty of time until the wedding, and Dongwoo’s almost positive he didn’t mis-measure anything—but there’s still the irrational fear that it’ll hang wrong or look silly, and he’ll have to start over. It’s never happened, but that doesn’t stop him worrying.
Dongwoo busies himself getting pins and a marking pencil, and knocks on the doorframe when he hears the sounds of clothes rustling stop. “Okay?” he asks, pushing aside the curtain.
Ah. Yes, he’d been right.
There were minor improvements to be made, of course, and the fine details still have to be smoothed out, but Woohyun looks good. He looks really good—the trousers hug his legs, not in a too-tight way but in a damn-he-has-a-great-ass way, and the jacket emphasizes the set of his shoulders and the narrowness of his waist without clinging or pulling. “Wow,” Dongwoo says, coming around to look at Woohyun from the front. “I did a really good job on this one.”
“I’ll say,” Woohyun says. He fiddles with the cuffs of the jacket, shrugging his shoulders once or twice and looking at his own reflection. “I gotta say, the suit I owned when I was seventeen has nothing on this.”
“Well, obviously,” Dongwoo says. With about fifteen pins between his teeth, it’s hard to seem appropriately cocky, but he figures Woohyun gets what he means. “Seventeen-year-olds always look awkward in suits, it’s just a fact.”
“I was an incredibly suave seventeen-year-old,” Woohyun protests. Somehow, Dongwoo doesn’t find it terribly hard to believe.
Still, as Dongwoo kneels to start pinning seams and adjusting cuffs, he can’t help but watch Woohyun watching himself in the mirror. Despite everything that he knows about Woohyun and his personality—his charming smile, his sense of humor, the slightly self-deprecating way that he talks about his job—Dongwoo still thinks he looks a little... nervous, in a suit. Maybe not nervous. More just like he’s not used to this kind of thing, hasn’t quite learned how to make his body move inside that encasement.
It’s endearing, somehow. Well, then again, lately Dongwoo seems prone to thinking that just about everything Woohyun does is endearing.
Woohyun glances down and meets Dongwoo’s eyes, and Dongwoo blushes and returns to pinning. Inappropriate, to be undressing clients with his eyes while he’s supposed to be working—Dongwoo can feel the flush to the very tips of his ears, and is pretty sure Woohyun can see it to. Damn him for always wearing his heart on his sleeve, huh?
“Dongwoo-ssi,” Woohyun says suddenly. Dongwoo narrowly avoids stabbing him with a pin. “Come get drinks with me tonight.”
“Excuse me?” Certain that he’s heard wrong, Dongwoo drops a couple pins when he jerks his head up to look at Woohyun. “I’m sorry, I thought—”
“No, you heard me right,” Woohyun says. “Come get drinks with me.”
Dongwoo isn’t really sure what to make of this. The flirting, that was one thing, but—he’d never expected this. This feels dangerously like actual interest, and that makes Dongwoo wary. “Is this a work thing?” he asks, feeling a little overturned. “Are you going to take me out for drinks and try to seduce me into letting your company advertise for mine?”
“Not entirely.” Woohyun’s smile is still charming, but it looks genuine. “I’m not asking you to let me wine and dine you. Well—the wine part, maybe. I just meant something casual. I’m sorry, did I overstep—?”
“No, no,” Dongwoo says, waving it off even though he’s not sure exactly why. He should be saying no. This is exactly how it started last time, too. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to attack your... intentions, or anything. I’d like that a lot.”
“Really?” There’s more surprise in Woohyun’s voice than Dongwoo finds strictly appropriate. Still. “That’s—wow, great. I’ll give you my number—there’s a bar near my apartment that has really good Friday drink deals.”
What have I gotten myself into? “Sure,” Dongwoo says. “But first, get out of my masterpiece.”
Dongwoo meets Woohyun at the bar, dressed down from the suit he’d worn to work into something more casual—Woohyun had said jeans were fine, so that’s what Dongwoo is wearing, jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and a sweatshirt. It’s a little weird to have someone else see him like this, someone he’s not that close with; normally the only people who see him dressed down are his parents and his best friends.
At least Woohyun looks similarly casual in jeans and a cardigan. “Sorry if it was a little hard to find,” he apologizes, bowing a little as he approaches Dongwoo. “I always forget how hard this place is to see from the street until I bring someone else.”
“It’s fine,” Dongwoo says. “Really, I only missed it once before I figured it out.”
“That’s better than me,” Woohyun says. “The first time I came here I walked by it probably... ten or eleven times before I worked up the courage to ask someone.”
The bar is set back, away from the street, which turns out to be a blessing—it’s cozy, not too busy, the kind of place Dongwoo could easily see himself relaxing. The bartender waves when Woohyun comes in, so Dongwoo figures he must be a regular, or something. “Here, let’s take a booth,” Woohyun says, gesturing to the comfortable-looking booths against the wall. “It’s quieter that way.”
Woohyun buys him a rum and Coke and refuses to let him pay, despite Dongwoo’s protests. It’s frustrating, how polite and charming and thoughtful Woohyun is—it makes it hard for Dongwoo to think of this as anything but a date, and the way Woohyun pays attention to him doesn’t help matters either.
“Is this how you treat your clients when you take them out for drinks?” Dongwoo asks, swirling his alcohol around its glass. Three drinks later, he’s feeling a little warm and tingly, his tongue a little looser. It’s easier to smile. “Like they’re a date?”
He’s not sure why he’s fixating on Woohyun taking his clients out right now. Maybe he just needs to know where he stands.
“No,” Woohyun says, laughing in a way that suggests he’s a little tipsy, too. “I take them out for lunch and the company foots the bill, and we make conversation about everything other than work. It’s not polite to talk about work during a meal.”
“Really?” Dongwoo asks.
“Yeah, really.” Woohyun leans back against the booth, arms crossed, looking incredibly suave despite the alcohol flushing his cheeks. “So we don’t talk about work ‘til the meal’s done, but after the plates are gone then the big guns come out.” He leans forward again, for dramatic effect, Dongwoo supposes, and braces his elbows on the table. “It’s a little like seducing someone, actually.”
The way that Woohyun’s mouth shapes the word seducing should be illegal. “How so?” Dongwoo asks, his voice a little weak as he leans forward as well.
“In acquisitions, it’s all about convincing the client that being with you will be the best they’ve ever had,” Woohyun says. His voice is pitched so low that Dongwoo has to strain to hear it. “That you can do things for them that nobody else can. If they agree to come with you, what you have in store will blow their mind, so much so that they’ll never want to leave.” He takes a sip of his drink, and Dongwoo watches as his throat moves. “You see?”
Oh yeah, I see. “And that’s where you come in?” Dongwoo asks, grasping for something that doesn’t make him feel weak-kneed and helplessly aroused. “You seem like you’d be good at that—” No, wrong. “I mean, you’re charismatic enough for it,” he finishes, then takes a gulp of his drink, trying not to meet Woohyun’s eyes.
“That’s where I come in,” Woohyun says with a nod of confirmation, sitting back a little. With more space between them, it’s easier for Dongwoo to breathe. “And in case you were curious—I’m good.”
Dongwoo chokes on his drink. “What?”
“At acquisitions,” Woohyun clarifies, though the smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth indicates that he knows exactly what Dongwoo had been thinking. “I’m good at acquisitions.”
“I’ll bet,” Dongwoo says. His glass is empty now, unfortunately, and his head feels light, like he can’t quite get enough oxygen. There’s a point of heat between them that’s pulling all the air out of the room. He should turn back now, should thank Woohyun for the drinks and claim heavy workload, sick sister, something—anything to get out, because if he doesn’t get out now, Dongwoo doesn’t think he’ll get out unscathed.
“Dongwoo-ssi,” Woohyun says. His hands are spread out on the table. He has nice fingers. “Let’s get out of here.”
So in that sense, at least Dongwoo sees it coming.
“And go where?” Dongwoo asks, even though he thinks he knows the answer.
As expected: “My apartment isn’t far,” Woohyun says, “if you want to take me up on the wine offer.”
I should say no. “Sure,” Dongwoo says, and decides he’ll regret it later.
Woohyun’s apartment is very chic, a one-bedroom with tall windows and a view of downtown Seoul that Dongwoo suspects he pays more for than Dongwoo makes in a month. Hoya’s apartment had been a shared two-bedroom in Yongsan that was always in need of repair—but why is he thinking about Hoya right now? Ah, yes—because he’s about to make the same mistake again.
“Here,” Woohyun says, handing Dongwoo a glass of red wine. Dongwoo glances at the way Woohyun’s fingers cradle the glass and spares a moment to be proud: Woohyun’s skin really does go well with red. “To... I don’t know. ‘New suits’ seems extremely... uninspired.”
Dongwoo laughs, more of a chuckle than anything. “Not very interesting, either, since new suits are my living.” But he can’t think of anything better, so instead he suggests, “Let’s just toast privately and drink.”
“All right,” Woohyun says. They clink glasses. Dongwoo thinks, To at least being aware that you’re about to fuck up bigtime.
The wine is good, though Dongwoo’s no connoisseur, but his mind isn’t really on it, and from the corner of his eye he can tell that Woohyun’s isn’t, either. “Woohyun-ssi,” Dongwoo says, swirling the wine around his glass. “When did you first know that you liked men?”
“Me?” Woohyun says. “I don’t know. High school, I guess.” He looks over and raises an eyebrow at Dongwoo. “Why?”
“Just curious,” Dongwoo says. At least he knows that when Woohyun inevitably fucks him and then leaves him, it won’t be because he thinks he might actually be straight and just confused. That makes this much more straightforward.
He takes another sip of wine and then sets the glass down on the side table to his left. “Woohyun-ssi,” he says again, turning to look at Woohyun. “Why did you bring me up here?”
For a second he thinks Woohyun is going to deny it, but then Woohyun smiles, loose and easy. “I wasn’t very subtle, was I?” he asks. “Though to be fair, I wasn’t really trying to be.”
That much had been apparent. Woohyun is the type to know exactly what he’s doing, all the time—that much, Dongwoo has been able to work out. “You were subtle up until the ‘acquisitions is like seduction’ part,” Dongwoo says, stepping closer and lifting the wineglass out of Woohyun’s hand. “After that, not really.”
Woohyun lets him take the glass, watches him set it on the table next to Dongwoo’s own. “Then I guess you don’t mind,” he says, and leans in for a kiss.
Woohyun’s mouth is sharp with tannins and spicy with the whiskey he’d been drinking at the bar, and he kisses Dongwoo thoroughly, until they’re pressed body-to-body with Dongwoo’s hands curled in the front of Woohyun’s shirt and Woohyun’s arms around Dongwoo’s back. The haze of arousal is back, pushing away the remainder of Dongwoo’s reservations—he makes a soft, breathless sound when Woohyun bites his lower lip, and presses his hips forward. “Impatient,” Woohyun murmurs against his mouth, bringing one hand up to drag his fingers down the front of Dongwoo’s pants, prompting a hiss.
“You started this,” Dongwoo says, dragging his fingernails along the nape of Woohyun’s neck. “You finish it.”
“And fiesty,” Woohyun adds. “I like you, Jang Dongwoo-ssi.”
By the time they make it to the bedroom, Dongwoo’s sweatshirt and shirt have been discarded on the living room floor, and Woohyun’s cardigan is hanging from a doorknob and his shirt on the hallway carpet. Woohyun’s body is, unsurprisingly, just as fit as Dongwoo expected it to be, yet somehow more yielding—he keeps doing things like catching Dongwoo’s hands from where they’re working at Woohyun’s fly, things like kissing the insides of his wrists all the way up to his elbow until Dongwoo has to look away because it’s making him blush. It’s too caring for a one-night stand. This is not quite as planned.
“How do you want me?” Dongwoo asks when they’re naked and sprawled out on Woohyun’s bed, touching in all of the places they can be.
“What’s do you want?” Woohyun rolls away to hunt in his drawer, comes back up with a half-empty bottle of lube and a condom. “You tell me, Dongwoo.”
The sound of his name with no suffix is startlingly intimate, enough to leave Dongwoo wordless for a moment until he remembers how to talk. “I want your mouth,” he says, shifting so he’s straddling Woohyun’s hips. The slide of his cock against Woohyun’s makes him feel like his head is going to explode, but in a good way, a sensory overload way.
“Fine with me,” Woohyun says, exhaling one long shuddering breath as Dongwoo rolls his hips again. “Stop that, let me—”
He fingers Dongwoo slowly, so slowly that it would be teasing if Woohyun didn’t seem so careful. It’s far from Dongwoo’s first time doing this, but he can’t bring himself to tell Woohyun that three fingers won’t hurt, not when those fingers are pressed up against the tender insides of him in the most uncomfortably full, intimate way. “Woohyun,” he gasps when Woohyun’s fingertip brushes his prostate, and doesn’t miss the way that Woohyun shudders beneath him.
“Enough,” Dongwoo says, his grip tightening on Woohyun’s ribs. “God, you’re a cocktease.”
“It’s one of my charm points,” Woohyun says. He withdraws his fingers and shifts a little, scooting down and propping himself up against the pillows at the head of the bed. “Come here.”
Dongwoo scoots closer, straddling Woohyun’s stomach, and Woohyun leans forward to take Dongwoo’s cock in his mouth. This is one thing Hoya would never do, in the four months that he and Dongwoo were together—he would touch Dongwoo, would fuck him, but he would never go down on him. Maybe that should have been a sign that something was wrong, some part of Hoya that he could never convince was really into it—
Stop thinking right now, Dongwoo thinks, threading his fingers through Woohyun’s hair.
Woohyun’s good with his mouth, like Dongwoo had been expecting judging by the way he’d been kissing. His tongue traces along the vein at the bottom of Dongwoo’s cock, and he sucks, which draws a strangled cry from Dongwoo’s throat—and then Woohyun slides two fingers back into him, deep-throats him, and Dongwoo loses his senses altogether.
He’s not sure what he moans as Woohyun goes down on him, something filthy and lustful and wholly inappropriate, but he does know that when he comes, it’s with both hands in Woohyun’s hair and Woohyun’s name on his lips. “Sorry,” he gasps, trying to catch his breath and loosening his fingers. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Come down my throat?” Woohyun asks. His voice sounds ragged, raw, and it’s enough to send another shiver of lust up Dongwoo’s spine. “I meant for you to.”
“God.” Dongwoo shakes his head and pushes sweat-dampened hair off of his forehead. “Then I guess I take the apology back.”
Woohyun laughs, and Dongwoo slumps down a little, pausing when he feels the insistent heat of Woohyun’s erection. “Ah,” he says, sitting back until he can feel the head of Woohyun’s cock against his entrance. “Do you want—?”
“You’re okay?” Woohyun asks.
Dongwoo nods. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, reaching for the condom and tearing the packaging open. “Kinda want you inside me anyway.”
Woohyun fucks him slowly, too, but this time it’s less out of consideration and more just because Woohyun is an awful human who likes to watch Dongwoo squirm. He’s still post-orgasmically sensitive, and the slide of Woohyun’s cock into his body, the sharp pressure forcing him open, is almost more than he can take—so of course Woohyun makes it last, makes him feel every inch of Woohyun as he thrusts.
Even without getting hard again, even without the goal of orgasm to work towards, Dongwoo still enjoys it. More than anything, he enjoys the solid presence of Woohyun’s body above his and the way that Woohyun’s skin feels against his. Woohyun hooks one of Dongwoo’s legs over his shoulder, and Dongwoo can feel the muscles of his back flex and relax. Woohyun must be stronger than he looks.
“Okay?” Woohyun asks. He’s braced over Dongwoo, sweat sticking his hair to his forehead.
“Keep going,” Dongwoo says, reaching up to push Woohyun’s hair out of his face. “Feels good.”
So Woohyun does, and when he comes, he turns his face into Dongwoo’s knee and stifles his moan against Dongwoo’s skin, keeps his face there until the aftershocks have subsided. When Dongwoo’s leg slips off of Woohyun’s shoulder, Woohyun pulls out to dispose of the condom, then flops back onto the bed, half on top of Dongwoo. “Mmgh,” he says.
“Okay,” Dongwoo says. He runs his fingers through Woohyun’s hair once, then pauses, remembering his place. Now that the glow is fading, this is beginning to seem like a bad idea again. “Do you know where my boxers are?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Woohyun says, mouth pressed to Dongwoo’s collarbone. “You can sleep here. If you want.”
It’s a tempting offer, because Dongwoo is lazy with pleasure and feeling sort of lackadaisical, but on the other hand, he knows this feeling won’t last longer than the night. Still—Woohyun is very warm, and close, and comforting. “Okay,” Dongwoo agrees, giving in to the temptation to put his fingers back in Woohyun’s hair. “I guess I can do that.”
“Can shower tomorrow,” Woohyun says, tugging the sheet up to cover them. The room smells like sex, but Dongwoo can’t really bring himself to mind. “Sleep now.”
“Lazy,” Dongwoo says, but there’s no real chiding in his voice. He lets his eyes fall shut and, lulled by the even keel of Woohyun’s breathing beside him, allows himself to fall asleep.
Early the next morning Dongwoo slips out from under Woohyun’s arm and dresses in the dark, haphazard. He gathers his clothes one by one—his boxers from the chair by the desk, his pants from halfway under the bed, his shirt and sweatshirt from where they’d been abandoned in the living room. The socks, Dongwoo figures, are a lost cause, mostly because he doesn’t want to stick around to find them.
Dongwoo hasn’t taken a real walk of shame since college, but somehow, Dongwoo can’t bring himself to stay and wait for Woohyun to kick him out.
It’s not even that he’s deluding himself, thinking that they have something more than they do. They fucked—that was all. Woohyun had never alluded to anything more, had made it plain to Dongwoo that he wanted him in bed—and that was all Dongwoo knew. But he wanted more. That was the problem: Woohyun had been tender and gentle and—he’d fucking let Dongwoo come down his throat, for God’s sake, what was Dongwoo supposed to do with that?
So he lets himself out of the apartment and takes the bus home, showers until his skin is pink and raw, and then falls into bed to sleep until he can’t anymore.
“Okay, what’s wrong,” Sungyeol says, pulling a stool up next to Dongwoo and looking down at where Dongwoo is doodling aliens on his sketchpad. “You haven’t drawn anything besides cartoons in three days. Last I saw you were back to designing, so what went wrong?”
Dongwoo pinches the bridge of his nose. “...I slept with him,” he says.
“You—God, hyung.” Sungyeol heaves a sigh, copying the nose-pinching gesture. “Why would you? You said this wasn’t like last time—”
“I know what I said.” Dongwoo scribbles over the alien’s feelers and then drops his pencil. “He’s—it was just a one-night thing, okay? It isn’t like last time. I never had any... delusions about that.”
“Then why are you so depressed?” Sungyeol demands.
Dongwoo stays silent for a long moment, but Sungyeol just looks at him, at once demanding and understanding—Sungyeol is hard to lie to, he always has been. It’s why Dongwoo likes him so much. “Because I wish it was,” he admits, sighing even as the words leave his mouth. How cliche. “Like last time, I mean. He’s—I mean, he’s way out of my league, but he’s something else.”
Sungyeol reaches out and pats his back, rubbing slow circles between his shoulderblades. “Hyung,” he says quietly, “nobody’s out of your league. I mean it,” he continues at Dongwoo’s disbelieving snort. “Hyung is jjang. I’m not just saying this as your best friend, this is totally objective.”
Dongwoo laughs. “Sungyeol-ah,” he says, “thanks, but I’ll be okay. Seriously, I just need a couple days and I’ll be fine.”
It doesn’t really look like he’s convinced Sungyeol at all, but thankfully Sungyeol is willing to let it drop. “Do you want me to do his last fitting?” he asks instead, looking back down at Dongwoo’s sketchbook. “In case things get awkward? I’ll be in on that day anyway...”
“I’m gonna be professional about this,” Dongwoo says, forcing decisiveness into his voice even though he’s not entirely sure he believes it himself. “I’ll just do the last fitting and he’ll go be the best man and we can put this whole situation behind us. I really have to stop getting involved with clients, though, seriously...”
“Let me amend,” Sungyeol says. “Hyung is jjang except for his really bad taste in men.”
“Depressing because it’s true,” Dongwoo agrees, and goes back to doodling.
When Woohyun shows up for his final fitting, Dongwoo can immediately tell that something is not going to go as planned. Woohyun is silent, almost stonily so, which is an alarming change from his usual charming, talkative personality. Dongwoo almost wants to ask what’s wrong, but somehow he thinks he knows, and—well. It’s a can of worms.
He hands the suit to Woohyun and leaves him to change, but there’s nothing to keep him busy—no sketching to do, no pins to get. So he just lingers awkwardly outside until the sounds stop, and then he knocks on the doorframe and says, “Ready?”
What Dongwoo is not expecting is for Woohyun to reach out from the curtain and haul Dongwoo inside by his sleeve. “Sorry,” Woohyun says, though Dongwoo can tell he’s not really at all. “I didn’t get the memo that said we were supposed to pretend like nothing happened and carry on.”
“You didn’t?” Dongwoo says. “I mean—what?”
“I woke up and you were gone,” Woohyun says. He’s keeping his voice low—he probably ran into Sungyeol on his way in—but Dongwoo can tell he’s upset. “I called you and you ignored it. I grew out of this shit in college, Dongwoo-ssi.”
Somehow, the suffix stings more than the words do. Dongwoo goes on the defensive. “I thought you made it pretty clear you just wanted sex and nothing more,” he says. “How was I supposed to know you wanted morning after cuddles, too?”
He’s being cruel, and he doesn’t mean to, but everything is fucked up right now—this isn’t how it was supposed to go. Woohyun wasn’t supposed to be angry, Dongwoo wasn’t supposed to feel stupid. This was supposed to be simple, straightforward—a one-night stand, uncomplicated by emotions and hurt feelings. Nobody was supposed to care.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Woohyun asks. It sounds like something between a demand and a plea, some of the anger softening out of him. “Did you really think I was that much of an asshole, that I’d want you to come over and sleep with me and then leave before I got up?”
The problem is that now that Dongwoo thinks about it, that’s not how Woohyun had been, not really. He’d been suave, sure, and charismatic, and aware of how he could manipulate people, but—save for the time in the bar—he’d never manipulated Dongwoo. He had never been anything other than sweet to Dongwoo, actually. And still, Dongwoo had assumed the worst of him.
“Jesus,” Dongwoo says, the beginnings of a headache pinching behind his eyes. “No. I just—it’s a habit.”
“What, running out after a night like that?” Woohyun’s brow furrows. “Is your taste in men really that awful?”
Dongwoo thinks about what Sungyeol had said and laughs, though not entirely in humor. “Apparently,” he says.
“Hyung?” Sungyeol’s voice, from outside the curtain. He sounds concerned. “Is everything okay?”
Dongwoo looks at Woohyun for a long moment, then says, “Yeah, everything’s fine, Sungyeol-ah.”
When Sungyeol’s footsteps retreat, Dongwoo shakes his head and says, “Then I’m sorry I left. I still can’t really work out how someone like you would be interested in someone like me as more than just a one-night stand.”
“You’re an idiot,” Woohyun says, reaching out and putting both hands on Dongwoo’s shoulders. “I think you’re adorable. And charming, and funny, and you have the best laugh I’ve ever heard. Should I keep going?”
“Please don’t,” Dongwoo says, resisting the urge to actually hide his face in his hands. “You don’t even know me, Woohyun. This is the fourth time we’ve met.”
“Well, you felt me up on the second time and we slept together on the third,” Woohyun points out, “so I’m pretty sure we’re not doing this in any order that you or I have ever heard of. Just stop second-guessing everything.”
They’re quiet for a moment. “Okay,” Dongwoo says after a moment. “Just—promise me you’re not going to suddenly realize you’re actually straight a few months down the line.”
Woohyun raises his eyebrows, then shakes his head. “And give up sex with you?” he says. “Are you kidding?”
“Hey, my ex did it,” Dongwoo says. “I’m just saying.”
“Don’t be dumb.” Woohyun ruffles his hair, then turns around and looks in the mirror. “Now tell me how hot I look in this suit.”
The wedding is a complete success, and Woohyun’s speech brings half the reception to tears. Dongwoo knows because he’s there—a last-minute (yet somehow indispensable) addition to the list as Woohyun’s +1. Soyu had been thrilled to add someone on Woohyun’s behalf—”We’ve been trying to get him to pay attention to something other than work for years,” she had told Dongwoo when he was in the dressing room, fixing a hem-related emergency on the bridal gown. “I’m not going to ask what you did, bu please keep doing it.”
In the here and now, Woohyun finds Dongwoo at his table and sits down, reaching out to interlace his fingers with Dongwoo’s. “Good?” he asks, reaching for a glass of water. His waistcoat is already unbuttoned and his tie already loosened—if they weren’t in public...
“You were great,” Dongwoo reassures him, squeezing his hand. “You and Hyorin-ssi looked like quite a pair up there.”
“Soyu’s mom asked me if I was going to be her date to the reception,” Woohyun says, sitting back in his chair and smiling. He really does look every inch the enthusiastic best man, and Dongwoo privately congratulates himself on a job well done. “I guess we matched pretty well.”
“What did you tell her?”
Woohyun laughs and leans over to kiss Dongwoo, soft and lingering. “Told her I had a date already,” he says, “and that I don’t think there’s anybody I match with better.”
“Cheesy,,” Dongwoo announces, in between kisses. “Cheddar. Gouda. Swiss. Brie. Tell me how I wound up with you again?”
“You fell for my dashing good looks and incredibly charismatic personality,” Woohyun says, stretching his free arm out along the back of Dongwoo’s chair. “Said you couldn’t live without me, that I should make you mine immediately. Something like that.”
“Uh huh,” Dongwoo agrees, laughing. “Something like that.”
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AUTHOR'S NOTES: Giving credit where credit is due: I don't think this fic would have been possible without this incredibly informative post by
hackthis. Also, I guess thanks to whoever invented Mad Men, because that show is literally the extent of my knowledge about the advertising industry (THEREFORE I APOLOGIZE IF I GOT ANYTHING WRONG OTL).As always, constrictive criticism is welcome!
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i cannot - explain - how much - i am completely in love with this - i bookmarked it and i rarely /rarely/ ever bookmark fic. just - BREAKS DOWN INTO SOBS RN BECAUSE IDT I CAN HANDLE THIS A LONG-ISH FIC OF MY OTP THAT NOBODY WRITES
oh my god just - first off, your woohyun, your dongwoo. so absolutely perfect. aside from the fact that dongwoo didn't peg me as someone who'd put out on the first date (lol), this was just completely so in line with my headcanon of woohyun and dongwoo and 2woo together. their dynamics, urgh. URGH idk if i can put it into words but woohyun being sensitive, blunt even, forward, and dongwoo all putting his foot in his mouth every five seconds, god dammit. all the banter, the awkward part during the last fitting and the last scene absolutely killed me. i hope you know i have this ridiculously large smile, the kind that if i were on a korean variety show the captions would read "ends of lips could touch her ears", and it is entirely your doing. ahhhhhh just this was just fantastic perfect amazing and i am going to go read it once more now. i'm going to grab onto this post and never let go ;;
just - i loved it. so much. i am wibbling with tears rn okay ♥
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i was worried that i wouldn't be able to capture dongwoo's silliness honestly... my biggest concern was "BUT DONGWOO LAUGHS SO MUCH, HOW DO I CONVEY THIS IN FIC 8(!!!"
tyvm for reading i'm glad it wasn't awful! ♥ ;;
SWEET JESUS
Re: SWEET JESUS
with the small things first i suppose.
the sistar cameo ;-; my goodness. idk if maybe i didn't read slow enough in my excitement but i didn't catch who the groom was or if he was ever mentioned at all. all i know is that yum, hyorin in red? hell to the frick yes.
the precious yadong. be still my heart. they're another otp. their bromance is the stuff of gold and the way you played it out was really just stunning. it was kinda thrust in there at first and the natural procession with which you had him kinda webbing in and out of dongwoo's conscious was really well done. the line about his sexuality was gold! it's just one of those lines that fits perfectly and it has this ring or flow to it that just makes it really fun even though it's just a sentence :/
sungjong and sungyeol were lovely. they were really nice additions because it might have felt just a bit too overbearing to have nothing but woohyun and dongwoo interacting nonstop during the whole of the fic. they provided really good relief and you used them really efficiently to foreshadow hoya from dongwoo's past without being too obvious all in one go and just spilling it all out.
woohyun!! you wrote him perfectly. i think this captures him down to a T with how he is most a charming guy who can woo the pants right off of you but he has sweet little tidbits in him that pretty much allow you to let him have his way. he was a perfecly well rounded character and while we only got so much history on his side, it worked perfectly and it was a really good balance between what was going on and the bits of information he gave dongwoo. he never gave more than he got and sometimes he didn't give at all lol.
dongwoo, what utter perfection. i saw you write in the meme that you weren't all that used to him perhaps but i feel like you captured certain parts of his personality really well. he is a delicate little thing and he tends to keep to himself unless he is forced out or grows into it but you managed to keep that little guarded bit of him up even to the very end and it was just stunning. i love love love how you did that. dongwo didn't change from the first sentence all the way down to teh very last word. that alone was really amazing and it made him seem a really fleshed out character that we can really think so much about when all we know about him is a bad break up and bits and pieces of his day to day life. he was just really wonderful and with him being my bias, i can freely say that you did an amazing job with him and he is divine in here.
one thing that i was driving myself crazy with here was how you never strayed from dongwoo. i tend to have lots of problems keeping to a 3rd person poc but keeping it to the pov of one person like how you did here, so i was being mind boggled the whole time. it's a simple thing but it's hard for me so just know that i was smiling and loving your writing style and how you worded certain things loads.
the actual suits bit. you really went to town on your research and it shows, dear lawd. it was perfect. this was an au i had been saving for myself to write down the line but i am so happy i gave it to you instead. i wouldn't have been able to do a quarter as good a job as you did with this here. i was feeling horrible but then i was all "idc, at least it's written wonderfully". just... i can't even B| the actual terminology and how you went about things. it felt perfectly routine and natural so it only added to their interactions and made the fic that much better.
i'll stop now but i could go on for ages ;-; DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON YOUR COMMAS. i was frothing at the mouth with how huge a whore i am with commas.
thank you so much for doing this. i don't even know what the frick i was doing on my first day back in the memes but i am so happy i chanced upon it and happened to stumble into you.
♥
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ah, i'm so glad that the supporting characters seemed nice ;; sometimes i worry that... well, if i write in a non-main character, it'll seem simply like a plot device or something that i've shoved in there. but i really love sungjong and sungyeol, so i'm glad that they seemed more fleshed-out :>
sobbing oh my gosh "divine" is much too strong a word! but thank you so much ♥ ahh i'm glad, i really love dongwoo a lot but i'm not at all confident in writing him, so i'm thankful that you think he was written all right.
oh gosh but i'm sure if you wrote it would be great too! ah don't feel bad :< i tend to over-research everything, and in this particular case i also used to work in a fabric store so i had a lot of random knowledge lying about in my brain. i'd really like to see you write it too ♥
thank you so much ahhh ♥ you're the best!!
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okay first of all suits. suits. um umumumumumum. yeah. dongwoo making suits. bahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh also more like everything. i loved the start, i loved the progression, stupid dongwoo thinking he's not good enough (stupid stupid kid) when he is amazing and sweet and adorable and i loved woohyun in this, and dongwoo being inspired and woohuyun and dongwoo and woohyun and dongwoo and eeeeeeep.
also the line about complaining about work also okay who was woohyun's boyfriend inquiring minds want to know, everything about getting drinks and ughhhhh.
“Sure,” Dongwoo says. “But first, get out of my masterpiece.”
this line really cracked me up
“Come down my throat?” Woohyun asks. His voice sounds ragged, raw, and it’s enough to send another shiver of lust up Dongwoo’s spine. “I meant for you to.”
orz orz orz i really liked this too
“Let me amend,” Sungyeol says. “Hyung is jjang except for his really bad taste in men.”
“Depressing because it’s true,” Dongwoo agrees, and goes back to doodling.
AND THIS. i mean not the part where dongwoo thinks it's true but orz sungyeol i loved sungyeol here tooooooo
“Don’t be dumb.” Woohyun ruffles his hair, then turns around and looks in the mirror. “Now tell me how hot I look in this suit.”
oh woohyun.
ALSO THE LINE WITH THE CHEESES. AHAHAHAHA YES.
okay words can never convey what i feel ever so YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO IMAGINE MY OVERFLOWING EMOTIONS TOWARDS YOU RIGHT NOW. my overflowing emotions over everything actually. towards you. yup.
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i'm so glad you liked it! ♥ ;; i've never written 2woo before so i was a little unsure, so if there are any characterization problems please tel me so i can fix them!
ummmm well i never really had a particular person in mind for woohyun's ex-boyfriend! since he wasn't a huge part of the story i didn't really think about who it should be haha ;; but since i've been shipping wookey lately i guess it could have been key. or basically anyone in the '91 line tbh lmao orz
my emotions will overflow back to you ahh ;; tysm!!
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(Anonymous) 2012-01-15 05:48 am (UTC)(link)i love how detailed this fic is. i've never read so much about the tailoring of suits and i've never been more riveted lol. my favourite part has probably got to be how apt their jobs are to them: advertising agent woohyun is so much want you don't even know omg. and of course the porny bit. yes.
also i need to leave this dongwoo/woohyun fancam for you because...yeah just watch it and you'll know why
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJ_6qOEkHk&feature=related (1:16 sobs)
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i wish i knew a bit more about advertising so i could do woohyun justice! but unfortunately as i said, all my knowledge comes from mad men lmao... which is both outdated (well, since it takes place in the 60s/70s) and from the wrong country! but maybe i'll do some research so i can write again XD
thanks for reading! ♥
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I got to the part where Dongwoo is walking out and I was screaming so loudly on the inside for him not to leave! I was dreading the confrontation so much but you did it really well. I was so glad there wasn't any excessive drama (that kinda thing makes me cringe)!
AND THEY WERE SO CUTE TOGETHER IN YOUR FIC. SO CUTE. I didn't think I could stand this pair (romantically anyways) but you made it work!
You definitely deserve more loving, flaily comments! You should definitely post this at dashidorawa!
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(Anonymous) 2012-03-22 11:11 pm (UTC)(link)I really loved this fic. I loved how you built the plot, the characters, their personalities...i loved both of them. I had never seen this pairing before, but they fitted so well! No other members would have looked that well in such a story.
Thanks a lot for writing it (and the sequels) and i really hope to read something new from you soon!
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This is about how much I love this fic this is so cute omg
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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
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ever.
just oh my god it's so perfect and I loved how you fitted in romance, comedy, fluff and angst in it ;a; ♥♥♥
i love every single part of it and i can't quote all my favourite parts b/c i'd be pasting it all into this comment lmao
but hoya is an idiot b/c who the hell would wanna break up with dongwoo? D: he's like flawless jfc
((sorry if this comment is crap, i find it hard to put my feelings into words))
thank you for writing this!!! <3
p.s i blame you for all my 2woo feels i'm having after reading this :c
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(Anonymous) 2012-10-28 11:37 pm (UTC)(link)<3
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(Anonymous) 2013-02-14 12:53 am (UTC)(link)also, do you have an lj because i really really want to memm this ;a;
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