The next day, Jiyoon shot upright in bed all over again.
"I can't believe I let you blow me in the bathroom at your own concert."
"Mhm." Danny rolled over and nuzzled into his hip. "S'good."
"Is it? Oh my God, there were so many people there…"
"And my boss."
This time, Jiyoon didn't say anything, just let out a long, agonized moan. Danny threw an arm over his lap and tried to go back to sleep, but it was just dawning on him—and his exhausted, but apparently still horny body—that this was the first time they had woken up together and could actually enjoy it. Danny wouldn't need to scamper off to the bathroom hiding a boner, after sleeping flat against the wall all night.
Hell, they could fuck again. Right now.
Evidently, his thought process had come across to Jiyoon, because he was now petting through Danny's hair.
"How do you feel?"
"Uh, like I'm gonna regret it if I stand up."
"I feel a little responsible." He stroked through Danny's hair and then moved his hand south, trailing over Danny's bare shoulders and down his back. Then he stopped to tug the sheet aside where it had wrapped around Danny's waist and thighs.
He let his fingernails skate over Danny's ass, and Danny shivered.
"I have an unconventional suggestion," he said, "and it involves my vibrator."
Immediately, Danny was awake. "Yes."
"I haven't even said it yet."
"You wanna fuck me with it?"
"Well… All right, yes." Jiyoon poked his ass. "Is that interesting to you?"
"Little bit? Yeah?" He craned his neck.
Jiyoon was looking vaguely smug. "I knew it. As soon as you brought it up last night, I knew what you wanted."
"Look, just because I made fun of you for having a bright fucking purple vibrator—"
"That's funny," Jiyoon said, resting his chin on his hand. "Usually I imagine it's your dick. And now I'm going to fuck you with it."
"Oh my God." Danny's entire body was lighting up, and he suddenly felt short of breath. Something about the casual tone of Jiyoon's voice, the way he said it so naturally, so unplanned, had Danny clutching his chest like an offended auntie, while Jiyoon's face was reddening up to the tips of his ears.
"What?" Jiyoon snapped.
"That was so hot."
"Well, now it's embarrassing!" He twisted over to faceplant in the pillow. "You can't just react like that!"
Danny rested his chin on his shoulder and whined. "But it was so hot!"
"Then don't make a big deal out of it! Just play along!"
"I'm literally lying in your bed with my ass out while you talk about fucking me with my own dick, how is that not playing along?"
"Oh my God." Jiyoon grumbled like an old man. "Turn over."
Danny did as he was told and rolled onto his back while Jiyoon swung his legs out of bed to root through the bedside table drawer. He laid everything they needed on top of Fundamentals of Advanced Accounting (sixth edition), and turned towards Danny. Then he cocked his head and ran a hand over Danny's thigh.
"How are your legs?"
"Sore as hell." Danny shivered as Jiyoon dug his fingers into his sensitive muscles, and then picked his leg up under the knee to drape it over his lap, leaving Danny open and exposed.
Jiyoon set the vibrator on the bed between Danny's spread legs, then gripped him behind the knee and pulled him roughly forward. He gasped as he felt the tip nudging his ass.
"Hold on." Jiyoon snapped open the lube and soon enough had two fingers buried deep enough in him that Danny was digging one heel into the bed like he was trying to drive it back into the wall.
"God… d'you think you could take any fucking longer?" He gasped as Jiyoon watched his own fingers curl.
"Absolutely," he said with a smile, before pitching forward, one hand braced next to Danny's body as he leaned over him. Danny chose that moment to let out a particularly helpless whine. "You sound impatient."
"Yeah, I've only been waiting like two months—" Then Jiyoon kissed him, muffling his words and then moans as he pushed in closer, spreading Danny's legs further with his body. A third finger pressed inside him, and Danny couldn't remember feeling this fucked up over three damn fingers before. He was breaking a sweat, and every torturous move of Jiyoon's hand threatened to break him. "Oh my God," he gasped as they broke apart. "You're killing me, dude."
Jiyoon cocked his head and tried to bite back a smile as he looked down at him. Danny was aware of how he must look: disheveled and kinda sweaty with his cheeks all flushed. And Jiyoon looked hungry.
"I have to say, I am… very into this."
"Great, we can do it every fucking day as long as you let me come."
"Mhm. You will." Jiyoon sat up again, resisting when Danny tried to keep him there with his legs. "Let me do my job, dammit," he laughed, and grabbed a condom off the bedside table, only to throw it at Danny's chest. "Open that."
He somehow managed to keep fucking Danny with his fingers while he watched him carefully rip the package open. Danny's hands were shaking, and when the pads of Jiyoon's fingers dragged over his prostate, he nearly crushed the condom in his clenched fist. His hips rocked instinctively into Jiyoon's hand, seeking more pressure. He tossed the unwrapped condom back to Jiyoon.
"Please tell me that's gonna be in me in, like, under a minute."
"I don't know, Danny, I'm just not sure how much you want it." Jiyoon twisted his hand so the pad of his thumb could rub gently at his taint. Danny moaned and fisted his own cock and he could come just from this, he could, there was pressure building in his groin and he couldn't even keep his eyes open—
Then Jiyoon's fingers left him empty, and he cried out in frustration. Gently, Jiyoon pulled his hand off his cock and twined their fingers together.
"Hold on. I've got you." He dropped Danny's hand on the mattress and quickly pulled the condom over the vibrator, then slicked it with lube. When he pressed the head of it to Danny's ass, it slid home with barely an effort, and Jiyoon actually gasped. "Oh my God."
"Fuck me. For the love of God, fuck me."
There was the plastic click of a button and suddenly Danny was shuddering and shaking with it, pressing his hips to the mattress and trying to get the right angle on the vibrator. Jiyoon had him covered; Danny could feel Jiyoon's hand against his ass as he gripped the vibrator to fuck him with it, and damn was he good at it. The curved head kept hitting him just so, and just when Danny was about to reach for his cock again, Jiyoon's other hand was already there.
The vibrator felt big inside him, and each pulse of it shot up his spine in a ceaseless rhythm. And with every deliberate push into him, Danny thought about Jiyoon fucking himself and how many times he must have done this. How many times he fucked himself in this bed and wished it had been Danny there with him.
The teasing, incessant rhythm built to an impossible crescendo, and Danny couldn't keep from clenching around the vibrator, writhing to bring it deeper inside him.
He came with a broken moan, and Jiyoon lazily circled the vibrator until Danny squirmed. Then he pulled it out slowly, not switching it off until it was well clear of his ass. Danny lay there with the certainty that this was it—he was never going to be able to stand again.
Jiyoon set the vibrator on the floor and laid his hands on Danny's thighs. "So…"
Whatever noise came out of Danny, it sure as hell wasn't articulate, or even words. Jiyoon laughed and lifted Danny's leg off his lap so he could crawl into bed next to him. Danny was dimly aware that his shoulder was being used as a pillow, but mostly he was hyperaware of everywhere else their bodies were pressed together now, and the gentle weight of Jiyoon's hand on his chest.
"Good at that," he managed.
"You can be good at anything if you practice." Jiyoon kissed and then sucked gently at his neck, before letting out a happy sigh and settling back down. "You feel all right?"
"Dead."
"Sorry to hear that." Jiyoon's hand drifted south to rest on his stomach, and Danny covered it with his own. "When you're coherent again, I'd like it if we could have that talk about boundaries."
"Right." Danny came back to himself with a jerk. "I don't think anyone's asked me to talk about it like that before."
"Is that something that makes you uncomfortable?"
Danny tried to gauge how much of his nervousness was genuine, and how much was worry that he was being set up to fail some romantic test that he didn't know the answers to.
"Kinda?" He took a deep breath. "I don't wanna say the wrong thing."
"Because you think you're going to hurt my feelings?"
"Yeah…"
Jiyoon huffed and rolled onto his back. "Back… well, a while ago I did some research. Not academic research, I was just Googling things. 'Can you date an aromantic person'. And then 'How to date an aromantic person'. That's when I realized that I needed to be asking what you wanted, and not what any number of people want. But it seemed unfair to put you on the spot." Jiyoon's voice shrunk with embarrassment. "So I did some self-reflection. And I made a spreadsheet of the things I consider integral to a relationship, and the things that don't matter to me."
"Holy shit."
"I know. I went overboard." Jiyoon sighed. "In any case, I found that for me, the important things were mutual respect…" He started ticking them off on his fingers, "Compatible goals, and… and kindness." He dropped his hands. "I think that, minus number two, those are qualities we've had for a while now. And if I were in a relationship defined by those things, rather than any other… romantic impulse, I could be happy."
"I… yeah." Danny's voice was scratchy, and he felt like he was in freefall, but he knew the landing wouldn't kill him. He hated putting voice to things like this, but Jiyoon just had and the things he listed weren't scary or impossible. It was the same way Danny felt about him. "I guess for me it'd be… we're friends. I want to be friends first no matter what. And I want to know if I'm doing something that hurts you. The other stuff you said was also good."
"Mhm. And what are some things that would make you upset? Don't feel like you have to be thorough. I'd just like something to start with."
"Okay, well… I don't mind being public. And I want to be actually, I mean, once you're not my TA." Danny winced, but Jiyoon just laughed. "I like being honest about who I am and shit."
"So far, so good."
"Right. But then I don't want people to get the wrong idea that it's a romantic thing—and that's gonna suck for you, I know it's gonna suck, because people are always shitty about it."
"I can handle shitty people."
"I want to go out with you and stuff, but I'm not really into the whole… performance thing? Like getting all fancy and spending lots of money as a date. Or even just the flowers and candles thing… I don't get that. I'd rather just hang out."
"So you don't like material displays of affection?"
"I guess that's a way of putting it."
Jiyoon leaned up on one arm. "What if, for example, I was going on a trip, and I wanted to travel with you."
Danny thought about it. "That would be different. I wanna go places with you."
"Okay. That makes sense."
"I'm serious about people being shitty to you." Danny swallowed, and cleared his throat. "They're gonna ask why the hell you're with me when you could be with anyone else."
"And I will tell them it's none of their fucking business. And maybe if they found a greasy hipster who gave the best oral they'd ever had, they wouldn't be so stuck-up about it." Jiyoon bent down and kissed him on the mouth. "So. Speaking of oral."
Danny laughed and grabbed him around the waist. "Get up here."
*~*~*
"Pencils down. Turn your tests in at the front of the room, please."
Danny finished jotting down his response and nearly shoved his accounting final over the desk in his haste to be done with it. Instead, he gathered up all his crap and marched the sheaf of papers to the front of the room, where Jiyoon was waiting to take tests. They shared a nod and a smile as Danny put his test on top of the stack, and Jiyoon craned his neck to look at it. He made a soft humming noise.
"What does that mean?"
"I'll see you later, Mr. Kim."
"Right…"
As soon as the testing room door shut behind him, it all hit Danny like a train. He was done. Done, done. That afternoon could be spent doing literally anything he wanted.
So he got on the bus and headed straight for the studio.
He had barely touched his music since the concert, and his brain was buzzing with pent-up ideas. All that shit he had learned could be jettisoned forever.
That week had been spent mostly in Jiyoon's apartment, trying to cram his head full of knowledge and avoiding a series of meltdowns.
Any promises of not spending time together outside of studying had fallen out the window once they had started sleeping together, and that had been just fine with Danny.
He stayed in the studio till midnight. A lot of it was spent dicking around: trying to pick his way through some famous guitar solos, messing with the effects on the recording equipment, letting out pent-up energy on the drum set. He laid down a few vocal tracks just for fun, and at one point Lei joined him to jam out before heading back home.
Jiyoon showed up with bags of Thai takeout for dinner, and they sat on the floor eating until Danny felt like he was going to explode or go into a food coma.
"I have to go," Jiyoon groaned. He was leaning back on his hands, and looked about ready to go to sleep. The last few days hadn't been kind to either of them, but Danny was still high off of the scent of freedom. Jiyoon still had another day of finals to go.
"Haven't you studied enough?"
Jiyoon laughed out loud. "Maybe when I'm dead." He checked his watch and then leaned in to give Danny a kiss. It might have been meant as a quick goodbye kiss, but one thing led to another and then Jiyoon was kissing him so deeply Danny forgot his own name. Finally he gave him a little nip on his lower lip. "I really do have to go."
"Yeah, yeah. Good luck with the thing."
Jiyoon picked up the takeout bags. "Tomorrow," he threatened. "You and I are celebrating."
*~*~*
"Celebrating" turned out to mean meeting in Jiyoon's apartment with the honest intention of going out, only to fall asleep by ten p.m.
The next day, "celebrating" meant loafing around in bed in varying states of undress.
After a week of winter break, Danny was sure things were damn near perfect. He even snuck in some honest-to-goodness gift shopping (thanks to daily reminders from Sam) and didn't go back to Lynnwood empty-handed for Christmas.
Considering how cool his parents had been about the prodigal rock-and-roll son thing, it was really the least he could do.
"I still feel kindly weirdly guilty every time I go home, you know?" He told Sam as they rode the bus up to Lynnwood together. "Just for like five minutes, and then I'm like, what the fuck am I doing?"
"It's not totally ridiculous. They might be supportive, but we still don't have a lot to show for it."
"Are you kidding? We have a ton to show for it. Look at us last year compared to now."
Sam prickled. "I'm not saying we haven't done anything. It's just not enough."
"Not yet." Danny jiggled his knee restlessly. He had been able to scrape up enough to get a nice bracelet for his lawyer mom and a set of mixing bowls for his cooking hobbyist dad. But even saying that was a little disingenuous, since they were still contributing money for the apartment, and those little necessities like food, when Danny's loans fell short.
He knew he was home as soon as he was holed up in the kitchen with both his parents foisting food on him. To his relief they asked him about the concert and the band first, giving him a chance to gush before his dad got around to gruffly asking, "And how is school?"
Danny made sure his mouth was full while he thought about it. "Uh, fine. No, it's shi—bad. Not great."
They listened while he explained the how and the why of that quarter being rough, and then the dreaded question came:
"What are you taking in January?"
Danny could barely remember, and he certainly didn't care. It was all a black hole in his mind, until summer, when his life would open up again.
He traipsed up to his old bedroom after dinner, peering out the window as he went up the stairs to glimpse Sam's house across the street.
Back in his childhood room, worn posters were still stuck to the walls with rolled-up tape, and a massive CD collection spread across shelves, dressers, and his nightstand. Danny flopped down on his twin bed and texted Jiyoon a picture of the mess.
Gross, came the reply a few minutes later. Are you still a teenager?
What does your room look like? Danny texted back. A picture of a sparse, neat bedroom popped up on his phone. He laughed, and was glad Jiyoon wasn't there to smack him.
He put the phone down and flipped through a few of the CDs, reading song names and looking at the jacket photos. Every album reminded him of a day, a person, or a feeling. A few yawns later, he put them back in the pile on the night stand, rolled over, and went to sleep.