“You look good, Jae,” he says quietly. No grin, no teasing, no dimple. Just the words, delivered with a sincerity that makes my throat tight.
I look away first.
The attendant packages both suits into garment bags while we wait, and I watch her fold tissue paper around the navy fabric with careful hands, thinking about how I’m going to explain this to Sungyoon if he sees it hanging in my closet. I don’t own anything this nice. The closest thing I have to formalwear is a dark button-down I bought secondhand three years ago for Sungyoon’s middle school graduation ceremony, and even that has a small stain on the cuff that I’ve never been able to get out.
Hongjoong signs for everything at the register without letting me see the total, which I’ve learned by now is on purpose. He takes both garment bags before I can reach for mine, draping them over his arm, and we walk out of the fitting area and back onto the main floor of the department store. The space is bright and sprawling, polished floors reflecting the overhead lights, displays of watches and leather goods and perfume arranged on glass counters that we pass as we head toward the exit.
“Should we eat?” Hongjoong asks, shifting the garment bags to his other arm. “There’s a place around the corner that does good jjigae, or we could find something in the food hall downstairs if you want something quick.”
I’m opening my mouth to answer but right then a voice cuts across the floor, loud and carrying.
“No fucking way. Hongjoong? Is that Jung Yoonjae?”
My blood goes cold. I know that voice. I haven’t heard it in over a decade but I know it the way you know the sound of your own name, something burned into memory from years of hearing it shout across schoolyards and rooftops and the backs of convenience stores. I turn slowly, already bracing myself, and see Wonjoon crossing the department store floor toward us with a shopping bag swinging from one hand and a grin splitting his face wide open.
He looks good, I’ll give him that. Broader than he was in high school, filled out the way alphas tend to in their thirties, his hair cropped short and his jaw heavier, but the same open friendly face and the same booming energy that always made him one the loudest people in any room. He reaches Hongjoong first and they clasp hands hard, pulling each other into one of those back-slapping alpha hugs that sounds like it hurts, Wonjoon laughing and saying something about Hongjoong’s hair being even more ridiculous than it was the last time he saw him.
Then Wonjoon turns to me and his eyes go wide, his whole face lighting up with genuine shock and delight. “Holy shit, it really is you,” he says, reaching out and gripping my shoulder, giving me a shake. “I thought I was seeing things. Yoonjae, man, where the hell have you been? You look good, you look really good.”
I manage a smile that I hope looks natural and not like I’m fighting the urge to bolt. “Hey, Wonjoon. It’s been a while.”
“A while?” He laughs, incredulous. “Try a lifetime. You just vanished, dude. One day you were there and the next, poof, gone like smoke. Nobody could find you, nobody had your number, it was like you fell off the planet.”
I shift my weight and rub the back of my neck, the old familiar gesture I default to when I’m cornered. “Yeah, I just... got busy. You know how it is, life gets away from you and before you know it years have passed.”
Wonjoon shakes his head like that answer doesn’t even begin to satisfy him, but before he can press further Hongjoong steps in, slinging an arm around Wonjoon’s shoulders and steering the conversation with effortless social command, that always comes naturally to him. “We were just about to grab food,” he says, flashing an easy grin. “Come with us, let’s catch up properly. When’s the last time the three of us were in the same room?”
I want to protest. I want to make up an excuse about needing to get home, about Sungyoon expecting me, about anything that would extract me from this situation before it goes somewhere I can’t control. But Wonjoon is already nodding enthusiastically and Hongjoong is already walking, and refusing now would draw exactly the kind of attention I’m trying to avoid, so I press my lips together and follow them out of the department store and down the block to a restaurant with warm lighting and wooden booths.
We slide into a booth near the back, me next to Hongjoong on one side and Wonjoon across from us, and I arrange my face into something pleasant and engaged as the two of them fall into easy conversation. It’s not hard to listen. Wonjoon was always one of the more likeable guys in our group, never mean-spirited, never the type to push too hard or ask questions designed to make you squirm. He and Hongjoong swap updates about mutual friends from the old days, who got bonded, who moved abroad, who’sstill in the city, and I nod along and laugh at the right moments and offer the occasional comment when it feels safe.
But I can feel it coming. The inevitable pivot. And sure enough, after the food arrives and Wonjoon has exhausted his updates on everyone else, he turns his attention to me with open curiosity on his face and says, “So seriously, Yoonjae, what have you been doing all this time? Where’d you disappear to?”
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out. I’m scrambling for something plausible, something vague enough to satisfy without inviting follow-up questions. Hongjoong’s voice cuts in smoothly beside me.
“You know Yoonjae,” he says, picking up his chopsticks and pointing them at me with a smirk. “Always the mysterious one. Remember how he used to just show up out of nowhere and then vanish for days and none of us could ever figure out where he went? Some things don’t change.” He launches into a story about the time I disappeared for an entire weekend in our second year and came back on Monday with a split lip and refused to tell anyone what happened, and Wonjoon cracks up laughing, slapping the table, saying he remembers that, saying he always assumed I’d gotten into a fight with someone from another school.
I let out a slow breath through my nose and take a sip of water, silently grateful. Hongjoong didn’t have to do that. He could have let me flounder, could have even added his own pointed questions to the pile the way he does when we’re alone. Instead he covered for me without hesitation, redirected the spotlight off me and onto safer ground, and he did it so naturally that Wonjoon didn’t even notice the deflection.
Abruptly, I feel Hongjoong’s hand land on my thigh under the table.
I don’t react. His palm is warm through the fabric of my pants, resting just above my knee, and for a second I think it’s justa casual touch, reassuring contact that friends share. But then his fingers shift, sliding higher along my inner thigh in a move that has nothing casual about it. My pulse kicks up sharply as I realize what he’s doing.
I keep my eyes forward, fixed on Wonjoon who is now telling a story about his bonded’s reaction to finding his old high school yearbook photos. Hongjoong’s hand moves higher still, his fingers trailing along the seam of my pants where the fabric pulls tight against my inner thigh, and then his hand dips lower, past my waistband, his fingers pushing down between my cheeks with a confidence that tells me he planned this the moment we sat down.
I bite the inside of my lower lip hard. His fingertips find my hole, already embarrassingly damp because my body has been producing slick in a low steady leak all day from being in Hongjoong’s proximity, from his scent saturating every breath I take, from the way he looked at me in that fitting room. Two of his fingers push inside me, sinking in with almost no resistance because I’m so wet, and I have to clamp my jaw shut to keep any sound from escaping as they crook against my walls.
Hongjoong doesn’t look at me. He’s nodding along to Wonjoon’s story, his free hand picking up a piece of meat with his chopsticks and bringing it to his mouth, chewing, responding with an amused comment about Wonjoon’s bonded being a saint for putting up with him. His voice doesn’t waver, doesn’t change pitch, doesn’t betray a single thing about what his other hand is doing beneath the table.
His fingers spread inside me, then thrust in a slow lazy rhythm, pushing deep and pulling back, and I grip the edge of the table with both hands as my cock hardens rapidly in my pants, thickening against my thigh. He finds my prostate and presses against it in a slow grinding circle that makes my eyesight go fuzzy. I have to disguise the sharp intake of breathas a cough, bringing my fist to my mouth and clearing my throat while my hole clenches and flutters around his fingers.
Wonjoon glances at me. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I manage tightly. “Water went down wrong.”
He accepts this without question and goes back to his story, and Hongjoong’s fingers push deeper, spreading wider, the wet sound of slick around his knuckles barely audible under the ambient noise of the restaurant but deafening to my own ears. I can feel more slick leaking out of me with every thrust of his fingers, soaking through my underwear. A spike of panic cuts through the arousal. If Wonjoon can smell it, if the pheromones reach him across the table, there will be no explaining this away.
I can’t take it anymore. I push back from the table abruptly, and both of them look up at me. “Bathroom,” I say, and I don’t wait for a response before I’m walking away from the booth as steadily as I can manage with my cock straining against my zipper and slick running in a warm trickle down my inner thigh.
