Chapter Text
The first thing Seunghyun noticed once he stepped into the tiny filthy bar was a petite boy with fading orange hair sitting alone, leaning over the table and sipping at his drink. The little guy had his back turned at him, so he couldn’t surely tell whether he was underage or not. He started walking towards him, surefooted.
“Mind if I take a seat?” he asked, his voice deep and steady. The boy looked disoriented and confused, but he gave him a slight nod as an answer. Truth is, he didn’t really look like he had anything better to do, and he looked like he was in need of some company.
“Thank you”, Seunghyun replied, a smirk lurking at the corners of his lips as he pulled an empty chair to sit on. “What’s your name?”
“Jiyong” slurred the boy, raising his glass to his lips and emptying its content down his throat, only to search through the crowd with slow eyes and wave a finger at the waiter. As one hand placed the booze filled glass on the table, two more reached for it. Seunghyun’s obviously won this race, since Jiyong was far too wasted to even order his limb to move towards the glass’ precise position.
“That’s my drink”.
“Don’t you think you had too much for one night?”
Seunghyun took a long sip of the cheap booze while raising an eyebrow in anticipation of Jiyong’s answer. His moves were slow and deliberate, like his patience was infinite and they had all the time in the world.
“I had like, six or seven”, Jiyong chuckled drunkenly. “You’re having my eighth!”
“I’m pretty sure I’m having my first”. That smirk again, a bit more visible this time.
“Fine, but I’m not paying for it”.
“I don’t want you to buy me this drink. I don’t even think you can afford the ones you’ve already chugged down”.
Jiyong, in all his drunkenness, shot a piercing cold stare right into Seunghyun’s eyes, and lowered it instantly, his face turning red.
“It’s okay… Jiyong, right?”
The redhead nodded, running his fingers through his greasy locks.
“Jiyong. Those drinks are on me tonight”, Seunghyun smiled warmly at the light that sparked in Jiyong’s eyes as soon as he heard these words.
“And how about this: as a ‘thank you’, you come over at my place tonight to continue your drinking. You don’t have to pay a won and it’s top quality liquor”, Seunghyun suggested, fixing his dark eyes into Jiyong’s lighter and duller from the drinking and the tiredness ones. His gaze was accompanied by a wide charming smirk, and a slight single eyebrow raise.
Jiyong just could not possibly reject such an appealing invitation. If he was in a more sober state, he’d have to reject; free liquor is always a good motive, and especially when offered by well dressed and neat guys such as the stranger that had walked in half an hour before, that free liquor was bound to be of excellent quality. But the drunker you are the more appealing more, better, and most importantly free liquor is.
He didn’t even realize when or how he answered. Thinking about it again, he probably didn’t even give an answer to the charming stranger, yet that stranger had already placed a 6,000 won bill on the sticky table and topped it with the empty glass, and he was now standing in front of the chair where Jiyong was sitting, offering him a hand to help him stand and walk out of the bar.
Once he stood up he had to put effort into maintaining his balance and what was left of his composure, and yet he failed. The world was spinning so much before his drunken eyes, that he took a dive forwards and landed into the stranger’s chest. The situation was embarrassing even in the state he was in, and with all the energy and self awareness he had left he pulled himself backwards, catching a glimpse of the taller man’s understanding face.
“Don’t worry, I’m okay”, he slurred. Seunghyun nodded.
A step towards the bar’s front door and his surroundings were spinning again, this time the floor also sliding away beneath his feet. That would end up in a painful collision with the floor for sure, if it wasn’t for the sudden strong grip on his right shoulder.
“You don’t really look okay to me”, Seunghyun deep tone reached Jiyong’s ears, and in his drunken state he focused on them and kept repeating them in his head again and again, for no apparent reason. Next thing he felt, the stranger’s grip on his wrist, raising his thin arm and placing it around his neck for support. It was pretty uncomfortable, since the stranger and he had a significant height difference, but judging by the steps they took without him diving towards the floor again, it worked.
Soon, the bar’s loud and monotonous music started fading away more and more, and a cold breeze hit his face, restarting his brain and putting him momentarily out of his drunken state. He realized he didn’t even know the stranger’s name, yet he felt like his tongue wasn’t flexible enough to spell the question without slurring, and God, he hated slurring.
The silence was pretty awkward. It made Jiyong feel pretty embarrassed, because there he was in his clothes that hadn’t been washed for a while and his old dirty shoes and his unkempt hair, clinging on to a very stylish and sharply dressed man for support. Lately he had been busy by his priorities, and clothes and style obviously weren’t included there. He felt some worry over the possibility of staining or even ripping the man’s expensive suit, and he tried to ignore this thought and follow his lead.
After a few minutes of walking, they stopped in front of a shiny black luxurious car. Seunghyun opened the door to the backseats and helped Jiyong inside, paying attention to the smaller man’s head, ready to prevent him from hitting it on the car’s roof.
“Don’t fall asleep”, he chuckled and helped Jiyong with the seatbelt.
“Can’t fall asleep when more drinking has been promised to me” Jiyong managed to slur out, half laughing and half serious. Seunghyun gave him a small smile, closed the door and headed to the driver’s seat.
The car came to life under the palms of his hands as soon as he turned the engine’s key, with the quiet purr he so much loved. Putting gentle pressure on the pedals and turning the wheel gracefully, he drove away from the dark alley where he had earlier parked it and drove towards the highway. Jiyong had leaned into the window and fixed his eyes on the streetlights. In an attempt to sober up a bit, he tried counting them, but his alcohol infused brain was too slow and the lights passed too fast over them, so he gave up after managing to count a bit over ten inaccurately, realizing he missed over twenty of them. His focus was now switched to the engine’s purr. The car’s gentle rocking made him sleepy.
“So, what was a man like you doing in that filthy little bar?”, Seunghyun broke the silence, looking at Jiyong through the front mirror.
Jiyong switched his weight from the window to the seat where the stranger was driving in, resting his chin on it and making eye contact through the front mirror.
“What was a man like you doing in there?”, he answered the question with a question. Seunghyun chuckled.
“Looking for someone like you”.
Jiyong fell back into his seat waist deep in thought of this statement. The conversation ended like that and they both fell silent, the only sound heard being the engine and the occasional car passing by Seunghyun’s. The highway wasn’t busy that night and the sky was clear, so the ride to Seunghyun’s place was a mild and pleasant one.
Jiyong had a hard time clearing his thoughts and an annoying headache had started forming. His relationship with drinking was a hate-love one, he loved the fuzziness but he hated the aftermath, hangover and all. Yet as much as he hated it, he didn’t avoid getting drunk almost every other night, and he really, really didn’t want to admit that he had a drinking problem. He liked to think that he had some sort of control over it, but deep down he knew that wasn’t exactly the truth.
Mentally going over his drinking problem for the millionth time that week, he started dozing off to sleep. At first he tried forcing his eyes open, remembering what the man had told him as he was helping him sit down on the backseat, but in the end he didn’t see how falling asleep would be a problem, and judging by the lack of houses on the sides of the streets they still had a pretty long way to go. He closed his eyes and gave himself over to the comforting embrace of sleep.
Seunghyun took his eyes from the road and checked on Jiyong through the front mirror. He found him sleeping and smiled to himself. The boy’s face was finally free of the concern that was nesting between his eyebrows for the hours before he fell asleep, and now he looked peaceful, angelic even.
Turning his gaze to the street again, he allowed himself to relax and empty his mind for a while. This whole time he was fixed on the boy, anxious to gain his trust and make him feel comfortable, which he apparently at least halfway managed, judging by the fact that he was now fast asleep in his backseat. Sure, his drunkenness really helped with that, but he thought that even in this state, some level of trust and comfort was essential for one to fall asleep in some random stranger’s car.
Minutes later, he reached their destination. With a single press of a button, the garage door opened up and he drove inside. Once he positioned the car inside and turned off the engine, he got out and closed the door as gently as possible, careful not to scare Jiyong awake. He opened the door to the backseats in the same gentle way, and he lightly tapped Jiyong on the shoulder. He got no response from the boy, so he shook him a bit, but that had the same effect as the tapping; no response. Drunken sleep was indeed deep sleep, and seeing he could get no response from Jiyong, he undid his seatbelt and slid his arms under him, one under his knees and one behind his back, lifting him up and outside of the car. It felt as if like the boy weighted nothing, which he should have expected by his scrawny and small body. With a swing of his hips he closed the door, and with Jiyong in his arms he walked out of the garage and upstairs, into his house.
First floor and passing through the living room, he assumed from the silence that the house was empty. He rolled his eyes at the messy couch and coffee table, but kept walking up another set of stairs, this time to the second floor where the bedrooms were.
Reaching an unoccupied bedroom, he laid Jiyong on the bed and took off his shoes, placing them next to the bed. Seeing that the boy was still sleeping unbothered, he carefully slid his hands into his old jeans. He pulled out an ID card, and enough coins to buy nothing with, as well as a photo of a girl. By the looks of her she looked pretty young, and Seunghyun assumed that she was either Jiyong’s sister or girlfriend, maybe even his best friend of some sort. The coins were of no significance to him, so he switched his attention to the ID card. Jiyong’s photo on the ID was unexpectedly good, taking into consideration that ID photos were usually on various levels of unattractiveness. He turned the card over to gather some initial information about the boy. After reading the date of birth he realized that calling him ‘boy’ was a bit ironic, as it turned out to be that Jiyong was only a year younger than him. Full name was Kwon Jiyong. Nationality Korean, as expected.
Not wanting to risk Jiyong waking up and seeing him looking through the content of his pockets, he carefully put everything back to place and then walked towards the wardrobe. He picked a blanket from inside and threw it over Jiyong. He was about to leave the room when he remembered the danger of him throwing up in his sleep, since he obviously was really drunk. He turned back and with a little effort he turned Jiyong on his side, placing a couple of pillows against his back to support this position and prevent him from lying on his back and chocking on his own vomit in the case of him actually ending up throwing up.
“Drink? You promised” Jiyong slurred in his sleep, slightly opening his eyes.
Seunghyun pulled the blanket over his shoulders. “It’s late now, go back to sleep.”
He walked to the bedroom door and looked back at Jiyong, who had went back to sleep as fast as he had woken up to request his promised drink.
“See you in the morning”, Seunghyun whispered, closing the door behind him as he walked out of the room.