I'm alive! (I think)
Longer wait - Longer chapter (5k)
Bang's Boxing Gym.
I squinted at the words. They morphed into You Are Dead the longer I stared at it, and it made me drawl outside in front of the gym longer than necessary. Passersby eyed me warily as I kept pacing back and forth, wearing the all-black sweats I came with when I left Japan and matched it with a cap and mask. It looked like I was about to rob the place but that was far from the truth.
Chan is going to kill me. That was all I could think of.
Two weeks no word about my whereabouts was the worst I could do to him. He actively reminded me how much he hated that. The last time was here at the gym when he tried to choke the life out of me.
Which was why I chose to come before his lunch break, I knew he was teaching kids right now so I had a room full of tiny witnesses.
Okay.
The moment I pulled on the vertical bar of the glass door, the sound of cheery, overly hyped kids molested my ears. I grimaced behind my mask. I didn't hate them, not necessarily, but I wasn't fond of them either. Mostly when they were high on adrenaline after two sloppy kicks against the boxing pad their opponent guarded themselves with because they imagined they were Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee.
Chan stood with his arms crossed, wearing a white compression shirt and light grey shorts. His eyes were trained on the six pairs of children, occasionally hitting shins and arms instead of the pad. He corrected them with authority backing him up and silenced the whiners who got hurt.
"There is not fighting without pain. Learn to absorb them and channel it back into energy." Chan then noticed me, his eyes diverting when I came closer to the red mat they had gathered on. I took off the mask and fumbled it into the pocket of my joggings and kept my hand there. A shitty smile surfaced when my friend's gaze intensified the longer he stared at me. "We'll have a ten-minute break. Try not to hurt each other, I'll be right back."
There were no words said to me as Chan brushed past me to head to his office. I knew this was an indication to follow him. So far the tiny witnesses, I thought and heaved a sigh as I closed the door behind me. The blinders were shut. The windows were double, keeping the screaming kid noises out, and mine in. There lay a pair of twenty-kilo dumbles on the ground, and I wondered if that would be the murder weapon and if the black carpeting would be soon soaked in red. Dramatic, yes, but I knew Chan most of my life, so I knew this wasn't going to end pretty.
Chan turned around, his arms back across his chest to stand in his familiar pose. The small of his back leaned against his desk with his legs apart, and all I could do was swallow thickly. This wasn't about that I didn't know how to tell what happened, not at all. Chan knew the lengths my father went to make me yield to his command. He had attended enough bruises and cuts to not question them anymore. Our friendship bond had visibly stretched to its limit, and we both knew it.
I have been lying to him. White lies but that didn't matter. Ever since the contract with Hwang, I haven't been honest with Chan because I knew it would upset him. And now that I had an epiphany of some sort in Japan, I had crawled back to Hwang because I couldn't get enough of him. Even now, when I was about to get murdered, my mind went back to this morning and triggered my lips to curl into a faint smile.
"Uhm..." I coughed, remembering where I was and what I was supposed to do. But what could I possibly say to make amends? Sorry sounded pathetic and shallow.
Then I blinked, shocked. Blinked again. After the third blink, I registered what was happening. Without processing it, Chan had left the desk to walk to me and now he was holding me in a death grip. He would call it a hug, but all I felt was my ribs crushing my lungs.
"Holy fuck, you're really here." He breathed into my neck, his arms drawing me closer to his chest. "I thought something terrible had happened... I couldn't reach you." I kept quiet, even when his forearm pressed too deep into my back, and bit back the reaction to the pain. Somehow, Chan noticed my discomfort and untangled me by holding my shoulders and pushing me an arm's length apart. "You hurt?" That's when I saw his glazed eyes.
"Are you crying?" I asked, ignoring his question.
"No." He sniffed, and he then let me go to drag his arm under his nose. "You're deflecting. What happened?" Chan scanned my whole body now. After a full sweep, he got stuck staring at my hand. I raised it slightly, looking at it now too. My knuckles had swollen overnight into a bruising red, troubling me in closing it fully. "I heard about Yang..."
"He deserved it." I spewed in defense as if Chan was here to scold me for my unreasonable actions.
"I bet he does." There was that stare of his again. The all-knowing look he gave me made it impossible to hide from him. I was an ace when it came to creating a blank expression, but it didn't matter when it came to Chan, who easily saw my colorful emotions run beneath. "Has this to do with your father?"
I bit my lip too hard before I gave in to his pinning gaze. "The video got out."
"What?!" Eyes turned wide. "Yang did that? Has everyone seen it?"
"I don't think so. My father was blackmailed for money. Nobody has seen it besides him."
"Fuck." Chan paced back and forth in his office with a hand in his hair, then he made an abrupt sharp turn back to me when something hit him. "Your father... what did he do to you that made you disappear on us for two weeks?"
He knew I hated this subject so he wasn't all surprised when my brows furrowed and I broke our eye contact.
"Min... how bad is it?"
"It's fine now."
"That was not my fucking question!" he shouted at me, evading my personal space once again. Hands fumbled on the end of my hoodie to pull it up. A strip of skin of my stomach showed but I yanked it back down again before Chan could see more.
"Stop that! I'll show you," I said, fused with anger and frustration. I turned my back to him so I could raise the fabric. The deafening silence that came with it was enough for me to know Chan was speechless while his gaze was glued onto my back. Hwang had patched me up again but Chan didn't need X-ray abilities to understand what lay beneath the bandages.
"He whipped you?" The again that followed was nothing more than air. "I thought he stopped that?"
"It seems when he's angry enough he goes back to his old habits." I shrugged, and I felt my walls rise to protect myself. It didn't matter how many times we discussed this topic, it would always be a soar one.
"Min..." Chan's voice cracked, and I hated it. I hated all of this, and I knew the day was far from over because I needed to visit my little cousin too.
I flinched when his fingers trailed over my back unexpectedly.
"Where did you go? Why didn't you call me? I could have helped." His words were nothing more than a whisper, thick with tears he tried to swallow down
"I got sent to some suburb in Tokyo...and I left my phone in the car, Felix has it. I couldn't reach you."
"Bullshit." Chan twirled me around, his hands back gripping the sides of my upper arms. An unexplainable emotion was swirling in the browns of his irises, a frown cast a shadow over his eyes. "All you needed to do was google the gym and call that number."
I blinked, stunned. That was an easy solution. Why hadn't I done that? This was something I usually think of right away. It was fucking simple.
"I could have..." I frowned at my best friend. "I should have." My mind was reeling, doing its damn best to figure out what to say, why I didn't contact him. "I think I needed a break," was all I could come up with, and I believed that.
Chan huffed as he let go of me, then grumbled incoherently under his breath. The need to fix things resurfaced when I saw the hurt in his face that I tried so damn hard not to give him. It seemed that everything I'd done to keep things right bit me in the ass in the end. Being compliant but distant with Hwang resulted in more desire to explore the man I once labeled as my biggest enemy. Being firm with Felix made him jump into the arms of one of the assholes in my close circle the first chance he got. And keeping Chan and Hwang apart to avoid a fight threatened my friendship to crumble.
"Why do you always have the urge to do everything on your own? Why am I even here then? Am I nothing to you that you don't even consider contacting me? I felt like shit the past two weeks."
My expression darkened. "I can assure you I haven't spent my days in the sunshine and my nights on a flowerbed."
"Shit Lee, I'm sorry. Does it still hurt much? Who helped you? God, I've too many fucking questions." Chan paced back behind his desk with disheveled hair from running through it too many times and sat down.
"Fuck, no I'm sorry, I should have thought more and called. But I came straight to you when I could." This was also a lie, and so I tangled myself deeper into the web of conceit I had created. Something the way Chan looked at me, he agreed. "And no, it doesn't hurt as much anymore. A nurse, Momo, took care of me."
Chan stared quizzically at me. "Momo? A nurse? Why does this sound like cheap porn..."
"She's married."
"Even cheaper."
"Shut up. My father fixed this. After his wrath, he sent me straight to Japan." Then Felix came to mind. "How is my cousin? Seen him?"
"Felix?" Chan frowned at that, leaning on his palm as he looked at me. "He has been a bit off lately. Can't put a name on it. He's in the gym more though, but quiet."
I heaved a sigh, pushing my words out, "He saw."
"Saw what? The video?"
"No." I would have chosen that if I could. "No, he saw what my father could do."
"He was with you?!" The desk chair clattered to the ground when Chan rose from his seat, startled. "He saw you get beaten up?"
"Yeah... I asked him to stay in the car but for some reason, he has trouble listening to me."
"Family trait it seems."
"Fuck you, Chan. But yeah, he saw me get whipped by a fucking belt. I ordered him to take my car and go home and not say a word about it."
"Not talking, another trait, now it makes all so much more sense. He was really worked up when I saw him that Sunday evening. He punched and kicked the living crap out of me."
My lips quirked up, pleased that Felix kept his promise and amused he used Chan as a living and breathing punching bag.
"Lee... I could see he had cried."
My smile dropped. A queasy feeling settled into my stomach when the memory of his snotty face appeared in my head. His wobbly mouth when he tried to speak while swallowing back his tears. Then guilt added to my already fucked up feelings; I should have dropped Felix at the gym.
"Shit, was it that bad? I need to call him." I cleared the distance between us and leaned with one hand on the desk and the other palm up, wiggling my fingers at Chan. "Give me your phone."
"Channie hyung!" Felix answered after the third transition tone.
"Hey, Lix..."
"Hyung?"
♛
It took me a couple of minutes, staring a hole through the door in the process. Felix had let me into the building and shared the code of his door because his hands were dirty prepping a meal to open it himself. I had touched the door lock pad three times now but couldn't get myself to push the numbers.
"Stop being such a pussy," I scolded, grumbling. A clear beep followed after each push on a number and then rang when the door unlocked. "Lix?"
"Kitchen!"
I slid into slippers and opened the door to the main living area. The bright colors of Felix's apartment welcomed me. A lot of things have changed since the last time I visited. More personal. Felix created a nook on the other side of the kitchen, painted in a beautiful periwinkle blue that reminded me of the night sky swallowing the last strip of sunset. Seeing the soft orange pillows thrown in the denim futons, it seemed my cousin was going for this look. But it was the centerpiece that took most of my attention and clarified the unique scent that wafted in my direction the moment I opened the door.
Huge lilies were put in a transparent, lilac vase on a side table in a richer blue than the wall and chairs. They were Tiger Lilies, bright orange with dark brown spots. Their pungent scent almost overruled the smell of beef that simmered on the fire, and I tore my gaze from the flowers to follow the sound of splattering oil.
Felix was washing his hands, his back turned to me. The countertop next to the stove was heavily used, and it made me smile for no reason, easing the knot in my stomach just a little.
"You need help?" I shoved the sleeves of my hoodie up past my elbows and gathered the leftover vegetables on the cutting board to clean the space. My right hand had a bit of difficulty grabbing things because of the swelling so I mostly used my left.
My cousin towel-dried his hands. I noticed how his stance straightened and his diaphragm expanded as he gulped in a deep breath before he turned around.
"Shit, I fucking can't," he muttered lowly and flicked his eyes up to peek through his curtain bangs. A little clueless, I stopped with what I was doing to study his face more thoroughly. The tip of Felix's nose had a pink hue and the waterline of his eyes was red, it was obvious he tried to keep himself composed.
He munched on his bottom lip, mulling it over, and then squeaked, "Can I hug you?"
There was a heavy silence. I thought back to the day I picked my carefree and clueless cousin up from the airport. Where I gave him his first lesson: no skinship. He had hugged me with all his might, a cousin he barely knew. And now he asked me to touch me, he had learned from his mistake, and it hurt all the more.
So I gave him the faintest nod.
Fat tears rolled over his cheeks before he even rounded the kitchen island. I dug my front teeth into my bottom lip, clamping hard, as I felt too many emotions brewing inside of me. Felix reached me with a stumble and crashed into my chest, trying his best to disappear into my black hoodie. And cried.
My little cousin sobbed his heart out while his fists grabbed tighter onto the fabric on my back. And all I could do was wrap my arms around his shaking frame and circle a hand over his back, waiting.
"I-I'm so sorry," he choked out a muffled cry, burying his face deeper into me. "—So sorry." He kept this on repeat. I wasn't sure what he was sorry for when all I could think of how sorry I was. But I let him. After what he had been through, he deserved this much from me.
I deepened my embrace and rested my chin on his shoulder as I hushed a soothing mantra directly into his ear. The grip on me lessened after a while and the 'sorries' died down. We were left with the sounds of our breathing and the sizzling meat in the background.
"I think your beef is burning," I said softly, and it broke the spell we were in.
"Fuck!" Felix backed away to show me a flushed face, wet from snot and tears. Warmth spread through my chest, knowing he cared for me. This selfless human being fucking cared for me, and I had to contain whatever wanted to spill from me right now by trapping my bottom lip behind my teeth.
"Go clean up, I'll plate the food." My cousin nodded with glossy eyes, pulled his nose up, and then left me behind with an ache in my chest and a lump in my throat. "Shit."
The table was set and I just sat down when Felix came back, all cleaned up and looking a little better. The evidence of his crying session was still visible through his pink nose and bloodshot eyes.
"Thank you for the food," I mumbled and tapped the chopsticks on the table. I munched on a strip of beef as I peered at my cousin sitting across the table with his head lowered while he ate. "I know you're dying to ask me questions. Go ahead."
His head raised. "Hyung..." he began hesitantly. There must have gone a million things through his head but the only question he managed to ask me was, "Why?"
Nothing in my head that tried to form an answer made sense. Because it didn't make fucking sense. A parent should be loving and caring for their children, not brutal like my father and emotionally unavailable like my mother. Yet that was how I was raised and taught. I lived with the forcing hand of my father so I would do exactly as he wanted and be exactly like him.
I placed the chopsticks on the rim of the bowl, giving Felix my full attention before I spoke. "I don't have the right answer for that, I know how fucked up and wrong it was what you saw. My father is a strict man who doesn't allow any missteps, and this is his way of putting me back in line. What you saw... believe me that this went too far, even for him. He hasn't..." I swallowed, "he hasn't been this angry in a long time. And I'll make sure of it to not let it get to this extreme ever again. And I'm so sorry you had to witness that. I don't want you to be scared. And most of all, I don't want you to see me any different than before."
Tears gathered again, on the brim of spilling. Felix hid behind a napkin, sniffing, and spoke behind it. "The only difference here is that I have gained more respect for you, hyung. You're so fucking strong and I aspire to be like you one day. I'm sorry for being such a pain in the ass to you. Now I understand your reasoning why you were so firm with me and I'll make sure to make you proud."
♛ ≪ ...𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐞𝐭 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 ♛
My throat was parched from the heavy breathing. I had collapsed on top of Lee, too tired to roll myself off of him. And even so, I didn't want to move. His warmth seeped through me, our sweaty chests glued together as his alluring scent engulfed me, and it made me crawl deeper into him.
"We need to clean up," my traitorous tongue said. I had accepted the fate that Lee would react to this and shove me off him but he surprised me instead—or more like shocked me—when he did the complete opposite. Arms wrapped around me, bringing me closer to him and I felt lips against my temple, stilling me.
"Give me a minute..."
Chills sprawled over my heated skin when his husky voice spoke against the shell of my ear, followed by the sound of heavy breathing. Lee was knocked out not a second after with me trapped in his embrace. There was a flight instinct that wanted to push myself free but the familiar heavy feeling of sleep after an orgasm beat me to it and I slumped into Lee's warmth.
♛
🍋
My last dream was wild and hazy, and it gave me a hard time registering where I was and what was happening until I felt an arm that had hooked around my neck. Puffs of warm air and grunts were sent straight into my ear, blowing strands of hair over the side of my face, tickling me.
"Lee?" My voice cracked, my throat in heavy need of water. "What are you doing?"
I felt his wettened length rub against my ass, and it was very hard. His rutting against me flared me alive. The semi I woke up with grew in an instant, welcoming the sensation that washed over me. The pressure of his forearm on my throat only enhanced my feelings and I had to pinch my eyes shut to not combust out of my fucking skin.
An arm flung back so I could touch his side, trailing my fingers over his thigh and back up again. They made patterns while my body fluttered from the inside. My cheeks flushed from the way Lee had woken me up, demanding something from me, and I was far too eager to explore all of him.
But then this sudden hot streak squirted against the small of my back and ass, and I knew all too well what that was. My eyes snapped open, baffled, and pulled me out of my horny daze. "Did you just came on my ass?" I almost shrieked. What the hell? Then I felt his cum move. "O my god, I can feel it slither down my ass crack."
And like that Lee shoved us apart. I looked over my shoulder, confused, and was met with an even more confused expression of Lee. The room was still dark, but the morning light that filtered through the thick curtains made it a bit easier to see.
Lee figured this out too.
He flipped on his other side, muttering something to himself, and quickly got up. I watched his perky ass move toward the walk-in and then he left me behind.
"Ya!" I yelled after him. "You just going to leave me like this?" Mortified, I pushed myself off the mattress and stood up. His cum curved over the swell of my ass, running down my legs. "Gross."
As I walked toward the bathroom too, knowing Lee must have gone into hiding there, I glanced down at my erection. If he got to chase his high so could I.
Lee stood under the shower with his back facing me. The water splashed over his broad shoulders as he shampooed his hair roughly. He hadn't heard me come in, I noticed how his form stayed relaxed. It gave me the chance to sweep my eyes over his backside. The angry red welts looked even worse than last night. But when I came closer, submerging under the hot spray of water, I felt a sudden chest pain.
Beneath and between his fresh wounds were faint pink stripes. Old scars. My fingertips touched his shoulder, barely, but Lee's body went rigid. He stopped soaping in his hair while he let my fingers trail his marks. I bit my lip, confused, frustrated, and angry all at once.
"How old are these," I whispered loud enough so he could hear me past the running water.
He knew what I was referring to and he said even softer, "Seventeen years ago, some are less."
I never cared about someone else's well-being besides my own. They could all fuck themselves, I wouldn't care. But when I pictured Lee not older than ten years with his back beaten raw, a strange feeling seized my body. I felt sick, my throat constricting, and I had to steady myself by holding onto the top of his shoulder.
Words gathered in my cloaked up throat, waiting to be spilled. Because I knew with certainty what the answer would be but I wanted him to confirm. But after three tries of opening my mouth, looking like a gaping fish, I couldn't form them.
So I did what I knew best; I fucked it out of my system. The hand that held onto his shoulder moved up to brush over his neck. One by one, my fingers curled around Lee's throat and pulled him flush against my body. If he didn't know I was aroused, he knew now... My hard cock nestled in between the seam of his ass, and I enveloped my other arm around his waist to keep him close.
"I'm going to use you now, like you've done with me." I nipped his lobe, then licked over the curve of his ear. "Care to explain what happened back there?"
Lee grunted, his Adam's apple bopped against my palm when he answered me, "I fucked you in my dream." The grip on him tightened.
"You weren't awake when you were humping me?"
"Nope. It was very vivid I have to say... thought it was real. But now I realize you were way too eager to get fucked in the ass. Still hot though." Those filthy words made me push him against the cold tiling. It earned me a low chuckle. "Did you prefer it was someone else I fucked? You don't want me to touch your precious ass, princess? Not even in my dreams?"
Lee was riling me up. Maybe he tried to shift the tension as much as I did. We were both lousy when it came to expressing our emotions through a normal, healthy conversation. Usually, we ended up fighting, getting rid of all our pent-up emotions, but now that we were both on board that we liked to release through sex, we didn't need to. And I had to be honest with myself, I really, really liked this development.
Slowly, I rocked my hips against him. My taut skin loved the friction dragging over my cock, and I moved faster. "Explain the dream," I said huskily as my breath became more sharp.
"I prepped your pretty round ass with my fingers. Your eager hole sucked me in deliciously." The image of Lee finger-fucking my ass made me push harder against him. His cheek hit the tiled wall as I used him to catch my release. His ass felt amazing but I wanted to drag more out of this.
"Bent," I ordered him. I let go of his throat while my other hand pushed against his pelvis so that his back was beautifully arched. Lee propped his arms against the wall with his legs a little spread. "Fuck," I muttered, mesmerized by the view. I grabbed onto his ass cheeks and forced them apart and slid my erection back and forth in between.
"You're taking your sweet time," he groaned. "Fuck!" he yelped when I smacked him so hard on his ass it instantly glowed red, showing me my handprint. It surprised him as much as it did me. The punishment came so naturally to me that I didn't even register it.
Lee looked over his shoulder, his hair plastered onto his face, and gave me a dark look. He looked fucking pretty like that, so I had to seize the opportunity and curled my body over him, slowly rocking against him. My fingers pinched his chin, drawing him closer, and kissed him.
The hot water seeped between our lips as we lazily followed each other's movement. The tips of our tongs touched outside of our mouths, battling where we would continue. I pushed Lee deeper against the wall, forcing myself onto him, and won this little battle as I swirled my tongue into his mouth.
It was soft, almost drowned out in the sound of crashing water, but I heard him moan into my mouth when my hand feathered over the stinging red skin of his ass cheek. I softly kneaded the warm flesh as I felt my orgasm nearing.
Our kiss turned more wild, using teeth, and sucking in bottom lips. My hips jerked erratically and I stopped kissing because all my attention was drawn toward the tingling of my lower spine.
"Fuck, gonna come," I breathed against Lee's swollen lips. My imagination went haywire, thinking of erupting all over his pretty face, and it was what toppled me over the edge.
A moan brushed over his tinted cheek, pressing my forehead against the side of his head, and shuddered when I came all over his ass and back, returning the favor. My body draped over his with my arms around his waist, and we stayed like that to catch our breaths.
Lee rested his chin on the top of his shoulder when my lips lightly caressed his temple, fluttering down to his cheek, and gave him a fleeting kiss. A lazy smile blossomed on my face, enjoying the aftermath.
"Go clean up, I'll bandage your wounds when you're done. We got a little sidetracked last night," I smirked against his hot cheek and peeled myself off him. Lee didn't move, waited for me to leave, and it gave me a perfect view of his ass covered in cum with my hand glowing on one cheek.
Fuck, that sight alone made me want to mark his whole body. Covering his old ones with only good experiences.
☞ ☆