A Subtle Companionship
My life is fucked...
Startled by the words that had slipped out of him without a thought, Hong Ji-hyeon froze where he stood.
"Uh, that's—"
His tongue scrambled to launch an excuse, but his head refused to come up with a single thing he could say.
"Sit here."
Marcus caught the flustered, speechless Ji-hyeon and lowered him onto the ledge in front of a bright glass wall. The two of them had been standing outside a convenience store.
"I'll buy you something to drink. What do you want?"
"Ah, I... banana milk, then."
"Okay."
Marcus answered and swept straight into the store. Left on his own, Ji-hyeon stared blankly at the door he had disappeared through.
Marcus is being so nice... No, that's not the point! You've got something way more urgent right now, you idiot!
Clutching his throbbing head, Ji-hyeon scolded himself. He had rambled himself drunk into a slip of the tongue, and somehow he had to fix it.
I outright said I like Black guys! How am I supposed to walk that back?! Pass it off as a joke? Then it just looks like I made some weird crack about race, which is even worse! Say I meant I like people without caring about race? There is no way the words I actually said could be heard like that!
With the alcohol dragging his thoughts along at a crawl, a clean excuse simply would not surface.
In the end the door chime rang as Marcus came back out. A plastic bag with a few things in it hung from his hand, and from inside it he drew a bottle of banana milk and held it out to Ji-hyeon.
"Ah, thank you."
Ji-hyeon took the banana milk and started to get up, but Marcus gestured for him to stay seated. So he sat back down, peeled the cap off, and began to drink, while Marcus stood beside him and took a bottle of water from the bag for himself. From above, his gaze rested on Ji-hyeon as he drank.
Once the banana milk was empty, the two of them set off again toward Marcus's place. Ji-hyeon no longer needed to be held up. He walked along at Marcus's side, step by steady step.
The excuse is one thing, but... why am I even going to Marcus's place right now?
The thought surfaced out of nowhere as he walked the street in a daze.
I'm starting to sober up, and crashing at someone else's house is kind of... and more than anything... more than anything... I'm starting to get turned on?!
The banana milk had begun to clear his fading head, and Ji-hyeon was thoroughly rattled. He was with a Black alpha male the likes of which a person might see once in a lifetime — being looked after by him, even heading for his home — and the reality of it was finally sinking in.
Aaaah! I can't think straight! What do I do? I still have to clean up what I said earlier, and I feel like I ought to say I'm going home now!
He decided to abandon the excuse for the time being. With his head still swimming, there was no way he could stick a clean landing.
For now... just go home and sleep.
He opened his mouth carefully, stopped where he was, and looked up at Marcus, who had been walking right beside him.
"Um, Marcus. I'm all right now. I'll take a taxi home."
"It's close. My place."
"Still, I'd feel bad showing up while I'm drunk..."
"It's okay."
Without so much as a change of expression, Marcus brushed the refusal aside as if it were nothing. Faced with that firm attitude, Ji-hyeon found it hard to dig in his heels.
I can't say no...!
Part of it was Marcus's manner, and part of it was Ji-hyeon's own inability to refuse anyone — but underneath it all was the anticipation coiled deep in his chest. Beneath the reason that wanted to mind its manners, expectation toward his own warped fantasy was writhing wildly.
He wanted to get closer. That was why he wanted to see the house. He wanted the two of them alone in a closed room. He wanted that strong, superior body to pin him down.
Ji-hyeon clung desperately to his reason and tried to smother those desires.
Calm down, Hong Ji-hyeon! Don't wreck things with Marcus over some weird expectation! He's looking after you this kindly even now! Fine. Since it's already come to this, I'll go to his place. My head hurts anyway, so I'll sleep, and once I'm back in my own room I'll use having been in Marcus's house as fuel for a fantasy jerk-off session♡
The tangle in his head sorted itself around that final goal, and all at once his chest felt clear. A thing like this was only possible because he was—
Hehehe.
—a pervert.
"Here we are."
While Ji-hyeon was busy striking a bargain with himself inside his own head, they had arrived. A road ran along their left; a high wall rose on their right. More precisely, they stood before one of the large entrances set into that wall at intervals.
"Uh, this is..."
Ji-hyeon, who hadn't even realized how far they'd come, looked around. It wasn't the sort of place you'd expect a rented room, and for a moment he was thrown — until he turned his head to the right and understood.
"This is an apartment complex...?"
It was one of the entrances to an apartment complex near the university.
Huh? What?
Following Marcus past the little park inside the complex, he thought it again.
Seriously, what?
When Marcus punched the code into the shared entrance and gestured for him to go in, he thought it again.
No, seriously, what is this?
Riding the elevator up with Marcus, he thought it again.
Ah, seeing him in a tight space, he looks even bigger and cooler... no, that's not it — what?! This is his house?! He said it was a studio!
With the clean chime of a new elevator they reached the thirteenth floor, and the doors opened onto a spotless apartment hallway. Once again Marcus opened his palm and held it forward, motioning for Ji-hyeon to step out.
We're right by campus, and if it's new construction it should be even more expensive, right? Look at the spacing between the doors — there's no way these are one-rooms!
The scene was nothing like the studio he rented in his aging villa, and Ji-hyeon was thrown. In the meantime Marcus entered the code on the lock of unit 1301 and opened the door.
"Come in."
"Ah, yes..."
Tense, Ji-hyeon answered in a voice that nearly crawled back down his throat, then scurried inside through the door Marcus held for him.
The entryway was wide. Straight ahead was a single door; to the left the wall receded into a spacious living room, where a modern sofa and table, a TV, and a balcony came into view. A hallway ran off to the right, and once he had slipped off his shoes and taken a few steps in, the far end of a U-shaped kitchen showed beyond the short wall on the left.
It's huge! This isn't a size meant for one person!
The door shut with a thud and a digital beep, and Marcus came in after him. He took off his shoes, and that large body drew close behind Ji-hyeon's back. Ji-hyeon naturally moved farther into the apartment, with the feeling of being herded inward.
"This way."
Marcus's big frame passed beside him and turned down the hallway on the right. Ji-hyeon hunched his smaller body and followed, hesitant. There was a door on each side of the hall. Marcus opened the one on the left.
"Sleep here."
Ji-hyeon peeked his face toward the open door. Inside sat a queen-size bed and a desk. It was Marcus's bedroom.
"Ah, no! No, no! I'll sleep on the sofa!"
Sorry to borrow someone else's bed, he tried to refuse.
"Sofa. You sleep, body hurts."
"Then I'll just spread a blanket in the room next door!"
At that, Marcus quietly went back down the hall, opened the door they had seen earlier, and showed him inside. The room was full of all kinds of workout equipment.
He built a mini gym in his house?!
It was Marcus's wordless explanation that laying bedding out in there would be awkward. Even so, when Ji-hyeon still hesitated—
Marcus set a hand on his shoulder.
"It's fine. Take the bad."
He was offering kindness once again, but Ji-hyeon had no room left to hear the words.
Eh. He grabbed my shoulder.
Because of the difference in their height, Marcus only had to lift his arm a little for his hand to land there. That small shoulder was caught as easily as a baseball in his huge hand.
Holy shit, what is this? Now that he's got my shoulder, I get it all over again. Marcus's body is fucking huge! His hand is warm, too! He just put it there, and I can still feel the strength in it! If he grabbed me for real, I don't think I could ever get away! I'm... I'm gonna get hard...!
Not wanting to give Marcus any hint of how suspicious he was acting, Ji-hyeon obediently went into the bedroom. Once Marcus had confirmed he was sitting on the bed, he told him to sleep first and closed the door.
Ah... I'm so fucking giddy, so fucking horny...! All I can picture is getting pinned down!
Now that he had made it all the way into the bedroom, Ji-hyeon's ruined brain started spinning on its own, and he tried with everything he had to shut the fantasy circuit off.
This is exactly... exactly... like that thing I saw the day before yesterday!
Cradling his pounding heart, he lay back on the bed, pulled out his smartphone, and opened the bookmarks in his browser.
This is it! It's exactly like this!
Looking at the page of a BBC erotic manga he had gone so far as to bookmark, he was certain of it. The story was about a cross-dressing man submitting to a Black man, a work Ji-hyeon adored because of its heroine(?) — tattooed with BBC and BNWO.
Aah... it's killing me...
Without realizing it, he rubbed his thighs together and twisted restlessly on the bed.
Spinning fantasies like this off of Marcus's kindness...! My conscience hurts...! All right, no more nonsense... time to... get ready... to sleep...
His eyelids grew heavy as he went to turn the screen off, and his mind grew hazier and hazier.
Sleep...
Between the soft, plush bed and the pleasant buzz of what alcohol remained, Ji-hyeon's eyes closed, and the phone slipped from his slack hand onto the covers.
Meanwhile Marcus, having left Ji-hyeon in the room, was showering before bed.
Water streamed from the showerhead.
It ran down the ridges of his dark, muscular body. Bracing a hand against the wall beneath the spray, Marcus was trying to settle a tangle of feelings and thoughts.
A little later, shower finished and feeling lighter, he dressed and carefully opened the bedroom door. Asleep in his view was Ji-hyeon, and beside him a glow.
Marcus stepped quietly into the room, picked up the phone the light was coming from, and looked at the screen. After a moment he pressed the button, turned it off, and set the phone down by Ji-hyeon's head.
...
Lost in some thought, he carefully brushed aside, with that thick hand, the hair covering Ji-hyeon's face. The face of the soundly sleeping young man was revealed, and for a little while Marcus gazed steadily down at it.
