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The two of them are trying to study at the kitchen table in Kavinsky’s house. Well, Prokopenko is probably actually studying, while Jiang is too busy staring at K’s ass to focus on his textbook. It wasn’t even his fault, not really. The shorts K was wearing were too damn small. K never cared too much about what clothes he wore around the house, but this was new and definitely too much.
K doesn’t notice his lingering stare; he makes himself coffee and leaves again to do more amusing things than homework. The second he’s out of earshot, Proko nudges Jiang with his elbow.
“Did you just check out K’s ass?”
Jiang very pointedly returns his gaze to the textbook. “No.”
“You totally did.”
Proko doesn’t even sound mad about it. He sounds amused and of course he does, because what are the chances of something, anything, happening between Jiang and K? Zero. Less than zero. Proko has nothing to worry about and he knows it.
Jiang begrudgingly stares at the textbook, not really seeing any of the words, just refusing to meet Proko’s eyes.
“I didn’t know you were into him,” Proko continues, matter-of-factly.
Jiang can’t help but shrug. “He’s hot.”
Proko’s still smiling obnoxiously. “I’m aware.”
Jiang sighs and forces himself to focus. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
He expects Proko to agree and forget about this conversation altogether. Maybe he’ll tell Kavinsky later and they’ll laugh at him together. Instead, Proko pushes the textbook out of the way and asks: “Would you fuck him?”
Jiang blinks, his brain momentarily frozen. “I… What?”
Proko shrugs, like it’s no big deal, like he asks all of his friends if they’d fuck his boyfriend. “We could have a threesome.”
Jiang keeps staring at him, unable to process what he’s hearing. He’s had the biggest fattest crush on Proko for ages and when he did his best to get rid of it, he ended up having a crush on not only Proko but K as well, knowing full well that nothing would ever come out of it because Proko and K were like soulmates or some shit and now Proko is casually offering him a threesome?
“Sorry, I think I’m hallucinating,” he manages only. “You’re actually offering me a threesome?”
Proko only shrugs again. “I’d have to ask K, obviously, but he’s very casual about sex so I don’t think he’d be opposed.”
Jiang is fully aware he’s pushing his luck way too much, but he can’t help asking: “What if I want more than just sex?”
Now it’s Proko’s turn to look surprised. “Oh.” He gets his composure back quickly though, and smiles rather smugly. “It’s like that, huh?”
Jiang gives him a hard look but he’s sure his face is getting redder the longer they’re talking. “Shut up.”
Proko laughs and pulls the textbook back to himself. “I’ll talk to K.” His smile wavers then. “But I can’t promise you anything. Not about this.”
Jiang nods. “It’s fine. I understand.” And he does. Proko might be open to the idea, but K was jealous and cagy and kept everyone at a safe distance. He wasn’t going to just let someone into his relationship.
…
Kavinsky’s sprawled on his bed, scrolling through his phone with Proko curled close to him, reading a book. It’s disgustingly domestic but there was no one around to see them and K craved the comfort of it.
Proko suddenly lifts his head to look at K and says: “Thoughts on a threesome with Jiang?”
K raises an eyebrow, but they’ve had weirder conversations than this. “He’s hot, so sure, why not?”
Proko chuckles at that.
“Is that a hypothetical question or…?”
“Hypothetical. Mostly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Proko shrugs. “Jay said he wants more than just sex.”
K snorts. “We can take him out for dinner if he wants.”
Proko smiles but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “That’s not what I mean.”
K puts the phone away and turns all of his attention to Proko. He doesn’t like where this conversation’s going in the slightest. “He wants to date you,” he says flatly.
“No. He wants to date us.”
K rolls his eyes. “Please.”
“I’m serious.”
K laughs humourlessly. “Oh, I’m sure you are.”
Proko frowns at him. “He is too.”
“Proko, I’m not an idiot. He wants to be with you, and he knows you won’t break things off with me, so this is his solution.”
“That is not true.”
“Are you gonna try to convince me that he genuinely wants to date me?”
“Yes. Is that so hard to believe?”
“Honestly? Yeah.”
“I think that says more about you than it does about him.”
Maybe it does. K doesn’t exactly care. He’s honestly surprised he managed to get himself one boyfriend. There’s no way in hell he’d be able to get two.
Proko sighs. “It’s fine if you don’t want to, I just told Jiang I’d talk to you.”
K wants to ask him what he wants. He wants to ask if he’s unhappy, if he feels the need to bring another person into their relationship because K alone wasn’t enough for him, but he doesn’t want to start a fight, so he stays silent.
“You can’t imagine dating him?” Proko asks, the tone of his voice so soft K has to look away. So much about what Proko wanted.
K really doesn’t want to start a fight about this, so he offers the most truthful thing he can. “I don’t trust him the way I trust you.”
Proko smiles a little and reaches for his hand, intertwining their fingers. K takes that as a good sign. “Maybe you could. Over time.”
“Maybe,” K says noncommittally. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
Proko takes that without arguing and goes back to reading his book as if nothing happened.
…
K can’t stop thinking about it for days. Proko either let it go or he’s doing an awfully good job pretending to. Jiang doesn’t act any differently. K wonders if he simply hallucinated the entire conversation.
It takes him stupidly long to muster up the courage to actually confront Jiang about it and when he does, it’s nothing dramatic.
It’s Monday afternoon, school done for the day, and they all want to get out of the parking lot as soon as possible. Usually, they took separate cars for the possibility of a race later, but today K puts his hand on Jiang’s shoulder, stopping him from approaching his Supra.
“You’re riding with me,” he says, and his tone leaves no room for arguing.
Jiang meets his eyes without flinching, but his voice is careful, unsure. “Okay.”
K gets behind the wheel, patiently waits for Jiang to buckle his seatbelt and then drives off. He keeps his eyes on the road ahead and doesn’t speak until they’re far away from school.
“What kind of game are you playing here?”
Jiang is too smart to play dumb and ask what he’s talking about. “There’s no game.”
“If this is about Proko –” K begins, quite ready to give him the whole ‘touch him and you die’ speech, but Jiang cuts him off with sharp: “It’s not. I’m not stupid enough to try to break you two up.”
K stays quiet. He still found it hard to consider that Proko was telling him the truth from the start. He’s suddenly very aware of Jiang’s presence only a foot or two away from him and the possibility that he was actually attracted to him, personality and all.
They pass the rest of the drive in uncomfortable silence. K breaks every speed limit possible to cut the journey as short as possible and parks in front of the house, stomping on the break with too much force. “Get out,” he says through gritted teeth, staring straight ahead, still clutching the steering wheel with both hands.
Jiang sighs. “You have nothing to worry about, okay? I’ll back off,” he says and gets out of the car and K doesn’t know if this is what he wanted or not.
…
Proko doesn’t say anything to him about it, but K can feel his eyes on him for several days afterwards. At this point, he’d prefer the fight.
Jiang sticks true to his word and keeps his distance from both K and Proko and K pretends he doesn’t see how disappointed Proko looks.
“Are you mad at me?” K asks him finally on Thursday afternoon when they’re smoking together during their free period.
Proko seems genuinely surprised by that question. “Of course not.”
“But you’re not happy with me either.”
Proko sighs. “I thought that maybe you could have a normal conversation with Jiang, not just yell at him.”
“I didn’t yell.”
Proko winces. “That’s honestly worse.” It was no secret that K was loud and prone to violence, but he was truly terrifying when he got quiet.
K frowns. “I didn’t say anything to upset him.”
“Yeah, you didn’t say anything at all.”
K angrily stomps his cigarette. “What the fuck do you want from me, Proko?”
Proko meets his eyes without flinching. “I want you to stop pushing away people who care about you. I don’t care if you want to date him or not, but I can’t stand this. He can hardly be in the same room with you.”
“That’s not my fault,” K says but it comes out almost whiny.
Proko gives him a hard look. “Get it together, then talk to him again and stop pretending you don’t care about him.”
K sighs. Fuck this shit. He liked it better when Jiang didn’t like him at all, and he especially liked it better when he didn’t like Jiang at all. Of course, he’s attracted to him, he has a working pair of eyes and Jiang is hot and smart and a little mean, which makes him even hotter in K’s mind and there’s absolutely no way K is going to start anything with him.
Right?
He spends the afternoon alone. Proko goes to the library, working on some extra credit assignment, Swan and Skov are somewhere together, and Jiang is who knows where, clearly far away from K.
When the night falls, K goes for a long drive to clear his head. He doesn’t have any sort of big epiphany like he hoped he would, but it does calm him down. Maybe he should’ve brought Jiang with him to talk it out. Proko was once again right. He usually is. The problem is that K is still not quite sure what he wants himself.
It’s way too fucking late when he gets back to Henrietta and he’s passing the edge of the city when the car engine gives a violent hiccup.
“Come on,” K mumbles angrily. “Don’t you fucking dare to die on me.”
But when the smoke appears from underneath the hood, he’s not stupid enough to try driving any longer. He steers the car safely to the side of the road, gets out to pop the hood and peers inside. A lot good it does, since he understands cars about as much as he understands his own emotions.
His first thought is to call Proko. There’s no doubt Proko would drop everything to come and pick him up. But it’s almost 3 am and Proko is probably already asleep, and K doesn’t want to bother him, not tonight.
Instead, he impulsively dials Jiang’s number.
It takes an eternity for him to pick up and when he does, he sounds still half asleep. “Someone better be dead,” he says in lieu of a hello.
K can’t help but smirk. “My car died. Come pick me up.”
“Where are you?”
“The exit on the east side.”
“How far from Henrietta?”
He’s practically in Henrietta already but he doesn’t tell him that. He loves pissing Jiang off. “Does it matter?”
Jiang sighs. There’s some rusting in the background as he gets out of the bed. “Apparently not. I’m on my way.”
…
Jiang is going to kill Kavinsky. He doesn’t bother changing from his PJs, just throws on a hoodie to chase off the cold and grabs his car keys. His teeth chatter anyway for the first five minutes of the drive until the heating finally kicks in.
He has no idea how long is he supposed to drive, but he’s prepared for the worst, which is why he almost misses the Mitsu standing just behind the Welcome to Henrietta sign. K is such an asshole, Jiang can’t believe he’s actually attracted to this idiot.
K gets in the passenger seat without a word. So, they’re still doing this.
“What’s wrong with the car?” Jiang asks to have something to talk about at last.
K shrugs. “No idea. I’ll call the tow truck in the morning.”
“Right.” So much for the conversation.
He drives to K’s house with the obvious plan of leaving to go back to the dorms, but when K gets out of the car, he holds the passenger door open and says: “Come in, there’s no point going back to the dorms.”
Jiang could point out that he still had to drive to the school in the morning, so it doesn’t really make a difference, but K is already halfway to the door, so Jiang resignedly follows him.
The house is dark and quiet. Jiang has spent enough time there to be able to navigate it even in the night, but he still sticks close to K.
They climb the stairs together and K leads the way to the bedrooms. Jiang’s designated bedroom is farther down the hall than K’s, but K stops in between the door to his room to grab Jiang’s arm. Jiang doesn’t expect it and the sudden movement almost makes him jump in fright.
It makes K smirk. Jiang wants to punch him for it. K’s still gripping his elbow though and before can Jiang ask what does he want now, he’s already pulling him into the bedroom.
He’s been in K’s bedroom before, but only briefly and never during the night. It’s so much more spacious than the other bedrooms with big windows, one of which is open, making the room even colder.
K lets go of him and goes to close the stupid window. Then he shrugs off his hoodie and jeans. There’s only enough moonlight for Jiang to see the outline of the tattoos on K’s skin, but he’s seen most of them before. Hell, he put most of them on K’s body himself. K was impatient but never flinched at the pain of the needle, on the contrary, almost leaned into it, relaxed, like it didn’t hurt him at all. Who knows, maybe it didn’t. Maybe his perception of pain was fucked, maybe he was into it. It wasn’t Jiang’s place to ask before and it’s not his place to ask now.
“Are you waiting for an invitation?” K asks sneeringly, already crawling into the bed and Jiang realises he hasn’t moved from the spot.
He takes off his hoodie as well, then immediately regrets it. It’s too fucking cold. He eyes K’s bed unsurely. It’s gigantic, big enough for him to lie in it sideways, so he doesn’t have to worry about the space or Kavinsky himself, or does he? He has no idea what K’s intention is. Why did he bring him here? Does he want to fuck? Sleep? It’s after 3 am and Jiang is dead tired, and he doesn’t think he could muster up the energy for more than a shitty handjob.
He cautiously climbs under the blanket. There’s only one and he’s acutely aware of K’s almost naked body, radiating heat. He’s really fucking cold. The sheets are stupidly comfortable. They probably cost more than all of Jiang’s clothes combined.
What now?
K turns to face him, so Jiang does the same. K’s eyes seem black in the dark. Jiang isn’t sure how he feels about having his undivided attention all of a sudden.
“Thanks for picking me up.”
It’s such a surreal thing for him to say, that Jiang has no idea how to respond. “It wasn’t a problem.”
K snorts. “Liar. You hate being woken up.”
Jiang doesn’t dwell on the fact that K knows these little things about him. “Right. Next time I’m turning my phone off and letting you sleep at the side of the road.”
K cackles. He has somehow moved closer without Jiang noticing. “You’re such an asshole,” he says, grabs his face with both of his hands and kisses him.
Before can Jiang get his composure back, K’s already pulling away, not much, just to put an inch or two between them, but making it clear he’s made the first step, and the choice is now Jiang’s.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He pulls K back and kisses him again and K actually smiles into it and Jiang hates him. He never wants to stop kissing him. He thinks that this is what burning alive feels like. He finds K’s waist on autopilot, and he puts his hand on the small of his back to bring him even closer and K hooks his leg over Jiang’s hip, playing along.
Fuck sleep. Jiang has never felt more awake. He wants to map K’s body with his hands and then his mouth. He wants to fuck him until he’s screaming or let him fuck him until they both are. The technicalities are unimportant.
Just then K puts his hand on Jiang’s chest and pulls away completely. Jiang is not above begging at this point and he’s ready to tell him so when K turns his back on him, announcing: “Okay. Goodnight.”
Jiang might actually kill him. “What the fuck?”
“It’s 3 am and I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”
It has to be a joke. He’s surely being fucked with. There’s no way Kavinsky just shoved his tongue down his throat and called it a night five seconds later.
But K makes no move to get back to the making out and to be fair, he has a point. Jiang is also tired. Distantly. The previous exhaustion is lurking in the back of his mind somewhere. He sighs. Arguing with K was like arguing with a brick wall.
He pulls the blanket closer around him, stealing it from K.
“Fuck off,” K hisses and snatches it right back.
“It’s cold here,” Jiang hisses back but K holds onto the stupid blanket for his life, so Jiang just scootches closer to him, K’s back to his chest and loops his arm around K’s middle.
K goes dangerously still under his touch.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He asks softly and the quiet tone is enough to make the hairs on Jiang’s neck stand.
Still, he doesn’t budge. He’s cold and K’s warm and he smells nice, like leather seats and expensive cologne. “Tell me to fuck off,” he suggests. He would back off if K told him to, obviously.
But K only sighs in resignation and a second later his body relaxes. He falls asleep surprisingly fast. Jiang wonders if he’s not dreaming this. In the end, he rests his forehead against the back of K’s neck, closes his eyes and comes to the conclusion that if this is a dream, he’s going to at least enjoy it while it lasts.
…
Jiang wakes up way too fucking early for his liking. Kavinsky’s alarm sounds like the kind of thing they would have in a nuclear powerplant when there was an explosion and it’s currently the sole bane of Jiang’s existence.
K’s still lying in his arms, facing him, and he makes a low groaning sound at the alarm before reaching out with his hand and blindly attempting to shut it off. When he finally succeeds, he returns to his previous position and Jiang hopes they won’t be getting up any time soon.
“I need five more hours,” he says and buries his face in the crook of K’s neck in an attempt to get away from the light that has been steadily trying to reach them through the gaps in the blinds.
K makes a noise that sounds like an agreement wraps his arms around Jiang and holds him tight. Jiang hides his smile in K’s neck. So he’s a fan of cuddles, sue him. It’d been ages since he’s had more than a casual one-night-stand, since he woke up with another person in the bed who was willing to hold him like this. He never imagined the person would be Kavinsky, but he’s definitely not complaining.
“We have to get up,” K mumbles.
“Why?”
“Proko will be mad if we bail on school.”
That’s probably true. Still, the idea of staying right here is way more tempting. When K makes a move as if to pull away, Jiang very unsubtly starts to mouth at the side of his neck. K stops moving away at once and bares his neck to give Jiang more space.
Jiang grins in victory.
“Bite me,” K breathes.
Jiang looks up to his face, unable to tell if he’s telling him to fuck off or to literally bite him. “For real?”
K’s eyes are half-closed still and he has both hands twisted in Jiang’s hair. “Yeah.”
Fuck,
Jiang thinks, excited and horny and suddenly very awake again and sinks his teeth into K’s shoulder, not hard enough to draw blood but hard enough to leave a mark.
K moans and Jiang’s glad he’s not the only one that’s completely lost in this even though they’re barely doing anything. K drags him up by the hair and kisses him and Jiang practically climbs on top of him, slotting his thigh between K’s legs. K abandons his hair in favour of his ass and Jiang can’t help but helplessly grind against him like he’s fucking fifteen again. It doesn’t matter. The friction is passable, K is hot, and Jiang is going to embarrass himself for sure. He pushes K’s underwear out of the way, then his own pyjama pants and the skin-on-skin contact is definitely too much. It’s pathetic how easy he is. K bats his hand out of the way, replacing it with his own and that’s it, Jiang’s done for. He feels distantly smug about ruining K’s expensive sheets.
“That’s flattering,” K says with a smirk but he’s nowhere near as composed as he pretends to be.
Jiang feels boneless and ready to fall back asleep, no matter the mess he made, but K’s still hard and Jiang is nothing but a gentleman. He bites K’s earlobe for that comment but says: “Let me suck you off.”
K laughs a little. “Sure, but fair warning, it’ll be over in ten seconds flat.”
Jiang smirks. “Now who should be flattered?”
“Shut up.”
It is over in ten seconds flat, but Jiang doesn’t care. He sprawls on the bed next to K and closes his eyes and laughs helplessly.
“Proko is going to be so mad he missed this,” K says.
“There’s always next time,” Jiang replies, not even bothering to hide the hopefulness in his voice.
“True.”
Jiang does his best to hide his smile but he’s still sure K didn’t miss it.
“Come on, we’re already late,” K says and gets out of the bed.
Despite the fact that they are horrendously late, they take the time to shower and have coffee. Jiang pointedly doesn’t swoon when K makes his coffee exactly the way he likes but it’s a close thing.
“Why didn’t you call Proko last night?” He asks on the drive to school. K claimed the driver’s seat and Jiang didn’t try to fight him.
K shrugs. There’s a hickey on his neck that he makes no effort to hide. “It was late. He was probably sleeping, and he surely spent his entire evening over that stupid extra credit thing.”
Jiang sighs. “I told him not to bother with that.”
“Yeah, I did too.”
Jiang isn’t surprised Proko didn’t listen to either of them. He was way too stubborn when it came to school.
“He told me to talk to you and fix things,” K adds.
“And you thought that the middle of the night is the perfect time for that?” Jiang asks amusedly.
K shrugs again. “It worked.”
Jiang snorts. “We didn’t exactly talk.”
“Are you complaining?”
He most definitely isn’t, not when K casually puts his hand on his thigh, a move Jiang has seen him execute thousands of times with Proko.
…
They get to school sometime during the second period and Proko catches up with K the second the lesson is over.
“Jay drove you to school?”
“Yeah.”
Proko waits for him to continue and when he doesn’t, he frowns. “That’s all you’re gonna say?”
K shrugs. “My car died last night. He picked me up. We slept over at my place.”
Proko opens his mouth to ask something else but stops and very intently stares at K’s neck. “Joseph Kavinsky, is that a hickey?”
K smirks. “Maybe.”
Proko grins like this is the best news he could possibly get. “What happened?”
“Nothing much, really. It was late. We were tired.”
“Okay. Did you talk?”
“There wasn’t much space for talking,” K says with a sly smirk.
Proko hits him for that but he’s still smiling. “And was it just sex or…?” He asks, trying to make it sound casual but K can hear the careful undertone.
K doesn’t tell him that he could hardly call that sex. If K wasn’t so desperate to get his hands on Jiang, he would feel embarrassed about the whole ordeal. At least Jiang was similarly pathetic. “It wasn’t just sex.”
Proko blinks. “Oh. Did you tell Jay that?”
K rolls his eyes. “I’m sure he got it.” Hell, they slept in each other’s arms. There’s no way Jiang was stupid enough to misinterpret that.
Proko puts his hand on K’s shoulder, his face suddenly serious. “Are you sure about this?” He asks softly.
Jiang didn’t bother asking K that and honestly, K was grateful he didn’t have to formulate his feelings into words. Of course, Proko wouldn’t let him off the hook so easily. “Yeah.”
Proko smiles widely at that, and K is so in love with him it hurts.
In the afternoon, the three of them drive back to K’s house. K doesn’t have a direct plan in his head, but he wouldn’t say no to another coffee and more sex, hopefully a little less embarrassing this time.
What happens instead is that Jiang flings himself on the couch, snuggling under one of the ugly quilts that Skov insisted gave the living room the right energy or some shit like that, and announcing: “Leave me alone, I wanna sleep.”
Proko laughs at him and forces his way under the quilt to him. Jiang grumbles but it’s all for show because he’s already lifting the quilt for him and pulling him close. It’s Proko who kisses him first and Jiang’s reaction is, hilariously, to immediately check if K’s not going to kill him for it.
K stands with his arms crossed, leaning on the wall, watching the two idiots with an amused smile. His idiots.
“I’m making coffee. Don’t fuck until I’m back,” he says and walks to the kitchen.
“No promises,” Proko yells after him, but when K gets back with the coffee, he finds the two of them cuddled together, just talking and laughing about something. He ignores the stupid warm feeling in his chest when they automatically make space for him.