Title: Crash Course in Shamelessness
Fandom: The Time of Fever/Unintentional Love Story
Rating: Teen
Length: 3200 words
Notes: New Relationship, Developing Relationship, Fluff, The Shadow of Past Trauma, Internalized Homophobia, Does this count as emotional hurt/comfort? idk. No archive warnings. Many many thankful thanks to Teaotter for beta.
Summary: “We’re boyfriends now, right? Can’t I kiss you?” Hotae had kissed Donghee twice yesterday, and both times Donghee had closed his eyes and let him, but hadn’t kissed back. In fact, the second time he’d been so tense Hotae had thought he might lash out… or worse, change his mind and insist they break up.



They’d officially been going out for about twenty-four hours when Hotae couldn’t stand it anymore. He caught Donghee by the arm and dragged him into the café storeroom.

“What are you doing?” Donghee resisted but didn’t pull free.

Hotae let his hold slide down Donghee’s arm till they were palm to palm. “I want to kiss you.”

They were surrounded by piles of clean folded towels, boxes of plastic cups, foil sacks of coffee beans, and a mop, bucket and other cleaning supplies. Donghee glanced around. “Here?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere.” Hotae didn’t crowd him against the shelves like he wanted to. “We’re boyfriends now, right? Can’t I kiss you?”

He’d kissed Donghee twice yesterday, and both times Donghee had closed his eyes and let him, but hadn’t kissed back. In fact, the second time he’d been so tense Hotae had thought he might lash out… or worse, change his mind and insist they break up.

At the time, Hotae had left it, telling himself it would get better if he didn’t make a big deal about it. But it had been bothering him all night.

Donghee smiled. “Of course we can kiss, but not here. I have to mind the café.”

“That customer has been working at her laptop for hours already, and you just made her a fresh cup of coffee,” said Hotae, but he was staring at Donghee’s smile. It looked… fake. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean? Everything’s great.” The smile relaxed, and Hotae felt better and worse at the same time. Something was wrong, a hidden something that meant Donghee didn’t want to kiss him. What should he do?

There was no one he could ask except Donghee himself, so he just said it. “What am I doing wrong?”

“What do you mean?” Donghee’s eyes met his, then slid away. “Really, it’s nothing. It’s not you.”

Alarm coiled in Hotae’s stomach. He couldn’t let Donghee back out of their relationship. It had taken too long to get this far, and Hotae would lose his mind if he had to give it up. But what if Donghee had been right all along? What if there was a good reason they shouldn’t be together, and Hotae was too stupid to see it?

“It’s just…” Donghee inhaled deeply, then let out a noisy sigh. “It’s just that I’ve spent years knowing this isn’t okay. I shouldn’t want to touch you. That if I do…”

“What?”

“Nothing! I’m glad we’re doing this. I really mean it.” Donghee’s smile widened, but Hotae knew he wasn’t telling the whole truth.

The door was still cracked open, so he shut it. Maybe Donghee would be able to speak freely if they had more privacy. He turned off the storeroom light, too, plunging them into total darkness.

“What are you doing?”

The wariness in Donghee’s voice made Hotae’s stomach twist tighter. Donghee should never sound like that with him. “I thought it might be easier to talk if you can’t see me,” he explained. “I’m not going to do anything.”

Donghee didn’t reply.

“I won’t do anything,” Hotae repeated, making it a promise. “But if I did kiss you now, what would it be like for you?”

“It would be good, of course.”

“Don’t. Don’t just answer without thinking.” Hotae felt his way carefully through what he wanted to say. “Kim Donghee, back then, when you taught me… you liked kissing me, right?”

Donghee didn’t answer right away. As the silence stretched, Hotae’s heart started to bang against his ribs, a panicked bird. What if the answer was no, and that was the reason Donghee had been pushing him away all this time?

“Yes.” Donghee sounded small in the dark.

Hotae pressed his hands to his own chest to calm himself. “Okay, good. Good. And back then, you kissed me back.”

“Yeah.”

Nothing more. Hotae regretted turning off the light. He needed to see Donghee’s face. But they were getting somewhere. Donghee was talking to him, not just giving him false smiles. “Kim Donghee, what aren’t you telling me?”

For a long moment, the only sound was the roar of a motorbike passing by, down on the street.

“Back then…” It was barely a whisper.

Hotae held very still, listening with all his might.

“…whenever I wanted to touch you, I heard him.” The confession came out in a rush. “I still do. And it… it just… it makes me really angry.”

“Who? Who do you hear?” But it was easy to guess. “Your father?”

“Yeah. Yelling ‘Are you sick!?’ and calling me names. It kind of ruins the mood, you know?”

Hotae closed his eyes. “No wonder, then.”

A rustling of clothing, and Donghee said, “He’s not here. It doesn’t matter what he thinks, and I don’t care. I want to be with you.”

But his voice cracked as he said it. Hotae wanted so badly to hold him, to rub his back, soothe away the tension and the hurt. Not touching him was the worst feeling, but making Donghee hear his father again? Now Hotae knew about it, that would be unforgiveable. He reached out with words instead. “Do you know you’re not sick? There’s nothing wrong with it. Ji Wonyoung, Cha Jooheon… me… you don’t judge us like that. Why should you be different?”

“I know, all right? I don’t want it to be different for me, either. I just want that… that bastard to shut up!”

“I’ll help.” Hotae would do anything. He’d track Kim ahjusshi down and beat the shit out of him if it would help. He kind of wanted to anyway. “What do you need?”

“Tell me…” Donghee broke off, then made a breathy sound that might have been a laugh. “No, teach me.”

The memory that evoked made Hotae’s skin heat, despite the gravity of the conversation. He had to order his hands to stay lowered at his sides. “Teach you what?”

“How to be shameless.” Donghee swallowed audibly. “After all, I taught you to kiss, back then. Isn’t it your turn to be the teacher?”

Hotae’s heart swelled. Donghee was trying so hard and trusting him to help. He put kissing out of his head and considered how to be shameless. He didn’t know how he did it: when he looked at Kim Donghee, he just knew he wanted him and that there was nothing wrong with that.

Even if there had been, even if his mum scolded him, smacked him around, and couldn’t accept it no matter what Hotae said, Hotae would move out of home rather than give Kim Donghee up. But he didn’t say that; he had some sense.

“Teach me…” whispered Donghee again. He sounded like he was losing hope.

Maybe Hotae was making this too complicated. That was the problem with the dark: not enough distractions. He reached out and found… Donghee’s sweater-clad chest, then felt across to his shoulder. Aha! “Of course I’ll teach you. But we can’t be shameless in a cupboard in the dark. That’s brainless. Will you come somewhere with me?”

“Where?”

Hotae turned on the light and grinned at the naked suspicion on Donghee’s face. “Trust me. I have an idea.”

When they emerged from the storeroom, Ji Wonyoung was sitting at one of the tables near the counter in his business clothes. He didn’t bat an eye at their sudden appearance. “I was supposed to meet Yoon Taejoon at Moon Jar, but he got held up at the workshop. It’s okay if I hang out here for a while, right?”

“Of course. It’s good to see you!” Donghee started to sit down at Wonyoung’s table.

Hotae stopped him. “Hey, Ji Wonyoung, could you keep an eye on things here for a bit?”

Donghee scowled and smacked him for being rude, but they had to keep up momentum. Luckily, Wonyoung wasn’t offended. “No problem. It’ll be like old times.”

“I’ll make you a coffee to pay you back,” Donghee assured him as Hotae towed him out the door. Five minutes later, Hotae was steering him through the market at the end of the street.

“Where are you taking me?” asked Donghee for the sixth time. “Hey, it had better not be the fortune-teller.”

“Why would I take you to the fortune-teller?” Hotae was genuinely curious about the reasoning, but they didn’t have time to get into it. They’d arrived at the stall he was looking for. “Pick one. My treat.”

Donghee surveyed the array of t-shirts in front of him and raised his eyebrows at Hotae. “What are you doing?”

“Teaching you to be shameless. Come on, choose.” Hotae felt energised and excited. He really wanted this. He watched Donghee’s hand hover over a pale green shirt, then move to a greyish green one, like the sea on an overcast day. It was pretty in a muted way but not Donghee’s usual style. His sweaters were always warm bright colours. Still, Hotae had invited him to choose, so he held his tongue.

Finally, Donghee settled on a sunflower-yellow shirt. “This one.”

“Good choice!” Hotae asked the stall ahjumma for two shirts that colour, one in each of their sizes. As he was paying, Donghee caught his sleeve.

“Hey, what is this?”

“What does it look like? I’m buying us matching tees.”

Donghee groaned. “Are you crazy? Ugh, that’s so embarrassing.”

Hotae received the bag from the stall ahjumma, who was too busy to pay any attention to their conversation. She thanked Hotae and immediately turned to serve another customer.

The bag felt full of promise… and shamelessness. Grinning, Hotae thrust it into Donghee’s hands for him to carry.

Donghee was still wrinkling his nose. “Couple tees, seriously? That’s too cheesy.”

“Humour me.” This was going to work. Donghee needed to stop feeling like his desire was a terrible secret, and Hotae knew in his heart that the solution was a stupid romantic gesture. It would be a full-frontal assault on Donghee’s shame.

They’d almost left the market when he had another brainwave. He told Donghee to wait there and dashed back to the t-shirt stall to make another hasty purchase.


*


Back at the café, Wonyoung was hanging up the phone. “A delivery order for four ice Americanos, two with caramel syrup,” he reported. “And Go Hotae’s mother just ordered a cappuccino, too.”

“I’ll make them now.” Donghee started behind the counter, but Hotae caught the back of his sweater.

“You have to change your shirt first.”

“What? Now?” Donghee glanced at the customer still typing away in the corner with headphones on, and at Wonyoung jotting down the coffee order in his suit. “Go Hotae, I have work to do.”

“You asked me to teach you.”

Donghee inhaled like someone about to get into a fight, but Wonyoung intervened. “If there’s something you need to do, I can make the coffees for the orders, no problem.”

“No, that’s too good of you,” Donghee protested.

But Wonyoung was already taking off his coat and putting on the spare café apron. Of course, he was too polite to ask what was going on, but once he was behind the counter, Hotae saw him glance curiously at them in the mirror above the coffee machine.

Donghee’s hand tightened on the plastic bag. “Ugh, I don’t know. Let’s leave it till tomorrow.”

“Do you want me to spill something on your sweater, so you have to change?” offered Hotae helpfully.

“Do you want to die?” countered Donghee, but sounded automatic. Hotae could feel him struggling with himself. After a moment, he took a deep breath and went into the storeroom.

Hotae followed him in and shut the door. He resisted gathering Donghee in his arms, or saying how proud he was of him. The thought of the matching shirts was like a balloon of happiness in his chest, but it seemed better to keep things lowkey. When Donghee raised his eyebrows, he just shrugged. “They’re not couple tees if only one of us is wearing them. I have to change too.”

He dropped the second shopping bag on a shelf and held out his hand expectantly.

Miraculously, Donghee didn’t argue. He checked the sizes and gave Hotae the larger of the sunflower-yellow shirts. They changed quickly, trying not to elbow each other in the small space. Not looking at each other, either. But when the shirts fell into place and they were standing there, matching among the café supplies, Donghee met Hotae’s eye.

Donghee was flushed. The corner of his mouth twitched like he was trying not to laugh. “This feels so weird.”

“Good weird.” Hotae had already come to terms with the fact that he had the cheesiest heart in the world. Then he paused. Was this too frivolous a way to deal with the pain Donghee had carried for years? Was Hotae being a jerk to think he could soothe such deep wounds with cheap t-shirts? He knew it wouldn’t solve everything, that change took time, and he didn’t want to get this wrong, not even a little bit. “Is it okay?”

“It’s weird,” Donghee repeated, but there was a warm light in his eyes. His smile was real. He reached up and brushed his hands lightly across the yellow fabric of Hotae’s shirt, smoothing out the creases, making Hotae shiver. There was no uncertainty in the touch.

“Kim Donghee.” It spilled out, strained with need.

Donghee’s smile changed. He leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to Hotae’s mouth, driving all other thoughts from his head. When he pulled back, Hotae chased his mouth, flushing all over, until Donghee gently pushed him away. “I thought you said we couldn’t be shameless in a closet.”

“Just five minutes? Kiss me for five minutes more. Ji Wonyoung’s looking after the shop.”

Donghee laughed and moved past him out the door. He seemed different already. Hotae grabbed the other shopping bag, tugged his new shirt straight and followed.

Wonyoung’s eyes widened when he saw them. “Oh, is this a new company uniform?”

“They’re couple tees,” said Hotae. “What do you think? Stylish, right?” Wonyoung was one hundred percent the right person to audition their new look in front of: kind, thoughtful and polite, and he already knew they liked each other.

He looked from Hotae to Donghee and back, beaming. “I think they suit you both perfectly. Congratulations!”

“You think we look like clowns. I’m taking it off,” Donghee groaned and tried to turn back, but Hotae blocked the way.

“Hey, you have to wear it for at least the rest of the day. It’s cool! Anyway…” Hotae dumped his other purchase from the t-shirt stall on the counter. “I bought tees for Wonyoung and Cha Jooheon… I mean, Yoon Taejoon, too.”

Donghee gave an incredulous laugh. “No way. No way will Cha Jooheon wear that.”

Wonyoung looked in the bag at the kingfisher blue shirts Hotae had picked for him and laughed too. “These are very nice. Thank you, Go Hotae. But yeah, I don’t know if Taejoon…”

“You have to persuade him,” Hotae told him. “I’m counting on you.”

Wonyoung looked back down at the shirts. The corners of his mouth were still turned up. “We’ll see. Actually… this is a secret, but we already have matching pyjamas.”

“You and Cha Jooheon?” exclaimed Donghee, diverted. “I don’t believe it!”

“I don’t know how he’d feel about t-shirts in public, though. Maybe…”

“Talk him into it. We can have our own personal Pride parade,” joked Donghee, and Hotae couldn’t help himself: he hooked his arm around Donghee’s neck and hugged him to his side.

“Excuse me,” said a soft voice behind them. It was the customer. She’d been quietly working away for so long that Hotae had completely forgotten about her.

Donghee hastily shrugged out of Hotae’s hold and turned to her. “Yes? Can I help you, ma’am?”

Hotae held his breath, but she was perfectly calm and pleasant. “I’d like another Americano, please.”

“Of course.” Donghee moved behind the counter and rang up the coffee.

As the customer tucked her card back into her purse, her eyes flicked between Donghee and Hotae, and her eyes crinkled a little. “I like your shirts. They’re very… cheerful. I think they suit the mood of the café.”

Whether she’d been listening in and knew the shirts’ significance or not, it was exactly the right thing to say. Hotae could have hugged her, too.

“Oh… really?” Donghee looked down at himself, bemused. He fingered the hem of the yellow cotton, then gave Hotae a smile like the sun coming out. A smile that heated Hotae’s skin and put a tingle in his palms.

“The shirts were my idea,” he told the woman. It made Donghee roll his eyes, but he was still smiling that warm, real smile.

She nodded politely, retreated to her table, and put her headphones back on.

Donghee turned to the coffees in their cardboard holders on the counter. “Hotae, you’ll do the deliveries, right?”

“Sure.”

“No, I’ll take them.” Wonyoung came out into the shop and picked them up.

“You don’t have to! You’re a customer now.” Donghee looked scandalised. “I can’t let you run around doing deliveries.”

“Eh, I don’t get enough exercise working in an office,” said Wonyoung cheerfully. “Besides, it’ll give me a chance to say hello to the fruit ahjumma. I’ll be back soon.”

Donghee made the Americano for the customer and carried it across, and Hotae leaned lazily on the counter and watched. The t-shirts were a link between them, a badge of togetherness.

Then Donghee came back and leaned against the counter next to him so their arms brushed. He said, quietly, “I think the t-shirt stall ahjumma put something in these shirts. Some kind of kiss-phrodisiac.”

Hotae frowned. “Is that bad? What does it mean?”

“It means…” Donghee shot a quick glance towards the corner, checking the customer was busy with her work, and out into the concourse to make sure no one was watching. He hooked his finger in the neck of Hotae’s shirt and pulled him till their faces were inches apart. Donghee’s eyes were light, still smiling. When he brushed his lips to Hotae’s, there was no tension in him at all. “It means that once I’ve closed up the shop for the night, five minutes won’t be nearly enough.”

Hotae’s heart soared. “I hope you mean that. But right now, I have to go.”

He took a step back, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“You’re not staying to keep me company?” Donghee looked disappointed. “After all this, where are you going?”

“Back to the t-shirt stall,” said Hotae. “I have to make sure we have enough matching shirts for every day of the week.”



END