The next morning, everything that came up on a search of Xi’s name was squashed down by Janey’s trending midnight adventure. That she had left his flat at or shortly after midnight seemed to be the only thing required to call it that, despite her having obviously lounged around streaming with him all evening well before that time.

Hailey and SM-UNI were trending as well, their searches a mix of fervent praise and bitter complaints that they’d neglected to signpost their participation onstream in the unofficial fan calendar. A new MV of the song Hailey had performed was demanded. A point-by-point evaluation of every little thing Hailey had said during the stream was held up as evidence that she was either planning to go permanently solo soon, or was trying to break up the group, or was getting too big for her britches, all with a side of her trying to throw shade at Hannah, the group’s secondary rapper.

Shaking his head, Xi browsed through the entertainment feeds while he gobbled down breakfast—cold yam and fried eggs and the last of that lovely sauce, and best of all, he didn’t have to share it with anyone. Though, if he’d had to—he couldn’t help but think back to the fraught breakfast he’d shared with Jiong in his stupidly empty flat—he was sure he’d have coped somehow. Pancakes? Or, simpler still, the rest of the eggs, rather than just three of them, along with some chopped veggies?

[MrJiong]: Xi-er, Xi-er, save me [cry]

[MrJiong]: nutrition shakes again ah… QAQ don’t want to live

[XiErXi]: …wasn’t it you who wanted to see what I was eating? [smile]?

[MrJiong]: [river of tears.jpg]

[MrJiong]: [dying.jpg]

“Mmm,” Xi said, moaning exaggeratedly around his last mouthful of fluffy, tender scrambled egg, “so perfect.” He couldn’t help but smirk when the camera, which was once again under Jiong’s control, pointedly turned away from him and his now nearly empty plate. “Are you sure you even have time to waste on this?”

[MrJiong]: everyone looks half-dead this morning anyway

[MrJiong]: plan is to head for the stadium at noon, and I’m not even sure everyone will be 100% ready by then

[MrJiong]: and look, jiongjiong worked hard enough this week, jiongjiong needs to look at Xi-er’s face to recharge, okay?

“Then why the heck do you have the cam noodling around in my kitchen?”

[MrJiong]: …

[MrJiong]: jiongjiong heard you made shortbread, ah, jiongjiong wants to see it [shy]

[XiErXi]: hahaha just fucking forget it

[XiErXi]: someone told on me to my aunts, I literally just got off link with one of them scolding me for giving away some of their share

[MrJiong]: ah… but… Orz

[XiErXi]: I’ll make another batch for you later okay?

[XiErXi]: I can bring them with me tonight

[MrJiong]: !!!

[MrJiong]: you’re definitely coming, then?

[XiErXi]: yeah, I snagged a ticket a while ago

[MrJiong]: Xi-er…

[XiErXi]: for fuck’s sake!!!

The camera had come wobbling back over to him by then, and was currently hovering right in front of him, zooming in and out in repetitive, whirring bursts. There was something oddly sexual about it—the crisp sound, the way the zoom lens lengthened and shortened and lengthened again…

[XiErXi]: I’m fucking warning you

[XiErXi]: do you want me to come to the game empty-handed? Hm???

[MrJiong]: no matter whether Xi-er’s hands are empty or not, jiongjiong will lick them well, okay?

[XiErXi]: [head in hands.gif]

[MrJiong]: you’ve been using them to eat that yam, right? Aren’t your fingers a little salty right now?

[XiErXi]: you

[MrJiong]: lick one? Please?

“Aren’t you in the team canteen still?”

[MrJiong]: jiongjiong has already moved~

[MrJiong]: jiongjiong is back in his room now~

Which was quite obviously a broad hint that this horny fucker was dying for a mutual wank. Not that Xi saw anything wrong with playing along for a bit, given how long it’d been since they had a chance to do anything like this.

“I think I can find something far more interesting to lick than just my fingers,” Xi murmured. “Just one sec, I think I might have something handy.”

He ended up deep-throating one of his smaller dildos, the slightly squishy purple one that he’d used the first time they’d done something like this. Luckily, it was still in its auto-cleaning case, tucked away in one of the drawers of the media cabinet in the living room, so it wasn’t long before Xi had it in hand, and was playing with it on camera.

It shone delightfully when properly slicked up, which was one of the reasons Xi had picked it. As for the other reason, it was just the right size to show off his skills with. Large, but not too large. He’d seen what he looked like, how obscene it looked when he started from the tip, sliding more and more of it into his mouth, and if this was all they had time for, he wanted to make the best of it. If he had to go on suffering from the lack of Jiong’s cock, then surely Jiong could suffer a little bit too, watching him lick and slurp his way up and down this long, thick substitute.

[XiErXi]: good?

Typing on your HUD while in motion was one of Xi’s most prized skills. It was more difficult than you’d think to get out something intelligible without pausing or jittering suspiciously.

[MrJiong]: how can you

[MrJiong]: fuck

When Jiong spoke out loud, his voice was unsteady. “Can you fit it all in?”

“Mmr-hmm.”

“Do it.”

The dildo had a nice, heavy base, making it easy for Xi to prop up on the dining table while he crammed his mouth with as much of it as he could. Then, pulling up slowly, all too aware of the focus of the camera on him, Xi swallowed and did it again, striving for more, revelling in the sound of Jiong’s increasingly harsh breaths. “Mnn…”

“Fuck.” A soft, familiar, rhythmic sound accompanied that fervent curse, making it obvious just what Jiong was doing. “Fuck. Look at you.”

“Hnn…”

“Do it again.” Then, as Xi, breathing hard, began to obey: “Touch yourself.”

Xi couldn’t focus enough to do both things properly, but Jiong didn’t seem to mind. “You slut,” he growled. “Look how hard you’ve got, just from cramming that down your throat. Do you even need to be touched to get off?”

“Hghlph—plehhz—”

“You’re not coming till I’m done,” was the merciless answer. “Hands off, right now.”

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before Xi was given the go-ahead again, given sweet permission by Jiong’s low, hoarse voice. “Stand up and wank it right over your plate,” he was told. “You’ll lick it all up afterwards anyway. Might as well make it easier for you, you dirty slut.”

Afterwards, when Xi sagged back down into his chair, having licked clean the streaks he’d left on his plate, Jiong was still a little bit shocked. “I didn’t mean you had to lick it,” he said. “I know you like mine, but I didn’t think… I mean, you’ve never…”

“It’s just come,” Xi said, shrugging, trying to hide how jittery he felt now that his sudden, daft urge to try and pleasantly surprise Jiong had backfired on him. “Doesn’t make much difference, whether it’s mine or someone else’s.” Which was a lie; he knew how Jiong’s tasted now, knew it, and tasting his own come was only going to hold off his craving for Jiong’s for so long. “I shouldn’t keep you for much longer, should I?”

“Xi—”

“Look, I’m just, it’s just that I really want to see you, and I know I can’t, so I’m, I’m crabby even though this is nice, because it’s still not…” And now he sounded like an ungrateful complainer, like someone who nagged and nagged and would never be satisfied. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Jiong said, his voice low and warm and almost disgustingly smug. “It is me we’re talking about, here, right? You’re addicted.”

He didn’t expand on the issue, didn’t say anything about Xi being a dirty slut addicted to his come, but then, with that tone in his voice, he didn’t need to. It was automatically implied, and so brazenly, yet innocently done that if Xi said anything about it, he was quite sure Jiong would tell him in an injured tone that he’d had only meant his precious Xi-er was addicted to his love, or something else just as sickening. All Xi could do was narrow his eyes at the camera that lovingly surveying his dishevelled self and then pointedly look away.

“Can Xi-er give jiongjiong a hug?” The camera whirred closer, its lens zooming in and out. “Please?”

“I’m not hugging my own fucking camera,” Xi muttered, but he did condescend to grab the thing and give it a light pat on the side, followed by a loud, smacking kiss he was sure Jiong couldn’t complain about not hearing. “Happy?”

Jiong chuckled, and the camera wobbled in Xi’s grasp, turning side to side on one axis. Then, when Xi let go of it, it promptly started to try and roll up and down Xi’s front, getting caught on his t-shirt and generally being a total nuisance as he started to clear the table. Annoyed, Xi opened the camera’s settings and stripped Jiong of admin access; bereft, Jiong sighed and sighed and lamented dramatically both in chat and out loud.

By the time Jiong reluctantly signed off, Xi was smiling a little again, like a total fucking idiot, even though none of his concerns had really gone away. He likes me, he kept thinking. It might just work.

Even though he knew it might all just as easily not work, he couldn’t help but put a little more thought into his so far haphazard plans for the evening he’d blocked out to spend on cheering on Claire and Jiong in their first game in the playoffs.

The match, in the end, was something of a letdown. Not because Xi had expected it to be some sort of exciting, once-in-a-lifetime event, but because the stadium was packed to the gills with screaming, joyous fans on an entirely different wavelength than him. Xi’s main concerns as he made his way to his shitty-ish seat all revolved around making sure the annoyingly heavy biscuit tins he had in his backpack didn’t get knocked around too much. The FOV fans here, on the other hand…

>> shios: [dying] to see my baby lonjon X

>> domdominates: kekeke lonjon just gonna get roasted, prepare yourself~~

>> yisdom: yeah f***kin right, can’t you see domV rollin in with subs for first game

>> domwife: that lineup’s total BS, shouldn’t it be main squad up?

>> shios: that’s why lonjon will X you all, muah~

>> shios: [dying] to see my baby lonjon X~~

Apparently, this particular section of the stadium was wall to wall rabid Dom-V fans with a sideline of equally rabid fans of Light of the North, a.k.a. L.O.N., a.k.a. the opposing team tonight. Or, technically, since this was L.O.N.’s stadium, the home team whose territory Jiong and company were hoping to make a brazen show on.

It was strangely disorienting seeing Jiong on stage. Or, more correctly, seeing his face highlighted on the projected screen of this particular section of the stadium, and seeing him so carefully posed and made up for the sake of the cameras.

Ah, Xi thought, feeling a little dazed. I’ve never seen him look like that… That being Captain Michael Star, who, as far as Xi remembered, had never quite shown up in front of him. That calm, gentle, reliable smile, that carefully smoothed, unblemished skin, that equally carefully styled, slightly wavy hair, even back in the beginning, none of that had been what Jiong presented to him. He’d taken Xi’s breath away just as himself. A quick glance back at one of the stills Xi had culled from his footage of their first meeting (because of course he’d saved it, all while mocking himself for needing to) even showed that Jiong had had a bit of stubble going at the time, something Xi had been too anxious and horny to notice.

Xi was quite positive that he didn’t know all of Jiong yet, didn’t even know enough to justify trusting him with his heart. But he thought now that he didn’t mind giving it a try, now that he knew for sure that Jiong had come to that first meeting much the way that Xi had: as someone polished, but still very much himself.

The half hour after the match was over (3-1 in Dom-V’s favour, thank god) saw Xi being partially smothered in the large, nerve-wracking crush of fans that had swarmed the backstage door that led to the dressing rooms for both teams. Partially, because Jiong had messaged him with arrangements and a contact that could get him safely backstage an hour or so before the match, and Xi was relying on said contact’s forceful arm and loud voice to get through.

Well, Xi and five other people were, all of them pinging as either stressed, confused family members or friends making this awkward pilgrimage for the first time, or stressed, but entirely knowledgeable people that were old hands at navigating this sort of crush. Xi would have liked to peg himself as the latter, but even with a pair of sunglasses and what he’d thought to be a low-key outfit, some of the fans out here had somehow recognized him.

Nothing prepared him for the screams, the wild outpouring of emotion. Karaoke fans were rowdy, sure, but it was different when you knew something like a quarter of the crowd by mask alone, and could probably find a mutual connection within six degrees of the rest. What was worse was the fact that they were cheering him on, shouting out unneeded thanks and apologies as if his presence in Jiong’s life had somehow managed to revitalize his gameplay or lend him the extra oomph to step on L.O.N.’s necks, rather than the brutal training regimen and the fact that Dom-V’s changed lineup had finally gained some positive synergy with each other.

“Okay, here we are,” came the cheerful voice of their guide over link, a short, stout woman Xi was quite convinced could bench press twice her own weight. “Just through here, and we’ll be out of the crowd.”

The door ahead of them slid open, revealing a blind corner and a dour-looking young man waiting to sign them in one by one. When it was Xi’s turn, the crowd’s screams reached a fevered pitch, and instead of hurrying inside, he found himself turning around and giving them the wave-and-smile entirely on autopilot. Good idea, or bad? he thought, restraining a flinch at the joyous reaction his brief wave elicited. Oh well, too late now.

He ducked inside after that, and tried not to think about if passing team staff and crew members were smiling at him, or smiling at just the whole group. He knew one or two of the other family-and-friends set were giving him intrigued once-overs now, but he just didn’t have the extra cycles to give a shit about it.

Maybe I should really just keep it to visiting Claire, he couldn’t help but think, for the cowardly moment where they all slowed to a stop right outside of THE dressing room, which had access blocked off by an expressionless stadium guard re-checking IDs and searching their bags for what felt like the third time. Then the guard was patting her way through his overlarge backpack, cracking open his biscuit tins with sure, unhurried movements, the tester on her wrist blinking a calm yellow as she went through their contents. “All checks,” she finally said, and then Xi was toting the whole mess along with him into the dressing room, gravitating towards the small knot of activity around Jiong’s tall, familiar form without even thinking about what he was doing.

The moment Jiong spotted him was nothing short of electric. Nothing was said; it was just two more steps forward, and then Jiong’s arm was coming tight around his shoulders, pulling him intimately close. Jiong smelled of sweat and makeup and the strong, sour note of something Xi recognized as a popular energy drink. It should have been—all right, it was maybe a bit disgusting, but Xi couldn’t make himself let go.

“Hi,” he murmured, his face pressed against that solid, familiar chest. “Well done, you.”

“Thank you,” was the low, slightly strangled answer. Followed by the slightly more steady: “I want lots of shortbread. Lots and lots and lots.”

“Well, sweetie, I did bring three tins, it’s just up to you how much hatred you can put up with.”

“Three? All for me?” By now, Jiong had pulled back just enough to stare down into Xi’s eyes, and he was taking advantage of it, putting that sinful, too-earnest gaze to use. “Oh, sweethea—Xi, you shouldn’t have.”

“Good thing I didn’t, then,” Xi said, wriggling out from under the weight of Jiong’s arm. He didn’t know what surprised him less, the fact that Jiong absolutely would try to call him ‘sweetheart’ in that sugary tone in public, under the startled gazes of the rest of the team, or that Jiong would switch to using Xi’s name instead without a hitch when mercilessly pinched. “Claire? This is, um, I brought gifts…?”

Claire, whose scowling form had popped up on the other side of Jiong sometime during their hug, came up to Xi and held out her hands. Only when Xi offered her the largest biscuit tin did she submit to a congratulatory hug. “I’d tell you to miss the next match, but I know it’ll only make him worse,” she muttered. “Ugh. Thanks for coming, I guess.”

Shortly thereafter, the third, unspoken-for tin was cracked open by Mayumi, and for the next half-hour, no one had to be called over to be introduced to Xi; everyone seemed to gravitate in the tin’s direction without really meaning to. In that fashion, Xi met the main squad, the subs, the three energetic trainees that had been allowed (or perhaps required?) to tag along, as well as the hardware minders and the coaches. PR was still wrangling the press, apparently, and management, with their high expectations, never bothered to do more than put in a minute or two of face time after a playoff match, and had thus missed the chance to meet the Captain’s intended spouse.

“I mean, that is what’s happening, right?” Hakon said, around a mouthful of shortbread. Then, when Jiong gave him a quelling look: “I’m just saying, anyone that’ll put up with the kind of press you get, and can cook…”

“Okay, I think that’s our cue to get going, split this all up,” Jiong said, his voice suddenly loud and sure and, for the lack of a better word, captainly. “You all know the drill, one day off, get some rest in, and then it’s back at the team house and back to it. Alright?”

Some time later, he explained that the tortured groans and sighs he’d received as a general response were tradition. “Nothing to worry about,” Jiong said, somewhat unsteadily. “It’s… ’s identity at this point, skating a bit during the regular season and going in hard at—the—hn, in playoffs…”

Xi, crouched down between his lover’s parted knees, let out an encouraging hum. They were tucked away in the back compartment of the team bus, waiting for the return of half the team from their scavenging of the charge station’s convenience store, and Jiong had swept the tiny almost-room for cameras and locker the door behind them almost as soon as the bus crawled to a halt. They’d pounced on each other then, and Xi had only won the struggle of who got to be the one doing the touching because he’d sat on his arse watching all four games while Jiong had played three of them, and was consequently too tired to resist. “Tell me more?”

“I—I can’t, I can’t fucking think of…” Jiong’s voice was lovely like this, low and tight, hoarse with frustration. “Just fucking take it all in.”

Xi, smirking inwardly, devoted the next few minutes to teasing, to getting Jiong’s cock properly wet. Only then did he deign to swallow it all the way down, all while thinking, muzzily, that it really was a shame there wasn’t time for more. Much as he’d been craving the taste of Jiong’s come, he’d also really wanted to feel the warmth of it deep in his arse.

This was good enough, though. Jiong’s big, hard hand on the back of his head, forcing him to take it, and Jiong’s harsh, ragged breaths as he thrust in and out and in again, too deep one moment and then not deep enough.

Xi didn’t know just when he’d reached down to rub himself. He only realized he was doing it well after Jiong had come, when he found himself rutting into his own hand while pressing his face against Jiong’s exposed crotch. It was horribly embarrassing, but not so much so that Xi didn’t continue, already most of the way to orgasm just from the musky smell.

Afterwards, they stayed like that for a moment, Xi flushed and panting and not at all interested in getting back onto his unsteady feet. That Jiong’s hand was still on his head, stroking gently through his hair, only intensified his embarrassment, because it felt—it felt so good, good enough that it was unnerving, and that it had to be really obvious.

“All done?” Jiong’s voice, still a little hoarse, sounded almost unspeakably fond. “Need a hand up?”

“Hmph,” was all Xi could bear to say, even as he accepted the help. “You—don’t do that, I’m—they’ll be back any moment, we can’t just keep—mmh…”

Somehow, they managed to stop groping and kissing each other just before the bus lurched back into motion. Tidying up was made more difficult by their cramped, slightly rattling surroundings, but they managed that too. Even the walk of shame wasn’t anything to write home about, given that Xi’s too-casual, pointedly delayed exit from the bathroom showed him that everyone was clustered near the front of the bus and arguing vociferously over whose bets had come out on top in the event of an unexpectedly narrow tiebreaker between two hapless playoff teams.

“All I’m saying is,” one of the players said, her nondescript appearance running counter to the sheer, piercing volume of her voice, “if you look at the numbers—”

“The numbers mean fuck all, An,” retorted another player. “It’s win or loss, that’s the main thing, and you know it.”

“Just because you never bother trying to peg the final stats doesn’t mean—”

“More tradition, I’m guessing?” Xi murmured, as he slid into the seat beside Jiong.

“Usually I wish it wasn’t,” was Jiong’s low, wicked response. “Want to bet they couldn’t hear you over themselves?”

A hard pinch was all the answer that sort of shameless question deserved. That said pinch was followed by only a slight, fond smile and the slow, inexorable settling of Jiong’s arm around his shoulders felt a little surprising still, even though Xi had thought he was used to things with Jiong being just like this: petty frustrations floating by in a sea of sugary, frighteningly satisfying moments.

It won’t always be this easy, he couldn’t help but think. It can’t. But that didn’t dim the slightly foolish smile on Xi’s face, or make him feel any less comfortable. He’d started out determined to enjoy this relationship while it lasted, but now he was beyond it, simply just enjoying it as it was.

I won’t regret this, Xi thought. I refuse to. And then, just because he could, he snuggled a little closer to Jiong, the better to admire the slightly blank expression his lover got while dozing off.