Duan's house was exactly what Jun had expected without knowing he'd expected anything.
Warm. Lived in. The kind of house that had noise built into its walls — laughter and arguments and the particular comfortable chaos of people who genuinely liked each other. The kind of house that explained a lot about the person who had grown up in it.
Duan's mother met them at the door before they'd even knocked, like she'd been watching the driveway.
"You're here." She grabbed Duan's face with both hands and squeezed. Duan made a sound of protest. She ignored it and turned to Jun with the bright assessing eyes of someone deciding something quickly.
Whatever she decided took about three seconds.
"Come in, come in." She waved Jun through the door ahead of Duan. "I'm making dinner. Go sit in the living room and relax. Duan—" she pointed at her son, "—entertain your guest. Don't just leave him sitting there."
"I wasn't going to—"
"Go."
Jun sat on the living room sofa and looked around at the shelves — photos, small trophies, a younger Duan grinning in every single one of them. He was looking at a photo of Duan at maybe twelve years old, front teeth slightly too big for his face, when the front door opened again.
Two people. An older man with Duan's jaw and a younger man with Duan's eyes and the particular easy confidence of someone who had never really had to try very hard at anything.
Duan spun around.
"P'Kamin—" He crossed the room in four steps and crashed into his brother who caught him without flinching and patted the back of his head once with the calm of someone very used to this.
"When did you get here," Duan said into his shoulder.
"This morning." Kamin pulled back and looked at him and then looked past him at the sofa. His eyes landed on Jun and something shifted in his expression — a slow recognition, an assessment, and then the corner of his mouth pulled up.
"Is that your boyfriend?"
Duan spun back around like he'd been caught doing something. "No — he's not — we're not — I'm working on it." He said the last part quietly through his teeth.
Kamin looked at Jun over Duan's shoulder and smiled the smile of someone who had just received very useful information. He tapped Duan on the back twice and walked off toward the kitchen.
Jun watched him go.
Duan turned back around with the expression of someone who had just narrowly survived something.
Jun said nothing.
Duan's father had settled into the armchair across from the sofa and was looking at Jun with the calm unhurried gaze of a man who had raised at least one extremely chaotic child and was difficult to surprise.
Jun straightened and greeted him properly.
The man nodded. "Sit down."
Jun sat.
"Has he been giving you trouble?"
Jun blinked. "No. Not at all."
Duan's father made a sound that suggested he found this unlikely. "Bear with him. Everyone in this house spoiled him rotten and now the rest of the world has to deal with it."
"Dad—"
"I'm telling the truth."
"You don't have to tell him everything—"
"He should know what he's getting into." The man stood, patted Jun once on the shoulder with a hand that was surprisingly warm, and walked off toward the back of the house.
Duan dropped onto the sofa beside Jun and covered his face with both hands.
"I'm sorry," he said through his fingers.
"They're fine," Jun said.
"They're embarrassing."
"They're fine Duan."
Duan lowered his hands and looked at him and Jun was looking back with something on his face that wasn't quite a smile but was close enough to one that Duan felt it in his chest.
Then Duan's mother appeared from the kitchen doorway and looked directly at Jun.
"Come here," she said.
Jun looked at her. "Me?"
"Yes you. Come."
Duan sat up. "Mom he's a guest, you can't just—"
She reached past her son and grabbed Jun by the wrist and Jun went because there wasn't really another option.
"Duan don't just sit there," she called back without turning around. "You look like a vegetable."
From the living room Duan could hear everything.
His mother's voice moving around the kitchen, explaining something. The sound of Jun responding — short, polite, and then gradually less short. The particular high sound she made when something pleased her. A cabinet opening. The clink of a spoon against a bowl.
He heard her ask Jun if there was anything he didn't eat.
Heard Jun say no.
Heard her say good because she'd made enough for ten people.
Heard Jun laugh — small, quiet, the real one — and his mother immediately make the sound she made when something was unbearably cute.
Duan sat on the sofa and smiled at the wall.
The sofa dipped.
Kamin dropped down beside him with a cold drink in hand and his legs stretched out and the easy settled energy of someone completely at home everywhere he went.
"So," Kamin said.
"Don't."
"I'm just asking how it's going."
"It's going fine."
"Fine." Kamin looked at the ceiling. "You drove three hours to bring a boy home to meet mom and it's going fine."
Duan looked at his hands.
"We're still talking," he said. "It's not — there's nothing official yet."
Kamin made a sound.
"What."
"Nothing."
"Kamin."
"I said nothing." He took a long drink. Then, like it had just occurred to him: "Did something happen though? You look like something happened."
Duan opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at the kitchen doorway where the sounds of his mother and Jun were still going.
"If someone kisses you," he said carefully, "does that mean they like you."
Kamin turned his head slowly and looked at his brother.
"Did Jun kiss you."
Duan made a sound that was not a yes and not a no and contained approximately all the information Kamin needed.
Kamin looked at the ceiling again. Then back at Duan. "Sometimes yes," he said. "Depends on the person."
Duan nodded. Looked at his hands. The back of his neck was warm.
"Hey." Kamin grabbed his shoulder. The teasing was gone from his voice. "I mean it when I ask if you're serious about this. Don't start something you can't finish. Don't play with someone just because you can."
"I know that—"
"Do you."
"Yes." Duan looked at him directly. "I would never mess with Jun like that. Not him." He held his brother's gaze. "I mean everything."
Kamin looked at him for a moment.
Then he leaned back and shook his head slowly with the expression of a person watching something inevitable unfold. "When did you get so grown," he said.
"I've always been grown."
"You cried at a dog food commercial three months ago."
"That was—" Duan pointed at him. "That dog was very old and I stand by my reaction."
Kamin laughed. Duan laughed. The kitchen sounds kept going.
Dinner was loud and warm and exactly what Jun hadn't known he was hungry for.
Duan's mother had made more food than eight people could reasonably finish and put it all in the center of the table like a challenge. His father ate slowly and asked questions. Kamin ate quickly and answered most of them before Duan could. Duan argued with Kamin about everything. His mother refereed with the calm of someone who had been doing it for decades.
Jun sat between Duan and his mother and ate and watched and felt something quiet settle in him that he didn't immediately have a name for.
He watched Duan steal food off Kamin's plate and get his hand smacked. Watched him argue with his father about something completely unimportant and then agree completely thirty seconds later when his father looked at him a certain way. Watched him reach over automatically and add more to Jun's bowl without looking up from the argument.
Jun looked at the bowl.
Then at Duan.
No wonder, he thought. No wonder he turned out like this.
This was where all of it came from — the warmth, the easy generosity, the way he moved through the world like it was fundamentally a safe place. This table. These people.
Jun picked up his chopsticks and ate and didn't say what he was thinking.
He didn't need to.
After dinner Duan's mother stood in the hallway with the energy of someone who had already made a decision.
"You're staying," she said to Jun.
Jun looked at her. "I don't want to impose—"
"You're staying." She said it the way she said everything — warmly, completely, with no real room for another answer. "Duan show him your room." She pointed at her son. "And behave."
Duan put a hand over his heart. "When do I not behave."
Everyone in the hallway looked at him.
"Rhetorical," he said quickly and grabbed Jun's bag.
Duan's bedroom looked like someone had grown up in it and hadn't fully left.
Shelves with old books and older trophies. Photos tucked into the frame of the mirror, edges curling. A desk with things stacked in a system that probably made sense to him. Two small figures on the shelf by the window that Jun looked at for a moment before moving on.
Duan dropped onto his bed and watched him move around the room with his hands in his pockets, taking everything in quietly the way Jun took everything in — without rushing, without announcing it.
"You like it?"
"It's very you," Jun said.
"Good or bad."
Jun looked at the photos on the mirror. At twelve year old Duan grinning with too many teeth. "Good," he said.
Duan patted the bed beside him.
Jun sat.
He was still looking at the shelf when Duan's arms came around his neck from behind, slow and deliberate, and warm lips pressed to his cheek and stayed there.
Jun reached up and wrapped his fingers around Duan's wrists.
Held them.
Didn't move them. Just held them.
Duan made the noise against his cheek.
"Sulking," Jun said. Not a question.
"Yes."
"About what."
Duan turned his face slightly so his mouth was closer to Jun's ear. "Are we a thing yet."
Jun's fingers tightened once around his wrists. Then he set them down carefully in Duan's own lap.
"Give me a little more time," he said.
Duan came around and sat facing him. He looked at Jun for a moment with the expression of someone making a decision about how mature they were going to be about something.
Then he exhaled. "Okay." He held Jun's gaze. "As long as you're not going anywhere."
"I'm not going anywhere."
Duan looked at him for one more second.
Then he puckered his lips.
Jun looked at him.
At the door.
At the shelf.
At Duan's face — still holding the expression with complete shameless commitment, eyes half closed, waiting.
Jun leaned in.
The first press of his mouth was soft. Barely there. Testing. Duan went very still the way he always did at the start of this — all that energy suddenly nowhere, everything quiet, like the rest of him was holding its breath so this one thing could happen properly.
Jun kissed him again. Slower this time. His hand came up and curved around the back of Duan's neck and he felt Duan exhale through his nose and lean in and Jun parted his lips just slightly and Duan followed him there immediately, mouth warm and unhurried, and Jun felt the heat of it move through him all the way down.
Duan's hand found his jaw.
The other found his waist.
He pulled Jun closer and Jun went and the kiss shifted — deeper now, something with more weight behind it, Duan's tongue moving slow and sure against his and Jun's fingers tightening in his hair and Duan making a low sound against his mouth that Jun felt more than heard.
Jun swung his leg over.
Duan's hands gripped his waist as Jun settled into his lap, directly on his cock and looked down at him and Duan looked back up with dark eyes and parted lips and Jun kissed him again before he could say anything, one hand braced against the headboard, the other sliding down the line of Duan's throat to his collarbone.
Duan shivered.
Jun felt it and did it again — fingers trailing slow and deliberate down his chest, pressing flat against his sternum, feeling his heartbeat going loud and fast underneath his palm while Jun kissed him deep and unhurried like they had nowhere to be.
Duan's hands pushed up under Jun's shirt.
His palms were warm and wide and they moved up Jun's back slowly, fingers spreading, learning the shape of him, and Jun broke the kiss to breathe and Duan immediately moved to his jaw, his neck, mouth open and warm dragging down to his collarbone and Jun's head tipped back slightly and his hand tightened in Duan's hair.
"Duan—"
Duan hummed against his throat and did not stop.
Jun pulled his head back by the hair. Kissed him again. Slower. Like a correction. Like he was reminding both of them what pace they were going at and Duan made a frustrated sound into his mouth and Jun swallowed it and kissed him deeper and felt Duan's hands grip his back harder.
They stayed there.
The room was completely quiet except for the sound of them.
Then Duan's fingers found Jun's belt.
Jun caught both his hands in one of his. Pulled back.
Duan looked at him. His mouth was swollen and his eyes were very dark and his chest was moving and he looked at Jun with the specific expression of someone standing at a door that just got closed in their face.
"Jun—"
"No."
"But—"
"No."
Duan dropped back against the headboard and stared at the ceiling with his arm over his eyes. His chest was still rising and falling. Jun sat in his lap and fixed his collar and pretended his own hands were steady.
They weren't entirely steady.
The room breathed around them.
Then Duan moved his arm off his eyes and looked at Jun still sitting in his lap and something shifted in his expression. Quieter. More serious.
"I don't care about that stuff," he said. "Positions and all that. I genuinely don't." He held Jun's gaze. "I'd be fine being the bottom. I just want you to know that."
Jun looked at him.
Something moved behind his eyes.
Then he reached down and took both of Duan's wrists and pushed them up above his head and pressed them into the pillow and leaned down over him in one slow motion until their faces were centimetres apart and Duan had stopped breathing entirely.
Jun held him there.
Wrists pinned. No space between them. Duan's eyes very wide and very dark looking up at him.
Jun turned his head slowly. His lips brushed the shell of Duan's ear and when he spoke his voice came out low and stripped down and unhurried, the kind of voice that had no performance in it at all.
"You'd really let me top you."
It wasn't a question.
Duan's throat moved.
His whole body had gone absolutely still beneath Jun — not tense, just completely, entirely focused on the few centimetres between Jun's mouth and his ear and the voice that had just come out of it.
He nodded. Barely. Just once.
Jun stayed exactly where he was.
Close enough that Duan could feel every exhale. Close enough that the moment had its own weight and its own heat and neither of them was breathing normally.
Then Jun pulled back.
He released Duan's wrists. Sat up straight. Looked at the ceiling with the composed expression of someone who had made a considered decision and was at peace with it.
"Don't bother," he said. "I don't have that kind of energy." He glanced down at Duan still flat on the bed beneath him. "You can be on top."
The silence lasted four full seconds.
Duan stared up at him.
His ears went red. Then his neck. Then his face.
Jun climbed off him and sat on the edge of the bed and fixed his shirt and said nothing else.
Duan sat up slowly.
Stood up.
Walked to the door with movements that were very deliberate and very careful and turned the lock.
Jun stood and walked past him into the bathroom and pulled the door shut.
Duan stood in the middle of his room and listened to the shower turn on.
He walked to the bathroom door.
Knocked.
"Jun."
"No."
"I just want to—"
"No."
"We could just—"
"Duan." Jun's voice came through the door, completely flat, completely unbothered. "I know exactly where your hands go. No."
Duan pressed his forehead to the door.
Through it — the sound of water. Jun on the other side of it. Half undressed by now probably.
Duan turned around and walked back to the bed and lay down and pressed the pillow over his face and lay there.
His entire face was hot.
He kicked his feet once into the mattress.
Silently.
Into the dark.
The shower kept running.
Duan stared up at the ceiling from under the pillow and thought about Jun's voice at his ear and the weight of him and the specific devastating patience of the way he kissed and felt absolutely no closer to sleeping than he had five minutes ago.
He was not going to survive this.