Kaisoo One Shots

Love From Last Night (1/2)

Author: strange_seas

Rating: PG-15

Genre: Actor!au, slice of life

Word Count: 12,510 words (twoshot)

Originally found on: livejournal.com

  There is a quiet comfort to Saturday nights that Kyungsoo has always relished. Nine times out of ten, he'll stay in. Just bolt the door, boil a pot of spicy ramyun with an egg and fresh scallions in it, and indulge his solitary nature. His one-bedroom flat cocoons him like a warm blanket; a safe, familiar haven in which he can curl up for hours, reading.

Sometimes, when he's feeling sociable, he'll whip up something that doesn't pour out of a packet and invite his friends over. Jongdae and Baekhyun are the perfect dinner companions--endlessly funny, perfectly raucous, at ease around all people. Nothing like him, in other words. But they'd all grown up together, gone to all the same schools, and moved out at the same time after graduation, so he's used to their noise. He almost likes it.

He should also be used to their weekend whims by now; their penchant for dragging him to places he'd never go otherwise. Because it's a lovely Saturday evening, the blue-black kind best spent with tea and a tome--and yet Kyungsoo finds himself crowded into a smoky club, dance music like gunfire to his ears.

He's spent the better part of the last two hours hiding in a padded booth, beer bottle held protectively in front of his face. Jongdae and Baekhyun have long abandoned him for their makeshift dates--two girls in identical crop tops and tiny skirts they've managed to scoop off their barstools and usher onto the dance floor.

That makes four people, Kyungsoo counts--four ridiculously uncoordinated, full-grown people who make "grinding" look like light morning exercise for seniors.

The electro-fied remix of a '90s hit has gotten so loud, the secondhand shame so thick, he doesn't realize how drunk he is. There are six empty bottles on the table, the entire collection his. He knows this because his friends were busy doing soju bombs at the bar to lure in their prey, while he watched, slit-eyed, from a distance. Now, everything is pounding (his head, the music). So much so, that Kyungsoo finds it absolutely necessary to stumble out of his leather-upholstered cave and hunt down some peace and quiet.

There's a flight of stairs over to his left, which Kyungsoo convinces himself is his chance for escape (although he vaguely remembers the mouth of the club being a walk up, not down). A burly heap of bouncer stands at the bottom of the staircase, and the dregs of Kyungsoo's common sense tell him this might not be the exit, after all. But then there's a screech, and a patch of sequined girls tumble over in a glittering wave, and the bouncer is leaving his post (quite calmly) to pluck them off the ground.

"We've got a spill," the big guy calls out.

Kyungsoo trudges up the stairs serenely, barely registering the hullaballoo. His sneakers squeak on the plexiglass steps--left, right, left, right. It's the only sound his spinning senses can discern, and he keeps himself steady by clamping onto the metal railing. When the steps end, there's only a heavy black curtain to rustle aside, and Kyungsoo finds himself not on the street, but in the VIP lounge.

He looks around him in a haze. The effects of the beer have turned his eyelids to lead, so he only sees the room in fragments. Deep violet walls. Blink. Glass lamps, glass tables. Blink. A long, expensive-looking couch with a young man seated on it. Blink, blink.

"Hello," says the stranger, voice hoarse from disuse. A rock glass with an inch of golden liquor in it rests on his knee. The hand around the glass wears a platinum band on its ring finger.

"H-hi," Kyungsoo slurs in response. "I'm just--"

"Are you lost?" The stranger fiddles with his drink, thumb tracing strips of condensation off the cheek of the glass.

Kyungsoo tries to explain that he's just looking for the way out, and this clearly isn't it, and he's sorry for barging in. But what he says instead is, "I'm really drunk."