IMB/IBB 2014: If you could just bear with me
Title: if you could just bear with me
Pairing/Focus: Sunggyu/Dongwoo
Length: 6874 words
Rating: G
Summary: Sunggyu had a comfortable job, a few close friends that he barely hated at all anymore, a mild obsession with eating watermelon, and a large collection of bear memorabilia milling around his apartment. He laughed at his own jokes and was decidedly Not Interested in a relationship with anyone at all. Hypothetically.
Note: I'm not sure if this went were I intended it to, but this pairing deserves a lot more love and I thought I’d try to contribute!
Sunggyu had a comfortable job, a few close friends that he barely hated at all anymore, a mild obsession with eating watermelon, and a large collection of bear memorabilia milling around his apartment. There was a brown bear figurine next to his bed on a table. A glass case of glass bears were lodged on a display case in his living room. He had a polar bear toothbrush, given to him by one of his friends. There was a fake bear rug in front of his door, and he proudly extolled its ironic value to anyone lucky enough to be invited inside his humble abode.
If someone had asked him to rank his life luxuries, he would have put the bears first, job second, and friends last, with watermelon as a summer pleasure too fleeting to rank. He was that kind of snarky bastard.
But he also genuinely liked bears.
He had a friend that often compared him to one. His friend knew the comparison made him mad, since bears were awesome but completely unrelated to Sunggyu as a member of the human species, so of course he worked it into conversation as often as possible.
“What has your fur all ruffled up today?”
Sunggyu narrowed his eyes at Woohyun. “You really want to start this here?” The coffee place was just the right amount of crowded, not so many people that they couldn’t hear each other, not so few that their conversation would spread to the ears of any unwitting eavesdropper, but he still didn’t like to talk about his bears in public.
“You have a coffee mustache.”
“You have an actual mustache.” It was true. Woohyun was working on growing a mustache that he considered debonair, but it wasn’t in the least, and everyone except Woohyun could see that.
Woohyun shrugged off the jibe, pinching his mustache between his thumb and index fingers like a primetime villain. “I’m setting you up on a date.”
“No you’re not,” Sunggyu said.
“Let me describe him for you. He is cute. He is your age. He dyes his hair blue. Very smart-”
“No thanks.” Dyes his hair blue, who even did that past the punk-rock age of 16? And why did that sound familiar. Sunggyu thought he’d remember meeting a smurf.
“Why don’t you
“I don’t like dating. Or people.”
“He likes animals. You could hang out with some of those instead.”
“I don’t get along with animals,” Sunggyu said immediately.
“Nonsense, you’re practically a bear.”
Sunggyu paused, a sudden realization dawning on him. “Wait, you said that he dyes his hair? Is this your friend Dongwoo?”
Woohyun made a face halfway between cringing and laughing. “You just realized? How many other guys with blue hair do you know?”
“When I last saw him it was red. We’ve only been at a couple of the same things and you barely introduced us. I think I talked to him for maybe two minutes, tops, at Key’s. His voice is too loud.”
“Key likes his music loud. You’re supposed to shout,” Woohyun countered.
Sunggyu ran a hand through his hair, leaning back in his chair. He stared up at the spinning ceiling fan blowing too-cold air onto their faces.
“He really likes animals,” Woohyun said, smothering something like a smile.
“I detest him already,” Sunggyu said, because detest was a funnier, more exaggerated word than hate.
Woohyun grinned in his disconcerting, knowing way. “Didn’t you used to dislike me too?”
“What do you mean, used to? Are you under the impression that I stopped?” Sunggyu held his poker face for five good seconds before he caved and smiled, mouth gaping wide at his own hilarity.
He’d met Woohyun by unfortunate accident, which was Sunggyu’s preferred way of making friends.The unfortunate accident was that they were assigned lab partners in chemistry during their first semester at university. The first day, their combined efforts broke a very expensive microscope, which pretty much set the tone for the class (Woohyun maintained to this day that it wasn’t his fault). They argued constantly. They messed up every lab. The day after their dismal grades came out, Woohyun convinced him to come to the place where he bartended. They stayed past closing time, sharing their misery/happiness about never becoming doctors and disappointing their parents, and imbibing pretty much every drink that Woohyun knew how to make, and some that he obviously didn’t. Obviously neither of their talents lay in accurate measuring.
They downed the last of their coffees in synch.
Woohyun cleared his throat. “He’s been asking me for a while. I don’t know how you did it, but he’s interested.”
Sunggyu decided to break it down. “Look, here is the list of possible scenarios. One: He likes me, I don’t like him. Awkward. Two: I like him, he doesn’t like me. Highly unlikely, leaning towards impossible. Three: we don’t like each other. That means you can never invite us to the same events again. Four,” Sunggyu gathered his thoughts, trying to remember which option he hadn’t covered. “Fourth option, is that we like each other, date for a while, maybe even open a joint credit card account and set up a fence and a community garden in front of our house, but ultimately we have too many fundamental personality and lifestyle incompatibilities and break up. Maybe a lawsuit or two. Clearly, that’s the worst option by far.”
“Are you done?” Woohyun asked, miraculously unfazed by his diatribe.
“Yes.”
Woohyun nodded. “Sounds like you’ve thought this through. So... are you free on Friday?”
Sunggyu normally prided himself on being part of a small minority of people who could resist Woohyun’s machinations. Sadly, he now realized he had to remove himself from that mental grouping. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Awesome, I just texted him to confirm time and location, and I’ll text you the place.”
“Yeah you ‘just’ texted him,” he said under his breath, checking the newly received message on his phone. “Isn’t that the gift shop?
“Yeah, he likes those. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
It was true that there were usually a lot of ornamental bears at those places... “Wait, I don’t remember his face.”
“I’m pretty sure the hair is a dead giveaway.”
***
It was a giveaway, but it was the wrong color. Sunggyu noticed the flash of green even before he walked inside the glass door, overlooking the window displays in favor of the literal cabbage patch kid near the far shelves. He smoothed down his jacket’s sleeves and made sure his shoes were tied, because even if he wasn’t going to have fun, he was going to look good not doing it.
As Sunggyu approached he noticed that Dongwoo was short. Why this, he thought. Why me.
He stood behind him for a good five seconds before he realized that the guy was completely engrossed in some shitty greeting card and wasn’t going to notice him. Sunggyu hated situations like these. What was he supposed to say? Now that he was standing there, he would look like a creepy stalker if he just kept staring and standing, but the guy looked like he startled easily, like a gazelle. Driven by a stroke of genius, Sunggyu coughed politely, and then less politely, but Dongwoo didn’t hear him. He decided his genius stroke was not working properly today.
Sunggyu walked away, undoubtedly drawing some weird glances from passerby, and importantly stomped his way back to Dongwoo.
Dongwoo looked up. Literally.
“Sunggyu! Hi! How are you? It’s great to see you again! I’m not late, am I?” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other like a kid on caffeine.
Sunggyu was completely underwhelmed by his unnecessary enthusiasm. “You got here before I did,” he mumbled rationally. “I’m okay.”
“Okay? Are you hungry? I did the reservation. Do you want to go?”
Tongue-tied, Sunggyu nodded.
“Okay, let’s go!”
Dinner arrived shortly after they’d been seated, and Sunggyu found himself at a loss for words, nothing unusual.
“You keep, uh, looking at my hair. Do you have any questions about it?” Dongwoo asked very politely.
He did. He asked all of them, and Dongwoo patiently answered.
“I’m trying to go green in my life, you know… Thought the hair might help with that.”
Dongwoo had a weird face, weirder than Sunggyu hadn’t remembered. His mouth took up at least half of his face with its extraordinarily large lips. His eyebrows’ actions were out of control. Sunggyu didn’t see how green hair promoted an environmentally conscious lifestyle, and he suppressed a frown.
Two refills on ice-cold water later, he found himself in an inane argument about produce.
“A tomato is a fruit,” he said.
“But it looks like a vegetable,” Dongwoo replied obstinately.
“What does that even mean?”
“Well, when I was younger I had this farm toy set…” And he launched into a detailed description of how he raised a fake vegetable farm when he was younger, one that had naturally included scientifically misleading categorizations of freshly grown substances.
“Fruits have flowers, and they have seeds that they use to make more plants.” And Sunggyu hadn’t thought he’d retained anything from biology. Or botany.
“So? Watermelons have seeds.”
“And watermelons are fruits.” His favorite, actually.
“Oh, I get it now.” Dongwoo thought for a moment, and he played his trump card. “Wait. When you go to the grocery store, do you look for tomatoes in the fruit aisle or the vegetables?”
He had a point somewhere between colloquial usage and scientific terminology, but Sunggyu refused to see it. He shrugged, and Dongwoo put the tomato in his mouth.
As the meal went on, Sunggyu couldn’t decide whether Dongwoo was a slow eater or just an inefficient eater. He would pick up his fork, and then one of two things would happen. He would either put the fork down and start to talk, or he would put the food in his mouth and start trying to talk. Trying was the operative word, because his words inevitably became muddled on their way out. As a result, Sunggyu finished his food when Dongwoo was barely halfway through, which put the onus of conversation on him.
Sunggyu switched his eyes from Dongwoo’s hair to a boring nature landscape, crammed with woodland creatures and sunny skies, pasted on the wall. “Nice photo.”
“I do pictures kind of like these things,” Dongwoo observed.
“You take pictures?” Keep eating, Sunggyu thought. I don't want you to starve.
“No, but I have a friend who’s amazing at photography! I-I paint. I’m not very good.”
Sunggyu wasn’t the type of person to say “Oh, I’m sure you’re good,” or “That’s not true,” without confirming that Dongwoo wasn’t actually not very good, so instead he nodded and said, “You’ll have to show me sometime.” He promptly kicked himself for implying there would be some time in the future he might be interested in doing this, but Dongwoo luckily barreled on with the conversation.
“And I mean, this is kind of my subject matter.”
“Yeah?” Sunggyu had no idea what he meant.
Dongwoo looked surprised, all wide eyes and raised eyebrows like a cartoon character. “Didn’t Woohyun tell you? I’m a wildlife veterinarian.”
Woohyun’s dumb laughter echoed in his ears. Sunggyu gritted his teeth. “No, he didn’t, Just said you really liked animals.”
“That’s true too! It’s why I became a vet.”
Well, as a topic of conversation, Sunggyu could work with it. Even though Dongwoo’s eating pace slowed to a starving crawl, the job actually sounded interesting, a hell of a lot better than his own job. Dongwoo was a good storyteller, punctuating a tale of an injured owl with fitting gestures and an occasional fist pumping the air. How could one single person hold all that energy in their body all at once without exploding?
When the subject turned to Sunggyu’s own work he was less forthcoming. “I’m a lyricist. I write the words to songs on the radio.”
“Oh yeah, Woohyun said. That’s a pretty famous production company.”
“It’s okay, not really what I wanted to do. But the main guy I work with is cool.”
“What did you want to do?” Of course he seized upon the one part of the sentence Sunggyu wasn’t willing to talk about.
“I don’t know. I try not to think about it.” What he couldn’t say was, I wanted to be an idol, I wanted my voice to be heard in more than words. I gave up. Simple things.
Dongwoo said encouragingly, “Don’t fight the past! It’s a part of you. You know what they say. Those who fight the past, are doomed to defeat it.”
“That’s not what they say,” Sunggyu said dismissively, unable to believe how wrong Dongwoo could be about something so simple. The past was full of times he had messed up and there was no point it carrying it around. He didn’t come off as a stupid guy, he was just plain wrong about some very basic things.
Dongwoo had just placed a cut of meat inside his mouth, but it fell open with surprise. “Isn’t it?” Sunggyu didn’t have the heart to correct him.
He was an odd mixture of child and adult, his obvious biceps flexing beneath his short-sleeved shirt as he maneuvered his cutlery around the plate, and his rather large mouth opening like a curling petal as he concentrated. Sunggyu ordered a cookie, feeling young himself, so that he could munch on something while he waited for him to finish.
Afterwards, they ambled around outside, post-poning the awkward end-of-date conversation. Then Sunggyu said he better get going, and Dongwoo walked him to the busstop. There was an awkward handshake and a brief kiss on the cheek that left Sunggyu’s lips tingling, and he was on his way home.
Sunggyu was pretty sure he would never hear from Dongwoo again and that was fine with him. He had had an average time, nothing disastrous but nothing special. It wasn’t the kind of first date story that got told again at parties or whatnot. He sat on the bus with his earphones in and ate the remaining cookie, chewing loudly. As he got towards the end, there was a bit packed with too much salt, and he choked, lolling his tongue against the roof of his mouth to repeal the taste.
He received a text from Dongwoo as soon as he got into bed, saying that he had a fun time and to let him know if he wanted to do it again. Clearly, he had no desire to not seem eager by following any archaic dating rules. Good for him. The rule was stupid anyways. He also received a text from Woohyun that had entirely too many winking faces (2), asking how the date went. He had a text from his mom asking how the date went. He never should have given Woohyun his mom’s number.
He went to bed without replying to anyone or brushing his teeth, and as he drifted off to sleep he sensed new words for a song crawling inside his dreams.
***
By Monday Sunggyu had collected two more texts from Woohyun and one from his annoying brother, who happened to also be his producer, who had a rodent problem. He’d sent zero of his own. He plopped himself at his desk and anxiously pondered the situation.
There were no more from Dongwoo, and he wondered why not. Hadn’t he made a good impression? Wasn’t he a nice enough person for his date to want to immediately follow up? His hand hovered over the Compose Message option, but he hesitated. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to venture out again. In the end he did send one, telling Sungyeol that he’d have to find someone else to unearth the mouse from the couch in his living room.
He got down to business, scrawling half-assed lyrics on a sheet of paper like the properly lazy composer he was. The black bear figurine on his desk looked at him mournfully.
At lunch his phone buzzed again. He traipsed off into the kitchen to find a snack, consciously telling himself it was okay to take a short break from writing.
come by my wrk today. i know you wont b working
Woohyun was nothing if not persistent. Sunggyu sighed and put his large headphones back on.
On the way there, Sunggyu picked up two sub sandwiches, one with ham and one with chicken, since he liked to avoid the dinner rush and the fast and safe option was easy. He used the side of his body to lean his way through the entrance.
“Ugh, it always stinks in here,” Sunggyu complained to Woohyun, who was staffed at the front.
Holding a watering can and wearing a pink smock, Woohyun responded, “It is a flower shop.”
A veritable sea of colorful flora greeted Sunggyu. The view was a rare one in the concrete jungle of a city they lived in, and the scent unsettling. He had to admit it smelled great wherever he walked, spices leaping out at him in the edible aisle, sweetness among the greeting card flowers, and softness in the green and fragrant herbiage. There was a small greenhouse out back that felt like a sauna in the wintertime and an oven in the summer.
For a while he had thought Woohyun might get in trouble for talking to him during his shift, but Woohyun had explained he had the highest sales commission of any employee and oh also, everyone loved him because he was a fantastical unicorn that vomited rainbows. Even if he hadn’t actually said any of that, Sunggyu had observed it with his own two eyes repeatedly over the last few years.
“Food,” Sunggyu offered.
Woohyun thanked him, setting the can on the ground. “How was the date? You want to go out again, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“From what I didn’t hear, it went well.”
Sunggyu made a noncommittal noise.
“Usually you send me a text essay after your dates about how horrible they are and how you’re done with humankind. That didn’t happen this time.”
He began a magnificent speech of protest, but the entrance door jingled, signaling the arrival of a customer.
“Sunggyu, can you hold this for a second while I help this wonderful person?” Woohyun always did lay it on thick. Without thinking, Sunggyu accepted the sub, and Woohyun promptly led them to another part of the store.
Someone tapped Sunggyu on the back just as he took a gigantic bite of sandwich.
“Excuse me, do you -Oh! You don’t work here, sorry, oh wait! Hey, Sunggyu.”
Sunggyu recognized the cadence of the voice before it registered exactly who it belonged to. He chewed for an eternity before the traitorous bite slithered down his throat.
“Dongwoo. Hi.” He wished he didn’t sound so unbearably stiff.
“Are you very hungry?” Dongwoo asked solemnly. With a lurching sensation Sunggyu realized he was holding a foot-long sub sandwich, each unwrapped, in both hands.
“No,” Sunggyu said, thinking fast on his feet. “One is for you.”
Dongwoo accepted one of the sandwiches, apparently unquestioning the logic behind the sub, but before he laid into it he said, “Wait, did someone bite this already?
Sunggyu quickly realized that his save was going to cost him the long game. Why hadn’t he just been real from the start? Why did he always do this. “Oh… yeah it’s actually Woohyun’s. He won’t mind though.”
“Him?” Dongwoo laughed raucously. “That guy probably has a lot of germs.” He bit off a huge chunk and chewed laboriously. Sunggyu gaped in horror.
They made small talk until Dongwoo noticed Woohyun making his way back over, and he hurriedly dropped a quick aside.
“Oh also, if you don’t want to go out again, I get it, no problem. But if you do or actually if you just want a friend too, then just text me. I’m free most nights!” He said this all in one breath and did the hand over heart thing Sunggyu thought only existed in movies.
“Uh,” was Sunggyu’s grand contribution.
“Do you want part of this?” Dongwoo asked Woohyun, who took back the food.
“Sure you don’t need some flowers?” Woohyun gave a knowing look to the both of them that Sunggyu did not appreciate.
There was nothing about Dongwoo that logically drew him in, and much they lacked in common, but something about the way Dongwoo looked right into his eyes when he talked and left his mouth dangling open made him not want to say an immediate no.
The next day he picked up his phone, and he typed in an invitation, fingers moving in an autonomous blur.
***
At the end of their next excursion, a fairly delightful trip to the zoo where Dongwoo explained too much about animal mating patterns, Sunggyu once again found himself at a dating precipice.
How soon he was supposed to wait before asking him out, and why he even felt the spontaneous desire to do so were not questions that he thought of before blurting out that he wanted to see Dongwoo again.
“Wow, that is so great!” Dongwoo’s hand slapped the air like a regular chump, a motion that Sunggyu thought he could get used to.
“When do you want to hang out then.” It came out more abruptly than he meant.
Ignoring his tone, Dongwoo simply said, “Tomorrow? No, Sunday. If you want to hang out? I’m cleaning. It’s, I guess, kinda the opposite of romantic or formal...” His eager confidence trailed off.
Sunggyu breathed a sigh of relief. Low-stress, indoor activity. “Okay but I am not going to help you,” he joked.
Dongwoo didn’t get the joke. “That’s fine, we can just chill. I will make a playlist.”
Sunggyu tried not to visibly cringe. “How about I make the playlist.” He had no trust in Dongwoo’s music taste, and he was a bit picky about his listening habits.
Making the CD, he stressed for a long time about whether to include his own songs or not, and the final mix did not include any he had personally contributed to.
***
Whenever he went someplace new, Sunggyu always felt like an intruder. Whether it was a new restaurant, a friend’s new place, the surrounding air was always alien and suffocating and left him with an itchy feeling he just couldn’t shake.
He felt himself sweating even though it was raining outside and Dongwoo had the windows open and it was nice and cool.
There were conversation magnets on the refrigerator, arranged in nonsensical patterns. He rearranged some letters to spell out “S u n g g y u was here.”
The mix went over well, though it was distracting to Sunggyu that sports he didn’t care about blared on the TV incessantly.
“I keep it on, I like to have some noise.” Dongwoo had no roommate.
“I don’t like sports too much,” Sunggyu said. Probably because he was bad at them.
“I like them! I just don’t care who wins. so that part gets kind of old,” A thoughtful expression passed through Dongwoo’s face. “They are just so cool to watch. How do they do that with their bodies?
“A lot of practice.”
Dongwoo laughed, but he hadn’t meant it as a joke. “That’s right, everything takes practice.”
More importantly, Dongwoo liked his music collection, at least the bits that could be heard over the sound of whatever nationally relevant game was playing.
He sorted through socks, coming up with many unmatched singles. Sunggyu laid himself out on the bed as non-suggestively as possible and stared up at the ceiling, where Dongwoo had pasted glow-in-the-dark stars.
This was one of Sunggyu’s favorite songs, and he felt a bit embarrassed to be sharing it with someone else. He almost wished he hadn’t added it into the mix, but this was part of the regular playlist he listened to when he relaxed at home, and it soothed him.
Besides it was a good song on its musical merit. He lost himself in the singer’s voice and story like he always did.
“You have a nice voice,” Dongwoo said sincerely when the song finished. Sunggyu hadn’t noticed himself singing along, but dongwoo said he’d started halfway through and gotten louder by the end. “It was really nice. You’re seriously good, man.”
Sunggyu nodded.
“I’m working on a new painting,” Dongwoo announced when he came back with a new load of laundry. He shoved it in front of Sunggyu’s nose with excitement.
There were blobs of red, green and blue in arranged in a haphazard pattern vaguely resembling an octopus in a helicopter.
“I don’t get it,” Sunggyu said, because he truly didn’t understand.
“Well, it’s a fish tank.”
“I see.”
Dongwoo shrugged, his face somehow mimicking his body’s gesture. “I don’t know either, really! Sure, I spend a lot of time on them, but I don’t know why people keep buying them. I’m just glad they do.”
When he got home, Sunggyu ordered two new bear figurines on Amazon.
***
Dongwoo mentioned that he liked to spend time outside, and Sunggyu bought a pair of sneakers for their big excursion out. Fitting a baseball cap on his head, Sunggyu checked himself in the mirror. He saw a moderately tall person with a hunch in his back and stubbornness in the set of his mouth. He raised a fist in the air. I can do it. I can go hiking. I don't need physical stamina. He breathed out and in, but his arm muscles didn’t swell or anything. He snagged his backpack on his way out, smiling to himself.
They stumbled over a giant tree root and planted themselves down with a package of different colored candies.
“I said you can’t know what color candy it is from the taste.”
Dongwoo staunchly replied that he could.
As it turned out, he did guess all of them correctly, something they discovered through much trial and error.
“It’s just luck. I didn’t get any right,” Sunggyu whined.
“Give me one more, and I’ll tell you the secret.”
It had something to do with eating away all the outsides first, but Sunggyu didn’t really care to invest in a bag of candies that tasted all the same. He failed to guess correctly once again.
“If I try one more time and I get it, will you say it’s real?” Dongwoo asked, closing his eyes and opening his mouth. He made a pretty picture, lying back against the tree with his green hair and unfurling eyelashes.
Sunggyu put a piece of something in his outstretched mouth.
Dongwoo let it rest on his tongue, then pushed himself off the trunk of the tree, eyes gaping wide open.
“Did you feed me a piece of bark?”
Sunggyu flushed hot, realizing he shouldn’t have tried to unintentionally poison his kind-of-not-really-boyfriend. “Maybe, I-”
Dongwoo laughed hysterically. “Bark!” He slapped his leg. “Bark! You fed me bark.”
“Woof,” said Sunggyu.
When Dongwoo leans over and kisses him, it’s like a kaleidescope opening up his mind, shifting images too quickly to hold a whole picture at once, and Sunggyu believes for a moment that tastes can have colors.
“Are we… Do you want us to be going out?” Dongwoo asked, gnawing on his lip. Surprised, Sunggyu took too long to respond, sweetness pricking his tongue, and he cursed himself for the flash of disappointment on Dongwoo’s face.
***
The bears had started as a joke, Sunggyu liked to say, since it was the only reasonable explanation. But really, they hadn’t. He didn’t know why watermelon was his favorite fruit ever since he was little, he didn’t know why he liked strewing bears right and left around his apartment, only that they offered him comfort. He didn’t know why he kept hanging around Dongwoo when they had so little in common.
Sunggyu did what he always did when he felt confused: He looked for a distraction in hopes that the problem would go away.
In other words, he called his lame producer.
“Want to meet up?”
“Anything to not be working on this piece of shit pop singer’s demo.”
“The usual place.”
Sungyeol drank his yerba mate while Sunggyu pretended to gag from across the table. Since getting off coffee, his brother had predictably swayed to the other side of the extremist pole, only drinking all-natural, herby drinks that invariably tasted like shit. He was a genius negotiator and a shark about contracts, but Sungyeol was also a picky grown man who refused to wear shirts with collars because they itched him.
“I don’t like him,” Sunggyu said. “Not really, or not that much.”
“That’s… not what it sounds like, bro.”
Sunggyu had just spent half an hour complaining about Dongwoo’s many obvious incompatibilities, so he was a bit miffed that Sungyeol had picked up on zero of it.
“Oh shit,” Sunggyu said out of the blue. “He’s here.”
Dongwoo was there, strolling through the door with a friend in tow, who tripped over the door threshhold, prompting Dongwoo’s customary laugh.
It wasn’t that surprising. Sunggyu had after all introduced Dongwoo to this very cafe.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Sunggyu said. That way, he could get back and avoid them entirely.
When he came back out, he knocked right into them.
Dongwoo’s friend blinked his wide eyes at him. This was when Sunggyu noticed that he was very, very handsome. As a result, he immediately felt very, very jealous. Dongwoo introduced him as a Myungsoo and asked what he was doing here.
“I’m… in a business meeting with my producer, yeah. Sungyeol, that’s him over there.” Sungyeol looked up from his smartphone but did not acknowledge him. Instead he very obviously looked at Dongwoo, then Sunggyu, then Dongwoo again. “He’s a weirdo,” Sunggyu hurriedly apologized.
“Well, business, I didn’t realize! Well I’ll leave you two for now. But I’ll see you on Saturday.” Dongwoo approximated a wink.
“Yeah, yeah Saturday.”
Myungsoo waved goodbye but didn’t say anything, and the two of them walked upstairs for their seats, out of view.
Sungyeol said, “What the fuck? He’s hot.” He quickly added, “Not that that makes me gay or anything.”
Sunggyu did not have time to deal with his producer’s pathological need to announce his alleged heterosexuality every other sentence. He replied wearily, and customarily, reciting a familiar speech. “I know you’re not, just because some people are doesn’t mean you are. But,” he added, “It doesn’t matter. He’s not that hot.”
“What’s possibly wrong with him?”
“His face is just weird.” He had no words to describe Dongwoo’s face. It was unique, sure, but not conventionally attractive. His features were exaggerated, but maybe it was the way he used them so expressively that made them look that way. He couldn't decide how he felt about it on the whole. It was a good face, open and unguarded, unlike Sunggyu’s.
“Your face is just weird.”
“At least I never had a fauxhawk.”
Sungyeol scowled and scoffed up a smart retort. Now they were off the topic of Dongwoo, which had been Sunggyu’s plan. For such a smart guy, sometimes he swore that Sungyeol was the easiest person to distract in the world. He always took the bait.
“Your songs have gotten much better lately,” Sungyeol said. “Maybe I’ll pitch you to one of our huge collabs coming up.”
“Yeah okay,” Sunggyu said, and then he went charging ahead despite his brain screaming at him to stop talking. “Do you really think he’s hot?”
“Sure bro,” Sungyeol said, shaking his head. “Man, you really have it bad for him.”
“I don’t. I see I haven’t given you enough information to judge. Well let’s see if you still think he’s attractive after you hear this:” Sunggyu gulped his water dramatically, swallowed. “He sneezes into his hands, his paintings look like a multicolored ink blot test, if you tell him the word gullible is on the ceiling, he will look up. This worked twice, by the way. He gives money to every homeless person he sees. He laughs really loudly and makes everyone stare at us in public. And he also snores like an elephant with pneumonia.”
Sungyeol developed this all-knowing, shit-eating grin and Sunggyu realized what he just said. “We-we-we haven’t slept together. He just fell asleep on one of our dates.”
“Wow, this guy must be really into you,” Sungyeol deadpanned. “Boring a guy to sleep, huh?”
“He is!” Sunggyu defended himself. “He just needs a lot of rest. Seriously, he told me he only feels rested when he gets nine hours of sleep a night. Who is insane enough to need that much sleep, I mean are you trying to be dead or well-rested-”
Sungyeol put both of his hands up, “Whoa, whoa I get it, I get it.”
“Good, right? So how could I be attracted to him, or like him at all.”
“Right. It makes more sense to observe every tiny habit he has and record it in your memory for an unknown posterity, bring him doughnuts at work, and watch sports that you vehemently abhor at his apartment, just because you think he’s brave for dyeing his hair.”
“I don't think it’s that brave anymore,” Sunggyu muttered. “Not when you compare it to his other eccentricities.”
“Look you know everything about this guy. All his habits. Don’t you think its a bit weird?”
“I know everything about you too.”
“I am your brother, I’d like to point out, and also your producer.”
“Maybe I'm thinking of adopting him as our new sibling or dropping his new single.”
“You are so weird.”
“You’re weirder.”
“Let’s just agree to blame mom.” Sungyeol made a face at his yerba mate. “Anyways, when are your next plans with him…?”
Sunggyu narrowed his eyes and glared at his brother for a good five seconds. “Soon.” Unless that handsome bastard Myungsoo managed to steal him away. Was he taller than Sunggyu? He’d have to bring a measuring tape next time.
Grimacing, Sungyeol powered through the dregs of his drink and stood up. “Let me know when the wedding is.”
“We’re not even dating,” Sunggyu grumbled. “Not officially.” Which made him pause with realization. He had a brilliant idea.
***
Taking a deep breath, Sunggyu dialed. His phone anxiety was no joke. it was funny, almost, how he could spend hours on his phone when he was bored or trying to avoid other obligations, but when the thing he had to do was call someone, the very function for which the phone had probably been invented, all he wanted to do was power off.
He didn’t order take-out very often.
“Hey, Dongwoo, you remember, uh, the place we met at last time? I can go again on Saturday.”
“Saturday? I can’t go on Saturday.”
“You’re joking, what’s so important then?” Sunggyu’s fingers drummed idiosyncratically against the side of his neck.
“Woohyun wants me to meet someone.” He said this so open-facedly, meaning nothing.
“What?”
“He didn’t say who. It’s probably his mom.”
Dongwoo’s full voice suddenly sounded tinny through his phone’s miniscule speakers and Sunggyu didn’t respond.
“Oh, Woohyun set it up.”
“Woohyun?” That was it, Sunggyu’s best friend was about to meet his imminent demise.
“It’s not a big deal, you know how he gets. He thinks I’m lonely.”
Sunggyu ditched his murderous rage scenarios for a second and focused on Dongwoo’s downturned tone.
“Are you?”
“I don’t know. I want to go to the movies with you though! We can go, maybe Sunday instead?”
Sunggyu’s fingers tapped and tapped, and he found himself humming a new melody to the rhythm.
***
“I’m going to cut off your mustache,” Sunggyu told Woohyun, who looked oddly happy despite the furry creature growing under his nose.
“Chill out. I had a guy who might want to sell his paintings.”
Sunggyu thought about that for a while and felt a smile burst over his face despite himself. “I’m still going to cut off your mustache. It’s for your own good.”
“Sungyeol said you started singing again, and I’ve grown this for a year so don’t expect changes anytime soon. At least I don’t have fur, because I’m not a bear.”
He groaned. “Since when do you talk to Sungyeol?” He was developing a headache from the anticipated noise already.
“Wouldn’t you like to know. Hey are you gonna record yourself ever? You’re loads better than all those idols you write for.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Sunggyu half-lied. There were possibilities opening up like flowers all over the place, too many to tackle all at once.
***
Dongwoo coughed into the phone, explaining that he was sick and couldn’t make their meetup.
“That’s fine, I mean…”
Sunggyu held the new bear figurine he’d bought in his hand and willed its ursine strength into his own being. He’d really wanted to see him.
He really wanted to see him, and he finally had realized why. He thought about Dongwoo sitting alone with the TV on, painting pictures of mundane things whose beauty only he could see while he blew his nose into endless tissues. Slowly, he came to a decision.
It was then he realized Dongwoo had continued to say words while he bumbled around with his thoughts.
“Sorry, I zoned out. I’m not mad at you,” he said. “I’m not sure if that’s a possible feeling for me to have, towards you.”
“Good, I was” -cough- “worried. So how are you doing,” he managed to say before hacking up a storm.
“Can I come over?” Sunggyu blurted out over the coughing. He wasn’t a blurter, not normally, but then his insides felt all twisted up. “If-if you want company. Okay, if you don’t then just say so. Like I said, I... won’t be mad.”
When he got there, Dongwoo was performing a preposterous imitation of a not-sick person who said things like “Do you want”-cough-”coffee?” and “No really, I’m fine.”
Sunggyu handed him a packet of cough syrup and they settled into the couch like a pair of potatoes.
He took something out of his bag, this tiny glass bear rearing up on his hind legs. Dongwoo’s eyes bugged and he offered a thousand extraneous thank yous. But once that was over, the bear finding its home on Dongwoo’s nightstand, Sunggyu took a deep breath. He spoke before he could lose his resolve. “Also, there’s this other thing, that I forgot to say on the phone.”
He felt Dongwoo’s anticipation by the way the coughing stopped.
“If you want it to be.” He moistened his lips. “This could be, maybe a date. The exclusive kind.” He explained himself badly, but perhaps better than usual. “What I actually mean is, would you like to go out. And if you want to hang out as friends that’s also fine.”
Dongwoo smiled. His smile ate up his entire face, two rows of slightly crooked pearly whites. He dragged himself to his feet and left the room with a bounce in his step that Sunggyu figured signified something good.
“I painted you this,” Dongwoo said. “It’s not very good.” The gift had hard corners, and Sunggyu realized it was clumsily self-framed. “Oh, also, yes.” There was too much emotion in the crevasses of his face, and Sunggyu resisted the temptation to look away.
He unwrapped it, curling his mouth around his teeth so his smile wouldn’t invade his entire face and make his eyes shrivel.
Splotches of red littered the page, forming a vaguely globular shape with a green blob at the top.
It was a painting of a tree. There was too much water in the consistency of the paint. It was also childlike in its simplicity. It was objectively terrible, just like the rest of Dongwoo’s art.
“You’re right, it isn’t very good.” Sunggyu said, because the right words never came to him in situations like these. He wanted to ask Dongwoo to paint a bear in the picture so that the tree could be climbed. His lungs squeezed the precious words he wanted to say in his chest, not wanting to let them escape. Dongwoo’s mouth ticked upwards at the insult.
The tree had splotches of dark-rust color on its leaves that didn’t form a pattern. “Why is the tree bleeding?” Sunggyu asked. It seemed like an odd touch for a Dongwoo painting.
“It’s not! It’s a tomato tree.”
“Tomatoes are red.”
“I know that,” Dongwoo said.
“Now seems like a good time for us to kiss again,” Sunggyu said. He felt a habit forming, one where he actually said what he meant most of the time.
Dongwoo shook his head.
Sunggyu knew what he was going to say. “I won’t get sick,” he said.
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can. I’m promising it right now. I’ll take your leftover antibiotics.”
“Isn’t that illegal? Like drug trading?”
Dongwoo was sounding earnest again, and he opened his mouth in invitation as he spoke, so Sunggyu kissed him.
He woke up the next morning with a sore throat and dry mouth and crusted-over eyes. His brother and his best friend were conspiring against him, his boyfriend lying next to him had snot running out of his nose, and he’d smashed the bear on the bedside table in his sleep. But that, at least, was replaceable.
He decided to revise his ranking list. There was potential for an upset in the bears category.
Pairing/Focus: Sunggyu/Dongwoo
Length: 6874 words
Rating: G
Summary: Sunggyu had a comfortable job, a few close friends that he barely hated at all anymore, a mild obsession with eating watermelon, and a large collection of bear memorabilia milling around his apartment. He laughed at his own jokes and was decidedly Not Interested in a relationship with anyone at all. Hypothetically.
Note: I'm not sure if this went were I intended it to, but this pairing deserves a lot more love and I thought I’d try to contribute!
Sunggyu had a comfortable job, a few close friends that he barely hated at all anymore, a mild obsession with eating watermelon, and a large collection of bear memorabilia milling around his apartment. There was a brown bear figurine next to his bed on a table. A glass case of glass bears were lodged on a display case in his living room. He had a polar bear toothbrush, given to him by one of his friends. There was a fake bear rug in front of his door, and he proudly extolled its ironic value to anyone lucky enough to be invited inside his humble abode.
If someone had asked him to rank his life luxuries, he would have put the bears first, job second, and friends last, with watermelon as a summer pleasure too fleeting to rank. He was that kind of snarky bastard.
But he also genuinely liked bears.
He had a friend that often compared him to one. His friend knew the comparison made him mad, since bears were awesome but completely unrelated to Sunggyu as a member of the human species, so of course he worked it into conversation as often as possible.
“What has your fur all ruffled up today?”
Sunggyu narrowed his eyes at Woohyun. “You really want to start this here?” The coffee place was just the right amount of crowded, not so many people that they couldn’t hear each other, not so few that their conversation would spread to the ears of any unwitting eavesdropper, but he still didn’t like to talk about his bears in public.
“You have a coffee mustache.”
“You have an actual mustache.” It was true. Woohyun was working on growing a mustache that he considered debonair, but it wasn’t in the least, and everyone except Woohyun could see that.
Woohyun shrugged off the jibe, pinching his mustache between his thumb and index fingers like a primetime villain. “I’m setting you up on a date.”
“No you’re not,” Sunggyu said.
“Let me describe him for you. He is cute. He is your age. He dyes his hair blue. Very smart-”
“No thanks.” Dyes his hair blue, who even did that past the punk-rock age of 16? And why did that sound familiar. Sunggyu thought he’d remember meeting a smurf.
“Why don’t you
“I don’t like dating. Or people.”
“He likes animals. You could hang out with some of those instead.”
“I don’t get along with animals,” Sunggyu said immediately.
“Nonsense, you’re practically a bear.”
Sunggyu paused, a sudden realization dawning on him. “Wait, you said that he dyes his hair? Is this your friend Dongwoo?”
Woohyun made a face halfway between cringing and laughing. “You just realized? How many other guys with blue hair do you know?”
“When I last saw him it was red. We’ve only been at a couple of the same things and you barely introduced us. I think I talked to him for maybe two minutes, tops, at Key’s. His voice is too loud.”
“Key likes his music loud. You’re supposed to shout,” Woohyun countered.
Sunggyu ran a hand through his hair, leaning back in his chair. He stared up at the spinning ceiling fan blowing too-cold air onto their faces.
“He really likes animals,” Woohyun said, smothering something like a smile.
“I detest him already,” Sunggyu said, because detest was a funnier, more exaggerated word than hate.
Woohyun grinned in his disconcerting, knowing way. “Didn’t you used to dislike me too?”
“What do you mean, used to? Are you under the impression that I stopped?” Sunggyu held his poker face for five good seconds before he caved and smiled, mouth gaping wide at his own hilarity.
He’d met Woohyun by unfortunate accident, which was Sunggyu’s preferred way of making friends.The unfortunate accident was that they were assigned lab partners in chemistry during their first semester at university. The first day, their combined efforts broke a very expensive microscope, which pretty much set the tone for the class (Woohyun maintained to this day that it wasn’t his fault). They argued constantly. They messed up every lab. The day after their dismal grades came out, Woohyun convinced him to come to the place where he bartended. They stayed past closing time, sharing their misery/happiness about never becoming doctors and disappointing their parents, and imbibing pretty much every drink that Woohyun knew how to make, and some that he obviously didn’t. Obviously neither of their talents lay in accurate measuring.
They downed the last of their coffees in synch.
Woohyun cleared his throat. “He’s been asking me for a while. I don’t know how you did it, but he’s interested.”
Sunggyu decided to break it down. “Look, here is the list of possible scenarios. One: He likes me, I don’t like him. Awkward. Two: I like him, he doesn’t like me. Highly unlikely, leaning towards impossible. Three: we don’t like each other. That means you can never invite us to the same events again. Four,” Sunggyu gathered his thoughts, trying to remember which option he hadn’t covered. “Fourth option, is that we like each other, date for a while, maybe even open a joint credit card account and set up a fence and a community garden in front of our house, but ultimately we have too many fundamental personality and lifestyle incompatibilities and break up. Maybe a lawsuit or two. Clearly, that’s the worst option by far.”
“Are you done?” Woohyun asked, miraculously unfazed by his diatribe.
“Yes.”
Woohyun nodded. “Sounds like you’ve thought this through. So... are you free on Friday?”
Sunggyu normally prided himself on being part of a small minority of people who could resist Woohyun’s machinations. Sadly, he now realized he had to remove himself from that mental grouping. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Awesome, I just texted him to confirm time and location, and I’ll text you the place.”
“Yeah you ‘just’ texted him,” he said under his breath, checking the newly received message on his phone. “Isn’t that the gift shop?
“Yeah, he likes those. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
It was true that there were usually a lot of ornamental bears at those places... “Wait, I don’t remember his face.”
“I’m pretty sure the hair is a dead giveaway.”
***
It was a giveaway, but it was the wrong color. Sunggyu noticed the flash of green even before he walked inside the glass door, overlooking the window displays in favor of the literal cabbage patch kid near the far shelves. He smoothed down his jacket’s sleeves and made sure his shoes were tied, because even if he wasn’t going to have fun, he was going to look good not doing it.
As Sunggyu approached he noticed that Dongwoo was short. Why this, he thought. Why me.
He stood behind him for a good five seconds before he realized that the guy was completely engrossed in some shitty greeting card and wasn’t going to notice him. Sunggyu hated situations like these. What was he supposed to say? Now that he was standing there, he would look like a creepy stalker if he just kept staring and standing, but the guy looked like he startled easily, like a gazelle. Driven by a stroke of genius, Sunggyu coughed politely, and then less politely, but Dongwoo didn’t hear him. He decided his genius stroke was not working properly today.
Sunggyu walked away, undoubtedly drawing some weird glances from passerby, and importantly stomped his way back to Dongwoo.
Dongwoo looked up. Literally.
“Sunggyu! Hi! How are you? It’s great to see you again! I’m not late, am I?” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other like a kid on caffeine.
Sunggyu was completely underwhelmed by his unnecessary enthusiasm. “You got here before I did,” he mumbled rationally. “I’m okay.”
“Okay? Are you hungry? I did the reservation. Do you want to go?”
Tongue-tied, Sunggyu nodded.
“Okay, let’s go!”
Dinner arrived shortly after they’d been seated, and Sunggyu found himself at a loss for words, nothing unusual.
“You keep, uh, looking at my hair. Do you have any questions about it?” Dongwoo asked very politely.
He did. He asked all of them, and Dongwoo patiently answered.
“I’m trying to go green in my life, you know… Thought the hair might help with that.”
Dongwoo had a weird face, weirder than Sunggyu hadn’t remembered. His mouth took up at least half of his face with its extraordinarily large lips. His eyebrows’ actions were out of control. Sunggyu didn’t see how green hair promoted an environmentally conscious lifestyle, and he suppressed a frown.
Two refills on ice-cold water later, he found himself in an inane argument about produce.
“A tomato is a fruit,” he said.
“But it looks like a vegetable,” Dongwoo replied obstinately.
“What does that even mean?”
“Well, when I was younger I had this farm toy set…” And he launched into a detailed description of how he raised a fake vegetable farm when he was younger, one that had naturally included scientifically misleading categorizations of freshly grown substances.
“Fruits have flowers, and they have seeds that they use to make more plants.” And Sunggyu hadn’t thought he’d retained anything from biology. Or botany.
“So? Watermelons have seeds.”
“And watermelons are fruits.” His favorite, actually.
“Oh, I get it now.” Dongwoo thought for a moment, and he played his trump card. “Wait. When you go to the grocery store, do you look for tomatoes in the fruit aisle or the vegetables?”
He had a point somewhere between colloquial usage and scientific terminology, but Sunggyu refused to see it. He shrugged, and Dongwoo put the tomato in his mouth.
As the meal went on, Sunggyu couldn’t decide whether Dongwoo was a slow eater or just an inefficient eater. He would pick up his fork, and then one of two things would happen. He would either put the fork down and start to talk, or he would put the food in his mouth and start trying to talk. Trying was the operative word, because his words inevitably became muddled on their way out. As a result, Sunggyu finished his food when Dongwoo was barely halfway through, which put the onus of conversation on him.
Sunggyu switched his eyes from Dongwoo’s hair to a boring nature landscape, crammed with woodland creatures and sunny skies, pasted on the wall. “Nice photo.”
“I do pictures kind of like these things,” Dongwoo observed.
“You take pictures?” Keep eating, Sunggyu thought. I don't want you to starve.
“No, but I have a friend who’s amazing at photography! I-I paint. I’m not very good.”
Sunggyu wasn’t the type of person to say “Oh, I’m sure you’re good,” or “That’s not true,” without confirming that Dongwoo wasn’t actually not very good, so instead he nodded and said, “You’ll have to show me sometime.” He promptly kicked himself for implying there would be some time in the future he might be interested in doing this, but Dongwoo luckily barreled on with the conversation.
“And I mean, this is kind of my subject matter.”
“Yeah?” Sunggyu had no idea what he meant.
Dongwoo looked surprised, all wide eyes and raised eyebrows like a cartoon character. “Didn’t Woohyun tell you? I’m a wildlife veterinarian.”
Woohyun’s dumb laughter echoed in his ears. Sunggyu gritted his teeth. “No, he didn’t, Just said you really liked animals.”
“That’s true too! It’s why I became a vet.”
Well, as a topic of conversation, Sunggyu could work with it. Even though Dongwoo’s eating pace slowed to a starving crawl, the job actually sounded interesting, a hell of a lot better than his own job. Dongwoo was a good storyteller, punctuating a tale of an injured owl with fitting gestures and an occasional fist pumping the air. How could one single person hold all that energy in their body all at once without exploding?
When the subject turned to Sunggyu’s own work he was less forthcoming. “I’m a lyricist. I write the words to songs on the radio.”
“Oh yeah, Woohyun said. That’s a pretty famous production company.”
“It’s okay, not really what I wanted to do. But the main guy I work with is cool.”
“What did you want to do?” Of course he seized upon the one part of the sentence Sunggyu wasn’t willing to talk about.
“I don’t know. I try not to think about it.” What he couldn’t say was, I wanted to be an idol, I wanted my voice to be heard in more than words. I gave up. Simple things.
Dongwoo said encouragingly, “Don’t fight the past! It’s a part of you. You know what they say. Those who fight the past, are doomed to defeat it.”
“That’s not what they say,” Sunggyu said dismissively, unable to believe how wrong Dongwoo could be about something so simple. The past was full of times he had messed up and there was no point it carrying it around. He didn’t come off as a stupid guy, he was just plain wrong about some very basic things.
Dongwoo had just placed a cut of meat inside his mouth, but it fell open with surprise. “Isn’t it?” Sunggyu didn’t have the heart to correct him.
He was an odd mixture of child and adult, his obvious biceps flexing beneath his short-sleeved shirt as he maneuvered his cutlery around the plate, and his rather large mouth opening like a curling petal as he concentrated. Sunggyu ordered a cookie, feeling young himself, so that he could munch on something while he waited for him to finish.
Afterwards, they ambled around outside, post-poning the awkward end-of-date conversation. Then Sunggyu said he better get going, and Dongwoo walked him to the busstop. There was an awkward handshake and a brief kiss on the cheek that left Sunggyu’s lips tingling, and he was on his way home.
Sunggyu was pretty sure he would never hear from Dongwoo again and that was fine with him. He had had an average time, nothing disastrous but nothing special. It wasn’t the kind of first date story that got told again at parties or whatnot. He sat on the bus with his earphones in and ate the remaining cookie, chewing loudly. As he got towards the end, there was a bit packed with too much salt, and he choked, lolling his tongue against the roof of his mouth to repeal the taste.
He received a text from Dongwoo as soon as he got into bed, saying that he had a fun time and to let him know if he wanted to do it again. Clearly, he had no desire to not seem eager by following any archaic dating rules. Good for him. The rule was stupid anyways. He also received a text from Woohyun that had entirely too many winking faces (2), asking how the date went. He had a text from his mom asking how the date went. He never should have given Woohyun his mom’s number.
He went to bed without replying to anyone or brushing his teeth, and as he drifted off to sleep he sensed new words for a song crawling inside his dreams.
***
By Monday Sunggyu had collected two more texts from Woohyun and one from his annoying brother, who happened to also be his producer, who had a rodent problem. He’d sent zero of his own. He plopped himself at his desk and anxiously pondered the situation.
There were no more from Dongwoo, and he wondered why not. Hadn’t he made a good impression? Wasn’t he a nice enough person for his date to want to immediately follow up? His hand hovered over the Compose Message option, but he hesitated. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to venture out again. In the end he did send one, telling Sungyeol that he’d have to find someone else to unearth the mouse from the couch in his living room.
He got down to business, scrawling half-assed lyrics on a sheet of paper like the properly lazy composer he was. The black bear figurine on his desk looked at him mournfully.
At lunch his phone buzzed again. He traipsed off into the kitchen to find a snack, consciously telling himself it was okay to take a short break from writing.
come by my wrk today. i know you wont b working
Woohyun was nothing if not persistent. Sunggyu sighed and put his large headphones back on.
On the way there, Sunggyu picked up two sub sandwiches, one with ham and one with chicken, since he liked to avoid the dinner rush and the fast and safe option was easy. He used the side of his body to lean his way through the entrance.
“Ugh, it always stinks in here,” Sunggyu complained to Woohyun, who was staffed at the front.
Holding a watering can and wearing a pink smock, Woohyun responded, “It is a flower shop.”
A veritable sea of colorful flora greeted Sunggyu. The view was a rare one in the concrete jungle of a city they lived in, and the scent unsettling. He had to admit it smelled great wherever he walked, spices leaping out at him in the edible aisle, sweetness among the greeting card flowers, and softness in the green and fragrant herbiage. There was a small greenhouse out back that felt like a sauna in the wintertime and an oven in the summer.
For a while he had thought Woohyun might get in trouble for talking to him during his shift, but Woohyun had explained he had the highest sales commission of any employee and oh also, everyone loved him because he was a fantastical unicorn that vomited rainbows. Even if he hadn’t actually said any of that, Sunggyu had observed it with his own two eyes repeatedly over the last few years.
“Food,” Sunggyu offered.
Woohyun thanked him, setting the can on the ground. “How was the date? You want to go out again, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“From what I didn’t hear, it went well.”
Sunggyu made a noncommittal noise.
“Usually you send me a text essay after your dates about how horrible they are and how you’re done with humankind. That didn’t happen this time.”
He began a magnificent speech of protest, but the entrance door jingled, signaling the arrival of a customer.
“Sunggyu, can you hold this for a second while I help this wonderful person?” Woohyun always did lay it on thick. Without thinking, Sunggyu accepted the sub, and Woohyun promptly led them to another part of the store.
Someone tapped Sunggyu on the back just as he took a gigantic bite of sandwich.
“Excuse me, do you -Oh! You don’t work here, sorry, oh wait! Hey, Sunggyu.”
Sunggyu recognized the cadence of the voice before it registered exactly who it belonged to. He chewed for an eternity before the traitorous bite slithered down his throat.
“Dongwoo. Hi.” He wished he didn’t sound so unbearably stiff.
“Are you very hungry?” Dongwoo asked solemnly. With a lurching sensation Sunggyu realized he was holding a foot-long sub sandwich, each unwrapped, in both hands.
“No,” Sunggyu said, thinking fast on his feet. “One is for you.”
Dongwoo accepted one of the sandwiches, apparently unquestioning the logic behind the sub, but before he laid into it he said, “Wait, did someone bite this already?
Sunggyu quickly realized that his save was going to cost him the long game. Why hadn’t he just been real from the start? Why did he always do this. “Oh… yeah it’s actually Woohyun’s. He won’t mind though.”
“Him?” Dongwoo laughed raucously. “That guy probably has a lot of germs.” He bit off a huge chunk and chewed laboriously. Sunggyu gaped in horror.
They made small talk until Dongwoo noticed Woohyun making his way back over, and he hurriedly dropped a quick aside.
“Oh also, if you don’t want to go out again, I get it, no problem. But if you do or actually if you just want a friend too, then just text me. I’m free most nights!” He said this all in one breath and did the hand over heart thing Sunggyu thought only existed in movies.
“Uh,” was Sunggyu’s grand contribution.
“Do you want part of this?” Dongwoo asked Woohyun, who took back the food.
“Sure you don’t need some flowers?” Woohyun gave a knowing look to the both of them that Sunggyu did not appreciate.
There was nothing about Dongwoo that logically drew him in, and much they lacked in common, but something about the way Dongwoo looked right into his eyes when he talked and left his mouth dangling open made him not want to say an immediate no.
The next day he picked up his phone, and he typed in an invitation, fingers moving in an autonomous blur.
***
At the end of their next excursion, a fairly delightful trip to the zoo where Dongwoo explained too much about animal mating patterns, Sunggyu once again found himself at a dating precipice.
How soon he was supposed to wait before asking him out, and why he even felt the spontaneous desire to do so were not questions that he thought of before blurting out that he wanted to see Dongwoo again.
“Wow, that is so great!” Dongwoo’s hand slapped the air like a regular chump, a motion that Sunggyu thought he could get used to.
“When do you want to hang out then.” It came out more abruptly than he meant.
Ignoring his tone, Dongwoo simply said, “Tomorrow? No, Sunday. If you want to hang out? I’m cleaning. It’s, I guess, kinda the opposite of romantic or formal...” His eager confidence trailed off.
Sunggyu breathed a sigh of relief. Low-stress, indoor activity. “Okay but I am not going to help you,” he joked.
Dongwoo didn’t get the joke. “That’s fine, we can just chill. I will make a playlist.”
Sunggyu tried not to visibly cringe. “How about I make the playlist.” He had no trust in Dongwoo’s music taste, and he was a bit picky about his listening habits.
Making the CD, he stressed for a long time about whether to include his own songs or not, and the final mix did not include any he had personally contributed to.
***
Whenever he went someplace new, Sunggyu always felt like an intruder. Whether it was a new restaurant, a friend’s new place, the surrounding air was always alien and suffocating and left him with an itchy feeling he just couldn’t shake.
He felt himself sweating even though it was raining outside and Dongwoo had the windows open and it was nice and cool.
There were conversation magnets on the refrigerator, arranged in nonsensical patterns. He rearranged some letters to spell out “S u n g g y u was here.”
The mix went over well, though it was distracting to Sunggyu that sports he didn’t care about blared on the TV incessantly.
“I keep it on, I like to have some noise.” Dongwoo had no roommate.
“I don’t like sports too much,” Sunggyu said. Probably because he was bad at them.
“I like them! I just don’t care who wins. so that part gets kind of old,” A thoughtful expression passed through Dongwoo’s face. “They are just so cool to watch. How do they do that with their bodies?
“A lot of practice.”
Dongwoo laughed, but he hadn’t meant it as a joke. “That’s right, everything takes practice.”
More importantly, Dongwoo liked his music collection, at least the bits that could be heard over the sound of whatever nationally relevant game was playing.
He sorted through socks, coming up with many unmatched singles. Sunggyu laid himself out on the bed as non-suggestively as possible and stared up at the ceiling, where Dongwoo had pasted glow-in-the-dark stars.
This was one of Sunggyu’s favorite songs, and he felt a bit embarrassed to be sharing it with someone else. He almost wished he hadn’t added it into the mix, but this was part of the regular playlist he listened to when he relaxed at home, and it soothed him.
Besides it was a good song on its musical merit. He lost himself in the singer’s voice and story like he always did.
“You have a nice voice,” Dongwoo said sincerely when the song finished. Sunggyu hadn’t noticed himself singing along, but dongwoo said he’d started halfway through and gotten louder by the end. “It was really nice. You’re seriously good, man.”
Sunggyu nodded.
“I’m working on a new painting,” Dongwoo announced when he came back with a new load of laundry. He shoved it in front of Sunggyu’s nose with excitement.
There were blobs of red, green and blue in arranged in a haphazard pattern vaguely resembling an octopus in a helicopter.
“I don’t get it,” Sunggyu said, because he truly didn’t understand.
“Well, it’s a fish tank.”
“I see.”
Dongwoo shrugged, his face somehow mimicking his body’s gesture. “I don’t know either, really! Sure, I spend a lot of time on them, but I don’t know why people keep buying them. I’m just glad they do.”
When he got home, Sunggyu ordered two new bear figurines on Amazon.
***
Dongwoo mentioned that he liked to spend time outside, and Sunggyu bought a pair of sneakers for their big excursion out. Fitting a baseball cap on his head, Sunggyu checked himself in the mirror. He saw a moderately tall person with a hunch in his back and stubbornness in the set of his mouth. He raised a fist in the air. I can do it. I can go hiking. I don't need physical stamina. He breathed out and in, but his arm muscles didn’t swell or anything. He snagged his backpack on his way out, smiling to himself.
They stumbled over a giant tree root and planted themselves down with a package of different colored candies.
“I said you can’t know what color candy it is from the taste.”
Dongwoo staunchly replied that he could.
As it turned out, he did guess all of them correctly, something they discovered through much trial and error.
“It’s just luck. I didn’t get any right,” Sunggyu whined.
“Give me one more, and I’ll tell you the secret.”
It had something to do with eating away all the outsides first, but Sunggyu didn’t really care to invest in a bag of candies that tasted all the same. He failed to guess correctly once again.
“If I try one more time and I get it, will you say it’s real?” Dongwoo asked, closing his eyes and opening his mouth. He made a pretty picture, lying back against the tree with his green hair and unfurling eyelashes.
Sunggyu put a piece of something in his outstretched mouth.
Dongwoo let it rest on his tongue, then pushed himself off the trunk of the tree, eyes gaping wide open.
“Did you feed me a piece of bark?”
Sunggyu flushed hot, realizing he shouldn’t have tried to unintentionally poison his kind-of-not-really-boyfriend. “Maybe, I-”
Dongwoo laughed hysterically. “Bark!” He slapped his leg. “Bark! You fed me bark.”
“Woof,” said Sunggyu.
When Dongwoo leans over and kisses him, it’s like a kaleidescope opening up his mind, shifting images too quickly to hold a whole picture at once, and Sunggyu believes for a moment that tastes can have colors.
“Are we… Do you want us to be going out?” Dongwoo asked, gnawing on his lip. Surprised, Sunggyu took too long to respond, sweetness pricking his tongue, and he cursed himself for the flash of disappointment on Dongwoo’s face.
***
The bears had started as a joke, Sunggyu liked to say, since it was the only reasonable explanation. But really, they hadn’t. He didn’t know why watermelon was his favorite fruit ever since he was little, he didn’t know why he liked strewing bears right and left around his apartment, only that they offered him comfort. He didn’t know why he kept hanging around Dongwoo when they had so little in common.
Sunggyu did what he always did when he felt confused: He looked for a distraction in hopes that the problem would go away.
In other words, he called his lame producer.
“Want to meet up?”
“Anything to not be working on this piece of shit pop singer’s demo.”
“The usual place.”
Sungyeol drank his yerba mate while Sunggyu pretended to gag from across the table. Since getting off coffee, his brother had predictably swayed to the other side of the extremist pole, only drinking all-natural, herby drinks that invariably tasted like shit. He was a genius negotiator and a shark about contracts, but Sungyeol was also a picky grown man who refused to wear shirts with collars because they itched him.
“I don’t like him,” Sunggyu said. “Not really, or not that much.”
“That’s… not what it sounds like, bro.”
Sunggyu had just spent half an hour complaining about Dongwoo’s many obvious incompatibilities, so he was a bit miffed that Sungyeol had picked up on zero of it.
“Oh shit,” Sunggyu said out of the blue. “He’s here.”
Dongwoo was there, strolling through the door with a friend in tow, who tripped over the door threshhold, prompting Dongwoo’s customary laugh.
It wasn’t that surprising. Sunggyu had after all introduced Dongwoo to this very cafe.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Sunggyu said. That way, he could get back and avoid them entirely.
When he came back out, he knocked right into them.
Dongwoo’s friend blinked his wide eyes at him. This was when Sunggyu noticed that he was very, very handsome. As a result, he immediately felt very, very jealous. Dongwoo introduced him as a Myungsoo and asked what he was doing here.
“I’m… in a business meeting with my producer, yeah. Sungyeol, that’s him over there.” Sungyeol looked up from his smartphone but did not acknowledge him. Instead he very obviously looked at Dongwoo, then Sunggyu, then Dongwoo again. “He’s a weirdo,” Sunggyu hurriedly apologized.
“Well, business, I didn’t realize! Well I’ll leave you two for now. But I’ll see you on Saturday.” Dongwoo approximated a wink.
“Yeah, yeah Saturday.”
Myungsoo waved goodbye but didn’t say anything, and the two of them walked upstairs for their seats, out of view.
Sungyeol said, “What the fuck? He’s hot.” He quickly added, “Not that that makes me gay or anything.”
Sunggyu did not have time to deal with his producer’s pathological need to announce his alleged heterosexuality every other sentence. He replied wearily, and customarily, reciting a familiar speech. “I know you’re not, just because some people are doesn’t mean you are. But,” he added, “It doesn’t matter. He’s not that hot.”
“What’s possibly wrong with him?”
“His face is just weird.” He had no words to describe Dongwoo’s face. It was unique, sure, but not conventionally attractive. His features were exaggerated, but maybe it was the way he used them so expressively that made them look that way. He couldn't decide how he felt about it on the whole. It was a good face, open and unguarded, unlike Sunggyu’s.
“Your face is just weird.”
“At least I never had a fauxhawk.”
Sungyeol scowled and scoffed up a smart retort. Now they were off the topic of Dongwoo, which had been Sunggyu’s plan. For such a smart guy, sometimes he swore that Sungyeol was the easiest person to distract in the world. He always took the bait.
“Your songs have gotten much better lately,” Sungyeol said. “Maybe I’ll pitch you to one of our huge collabs coming up.”
“Yeah okay,” Sunggyu said, and then he went charging ahead despite his brain screaming at him to stop talking. “Do you really think he’s hot?”
“Sure bro,” Sungyeol said, shaking his head. “Man, you really have it bad for him.”
“I don’t. I see I haven’t given you enough information to judge. Well let’s see if you still think he’s attractive after you hear this:” Sunggyu gulped his water dramatically, swallowed. “He sneezes into his hands, his paintings look like a multicolored ink blot test, if you tell him the word gullible is on the ceiling, he will look up. This worked twice, by the way. He gives money to every homeless person he sees. He laughs really loudly and makes everyone stare at us in public. And he also snores like an elephant with pneumonia.”
Sungyeol developed this all-knowing, shit-eating grin and Sunggyu realized what he just said. “We-we-we haven’t slept together. He just fell asleep on one of our dates.”
“Wow, this guy must be really into you,” Sungyeol deadpanned. “Boring a guy to sleep, huh?”
“He is!” Sunggyu defended himself. “He just needs a lot of rest. Seriously, he told me he only feels rested when he gets nine hours of sleep a night. Who is insane enough to need that much sleep, I mean are you trying to be dead or well-rested-”
Sungyeol put both of his hands up, “Whoa, whoa I get it, I get it.”
“Good, right? So how could I be attracted to him, or like him at all.”
“Right. It makes more sense to observe every tiny habit he has and record it in your memory for an unknown posterity, bring him doughnuts at work, and watch sports that you vehemently abhor at his apartment, just because you think he’s brave for dyeing his hair.”
“I don't think it’s that brave anymore,” Sunggyu muttered. “Not when you compare it to his other eccentricities.”
“Look you know everything about this guy. All his habits. Don’t you think its a bit weird?”
“I know everything about you too.”
“I am your brother, I’d like to point out, and also your producer.”
“Maybe I'm thinking of adopting him as our new sibling or dropping his new single.”
“You are so weird.”
“You’re weirder.”
“Let’s just agree to blame mom.” Sungyeol made a face at his yerba mate. “Anyways, when are your next plans with him…?”
Sunggyu narrowed his eyes and glared at his brother for a good five seconds. “Soon.” Unless that handsome bastard Myungsoo managed to steal him away. Was he taller than Sunggyu? He’d have to bring a measuring tape next time.
Grimacing, Sungyeol powered through the dregs of his drink and stood up. “Let me know when the wedding is.”
“We’re not even dating,” Sunggyu grumbled. “Not officially.” Which made him pause with realization. He had a brilliant idea.
***
Taking a deep breath, Sunggyu dialed. His phone anxiety was no joke. it was funny, almost, how he could spend hours on his phone when he was bored or trying to avoid other obligations, but when the thing he had to do was call someone, the very function for which the phone had probably been invented, all he wanted to do was power off.
He didn’t order take-out very often.
“Hey, Dongwoo, you remember, uh, the place we met at last time? I can go again on Saturday.”
“Saturday? I can’t go on Saturday.”
“You’re joking, what’s so important then?” Sunggyu’s fingers drummed idiosyncratically against the side of his neck.
“Woohyun wants me to meet someone.” He said this so open-facedly, meaning nothing.
“What?”
“He didn’t say who. It’s probably his mom.”
Dongwoo’s full voice suddenly sounded tinny through his phone’s miniscule speakers and Sunggyu didn’t respond.
“Oh, Woohyun set it up.”
“Woohyun?” That was it, Sunggyu’s best friend was about to meet his imminent demise.
“It’s not a big deal, you know how he gets. He thinks I’m lonely.”
Sunggyu ditched his murderous rage scenarios for a second and focused on Dongwoo’s downturned tone.
“Are you?”
“I don’t know. I want to go to the movies with you though! We can go, maybe Sunday instead?”
Sunggyu’s fingers tapped and tapped, and he found himself humming a new melody to the rhythm.
***
“I’m going to cut off your mustache,” Sunggyu told Woohyun, who looked oddly happy despite the furry creature growing under his nose.
“Chill out. I had a guy who might want to sell his paintings.”
Sunggyu thought about that for a while and felt a smile burst over his face despite himself. “I’m still going to cut off your mustache. It’s for your own good.”
“Sungyeol said you started singing again, and I’ve grown this for a year so don’t expect changes anytime soon. At least I don’t have fur, because I’m not a bear.”
He groaned. “Since when do you talk to Sungyeol?” He was developing a headache from the anticipated noise already.
“Wouldn’t you like to know. Hey are you gonna record yourself ever? You’re loads better than all those idols you write for.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Sunggyu half-lied. There were possibilities opening up like flowers all over the place, too many to tackle all at once.
***
Dongwoo coughed into the phone, explaining that he was sick and couldn’t make their meetup.
“That’s fine, I mean…”
Sunggyu held the new bear figurine he’d bought in his hand and willed its ursine strength into his own being. He’d really wanted to see him.
He really wanted to see him, and he finally had realized why. He thought about Dongwoo sitting alone with the TV on, painting pictures of mundane things whose beauty only he could see while he blew his nose into endless tissues. Slowly, he came to a decision.
It was then he realized Dongwoo had continued to say words while he bumbled around with his thoughts.
“Sorry, I zoned out. I’m not mad at you,” he said. “I’m not sure if that’s a possible feeling for me to have, towards you.”
“Good, I was” -cough- “worried. So how are you doing,” he managed to say before hacking up a storm.
“Can I come over?” Sunggyu blurted out over the coughing. He wasn’t a blurter, not normally, but then his insides felt all twisted up. “If-if you want company. Okay, if you don’t then just say so. Like I said, I... won’t be mad.”
When he got there, Dongwoo was performing a preposterous imitation of a not-sick person who said things like “Do you want”-cough-”coffee?” and “No really, I’m fine.”
Sunggyu handed him a packet of cough syrup and they settled into the couch like a pair of potatoes.
He took something out of his bag, this tiny glass bear rearing up on his hind legs. Dongwoo’s eyes bugged and he offered a thousand extraneous thank yous. But once that was over, the bear finding its home on Dongwoo’s nightstand, Sunggyu took a deep breath. He spoke before he could lose his resolve. “Also, there’s this other thing, that I forgot to say on the phone.”
He felt Dongwoo’s anticipation by the way the coughing stopped.
“If you want it to be.” He moistened his lips. “This could be, maybe a date. The exclusive kind.” He explained himself badly, but perhaps better than usual. “What I actually mean is, would you like to go out. And if you want to hang out as friends that’s also fine.”
Dongwoo smiled. His smile ate up his entire face, two rows of slightly crooked pearly whites. He dragged himself to his feet and left the room with a bounce in his step that Sunggyu figured signified something good.
“I painted you this,” Dongwoo said. “It’s not very good.” The gift had hard corners, and Sunggyu realized it was clumsily self-framed. “Oh, also, yes.” There was too much emotion in the crevasses of his face, and Sunggyu resisted the temptation to look away.
He unwrapped it, curling his mouth around his teeth so his smile wouldn’t invade his entire face and make his eyes shrivel.
Splotches of red littered the page, forming a vaguely globular shape with a green blob at the top.
It was a painting of a tree. There was too much water in the consistency of the paint. It was also childlike in its simplicity. It was objectively terrible, just like the rest of Dongwoo’s art.
“You’re right, it isn’t very good.” Sunggyu said, because the right words never came to him in situations like these. He wanted to ask Dongwoo to paint a bear in the picture so that the tree could be climbed. His lungs squeezed the precious words he wanted to say in his chest, not wanting to let them escape. Dongwoo’s mouth ticked upwards at the insult.
The tree had splotches of dark-rust color on its leaves that didn’t form a pattern. “Why is the tree bleeding?” Sunggyu asked. It seemed like an odd touch for a Dongwoo painting.
“It’s not! It’s a tomato tree.”
“Tomatoes are red.”
“I know that,” Dongwoo said.
“Now seems like a good time for us to kiss again,” Sunggyu said. He felt a habit forming, one where he actually said what he meant most of the time.
Dongwoo shook his head.
Sunggyu knew what he was going to say. “I won’t get sick,” he said.
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can. I’m promising it right now. I’ll take your leftover antibiotics.”
“Isn’t that illegal? Like drug trading?”
Dongwoo was sounding earnest again, and he opened his mouth in invitation as he spoke, so Sunggyu kissed him.
He woke up the next morning with a sore throat and dry mouth and crusted-over eyes. His brother and his best friend were conspiring against him, his boyfriend lying next to him had snot running out of his nose, and he’d smashed the bear on the bedside table in his sleep. But that, at least, was replaceable.
He decided to revise his ranking list. There was potential for an upset in the bears category.