ISS 2012: for miangel_zezchic
Title: Origin of Species
Pairing/Focus: Dongwoo/Hoya
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 4,098
Summary: Hoya goes on a date with a man who has a passion for the past.
To: miangel_zezchic
From: Your Secret Santa
Hoya is late. It's snowing, of course it's snowing, and there's an accident on the L.I.E. He should have known better than to chance the expressway in this weather, but his pride got the better of him once again, and now he's just sitting in traffic watching his chances of getting laid tonight melt away like snowflakes on a windshield. A lot of good a brand-new BMW with tinted windows and heated seats is doing him out here, he thinks.
He spends a good ten minutes typing up a text to his date. Maybe if he phrases it right the guy will just tell him to turn around, that they can reschedule for after the holidays; he can go home and order pizza and not have to deal with traffic and crowds and snow and the complex burden of other people's expectations.
It's a little depressing how much his heart sinks when his date's response is enthusiastic, accommodating, and complete with emoticons.
It's fine!! I'll be waiting outside. I'm wearing a green hat and a purple scarf. And glasses... ~.~
Hoya sighs and tosses his phone into the passenger seat. This guy better be cute. He better be really cute.
In the end he's a full hour late. There's no parking in the street, of course, and the nearest garage is all the way on 85th Street. Once the car is parked he trudges through six blocks of the grimy slush that passes for snow in this city; by the time he can see his destination, twinkling in the distance through a curtain of snowfall, his socks are soaked through at the toes.
Sure enough, there's a man waiting outside the café when he arrives. He's standing under the awning and the curtain of already-lit Christmas lights, in a green-and-white knit hat and a purple scarf and big tortoiseshell glasses. His hands are in his pockets and his shoulders are drawn up and he's bouncing on his toes like he's trying to keep warm.
When he catches sight of Hoya approaching he turns, pulls his hands from his pockets, and waves, pressing his lips together into a shy half-smile.
And yeah, okay. He's pretty cute.
"I'm really sorry," Hoya says, his breath a white cloud rolling around him as he approaches. "There was an accident on the highway."
"Ah, don't worry, it's fine," the man says.
"You didn't have to wait for me. You should have gone inside, it's freezing out here."
The man smiles. "No, I don't mind! I love the snow." He glances down, sticks out his hand, and looks up to meet Hoya's gaze. "Dongwoo. It's really nice to finally meet you."
His voice is low, lilting, syncopated, toeing the line between soothing and seductive and easy to imagine falling on either side. His nose is bright red, his high cheekbones are pink with cold, and his eyes are wide, bright, and awake. There's something about him that's familiar, Hoya thinks, like he's watching the shadow of an aesthetic canon flicker across his face, flashing in his dramatic features.
"Nice to meet you too," Hoya says, shaking Dongwoo's proffered hand.
Dongwoo squeezes, shivers, and smiles.
It's horrible, but Hoya's first thoughts are of the tricks he's going to have to pull to get this guy into bed with him tonight. It's horrible, he's horrible, and a voice in the back of his head tells him as much-that he should be ashamed of himself, that this is a date, not some concentrated cruising exercise, and that, as much as he might like it to be, the endgame here is not sex. A more sardonic part of his brain retorts that any other goals aren't worth bothering with, but the voice has an answer at the ready: that maybe there is no goal here, and maybe that's how it should be.
He thinks about his car and is flushed with shame and anger.
Dongwoo holds the door open for him, but at their table Hoya lets him have the bench seat, where his head is framed by the fragrant pine boughs and velveteen ribbons adorning the wall behind him.
Hoya hadn't chosen this place; it had been Eunji's suggestion. It's... precious, he guesses; precious is the word for it. The chairs are antique, assorted, and upholstered in floral prints. There are silver trays of scones on the dessert counter, and the menus are printed on handmade paper. A veritable truckload of holiday decorations have been strung around the small room, and golden Christmas lights glisten in every corner. Needless to say, it's making him a little uncomfortable: especially when the waiter brings them their purposely mismatched teacups and Dongwoo's eyes light up.
"Oh!" he exclaims. "Cute!"
Adorable, Hoya thinks. His cup rattles in its saucer as he pushes it away.
They don't say much, using the distraction of the waiter fetching and pouring their tea as an excuse not to speak. Hoya eventually asks Dongwoo where he lives (the East Village, of course) but fails to actually care enough to think up any more questions on the subject.
"I lived on 12th Street once," he says.
Dongwoo smiles, ducking his head and pursing his lips but saying nothing.
Time to try a different tack, Hoya thinks. Beating around the bush like this has never been his style.
"So you play with a bunch of big, hard bones for a living? I'm jealous."
Dongwoo laughs, a big, self-conscious laugh, and his cheeks flush bright red. "No, no no no." He shakes his head, then flips the hair in his eyes away with a finger. "I study fish. Prehistoric fish."
It's cute-the way he says prehistoric, the way the word is there in the shape of his lips.
"That's... specific," Hoya says.
Dongwoo shrugs and wraps a hand around his cup of tea. "Well, there were a lot of fish back then." He looks up into Hoya's eyes, meeting his gaze with a crooked smile. "Someone has to study them, no?"
Hoya would like to have something clever to say in response, but for once, he doesn't. Dongwoo's eyes are chestnut red, opaque, and polygraphic.
The waiter comes to take their orders; Dongwoo gets the grilled vegetable panini (after confirming it's vegan-friendly) and Hoya the smoked salmon sandwich, which honestly he only chooses for the joke potential. It pays off, as his quip about eating Dongwoo's research subjects earns him spirited laughter. Dongwoo covers his mouth with the back of his hand and leans back in his seat when he laughs; his eyes narrow into inverted half-moons, his jaw goes crooked with the force of his smile, and his hop-skip staccato laughter bounces across the table and splashes over Hoya's body: warm, infectious, curling his lips up into a smile of their own, like a piece of paper held over a flame.
"Aish," Dongwoo says, after his laughter passes. He glances up at Hoya and smiles at him from under the fall of his bangs, his face in their shadow, his lips dark and matte in the light-and Hoya gets that feeling again, that he resembles an ancient statue somewhere: of a youth, of a god, of a faun in a garden. He notices that his shirt is crooked: that he can see his collarbones, prominent and sharp, through the twisted v-neck of his shirt.
"Um, so," Dongwoo begins, his voice soft, "this place is nice."
They pause; their eyes meet.
Hoya can't help it. He laughs, nearly spitting tea all over the table.
"Ahh," Dongwoo whines. He puts his elbow on the table and his head in his hand. "I'm sorry," he says, "I'm so sorry!" He's apologizing, but there's laughter in his voice, and Hoya can see his face contorted with amusement behind his hand.
"I'm sorry," Hoya says, "I'm sorry, there's nothing funny..."
Dongwoo sits up and takes off his glasses and begins to fan himself with his hand. His face is bright red. "I don't really, uh, go on many dates."
"Yeah," Hoya says, "me neither."
He follows Dongwoo's gaze into the still-steaming cup of Earl Gray sitting before him in a discordant saucer. It's not that he doesn't want someone, he thinks; it's just that it's so demoralizing a search. It's hard for everybody, he knows, but it's even harder when you feel like a square peg in a round hole even on your best of days, when at every turn the world seems made for people cut from a different cloth.
He's not even made of cloth.
He remembers all the false starts he's had in places just like this, with men who wanted someone softer, more forgiving, less honest; men who expected their hands to be held and their company to be actively desired; men who liked his mouth but none of the words that came out of it.
"It's hard," Hoya says, breaking the silence that has fallen between them. "It's hard finding someone who likes me for me, you know?"
"Mmm," Dongwoo hums, a sound of neither agreement nor disagreement. He sits and stares at his hands as he twists his rings around and around his fingers. When he speaks, he does not look up. "When was the last time you dated?"
Hoya purses his lips. He actually has to think hard about this one.
"It was in grad school. We broke up when he graduated and moved back to California."
Dongwoo smiles, tight-lipped and reticent. "Where did you go to school?"
"For my masters?" Hoya takes a sip of his tea, remembering the view from Peter's apartment, looking out over the avenue, the park, the river-remembering what it looked like in the snow. "Columbia."
"Oh! Seriously?" Dongwoo's eyes go as wide as dinner plates and his eyebrows shoot up to somewhere in the middle of his forehead. "I did too! Wow, I didn't know you went there. We must have graduated together."
Hoya smiles a little. It's not that impressive a coincidence, to be honest. But knowledge of their shared experience seems to have stoked the fires of Dongwoo's enthusiasm, as he leans forward and puts his elbows on the table and blinks at him like a child looking up into the stars.
"What did you study? Did you like it there? What was your thesis?" He smiles, and it's warm and welcoming and not at all like a statue. "Tell me about it," he says.
So Hoya does.
From there, Dongwoo's questions work backward. He asks about grad school, undergrad, high school-what he's studied, where he's lived, what he's loved and why he loved it. He asks about the people he's dated, the jobs he's had, and all the apartments he's lived in, even if only for a night. Their sandwiches arrive as Hoya is explaining why he hated Manhattan and had to get out, but food does not dissuade Dongwoo from his mission, and he continues spitting his questions out one by one, nodding and chewing, mouth half-open, as he listens to Hoya's answers.
He asks about Hoya's parents, his siblings, his family. He asks about the toys he played with as a child, the things he had in his bedroom, the sports he played, the friends he had. He asks about the first time he used a computer, and the first time he sat down and tried to program one, and the first time he saw his program working and realized he wanted to do it for the rest of his life. He asks about his childhood home, the kitchen his mother cooked in, the things she cooked for them. He asks about his hometown and the people that lived there, and when Hoya explains that he grew up in Maine Dongwoo's eyes go wide and he asks about the snow. Was it deep and fluffy or was it shallow and hard and heavy with ice? Did they go sledding down the hills, and skiing down the mountains, and skating on the ponds? Did he build igloos with his brothers? Did he build snowmen with his boyfriends, on the lawns of their parents' houses in the dark of night after their dates?
"Well, not really whole snowmen," Hoya says. "Just certain parts of them."
Dongwoo laughs at that one.
He asks and asks and asks but it never feels like an interview. Hoya never feels like he's being judged or evaluated, only like he's being uncovered, having the heavy blankets he had dragged over himself pulled off one-by-one and being exposed to the cool, fresh air outside his cocoon.
Dongwoo doesn't say much about himself. He offers nothing unsolicited, and his responses are modest and self-effacing when he gives Hoya the rare chance to inquire about his life, his opinions, his feelings.
"What about you?" Hoya asks eventually.
Dongwoo furrows his brow. "What about me?"
"You know so much about me now, I want to know about you."
"Hmm. There's not much to know." Dongwoo looks down at his empty plate and pushes the eggplant he had pulled from his sandwich around with his fork. The vintage china rings distinctively as he taps his utensil against the ceramic. "Like you said, I play with bones all day. That's it, really."
Hoya raises an eyebrow. Dongwoo looks up at him and grins. "Do you want to go to the museum? I can show you my fish."
Hoya's BMW is in the garage on 85th Street. He rolls the potential question around in his head for a long moment while Dongwoo peers at the desserts on the way out. Do you like cars? Do you drive? Is there anywhere to park at the museum? But he knows all he'd really be asking is whether Dongwoo is easily impressed by shiny expensive things, which is a question he's ashamed to even be thinking about in light of Dongwoo's enthusiasm for snow and his cute tasseled hat and the way he goes pink when Hoya makes a dirty joke.
So Hoya says nothing, and when Dongwoo asks him where he put his car Hoya just tells him he'd rather take a cab than have to look for parking again. Dongwoo hails a taxi, hard-found in the still-falling snow, and holds the door open for him when it arrives. Hoya thinks hard about where he's going to sit inside the cab, if it would be too presumptuous to sit toward the middle or too cold to sit against the window. He doesn't have much time to think about it but it also doesn't much matter, because Dongwoo slides all the way over in the seat, and when he sits back and opens his legs their knees brush together. It's just the folds in their jeans rustling against each other, but even in the stifling heat of the cab it sends shivers dashing up Hoya's spine.
On any other date, in any other circumstance, a shiver would be a good sign-it would mean he was getting somewhere. But today, he's not sure how he feels about it. The voice in the back of his head tells him it's still a good sign, only for different reasons.
He's not sure how he feels about that, either.
It's a Monday and already after five, and most visitors are trickling out of the museum as closing time draws near. In the rotunda schoolchildren mill about the towering Barosaurus skeleton, the squeaking of their sneakers on the tiles echoing in the empty hall. Dongwoo waves his researcher's badge at the teen manning the ticket counter, but Hoya takes it as an opportunity to be a gentleman and insists on paying his way. He asks himself if he means what he says in explanation-that he feels bad not paying, knowing that his ticket pays Dongwoo's salary-and isn't exactly sure of the answer.
"Actually, I'm paid by the university," Dongwoo says.
But Hoya pays anyway.
In the hallway beyond the rotunda they stop to remove their coats. Hoya watches as Dongwoo twists to pull off his heavy jacket. He looks less substantial like this, without the layers of protection from the weather and standing defenseless in the huge corridor. His smile may be big, but Hoya realizes, watching him now, that his body is small, and his movements are slight, and the way he holds himself is modest.
Somehow, that thought makes him sad.
"Hey," Hoya says. "Let's go see the whale."
The hall of marine life is massive, blue, and mostly empty. There's a class of elementary schoolers making their way around the exhibits, peering at the dioramas of taxidermied walruses, polar bears, penguins, and puffins, still frozen in the poses Hoya remembers from his visits as a child.
They find a bench in a corner. Hoya doesn't fail to notice the way Dongwoo subtly places a hand behind him when he sits down.
"I've always wondered how they got this in here," Dongwoo says, keeping his voice museum-low.
Hoya looks up at the massive model whale suspended in the air above the hall.
"It probably came in pieces," he says.
"Oh," Dongwoo says. He seems to ponder the idea for a moment, and then begins to laugh. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense."
One of the children across the room screeches as a classmate kicks him in the shins. Hoya watches as they chase each other in circles around the hall, the slapping of their feet against the floor echoing up the empty space.
"That's what your job is like, isn't it?" Dongwoo asks.
"Hm?"
"Solving problems. Like how to get a 100-foot-long whale model into a museum."
"Yeah. Yeah, that's what it's like, I guess."
"Mmm," Dongwoo hums deep in his chest, and gazes back up at the whale.
"What's your job like, then?"
Dongwoo turns and smiles at him. "Putting the whale pieces back together again."
On the way out of the marine hall, Dongwoo stops in front of a model fish on the wall.
"Ah." He points up at it. "That's a coelacanth. We have a few preserved downstairs. They haven't evolved at all in over four hundred million years."
Dongwoo stands and looks at the model for a long moment, swinging his arms and slapping his palms together as he stares. Hoya tries to care about the fish, he really does, but Dongwoo's eyes are flashing like steel in the sunlight, shimmering with uncharacteristic intensity. It's strange, and beautiful, and a little frightening.
Hoya feels suddenly useless.
He looks down at his feet and pulls a tin from his pocket.
"Do you want a mint?" he asks. "Spearmint."
Dongwoo looks up. He glances around, a bewildered look in his eyes. His gaze goes first to Hoya's hand and the tin of mints in his palm and then to his face.
"Oh," Dongwoo says. "Thanks."
With the tips of his narrow fingers he plucks a mint from the tin and places it on his tongue. The taste seems to snap him out of his daze; he offers Hoya a warm smile.
"Come on. I'll show you the research facilities."
Specimen storage is an impossible maze of rooms. Hallways upon hallways upon hallways, doors upon doors upon doors, low ceilings and white floodlights and bare cinderblock walls.
"This is only a little bit of it," Dongwoo says. "There are lots of other vaults and basements, with cultural artifacts and rocks and modern specimens and stuff."
Dongwoo leads them through the winding corridors like he's walked them countless times. He talks about the research the museum is making possible with this collection: in astronomy, geology, physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology (his own specialty).
"Fish," Hoya says.
"More than fish," Dongwoo replies. "Every animal on earth. Life began in the ocean."
He throws him a crooked, cocksure smile that makes Hoya's heart skip a beat.
Not ten paces later, Dongwoo stops short in the middle of the hall.
"Oh!" he exclaims, pointing to a door on their left. "This whole room is Alfred Kinsey's collection of gall wasps. Six million of them. He was an entomologist before he started studying sex. He also found one of our famous meteorites."
It's only a momentary distraction. As soon as Dongwoo's finished speaking they're off again, walking briskly down the hall. But even as they turn the corner and put it physically behind them, Hoya's mind is back at the room of gall wasps.
A mystery, he thinks. He's a mystery, hard and deep like an effigy quickened.
He would like to ask Dongwoo how he knows all this: who told him about Kinsey's gall wasps? Who told him about Kinsey's meteorite? Who told him about Kinsey's life?
Hoya would like to know: what has he been taught, and who has taught him. Who his role models are, who he wants to be more like, who he wants to be. Who would he meet, if given the chance; who he would thank; who would he kiss.
He wants to know about the things he's sorry for, and the things he's not sorry for, too. The things he believes in. The things he wants to believe in.
The color of his bedroom. His favorite cartoon. The way he takes his eggs. What he puts in his coffee. His mother's maiden name. What he likes about the snow.
A mystery, Hoya thinks.
"Hey," he says. "Show me your favorite."
Dongwoo stops and turns. "Hm?"
"Your favorite thing down here."
Dongwoo blinks a few times, as if he's been blindsided by the question. "Ah. Okay."
It's a dinosaur egg.
Not just any dinosaur egg, of course. "This one has an intact embryo inside," Dongwoo explains. "Really, really rare."
It's sitting before them, tucked into a bed of baby-blue foam. It doesn't look like much, really-just like an egg-shaped rock, its color gray and dull in the clinical fluorescent light of the archive room.
"I can touch it?" Hoya asks.
"Sure," Dongwoo says, "as long as you're gentle."
Hoya reaches out and brushes his fingers across the surface of the fossil. It's pockmarked but smooth: halfway between a stone and the worn ivory keys on his mother's piano. It's weird, but it feels old, and somehow, strangely, like electricity running up his fingers, important.
"Isn't it incredible," Dongwoo begins, "this was buried for a hundred million years, waiting for someone to come and dig it up."
Hoya can hear the rest of his thoughts behind his voice, like a banner fluttering in the breeze. He could speak them, but they both know that he doesn't need to-they both understand what he means. That the entire history of the human race lived and died on the ground where this was buried; that generations upon generations of people loved and lost while this was lying patiently in the earth; that there's still so much we don't know, and no one knows what else is out there waiting to be understood.
Hoya pulls his hand away from the egg and turns to Dongwoo. "Why do you like this stuff?"
Dongwoo seems to think about it for a moment, pursing his lips in concentration.
"Because it's nice to think about," he says after a moment. "I mean. To think about where we came from."
"Why?"
Dongwoo looks at him.
"Because maybe if we know where we came from, we can figure out where we're going."
The hair on the back of Hoya's neck stands on end. A cold draft creeps up his spine. His palm begins to itch: it wants to reach out, it wants to lay on Dongwoo's arm, on his shoulder, on his hip. His mouth begins to burn: it wants to kiss him. He could lean over and do it. He could, and it would be good. But there's a voice in the back of his head again, and its sound is clear like sunlight over the ocean. It's telling him no-not this time.
This time we wait.
Hoya opens his mouth, but does not move.
"I think I like you," he says. His voice is weak and his words sound stupid to his ears, but it's all he can say, it's all he can think, and finally, finally, it's true.
Dongwoo smiles.
"I think I like you too."
His warmth spreads through Hoya's body again, across his skin, through his bloodstream, making him light, ready to float away.
He takes a deep breath.
"Do you want to go for a drive?"
Pairing/Focus: Dongwoo/Hoya
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 4,098
Summary: Hoya goes on a date with a man who has a passion for the past.
To: miangel_zezchic
From: Your Secret Santa
Hoya is late. It's snowing, of course it's snowing, and there's an accident on the L.I.E. He should have known better than to chance the expressway in this weather, but his pride got the better of him once again, and now he's just sitting in traffic watching his chances of getting laid tonight melt away like snowflakes on a windshield. A lot of good a brand-new BMW with tinted windows and heated seats is doing him out here, he thinks.
He spends a good ten minutes typing up a text to his date. Maybe if he phrases it right the guy will just tell him to turn around, that they can reschedule for after the holidays; he can go home and order pizza and not have to deal with traffic and crowds and snow and the complex burden of other people's expectations.
It's a little depressing how much his heart sinks when his date's response is enthusiastic, accommodating, and complete with emoticons.
It's fine!! I'll be waiting outside. I'm wearing a green hat and a purple scarf. And glasses... ~.~
Hoya sighs and tosses his phone into the passenger seat. This guy better be cute. He better be really cute.
In the end he's a full hour late. There's no parking in the street, of course, and the nearest garage is all the way on 85th Street. Once the car is parked he trudges through six blocks of the grimy slush that passes for snow in this city; by the time he can see his destination, twinkling in the distance through a curtain of snowfall, his socks are soaked through at the toes.
Sure enough, there's a man waiting outside the café when he arrives. He's standing under the awning and the curtain of already-lit Christmas lights, in a green-and-white knit hat and a purple scarf and big tortoiseshell glasses. His hands are in his pockets and his shoulders are drawn up and he's bouncing on his toes like he's trying to keep warm.
When he catches sight of Hoya approaching he turns, pulls his hands from his pockets, and waves, pressing his lips together into a shy half-smile.
And yeah, okay. He's pretty cute.
"I'm really sorry," Hoya says, his breath a white cloud rolling around him as he approaches. "There was an accident on the highway."
"Ah, don't worry, it's fine," the man says.
"You didn't have to wait for me. You should have gone inside, it's freezing out here."
The man smiles. "No, I don't mind! I love the snow." He glances down, sticks out his hand, and looks up to meet Hoya's gaze. "Dongwoo. It's really nice to finally meet you."
His voice is low, lilting, syncopated, toeing the line between soothing and seductive and easy to imagine falling on either side. His nose is bright red, his high cheekbones are pink with cold, and his eyes are wide, bright, and awake. There's something about him that's familiar, Hoya thinks, like he's watching the shadow of an aesthetic canon flicker across his face, flashing in his dramatic features.
"Nice to meet you too," Hoya says, shaking Dongwoo's proffered hand.
Dongwoo squeezes, shivers, and smiles.
It's horrible, but Hoya's first thoughts are of the tricks he's going to have to pull to get this guy into bed with him tonight. It's horrible, he's horrible, and a voice in the back of his head tells him as much-that he should be ashamed of himself, that this is a date, not some concentrated cruising exercise, and that, as much as he might like it to be, the endgame here is not sex. A more sardonic part of his brain retorts that any other goals aren't worth bothering with, but the voice has an answer at the ready: that maybe there is no goal here, and maybe that's how it should be.
He thinks about his car and is flushed with shame and anger.
Dongwoo holds the door open for him, but at their table Hoya lets him have the bench seat, where his head is framed by the fragrant pine boughs and velveteen ribbons adorning the wall behind him.
Hoya hadn't chosen this place; it had been Eunji's suggestion. It's... precious, he guesses; precious is the word for it. The chairs are antique, assorted, and upholstered in floral prints. There are silver trays of scones on the dessert counter, and the menus are printed on handmade paper. A veritable truckload of holiday decorations have been strung around the small room, and golden Christmas lights glisten in every corner. Needless to say, it's making him a little uncomfortable: especially when the waiter brings them their purposely mismatched teacups and Dongwoo's eyes light up.
"Oh!" he exclaims. "Cute!"
Adorable, Hoya thinks. His cup rattles in its saucer as he pushes it away.
They don't say much, using the distraction of the waiter fetching and pouring their tea as an excuse not to speak. Hoya eventually asks Dongwoo where he lives (the East Village, of course) but fails to actually care enough to think up any more questions on the subject.
"I lived on 12th Street once," he says.
Dongwoo smiles, ducking his head and pursing his lips but saying nothing.
Time to try a different tack, Hoya thinks. Beating around the bush like this has never been his style.
"So you play with a bunch of big, hard bones for a living? I'm jealous."
Dongwoo laughs, a big, self-conscious laugh, and his cheeks flush bright red. "No, no no no." He shakes his head, then flips the hair in his eyes away with a finger. "I study fish. Prehistoric fish."
It's cute-the way he says prehistoric, the way the word is there in the shape of his lips.
"That's... specific," Hoya says.
Dongwoo shrugs and wraps a hand around his cup of tea. "Well, there were a lot of fish back then." He looks up into Hoya's eyes, meeting his gaze with a crooked smile. "Someone has to study them, no?"
Hoya would like to have something clever to say in response, but for once, he doesn't. Dongwoo's eyes are chestnut red, opaque, and polygraphic.
The waiter comes to take their orders; Dongwoo gets the grilled vegetable panini (after confirming it's vegan-friendly) and Hoya the smoked salmon sandwich, which honestly he only chooses for the joke potential. It pays off, as his quip about eating Dongwoo's research subjects earns him spirited laughter. Dongwoo covers his mouth with the back of his hand and leans back in his seat when he laughs; his eyes narrow into inverted half-moons, his jaw goes crooked with the force of his smile, and his hop-skip staccato laughter bounces across the table and splashes over Hoya's body: warm, infectious, curling his lips up into a smile of their own, like a piece of paper held over a flame.
"Aish," Dongwoo says, after his laughter passes. He glances up at Hoya and smiles at him from under the fall of his bangs, his face in their shadow, his lips dark and matte in the light-and Hoya gets that feeling again, that he resembles an ancient statue somewhere: of a youth, of a god, of a faun in a garden. He notices that his shirt is crooked: that he can see his collarbones, prominent and sharp, through the twisted v-neck of his shirt.
"Um, so," Dongwoo begins, his voice soft, "this place is nice."
They pause; their eyes meet.
Hoya can't help it. He laughs, nearly spitting tea all over the table.
"Ahh," Dongwoo whines. He puts his elbow on the table and his head in his hand. "I'm sorry," he says, "I'm so sorry!" He's apologizing, but there's laughter in his voice, and Hoya can see his face contorted with amusement behind his hand.
"I'm sorry," Hoya says, "I'm sorry, there's nothing funny..."
Dongwoo sits up and takes off his glasses and begins to fan himself with his hand. His face is bright red. "I don't really, uh, go on many dates."
"Yeah," Hoya says, "me neither."
He follows Dongwoo's gaze into the still-steaming cup of Earl Gray sitting before him in a discordant saucer. It's not that he doesn't want someone, he thinks; it's just that it's so demoralizing a search. It's hard for everybody, he knows, but it's even harder when you feel like a square peg in a round hole even on your best of days, when at every turn the world seems made for people cut from a different cloth.
He's not even made of cloth.
He remembers all the false starts he's had in places just like this, with men who wanted someone softer, more forgiving, less honest; men who expected their hands to be held and their company to be actively desired; men who liked his mouth but none of the words that came out of it.
"It's hard," Hoya says, breaking the silence that has fallen between them. "It's hard finding someone who likes me for me, you know?"
"Mmm," Dongwoo hums, a sound of neither agreement nor disagreement. He sits and stares at his hands as he twists his rings around and around his fingers. When he speaks, he does not look up. "When was the last time you dated?"
Hoya purses his lips. He actually has to think hard about this one.
"It was in grad school. We broke up when he graduated and moved back to California."
Dongwoo smiles, tight-lipped and reticent. "Where did you go to school?"
"For my masters?" Hoya takes a sip of his tea, remembering the view from Peter's apartment, looking out over the avenue, the park, the river-remembering what it looked like in the snow. "Columbia."
"Oh! Seriously?" Dongwoo's eyes go as wide as dinner plates and his eyebrows shoot up to somewhere in the middle of his forehead. "I did too! Wow, I didn't know you went there. We must have graduated together."
Hoya smiles a little. It's not that impressive a coincidence, to be honest. But knowledge of their shared experience seems to have stoked the fires of Dongwoo's enthusiasm, as he leans forward and puts his elbows on the table and blinks at him like a child looking up into the stars.
"What did you study? Did you like it there? What was your thesis?" He smiles, and it's warm and welcoming and not at all like a statue. "Tell me about it," he says.
So Hoya does.
From there, Dongwoo's questions work backward. He asks about grad school, undergrad, high school-what he's studied, where he's lived, what he's loved and why he loved it. He asks about the people he's dated, the jobs he's had, and all the apartments he's lived in, even if only for a night. Their sandwiches arrive as Hoya is explaining why he hated Manhattan and had to get out, but food does not dissuade Dongwoo from his mission, and he continues spitting his questions out one by one, nodding and chewing, mouth half-open, as he listens to Hoya's answers.
He asks about Hoya's parents, his siblings, his family. He asks about the toys he played with as a child, the things he had in his bedroom, the sports he played, the friends he had. He asks about the first time he used a computer, and the first time he sat down and tried to program one, and the first time he saw his program working and realized he wanted to do it for the rest of his life. He asks about his childhood home, the kitchen his mother cooked in, the things she cooked for them. He asks about his hometown and the people that lived there, and when Hoya explains that he grew up in Maine Dongwoo's eyes go wide and he asks about the snow. Was it deep and fluffy or was it shallow and hard and heavy with ice? Did they go sledding down the hills, and skiing down the mountains, and skating on the ponds? Did he build igloos with his brothers? Did he build snowmen with his boyfriends, on the lawns of their parents' houses in the dark of night after their dates?
"Well, not really whole snowmen," Hoya says. "Just certain parts of them."
Dongwoo laughs at that one.
He asks and asks and asks but it never feels like an interview. Hoya never feels like he's being judged or evaluated, only like he's being uncovered, having the heavy blankets he had dragged over himself pulled off one-by-one and being exposed to the cool, fresh air outside his cocoon.
Dongwoo doesn't say much about himself. He offers nothing unsolicited, and his responses are modest and self-effacing when he gives Hoya the rare chance to inquire about his life, his opinions, his feelings.
"What about you?" Hoya asks eventually.
Dongwoo furrows his brow. "What about me?"
"You know so much about me now, I want to know about you."
"Hmm. There's not much to know." Dongwoo looks down at his empty plate and pushes the eggplant he had pulled from his sandwich around with his fork. The vintage china rings distinctively as he taps his utensil against the ceramic. "Like you said, I play with bones all day. That's it, really."
Hoya raises an eyebrow. Dongwoo looks up at him and grins. "Do you want to go to the museum? I can show you my fish."
Hoya's BMW is in the garage on 85th Street. He rolls the potential question around in his head for a long moment while Dongwoo peers at the desserts on the way out. Do you like cars? Do you drive? Is there anywhere to park at the museum? But he knows all he'd really be asking is whether Dongwoo is easily impressed by shiny expensive things, which is a question he's ashamed to even be thinking about in light of Dongwoo's enthusiasm for snow and his cute tasseled hat and the way he goes pink when Hoya makes a dirty joke.
So Hoya says nothing, and when Dongwoo asks him where he put his car Hoya just tells him he'd rather take a cab than have to look for parking again. Dongwoo hails a taxi, hard-found in the still-falling snow, and holds the door open for him when it arrives. Hoya thinks hard about where he's going to sit inside the cab, if it would be too presumptuous to sit toward the middle or too cold to sit against the window. He doesn't have much time to think about it but it also doesn't much matter, because Dongwoo slides all the way over in the seat, and when he sits back and opens his legs their knees brush together. It's just the folds in their jeans rustling against each other, but even in the stifling heat of the cab it sends shivers dashing up Hoya's spine.
On any other date, in any other circumstance, a shiver would be a good sign-it would mean he was getting somewhere. But today, he's not sure how he feels about it. The voice in the back of his head tells him it's still a good sign, only for different reasons.
He's not sure how he feels about that, either.
It's a Monday and already after five, and most visitors are trickling out of the museum as closing time draws near. In the rotunda schoolchildren mill about the towering Barosaurus skeleton, the squeaking of their sneakers on the tiles echoing in the empty hall. Dongwoo waves his researcher's badge at the teen manning the ticket counter, but Hoya takes it as an opportunity to be a gentleman and insists on paying his way. He asks himself if he means what he says in explanation-that he feels bad not paying, knowing that his ticket pays Dongwoo's salary-and isn't exactly sure of the answer.
"Actually, I'm paid by the university," Dongwoo says.
But Hoya pays anyway.
In the hallway beyond the rotunda they stop to remove their coats. Hoya watches as Dongwoo twists to pull off his heavy jacket. He looks less substantial like this, without the layers of protection from the weather and standing defenseless in the huge corridor. His smile may be big, but Hoya realizes, watching him now, that his body is small, and his movements are slight, and the way he holds himself is modest.
Somehow, that thought makes him sad.
"Hey," Hoya says. "Let's go see the whale."
The hall of marine life is massive, blue, and mostly empty. There's a class of elementary schoolers making their way around the exhibits, peering at the dioramas of taxidermied walruses, polar bears, penguins, and puffins, still frozen in the poses Hoya remembers from his visits as a child.
They find a bench in a corner. Hoya doesn't fail to notice the way Dongwoo subtly places a hand behind him when he sits down.
"I've always wondered how they got this in here," Dongwoo says, keeping his voice museum-low.
Hoya looks up at the massive model whale suspended in the air above the hall.
"It probably came in pieces," he says.
"Oh," Dongwoo says. He seems to ponder the idea for a moment, and then begins to laugh. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense."
One of the children across the room screeches as a classmate kicks him in the shins. Hoya watches as they chase each other in circles around the hall, the slapping of their feet against the floor echoing up the empty space.
"That's what your job is like, isn't it?" Dongwoo asks.
"Hm?"
"Solving problems. Like how to get a 100-foot-long whale model into a museum."
"Yeah. Yeah, that's what it's like, I guess."
"Mmm," Dongwoo hums deep in his chest, and gazes back up at the whale.
"What's your job like, then?"
Dongwoo turns and smiles at him. "Putting the whale pieces back together again."
On the way out of the marine hall, Dongwoo stops in front of a model fish on the wall.
"Ah." He points up at it. "That's a coelacanth. We have a few preserved downstairs. They haven't evolved at all in over four hundred million years."
Dongwoo stands and looks at the model for a long moment, swinging his arms and slapping his palms together as he stares. Hoya tries to care about the fish, he really does, but Dongwoo's eyes are flashing like steel in the sunlight, shimmering with uncharacteristic intensity. It's strange, and beautiful, and a little frightening.
Hoya feels suddenly useless.
He looks down at his feet and pulls a tin from his pocket.
"Do you want a mint?" he asks. "Spearmint."
Dongwoo looks up. He glances around, a bewildered look in his eyes. His gaze goes first to Hoya's hand and the tin of mints in his palm and then to his face.
"Oh," Dongwoo says. "Thanks."
With the tips of his narrow fingers he plucks a mint from the tin and places it on his tongue. The taste seems to snap him out of his daze; he offers Hoya a warm smile.
"Come on. I'll show you the research facilities."
Specimen storage is an impossible maze of rooms. Hallways upon hallways upon hallways, doors upon doors upon doors, low ceilings and white floodlights and bare cinderblock walls.
"This is only a little bit of it," Dongwoo says. "There are lots of other vaults and basements, with cultural artifacts and rocks and modern specimens and stuff."
Dongwoo leads them through the winding corridors like he's walked them countless times. He talks about the research the museum is making possible with this collection: in astronomy, geology, physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology (his own specialty).
"Fish," Hoya says.
"More than fish," Dongwoo replies. "Every animal on earth. Life began in the ocean."
He throws him a crooked, cocksure smile that makes Hoya's heart skip a beat.
Not ten paces later, Dongwoo stops short in the middle of the hall.
"Oh!" he exclaims, pointing to a door on their left. "This whole room is Alfred Kinsey's collection of gall wasps. Six million of them. He was an entomologist before he started studying sex. He also found one of our famous meteorites."
It's only a momentary distraction. As soon as Dongwoo's finished speaking they're off again, walking briskly down the hall. But even as they turn the corner and put it physically behind them, Hoya's mind is back at the room of gall wasps.
A mystery, he thinks. He's a mystery, hard and deep like an effigy quickened.
He would like to ask Dongwoo how he knows all this: who told him about Kinsey's gall wasps? Who told him about Kinsey's meteorite? Who told him about Kinsey's life?
Hoya would like to know: what has he been taught, and who has taught him. Who his role models are, who he wants to be more like, who he wants to be. Who would he meet, if given the chance; who he would thank; who would he kiss.
He wants to know about the things he's sorry for, and the things he's not sorry for, too. The things he believes in. The things he wants to believe in.
The color of his bedroom. His favorite cartoon. The way he takes his eggs. What he puts in his coffee. His mother's maiden name. What he likes about the snow.
A mystery, Hoya thinks.
"Hey," he says. "Show me your favorite."
Dongwoo stops and turns. "Hm?"
"Your favorite thing down here."
Dongwoo blinks a few times, as if he's been blindsided by the question. "Ah. Okay."
It's a dinosaur egg.
Not just any dinosaur egg, of course. "This one has an intact embryo inside," Dongwoo explains. "Really, really rare."
It's sitting before them, tucked into a bed of baby-blue foam. It doesn't look like much, really-just like an egg-shaped rock, its color gray and dull in the clinical fluorescent light of the archive room.
"I can touch it?" Hoya asks.
"Sure," Dongwoo says, "as long as you're gentle."
Hoya reaches out and brushes his fingers across the surface of the fossil. It's pockmarked but smooth: halfway between a stone and the worn ivory keys on his mother's piano. It's weird, but it feels old, and somehow, strangely, like electricity running up his fingers, important.
"Isn't it incredible," Dongwoo begins, "this was buried for a hundred million years, waiting for someone to come and dig it up."
Hoya can hear the rest of his thoughts behind his voice, like a banner fluttering in the breeze. He could speak them, but they both know that he doesn't need to-they both understand what he means. That the entire history of the human race lived and died on the ground where this was buried; that generations upon generations of people loved and lost while this was lying patiently in the earth; that there's still so much we don't know, and no one knows what else is out there waiting to be understood.
Hoya pulls his hand away from the egg and turns to Dongwoo. "Why do you like this stuff?"
Dongwoo seems to think about it for a moment, pursing his lips in concentration.
"Because it's nice to think about," he says after a moment. "I mean. To think about where we came from."
"Why?"
Dongwoo looks at him.
"Because maybe if we know where we came from, we can figure out where we're going."
The hair on the back of Hoya's neck stands on end. A cold draft creeps up his spine. His palm begins to itch: it wants to reach out, it wants to lay on Dongwoo's arm, on his shoulder, on his hip. His mouth begins to burn: it wants to kiss him. He could lean over and do it. He could, and it would be good. But there's a voice in the back of his head again, and its sound is clear like sunlight over the ocean. It's telling him no-not this time.
This time we wait.
Hoya opens his mouth, but does not move.
"I think I like you," he says. His voice is weak and his words sound stupid to his ears, but it's all he can say, it's all he can think, and finally, finally, it's true.
Dongwoo smiles.
"I think I like you too."
His warmth spreads through Hoya's body again, across his skin, through his bloodstream, making him light, ready to float away.
He takes a deep breath.
"Do you want to go for a drive?"