[infinite] (as "x" tends to) three
Title: (as "x" tends to) three
Rating: pg-13
Word count: 4166
Summary: Nam Woohyun’s cafe specializes in secret rendezvous, in safe spaces, in soft cushions and comfort zones.
(as "x" tends to) three
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
albert einstein
∞
[week one]
In principle, Myungsoo doesn’t mind speed-dating. In principle he also doesn’t mind dim lighting, silk tablecloths, or gaudily scented candles. It's terribly tacky and a bit disquieting, but there's nothing wrong with it all.
He's just pretty sure it isn't right for Dongwoo. Dongwoo’s never been good at finding the right words to say, especially under pressure, and Myungsoo’s pretty sure that a few evenings of constant rejection isn't going to do any favors for Dongwoo’s shattered self-esteem. But when Dongwoo had begged the favor, softly mumbling into his wineglass, hands tight over the invitation that Sunggyu had sent them, Myungsoo found that he couldn’t say no. Ever since college, Jang Dongwoo had always been unfairly good at getting what he wanted.
The only thing that really bothers Myungsoo are the daffodils settled in a glass cut vase in the middle of the small table. That, and the lackluster conversation.
The organizer’s bell chimes softly. Chairs are pulled back against the floor, Myungsoo’s own companion stalks off, and someone takes his place. He wonders absentmindedly how much longer he'll be able to last. He certainly won't be doing this again.
“Hi!” Lean fingers nervously rearrange a multitude of scarves draped around a thin neck, cradling pointed cheeks and sharp eyes. “Lee Sungjong, twenty-eight. I'm a fashion designer for my own line of clothes-we just opened our first boutique in Seoul three weeks ago. Nice to meet you!”
“Uhm,” Myungsoo says. This is always the awkward part. He taps a finger against the tablecloth irritably. “I’m not actually single. Er. Sorry?”
Sungjong leans forward on an elbow, and the vase shakes. “That’s what they all say after I introduce myself. Either that or ‘I’m straight.’”
“I’m really not. I’m here for a friend. He needed, ah, emotional support.”
“Oh,” and Sungjong falls back and crosses his arms and looks up at the timer beside the buzzer. Two minutes, twenty seconds. “That’s a bit disappointing,” and, more teasingly, “you’re my type.”
Sungjong’s hands are as thin as Sungyeol’s, but his hair is dyed blond instead of black, and Myungsoo’s fairly sure that Sungjong wouldn’t stand head to head with him, wouldn’t be able to tilt Myungsoo’s chin five centimeters upwards with two fingers and kiss deeply into his mouth, warm and wet and lazy with just a hint of teeth. Sungyeol’s eyes would look black in the dim light of the cafe, and he’d keep his feet between Myungsoo’s, but Sungjong’s back is flush against the small wooden chair decorated with bright paper hearts and plastic flower petals. Myungsoo estimates that there is a meter separating their fingertips.
He shouldn’t be counting.
One minute and forty five seconds later, the bell chimes three pretty notes, Sungjong pushes back at the table, the vase shudders, the daffodil tilts right and left, and someone swoops in to take Sungjong’s place.
“Hi,” he begins in a voice that rustles. “I’m-”
[week two]
“Date night” is held every other Tuesday evening. Nam Woohyun’s cafe specializes in secret rendezvous, in safe spaces, in soft cushions and comfort zones. Ever since Kim Sunggyu had slipped Dongwoo the address after a few commiserating glances in a story Myungsoo’s never quite understood, they’d settled in as regular customers, sometimes even coming by during the day, Myungsoo bringing over the occasional unaware coworker for a muffin and a coffee. Myungsoo takes pleasure in their accidental sponsorship of the underground gay community. They’d never been to the evening events before that second invitation, before Dongwoo’s breakup with a guy who was still married at the time.
“You again. Just my luck.”
Myungsoo looks up from his phone, from Sungyeol’s sharp rebuke over the dishes he’d left in the sink and the casserole he’d accidentally thrown out a few days previously. It was still good, the note read, I’m too tired to cook on my days off. The voice and face look terribly familiar, look almost like-“Lee...Sungjong?”
“Bingo,” and Sungjong leans in, cap tilted too far over his forehead. “Your friend still hasn’t met anyone?”
“These things take a while.” He’d fed the same line to Dongwoo afterwards, over dinner at Myungsoo and Sungyeol’s apartment, Dongwoo sitting in Sungyeol’s seat, kicking morosely at the legs of the stool. He'd also promised to go again-just a few more times, just to help Dongwoo find his feet. “What about yourself? Didn’t find your prince charming?”
Sungjong waves off the question. “I’m shopping around. I have standards. You’re still taken?”
Myungsoo has every email Sungyeol’s ever sent saved in his inbox. He rereads the old ones to confirm that Sungyeol hasn’t always been so consumed by his shifts at the hospital, that Sungyeol didn’t always stumble into their apartment, pick at cold leftovers, and crawl into bed for a few hours before repeating the cycle. That once upon a time, Sungyeol responded to all of Myungsoo’s texts within seconds, that once upon a time Myungsoo had been totally, helplessly entranced by Sungyeol’s acerbic wit and cutting self-consciousness and white lab coat. “Yeah.”
“A pity.” There’s a meter of space between them, a meter of silk cloth and wilting daffodils and vanilla-scented candles. It's an acceptable distance. Two minutes, five seconds.
Myungsoo will have to do the dishes when he gets home. It’s his way of apologizing without needing to lie about feeling particularly sorry. The casserole had definitely been moldy, but soapy hands and cracked skin over knuckles always seem to do the trick.
One minute Myungsoo bites at the inside of his mouth.
“What’s your name, anyway?”
Sungjong cocks his head and he looks just a bit like Sungyeol when he does that with the corners of his lips. Just enough to-“Myungsoo. Kim Myungsoo.”
The bell chimes. Three descending notes. Sungjong leans forward and grabs at Myungsoo’s obligatory stack of business cards.
A wink. “Just in case.”
[week three]
“I can’t decide which one of us is more pathetic.”
Myungsoo nods perfunctorily and sips at his orange juice. “Probably you, honestly. You’re the one looking for a date.”
“Doesn’t your boyfriend mind?”
Usually when Myungsoo gets back from work he makes hot chocolate and waits and waits for Sungyeol to finish his evening shift at the hospital, to come home with his breath wheezing in his ribcage, too exhausted to do anything but curl around Myungsoo's side and whine that he's cold. But lately, Sungyeol’s taken to sleeping in the breakroom between shifts. Lately, Myungsoo’s been keeping his phone switched off.
Myungsoo doesn’t think he’s seen Sungyeol in over a week. He grabs at the glass and finds that it’s empty. “Not really.”
“And how’s your friend doing?”
“Still desperate.” One minute, five seconds. Myungsoo clears his throat. “Uh. How’d you find this place anyway?”
“Probably the same way you did. Kim Sunggyu slipped me a card.”
Sunggyu seems to see through everyone. “Huh. I’ve always wondered how he knows who to invite.”
“Gaydar?” Sungjong smiles and it’s easy and unguarded and his hands splay across the beaded patterns in the silk cloth. “An underground network of single, gay men?”
Myungsoo would laugh if the idea wasn’t so plausible, if they weren’t all hiding from something, lining their futures with careful explanations, they’re just friends, he’s just my roommate, it’s just a joke. “Not really funny,” he says instead. He looks at the clock.
“I’m a fashion designer. They think we’re all gay anyway. I’m not hiding.” It sounds like an accusation. Sungjong doesn’t smile.
“I don’t either. We don’t.” Sungyeol had kissed him at his graduation, cap in one hand, a fistful of Myungsoo’s shirt in the other. It’d been after the ceremony of course, behind the university’s gates while Sungyeol took a few final photographs with friends and professors, but it had been their first public admission, their only revelation to reality. It had been enough.
Five seconds.
The bell chimes, Sungjong excuses himself, and Myungsoo returns to staring out of the window where falling chunks of snow are beginning to fill the air.
Sungyeol, he remembers, really likes the blinding white of snowflakes and latex gloves and hospital floors. Possibly more than anything else in the world.
[week four]
“What does he do? Your boyfriend?”
He slams doors and goes out drinking and his friends need to call me up to haul him home and pay his tab. He never answers his phone. “He’s a surgical resident.”
Sungjong whistles. “And you?”
“Receptionist for an advertising agency.” Myungsoo shrugs cautiously. “I like talking to people.”
“You could have fooled me.”
Myungsoo laughs despite himself. His fingers are still numb from the cold and the tips of Sungjong’s ears are pink and wet. Sungjong looks more tired than he’s ever been, ditching his scarves and fashionable slinky shirts in favor of a oversized pink-grey hoodie. “How’ve you been?”
“Preparing for the Spring show. It’s going to be big-I need funding.”
They talk about the the weather, the way it hasn’t stopped snowing for three days, the small selection of available men who made it to the cafe that evening, how hoarse Woohyun sounded when he tried to sing through his cold. Myungsoo forgets to ask if Sungjong’s found anyone suitable that evening, and ignores the faint buzzing in his pants pocket. “I can’t believe Dongwoo hasn’t met anyone yet,” Myungsoo admits. “I’m worried about him.”
“He does look like a dinosaur. He might want to stop tying his hair up in a bun like that. It’d help.”
“So you’re shallow,” but Myungsoo grins. He doesn’t mean to, it just slips between his teeth and out of his mouth and his foot slides along Sungjong’s shoe accidentally and he jerks backwards, rattling Sungjong’s drink.
“Sorry,” he says. Not: your feet are smaller than Sungyeol’s. Not: he hasn’t been here with me in a long time. Not: but the cider was his favorite.
“Nothing to apologize for.” Thirty seconds. “How’s my hair tonight? The guy at table six looks promising.”
“You’ve got-”
“Hmm?”
“A bit of-” It’s snow and there are three seconds left and Myungsoo can’t quite describe where it is in relation to Sungjong’s eyes and forehead and he moves a meter in the right direction and picks it out of Sungjong’s mess of waves and curls with a thumb and forefinger and this time Sungjong is the one to jerk back and upend his cup.
The bell rings.
“Snow,” Myungsoo finishes dumbly. “It was a bit of snow.”
[week five]
The bell rings eleven times.
[week six]
He’s surprised to see Sungjong. “I thought you’d be off on a hot date.” But it’s a change from staring out of the window and pretending not to notice the constant stream of disappointed singles.
“I got sick,” Sungjong says. “Don’t worry, table six turned me down.”
There’s a pause that Myungsoo doesn’t quite know what to do with. “You feeling better?” He asks finally, only because Sungjong still looks tired, eyes red, tugging at the multitude of scarves and fuzzy layers he’s wearing. There are more people there that evening to pick from, and Myungsoo’s fairly sure that the man making his way around to table ten is Sungjong’s type. He ought to tell Sungjong to take off his ridiculous fingerless gloves. They don’t match his eyes.
“Yeah. Much.” Sungjong pokes at his tea. “Anything interesting happen to you this past month?”
“Hmm.” Sungyeol threw an alarm clock at my head Tuesday morning because I kept rolling over and hitting the snooze button. He left ten days ago and hasn’t come home, but his clothes are gone and movers are coming in the morning to take the cherry armoire and the ugly painting above the television and the dining room set and all of the silver cutlery. So I guess. “Nothing much. Did you raise the money you needed?”
“Almost. Work is so frustrating-I’m supposed to be concentrating on the design, not the fundraising. That’s what I hire fucking interns for. I just-” Sungjong blinks. “Sorry. I’m really frustrated. It's been a tough month.”
Myungsoo traces a pattern into the silk tablecloth. “It might help to talk it out. Might make you feel better if you let it all out.”
“Yeah but,” Sungjong turns around and looks at the clock, “we don’t have that much time.”
He’s right, Myungsoo had almost forgotten. Twenty seconds. Myungsoo fumbles. “Well-you have my number. You can call me if you need to vent. I’m-good at talking to people.”
“Because you’re a receptionist.”
The bell rings. Sungjong adjusts his gloves and shirt and ridiculous manpurse and Myungsoo watches him sidle into a chair three and a half meters away. “Right,” he says uncomfortably. “Because-”
“Are you speaking to me?”
Myungsoo looks down at the table, at his stack of business cards, and carefully pushes them into a perfectly even pile, corners neatly aligned. “No.”
[week seven]
“You’re not wearing the scarf I picked out.”
“The picture didn’t do this one justice.”
“Reality doesn’t do this one justice.”
Sungjong crosses his arms. “Sorry, but this is coming from the guy who wears plaid all of the time. Not even nice plaid. Ugly plaid. I’m not even sure if you can make plaid look-”
“I regret giving you my number. I didn’t know you’d text me about the stupidest things.”
“You said that if I needed anything-”
“I was thinking more of an emergency?”
“-you’d be there for me.”
“You’re completely insufferable,” and Myungsoo is grinning. Trading barbs with Sungjong in real-time is incredibly satisfying.
Sungjong sniffs. “By which you mean that I’m fabulous and you have no idea how you’ve lived for so long without me, of course.”
Sungjong sounds exactly like his text-messages, short bursts of excitement apropos of nothing at all punctuated with emoticons and odd photo attachments. They’re ridiculous and cost him a fortune because all of Sungjong’s pictures are in the highest possible resolution. Myungsoo saves all of them.
Myungsoo asks about the collection Sungjong was working on earlier that evening, about the particularities of days he can already envision, broad brushstrokes of frantic worry over losing too many models and never having enough working sewing machines, mornings with too much coffee, late night revisions and locking up after midnight. Sungjong gladly fills him in. The warmth of his stories bleed into the space between them. Myungsoo forgets about the snow. Sungjong’s wrists flutter when he speaks, and sometimes he’ll cover his mouth to disguise an inconvenient hiccup. Myungsoo forgets about everything except the nuances of behavior that don’t translate well in the two-dimensional.
Sungjong stops in the middle of a particularly convoluted explanation of appliqué and prism heels. Myungsoo coughs and then kicks gently at Sungjong’s Armani boots (2004, Fall Paris Collection) when he doesn't finish his sentence. “Well? Go on-what did your assistant say? Don’t tell me you let her go as well.”
“The bell rang,” Sungjong says slowly.
“The-”
“Bell.” Sungjong points. And the air is full of skittering chairs and clasped hands and forced ritualistic expressions of gratitude and suddenly Myungsoo realizes where he is, where they are, and pulls his cable-knit sweater closer to his chest, suppressing a chill.
“Oh. Right.” Sungjong gathers up his bag and his scarves and his laughs and his story, and Myungsoo looks across the room to share an exasperated glance. All too late he remembers that Dongwoo started dating a financial analyst by the name of Lee Howon just last week. That, this time, Myungsoo came on his own.
[week eight]
“Finally,” Sungjong says, slumping into his seat. “Someone to talk to.”
“At. You just want someone to listen to your stories.” Myungsoo flicks a bit of confetti across the table. “It’s amazing how boring this place gets.”
“It’s always been boring. Why do you keep coming?”
“I could ask you the same question,” but Myungsoo flushes uncomfortably. He can’t exactly say that it’s a nice change from wandering around his half-empty apartment and brushing up against all of the blank spaces in his life. “How’s the new office?”
“Gorgeous, god. I should tell you about the interns this term. They’re actually competent and I can leave them alone in a room with a pair of scissors and not come back to find my building in shreds. It’s amazing.”
“Did you fire your assistant?”
“Nah. It’s better to keep her. This way she’ll feel guilty for life and always try and make up for it. I might even have to stop paying her overtime.”
Myungsoo rubs at his eyes. “Jerk.”
“Are you okay, though? You seemed a bit weird over the phone yesterday. You been a bit weird for a while, actually.”
“Oh I’m fine,” Myungsoo says airily. “It’s just been cold. I don’t like the cold.”
It snowed on Monday. Myungsoo really doesn’t like the snow. Especially- “That book you recommended was great, though. The one about the guy and his cat.”
Sungjong quirks his lips upwards in that weird, Sungyeol-esque way and Myungsoo bites his tongue and curls his fingernails into his upper thigh. The flames on their table flicker unsteadily. “Well. You know you can talk to me if you need to, right? Like I always do.”
“Of course. I’m-”
“Good at talking to people. I know.” And then, “you don’t seem to have anyone else. To talk to, I mean.”
Myungsoo wonders if Sungjong’s noticed that Dongwoo hasn’t been coming with him. He clears his throat. “I just meant. It was a good book. I like those sorts of books.”
Woohyun changes the CD. The background music is just a bit haunting, just a bit beautiful. Myungsoo watches the shadows play across Sungjong’s profile as he launches into another tale of disastrously incompetent interns, and counts up the seconds until next time.
[week nine]
It’s a happy coincidence that Valentines Day falls on a Tuesday. Sunggyu and Woohyun open the event to couples and singles alike, offering free drinks to particularly demonstrative threesomes, and the cafe is decorated with a wide variety of incredibly tacky velveteen hearts which Myungsoo is pretty sure will gnaw at Sungjong’s not-so-inner critic.
Myungsoo takes the bus by himself and arrives an hour late. He spots Sungjong almost immediately, harried and flushed and already slightly tipsy, speaking to handful of men Myungsoo recognizes. From a distance, Sungjong looks tall and sharply dressed, back ramrod straight, fingers curled delicately around the stem of a wineglass. Nothing like the disorganization of errant limbs and misplaced grace that Myungsoo is used to looking for. Myungsoo smiles softly.
“You made it,” Sungjong says, arm flung around Myungsoo’s shoulder, breath hot against his ear. “Happy Valentines Day.”
“You’re drunk.”
Sungjong laughs. “Not yet, but I’d like to be.”
Dongwoo and Howon are in a corner, and Myungsoo steers Sungjong over to meet them, hand along the crook of Sungjong’s elbow, fingerpads flush against the heat of Sungjong’s arteries and veins and muscles and ligaments. Something skitters across Myungsoo arm and settled low in the pit of his stomach and it uncurls lazily and carefully as Sungjong bows and introduces himself with long time no see and Dongwoo ruffles his hair.
“You look good together,” Howon says after a few minutes of skirting around politics, philosophy, and religion.
“They’re not,” and Dongwoo pauses.
“We’re really not-”
“-you’re not?”
“We could,” and Sungjong clears his throat, “it’s sort of the point of these-”
“-Sungjong”
“I’m sorry,” and Dongwoo elbows Howon in the ribs, “I didn’t.”
“Dongwoo.”
Dongwoo bites his lip. “Can I speak to you. Alone. In the corner. Far away from here.”
“You don’t have to-”
“That’d be great,” Myungsoo says as tersely as he can manage. Sungjong shrugs, and Dongwoo drags Howon towards the bar, gesticulating wildly and overexcitedly.
When they’re gone, Myungsoo steps back, unhooks his arm from where it’s gotten tangled up in bits of Sungjong, and calculates a meter, the distance he’s used to, and swallows uncomfortably. He’s forgotten how easy it is to get so close. “I’m-”
“Don’t be sorry. I don’t really think you should be apologizing.”
“That’s not-” that’s exactly what and there’s this disquieting moment of revelation. There’s really no other reason that Sungjong should have been so friendly, should have persisted despite everything Myungsoo told him, should have wanted to be friends. Not when Myungsoo wasn’t-not when there was no chance that Myungsoo was interested. “You haven’t asked me about Sungyeol yet. You haven’t asked me why he isn’t here.”
“Oh,” Sungjong says lightly, “was that his name?”
“Did you,” and Myungsoo finds that he’s angry, that he can’t quite order the words correctly, because this has meant everything to him for years and he didn’t realize how easily it could fall apart, “did you know?”
“I mean there was no way anyone would really be all that happy with his boyfriend going to singles events every other week.”
That’s not true. He was. At first.
“And you never wanted to talk about him. You talked about anything but him. There was no chance the two of you were actually together. I figured it was an excuse. You were embarrassed about being here. It’s okay, you know.”
I want to punch you, Myungsoo thinks. And then, after a moment, completely irrationally, “I want to punch you.”
“Well at least you’re being honest with me.” Sungjong toys with the straw in his cocktail, but the motion is all too precise and deliberate. “For once.”
“You piece of-”
“Or maybe you’re just being honest with yourself.”
“-no seriously, come here so I can-”
“It’s about time, anyway. I’ve known you for four-and-a-half fucking months, Myungsoo.”
Myungsoo doesn’t move. The self-imposed distance feels insurmountable. He can’t quite believe that a moment ago they were close enough to-as close as-Myungsoo hadn’t been-Sungjong doesn’t look anything like Sungyeol but for a second it’s that day, the one after Sungyeol had gotten his beeper and left the milk out and Myungsoo hadn’t put it back and they’d fought and hadn’t made up with kisses and deep bruises and warm, languid sex. Sungyeol is there, angry and screaming and his beeper is going off and Myungsoo feels a helplessness spread along the axes of his body and watches it all become completely incomprehensible. The milk, the beeper, the white coat, his insecurities, that story he’ll never tell, the reason he slept on the couch in the break room in the hospital, the silences, the deep, unfading self-hatred.
Fuck, he thinks. “Fuck. You know nothing about me.” The air is full of oblique noises, loud and purposeless and thick. The decorations and glitter are blinding and gaudy and distasteful. Sungyeol would have laughed. Sungyeol never would have come. Sungyeol would have just left his customary bouquet of daffodils next to a box of almond chocolates in the living room and considered it money ill spent.
“Fuck,” Myungsoo says half to himself, half to no one at all. Certainly not to Sungyeol. They never talked, not like this, not with words that actually hurt, not with words that meant anything. Myungsoo steps back and back and away and into someone else who objects with a voice that blends into the music and Myungsoo spins around and heads for the door.
“Where are you going,” Woohyun calls, “you didn’t even stay a full round of-”
“Leave him,” Sunggyu says, just loudly enough for Myungsoo to hear his voice fade away. “Let him go.”
Chest thudding with the effort, Myungsoo pushes at the glass door and goes.
[week eleven]
When the bell rings, Myungsoo’s still not sure why he’s there, why Sungjong's there, why they’re sitting across from each other silently, eyes trained on the flickering candle and the weeping daffodil. It’s been a very long month.
Two minutes, fifty-nine seconds.
“I’m not going to apologize,” Sungjong says suddenly. “I’m not sorry. I still want to get to know you.”
Myungsoo clenches his fists. He’s not sure what to say. Sungjong’s hands are lean and thin and stretch across the table, palm facing downwards, open and empty. Myungsoo isn’t quite sure where to start.
But he really wants to.
Two minutes.
“I’m not very good at talking to people,” he admits. “That’s Sungyeol.”
“I figured.”
The thing is, Myungsoo still sees remnants of Sungyeol in Sungjong. He sees Sungyeol as a college student, dribbling soup out between his lips and spilling coffee all over Myungsoo’s notes only semi-on-purpose. He sees easily bruised skin and the first time they’d kissed, hands safely tangled in hair and fabric and the waistband of Myungsoo’s jeans. Sungyeol is twenty-two and stupid and then twenty-five and passionate and then twenty-nine and angry. Myungsoo is probably still twenty-one.
Myungsoo breathes in and out and in again and nothing changes. He’s still in a room full of thirty-two other gay men. He’s still sitting across from Sungjong, a fashion designer with blond hair and dark eyes and thin, papery features. He puts his hands on the table and brushes against the candle and pokes at the vase and says, finally, with a voice that he doesn’t think he’s used in years, “I’m allergic.”
“Huh?”
“I’m probably allergic. To daffodils. I think. It’s one of the reasons that I hate them. I never told Sungyeol that. He used to get them for me every year-they’re his favorite.”
Nineteen seconds. Sungjong grins and then laughs and doesn’t cover his mouth and his hair falls into his eyes and everyone turns and stares because it really isn’t that funny. After a long pause of exactly eighteen seconds, Woohyun rings the bell. Three descending notes.
“We’d best get you out of here, then,” Sungjong says, gathering up his scarves and his bag and his stupidly honest mouth. Myungsoo gets out of his seat. Someone protests. There’s a roar in his inner ear and a prickling under his skin and Sungjong’s hand is at his back, steering him towards the door.
“So,” Sungjong says in a voice that rustles, “honestly now: how do you feel about roses?”
♥
a/n: all of my love for reifica without whom, of course, this could never have been written, and for that lovely H who seems to think much more of me than realistic and critiques my narrative with a surety usually reserved for novels.
i am truly lucky to have the best of friends.
note: this story was originally posted here and written for infinitesanta 2011.
Rating: pg-13
Word count: 4166
Summary: Nam Woohyun’s cafe specializes in secret rendezvous, in safe spaces, in soft cushions and comfort zones.
(as "x" tends to) three
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
albert einstein
∞
[week one]
In principle, Myungsoo doesn’t mind speed-dating. In principle he also doesn’t mind dim lighting, silk tablecloths, or gaudily scented candles. It's terribly tacky and a bit disquieting, but there's nothing wrong with it all.
He's just pretty sure it isn't right for Dongwoo. Dongwoo’s never been good at finding the right words to say, especially under pressure, and Myungsoo’s pretty sure that a few evenings of constant rejection isn't going to do any favors for Dongwoo’s shattered self-esteem. But when Dongwoo had begged the favor, softly mumbling into his wineglass, hands tight over the invitation that Sunggyu had sent them, Myungsoo found that he couldn’t say no. Ever since college, Jang Dongwoo had always been unfairly good at getting what he wanted.
The only thing that really bothers Myungsoo are the daffodils settled in a glass cut vase in the middle of the small table. That, and the lackluster conversation.
The organizer’s bell chimes softly. Chairs are pulled back against the floor, Myungsoo’s own companion stalks off, and someone takes his place. He wonders absentmindedly how much longer he'll be able to last. He certainly won't be doing this again.
“Hi!” Lean fingers nervously rearrange a multitude of scarves draped around a thin neck, cradling pointed cheeks and sharp eyes. “Lee Sungjong, twenty-eight. I'm a fashion designer for my own line of clothes-we just opened our first boutique in Seoul three weeks ago. Nice to meet you!”
“Uhm,” Myungsoo says. This is always the awkward part. He taps a finger against the tablecloth irritably. “I’m not actually single. Er. Sorry?”
Sungjong leans forward on an elbow, and the vase shakes. “That’s what they all say after I introduce myself. Either that or ‘I’m straight.’”
“I’m really not. I’m here for a friend. He needed, ah, emotional support.”
“Oh,” and Sungjong falls back and crosses his arms and looks up at the timer beside the buzzer. Two minutes, twenty seconds. “That’s a bit disappointing,” and, more teasingly, “you’re my type.”
Sungjong’s hands are as thin as Sungyeol’s, but his hair is dyed blond instead of black, and Myungsoo’s fairly sure that Sungjong wouldn’t stand head to head with him, wouldn’t be able to tilt Myungsoo’s chin five centimeters upwards with two fingers and kiss deeply into his mouth, warm and wet and lazy with just a hint of teeth. Sungyeol’s eyes would look black in the dim light of the cafe, and he’d keep his feet between Myungsoo’s, but Sungjong’s back is flush against the small wooden chair decorated with bright paper hearts and plastic flower petals. Myungsoo estimates that there is a meter separating their fingertips.
He shouldn’t be counting.
One minute and forty five seconds later, the bell chimes three pretty notes, Sungjong pushes back at the table, the vase shudders, the daffodil tilts right and left, and someone swoops in to take Sungjong’s place.
“Hi,” he begins in a voice that rustles. “I’m-”
[week two]
“Date night” is held every other Tuesday evening. Nam Woohyun’s cafe specializes in secret rendezvous, in safe spaces, in soft cushions and comfort zones. Ever since Kim Sunggyu had slipped Dongwoo the address after a few commiserating glances in a story Myungsoo’s never quite understood, they’d settled in as regular customers, sometimes even coming by during the day, Myungsoo bringing over the occasional unaware coworker for a muffin and a coffee. Myungsoo takes pleasure in their accidental sponsorship of the underground gay community. They’d never been to the evening events before that second invitation, before Dongwoo’s breakup with a guy who was still married at the time.
“You again. Just my luck.”
Myungsoo looks up from his phone, from Sungyeol’s sharp rebuke over the dishes he’d left in the sink and the casserole he’d accidentally thrown out a few days previously. It was still good, the note read, I’m too tired to cook on my days off. The voice and face look terribly familiar, look almost like-“Lee...Sungjong?”
“Bingo,” and Sungjong leans in, cap tilted too far over his forehead. “Your friend still hasn’t met anyone?”
“These things take a while.” He’d fed the same line to Dongwoo afterwards, over dinner at Myungsoo and Sungyeol’s apartment, Dongwoo sitting in Sungyeol’s seat, kicking morosely at the legs of the stool. He'd also promised to go again-just a few more times, just to help Dongwoo find his feet. “What about yourself? Didn’t find your prince charming?”
Sungjong waves off the question. “I’m shopping around. I have standards. You’re still taken?”
Myungsoo has every email Sungyeol’s ever sent saved in his inbox. He rereads the old ones to confirm that Sungyeol hasn’t always been so consumed by his shifts at the hospital, that Sungyeol didn’t always stumble into their apartment, pick at cold leftovers, and crawl into bed for a few hours before repeating the cycle. That once upon a time, Sungyeol responded to all of Myungsoo’s texts within seconds, that once upon a time Myungsoo had been totally, helplessly entranced by Sungyeol’s acerbic wit and cutting self-consciousness and white lab coat. “Yeah.”
“A pity.” There’s a meter of space between them, a meter of silk cloth and wilting daffodils and vanilla-scented candles. It's an acceptable distance. Two minutes, five seconds.
Myungsoo will have to do the dishes when he gets home. It’s his way of apologizing without needing to lie about feeling particularly sorry. The casserole had definitely been moldy, but soapy hands and cracked skin over knuckles always seem to do the trick.
One minute Myungsoo bites at the inside of his mouth.
“What’s your name, anyway?”
Sungjong cocks his head and he looks just a bit like Sungyeol when he does that with the corners of his lips. Just enough to-“Myungsoo. Kim Myungsoo.”
The bell chimes. Three descending notes. Sungjong leans forward and grabs at Myungsoo’s obligatory stack of business cards.
A wink. “Just in case.”
[week three]
“I can’t decide which one of us is more pathetic.”
Myungsoo nods perfunctorily and sips at his orange juice. “Probably you, honestly. You’re the one looking for a date.”
“Doesn’t your boyfriend mind?”
Usually when Myungsoo gets back from work he makes hot chocolate and waits and waits for Sungyeol to finish his evening shift at the hospital, to come home with his breath wheezing in his ribcage, too exhausted to do anything but curl around Myungsoo's side and whine that he's cold. But lately, Sungyeol’s taken to sleeping in the breakroom between shifts. Lately, Myungsoo’s been keeping his phone switched off.
Myungsoo doesn’t think he’s seen Sungyeol in over a week. He grabs at the glass and finds that it’s empty. “Not really.”
“And how’s your friend doing?”
“Still desperate.” One minute, five seconds. Myungsoo clears his throat. “Uh. How’d you find this place anyway?”
“Probably the same way you did. Kim Sunggyu slipped me a card.”
Sunggyu seems to see through everyone. “Huh. I’ve always wondered how he knows who to invite.”
“Gaydar?” Sungjong smiles and it’s easy and unguarded and his hands splay across the beaded patterns in the silk cloth. “An underground network of single, gay men?”
Myungsoo would laugh if the idea wasn’t so plausible, if they weren’t all hiding from something, lining their futures with careful explanations, they’re just friends, he’s just my roommate, it’s just a joke. “Not really funny,” he says instead. He looks at the clock.
“I’m a fashion designer. They think we’re all gay anyway. I’m not hiding.” It sounds like an accusation. Sungjong doesn’t smile.
“I don’t either. We don’t.” Sungyeol had kissed him at his graduation, cap in one hand, a fistful of Myungsoo’s shirt in the other. It’d been after the ceremony of course, behind the university’s gates while Sungyeol took a few final photographs with friends and professors, but it had been their first public admission, their only revelation to reality. It had been enough.
Five seconds.
The bell chimes, Sungjong excuses himself, and Myungsoo returns to staring out of the window where falling chunks of snow are beginning to fill the air.
Sungyeol, he remembers, really likes the blinding white of snowflakes and latex gloves and hospital floors. Possibly more than anything else in the world.
[week four]
“What does he do? Your boyfriend?”
He slams doors and goes out drinking and his friends need to call me up to haul him home and pay his tab. He never answers his phone. “He’s a surgical resident.”
Sungjong whistles. “And you?”
“Receptionist for an advertising agency.” Myungsoo shrugs cautiously. “I like talking to people.”
“You could have fooled me.”
Myungsoo laughs despite himself. His fingers are still numb from the cold and the tips of Sungjong’s ears are pink and wet. Sungjong looks more tired than he’s ever been, ditching his scarves and fashionable slinky shirts in favor of a oversized pink-grey hoodie. “How’ve you been?”
“Preparing for the Spring show. It’s going to be big-I need funding.”
They talk about the the weather, the way it hasn’t stopped snowing for three days, the small selection of available men who made it to the cafe that evening, how hoarse Woohyun sounded when he tried to sing through his cold. Myungsoo forgets to ask if Sungjong’s found anyone suitable that evening, and ignores the faint buzzing in his pants pocket. “I can’t believe Dongwoo hasn’t met anyone yet,” Myungsoo admits. “I’m worried about him.”
“He does look like a dinosaur. He might want to stop tying his hair up in a bun like that. It’d help.”
“So you’re shallow,” but Myungsoo grins. He doesn’t mean to, it just slips between his teeth and out of his mouth and his foot slides along Sungjong’s shoe accidentally and he jerks backwards, rattling Sungjong’s drink.
“Sorry,” he says. Not: your feet are smaller than Sungyeol’s. Not: he hasn’t been here with me in a long time. Not: but the cider was his favorite.
“Nothing to apologize for.” Thirty seconds. “How’s my hair tonight? The guy at table six looks promising.”
“You’ve got-”
“Hmm?”
“A bit of-” It’s snow and there are three seconds left and Myungsoo can’t quite describe where it is in relation to Sungjong’s eyes and forehead and he moves a meter in the right direction and picks it out of Sungjong’s mess of waves and curls with a thumb and forefinger and this time Sungjong is the one to jerk back and upend his cup.
The bell rings.
“Snow,” Myungsoo finishes dumbly. “It was a bit of snow.”
[week five]
The bell rings eleven times.
[week six]
He’s surprised to see Sungjong. “I thought you’d be off on a hot date.” But it’s a change from staring out of the window and pretending not to notice the constant stream of disappointed singles.
“I got sick,” Sungjong says. “Don’t worry, table six turned me down.”
There’s a pause that Myungsoo doesn’t quite know what to do with. “You feeling better?” He asks finally, only because Sungjong still looks tired, eyes red, tugging at the multitude of scarves and fuzzy layers he’s wearing. There are more people there that evening to pick from, and Myungsoo’s fairly sure that the man making his way around to table ten is Sungjong’s type. He ought to tell Sungjong to take off his ridiculous fingerless gloves. They don’t match his eyes.
“Yeah. Much.” Sungjong pokes at his tea. “Anything interesting happen to you this past month?”
“Hmm.” Sungyeol threw an alarm clock at my head Tuesday morning because I kept rolling over and hitting the snooze button. He left ten days ago and hasn’t come home, but his clothes are gone and movers are coming in the morning to take the cherry armoire and the ugly painting above the television and the dining room set and all of the silver cutlery. So I guess. “Nothing much. Did you raise the money you needed?”
“Almost. Work is so frustrating-I’m supposed to be concentrating on the design, not the fundraising. That’s what I hire fucking interns for. I just-” Sungjong blinks. “Sorry. I’m really frustrated. It's been a tough month.”
Myungsoo traces a pattern into the silk tablecloth. “It might help to talk it out. Might make you feel better if you let it all out.”
“Yeah but,” Sungjong turns around and looks at the clock, “we don’t have that much time.”
He’s right, Myungsoo had almost forgotten. Twenty seconds. Myungsoo fumbles. “Well-you have my number. You can call me if you need to vent. I’m-good at talking to people.”
“Because you’re a receptionist.”
The bell rings. Sungjong adjusts his gloves and shirt and ridiculous manpurse and Myungsoo watches him sidle into a chair three and a half meters away. “Right,” he says uncomfortably. “Because-”
“Are you speaking to me?”
Myungsoo looks down at the table, at his stack of business cards, and carefully pushes them into a perfectly even pile, corners neatly aligned. “No.”
[week seven]
“You’re not wearing the scarf I picked out.”
“The picture didn’t do this one justice.”
“Reality doesn’t do this one justice.”
Sungjong crosses his arms. “Sorry, but this is coming from the guy who wears plaid all of the time. Not even nice plaid. Ugly plaid. I’m not even sure if you can make plaid look-”
“I regret giving you my number. I didn’t know you’d text me about the stupidest things.”
“You said that if I needed anything-”
“I was thinking more of an emergency?”
“-you’d be there for me.”
“You’re completely insufferable,” and Myungsoo is grinning. Trading barbs with Sungjong in real-time is incredibly satisfying.
Sungjong sniffs. “By which you mean that I’m fabulous and you have no idea how you’ve lived for so long without me, of course.”
Sungjong sounds exactly like his text-messages, short bursts of excitement apropos of nothing at all punctuated with emoticons and odd photo attachments. They’re ridiculous and cost him a fortune because all of Sungjong’s pictures are in the highest possible resolution. Myungsoo saves all of them.
Myungsoo asks about the collection Sungjong was working on earlier that evening, about the particularities of days he can already envision, broad brushstrokes of frantic worry over losing too many models and never having enough working sewing machines, mornings with too much coffee, late night revisions and locking up after midnight. Sungjong gladly fills him in. The warmth of his stories bleed into the space between them. Myungsoo forgets about the snow. Sungjong’s wrists flutter when he speaks, and sometimes he’ll cover his mouth to disguise an inconvenient hiccup. Myungsoo forgets about everything except the nuances of behavior that don’t translate well in the two-dimensional.
Sungjong stops in the middle of a particularly convoluted explanation of appliqué and prism heels. Myungsoo coughs and then kicks gently at Sungjong’s Armani boots (2004, Fall Paris Collection) when he doesn't finish his sentence. “Well? Go on-what did your assistant say? Don’t tell me you let her go as well.”
“The bell rang,” Sungjong says slowly.
“The-”
“Bell.” Sungjong points. And the air is full of skittering chairs and clasped hands and forced ritualistic expressions of gratitude and suddenly Myungsoo realizes where he is, where they are, and pulls his cable-knit sweater closer to his chest, suppressing a chill.
“Oh. Right.” Sungjong gathers up his bag and his scarves and his laughs and his story, and Myungsoo looks across the room to share an exasperated glance. All too late he remembers that Dongwoo started dating a financial analyst by the name of Lee Howon just last week. That, this time, Myungsoo came on his own.
[week eight]
“Finally,” Sungjong says, slumping into his seat. “Someone to talk to.”
“At. You just want someone to listen to your stories.” Myungsoo flicks a bit of confetti across the table. “It’s amazing how boring this place gets.”
“It’s always been boring. Why do you keep coming?”
“I could ask you the same question,” but Myungsoo flushes uncomfortably. He can’t exactly say that it’s a nice change from wandering around his half-empty apartment and brushing up against all of the blank spaces in his life. “How’s the new office?”
“Gorgeous, god. I should tell you about the interns this term. They’re actually competent and I can leave them alone in a room with a pair of scissors and not come back to find my building in shreds. It’s amazing.”
“Did you fire your assistant?”
“Nah. It’s better to keep her. This way she’ll feel guilty for life and always try and make up for it. I might even have to stop paying her overtime.”
Myungsoo rubs at his eyes. “Jerk.”
“Are you okay, though? You seemed a bit weird over the phone yesterday. You been a bit weird for a while, actually.”
“Oh I’m fine,” Myungsoo says airily. “It’s just been cold. I don’t like the cold.”
It snowed on Monday. Myungsoo really doesn’t like the snow. Especially- “That book you recommended was great, though. The one about the guy and his cat.”
Sungjong quirks his lips upwards in that weird, Sungyeol-esque way and Myungsoo bites his tongue and curls his fingernails into his upper thigh. The flames on their table flicker unsteadily. “Well. You know you can talk to me if you need to, right? Like I always do.”
“Of course. I’m-”
“Good at talking to people. I know.” And then, “you don’t seem to have anyone else. To talk to, I mean.”
Myungsoo wonders if Sungjong’s noticed that Dongwoo hasn’t been coming with him. He clears his throat. “I just meant. It was a good book. I like those sorts of books.”
Woohyun changes the CD. The background music is just a bit haunting, just a bit beautiful. Myungsoo watches the shadows play across Sungjong’s profile as he launches into another tale of disastrously incompetent interns, and counts up the seconds until next time.
[week nine]
It’s a happy coincidence that Valentines Day falls on a Tuesday. Sunggyu and Woohyun open the event to couples and singles alike, offering free drinks to particularly demonstrative threesomes, and the cafe is decorated with a wide variety of incredibly tacky velveteen hearts which Myungsoo is pretty sure will gnaw at Sungjong’s not-so-inner critic.
Myungsoo takes the bus by himself and arrives an hour late. He spots Sungjong almost immediately, harried and flushed and already slightly tipsy, speaking to handful of men Myungsoo recognizes. From a distance, Sungjong looks tall and sharply dressed, back ramrod straight, fingers curled delicately around the stem of a wineglass. Nothing like the disorganization of errant limbs and misplaced grace that Myungsoo is used to looking for. Myungsoo smiles softly.
“You made it,” Sungjong says, arm flung around Myungsoo’s shoulder, breath hot against his ear. “Happy Valentines Day.”
“You’re drunk.”
Sungjong laughs. “Not yet, but I’d like to be.”
Dongwoo and Howon are in a corner, and Myungsoo steers Sungjong over to meet them, hand along the crook of Sungjong’s elbow, fingerpads flush against the heat of Sungjong’s arteries and veins and muscles and ligaments. Something skitters across Myungsoo arm and settled low in the pit of his stomach and it uncurls lazily and carefully as Sungjong bows and introduces himself with long time no see and Dongwoo ruffles his hair.
“You look good together,” Howon says after a few minutes of skirting around politics, philosophy, and religion.
“They’re not,” and Dongwoo pauses.
“We’re really not-”
“-you’re not?”
“We could,” and Sungjong clears his throat, “it’s sort of the point of these-”
“-Sungjong”
“I’m sorry,” and Dongwoo elbows Howon in the ribs, “I didn’t.”
“Dongwoo.”
Dongwoo bites his lip. “Can I speak to you. Alone. In the corner. Far away from here.”
“You don’t have to-”
“That’d be great,” Myungsoo says as tersely as he can manage. Sungjong shrugs, and Dongwoo drags Howon towards the bar, gesticulating wildly and overexcitedly.
When they’re gone, Myungsoo steps back, unhooks his arm from where it’s gotten tangled up in bits of Sungjong, and calculates a meter, the distance he’s used to, and swallows uncomfortably. He’s forgotten how easy it is to get so close. “I’m-”
“Don’t be sorry. I don’t really think you should be apologizing.”
“That’s not-” that’s exactly what and there’s this disquieting moment of revelation. There’s really no other reason that Sungjong should have been so friendly, should have persisted despite everything Myungsoo told him, should have wanted to be friends. Not when Myungsoo wasn’t-not when there was no chance that Myungsoo was interested. “You haven’t asked me about Sungyeol yet. You haven’t asked me why he isn’t here.”
“Oh,” Sungjong says lightly, “was that his name?”
“Did you,” and Myungsoo finds that he’s angry, that he can’t quite order the words correctly, because this has meant everything to him for years and he didn’t realize how easily it could fall apart, “did you know?”
“I mean there was no way anyone would really be all that happy with his boyfriend going to singles events every other week.”
That’s not true. He was. At first.
“And you never wanted to talk about him. You talked about anything but him. There was no chance the two of you were actually together. I figured it was an excuse. You were embarrassed about being here. It’s okay, you know.”
I want to punch you, Myungsoo thinks. And then, after a moment, completely irrationally, “I want to punch you.”
“Well at least you’re being honest with me.” Sungjong toys with the straw in his cocktail, but the motion is all too precise and deliberate. “For once.”
“You piece of-”
“Or maybe you’re just being honest with yourself.”
“-no seriously, come here so I can-”
“It’s about time, anyway. I’ve known you for four-and-a-half fucking months, Myungsoo.”
Myungsoo doesn’t move. The self-imposed distance feels insurmountable. He can’t quite believe that a moment ago they were close enough to-as close as-Myungsoo hadn’t been-Sungjong doesn’t look anything like Sungyeol but for a second it’s that day, the one after Sungyeol had gotten his beeper and left the milk out and Myungsoo hadn’t put it back and they’d fought and hadn’t made up with kisses and deep bruises and warm, languid sex. Sungyeol is there, angry and screaming and his beeper is going off and Myungsoo feels a helplessness spread along the axes of his body and watches it all become completely incomprehensible. The milk, the beeper, the white coat, his insecurities, that story he’ll never tell, the reason he slept on the couch in the break room in the hospital, the silences, the deep, unfading self-hatred.
Fuck, he thinks. “Fuck. You know nothing about me.” The air is full of oblique noises, loud and purposeless and thick. The decorations and glitter are blinding and gaudy and distasteful. Sungyeol would have laughed. Sungyeol never would have come. Sungyeol would have just left his customary bouquet of daffodils next to a box of almond chocolates in the living room and considered it money ill spent.
“Fuck,” Myungsoo says half to himself, half to no one at all. Certainly not to Sungyeol. They never talked, not like this, not with words that actually hurt, not with words that meant anything. Myungsoo steps back and back and away and into someone else who objects with a voice that blends into the music and Myungsoo spins around and heads for the door.
“Where are you going,” Woohyun calls, “you didn’t even stay a full round of-”
“Leave him,” Sunggyu says, just loudly enough for Myungsoo to hear his voice fade away. “Let him go.”
Chest thudding with the effort, Myungsoo pushes at the glass door and goes.
[week eleven]
When the bell rings, Myungsoo’s still not sure why he’s there, why Sungjong's there, why they’re sitting across from each other silently, eyes trained on the flickering candle and the weeping daffodil. It’s been a very long month.
Two minutes, fifty-nine seconds.
“I’m not going to apologize,” Sungjong says suddenly. “I’m not sorry. I still want to get to know you.”
Myungsoo clenches his fists. He’s not sure what to say. Sungjong’s hands are lean and thin and stretch across the table, palm facing downwards, open and empty. Myungsoo isn’t quite sure where to start.
But he really wants to.
Two minutes.
“I’m not very good at talking to people,” he admits. “That’s Sungyeol.”
“I figured.”
The thing is, Myungsoo still sees remnants of Sungyeol in Sungjong. He sees Sungyeol as a college student, dribbling soup out between his lips and spilling coffee all over Myungsoo’s notes only semi-on-purpose. He sees easily bruised skin and the first time they’d kissed, hands safely tangled in hair and fabric and the waistband of Myungsoo’s jeans. Sungyeol is twenty-two and stupid and then twenty-five and passionate and then twenty-nine and angry. Myungsoo is probably still twenty-one.
Myungsoo breathes in and out and in again and nothing changes. He’s still in a room full of thirty-two other gay men. He’s still sitting across from Sungjong, a fashion designer with blond hair and dark eyes and thin, papery features. He puts his hands on the table and brushes against the candle and pokes at the vase and says, finally, with a voice that he doesn’t think he’s used in years, “I’m allergic.”
“Huh?”
“I’m probably allergic. To daffodils. I think. It’s one of the reasons that I hate them. I never told Sungyeol that. He used to get them for me every year-they’re his favorite.”
Nineteen seconds. Sungjong grins and then laughs and doesn’t cover his mouth and his hair falls into his eyes and everyone turns and stares because it really isn’t that funny. After a long pause of exactly eighteen seconds, Woohyun rings the bell. Three descending notes.
“We’d best get you out of here, then,” Sungjong says, gathering up his scarves and his bag and his stupidly honest mouth. Myungsoo gets out of his seat. Someone protests. There’s a roar in his inner ear and a prickling under his skin and Sungjong’s hand is at his back, steering him towards the door.
“So,” Sungjong says in a voice that rustles, “honestly now: how do you feel about roses?”
♥
a/n: all of my love for reifica without whom, of course, this could never have been written, and for that lovely H who seems to think much more of me than realistic and critiques my narrative with a surety usually reserved for novels.
i am truly lucky to have the best of friends.
note: this story was originally posted here and written for infinitesanta 2011.