[fic]
title: Enough (or: The Real NicHan)
rating: 15, I guess?
fandom: Crossover
pairing: Nicholas Tse/Hangeng
summary: It actually starts off as a strange half-friendship.
notes: this is old, for spinspiderspin, who wanted me to write realistic NicHan. I tried, and I probably failed. None of this is real, and Nic and Hangeng, as far as I know, have never met. Yet ;)
As Nic gives his name to the man behind the counter, he thinks to himself that he’s getting pretty good at this. Finding the right hotels to go to. Using a name that is believably not his own. Looking like he might not just be checking in to a hotel for the reasons that he actually is. He thinks, after the several weeks of this routine, he’s getting the hang of it.
He’s not the only one getting good at this by now, and he’s been in the room only twenty minutes before the reason for it all arrives. A smile, wide and unfiltered, spreads across Nic’s face. “Hey. Nice to see you.” As soon as the door closes, clicks shut, locks, the warmth of another mouth meets with his own, and Nic is reminded of exactly why he goes through this every chance he can get.
He’s never heard of Hangeng before. Or Hankyung. And he’s not even sure he’s heard of this boy band, this Super Junior. So he hears about this Hangeng for the first time when they’re both guests on a TV show. They meet backstage, and get to talking, just briefly, to pass the time before shooting starts. Nic’s first impression is how soft-spoken this guy is as he introduces himself. Nic’s never heard of him before, but of course Hangeng knows who he is.
When Nic asks just what it is that Hangeng does, why he’s on the show, Hangeng tells him he’s one part of a 13-member boy band. Nic laughs.
Just before Hangeng’s due to go on set he gives Nic a smile. It’s that smile that captures Nic’s interest, and assures that as soon as this is over, he’s going to try and get hold of Hangeng again.
It actually starts off as a strange half-friendship. Nic leads a busy life, back and forth between Hong Kong and the mainland, and Hangeng back and forth between Korea and China. But, Nic finds Hangeng a refreshing person to be around, so whenever the opportunity arises, and schedules allow for it, and they’re both in the same area, they meet up. First, it’s just for drinks. Talking, laughing, joking, sharing stories. Hangeng confesses that he’d really like to get into acting, like Nic, and in turn, Nic confesses that he’d love to have a band of his own (not a boy band though).
And then it’s something more. Between about five too many drinks, stumbling into Nic’s hotel room (he’d actually invited Hangeng up to listen to some music, or he thinks he did, anyway) and laughing about something neither will remember five minutes later, it all turns from casual acquaintance, to something quite different.
Nic kisses him. One hand behind Hangeng’s neck, to tug him that bit closer, and he kisses that laughing, smiling mouth with his own. He can’t help it. Maybe it’s the drinks, because really, Nic has a very, very good tolerance for alcohol, but he’s had more than his usual and hell, he’s naturally a pretty instinctive person anyway. But he’d kind of almost been thinking for at least half of the night about wanting to kiss Hangeng.
It’s a little clumsy at first, because a split-second before it happened, Nic hadn’t even known he was going to do it. And he’s a little drunk, as is Hangeng, which makes for a clumsy meeting of mouths. But it’s a kiss all the same. Warm, wet, hazed and almost drowning in the alcohol they’d both consumed, but its still one hell of a kiss. So Nic does it again.
He doesn’t stop until there’s a hand on his chest, pushing him a little away, and Nic opens his eyes to see a surprised looking Hangeng. “Wait,” he says, sounding just a bit breathless. “Wait…what?”
Perhaps it’s a good question. Perhaps Nic really ought to stop and think about this ‘what’. But he doesn’t want to. Instead, he smiles, tangles his fingers lightly in the hair at the nape of Hangeng’s neck. “I want to kiss you some more. Is that okay?”
Hangeng gapes a little, looking quite at a loss for words. Closing his mouth again a few moments later, he nods his head. Well, he’s drunk too, after all, and it’s not as if this was his first time kissing another guy, and hell, he wants Nic to kiss him some more too.
Nic smiles, and is more than happy to oblige the both of them.
The kisses quickly lead to touching. Over clothes, above the waist, but then hands are tugging rather insistently at shirts and soon enough clothes are steadily littering the floor around them and hands are pressed to bare skin. Fingers touch everywhere, as if neither can quite get enough of the other, and every press of a palm and each stroke of fingers builds the heat up between them. The alcohol probably plays a large part in this sudden, physical attraction, but that’s something to think about later. Much later, not now, not when mouths and oh god tongues are exploring skin and each other.
One thing leads to another, and it comes as no surprise to either of them when they find themselves on the bed. Nic has no reservations about sleeping with another man. It’s not something he’s particularly vocal about, but it’s also nothing he’s opposed to, either. And Hangeng certainly has no complaints, and he’s the one that ends up tugging Nic down on top of him, steals him down for a kiss and rocks his hips up in such a way that Nic now fully believes that Hangeng is indeed a talented, talented dancer.
“Fucking hell,” Nic grunts quietly, breathless and head spinning a little, from the kiss, from those hips, from the alcohol. “I didn’t know guys in boy bands could do that.”
And things continue from there. Eventually, when they get the chance to meet up (which are few and far between) they no longer need alcohol to spur them into passion. It just happens. As soon as doors close, Nic’s fingers go to Hangeng’s shirt, and Hangeng’s mouth finds Nic’s and his hands thread through dark hair and they end up naked and in bed together, again.
It’s a bit of fun, so Nic thinks. A little relief from the hectic his schedule can be; Hangeng is just about the best stress relief he has ever encountered. And it’s not as if either of them has enough time for it to be anything other than fun. Not when Hangeng spends a lot of time in Korea, and Nic moves between China and Hong Kong.
So it’s just fun, but it’s the kind of fun that Nic thinks he might almost be getting addicted to. The kind of fun he can’t, and doesn’t want to, stop. As Hangeng presses against him, slides a hand down the expanse of Nic’s chest and smiles at him - that smile that Nic’s grown to really, really like - it’s obvious that this has become something Hangeng doesn’t want to stop, either.
Then, a couple of months later, it all comes crashing down. ‘When are you free? I want to see you’ Nic sends off in a text message to Hangeng. He knows the other is in the country; Hangeng always lets him know when he’s in China.
A couple of hours later, between shoots for a movie he’s acting in, Nic checks his phone and finds a reply, ‘Does tomorrow work for you? Let me know where and when.’
As he waits for Hangeng the next day Nic finds a different kind of anticipation filling him. And apprehension. He’s not sure quite why he’s feeling that, or even if he should be, because this was only some fun, because he finds Hangeng shockingly easy to be around, to spend time with, and apparently, to fall into bed with too. But they were friends, when they had the time, and that was it. Nic didn’t owe Hangeng a thing, nor the other way around.
And yet, as he waits, Nic finds himself feeling almost as if he’s done something wrong.
The first thing Hangeng does upon seeing Nic is to smile at him, that same soft, warm smile he always has. Nic can’t smile back, though, and pushes a drink across the table towards Hangeng, before taking several, deep gulps from his own.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” he starts to say, and Nic finds himself feeling so strangely awkward. He’s 26 years old, Hangeng is not his partner, his lover, or his boyfriend, and he should not be feeling this awkward. But he does.
“Okay.” Hangeng waits, patient and curious, for Nic to continue.
Another sip of his drink, the alcohol burning the back of Nic’s throat a little; he wants to get rid of that lump in his throat, but it doesn’t help. So fuck it, he thinks, and just says it. It’s not like him to get like this, anyway.
“Uh, I saw Cecilia a couple of weeks ago,” he starts. Cecilia. Nic almost wants to wince even as he says the name. She’d started off as just a one time thing (kind of like Hangeng, almost, actually) and the papers had kind of caught hold of it and run wild. And Nic really had no intention at all to carry on dating her. Until he’d seen her again recently. “She’s pregnant. And the kid is mine.”
Hangeng blinks, takes in the words, and blinks again. His eyes widen a little as he stares at Nic. “Oh,” he says, and then takes several drinks from his glass. Oh. Well then. He has no idea how to respond to this news, so he just doesn’t.
“We’re going to get married,” Nic adds, and it’s not really what he wants to say, but Hangeng’s lack of response, his reaction to this revelation, leave Nic feeling like he has to say something, anything. Even if it’s not quite the right something to say.
“Congratulations.”
Nic doesn’t realise, until he hears those stiff, empty words that it feels like he’s just lost something. Or as if something has broken. Or maybe both. Lost, and broken, and irreplaceable.
It's months. Months and months and months, and no Hangeng. And now Nic is a married man. Married and with a baby soon to be on the way. He can hardly believe it, actually. Everything’s happened a lot faster than he might have liked. And the thing Nic likes least about this whole deal is no more Hangeng.
Strange, how something that starts off as just a bit of fun, a nice time spent hanging out with another person, has developed, at least for Nic, into something more than that.
He thinks about Hangeng a lot, actually. Sometimes he catches the odd thing on television, Hangeng and some of the other guys in his group when they’re in China. It strikes Nic as odd, whenever he sees such things, because the Hangeng he sees on television isn’t the same as the Hangeng he knows. Maybe it’s because their jobs, their careers, don’t play a very big part in the time they spend together - more in the time that they don’t get to spend together, actually, and maybe it’s because Nic doesn’t know the rest of Super Junior, how Hangeng acts around his other friends.
When they’re together, it’s just the two of them, and that’s the Hangeng Nic knows. The Hangeng that laughs and smiles, that threads fingers through Nic’s hair and kisses him with passion, knows just where to touch him and doesn’t complain whenever Nic sends him rather racy text messages.
That’s the Hangeng that Nic knows, and that’s the Hangeng that Nic misses.
One day Nic calls him. Just like that, he doesn’t know where Hangeng is, what he’s doing or who he’s with, but he calls him anyway. Nic has to.
When Hangeng picks up, Nic can hear the sounds of other people around him, and wonders what he might have interrupted. Wonders, but doesn’t care.
“Hey.”
“…Nic?” Hangeng sounds surprised, genuinely, honestly, surprised to hear Nic’s voice. It almost makes Nic smile.
“Yeah. How’re you doing? I saw you on some show the other week, you looked good.”
“Why are you calling me now?”
Nic opens his mouth to answer, but is interrupted by sounds on the other end of the phone. Words he can’t understand, voices he doesn’t know, laughter, and then after several moments it’s quiet, and Hangeng speaks up again. “Sorry, my roommates are noisy. Now, tell me why you’re calling after all this time.”
He’s quiet for a few beats, and wonders briefly, just briefly, if he actually wants to say this out loud, to Hangeng. But before he can quite come to a decision, the words fall from Nic’s mouth regardless. “I missed talking to you.”
“You’re married now.”
A quiet sigh, then Nic says, “not by choice. This isn’t what I wanted to happen.” Hangeng says nothing, but he doesn’t have to speak for Nic to hear the ‘me either’ he knew was there. “I wasn’t seeing her when I was with you, you know.”
Silence, then, “oh.”
It’s kind of awkward, and maybe that’s because they haven’t spoke in awhile. And maybe it’s because of the whole situation. And maybe because now, as to when the last time they spoke, Nic sees Hangeng a little differently. Maybe maybe maybe.
“Look,” Nic says, trying to ease through his awkward feelings, “I want to see you. When are you next in China?”
“You’re married,” Hangeng reminds him.
And then he tells Nic his schedule.
Weeks later. Weeks and weeks, and the first thing Nic says when he finally sees Hangeng again is, “I love you.” It’s strange, kind of, to be saying that out loud, to be saying it to Hangeng, but Nic means it, and he knows its true, so what’s the point in not saying it?
“No, we can’t,” Hangeng says, but he won’t meet Nic’s gaze, won’t look him in the face. Almost as if he can’t, right now. “You know we can’t. You’re married.”
The look on Nic’s face says that he really, really doesn’t care about those details, not now, but he doesn’t say so. He doesn’t think he needs to. “It’s not forever.”
Hangeng looks like he’s trying to resist, like he’s going to hold firm and not want to go along with this, he really does. But Nic’s trying to knock down that resistance.
“I love you,” he says again.
And then Hangeng kisses him; kisses Nic as if he’s making up for every month that they haven’t seen each other. It’s been a long time, such a long time.
It starts again, except this time even more secretive than the first. Nic is married, with a child on the way, he’s high profile now, and almost everything he does manages to make its way into a tabloid somewhere. So it’s illicit meetings in hotels, under false names and behind locked doors, for only hours at a time, whatever Nic can spare.
It’s not ideal, of course its not. But by now Nic is too, too far gone to even help himself, not when it comes to Hangeng. So its back to their old routine, except even more secretive than the first. Because now there's more to lose. Or, really, now he knows just what there is to be lost.
It’s not perfect, it’s not a solution, and there are feelings of guilt in both of them, for different reasons. But Nic shoves all negative thoughts from his mind, winds an arm easily around Hangeng’s shoulders and tugs him just that tiny bit closer. Their skin is still flushed and warm from their lovemaking, and Nic smiles slightly as he feels Hangeng shiver against him from this.
“Hey, Nic,” Hangeng starts, his voice that same softness that Nic will never get tired of listening to.
Nic glances sideways at him, humming a curious sounding, “hm?”
It’s not ideal, but the smile Hangeng gives Nic, as he says three of the simplest words in the world, gives Nic more than enough reason to stick through with this, whatever happens. It’s not ideal, and it’s not perfect, but it’s enough.
- end -
rating: 15, I guess?
fandom: Crossover
pairing: Nicholas Tse/Hangeng
summary: It actually starts off as a strange half-friendship.
notes: this is old, for spinspiderspin, who wanted me to write realistic NicHan. I tried, and I probably failed. None of this is real, and Nic and Hangeng, as far as I know, have never met. Yet ;)
As Nic gives his name to the man behind the counter, he thinks to himself that he’s getting pretty good at this. Finding the right hotels to go to. Using a name that is believably not his own. Looking like he might not just be checking in to a hotel for the reasons that he actually is. He thinks, after the several weeks of this routine, he’s getting the hang of it.
He’s not the only one getting good at this by now, and he’s been in the room only twenty minutes before the reason for it all arrives. A smile, wide and unfiltered, spreads across Nic’s face. “Hey. Nice to see you.” As soon as the door closes, clicks shut, locks, the warmth of another mouth meets with his own, and Nic is reminded of exactly why he goes through this every chance he can get.
He’s never heard of Hangeng before. Or Hankyung. And he’s not even sure he’s heard of this boy band, this Super Junior. So he hears about this Hangeng for the first time when they’re both guests on a TV show. They meet backstage, and get to talking, just briefly, to pass the time before shooting starts. Nic’s first impression is how soft-spoken this guy is as he introduces himself. Nic’s never heard of him before, but of course Hangeng knows who he is.
When Nic asks just what it is that Hangeng does, why he’s on the show, Hangeng tells him he’s one part of a 13-member boy band. Nic laughs.
Just before Hangeng’s due to go on set he gives Nic a smile. It’s that smile that captures Nic’s interest, and assures that as soon as this is over, he’s going to try and get hold of Hangeng again.
It actually starts off as a strange half-friendship. Nic leads a busy life, back and forth between Hong Kong and the mainland, and Hangeng back and forth between Korea and China. But, Nic finds Hangeng a refreshing person to be around, so whenever the opportunity arises, and schedules allow for it, and they’re both in the same area, they meet up. First, it’s just for drinks. Talking, laughing, joking, sharing stories. Hangeng confesses that he’d really like to get into acting, like Nic, and in turn, Nic confesses that he’d love to have a band of his own (not a boy band though).
And then it’s something more. Between about five too many drinks, stumbling into Nic’s hotel room (he’d actually invited Hangeng up to listen to some music, or he thinks he did, anyway) and laughing about something neither will remember five minutes later, it all turns from casual acquaintance, to something quite different.
Nic kisses him. One hand behind Hangeng’s neck, to tug him that bit closer, and he kisses that laughing, smiling mouth with his own. He can’t help it. Maybe it’s the drinks, because really, Nic has a very, very good tolerance for alcohol, but he’s had more than his usual and hell, he’s naturally a pretty instinctive person anyway. But he’d kind of almost been thinking for at least half of the night about wanting to kiss Hangeng.
It’s a little clumsy at first, because a split-second before it happened, Nic hadn’t even known he was going to do it. And he’s a little drunk, as is Hangeng, which makes for a clumsy meeting of mouths. But it’s a kiss all the same. Warm, wet, hazed and almost drowning in the alcohol they’d both consumed, but its still one hell of a kiss. So Nic does it again.
He doesn’t stop until there’s a hand on his chest, pushing him a little away, and Nic opens his eyes to see a surprised looking Hangeng. “Wait,” he says, sounding just a bit breathless. “Wait…what?”
Perhaps it’s a good question. Perhaps Nic really ought to stop and think about this ‘what’. But he doesn’t want to. Instead, he smiles, tangles his fingers lightly in the hair at the nape of Hangeng’s neck. “I want to kiss you some more. Is that okay?”
Hangeng gapes a little, looking quite at a loss for words. Closing his mouth again a few moments later, he nods his head. Well, he’s drunk too, after all, and it’s not as if this was his first time kissing another guy, and hell, he wants Nic to kiss him some more too.
Nic smiles, and is more than happy to oblige the both of them.
The kisses quickly lead to touching. Over clothes, above the waist, but then hands are tugging rather insistently at shirts and soon enough clothes are steadily littering the floor around them and hands are pressed to bare skin. Fingers touch everywhere, as if neither can quite get enough of the other, and every press of a palm and each stroke of fingers builds the heat up between them. The alcohol probably plays a large part in this sudden, physical attraction, but that’s something to think about later. Much later, not now, not when mouths and oh god tongues are exploring skin and each other.
One thing leads to another, and it comes as no surprise to either of them when they find themselves on the bed. Nic has no reservations about sleeping with another man. It’s not something he’s particularly vocal about, but it’s also nothing he’s opposed to, either. And Hangeng certainly has no complaints, and he’s the one that ends up tugging Nic down on top of him, steals him down for a kiss and rocks his hips up in such a way that Nic now fully believes that Hangeng is indeed a talented, talented dancer.
“Fucking hell,” Nic grunts quietly, breathless and head spinning a little, from the kiss, from those hips, from the alcohol. “I didn’t know guys in boy bands could do that.”
And things continue from there. Eventually, when they get the chance to meet up (which are few and far between) they no longer need alcohol to spur them into passion. It just happens. As soon as doors close, Nic’s fingers go to Hangeng’s shirt, and Hangeng’s mouth finds Nic’s and his hands thread through dark hair and they end up naked and in bed together, again.
It’s a bit of fun, so Nic thinks. A little relief from the hectic his schedule can be; Hangeng is just about the best stress relief he has ever encountered. And it’s not as if either of them has enough time for it to be anything other than fun. Not when Hangeng spends a lot of time in Korea, and Nic moves between China and Hong Kong.
So it’s just fun, but it’s the kind of fun that Nic thinks he might almost be getting addicted to. The kind of fun he can’t, and doesn’t want to, stop. As Hangeng presses against him, slides a hand down the expanse of Nic’s chest and smiles at him - that smile that Nic’s grown to really, really like - it’s obvious that this has become something Hangeng doesn’t want to stop, either.
Then, a couple of months later, it all comes crashing down. ‘When are you free? I want to see you’ Nic sends off in a text message to Hangeng. He knows the other is in the country; Hangeng always lets him know when he’s in China.
A couple of hours later, between shoots for a movie he’s acting in, Nic checks his phone and finds a reply, ‘Does tomorrow work for you? Let me know where and when.’
As he waits for Hangeng the next day Nic finds a different kind of anticipation filling him. And apprehension. He’s not sure quite why he’s feeling that, or even if he should be, because this was only some fun, because he finds Hangeng shockingly easy to be around, to spend time with, and apparently, to fall into bed with too. But they were friends, when they had the time, and that was it. Nic didn’t owe Hangeng a thing, nor the other way around.
And yet, as he waits, Nic finds himself feeling almost as if he’s done something wrong.
The first thing Hangeng does upon seeing Nic is to smile at him, that same soft, warm smile he always has. Nic can’t smile back, though, and pushes a drink across the table towards Hangeng, before taking several, deep gulps from his own.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” he starts to say, and Nic finds himself feeling so strangely awkward. He’s 26 years old, Hangeng is not his partner, his lover, or his boyfriend, and he should not be feeling this awkward. But he does.
“Okay.” Hangeng waits, patient and curious, for Nic to continue.
Another sip of his drink, the alcohol burning the back of Nic’s throat a little; he wants to get rid of that lump in his throat, but it doesn’t help. So fuck it, he thinks, and just says it. It’s not like him to get like this, anyway.
“Uh, I saw Cecilia a couple of weeks ago,” he starts. Cecilia. Nic almost wants to wince even as he says the name. She’d started off as just a one time thing (kind of like Hangeng, almost, actually) and the papers had kind of caught hold of it and run wild. And Nic really had no intention at all to carry on dating her. Until he’d seen her again recently. “She’s pregnant. And the kid is mine.”
Hangeng blinks, takes in the words, and blinks again. His eyes widen a little as he stares at Nic. “Oh,” he says, and then takes several drinks from his glass. Oh. Well then. He has no idea how to respond to this news, so he just doesn’t.
“We’re going to get married,” Nic adds, and it’s not really what he wants to say, but Hangeng’s lack of response, his reaction to this revelation, leave Nic feeling like he has to say something, anything. Even if it’s not quite the right something to say.
“Congratulations.”
Nic doesn’t realise, until he hears those stiff, empty words that it feels like he’s just lost something. Or as if something has broken. Or maybe both. Lost, and broken, and irreplaceable.
It's months. Months and months and months, and no Hangeng. And now Nic is a married man. Married and with a baby soon to be on the way. He can hardly believe it, actually. Everything’s happened a lot faster than he might have liked. And the thing Nic likes least about this whole deal is no more Hangeng.
Strange, how something that starts off as just a bit of fun, a nice time spent hanging out with another person, has developed, at least for Nic, into something more than that.
He thinks about Hangeng a lot, actually. Sometimes he catches the odd thing on television, Hangeng and some of the other guys in his group when they’re in China. It strikes Nic as odd, whenever he sees such things, because the Hangeng he sees on television isn’t the same as the Hangeng he knows. Maybe it’s because their jobs, their careers, don’t play a very big part in the time they spend together - more in the time that they don’t get to spend together, actually, and maybe it’s because Nic doesn’t know the rest of Super Junior, how Hangeng acts around his other friends.
When they’re together, it’s just the two of them, and that’s the Hangeng Nic knows. The Hangeng that laughs and smiles, that threads fingers through Nic’s hair and kisses him with passion, knows just where to touch him and doesn’t complain whenever Nic sends him rather racy text messages.
That’s the Hangeng that Nic knows, and that’s the Hangeng that Nic misses.
One day Nic calls him. Just like that, he doesn’t know where Hangeng is, what he’s doing or who he’s with, but he calls him anyway. Nic has to.
When Hangeng picks up, Nic can hear the sounds of other people around him, and wonders what he might have interrupted. Wonders, but doesn’t care.
“Hey.”
“…Nic?” Hangeng sounds surprised, genuinely, honestly, surprised to hear Nic’s voice. It almost makes Nic smile.
“Yeah. How’re you doing? I saw you on some show the other week, you looked good.”
“Why are you calling me now?”
Nic opens his mouth to answer, but is interrupted by sounds on the other end of the phone. Words he can’t understand, voices he doesn’t know, laughter, and then after several moments it’s quiet, and Hangeng speaks up again. “Sorry, my roommates are noisy. Now, tell me why you’re calling after all this time.”
He’s quiet for a few beats, and wonders briefly, just briefly, if he actually wants to say this out loud, to Hangeng. But before he can quite come to a decision, the words fall from Nic’s mouth regardless. “I missed talking to you.”
“You’re married now.”
A quiet sigh, then Nic says, “not by choice. This isn’t what I wanted to happen.” Hangeng says nothing, but he doesn’t have to speak for Nic to hear the ‘me either’ he knew was there. “I wasn’t seeing her when I was with you, you know.”
Silence, then, “oh.”
It’s kind of awkward, and maybe that’s because they haven’t spoke in awhile. And maybe it’s because of the whole situation. And maybe because now, as to when the last time they spoke, Nic sees Hangeng a little differently. Maybe maybe maybe.
“Look,” Nic says, trying to ease through his awkward feelings, “I want to see you. When are you next in China?”
“You’re married,” Hangeng reminds him.
And then he tells Nic his schedule.
Weeks later. Weeks and weeks, and the first thing Nic says when he finally sees Hangeng again is, “I love you.” It’s strange, kind of, to be saying that out loud, to be saying it to Hangeng, but Nic means it, and he knows its true, so what’s the point in not saying it?
“No, we can’t,” Hangeng says, but he won’t meet Nic’s gaze, won’t look him in the face. Almost as if he can’t, right now. “You know we can’t. You’re married.”
The look on Nic’s face says that he really, really doesn’t care about those details, not now, but he doesn’t say so. He doesn’t think he needs to. “It’s not forever.”
Hangeng looks like he’s trying to resist, like he’s going to hold firm and not want to go along with this, he really does. But Nic’s trying to knock down that resistance.
“I love you,” he says again.
And then Hangeng kisses him; kisses Nic as if he’s making up for every month that they haven’t seen each other. It’s been a long time, such a long time.
It starts again, except this time even more secretive than the first. Nic is married, with a child on the way, he’s high profile now, and almost everything he does manages to make its way into a tabloid somewhere. So it’s illicit meetings in hotels, under false names and behind locked doors, for only hours at a time, whatever Nic can spare.
It’s not ideal, of course its not. But by now Nic is too, too far gone to even help himself, not when it comes to Hangeng. So its back to their old routine, except even more secretive than the first. Because now there's more to lose. Or, really, now he knows just what there is to be lost.
It’s not perfect, it’s not a solution, and there are feelings of guilt in both of them, for different reasons. But Nic shoves all negative thoughts from his mind, winds an arm easily around Hangeng’s shoulders and tugs him just that tiny bit closer. Their skin is still flushed and warm from their lovemaking, and Nic smiles slightly as he feels Hangeng shiver against him from this.
“Hey, Nic,” Hangeng starts, his voice that same softness that Nic will never get tired of listening to.
Nic glances sideways at him, humming a curious sounding, “hm?”
It’s not ideal, but the smile Hangeng gives Nic, as he says three of the simplest words in the world, gives Nic more than enough reason to stick through with this, whatever happens. It’s not ideal, and it’s not perfect, but it’s enough.
- end -