Second Chances, or Just a Chance (Han Geng/Siwon)
Han Geng/Siwon (Super Junior)
PG for general AU, some angst.
Written for
jung_hyeri's
blind pic fic challenge #4:
...a.k.a. THE EPIC CHALLENGE FIC OF DOOM THAT WOULD NOT END. Seriously. 7,888 words for a challenge that isn't even being judged? I am insane.
I do wish I'd started on this earlier - I found myself frantically trying to finish it in time, and I think it shows. I actually really like the beginning and middle of it, but it's evident that I ran out of steam towards the end. Edited for details/flow/consistency problems post-submission and posted here, so you'll find that this version is different from that posted at
- sorry for any confusion.
.
When Siwon wakes up, it's far too sudden, his heart pumping hard and his breath caught high in his throat. It takes a while for his heartrate and breathing to return to normal, and when it does, he finds that he doesn't remember what it was that he dreamt of, what it was that left him wide-eyed and trembling, with all his nerves tingling and his body soaked in sweat. These night terrors have been on and off for a while now, and still his body can't control its reaction to what he can only assume is fear.
When Siwon wakes up, it's an ordinary Monday morning, and he slides out of bed with shaking limbs and his vision blurred with dark spots. He blinks rapidly, the spots fading to clarity, and gathers himself together - it was merely a dream, after all, like it always is; one that he can't even recall - and he gets ready to go to work.
The day passes in an unremarkable haze of entering an endless stream of numbers and figures into innumerable data tables until even during his lunch break he sees numbers printed in small black lines across his dry sandwich. But work is work, and he needs it to eat and pay rent, so he doesn't complain, simply rests his wrists on his desk every once in a while, stretching his fingers (one, two, three, all the way up to ten and back down again) and gazing out his office window to give his strained eyes a break. Outside is all grey skies and grey streets with grey people scurrying to and fro, and when he turns back to his computer monitor, he's left with an odd feeling of exhaustion, rather than relief.
He steps onto the train at the end of the day, tired from sitting at a desk and punching numbers into the company database, and wonders fleetingly if this is all this life will amount to - a certificate touting a double major in accounting and economics, the top 5% of his graduating class, over-qualified and unmoving in his boring desk job. When he takes a seat on the train, settling his laptop bag over his lap, he covers his yawn with his hand and allows his eyes to slip closed. The familiar sounds of the train make soothing white noise in the background, and he drifts, mind drowsing somewhere between asleep and awake. Snatches of soft conversation and the murmur-whisper-rumble of a hundred people travelling to a hundred destinations permeate his consciousness in waves.
He's jostled awake when someone sits down next to him and bumps his elbow, but he just pulls his bag closer and retracts his arm with a muttered apology, his eyes barely opening.
He's halfway back to that dozing state when the person beside him says, hesitantly, in a voice he hasn't forgotten for four years, 'Siwon-sshi? Choi Siwon?'
His eyes flutter open reluctantly, and with the sway of the bodies standing before him, the smooth jerk pull hold of the train, the world - or maybe just the subway car - almost seems as though it's tilting away from gravity. He turns and doesn't expect to see the face he spent years trying to forget. The sleepiness is making him unable to think fast enough for a situation like this, to pretend he doesn't care or that he didn't miss him, so he just smiles, genuine, surprised, and perhaps a little sleepy, and says his Korean name, his upper body dipping on reflex into a small bow.
'Hankyung-sshi.'
-
It's surreal, that Hankyung is still as affable as ever, still just as friendly and warm as he was when they were together, asking questions about Siwon's life and job and what he's been doing. His voice is familiar and unchanged, and eases steadily though the sleep-heavy fog of Siwon's mind. He's careful not to overstep any possible boundaries or delve too far back into the past, and Siwon is grateful, as he is far too tired to think of a tactful, non-desperate way to ask why he really left. Hankyung himself is doing well, back in Seoul to teach dance - ballet, actually - after being in China for a few years.
(It's muffled when muttered into a shoulder, a soft echo when held between lips against an ear: 'Call me when you get there, okay?'
The pause is a beat too long, followed by his own laughter that isn't quite nervous or awkward. It just is.
'Just to stop me from worrying. Call me, Geng.'
The telephone stays quiet for exactly six days, five hours and twenty-three minutes after Geng's scheduled flight arrival time. When he calls, Siwon is at school - the same class hours he's had for the whole semester - and he leaves a message:
'Siwon-ah, I. I need to stay in Beijing for - awhile.' There is a crackle of static, a sigh across a distance too far for a single breath to span. 'I'm not coming back. Don't wait up for me.'
There are two ways to take that sentence, and Siwon is not naive enough to be optimistic about its meaning.
'I'm sorry.' A click, and then the dial tone. He deletes the message, and cancels his flight.)
His Korean is still fluent despite the years away from Korea, though his pronunciation has worsened considerably. Siwon finds himself watching his lips - the words seem to flow differently from Hankyung's mouth, and there is some part of him that wants to tuck each part of this encounter away to remember, in case it is all just a dream. He learns that Hankyung has only been back for two weeks and is still having trouble adjusting, not just to the language, but to the lifestyle as well - Beijing and Korea may both be two big cities, but they're also two different cities. His mind must have been lulled back to a quiet slumber by the gentle rocking motion of the train, because his mouth moves and offers his phone number, extends an invitation to coffee sometime, or tea. Maybe rice cakes and soju, if he's ever in the mood, because while Siwon doesn't mention this to the man beside him, he knows what it's like to be in a bustling city where you have friends, but no one to call on a Saturday night.
There is a pause - the doors of the subway car hiss open, commuters stream out and then in like a coastal tide in transit - and Hankyung looks at him with his large eyes. The doors close with a hushing noise and slight suction and the train begins to move again, and the jerk of the car seems to set him in motion. His smile is small but sincere and Siwon catches the curve of it with his gaze.
'Sure,' he says, 'But we can go without the soju, unless you drink now.'
Siwon smiles back instinctively and enters his number into the proffered handphone. When he hands it back to Hankyung, he doesn't tell him to call him. He doesn't really expect him to, either.
They talk a little more, until the sexless automated voice declares their arrival at Cheongdam station and Hankyung looks up and loops his arm through the strap on his bag. Siwon watches him exit the car, raising his hand in a polite wave when Hankyung half-turns back with a smile. The doors close behind him, and the standing passengers seem to melt into the space he left behind as he lets his eyelids drift back closed. He lets his thoughts wander aimlessly, back and forth and ever-changing, and he ends up dozing again, missing his stop, and has to take the opposite train back the way he came.
('What are you doing with all these clothes? Are we going somewhere? ...Kyung. Geng. Geng, what are you doing?'
'I-I'm just going to stay with my mother for a while. She's sick, I want to make sure she's okay.'
'Hyung - ge, she's in Beijing with a head cold, are you seriously going to fly... you're going to fly there.'
Silence but for the rustling of clothes, the crinkle of plastic - the slam of a door, the rush of two sighs.)
When he gets home, he forgoes his regular visit to the gym, barely having enough energy as it is to reheat last night's leftover rice and pick out some kimchi for dinner. Everything is tasteless in his mouth.
He sleeps fitfully that night, tossing and turning and tangling the sheets around his sweating body, and dreams of darkness and bright lights fading in the sunrise over the cityscape.
Something like a week goes by without so much as a missed call, and Siwon almost forgets about the brief exchange on the train; its brevity, along with the way his attention and consciousness always seem to drift during the commute home, serves to create this unreality surrounding the likelihood of its actual occurrence. He has almost convinced himself that it had all been one of those unexpected, though not unwelcome, semi-lucid dreams that his mind sometimes constructs while caught between two states of consciousness.
His night terrors continue to persist, and he's beginning to think that maybe he should talk to his doctor about them - maybe there's some psychological basis for the dreams that seize his body at night. He makes an appointment three days into the week, and follows it with a reminder in his appointment book, underlined once in blue ink that smudges a little from his ballpoint pen. On the fifth day, he comes back to his apartment from the doctor's office with a hastily-scrawled prescription for sleeping pills and an unsettled mind. With the sixth day come the filled prescription and two pills downed with a glass of water before bed. He's out like a light, and wakes up late the seventh day, disoriented and slightly dizzy with a strange, empty taste in his mouth. He's not sure if he prefers this to the sweating and shaking. At least he'd always been to work on time.
Something like a week of mornings spent retching nothing into his toilet bowl goes by before his phone lights up on rainy day while he's at work. It buzzes along the wood of his desk with an unfamiliar number flashing on the screen. He picks it up as if in a dream and lets it ring, once, twice, then answers the call and sets the phone to his ear.
Hankyung's voice is apologetic and kind when it comes across the line - he'd been caught up with some problems at work, he tells Siwon, and he wanted to - he would've called earlier, see, but things had been so hectic... is Siwon at work right now, should he call back later? Siwon just smiles, and despite not being face-to-face with the other man, gestures with his free hand as he tells him it's okay, things like that happen. He understands how some things don't quite turn out the way you'd wanted them to.
(‘Hey, are you alright?’
The comforting slide of hands onto tense shoulders is stilled and echoed by the rasp of cotton blankets against skin.
‘I’m fine, Siwon-ah. Let’s just sleep, okay?’
There’s the click of the lamp, and silence.)
There's a barely perceptible pause before Hankyung picks the conversation up smoothly, a politely regretful, 'Well, it probably took me too long to call, anyway,' that Siwon doesn't read into any more than necessary. 'Anyway, I wanted to ask - well, are you free later today?'
Siwon reminds himself that meeting an old friend (an ex? He's never liked that term - it seems so insignificant and cruel, to reduce someone you once loved or someone you still love to a short, sharp syllable that rings of finality) is no guarantee or invitation for re-establishing a relationship, and agrees to meet Hankyung for lunch at an eatery he's never heard of, two blocks from his workplace.
The rain has lessened to a misty drizzle by the time he steps out of the office to meet the other man, and it settles in his chest as a cold marker of discomfort. When he finds the place - a tiny, nondescript hole-in-the-wall of a family restaurant, made to look American but serving an odd combination of Korean and Western food - he settles down at one of the high-backed vinyl booths to wait for Hankyung.
It’s warm inside the restaurant, and cozy, in a friendly, potted-plastic-plant sort of way that serves to warm his body a little from the cold outside. The waitress that comes to serve him looks like a college student, her body plump beneath her uniform and her features soft beneath a fringe of dark hair, and promises to bring him tea even though he assures her he’ll wait for his friend first before ordering.
When she leaves the table, shoes squeaking slightly against the linoleum floor, he picks up the laminated menu and turns it over aimlessly, scanning the menu items, but his mind goes back to the dreams that have begun invading the relatively newfound peace of his nights once again. They don't disturb him as much as they used to, before the sleeping pills, but now the sweat and the shaking has been replaced by the same one dream each night. It's dark and confusing, this recurring dream with the lights and the stairs, and he recalls it only as the briefest of impressions: the flash of a soft mouth and a stubbornly set chin, a flight of stairs leading up to a flare of light, and always, always a brilliant stripe of gold obscuring his vision before it all fades to black and his eyelids snap open.
He allows it to sink back from the focus of his thoughts, instead turning his attention to the rain-streaked window beside him, and gazes out at the street past the trickling raindrops. Despite the weather, he can still track the blurred forms of people rushing around outside under the cover of umbrellas and soggy newspapers. One of the blurs suddenly veers to the front of the restaurant, still hidden beyond an umbrella that collapses upon itself as the door opens with a jingle and a rush of sound from the traffic and the rain outside. When the door closes, the whoosh of tyres on the street is a lingering echo amidst the quiet of the near-empty restaurant.
Hankyung’s face appears from behind the umbrella when it lowers and snaps closed, his eyes scanning the tables, and a smile of recognition tugs at the corner of Hankyung’s lips and lights his eyes when he spots Siwon at a booth in the corner. Siwon ignores the long-forgotten fluttering in his stomach upon seeing Hankyung smile, choosing to rise a little and gesture towards the opposite side of the booth as the other man makes his way towards him.
When Hankyung sits, his umbrella dripping water underneath the table, Siwon finds himself almost helpless in the rush of familiarity that the situation presents to him. Insignificant memories that seemed a lifetime ago rise to the surface of his mind, and he remembers dinner dates, cooking together in a tiny dorm kitchen, ordering take-out and eating in, all alongside the same man smiling at him now. They exchange a customary greeting, and he almost feels jittery with nerves.
‘There’s just one thing I wanted to say first,’ Hankyung suddenly starts, threading his fingers together. Siwon watches his hands as they flutter apart and settle together again, restless. ‘I just, I just wanted to make my intentions clear - I’m not expecting… anything, Siwon-ah,’ he fiddles with the cuff of his jacket, and looks up to meet Siwon’s gaze with clear eyes, ‘but I’d like if we could, could be friends again. If we could start over.’
He wonders if Hankyung knows he would still do anything for him. He wonders if it’s sensible, trusting someone who hurt him so much. He wonders if it’s possible for them to have what they used to. He wonders too much, he knows, and does too little. That still hasn’t changed.
‘I’d like that,’ is all he says, ‘I’ve missed you.’
Not yet will he confront Hankyung - he wants this friendship still, and doesn’t want to destroy it before it’s even given a chance to walk on its own. Siwon will wait for whenever he’s ready to tell him why everything fell apart.
The tea comes before either of them can say anything else, and when he thanks the waitress with a smile her face blushes a pretty pink in the blue-white buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights. They place their orders, Hankyung quickly glancing over the menu and picking something (kimchi fried rice) seemingly at random, Siwon ordering the daily special (vegetarian sandwich with small beef broth soup), and it seems to be an unspoken agreement to put the past behind them, at least for now, as Hankyung starts talking about the class he taught in the morning.
Siwon worried that meeting Hankyung again would be awkward; that the easy flow of conversation on the train was simply because of his own exhaustion at the time. As it turns out, after their first hesitant exchange, Hankyung is just as easy to talk to as he was on the train, and he finds the conversation, which ranges from everything from the whereabouts of old college mates to the pros and cons of haptic phones (‘Can’t use them when it’s cold, you have to use bare hands.’ ‘What about those gloves without fingertips?’ ‘Defeats the purpose of the gloves, though…’), carrying on without so much as an uncomfortable pause as the food gradually disappears. When his watch beeps, telling him his lunch break is over, it is as though no time has passed at all, and he sets down the small fork with which he’d been gesturing with a start of surprise.
‘Sorry, Hankyung… I’ve got to get back to work,’ he says, palms braced against the edge of the table, and he finds that he really is sorry - he wants nothing more than to sit here with Hankyung and just listen to him talk about the children he teaches, his own strict dance teacher in China, and all the other stories he tells that fill in the missing spaces between the them back then and the them right now. When he speaks, more is said through the tilt of his head and his faraway eyes than any other spoken dialogue, and Siwon catalogues it all away into the part of his mind that whispers to him, this is another chance. Don’t screw it up again.
‘Call me Geng, Siwon. Hankyung sounds too formal - and I don’t know if I’m used to the Korean yet,’ he pauses before looking down at his hands and adding, ‘Do you really have to go so soon?’
Maybe this is all Siwon’s been waiting for: an invitation to stay longer, to spend a little more time away from the monotony of his daily routine. He thinks of the columns of numbers going absolutely nowhere, thinks of twenty-seven year old Hankyung, achingly reminiscent of Han Geng at twenty-three but a different person entirely (he wears a necklace with a pendant Siwon’s never seen before resting below the base of his throat, just visible past the collar of his dark jacket. It looks like it would be a comforting weight in the palm; it looks like it carries meaning). There are four years of his life Siwon only now has an inkling about, and Siwon’s desire to know is almost overwhelming when the words rush out from him: ‘I can leave work early, if you wanted to do something?’
Geng’s smile is all the answer Siwon needs, his ‘Sure, yeah, I’d like to,’ just a supplement to the happiness that warms the inside of his chest more than the hot, strong tea steaming in the mug beside him.
The rain has petered off to barely a sprinkling from the sky, and is almost refreshing when he leaves the restaurant with Geng to pick up his bag from work, begging off the rest of the day with a flimsy excuse to his boss: ‘I’m not feeling too well, sajangnim - do you mind if I take the rest of the day off?’ He tries to look as pale and drawn and pathetic as he possibly can, and secretly rejoices when she presses her lips together in an almost maternal fashion and lets him go with a stiff reminder to keep himself healthy. He gets a silly little rebellious thrill while he’s in the elevator heading back downstairs, and wonders why he’s never tried this before until he remembers that he’s never had Geng waiting outside for him; he’s never had a reason to skip off on his work that seemed as pertinent as this.
Seeing Geng’s figure bathed in the brilliant, post-rain sunlight of the afternoon as Siwon shoulders his way out of the doors of the office building convinces him that it’s worth it. Geng’s happy, carefree smile when he sees Siwon coming toward him gives him the feeling that this won’t be the last time it’ll happen.
(The alarm goes off.
There is a pause, as the beeping becomes insistent, then a tired, drawn-out groan, followed by the fumbling of a hand over the bedside table. It ends with a slam and the clatter of plastic onto the carpet.
An unmanly giggle, another groan muffled by a pillow, then - ‘Screw it, who thought of seven AM classes in the first place?’ - the sounds of two smiles meeting in the sleepy silence of early morning.)
A week later finds Siwon on the phone in the morning of a particularly sunny day, charming his boss into letting him take a day off (he doesn’t quite remember his excuse - likely it involves a sickly aunt or a newborn niece or nephew) and leaving his apartment with that same silly thrill running through his whole body. He doesn’t remember the last time he took a whole day off, least of all on a day like today.
As he runs downstairs, he gets a call - it’s Geng - and he picks it up, unable to stop a grin from splitting his face as he jumps down the last couple of stairs to the ground level. He tells Geng he’ll be there soon, in about ten minutes, and they meet at the front of the water park in brightly coloured swim shorts and t-shirts.
‘Race you,’ says Geng, and Siwon doesn’t care that he’s twenty-five and more than ten years too old for this - he books it madly to the nearest pool and dive bombs into the deep end.
When their fingertips wrinkle and they tire of swimming and splashing around (and Siwon gets too much chlorine up his nose), they play cops and robbers around the park, the leaves crunching under Siwon’s bare feet and his hair obscuring his vision in wet strands. Siwon almost manages to stay upright when he slips on a particularly resilient leaf, but gravity, as always, wins, and he finds himself with his face planted in the grass and his butt in the air.
Siwon is twenty-five years old, a Korea University graduate with a double major in accounting and economics, and works for a respectable accounting firm.
But when he hears Geng laughing so hard that he doesn’t even care when Siwon tackles him from behind, holding his hand up to Geng’s head like a gun and cackling like a madman, he is five years old again, just a kid without a care in the world, and the happiest he’s been in years.
-
In the months that follow, Siwon’s day to day routine takes a more exciting turn. It’s not like he’s going to raves or joining rock bands or taking spontaneous flights to exotic locations - he still works at his dull office job, eight to five, Monday to Friday, statutory holidays excluded, and he’s still plagued by the same mysterious dream, which is turning up with more frequency than ever before and occupying the tiny recesses of his mind. It doesn’t bother him too terribly, though - Geng often calls him with suggestions of interesting places to eat at and things to see or do all around South Korea (most often than not, his phone calls are littered by questions beginning with, ‘Have you ever…’ and most often than not, Siwon’s answer is, ‘No, but let’s go this week.’), and it distracts him well enough from the dream as he discovers, or rediscovers, more about his city and his old friend in two months than he has in his four years out of college.
After Geng left, he’d forgot what life with him was like, instead wondering what he’d done wrong and wallowing in all the insecurities and feelings of inadequacy that arose when he realized that Geng wasn’t coming back. He forgot that even in the past their time together had often been spent discovering new things about Seoul and about each other (wishes, dreams, memories, and in the dark comfort of the night or the quiet of the morning, bodies and all the ways they could love one another).
He forgot how easy and simple life was - is - with Han Geng.
With his terrible written Korean, his handy inability to understand the language at times that benefit him, his cooking that makes Siwon feel not so alone on Saturday nights, and his laugh lines that lend a kind air to his face… just like before, he's become an integral part of Siwon's daily existence. Something about his easy familiarity and his sweetness and his soft voice allow Geng's existence to slip easily back into his routine - except now, the monotony and day-to-day repetition seem timeless in their absolute simplicity. It's not quite beautiful, subtle and with a sense of lasting not seen in classic romances, because even though it's no longer the exciting, trembling first love it was in college, it's absolutely the same in the comfort it brings to Siwon.
Having gotten caught up in his daily ennui, Siwon comes to realize that he’s forgotten many things about Geng that, once upon a time, he thought he’d never forget. One of these is brought to light one evening Geng comes to pick him up from work and they take the subway to the stop nearest the studio where Geng is teaching. It’s a short walk from the station to the studio, the sidewalk they take running alongside a park with a children’s playground and a basketball court, and they walk it in a peaceful silence. The air is crisp and cool in the early evening, and Siwon notices that the other man’s sweatshirt is a little too light for the weather - he sees goosebumps rising over the exposed skin by Hankyung’s neck, against the necklace he always wears. He quashes the compelling urge to wrap his arms around him, shoving his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat, and says nothing. A child no older than five trips over something in the park and starts wailing for his mother as they walk past, and the sounds of his cries follow them to the studio, ringing in Siwon’s ears.
Geng’s small apartment is situated above the studio, but although Siwon has often visited the studio when he and Geng are meeting to go out somewhere, he has never been upstairs. The studio itself is a typical dance studio - there are barres running along two opposite walls, and the far wall is also lined with a wall-to-wall mirror that reflects all of their movements as they step through the door. Siwon always finds himself feeling self-conscious before the mirror while waiting for Geng to finish packing up from a lesson, children milling around them and chattering a mile a minute, and feels even more so now. At home, he doesn’t bother too much with his reflection - just washes up and heads to either bed or breakfast, according to the time of day - and so the wall-to-wall mirror is almost unnerving when it’s just him and Geng in the empty studio space.
In lieu of focusing on his reflection, he concentrates on Geng’s slim frame, all long limbs as he toes off his shoes and pulls his sweatshirt over his head, tossing the clothing beside the stereo system in the opposite corner of the room. Siwon sinks to the floor against the wall without the mirror and waits until Geng presses a button on the stereo, walking to the center of the room as the opening strains of a melody uncurl into the space around and between them.
He is still for a moment, his back facing Siwon. He looks as though he is trembling with the effort of containing a magnificent, intangible force - perhaps the music - within his human skin, and Siwon can see Geng’s eyes slide closed in the mirror before his body twists and straightens up into an effortless pirouette. It plots itself in points of slow-motion in Siwon’s mind; arm, elbow, ankle and curved foot; and then all arching, an explosion of movement as his limbs pitch his body into a graceful leap, and Siwon almost forgets to breathe.
He forgot what it was like to watch Geng dance, all fluid lines and perfectly effortless movement across the floor. He feels twenty again; awkward in his body and harboring the most secret of secret crushes on a friend of a friend, a soft-spoken dancer with a kind face whose conversations he keeps close to his heart. He feels unspeakably young again. Naïve.
He watches him dance and just lets it all go - lets the music work its way into him as well. He could never dance like Geng - he didn’t have that natural rhythm engrained in his very bones like Geng seemed to. He thinks that it may be part of the reason he fell so easily for him, back then; he wanted to be able to breathe in that sheer aliveness that Geng seemed to possess, even in the times he was quiet and still among their group of friends. He thinks that it may be part of the reason he’s falling for him again, now, twenty-five and alone, twenty-five and his life held in stasis. He doesn’t want to die like this.
It’s a hesitant sort of self-confession, though - he’s not sure if he’s in love with this Geng, his reprieve from the dull repetition of his life before they ran into each other that evening only a few months ago, or the shy, sweet Geng of four years ago, whom he loved with all the enthusiasm that came from a meaningful first love that blossomed from friendship.
Geng is coming down from his movement, small leaps across the floor that barely make a sound, and he finishes in another pirouette, his extensions slow and beautiful as he turns on one foot, sinking to the floor as the song winds to an end, and Siwon is surprised to find that he’s crying.
They’re both crying.
He quickly presses his palms to his own eyes, wiping away the tears on his cheeks and hoping Geng doesn’t notice. He doesn’t look up until he feels a body collapse beside him, and Geng’s voice, steadier than his own would be, murmurs something that he can’t quite hear.
When he does look up, he meets Geng’s eyes in the mirror across the room, and he struggles for a moment to articulate his thoughts. In the end, all he can manage is, ‘You’re still a beautiful dancer, Geng.’ His gaze traces the lines of his face and his pendant falling below his collarbones and the slight outline of his chest under his tank top as Geng catches his breath, and he reminds himself to do the same.
Geng smiles, breathless, eyes red in his reflection, and turns his head to look at Siwon - he can see the motion in the mirror, Geng’s profile, Siwon’s own face. His dark, straight brows and handsome features somehow pale in comparison to the life thrumming through the veins and arteries in Geng’s body, and he doesn’t know if he can meet his gaze and capture it all within his eyes without canting forward and drinking it in with dry lips and shaking hands.
‘Thank you,’ he hears, sees Geng’s mouth in his reflection form the words, and then quieter: ‘I learnt a lot in China.’
The words don’t echo in the empty room. They sink into Siwon’s bones and feel heavy, caught within him - he doesn’t quite know what they mean.
He watches Geng turn to face the mirror again, and their eyes don’t meet.
That night the dream comes again, and this time the stairs spin around him in a dizzying kaleidoscope of blinking lights. He wants to reach out and steady the world with his hands, but by the time he stretches out his fingertips, the lights are far away and fading, and he can’t move. Everything holds, for one long moment out of reach, and then it all explodes into a brilliant, bursting gold that blinds him to darkness.
(The music stops and is immediately replaced by applause in the practice room.
‘I’m the luckiest guy in the world, you know that? That was beautiful. I wish you could’ve seen yourself dancing.’
‘I still have a lot to learn, though.’
‘You’ve got all the time you need, Geng. You’re amazing already.’
‘I didn’t mean the dancing.’
‘…You idiot,’ a smile threatens to overturn the words completely, ‘You’re perfect.’)
Two weeks later, Geng asks him if he’d like to go to a club, and Siwon accepts because it’s been too long since he’s spent some time enjoying Seoul’s nightlife. He doesn’t think the gym counts.
They meet at the club, and it’s not long before they’re inside the dark room, all slick black floors, flashing lights and gyrating bodies, and the DJ is raised up above the crowd like some kind of demi-god. Siwon can barely remember the last time he went to a club, and is a little taken aback by the overwhelming thereness of it all until Geng grabs his hand and drags him straight to the middle of the crowd with a persuasive smile, the stripe of gold fabric at the back of his shirt shining with a ripple of lights and the movement of his body.
On the dance floor, Geng grins at him, and coloured patches of light slide over the beaming expression of his face and the smooth skin of his bare arms and reflect off of his necklace in shards of cellophane hued light. He doesn’t know how long they dance for; only that he’s pressed close to Geng, pushed closer with the rising, rollicking pull of the surrounding crowd, and the heat of Geng’s body is like a burning brand in all the places they touch. He can feel the other man moving against him, can hear him humming along breathlessly to the melody of the song almost drowned by the amplified bass, can see the sheen of sweat over the muscle in his arms, in the skin above his shirt, along the column of his neck. He wants to bend down and tilt Geng’s jaw up with his fingertips, he wants to run his lips over the smooth column and taste the salt lingering on the skin and the metallic links of his necklace, he wants to press into him in all the ways he knows how, he wants to sink down onto a bed and kiss him until they can’t breathe, he wants to curl his arms around him, wants to fall asleep with him in his arms, he, he wants to - he wants -
It’s too much.
He breaks away from Geng despite how much he just wants to fall into him, because he needs to get away from the suddenly dangerously familiar heat of his body and his easy smile, the same from so many years ago. He breaks away and runs, blindly pushing through the crowd, but the bodies hold him back, the mass of people that move together. He fights the clutching hands and inviting smiles until he’s stumbling outside, staggering down the steps and breathing in night air untainted by cigarette smoke and the acrid odour of sweat and alcohol. He breathes deep in an attempt to catch himself before he can’t remember how he fell.
Tiny lights line the outside of the club in rows, and from the bottom of the steps he can still see the pulsing flashes of strobe lights within the club. He can hear someone coming towards the exit, and knowing the cadence of Geng’s footsteps, hating that he knows it, he turns around, pushing a frustrated hand through his hair. When it comes down, it’s grabbed by a familiar hand, and he spins around to tug it from Geng’s grasp.
‘Stop it,’ he whispers fiercely, trying not to attract unnecessary attention.
He knows he’s overreacting, but the pounding bass from inside the club is throbbing in his head and the bright lights in the darkness of the night are making him feel dizzy and irrational, his blood rushing through his veins in a course run by confused frustration and adrenaline left from dancing so close to Geng in the dark of the pulsating crowd.
Geng looks bewildered as he asks, ‘What’s wrong, Siwon? Do you not feel well?’ Immediately he moves in front of Siwon, grasping his arms and trying to look into his eyes. The concern written on his face is as suffocating as the sweaty heat of his palms against Siwon’s skin, and Siwon rips his arms away, staggering backward and glaring at Geng, his heart pounding and his fists clenched, nails digging into his palms. The words tear out from his throat in a desperate attempt to place distance between them.
‘It’s not the same anymore, Geng! Things have changed. We’ve changed. We can’t go back to how it used to be, and nothing is going to change that, okay? Just… just stop trying.’
The look on Geng’s face - shocked and stung by the unexpected barbs - is enough to break his heart. He tries not to choke on the bile rising in his throat and swallows hard as he brushes past Geng, and it doesn’t feel like he’s the one controlling his body as he hails a cab and ducks inside. All his emotions prickle on the surface of his skin, mingling with each other in strange shapes and making his blood feel too hot in his body in the relative coolness of the cab as it takes off down the street. He can see Geng in his mind’s eye; can see the hurt line of his body and the rigid set of his shoulders in the darkness, his head turned just slightly. There’s some part of him that wishes Geng would run after him, run after the cab like the male leads always do in the dramas and movies, but he knows that would never happen. Life is not a movie and there aren’t always emotional confessionals and happy endings. People are too afraid for their own emotions to lay themselves bare the way actors pretend to.
('Hello?'
'Hi, um, Hankyung? Geng?'
'Yeah - who's this?'
'It's... Siwon, Choi Siwon, we met the other day - I'm Heechul's under-classman...'
'Oh, Siwon! What's up?'
'This might be a little forward of me, but I was just wondering if... I was wondering if you'd, uh, ever tried the coffeeshop outside the university, they make very good coffee and...'
A laugh comes over the line - 'Are you asking me out on a date?' - and immediate denial, 'No, no, not a date, just, I just wondered if you wanted to - uh, talk, over coffee, sometime -'
The laugh comes over the line again, quiet but amused, 'I'd love to. Tomorrow okay with you? Like at eleven?'
'Sure! Yes, that works.'
'Alright, see you then.' )
He’s not sure if he’s afraid for his heart, or afraid of it.
He wants to hit something, but, at the same time, his body can’t seem to muster up the energy to move - so he sits stiffly in the backseat, back ramrod-straight and elbow by the window, his hand held still over his mouth. He presses his lips together tightly and watches the glowing smears of streetlights like golden comets across his window as the cab winds its way through the streets and back to his apartment, and doesn’t cry.
-
It feels weird, in the ensuing days, because he’s going to work like always, going to the gym like always, doing all the things that came before Geng did and remained while he was in Siwon’s life, and Siwon’s not stupid enough to think that there’s another reason as to why he feels so empty inside. It feels weird, because he knows that he misses Geng, perhaps even more than he did when Geng left him for China.
It feels weird, because he’s the one running now, avoiding all of Geng’s calls until five calls a day becomes three becomes one and then they stop coming altogether. His days start to feel incomplete without talking to Geng, and he hates himself for how dependent he’s become on the other’s presence. Geng walked back into Siwon’s life so abruptly and unexpectedly that the loss of it leaves Siwon feeling out of sorts and strange, going through the motions of his life without truly thinking.
Sometimes he wonders if this is how it would have been if he’d never met Geng on that train, and the outlook is so bleak he stops wondering altogether.
Sometimes he walks by the studio, if he happens to be in that part of the city, and finds himself caught in the faint rhythm of music within - it pulls him to an unsteady halt and holds him for one faltering moment on the street outside. He never enters, though - just passes on and doesn’t look back.
The emptiness of his days bleeds into his nights and circles back to haunt him as his recurring dream becomes a nightmare - he sees the lights on the wall of the club that night in the dizzying, spinning lights of his dream; the black of the night sky manifests itself in the enveloping darkness; the liquid, gold stripe of fabric at the back of Geng’s shirt morphs and explodes into the metallic fires that destroy his dream-eyes. He takes three pills each night, now.
-
He’s not sure what he expects to happen now, but it’s certainly not what occurs one day when he’s heading home from work. As he approaches his apartment building, his eyes catch the casual slouch of someone leaning against the outside, features half-hidden in shadows. He doesn't need light to recognize the far too familiar figure leaning against the outside of the building, and he rushes to the door with his key, but Geng’s already spotted him - he reaches out into the light and snags Siwon’s sleeve, and his please, Siwon is all it takes for him to cave and let him follow him up.
The first thing Geng says, when they’re seated on Siwon’s couch with coffee in front of them, is an apology.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and it sounds like he’s choking. Siwon stirs his coffee and doesn’t know what to say.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeats, and it’s a little stronger. Siwon looks up, and there’s something in Geng’s eyes that he saw in his own, in the mirror of his dorm room four years ago. Something inside of him breaks, then, and he sets down his spoon, his head bowed forward, and allows Geng to give him the explanation he's waited for since he was twenty-one and alone, insecure and scared.
Geng’s voice stops and starts in parts, and it washes over him in a tidal wave of emotion when he whispers, you were too good for me; I was scared of how easy, how simple it all was; I was in love and over my head, and at the last, Siwon thinks he’s about to cry.
‘I was scared back then, and you’re scared now… but I want this to work, Siwon. I told you before, I don’t expect anything else,’ he shifts closer and takes hold of Siwon’s hand, ‘I just want my friend back.’
Siwon stares down at their entwined hands, at Geng’s long fingers interwoven with his own, and closes his eyes at the sight. He brings their hands up, and presses his lips chastely to the knuckle of Geng’s index finger, before letting go with a sigh. He’s not sure he trusts himself enough to speak properly, but he tries anyway, and the croaky alright that leaves his throat seems to convey all he wants to say.
Alright, he whispers, and the soft smile that tilts the corners of Geng’s mouth gives Siwon hope that things will be okay. He lets it all go.
-
At twenty-five years old, Choi Siwon is not entirely happy with his life, but he’s getting there.
When he wakes, it’s with the good-natured groan of an accountant in a desk job that he’s over-qualified for and has to wake up at six-thirty in the morning to get to. He spends his days staring at a computer screen, entering columns of numbers into columns of data tables, and feels himself deteriorating into the seat of his chair.
When he gets off work, though, he goes gallivanting around the city like a child, go-karting or trying the tiny Ethiopian restaurant half-hidden in an alleyway by his apartment building. Often it's exhilarating, other times comforting, and other times still he's just happy, living his simple life like this, Geng leading him by the hand or allowing himself to be led by Siwon, but always by his side.
When he dreams, it is blissfully devoid of a striking darkness or a golden flash that burns his eyes in its brightness. He dreams instead of normal things, silly, dream-like things like ice cream cake and aquatic animals and turning up at work naked, and if he sometimes dreams of Geng’s elegant hands and the smooth movement of his graceful dancer’s body, he’s fine with it. They aren’t together, but they’re together, and for now, Siwon thinks he’s okay with that.
(‘Oh! Ni hao. Wo... wo ming zhe - Siwon.’
A bemused smile half-hidden in a bow, and an accented but perfectly articulate, ‘Hi, it’s nice to meet you.’
An embarrassed silence of surprise is recovered by a quiet laugh: ‘Heechul should’ve told you I can speak Korean,’ and his smile can be heard when he introduces himself, ‘I’m Hankyung, but you can call me Geng. Not quite used to the Korean, yet.’
Their hands clasp and slide away - a shift of a bag on a shoulder, two sets of footsteps, and ‘So what do you major in, Siwon?’ - the dawning sounds of friendship.)
PG for general AU, some angst.
Written for
jung_hyeri's
blind pic fic challenge #4:
...a.k.a. THE EPIC CHALLENGE FIC OF DOOM THAT WOULD NOT END. Seriously. 7,888 words for a challenge that isn't even being judged? I am insane.
I do wish I'd started on this earlier - I found myself frantically trying to finish it in time, and I think it shows. I actually really like the beginning and middle of it, but it's evident that I ran out of steam towards the end. Edited for details/flow/consistency problems post-submission and posted here, so you'll find that this version is different from that posted at
- sorry for any confusion.
.
When Siwon wakes up, it's far too sudden, his heart pumping hard and his breath caught high in his throat. It takes a while for his heartrate and breathing to return to normal, and when it does, he finds that he doesn't remember what it was that he dreamt of, what it was that left him wide-eyed and trembling, with all his nerves tingling and his body soaked in sweat. These night terrors have been on and off for a while now, and still his body can't control its reaction to what he can only assume is fear.
When Siwon wakes up, it's an ordinary Monday morning, and he slides out of bed with shaking limbs and his vision blurred with dark spots. He blinks rapidly, the spots fading to clarity, and gathers himself together - it was merely a dream, after all, like it always is; one that he can't even recall - and he gets ready to go to work.
The day passes in an unremarkable haze of entering an endless stream of numbers and figures into innumerable data tables until even during his lunch break he sees numbers printed in small black lines across his dry sandwich. But work is work, and he needs it to eat and pay rent, so he doesn't complain, simply rests his wrists on his desk every once in a while, stretching his fingers (one, two, three, all the way up to ten and back down again) and gazing out his office window to give his strained eyes a break. Outside is all grey skies and grey streets with grey people scurrying to and fro, and when he turns back to his computer monitor, he's left with an odd feeling of exhaustion, rather than relief.
He steps onto the train at the end of the day, tired from sitting at a desk and punching numbers into the company database, and wonders fleetingly if this is all this life will amount to - a certificate touting a double major in accounting and economics, the top 5% of his graduating class, over-qualified and unmoving in his boring desk job. When he takes a seat on the train, settling his laptop bag over his lap, he covers his yawn with his hand and allows his eyes to slip closed. The familiar sounds of the train make soothing white noise in the background, and he drifts, mind drowsing somewhere between asleep and awake. Snatches of soft conversation and the murmur-whisper-rumble of a hundred people travelling to a hundred destinations permeate his consciousness in waves.
He's jostled awake when someone sits down next to him and bumps his elbow, but he just pulls his bag closer and retracts his arm with a muttered apology, his eyes barely opening.
He's halfway back to that dozing state when the person beside him says, hesitantly, in a voice he hasn't forgotten for four years, 'Siwon-sshi? Choi Siwon?'
His eyes flutter open reluctantly, and with the sway of the bodies standing before him, the smooth jerk pull hold of the train, the world - or maybe just the subway car - almost seems as though it's tilting away from gravity. He turns and doesn't expect to see the face he spent years trying to forget. The sleepiness is making him unable to think fast enough for a situation like this, to pretend he doesn't care or that he didn't miss him, so he just smiles, genuine, surprised, and perhaps a little sleepy, and says his Korean name, his upper body dipping on reflex into a small bow.
'Hankyung-sshi.'
-
It's surreal, that Hankyung is still as affable as ever, still just as friendly and warm as he was when they were together, asking questions about Siwon's life and job and what he's been doing. His voice is familiar and unchanged, and eases steadily though the sleep-heavy fog of Siwon's mind. He's careful not to overstep any possible boundaries or delve too far back into the past, and Siwon is grateful, as he is far too tired to think of a tactful, non-desperate way to ask why he really left. Hankyung himself is doing well, back in Seoul to teach dance - ballet, actually - after being in China for a few years.
(It's muffled when muttered into a shoulder, a soft echo when held between lips against an ear: 'Call me when you get there, okay?'
The pause is a beat too long, followed by his own laughter that isn't quite nervous or awkward. It just is.
'Just to stop me from worrying. Call me, Geng.'
The telephone stays quiet for exactly six days, five hours and twenty-three minutes after Geng's scheduled flight arrival time. When he calls, Siwon is at school - the same class hours he's had for the whole semester - and he leaves a message:
'Siwon-ah, I. I need to stay in Beijing for - awhile.' There is a crackle of static, a sigh across a distance too far for a single breath to span. 'I'm not coming back. Don't wait up for me.'
There are two ways to take that sentence, and Siwon is not naive enough to be optimistic about its meaning.
'I'm sorry.' A click, and then the dial tone. He deletes the message, and cancels his flight.)
His Korean is still fluent despite the years away from Korea, though his pronunciation has worsened considerably. Siwon finds himself watching his lips - the words seem to flow differently from Hankyung's mouth, and there is some part of him that wants to tuck each part of this encounter away to remember, in case it is all just a dream. He learns that Hankyung has only been back for two weeks and is still having trouble adjusting, not just to the language, but to the lifestyle as well - Beijing and Korea may both be two big cities, but they're also two different cities. His mind must have been lulled back to a quiet slumber by the gentle rocking motion of the train, because his mouth moves and offers his phone number, extends an invitation to coffee sometime, or tea. Maybe rice cakes and soju, if he's ever in the mood, because while Siwon doesn't mention this to the man beside him, he knows what it's like to be in a bustling city where you have friends, but no one to call on a Saturday night.
There is a pause - the doors of the subway car hiss open, commuters stream out and then in like a coastal tide in transit - and Hankyung looks at him with his large eyes. The doors close with a hushing noise and slight suction and the train begins to move again, and the jerk of the car seems to set him in motion. His smile is small but sincere and Siwon catches the curve of it with his gaze.
'Sure,' he says, 'But we can go without the soju, unless you drink now.'
Siwon smiles back instinctively and enters his number into the proffered handphone. When he hands it back to Hankyung, he doesn't tell him to call him. He doesn't really expect him to, either.
They talk a little more, until the sexless automated voice declares their arrival at Cheongdam station and Hankyung looks up and loops his arm through the strap on his bag. Siwon watches him exit the car, raising his hand in a polite wave when Hankyung half-turns back with a smile. The doors close behind him, and the standing passengers seem to melt into the space he left behind as he lets his eyelids drift back closed. He lets his thoughts wander aimlessly, back and forth and ever-changing, and he ends up dozing again, missing his stop, and has to take the opposite train back the way he came.
('What are you doing with all these clothes? Are we going somewhere? ...Kyung. Geng. Geng, what are you doing?'
'I-I'm just going to stay with my mother for a while. She's sick, I want to make sure she's okay.'
'Hyung - ge, she's in Beijing with a head cold, are you seriously going to fly... you're going to fly there.'
Silence but for the rustling of clothes, the crinkle of plastic - the slam of a door, the rush of two sighs.)
When he gets home, he forgoes his regular visit to the gym, barely having enough energy as it is to reheat last night's leftover rice and pick out some kimchi for dinner. Everything is tasteless in his mouth.
He sleeps fitfully that night, tossing and turning and tangling the sheets around his sweating body, and dreams of darkness and bright lights fading in the sunrise over the cityscape.
Something like a week goes by without so much as a missed call, and Siwon almost forgets about the brief exchange on the train; its brevity, along with the way his attention and consciousness always seem to drift during the commute home, serves to create this unreality surrounding the likelihood of its actual occurrence. He has almost convinced himself that it had all been one of those unexpected, though not unwelcome, semi-lucid dreams that his mind sometimes constructs while caught between two states of consciousness.
His night terrors continue to persist, and he's beginning to think that maybe he should talk to his doctor about them - maybe there's some psychological basis for the dreams that seize his body at night. He makes an appointment three days into the week, and follows it with a reminder in his appointment book, underlined once in blue ink that smudges a little from his ballpoint pen. On the fifth day, he comes back to his apartment from the doctor's office with a hastily-scrawled prescription for sleeping pills and an unsettled mind. With the sixth day come the filled prescription and two pills downed with a glass of water before bed. He's out like a light, and wakes up late the seventh day, disoriented and slightly dizzy with a strange, empty taste in his mouth. He's not sure if he prefers this to the sweating and shaking. At least he'd always been to work on time.
Something like a week of mornings spent retching nothing into his toilet bowl goes by before his phone lights up on rainy day while he's at work. It buzzes along the wood of his desk with an unfamiliar number flashing on the screen. He picks it up as if in a dream and lets it ring, once, twice, then answers the call and sets the phone to his ear.
Hankyung's voice is apologetic and kind when it comes across the line - he'd been caught up with some problems at work, he tells Siwon, and he wanted to - he would've called earlier, see, but things had been so hectic... is Siwon at work right now, should he call back later? Siwon just smiles, and despite not being face-to-face with the other man, gestures with his free hand as he tells him it's okay, things like that happen. He understands how some things don't quite turn out the way you'd wanted them to.
(‘Hey, are you alright?’
The comforting slide of hands onto tense shoulders is stilled and echoed by the rasp of cotton blankets against skin.
‘I’m fine, Siwon-ah. Let’s just sleep, okay?’
There’s the click of the lamp, and silence.)
There's a barely perceptible pause before Hankyung picks the conversation up smoothly, a politely regretful, 'Well, it probably took me too long to call, anyway,' that Siwon doesn't read into any more than necessary. 'Anyway, I wanted to ask - well, are you free later today?'
Siwon reminds himself that meeting an old friend (an ex? He's never liked that term - it seems so insignificant and cruel, to reduce someone you once loved or someone you still love to a short, sharp syllable that rings of finality) is no guarantee or invitation for re-establishing a relationship, and agrees to meet Hankyung for lunch at an eatery he's never heard of, two blocks from his workplace.
The rain has lessened to a misty drizzle by the time he steps out of the office to meet the other man, and it settles in his chest as a cold marker of discomfort. When he finds the place - a tiny, nondescript hole-in-the-wall of a family restaurant, made to look American but serving an odd combination of Korean and Western food - he settles down at one of the high-backed vinyl booths to wait for Hankyung.
It’s warm inside the restaurant, and cozy, in a friendly, potted-plastic-plant sort of way that serves to warm his body a little from the cold outside. The waitress that comes to serve him looks like a college student, her body plump beneath her uniform and her features soft beneath a fringe of dark hair, and promises to bring him tea even though he assures her he’ll wait for his friend first before ordering.
When she leaves the table, shoes squeaking slightly against the linoleum floor, he picks up the laminated menu and turns it over aimlessly, scanning the menu items, but his mind goes back to the dreams that have begun invading the relatively newfound peace of his nights once again. They don't disturb him as much as they used to, before the sleeping pills, but now the sweat and the shaking has been replaced by the same one dream each night. It's dark and confusing, this recurring dream with the lights and the stairs, and he recalls it only as the briefest of impressions: the flash of a soft mouth and a stubbornly set chin, a flight of stairs leading up to a flare of light, and always, always a brilliant stripe of gold obscuring his vision before it all fades to black and his eyelids snap open.
He allows it to sink back from the focus of his thoughts, instead turning his attention to the rain-streaked window beside him, and gazes out at the street past the trickling raindrops. Despite the weather, he can still track the blurred forms of people rushing around outside under the cover of umbrellas and soggy newspapers. One of the blurs suddenly veers to the front of the restaurant, still hidden beyond an umbrella that collapses upon itself as the door opens with a jingle and a rush of sound from the traffic and the rain outside. When the door closes, the whoosh of tyres on the street is a lingering echo amidst the quiet of the near-empty restaurant.
Hankyung’s face appears from behind the umbrella when it lowers and snaps closed, his eyes scanning the tables, and a smile of recognition tugs at the corner of Hankyung’s lips and lights his eyes when he spots Siwon at a booth in the corner. Siwon ignores the long-forgotten fluttering in his stomach upon seeing Hankyung smile, choosing to rise a little and gesture towards the opposite side of the booth as the other man makes his way towards him.
When Hankyung sits, his umbrella dripping water underneath the table, Siwon finds himself almost helpless in the rush of familiarity that the situation presents to him. Insignificant memories that seemed a lifetime ago rise to the surface of his mind, and he remembers dinner dates, cooking together in a tiny dorm kitchen, ordering take-out and eating in, all alongside the same man smiling at him now. They exchange a customary greeting, and he almost feels jittery with nerves.
‘There’s just one thing I wanted to say first,’ Hankyung suddenly starts, threading his fingers together. Siwon watches his hands as they flutter apart and settle together again, restless. ‘I just, I just wanted to make my intentions clear - I’m not expecting… anything, Siwon-ah,’ he fiddles with the cuff of his jacket, and looks up to meet Siwon’s gaze with clear eyes, ‘but I’d like if we could, could be friends again. If we could start over.’
He wonders if Hankyung knows he would still do anything for him. He wonders if it’s sensible, trusting someone who hurt him so much. He wonders if it’s possible for them to have what they used to. He wonders too much, he knows, and does too little. That still hasn’t changed.
‘I’d like that,’ is all he says, ‘I’ve missed you.’
Not yet will he confront Hankyung - he wants this friendship still, and doesn’t want to destroy it before it’s even given a chance to walk on its own. Siwon will wait for whenever he’s ready to tell him why everything fell apart.
The tea comes before either of them can say anything else, and when he thanks the waitress with a smile her face blushes a pretty pink in the blue-white buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights. They place their orders, Hankyung quickly glancing over the menu and picking something (kimchi fried rice) seemingly at random, Siwon ordering the daily special (vegetarian sandwich with small beef broth soup), and it seems to be an unspoken agreement to put the past behind them, at least for now, as Hankyung starts talking about the class he taught in the morning.
Siwon worried that meeting Hankyung again would be awkward; that the easy flow of conversation on the train was simply because of his own exhaustion at the time. As it turns out, after their first hesitant exchange, Hankyung is just as easy to talk to as he was on the train, and he finds the conversation, which ranges from everything from the whereabouts of old college mates to the pros and cons of haptic phones (‘Can’t use them when it’s cold, you have to use bare hands.’ ‘What about those gloves without fingertips?’ ‘Defeats the purpose of the gloves, though…’), carrying on without so much as an uncomfortable pause as the food gradually disappears. When his watch beeps, telling him his lunch break is over, it is as though no time has passed at all, and he sets down the small fork with which he’d been gesturing with a start of surprise.
‘Sorry, Hankyung… I’ve got to get back to work,’ he says, palms braced against the edge of the table, and he finds that he really is sorry - he wants nothing more than to sit here with Hankyung and just listen to him talk about the children he teaches, his own strict dance teacher in China, and all the other stories he tells that fill in the missing spaces between the them back then and the them right now. When he speaks, more is said through the tilt of his head and his faraway eyes than any other spoken dialogue, and Siwon catalogues it all away into the part of his mind that whispers to him, this is another chance. Don’t screw it up again.
‘Call me Geng, Siwon. Hankyung sounds too formal - and I don’t know if I’m used to the Korean yet,’ he pauses before looking down at his hands and adding, ‘Do you really have to go so soon?’
Maybe this is all Siwon’s been waiting for: an invitation to stay longer, to spend a little more time away from the monotony of his daily routine. He thinks of the columns of numbers going absolutely nowhere, thinks of twenty-seven year old Hankyung, achingly reminiscent of Han Geng at twenty-three but a different person entirely (he wears a necklace with a pendant Siwon’s never seen before resting below the base of his throat, just visible past the collar of his dark jacket. It looks like it would be a comforting weight in the palm; it looks like it carries meaning). There are four years of his life Siwon only now has an inkling about, and Siwon’s desire to know is almost overwhelming when the words rush out from him: ‘I can leave work early, if you wanted to do something?’
Geng’s smile is all the answer Siwon needs, his ‘Sure, yeah, I’d like to,’ just a supplement to the happiness that warms the inside of his chest more than the hot, strong tea steaming in the mug beside him.
The rain has petered off to barely a sprinkling from the sky, and is almost refreshing when he leaves the restaurant with Geng to pick up his bag from work, begging off the rest of the day with a flimsy excuse to his boss: ‘I’m not feeling too well, sajangnim - do you mind if I take the rest of the day off?’ He tries to look as pale and drawn and pathetic as he possibly can, and secretly rejoices when she presses her lips together in an almost maternal fashion and lets him go with a stiff reminder to keep himself healthy. He gets a silly little rebellious thrill while he’s in the elevator heading back downstairs, and wonders why he’s never tried this before until he remembers that he’s never had Geng waiting outside for him; he’s never had a reason to skip off on his work that seemed as pertinent as this.
Seeing Geng’s figure bathed in the brilliant, post-rain sunlight of the afternoon as Siwon shoulders his way out of the doors of the office building convinces him that it’s worth it. Geng’s happy, carefree smile when he sees Siwon coming toward him gives him the feeling that this won’t be the last time it’ll happen.
(The alarm goes off.
There is a pause, as the beeping becomes insistent, then a tired, drawn-out groan, followed by the fumbling of a hand over the bedside table. It ends with a slam and the clatter of plastic onto the carpet.
An unmanly giggle, another groan muffled by a pillow, then - ‘Screw it, who thought of seven AM classes in the first place?’ - the sounds of two smiles meeting in the sleepy silence of early morning.)
A week later finds Siwon on the phone in the morning of a particularly sunny day, charming his boss into letting him take a day off (he doesn’t quite remember his excuse - likely it involves a sickly aunt or a newborn niece or nephew) and leaving his apartment with that same silly thrill running through his whole body. He doesn’t remember the last time he took a whole day off, least of all on a day like today.
As he runs downstairs, he gets a call - it’s Geng - and he picks it up, unable to stop a grin from splitting his face as he jumps down the last couple of stairs to the ground level. He tells Geng he’ll be there soon, in about ten minutes, and they meet at the front of the water park in brightly coloured swim shorts and t-shirts.
‘Race you,’ says Geng, and Siwon doesn’t care that he’s twenty-five and more than ten years too old for this - he books it madly to the nearest pool and dive bombs into the deep end.
When their fingertips wrinkle and they tire of swimming and splashing around (and Siwon gets too much chlorine up his nose), they play cops and robbers around the park, the leaves crunching under Siwon’s bare feet and his hair obscuring his vision in wet strands. Siwon almost manages to stay upright when he slips on a particularly resilient leaf, but gravity, as always, wins, and he finds himself with his face planted in the grass and his butt in the air.
Siwon is twenty-five years old, a Korea University graduate with a double major in accounting and economics, and works for a respectable accounting firm.
But when he hears Geng laughing so hard that he doesn’t even care when Siwon tackles him from behind, holding his hand up to Geng’s head like a gun and cackling like a madman, he is five years old again, just a kid without a care in the world, and the happiest he’s been in years.
-
In the months that follow, Siwon’s day to day routine takes a more exciting turn. It’s not like he’s going to raves or joining rock bands or taking spontaneous flights to exotic locations - he still works at his dull office job, eight to five, Monday to Friday, statutory holidays excluded, and he’s still plagued by the same mysterious dream, which is turning up with more frequency than ever before and occupying the tiny recesses of his mind. It doesn’t bother him too terribly, though - Geng often calls him with suggestions of interesting places to eat at and things to see or do all around South Korea (most often than not, his phone calls are littered by questions beginning with, ‘Have you ever…’ and most often than not, Siwon’s answer is, ‘No, but let’s go this week.’), and it distracts him well enough from the dream as he discovers, or rediscovers, more about his city and his old friend in two months than he has in his four years out of college.
After Geng left, he’d forgot what life with him was like, instead wondering what he’d done wrong and wallowing in all the insecurities and feelings of inadequacy that arose when he realized that Geng wasn’t coming back. He forgot that even in the past their time together had often been spent discovering new things about Seoul and about each other (wishes, dreams, memories, and in the dark comfort of the night or the quiet of the morning, bodies and all the ways they could love one another).
He forgot how easy and simple life was - is - with Han Geng.
With his terrible written Korean, his handy inability to understand the language at times that benefit him, his cooking that makes Siwon feel not so alone on Saturday nights, and his laugh lines that lend a kind air to his face… just like before, he's become an integral part of Siwon's daily existence. Something about his easy familiarity and his sweetness and his soft voice allow Geng's existence to slip easily back into his routine - except now, the monotony and day-to-day repetition seem timeless in their absolute simplicity. It's not quite beautiful, subtle and with a sense of lasting not seen in classic romances, because even though it's no longer the exciting, trembling first love it was in college, it's absolutely the same in the comfort it brings to Siwon.
Having gotten caught up in his daily ennui, Siwon comes to realize that he’s forgotten many things about Geng that, once upon a time, he thought he’d never forget. One of these is brought to light one evening Geng comes to pick him up from work and they take the subway to the stop nearest the studio where Geng is teaching. It’s a short walk from the station to the studio, the sidewalk they take running alongside a park with a children’s playground and a basketball court, and they walk it in a peaceful silence. The air is crisp and cool in the early evening, and Siwon notices that the other man’s sweatshirt is a little too light for the weather - he sees goosebumps rising over the exposed skin by Hankyung’s neck, against the necklace he always wears. He quashes the compelling urge to wrap his arms around him, shoving his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat, and says nothing. A child no older than five trips over something in the park and starts wailing for his mother as they walk past, and the sounds of his cries follow them to the studio, ringing in Siwon’s ears.
Geng’s small apartment is situated above the studio, but although Siwon has often visited the studio when he and Geng are meeting to go out somewhere, he has never been upstairs. The studio itself is a typical dance studio - there are barres running along two opposite walls, and the far wall is also lined with a wall-to-wall mirror that reflects all of their movements as they step through the door. Siwon always finds himself feeling self-conscious before the mirror while waiting for Geng to finish packing up from a lesson, children milling around them and chattering a mile a minute, and feels even more so now. At home, he doesn’t bother too much with his reflection - just washes up and heads to either bed or breakfast, according to the time of day - and so the wall-to-wall mirror is almost unnerving when it’s just him and Geng in the empty studio space.
In lieu of focusing on his reflection, he concentrates on Geng’s slim frame, all long limbs as he toes off his shoes and pulls his sweatshirt over his head, tossing the clothing beside the stereo system in the opposite corner of the room. Siwon sinks to the floor against the wall without the mirror and waits until Geng presses a button on the stereo, walking to the center of the room as the opening strains of a melody uncurl into the space around and between them.
He is still for a moment, his back facing Siwon. He looks as though he is trembling with the effort of containing a magnificent, intangible force - perhaps the music - within his human skin, and Siwon can see Geng’s eyes slide closed in the mirror before his body twists and straightens up into an effortless pirouette. It plots itself in points of slow-motion in Siwon’s mind; arm, elbow, ankle and curved foot; and then all arching, an explosion of movement as his limbs pitch his body into a graceful leap, and Siwon almost forgets to breathe.
He forgot what it was like to watch Geng dance, all fluid lines and perfectly effortless movement across the floor. He feels twenty again; awkward in his body and harboring the most secret of secret crushes on a friend of a friend, a soft-spoken dancer with a kind face whose conversations he keeps close to his heart. He feels unspeakably young again. Naïve.
He watches him dance and just lets it all go - lets the music work its way into him as well. He could never dance like Geng - he didn’t have that natural rhythm engrained in his very bones like Geng seemed to. He thinks that it may be part of the reason he fell so easily for him, back then; he wanted to be able to breathe in that sheer aliveness that Geng seemed to possess, even in the times he was quiet and still among their group of friends. He thinks that it may be part of the reason he’s falling for him again, now, twenty-five and alone, twenty-five and his life held in stasis. He doesn’t want to die like this.
It’s a hesitant sort of self-confession, though - he’s not sure if he’s in love with this Geng, his reprieve from the dull repetition of his life before they ran into each other that evening only a few months ago, or the shy, sweet Geng of four years ago, whom he loved with all the enthusiasm that came from a meaningful first love that blossomed from friendship.
Geng is coming down from his movement, small leaps across the floor that barely make a sound, and he finishes in another pirouette, his extensions slow and beautiful as he turns on one foot, sinking to the floor as the song winds to an end, and Siwon is surprised to find that he’s crying.
They’re both crying.
He quickly presses his palms to his own eyes, wiping away the tears on his cheeks and hoping Geng doesn’t notice. He doesn’t look up until he feels a body collapse beside him, and Geng’s voice, steadier than his own would be, murmurs something that he can’t quite hear.
When he does look up, he meets Geng’s eyes in the mirror across the room, and he struggles for a moment to articulate his thoughts. In the end, all he can manage is, ‘You’re still a beautiful dancer, Geng.’ His gaze traces the lines of his face and his pendant falling below his collarbones and the slight outline of his chest under his tank top as Geng catches his breath, and he reminds himself to do the same.
Geng smiles, breathless, eyes red in his reflection, and turns his head to look at Siwon - he can see the motion in the mirror, Geng’s profile, Siwon’s own face. His dark, straight brows and handsome features somehow pale in comparison to the life thrumming through the veins and arteries in Geng’s body, and he doesn’t know if he can meet his gaze and capture it all within his eyes without canting forward and drinking it in with dry lips and shaking hands.
‘Thank you,’ he hears, sees Geng’s mouth in his reflection form the words, and then quieter: ‘I learnt a lot in China.’
The words don’t echo in the empty room. They sink into Siwon’s bones and feel heavy, caught within him - he doesn’t quite know what they mean.
He watches Geng turn to face the mirror again, and their eyes don’t meet.
That night the dream comes again, and this time the stairs spin around him in a dizzying kaleidoscope of blinking lights. He wants to reach out and steady the world with his hands, but by the time he stretches out his fingertips, the lights are far away and fading, and he can’t move. Everything holds, for one long moment out of reach, and then it all explodes into a brilliant, bursting gold that blinds him to darkness.
(The music stops and is immediately replaced by applause in the practice room.
‘I’m the luckiest guy in the world, you know that? That was beautiful. I wish you could’ve seen yourself dancing.’
‘I still have a lot to learn, though.’
‘You’ve got all the time you need, Geng. You’re amazing already.’
‘I didn’t mean the dancing.’
‘…You idiot,’ a smile threatens to overturn the words completely, ‘You’re perfect.’)
Two weeks later, Geng asks him if he’d like to go to a club, and Siwon accepts because it’s been too long since he’s spent some time enjoying Seoul’s nightlife. He doesn’t think the gym counts.
They meet at the club, and it’s not long before they’re inside the dark room, all slick black floors, flashing lights and gyrating bodies, and the DJ is raised up above the crowd like some kind of demi-god. Siwon can barely remember the last time he went to a club, and is a little taken aback by the overwhelming thereness of it all until Geng grabs his hand and drags him straight to the middle of the crowd with a persuasive smile, the stripe of gold fabric at the back of his shirt shining with a ripple of lights and the movement of his body.
On the dance floor, Geng grins at him, and coloured patches of light slide over the beaming expression of his face and the smooth skin of his bare arms and reflect off of his necklace in shards of cellophane hued light. He doesn’t know how long they dance for; only that he’s pressed close to Geng, pushed closer with the rising, rollicking pull of the surrounding crowd, and the heat of Geng’s body is like a burning brand in all the places they touch. He can feel the other man moving against him, can hear him humming along breathlessly to the melody of the song almost drowned by the amplified bass, can see the sheen of sweat over the muscle in his arms, in the skin above his shirt, along the column of his neck. He wants to bend down and tilt Geng’s jaw up with his fingertips, he wants to run his lips over the smooth column and taste the salt lingering on the skin and the metallic links of his necklace, he wants to press into him in all the ways he knows how, he wants to sink down onto a bed and kiss him until they can’t breathe, he wants to curl his arms around him, wants to fall asleep with him in his arms, he, he wants to - he wants -
It’s too much.
He breaks away from Geng despite how much he just wants to fall into him, because he needs to get away from the suddenly dangerously familiar heat of his body and his easy smile, the same from so many years ago. He breaks away and runs, blindly pushing through the crowd, but the bodies hold him back, the mass of people that move together. He fights the clutching hands and inviting smiles until he’s stumbling outside, staggering down the steps and breathing in night air untainted by cigarette smoke and the acrid odour of sweat and alcohol. He breathes deep in an attempt to catch himself before he can’t remember how he fell.
Tiny lights line the outside of the club in rows, and from the bottom of the steps he can still see the pulsing flashes of strobe lights within the club. He can hear someone coming towards the exit, and knowing the cadence of Geng’s footsteps, hating that he knows it, he turns around, pushing a frustrated hand through his hair. When it comes down, it’s grabbed by a familiar hand, and he spins around to tug it from Geng’s grasp.
‘Stop it,’ he whispers fiercely, trying not to attract unnecessary attention.
He knows he’s overreacting, but the pounding bass from inside the club is throbbing in his head and the bright lights in the darkness of the night are making him feel dizzy and irrational, his blood rushing through his veins in a course run by confused frustration and adrenaline left from dancing so close to Geng in the dark of the pulsating crowd.
Geng looks bewildered as he asks, ‘What’s wrong, Siwon? Do you not feel well?’ Immediately he moves in front of Siwon, grasping his arms and trying to look into his eyes. The concern written on his face is as suffocating as the sweaty heat of his palms against Siwon’s skin, and Siwon rips his arms away, staggering backward and glaring at Geng, his heart pounding and his fists clenched, nails digging into his palms. The words tear out from his throat in a desperate attempt to place distance between them.
‘It’s not the same anymore, Geng! Things have changed. We’ve changed. We can’t go back to how it used to be, and nothing is going to change that, okay? Just… just stop trying.’
The look on Geng’s face - shocked and stung by the unexpected barbs - is enough to break his heart. He tries not to choke on the bile rising in his throat and swallows hard as he brushes past Geng, and it doesn’t feel like he’s the one controlling his body as he hails a cab and ducks inside. All his emotions prickle on the surface of his skin, mingling with each other in strange shapes and making his blood feel too hot in his body in the relative coolness of the cab as it takes off down the street. He can see Geng in his mind’s eye; can see the hurt line of his body and the rigid set of his shoulders in the darkness, his head turned just slightly. There’s some part of him that wishes Geng would run after him, run after the cab like the male leads always do in the dramas and movies, but he knows that would never happen. Life is not a movie and there aren’t always emotional confessionals and happy endings. People are too afraid for their own emotions to lay themselves bare the way actors pretend to.
('Hello?'
'Hi, um, Hankyung? Geng?'
'Yeah - who's this?'
'It's... Siwon, Choi Siwon, we met the other day - I'm Heechul's under-classman...'
'Oh, Siwon! What's up?'
'This might be a little forward of me, but I was just wondering if... I was wondering if you'd, uh, ever tried the coffeeshop outside the university, they make very good coffee and...'
A laugh comes over the line - 'Are you asking me out on a date?' - and immediate denial, 'No, no, not a date, just, I just wondered if you wanted to - uh, talk, over coffee, sometime -'
The laugh comes over the line again, quiet but amused, 'I'd love to. Tomorrow okay with you? Like at eleven?'
'Sure! Yes, that works.'
'Alright, see you then.' )
He’s not sure if he’s afraid for his heart, or afraid of it.
He wants to hit something, but, at the same time, his body can’t seem to muster up the energy to move - so he sits stiffly in the backseat, back ramrod-straight and elbow by the window, his hand held still over his mouth. He presses his lips together tightly and watches the glowing smears of streetlights like golden comets across his window as the cab winds its way through the streets and back to his apartment, and doesn’t cry.
-
It feels weird, in the ensuing days, because he’s going to work like always, going to the gym like always, doing all the things that came before Geng did and remained while he was in Siwon’s life, and Siwon’s not stupid enough to think that there’s another reason as to why he feels so empty inside. It feels weird, because he knows that he misses Geng, perhaps even more than he did when Geng left him for China.
It feels weird, because he’s the one running now, avoiding all of Geng’s calls until five calls a day becomes three becomes one and then they stop coming altogether. His days start to feel incomplete without talking to Geng, and he hates himself for how dependent he’s become on the other’s presence. Geng walked back into Siwon’s life so abruptly and unexpectedly that the loss of it leaves Siwon feeling out of sorts and strange, going through the motions of his life without truly thinking.
Sometimes he wonders if this is how it would have been if he’d never met Geng on that train, and the outlook is so bleak he stops wondering altogether.
Sometimes he walks by the studio, if he happens to be in that part of the city, and finds himself caught in the faint rhythm of music within - it pulls him to an unsteady halt and holds him for one faltering moment on the street outside. He never enters, though - just passes on and doesn’t look back.
The emptiness of his days bleeds into his nights and circles back to haunt him as his recurring dream becomes a nightmare - he sees the lights on the wall of the club that night in the dizzying, spinning lights of his dream; the black of the night sky manifests itself in the enveloping darkness; the liquid, gold stripe of fabric at the back of Geng’s shirt morphs and explodes into the metallic fires that destroy his dream-eyes. He takes three pills each night, now.
-
He’s not sure what he expects to happen now, but it’s certainly not what occurs one day when he’s heading home from work. As he approaches his apartment building, his eyes catch the casual slouch of someone leaning against the outside, features half-hidden in shadows. He doesn't need light to recognize the far too familiar figure leaning against the outside of the building, and he rushes to the door with his key, but Geng’s already spotted him - he reaches out into the light and snags Siwon’s sleeve, and his please, Siwon is all it takes for him to cave and let him follow him up.
The first thing Geng says, when they’re seated on Siwon’s couch with coffee in front of them, is an apology.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and it sounds like he’s choking. Siwon stirs his coffee and doesn’t know what to say.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeats, and it’s a little stronger. Siwon looks up, and there’s something in Geng’s eyes that he saw in his own, in the mirror of his dorm room four years ago. Something inside of him breaks, then, and he sets down his spoon, his head bowed forward, and allows Geng to give him the explanation he's waited for since he was twenty-one and alone, insecure and scared.
Geng’s voice stops and starts in parts, and it washes over him in a tidal wave of emotion when he whispers, you were too good for me; I was scared of how easy, how simple it all was; I was in love and over my head, and at the last, Siwon thinks he’s about to cry.
‘I was scared back then, and you’re scared now… but I want this to work, Siwon. I told you before, I don’t expect anything else,’ he shifts closer and takes hold of Siwon’s hand, ‘I just want my friend back.’
Siwon stares down at their entwined hands, at Geng’s long fingers interwoven with his own, and closes his eyes at the sight. He brings their hands up, and presses his lips chastely to the knuckle of Geng’s index finger, before letting go with a sigh. He’s not sure he trusts himself enough to speak properly, but he tries anyway, and the croaky alright that leaves his throat seems to convey all he wants to say.
Alright, he whispers, and the soft smile that tilts the corners of Geng’s mouth gives Siwon hope that things will be okay. He lets it all go.
-
At twenty-five years old, Choi Siwon is not entirely happy with his life, but he’s getting there.
When he wakes, it’s with the good-natured groan of an accountant in a desk job that he’s over-qualified for and has to wake up at six-thirty in the morning to get to. He spends his days staring at a computer screen, entering columns of numbers into columns of data tables, and feels himself deteriorating into the seat of his chair.
When he gets off work, though, he goes gallivanting around the city like a child, go-karting or trying the tiny Ethiopian restaurant half-hidden in an alleyway by his apartment building. Often it's exhilarating, other times comforting, and other times still he's just happy, living his simple life like this, Geng leading him by the hand or allowing himself to be led by Siwon, but always by his side.
When he dreams, it is blissfully devoid of a striking darkness or a golden flash that burns his eyes in its brightness. He dreams instead of normal things, silly, dream-like things like ice cream cake and aquatic animals and turning up at work naked, and if he sometimes dreams of Geng’s elegant hands and the smooth movement of his graceful dancer’s body, he’s fine with it. They aren’t together, but they’re together, and for now, Siwon thinks he’s okay with that.
(‘Oh! Ni hao. Wo... wo ming zhe - Siwon.’
A bemused smile half-hidden in a bow, and an accented but perfectly articulate, ‘Hi, it’s nice to meet you.’
An embarrassed silence of surprise is recovered by a quiet laugh: ‘Heechul should’ve told you I can speak Korean,’ and his smile can be heard when he introduces himself, ‘I’m Hankyung, but you can call me Geng. Not quite used to the Korean, yet.’
Their hands clasp and slide away - a shift of a bag on a shoulder, two sets of footsteps, and ‘So what do you major in, Siwon?’ - the dawning sounds of friendship.)