Sway 2/4

[warmboys]

Title: Sway
Pairing: Han Geng/Amber, Heechul/Eunhyuk, Heechul/Hankyung
Rating: R
Summary: Collisions, and the vehicles that carry them there.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4



STARE DOWN THE SUN

Amber’s waiting in line to buy a donut. She has a thing for the plain glazed ones. She doesn’t care if she gains weight. She’s unlike any girl he’s ever dated. He’s glad he can reach around her and squeeze the little jiggle of fat around her waist. There’s hardly anything, but more than nothing.

“When I was little, I thought sprinkles looked like worms from far away. Funny, how that can turn someone off them for life. I fucking hate sprinkles,” she says to him while they’re waiting in line. The expletive rolls off her tongue naturally, like she’s never had to censor herself. He feels vicariously American through her sometimes. It’s not only in her speech patterns, the rushed Mandarin. Her bangs fall in pieces before her eyes and she tosses her head to the side without moving them away. She’s the kind of person who’d survive in the desert. She’d talk enthusiastically with sand in her mouth even as it filled the grooves of her teeth.

He drags his mind away from her mouth to say something about worms and regeneration.

She places her order-“Um, the shiny ones? How do you say ‘glazed,’ Han Geng? Yeah, one of those. To go. Thanks!”-and turns to him. “Wouldn’t it be great if people could do that, too? Regrow an arm or leg. So many people get into accidents these days, but if we could just heal that easily, wouldn’t that be amazing?”

“Yeah,” he says. “That would.” He moves his arm around her waist and places the slightest pressure there. It’s instinctive to him; his body naturally behaves like that of an overprotective boyfriend. It requires less thought than saying the words, or trying to figuring out her favorite type of flower without asking.

Tulips.

The best part is she leans into him now. Her eyes don’t go wide like before. This is all smooth-paved road. Highway for their taking. Easy as.

“And this is going to sound totally corny, and you’re going to laugh at me-don’t laugh-but wouldn’t it be great if, if people could do that with, like, heartbreak? Hey, I said don’t laugh.”

He wasn’t laughing. “What? Okay, go on.”

“Like, you break up with someone, and you’re, you know, sad for a while. You go finish your roommate’s carton of Haagen Daz in the freezer (she hid it behind the frozen mixed veggies or something, Vic did that once)”-she stops, dazed at the memory, and he feels something twist in his chest: jealousy?-”so you eat your ice cream and watch, I don’t know, whatever people watch when they’re sad. I Love Lucy, or Friends, or-”

“I don’t know any of these shows.”

“You’re kidding me.” She lets out a gasp full of drama. “So no one told you life was gonna be this way? Your job’s a joke you’re broke your love life’s DOA?”

“Okay. Okay, Amber. Confession time.” He takes both of her hands in his, but it’s unfortunately the most inopportune moment ever because they’re handing her her donut on a tray, so he releases them, and she kind of side-squints at him in this irritatingly cocky way, like she just knows he needs every excuse to touch her.

Oh God, she knows.

“What were you going to say?” she asks when they’re sitting. She’s looking the donut head-on, calculating the angle of attack.

He clears his throat. “It’s not funny anymore.”

“C’mon!”

“No, it’s really lame. I don’t know what possessed me to even think it’d be funny. It’s a good thing that guy interrupted me in time. You would’ve been horrified. This would’ve been our last date.”

She’s got her mouth hanging open, ready for the first bite, but now just staring at him dumbfounded. “That’s like the longest preface to a non-joke ever. And how is this a real date? Do you take all your foreign lovers to Dunkin Donuts? Is that how they do it here?”

Here is Beijing, and Amber talks like they aren’t already sleeping together, like she doesn’t already belong to this city and its smog and dust and vibrancy. But once upon a time he did the same, only elsewhere. It made people soften their voices and treat him more kindly, like it was okay to be different if you acknowledged it self-deprecatingly.

“Are you a foreigner? I didn’t notice,” he says, conjuring up a twinkle in his eye.

“You were too distracted by the boobs,” she returns the twinkle effortlessly. Her hand brushes his over the table. He can’t stop looking at her mouth. A part of him would like to press her up against the plastic decor and feel her warm and irreverent underneath him. He’d cup her face with one hand and deftly unbutton her jeans with the other, slide under the thin elastic of her panties, over the coarse patch of hair, and watch her face contort with a shade of violence, seesawing between pleasure and restraint, as she let him touch her there, and there, and there.

Fuck, he is hard under the table, and she is-still licking away at that donut.

“What can I say? I’ve always wanted a pair of my own-” he starts off cheekily, but is interrupted by a rustle, and a corner of today’s paper held up by the guy one table over catches his eye.

Young writer-

New novel-

Beijing-

Landed yesterday-

‘Gold’ ‘Hope’-

Oh.

It’s like the air suddenly constricts and expands at the same time. It feels like a joke, a cruel one of cosmic proportions, but one that surprises nobody, like something that shows up at your doorstep to say, I’m back.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to Geng-tits,” Amber continues, with the kind of squinty gaze that just five seconds ago would’ve brought him to his knees, but now.

“Oh God,” he says without thinking.

She frowns, but it hasn’t hit her. She won’t know-she can’t know. “Oh God what?”

It’s okay. That was years and years ago. Let’s just forget it. Focus. Look, an interesting stain in the shape of Africa on the wall. Look, the beautiful woman sitting across from you. The one who’s pretty much yours, if you asked.

He blinks everything into place. A strand of her hair is stuck to crumbs of donut glaze collecting at the corner of her mouth, which hangs slightly open to show him exactly what stage of chewed-up the former donut now inhabits. Pleasantly Mauled.

“I’m just-visualizing them,” he finishes and forces a laugh up his throat. She pauses for a minute, and then her eyes roll over, and she’s, he knows it, charmed. It’s easy with her.

He files the ache away and watches her ravage the entire pastry in two bites.

- - -

The first thing he’d noticed, when she’d tripped into the room, was her hair, too dark to be natural. She had dyed it-and redyed it black. It glinted in the light. She found her balance and smiled at him.

And then, the second piercing, and the third. A tiny cross in the hole. A tinier hole in the cartilage, when she turned her head to ponder over a question he asked. He wondered what usually filled it. A black stone, maybe.

There was something sexy about the way she moved. Awkward grace. Then the name struck a chord, and he remembered Song Qian and her little tomboy friend.

“Amber Liu?”

She’d looked surprised, then laughed, yep, that was her, and they’d chatted for the sake of old times, and the whole while he thought, Has it really been that long?

So much could change in eight years. His gaze stopped on the swell of her upper lip, the curve of her cheek, the smooth slope of her neck. She vibrated nerves and thrumming tension, the way you did on a new conquest. China-the open frontier. She was used to foreign lands. She’d survived Korea, too. She was familiar.

He looked away, ashamed.

- - -

“That’s it?” The credits roll by lazily over an indie song. Amber kneels over the arm of the couch, reaching up to turn on the light, but her hand stops above the switch. She cocks her head at him in question.

“What?” she says.

“The movie’s over? She kisses the old man and they . . . go their separate ways? Is she going to tell her husband?”

The light remains off. “I don’t know? I mean, it doesn’t matter! Two strangers find each other in a strange land-okay, well, Japan, but strange to white people-and,” she pauses, thinking. “Stuff happens. Basically the entire movie.”

He hooks his arm around her leg to help with balance. “I don’t get it. Nothing happened.”

“Sure, stuff happened. There was a prostitute. You saw those nipples, right?”

She says it with a straight face. He has no idea how. “Yes . . . but what does it mean?”

She gets off the couch, knocking his hand aside. Her feet find the ground, cold from having the AC on all day, and she crosses her arms. Shifts her weight from one leg to the other as she thinks. “It doesn’t mean anything. That’s the point. You’re not supposed to get it.”

“How can that be the point?” He laughs.

“That’s how American movies work. I mean, there’re the really cheesy ones that’re all up in your face about morals, you know, Disney and that whole enterprise, but even they’ve become more subtle about it-I think. I haven’t watched a proper Disney movie in ages. But that’s not the point-”

“Family means no one gets left behind,” he quotes, perfectly Stitch. She gapes at him and then cracks up, clapping her hands together and throwing her head back. Such a display of happiness. He could watch her for hours, he thinks, and feel invigorated. There’s a hunger in him when she’s involved.

“I love your uncanny talent for always finding the lamest thing possible to say in the moment-” she starts, wiping at her eye, and he leans over to kiss her. Her lower lip curls under his before relaxing. She lets him do it like it’s a favor.

Moments pass before they break apart. Her eyelids flutter before lifting.

“I’m not lame,” he clears his throat. “You laugh at my jokes.”

She touches the ends of her hair absentmindedly. “That’s because it’s contagious. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”

He knows she’s kidding, but the words carry a mournful quality. If anything, he doesn’t ever want to become a burden. He treads carefully.

“I thought we were talking about movies,” he says lightly. Kicks at her foot. She kicks back, harder.

“We were,” she agrees, flopping back on the sofa. So she doesn’t want to go there, either. “And now I’m hungry.” Makes puppy eyes at him.

She knows him too well, he thinks, grudgingly walking into the bathroom to grab the apron off the hook on the back of the door.

- - -

“You gotta let me go, man.”

The wind outside cuts along the side of the building. His head stills for a moment, reacting to the whistle, sharp as a knife across stone. He pulls the covers up. His hand fists and locates the shapes of feathers filling the sheets. The patterns print themselves dark over his mind.

“You gotta let me go.”

The voice is disembodied, traveling through his body, the empty vessel. He watches and hears himself as someone else.

“Let me go,” he whispers again. It isn’t clear what he expects.

- - -

“I’m ridiculously hungry.” A hand on his hip, the other slipping under his shirt.

“Again?”

“Mmhm.” Teasing at his belly button, then trailing lower. Fingers doing pirouettes over his jean zipper before pulling the snap down.

“Oh God, Heechul.”

Cold contact. Crisp and Technicolor.

He tilts his head back and wakes up again. Beside him, Amber stirs and digs her nails into the inside of his arm.

- - -

He could say a lot about the airport, with its wide open ceiling filtering light in through diamond-patterned glass, with the middle-aged woman dragging a mop across the floor, dirtying the marble she’d just cleaned with her own footprints. He thought of his mother then, and then the woman’s child, if she had one, and then he took out the red bean bun he bought from the kiosk and bit into it, filling himself with thoughts of nothing but food. A little girl sitting across from him dangled her feet over the black fake leather upholstery of the waiting area seats and complained loudly about being hungry, so he offered her the two buns he had left from the pack of three. Her grandmother said thank you and scolded the girl, who fell sullen.

Inside the plane, he sat by the window and looked at the tip of the wing before a flight attendant told him they had to roll down the window covers for a reason he couldn’t catch. Her Chinese was rich and flawed, and she’d known instantly what he was.

They didn’t serve food; it was only a two-hour flight.

They didn’t check him at customs. It was obvious, with one look, that he had nothing to smuggle in. The floppy hair, the loose jeans, topped with a belt that his father had left behind.

He wasn’t tired. He arrived in Korea on a Saturday. He begins school on Monday.

- - -

The second week of school, Han Geng sits on gum. Or rather, gum appears on his chair after lunchtime, and he doesn’t notice until it’s already attached itself to the back of his pants. It’s a tiny lump with impressive adhesive power. When he tries to stand up, the chair follows.

The culprit, however, turns himself in without much of a fight.

“You’re Chinese,” Heechul says, gliding into the seat in front of Han Geng’s. “I’m Kim Heechul.”

Han Geng knows who he is. The teacher called on him to solve a math problem on the board earlier, and Heechul had taken forever in scribbling something ambiguous that cracked the class up.

“I’m Hankyung.”

“I like Chinese people,” Heechul says. “They’re going to take over the world soon, that’s what I keep hearing.”

He looks at Hankyung expectantly. Hankyung doesn’t know what to say. At first he thinks maybe Heechul is mocking him and it’s the start of yet another not-really-funny joke about his people, but his face is unmistakably earnest.

“I don’t know about that.”

“Well,” Heechul says, unfazed. “I do. And I want to have as many Chinese friends as possible so that when they do rule the world, I’ll be right there with them.”

Hankyung takes a second to think it through. “That . . . makes sense.”

Heechul grins, and it’s almost impossibly coincidental that a cloud passes and the sun chooses that moment in time to stream in through the window and frame him in a halo of light. “You can be the first one. I’ll help you scrape off the gum after school if you want.”

Hankyung stares at him. “So you-”

“I had to make sure you’d hear me out!” Heechul says loudly. “You always run out the door after class and before lunch. My friendship proposal is very important, you know.”

It takes an hour, and the little pink blotch never quite fades entirely.

Hankyung spends a lot of time watching Heechul in class. The school may be nominally international but Koreans dominate the population. The cafeteria’s divided into sections by country; the Chinese people generally sit on the right, closest to the food, the Americans in the back left, the Japanese in their corner by the bathrooms. Et cetera. There’s no real mixing of races outside of class, as far as he can tell. But granted, he just got here. He has a lot to learn.

He thinks, maybe, he can learn it from this long-haired boy who seems inexplicably interested in befriending him.

“So, first thing you need to know, is that food is really important here. I don’t know what it’s like in China but we eat here, all the time,” Heechul explains to him while they’re waiting in the lunch line.

“It’s important to me, too,” Hankyung jokes lightly.

“Okay, well, that’s not the only thing. See, it’s also about . . . about respect, right? So when you eat, you can’t just eat,” Heechul pulls him by the collar. “You listening?”

“Yeah,” Hankyung says, eyeing the strips of beef the lunch lady is laying over a mat of rice.

“What’s the last thing I said?”

“Uh. . . . respect. Food, respect.”

Heechul smacks him upside the head. “I’m trying to teach you something, Hankyung.”

They move a step forward in line. The kid in front of Hankyung pays and moves his tray off the ledge. “I can’t even focus, I’m so hungry,” he admits before placing his order. “I’ll have . . . that one.” He points at the A set.

She rattles something off in rapidfire Korean, and he stares at her dully before nodding. “Yes, ma’am.”

“She asked if you wanted ginger on top of the rice,” Heechul translates, snickering.

“Oh. Uh, yes, please?”

Heechul pokes him with his elbow. “What would you do without me?”

“I have no idea,” Hankyung replies honestly. “I thought I did okay for the past sixteen years, but now that you’ve . . .” he pauses, looking for the right word. “-entered my life, things haven’t been the same.”

Without warning Heechul starts cackling. “I’ve heard that song before.”

“That wasn’t a song!”

“No, no,” Heechul explains, calming down. “What you just said? That’s what we call ‘really cheesy’ in Korean. When someone asks, ‘What would you do without me?’-say it with me, Hankyung!- ”

“. . . What would you do without me?”

“Oh, you gonna eat that egg?” Heechul dangles a pair of chopsticks over Hankyung’s bowl, eyes gleaming.

“What?” Hankyung is utterly lost.

Heechul lowers his weapon of choice. “It was an example. It’s a rhetorical question-something you’re not supposed to answer, really. You took it way too seriously and gave me a response you’d maybe hear in a drama or a sappy ballad.”

“Uh, okay,” Hankyung says, zoning out a little. He’s distracted by the way Heechul spits his words. Something about the shape of his mouth, or something.

“Whatever,” Heechul says. “Anyway, as I was saying earlier. We have this tradition in Korea that you can’t eat by yourself, especially in the presence of someone older than you. You have to, it sounds embarrassing but I’m serious! You really need to do this if you want to turn Korean! You have to feed them.”

“What?” Hankyung laughs, snapping out of it. “What did you just say?”

“Feed me,” Heechul summarizes. He opens his mouth wide. “Ahhhh.”

Hankyung looks down at his bowl. Those strips of beef are his. His mother has to work night shifts at the restaurant to pay for them.

Who’s this kid he just met? Literally became friends with a week ago? And his stomach is growling bad enough as is.

But he’s taken too much time to think, because Heechul’s chopsticks swipe over the top of his bowl and have made way with a piece of simmering meat.

“What?” Heechul asks, mouth full, spitting rice in the direction of Hankyung’s face. “You took too long!”

Hankyung looks at him, thoughtful, and then steals his egg.

- - -

“Are you healthy? Are you eating well?”

“Yes, ma.”

“Are they working you hard? How are your feet?”

“They’re great.”

“What about the school? You’re attending school properly? They paid for everything?”

“Ma, you cashed the scholarship check yourself.”

“I’m just making sure. I’m not familiar with how Koreans do things. How about the weather? How is it there?”

He glances out the window. It’s dark already. “It’s okay. Still kind of hot. Beijing is muggier.”

“How hot?”

“Ma,” he says.

“I’m just wondering.” Her voice is tiny on the phone. He wonders if she’s been crying.

“Not that hot.”

“How about the people? Are they treating you well? Do you have friends?”

He remembers the notes that were passed around in class that never reached his hands. He remembers the look on Heechul’s face afterwards as he pummeled his fist into a boy’s skull. Heechul earned himself a warning and detention for a month, because his father had a fairly influential presence in the town, Hankyung learned, and because Heechul’s strongest punch is still hardly enough to wound.

“They’re really nice,” he says. “It was kind of awkward at first, but I think I’m winning them over.”

- - -

“This doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“No, trust me, it’s a great idea.” Heechul fishes out one last thousand-won bill and slaps it on the counter. The cashier looks roughly their age, maybe even younger, and he’s gotten both sides of his head shaved-a delinquent. Makes their rebellions seem pitiful in return. Heechul grabs the box and Hankyung’s arm, then tosses a nod over his shoulder. “Thanks Seungho.” The cashier grins back, showing crooked teeth.

“You know him?”

“He caught me shoplifting a while ago and told me, ‘You’re doing it wrong.’” Heechul’s working on the transparent film sheathing the box.

“Give it to me,” Hankyung makes a Bruce Lee motion with his hand. “You have to find the little tab-”

Heechul keeps fumbling. “Aha!” as the plastic comes undone in strips. “Didn’t need your help, did I?”

The binoculars are a sleek black. “Perfect,” Heechul says, pretending to check his reflection in the shiny finish. He brushes aside his bangs with the nail of his pinky, and Hankyung can hardly resist laughing.

“I’m so excited. Do you think he’ll float?”

Hankyung pictures the kid’s bony body bobbing up and down in the pool. “He’s too light to sink,” he says slowly. “But-he can swim, right?”

“That’s what he said,” Heechul reminds him. “I’m not out to kill anyone. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.”

They walk faster, because Heechul’s eager to make it back in time for lunch. They cut English class together, Heechul feigning a stomachache and Hankyung trailing mournfully behind. Ms. Ahn knows they’re best friends, and best friends see each other through thick and thin. Well, truth is, she likes Hankyung a lot. Hankyung knows this. He thanks his naturally mild disposition.

Mild compared to Heechul, maybe.

Heechul unfolds the binoculars and wastes no time in tearing the sticky film off the lenses. “You think we’ll be able to see from the roof?”

“It’s only like two stories high. I don’t think we even need these . . . Heechul, this really . . . isn’t a good idea.” But Heechul looks at him like he’s being a bad sport and all the fun in the world is to be had at Lee Hyukjae’s expense.

“Look,” Heechul says, smile dimming. They’re almost at the gate of the courtyard. Hankyung kicks a rock to the fence and misses. “This is a great way to make friends! He said he wanted to join our group, right? Well, this is a way for him to prove it. How badly he wants to hang out with us. It’s like, like an initiation. Being inducted into a fraternity, something like that? The American way!”

“But what if his head hits the bottom of the pool or something?”

“Oh man. You’re ruining my high. Look,” Heechul places a hand on his shoulder, and Hankyung twitches involuntarily at the touch. “You’re always running off to dance practice when I get one of my great ideas. This is the one time you can be around for something, Hankyung. Live a little, okay?”

He ruffles his carefully gelled hair and runs before Hankyung can chase after him.

They’re waiting at the top of the science building, the shortest one on campus, overlooking the outdoor swimming pool. Heechul bribed Youngwoon to fill it up, even though it’s February and the swim team practices indoors these days. Youngwoon works at the Phys Ed department during free periods and all the gym teachers love him, especially Mr. Kanganis, the soccer coach who used to be a drill sergeant in the States. His head is shaved and shiny, and Heechul jokes about rubbing it for good luck. He tells Youngwoon to, every time he sees him, and Youngwoon pretends not to hear him but grins through the act. Heechul is very charming when he’s up for it.

Hyukjae is a bony thing shivering under a towel. Donghae’s got his arm wrapped around him, their heads knocking together, when Heechul announces his arrival with a nod towards Hyukjae. “You ready?”

Skinny but not helpless, Hankyung decides, watching Hyukjae’s chin jut in defiance with something akin to pride. “Yeah,” Hyukjae says. “I jump from here right?”

“Unless you want to climb to the top of the chapel,” Heechul’s eyes are shining.

Donghae flashes him a helpless grin. “Fighting, Hyukjae!”

“F-fighting!” Hyukjae stutters back through chattering teeth. Heechul’s already clutching his stomach, enjoying this way too much.

When he takes the towel off, his flesh is goosepimply and bespeckled with raised hairs. Hankyung can count his ribs like piano keys. Hyukjae’s chest swells, filling itself with air, as he steps carefully onto the ledge overlooking the pool. Hankyung holds his breath, and then Hyukjae jumps.

The binoculars lie forgotten in Heechul’s backpack. He pushes himself over the edge of the roof to watch the boy fall. The water breaks and parts, making way for a new friend.

The air ripples around them eagerly as they wait for him to surface. He’ll sputter up water and blow his nose and cast Heechul a victorious look. Donghae will run down with the towel and say, “You did good,” letting the cold press into him as well. Heechul will grudgingly admit that he went down more gracefully than he imagined and then shake his hand, formally allow him into their small and exclusive group. Hyukjae will wonder, is this it? Is that what I nearly got pneumonia for? But it’ll be something to talk about tomorrow, and the day after, and for years to come. How stupid they were.

When it occurs to Hankyung that they’re waiting an awfully long time, Donghae makes a choking sound in his throat, and a breeze on Hankyung’s arm signals that Heechul has disappeared. He emerges on the tiling surrounding the pool fifteen seconds later, barefoot, and throws his school jacket and pants aside before diving into the water and swimming down toward the dark, flickering shadow.

By the time Hankyung and Donghae have thought to run down to join them, Heechul has carried Hyukjae out of the pool and laid him flat on the ground. Donghae covers his body with the towel. His shoulders are pale and glistening. Heechul doesn’t say anything as he presses the space below Hyukjae’s diaphragm, waits five seconds, presses again, again, again. It almost looks like he’s hurting him.

Hyukjae convulses once and water spurts forth from his mouth. Donghae breathes a sharp sigh of relief and hugs Hyukjae’s head to his chest before Hyukjae has opened his eyes, and Heechul falls back on his palms, spent.

“Whoa,” is the first thing Hyukjae says, blinking aside a drop of water that’s slid off his eyelid.

Donghae starts sobbing, a broken dam. Heechul doesn’t say anything as he picks up his jacket and wraps it around the boy he almost killed.

- - -

“He should’ve told me he couldn’t swim,” Heechul says, exhaling a lungful of smoke. The sun falls in his eyes, colors his hair blood orange. “I can’t stand liars.”

Hankyung is quiet. He doesn’t know where to place the blame, or whether his opinion, if he had one, is necessary.

“Just tell me, you know? I don’t want to find out the hard way.” Heechul squints at him, takes another drag.

He blows the smoke in the other direction, away from Hankyung. Lets the wind carry it.

“You know?” He touches Hankyung on the cheek in one of those insignificant gestures that Hankyung knows mean nothing but still stir up a tightness in his chest, conjures up a quickening of his heartbeat.

Hankyung presses his hand there, because he can play this game, too. “I won’t lie to you.”

“I’m serious, Hankyung. Don’t lie to me. Or,” Heechul knits his brow together. “I’d kill you.”

“I won’t,” Hankyung promises, fully holding his hand now because Heechul hasn’t said anything about it.

- - -

Hankyung’s a lover, but Heechul’s a fighter. Unfortunately he’s got terrible aim and can’t throw a decent punch for his life. Hankyung, on the other hand, is pretty sure he would be able to cripple if he wanted to. But he doesn’t. Leave the violent tendencies to Heechul.

This way the universe balances out and not too many annoying little seventh-graders end up with broken noses.

“It’s so unfair. Sometimes someone says something really stupid, and I just want to throttle them. But I can’t.”

“You don’t want to end up in jail,” Hankyung reminds him. “Gladiator?”

“Exactly what I was looking for.” Heechul snatches the DVD and scans the back cover. “Russell Crowe, man. I wish I were a foreigner like him.”

“Not like me?”

“You’re easy! ‘Auntie, another bowl of rice for this fella here’-”

Hankyung elbows him in the side. Hard. Heechul takes it like a girl.

“How do you do that?”

Hankyung shrugs. “I descended from the ancestors of Bruce Lee.”

They shuffle through the aisle of the video rental store, narrowly dodging a high school girl. Heechul throws an arm around him and says enthusiastically, “Your place tonight? Did you clean?”

“Yes,” Hankyung lies. He just needs to kick the dirty underwear under the bed. Heechul, once transfixed by something-in this case, Russell Crowe-won’t notice anything else anyway.

Hankyung lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment, bathroom and kitchen all crammed into a small living space. He can get into one from the other; they’re all connected. Like a maze, he tells himself. That way it seems more glamorous than it really is. He sleeps on a tatami mat on the floor, rolling up blankets every morning before he goes to school, and unrolling them when he feels sufficiently tired. At first he hesitated to invite anyone over, but Heechul persisted for a year, bringing up the fact that it was obviously a better idea to hang out just the two of them, without parental supervision, than in a much larger, luxurious apartment with actual beds and couches. And, like, a full surround-sound system.

Point is, Hankyung is dirt poor and his room reflects that, but Heechul is stupid enough to not mind.

At some point over the years Heechul had decided it’d be a good idea to smuggle one of his DVD players over to Hankyung’s so that at the very least, they could watch movies together instead of reading manga and-as time wore on, as pants grew shorter and body hair grew thicker-porn all the time. Or flicking rocks at passersby below from the window.

“Something stinks,” Heechul says from behind. Hankyung pushes the door open wider to find that something does in fact stink. Like day-old noodles.

“Oh, geez. When’s the last time you did the dishes?”

“Want to do them for me?”

Hankyung flips the bowl over the sink, and the putrid smell rises to his nostrils. Heechul’s face has entered a permanent state of scrunched-up, but instead of complaining he reaches into his-now Hankyung notices-abnormally large knapsack. Knapsack?

“Air freshener? You brought air freshener?”

“Your place is always full of weird smells,” Heechul releases a cursory spray in Hankyung’s direction. “Oh, it works.”

Hankyung wheezes. “Of course it works. But how long are you planning on staying?”

“A week or so, until they beg me to come back.”

Every three months, Heechul argues with his sister and his parents, who always take her side, and seeks refuge in Hankyung’s flat until he forgets why he was mad in the first place. Hankyung reminded himself a long time ago to start marking calendars, because Heechul’s timing is eerily consistent. It’s about once every ninety days now.

“You might as well leave stuff over,” he starts, and Heechul grins unnaturally bright at that. “What else did you bring?”

“PJs, slippers, tissues-”

“I’m not that poor. I’ve got tissues!”

“I know but-just in case we run out!”

“Why would we-oh.”

He lets his hands fall limp under the faucet. His skin is pruning already. “Right,” he says, because lately they have been doing that together, too, and . . . it’s been nice.

Heechul slaps his back, signaling a return to normality. “We should have a contest. I bet I could do it faster.”

The thing about Heechul is, sometimes it’s hard to tell when he’s joking. Because if he isn’t joking and you laugh, then he’ll narrow his eyes and be like, “What?” But if he is joking and you didn’t get it, then, well, that might’ve been your last chance to get it. Hankyung’s gotten better at reading him, but there are these times, times like this, when he has no idea.

So Hankyung says stupidly, “Did I not mention my kung-fu fingers?”

“You’re on, punk.”

“But we’re watching Gladiator?”

“C’mon! Russell Crowe ain’t good enough for you?” Heechul says with his dialect, which often sounds like countryside gibberish, but Hankyung is able to decipher it this time.

“Uh . . .”

Usually they do it to a girly magazine, facing the wall, neither looking at the other because that’s just weird and uncomfortable. But they can still hear each other, and Hankyung always does, without meaning to-Heechul breathing, the slick slapping sound of his hand moving frantically, and then Hankyung closes his eyes and pictures Heechul open-mouthed and panting and imagines putting his own hand where Heechul’s is and moving it up and down; imagines making him feel good. And sometimes that’s what does the trick, instead of the big tits and carefully shaved girls waiting with glossy eyes, propped up against the wall.

It’s probably not natural to be having these thoughts, but between dance practice and school Hankyung doesn’t have much time to spend thinking. What they’re doing, they do because it feels fucking awesome.

And it’s awesome to be able to share that with who’s pretty much his only friend in Korea.

“I’m kidding,” Heechul says quickly, gauging from the look of horror on Hankyung’s face. “Russell’s not my type, anyway.” He grins. “I could go for Kaneshiro Takeshi, though.”

He’s half-Chinese, Hankyung doesn’t say, because there’s no point in indulging Heechul when he makes these jokes that aren’t really funny. “I approve.”

“Jealous?”

“Who said you’re my type?” Hankyung laughs, flicking water in Heechul’s face.

“Hey!”

The movie’s confusing, because the subtitles are in Korean, and Hankyung isn’t that good at reading words flying across the screen so he focuses on the images instead. Russell Crowe’s really manly, he thinks, transfixed by the ripples of muscle building under his armor. He’s like, almost Arnold Schwartzenegger-level scary-buff. Or something. He doesn’t really know. Hankyung hasn’t actually seen that many movies. In fact, he’s seen more since he came to Korea than he had his entire life before. Mostly because of Heechul.

“I want to be famous,” Heechul says, a lazy whisper. He scratches the back of his neck, making a tiny hole in the curtain of his hair. Hankyung reaches over and does it for him. “That tickles,” Heechul says, squirming away, which makes Hankyung grin and trail his fingers down his shoulder and under his armpit.

“Noooo,” Heechul begs, shielding himself with his stick-thin arms, and Hankyung pounces, aiming for a sliver of neck that he knows is Heechul’s weakest of weak spots. Heechul can usually hold a straight face for five seconds, but one second longer and he breaks-instantly. And then the giggling comes, the pleading is nonstop, and it’s one of the few moments Hankyung can honestly say he’s in control, with Heechul writhing and squealing under him.

“No-hahahaha-stop!!-oh my GODhahaha-stoooppp-”

Hankyung stops. He’s got Heechul pinned on the tatami mat. Heechul’s alternately convulsing and laughing, head turned to the side, eyes shut tight, a knee in Hankyung’s groin, toes on his thigh. Hankyung feels suddenly transparent and-dirty.

“What’s wrong,” Heechul blinks up at him. They’re eyelashes away from touching.

“Nothing,” Hankyung says casually, releasing him. “You looked like you were enjoying it too much.”

Heechul coughs. “Just like you to deny me my pleasure.”

“I thought you hated being tickled!”

“I mean, it feels awful and really good at the same time.” His face is still a flushed red, and he sidles close to Hankyung. “You know?”

“No,” Hankyung lies.

They’ve missed an important scene, and now people are yelling. The vein on the side of Russell Crowe’s forehead is protruding like crazy and his face is partly bloody-and the screen goes black with a click.

“Ugh, now I’m horny,” Heechul complains, dropping the remote on the floor. “You weren’t really watching, were you?”

“Not really,” Hankyung admits. “Um. I . . . recycled those other magazines.”

“Aw, you did what?”

“Sorry.”

“Whatever.” Heechul rolls over. “We’ll just use our imagination.”

“You go ahead,” Hankyung agrees, pretending to get up. “I’m going to start my homework.”

Heechul pulls on the hem of his shirt with his toes. Hankyung recoils. “Gross, man. Get off!”

“Don’t forget we’re competing, Hankyung.”

“Why?”

Heechul sits up straight. Hankyung sits back down.

“Why not?” Heechul asks blankly. “Afraid of losing?”

Then, of course, it’s on.

They claim adjacent pieces of wall. No looking until one of them wins, and then they have to look in order to acknowledge the other’s victory. No staining the wall, because Hankyung’s lazy enough about cleaning as is, and also, that’s just gross. Tissue boxes stationed at their sides. “Hm. . . something really, really dirty,” he hears Heechul hum, laughing a little. His voice goes low. Hankyung gulps.

He thinks of Zhang Ziyi. He thinks of her collarbone and the way it jutted out cleanly under the robe she wore during that sex scene. Her hair is mussed, cheeks rouged, and-okay, he’s not really a fan. No one at home really likes her anyway.

Heechul’s quiet, but he’s breathing harder.

Heechul’s fingers are long and slim. Heavy at the knuckles and tapering down on the sides. He plays the piano, he’d once told Hankyung, but not well. If he tries really hard, he can put enough emotion in it, maybe even sway a little, but then he’ll mess up a note, clank down on the wrong key, and the vision tears a hole. “I’m like that with a lot of stuff,” he’d said. “I just don’t have the patience? There’s too much I want to do, you know.”

“Like travel?”

“Sure. I want to go to Europe. I want to go to China. Visit your hometown.”

“I want that, too.”

They’d looked at each other, unembarrassed. Maybe it’d been obvious then.

“Oh,” Heechul says softly, fidgeting. Hankyung sneaks a peek at him and finds that his eyes are closed.

So Hankyung gives in and thinks of him.

- - -

Their last year of college, they decide to visit their high school alma mater. Hankyung’s mother tells him she’s friends with someone whose daughter is attending school there now-“Take care of her, Han Geng. Be an older brother.”

Song Qian is bright-eyed and cheerful. She can kick up to her head. They do an impromptu dance-off and find they have entirely polar styles. She’s good, though. He isn’t sure what to do, so he pats her on the back.

“Dong Hai and He Zai have told us so much about you,” she says.

“About me? Are you sure?”

“Of course,” she says. “You and Xi Che.”

“Xi Che,” repeats the tiny girl beside her. She has her hair cut short, and her eyes are set apart like a doe’s. She looks to be about twelve.

Heechul perks up at the sound of his name, one of the few Chinese words he’s managed to remember. “What about me?”

Hankyung makes a show of ignoring him. “Your little sister?”

“No, no!” Song Qian laughs. “She’s in the junior high school-I’m teaching her Chinese. Mr. Lim told me to.”

“Mr. Lim is a tough one. Watch out for his ruler.”

Heechul is bored. He’s taken to playing with the little girl, hand games with rules that he makes up as they go along. After he claps once instead of twice, he tells her that’s the exception, between fives and sixes you have to clap once, and she says, “This is retarded.” Heechul looks a mixture of cross and amused.

“Hey,” Song Qian says suddenly. “Can you drive?”

The nearest mall is half an hour away. It’s a good day for driving, so he rolls down the windows. Song Qian and Amber stick their arms out the windows, and Heechul flicks the radio console again and again, until it stops on the fuzz of an electric guitar, something in Japanese, and then he starts singing.

It’s not the best voice in the choir. He rasps along scales and you can taste cancer on your tongue. And the way he sings it, it still sounds like Korean. But it travels up Hankyung’s spine and lingers. The thin, scratchy timbre. The shudder of his throat. Heechul’s always been good at things without meaning to.

This periodic lack of self-awareness throws Hankyung off-guard every time. Like when he turns to look at Heechul and he’s totally oblivious, mouth ajar and watching the television; or when Heechul scratches at his neck until it reddens in a small patch, and folds his arms behind his head and his elbows are so sharp they threaten to break skin; or the soft sigh he exhales when he’s satisfied that itch. Little things.

Little things that make Hankyung want to kiss him, right now, over the steering wheel. But they aren’t alone.

But it’s okay, because they have time.

The wind blusters and Song Qian sings along, although it’s pretty clear she doesn’t know the words. Hankyung represses a smile against the back of his hand.

- - -

For him, there are vignettes, immobile in their clarity. Heechul had grown his hair long a couple times in his life, once for at least a year until it grazed the small of his back. That one time they visited the beach with Donghae, Hyukjae, and Jungsu, who’d always been more of Heechul’s friend than his. . . well, they all had been-but that time. The three of them, Jungsu and him and Heechul, were in college now, but the younger ones were in their last year of high school, still worrying about entrance exams and a slightly less imminent future, and it’d been-springtime? Maybe. Yes. It’d been April, and Heechul had said, “I miss the water,” one morning, and it’d been only a year after that car hit him and kept going, so for the past twelve months Hankyung hadn’t once been able to say the word “no”; everything was “sure,” “okay,” “you want fries with that?” The last one with a wink and a sliding of his lips into a shape that no longer felt familiar; Hankyung had to have the strength to carry another person now, and sometimes he envied the others for their faith that at the end of the day, someone up there could do it for you. Someone was watching out for you. But that was his job, watching out for Heechul, spying out the corner of his eye even when he pretended to be asleep, because at that point he couldn’t leave him alone without feeling sick. Even after Heechul came off the crutches, he still couldn’t. So when Heechul said, “Hey,” and mentioned something about the beach, Hankyung’s head ticked and spun with road maps-Google didn’t own the world back then-and they outlined plans and packed sandwiches and in the end headed for the one just half an hour away-anticlimactic, like Heechul would say, but at least he never said Well, what’s the point? because the answer to that was clear.

When they got there, it looked like it was going to rain, but it didn’t, so they walked along the beach and sand filled their sandals and the gaps between their toes where webbing would’ve been, centuries ago, Hyukjae said, and Heechul’s cough sounded like laughter, but then it was. Hankyung put his arm around Heechul’s waist because no one else was there besides the boys and Jungsu, and he suspected they knew, or vice versa, he knew they suspected, and also because at that point he had already decided-without being aware of it consciously, there would be time for that later-he was going home and there was no harm in letting people know the truth before you leave them.

They walked close to the beach and when the tide pulled in the water ran up to their knees and Heechul fell back on the inside of his arm but Hankyung could tell he was using all his strength to not lean, to keep his spine straight and pride intact. All he wanted was to say, “I’ll be more reliable than your pride” even if it was a promise he couldn’t keep, but the thought whispered away when Heechul opened his arms to a gust of wind and smiled like it was okay even if he died at that moment, like he had all he needed and it was okay.

- - -

But most of the time, Hankyung doesn’t think. Life’s too short to spend time regretting and wondering. And the thing is, he didn’t think all those years back either. It was or it wasn’t. There was no might’ve been. Heechul used to say, “I never know what you’re thinking about,” and he’d reply, “I’m not thinking about anything.” It was the truth. He didn’t have a mental breakdown the first time he thought of kissing his best friend, or the first time he stuck his hand down his pants, or the first time he stuck his hand down Heechul’s. All that stuff, that unimportant stuff, he let it wash over him. He felt what he felt, and knew it was irrational-because honestly, how could you really love another boy and still want children with both your blood coursing through their veins and for your mother to have a daughter-in-law to brag to the neighbors about?-but he didn’t do anything about it, either. Maybe he’d just fed it. That was messed up of him. But this is all realized in hindsight, which is, despite popular belief, not to be trusted. What he’s thinking now is affected by how crabby Amber gets in the mornings, her hair sticking up and the ghost-face she makes before groaning and shutting the bathroom door. He’s rationalizing. But really, at the time, everything had felt temporary. That was something he’d known from the beginning, from the moment he made contact with the small unassuming wad of gum, and had quelled because as realistic as he was, and here is where it breaks down, it didn’t work completely. He hadn’t been able to separate himself from what he wanted and knew he needed to become. He couldn’t stop himself from touching Heechul, just because he could. That was his big mistake, and that was, essentially, how he fell.

It’s like what they say about a person only getting one big love. A love like that only comes once in your life, and that’s if you’re lucky. But that’s like saying that all that’s worth remembering already happened ten years ago. Hankyung won’t forget but he won’t dwell, either. It’s unfair, and he doesn’t think it’s selfish of him to not want someone to have that grasp over him his whole life, even if it isn’t just anyone. They were young. It wasn’t a love born of necessity but it could’ve only happened then. He tells himself these self-reassurances and on a good day he believes them. But that’s casting aside memories of the really good stuff like waking up before his alarm rang, slow and easy seven a.m. lovemaking, in exactly those words, yeah. Lovemaking. And the teasing that wouldn’t end. How delicate they were. Thoughts like these hover over the periphery of his mind always, always.

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