[siwon/hangeng] peak (2/2)
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jewelledhoursPeak (2/2)
siwon/hangeng
r, 3910 words (8971 in total), au, non-chronological order
there were some things that they were not supposed to touch. namely, each other.
part one here.
When breakfast is over, Siwon makes barley tea and sits at the table with his bathrobe sagging open at his chest. He doesn't smile. Hangeng has the vague feeling of something being unusual.
"I spoke to Kibum this morning," Siwon says.
"Yeah?" Hangeng says. A year ago, Kibum had wised in on their affair and Siwon hadn't bothered to deny it. Said that Kibum could be trusted to keep their secret. Hangeng didn't have an opinion to offer, but since Siwon seemed so certain that it was safe, he didn't dispute it.
"He told me that CorpComms has fended off yet another tabloid report." Siwon smiles now, tight around the corners. "What did I say before? One comes, the rest will follow on its heels. Apparently a reporter was hanging around outside the entrance of Signet yesterday night, watching out for you. My security got rid of him, but the point is, he was there."
"What do you want to do about it, then?" Hangeng asks.
Siwon doesn't reply immediately. Hangeng sips the tea, waits patiently. He's almost surprised at how calm he is. No palms turning sweaty, no hollow feelings in his stomach, no anxious expectations, just a coldness somewhere deep within him, an area that he can't quite identify.
"We can't afford to have the story coming out in the tabloids," Siwon says at last, looking straight at him, and Hangeng thinks that if there are things about Siwon that annoy him, there are also things about Siwon that he appreciates; the way he doesn't skip around issues, says what has to be said. "It would affect both our companies…I don't think it's in either of our interests to have it blared out to the entire nation."
"No," Hangeng agrees.
He waits a little more.
"So, this…" Siwon begins, and the wrinkle between his brows gets deeper.
"You want me to go back to Beijing," Hangeng says lightly.
"No."
"No?"
"I don't have any right to want you to do anything."
"So you want me to stay."
"That…"
"But no, that isn't right either. So you don't want me to go back to Beijing, but you don't want me to stay either. What a complicated situation, Siwon-sshi. But in actual fact, it should be easy, shouldn't it? We should be able to shake hands and say, 'Thanks for the good times', and that should be the end of it."
Siwon's looking at him, following him, but wary and from about ten feet back.
Hangeng tilts the right corner of his mouth. "Why don't we do that?"
"What are you trying to say?" Siwon says, faintly questioning, mostly frustrated.
"What I'm saying is that since we're both apparently so afraid of being exposed, the easiest and most effective way of dealing with it is to stop this whole thing now."
Siwon drops back into silence, stares at him over dirty plates and cooling barley tea.
"Don't you think?" Hangeng says.
In the end, Siwon stands at the doorway and watches him pick his clothes off the floor. Suggests that Hangeng take one of his shirts instead of wearing his crumpled one from the night before, but Hangeng declines, says that they might as well not have a ready reason to see each other again. Siwon doesn't object to that. After they tidy the breakfast table, they walk quietly to the front door and Hangeng slips on his shoes and it seems that a whole vista of doors are opening to them at that very moment, doors that are going to slam shut in the next five seconds that it'll take him to turn and walk out the front door.
He holds out his hand. "Thanks for the good times."
Siwon automatically returns the handshake, and somehow it makes Hangeng want to laugh, loudly and crassly, like a blue-collar worker laughing at a B-grade comedy. He doesn't miss the look in Siwon's eyes but he turns anyway, walks out as he meant to.
… …
In June, the new hotel in Malaysia was completed and Hangeng was sent to oversee the operations for the first month. Siwon texted him a couple of times and he agreed to call, but somehow he couldn't work up the time nor energy to. There were too many things to settle, too many meetings that went on till the early hours of the morning. His father had, it appeared, hired the most incompetent professional in Asia to be the general manager, and he had brief moments of being convinced that this was a sadistic form of punishment for having failed so badly with the Korean hotels.
An opportunity came at last, ten p.m. on a Friday night three weeks after his arrival, and he soaked for half an hour in the tub before he felt calm enough to call.
"You've caught me at a bad time," Siwon said the moment he picked up.
"I'll hang up."
"No, give me a minute."
Hangeng took a sip of whiskey while waiting. There was a balcony, but the wind was too strong up here for him to sit outside. He studied the two vertical strips of The Petronas Towers in the distance. They reminded him of Seoul, somehow, and suddenly, strangely, he wanted badly to be back.
"Okay," Siwon said. "I can talk for eight minutes."
"So exact?"
"You know that's the method of my success," Siwon said, and he could hear the smile in his voice. "How's it going over there? Fired anybody yet?"
"No, but if it was up to me I'd have fired the general manager at least two weeks ago."
"Put in a recommendation to your father to get rid of him."
"He kisses ass. My father likes him. I don't hold as much sway," Hangeng said. "Besides, I think my father found out about us, and so I'm not quite his favourite person right now."
Siwon was silent for a moment. "People are beginning to find out, are they?"
"I don't advise worrying yet. My father has his spies everywhere. He was bound to find out sooner or later. For all I know, my bodyguard has been filing weekly reports of my activities."
"Your father is a unique man."
"There's only one thing that we have in common," Hangeng said. "This hotel chain."
Another moment, and Hangeng said, "You have half a minute left."
"Yes," Siwon said. "Well, this won't take me half a minute to say. I've withdrawn from the takeover."
Hangeng had to blink several times before managing to say, "Why?"
"It's what you want, isn't it?" Siwon said. "You can't bear to sell your hotels, so I won't make you sell them. I have several other moneymaking schemes to attend to. About a dozen others, in fact."
"Siwon-sshi…"
"Yes?"
"You're twenty seconds overtime."
"Is that so?" Siwon sounded amused. "Perhaps you should leave your company and come work for me as my secretary."
"That would be so cliché."
"I like clichés," Siwon said. "Certain ones, in particular."
"I don't believe in office romances," Hangeng said.
"I just like the idea of mahogany desktop sex," Siwon said, almost teasingly. It turned up the corners of Hangeng's mouth.
That was, he believed, the first time he thought that maybe, just maybe, he understood a little of why people talked about being together forever.
… …
Beijing is Beijing, his hunting ground and sanctuary. Beijing is where he doesn't have to think about Siwon. Beijing is where, he thinks, Siwon will begin to think about him.
In between the long drawn out corporate meetings and formal, indirect mud slinging and construction projects to oversee, he manages to get himself involved with Bai Guocheng, a young actor who had recently become an overnight sensation for his starring role in China's most popular afternoon drama.
Guocheng doesn't calculate the minutes that he can spend talking on the phone; stays in bed the next morning if he doesn't have any early appointments. Hangeng thinks he could get used to that.
They're having drinks one night at an ordinary pub when Guocheng warns him that tomorrow's Apple Daily headlines will be about them. "My PR person found out only a couple of minutes ago," he says. "They've already started printing, so we can't stop it. They have a couple of photos and whole lot of speculation."
"As always," Hangeng says. Reflects a little on Siwon's paranoia. "Well, if you don't mind, I don't."
Guocheng laughs. "I'm a celebrity! Any publicity is good publicity."
"Point made." Hangeng knocks his shot glass against Guocheng's. "To the publicity that we've generated."
"May we be this week's hot topic," Guocheng says.
He wakes up six hours later to Guocheng's morning breath on his face and approximately twenty messages on his phone. Discards it over the side of the bed when he doesn't see Siwon's name on any of the messages.
Perhaps he should send an issue of Apple Daily to Siwon's office?
He wants to laugh, though whether it's in amusement or at himself, he's not entirely sure.
Instead, he pulls the blanket over himself and goes back to sleep.
… …
It takes fifteen hours for Siwon to call, and he sounds weird. Like he's trying to excuse himself for breaking the rules by being oddly, informally, awkwardly cheerful.
"Thought you would have missed my voice by now," he says in a tone that's almost chirpy.
"A little," Hangeng acknowledges, hoping that the smile in his voice is adequately suppressed.
"So," Siwon says. "How have you been?"
"Not too bad. I've actually managed to oversee a major rooms renovation project to its completion, and implemented a few successful innovations in the hotels. Think of the revolutionary changes I'll bring to Tang Hotels when I finally take over!"
Siwon laughs along with him and Hangeng has to admit, it feels pretty good.
"I saw the article today about you and this actor," Siwon says, mellowed after their laughter. "Don't think I went hunting for it though; a couple of girls in the office were discussing it and were only too happy to fill me in on the sordid details."
"Ah," says Hangeng. "The Chinese paparazzi is far more efficient than the Korean one, it would seem."
"Do they print the same bullshit that the Korean tabloids do?"
"Maybe," says Hangeng. "Sometimes they print the truth, and that's when everyone really gets angry."
Siwon laughs again, and they spend a couple of moments in silence. Strange, Hangeng thinks, how they're not lovers anymore, not exactly friends, and yet, when they talk like this, it seems like they're something much more than acquaintances.
"How does it feel to have your name splashed in multi colours over the front pages of disreputable magazines?" Siwon asks.
"Not as bad as you would imagine," Hangeng says. "By next week, I'll be yesterday's news. The media doesn't stay fixated on any one topic for too long, you know. Even major natural disasters merit about two weeks' worth of coverage before they get pushed to page five."
"That's true," says Siwon. He clears his throat. "Well, I won't say anything as tripe as don't let him break your heart."
"I don't care enough for him to break my heart," Hangeng says.
"I know." Siwon laughs, but it sounds more like a sigh. "That's one thing I'm beginning to envy a lot about you – you never care enough."
"I do care about some things."
"Never the unimportant things."
"It depends," says Hangeng, and leaves the pause uninterrupted. At the end of it they're talking about something else and he listens to the moderately deep tones of Siwon's voice, the way he pronounces his consonants and vowels, and if it seems as though there's something missing between them he doesn't mention it and so they let it be. If they're talking like two people who share a deep and loaded history, he doesn't mention it and so they let it be.
It's three a.m in Beijing; four in Seoul. Dark out. The phone line flickers a little, but holds.
… …
"You care a lot about him, don't you?" Guocheng says lazily one night as they lie side by side, watching their cigarette smoke curling up into the air.
"Who?"
"The guy called Siwon. You said his name just now."
Hangeng blinks, pulls away a little. "I did not."
"Don't be so lame, you did. I wouldn't have known about him otherwise."
"Did I really?"
Guocheng playfully blows smoke into his face. "I believe that you're generally in big trouble when you sleep with someone and say someone else's name without knowing it."
Hangeng suddenly finds it hard to look directly at him. "I'm sorry."
"Nah, don't be. I figured out a while ago that you liked someone else. It's okay, you know. No hard feelings. What's he like?"
"Nothing like you." Hangeng thinks more. "He calculates how long he can talk to me when we're on the phone. And I mean he really calculates it down to the minute. The only club he ever goes to is the one he owns, sixty floors above ground level. He doesn't stay in bed in the mornings. He has this insane fear of publicity. He likes Chinese breakfasts. He likes reading about warfare. He dimples when he smiles."
"Sounds like you got along pretty well," Guocheng comments, stubbing his cigarette out on the ash tray beside him.
Hangeng exhales slowly. "I guess you could say that."
Guocheng shifts himself down the bed and goes to sleep. Hangeng would like to follow his example, but when his cigarette ends, he lights up another.
How many cigarette butts does it take before two people can be together?
He wishes now that he hadn't rubbed out the opaque heart that he'd finger-drawn on Polaris' windows.
… …
When he started thinking of forever, he knew he was lost.
Forever had never been on the cards. They had always been just for now. And he knew that as long as they could help it, they would always be just for now.
He hated how his mind played tricks on him sometimes, showed him images of a lifetime with Siwon. Of spending the rest of his days with someone whom he could visualise quite clearly being happy with.
Other times he reflected on the possibility of unrequited love. Of walking away from it before it began to take hold.
But those other times were drowned out in the deluge of the forevers and for nows, and in the end all he wanted, really, was something very simple; to see Siwon again.
And so he spent the money for the plane tickets back to Seoul. Slept with Siwon in his echoing apartment. Woke up alone in the mornings. Braved his father's barely concealed disgust at the knowledge of his son's affair. Occasionally, he still questioned himself about 付出, but often than not he didn't. After all, the answer was really quite straightforward, if he chose to make himself see it.
… …
Later, Hangeng thinks that there should really have been an element of romance.
He should have been sitting at his desk, preferably in the foreground of golden sunset, typing something complicated on his computer screen when Siwon would walk in completely unannounced and stand by the door smiling at the shock on his face.
There should have been an emotional song playing as the background music, at least.
Instead, what happens is that he's having a business lunch at a Muslim restaurant when Siwon calls against an incredibly noisy background. He can't make out the first few words.
"…now," Siwon says.
"What? I can't hear you."
"I just arrived in Beijing," Siwon clarifies. "I'm at the airport."
"You're at the airport?"
"I can only spend one and a half days here before I have to go back to Seoul, so you'd probably want to make some time to see me."
"What are you doing here?"
"To see you, of course," Siwon says, and Hangeng suddenly feels all the blood in his body rushing into his head.
"Do I really, really believe that?"
"Yes, you really, really believe it. I'll be staying at the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel. Come when you're done with whatever you're doing right now."
"I'm in the middle of a business lunch."
"I know I shouldn't have arrived during lunchtime," Siwon says.
… …
It seems strange, a letdown almost, that after all the drama of secrecy and separation, it's surprisingly easy to move on to Point B.
They're thirty floors up – always so near the sky, Hangeng thinks; maybe one day they should be on ground level – and Siwon is eating the ridiculously overpriced Lindt chocolates that the hotel put on the dresser. He's smiling, and Hangeng wants to sink his index finger into the dimple. It's three-thirty in the afternoon, and in five hundred metres the city is shrouded in the typical Beijing haze. It makes them feel like they're alone in a white world.
Maybe Siwon says something about how expensive last-minute flights are. Maybe Hangeng replies that he should have just called instead of physically coming all the way to Beijing. It is the twenty-first century after all, the digital age. Who, besides people in Korean dramas who never seem concerned about flight fares, flies five hundred miles just for a conversation?
"Some conversations are too important to be held over the phone," Siwon says.
"Like this one?"
"Yes." Siwon starts folding the wrapper, once, twice, thrice, until it's a hard little ball in his palm. "The thing is, I've decided that I made a mistake in letting you walk out that day. I should have stopped you. But I was afraid. Even though I shouldn't have been."
Hangeng remains quiet, and Siwon takes it as a cue to continue. "I think I've been pretty dense the whole time we've been together. I never did much for our relationship, did I? You were always the one making time to come to Polaris."
"I was the one flying back to Seoul, too, even when I didn't have any business there."
"You were. So this time, I've come to Beijing. I'm hoping that it proves how sincere I am." Siwon grins, and Hangeng feels the tension in the air slipping away.
"Siwon-sshi…"
"Yes, Hankyung-sshi?"
"Are you trying to confess to me?"
Siwon rolls the wrapper between his fingers. "In a very roundabout way, yes."
"What took you so long?"
"Hesitation, oblivion, denial…or just plain idiocy." Siwon presses his fingernail into the wrapper. "Are you going to hold it against me?"
"I was planning to," Hangeng says, "but I don't think I will."
Siwon's mouth tastes of mint chocolate. The skin beneath his pressed shirt is warm. Hangeng lays his head against the curve of Siwon's neck and shoulder for a moment before they undress.
"I missed you," he says, quietly.
"I love you," says Siwon. It sounds like everything that Hangeng has ever wanted to hear.
Half an hour later they're on the bed, breathless, and Siwon still looks dazed. Hangeng closes his eyes. Feels the weight of Siwon's quick breaths on his face. They're touching, but barely. Just the impression of each other's skin.
"You know," Hangeng says, "you were too hard on yourself. You gave up on the takeover for me."
"That wasn't anything," Siwon says.
"That was something, and don't try to trivialise it," Hangeng says, "because that was when I let myself fall in love with you."
"That long ago?"
"That long ago."
"We're a couple of fools," Siwon says in a wondering sort of way.
"Luckily, we got out of it," Hangeng says. "It took courage. We don't need to blame ourselves anymore. We're here now."
Siwon rests his palm on Hangeng's cheek. "You're right."
They fall asleep together.
… …
What he thinks about almost every night now:
They'd been lying in bed together early one morning, or late one night, however one chose to look at it. When Hangeng dragged his hand from Siwon's chest to his abdomen, his skin was still slick with sweat, smooth under his palm. He rested his hand on the curve of Siwon's hip, chin on Siwon's shoulder. The stillness around them was so thick, so palpable, that it seemed to resonate in their ears. They were so high above the earth that it was effortless to imagine that they were in fact truly alone, and in that loneliness, Hangeng breathed into Siwon's skin.
Siwon spoke only once, voice slightly raspy, distant, wandering. "What would happen if this was to last forever?"
He turned his head, and they were nose to nose. In the darkness, he could just about make out Siwon's eyes. "We just stay where we are and see where forever goes."
Siwon remained quiet, drawing circles on Hangeng's arm.
"I suppose," Hangeng said.
His memory is rusting over, but he thinks they fell asleep after that.
It had seemed so ordinary then.
So beautiful now.
… …
The café is tucked away in a corner at the bottom of a flight of stairs; one floor below ground level, paper hearts pasted on the windows with multi-coloured messages from other customers, the menu presented in squiggly cute font. Siwon squints at the menu as he shrugs off his stiff black jacket. It makes Hangeng want to smile.
"There better be a good reason for bringing me here," Siwon says, turning his head to stare at the bottles of paper stars lining the shelf behind the counter.
"It's a place that people refer to as quaint and romantic."
"Not a good reason, then," Siwon says. "Seeing as neither of us is quaint nor romantic."
Hangeng does smile at that.
All the cakes are too pretty for two grown men to eat, and so they order coffee instead; black for Siwon, cappuccino for Hangeng. Before the coffee arrives they make small talk about who and where and what; when the coffee finally arrives they fall silent, stirring, sipping, looking out of the window. The tree outside is green. It had been summer, Hangeng remembers, when they first noticed each other.
"And you had wine on your pants," he muses, aloud.
"What?" Siwon asks.
"The waitress dropped a glass of wine on your pants," Hangeng says.
"Oh," Siwon says, a smile quirking the side of his mouth. "Yes. And you had the goddamnest eye bags."
"You brought me the Gurkhas."
"You had at least three vodka shots."
"You tried to buy me out."
"Your old man hated me."
"I always hated what he loved," Hangeng says. "And loved what he hated."
Siwon grins, suddenly, and his cheek dimples. It's distracting. "Is that a confession?"
"I don't think I need to make one."
"Be quaint and romantic," Siwon says. "We're in the right setting, anyway."
Hangeng holds his gaze steadily. There are, he knows, a multitude of things to say, and do, and worry about. There are a lot of things that aren't going to work out.
But a lot of things that are.
Slowly, casually, their hands meet.
"Better to be one level below the ground than sixty floors up?"
"Hey," says Siwon, warningly. "Don't pretend to get all snotty on my Polaris. It has served us well."
Hangeng laughs, and after a while Siwon laughs too, and his cheek dimples, distractingly, and after even an hour, or maybe two, or three, it still feels like they're laughing.
end
I fail. 5 months and everlastingever to write 8,000 words. But I hope you don't hold it against me anyway. ♥
siwon/hangeng
r, 3910 words (8971 in total), au, non-chronological order
there were some things that they were not supposed to touch. namely, each other.
part one here.
When breakfast is over, Siwon makes barley tea and sits at the table with his bathrobe sagging open at his chest. He doesn't smile. Hangeng has the vague feeling of something being unusual.
"I spoke to Kibum this morning," Siwon says.
"Yeah?" Hangeng says. A year ago, Kibum had wised in on their affair and Siwon hadn't bothered to deny it. Said that Kibum could be trusted to keep their secret. Hangeng didn't have an opinion to offer, but since Siwon seemed so certain that it was safe, he didn't dispute it.
"He told me that CorpComms has fended off yet another tabloid report." Siwon smiles now, tight around the corners. "What did I say before? One comes, the rest will follow on its heels. Apparently a reporter was hanging around outside the entrance of Signet yesterday night, watching out for you. My security got rid of him, but the point is, he was there."
"What do you want to do about it, then?" Hangeng asks.
Siwon doesn't reply immediately. Hangeng sips the tea, waits patiently. He's almost surprised at how calm he is. No palms turning sweaty, no hollow feelings in his stomach, no anxious expectations, just a coldness somewhere deep within him, an area that he can't quite identify.
"We can't afford to have the story coming out in the tabloids," Siwon says at last, looking straight at him, and Hangeng thinks that if there are things about Siwon that annoy him, there are also things about Siwon that he appreciates; the way he doesn't skip around issues, says what has to be said. "It would affect both our companies…I don't think it's in either of our interests to have it blared out to the entire nation."
"No," Hangeng agrees.
He waits a little more.
"So, this…" Siwon begins, and the wrinkle between his brows gets deeper.
"You want me to go back to Beijing," Hangeng says lightly.
"No."
"No?"
"I don't have any right to want you to do anything."
"So you want me to stay."
"That…"
"But no, that isn't right either. So you don't want me to go back to Beijing, but you don't want me to stay either. What a complicated situation, Siwon-sshi. But in actual fact, it should be easy, shouldn't it? We should be able to shake hands and say, 'Thanks for the good times', and that should be the end of it."
Siwon's looking at him, following him, but wary and from about ten feet back.
Hangeng tilts the right corner of his mouth. "Why don't we do that?"
"What are you trying to say?" Siwon says, faintly questioning, mostly frustrated.
"What I'm saying is that since we're both apparently so afraid of being exposed, the easiest and most effective way of dealing with it is to stop this whole thing now."
Siwon drops back into silence, stares at him over dirty plates and cooling barley tea.
"Don't you think?" Hangeng says.
In the end, Siwon stands at the doorway and watches him pick his clothes off the floor. Suggests that Hangeng take one of his shirts instead of wearing his crumpled one from the night before, but Hangeng declines, says that they might as well not have a ready reason to see each other again. Siwon doesn't object to that. After they tidy the breakfast table, they walk quietly to the front door and Hangeng slips on his shoes and it seems that a whole vista of doors are opening to them at that very moment, doors that are going to slam shut in the next five seconds that it'll take him to turn and walk out the front door.
He holds out his hand. "Thanks for the good times."
Siwon automatically returns the handshake, and somehow it makes Hangeng want to laugh, loudly and crassly, like a blue-collar worker laughing at a B-grade comedy. He doesn't miss the look in Siwon's eyes but he turns anyway, walks out as he meant to.
… …
In June, the new hotel in Malaysia was completed and Hangeng was sent to oversee the operations for the first month. Siwon texted him a couple of times and he agreed to call, but somehow he couldn't work up the time nor energy to. There were too many things to settle, too many meetings that went on till the early hours of the morning. His father had, it appeared, hired the most incompetent professional in Asia to be the general manager, and he had brief moments of being convinced that this was a sadistic form of punishment for having failed so badly with the Korean hotels.
An opportunity came at last, ten p.m. on a Friday night three weeks after his arrival, and he soaked for half an hour in the tub before he felt calm enough to call.
"You've caught me at a bad time," Siwon said the moment he picked up.
"I'll hang up."
"No, give me a minute."
Hangeng took a sip of whiskey while waiting. There was a balcony, but the wind was too strong up here for him to sit outside. He studied the two vertical strips of The Petronas Towers in the distance. They reminded him of Seoul, somehow, and suddenly, strangely, he wanted badly to be back.
"Okay," Siwon said. "I can talk for eight minutes."
"So exact?"
"You know that's the method of my success," Siwon said, and he could hear the smile in his voice. "How's it going over there? Fired anybody yet?"
"No, but if it was up to me I'd have fired the general manager at least two weeks ago."
"Put in a recommendation to your father to get rid of him."
"He kisses ass. My father likes him. I don't hold as much sway," Hangeng said. "Besides, I think my father found out about us, and so I'm not quite his favourite person right now."
Siwon was silent for a moment. "People are beginning to find out, are they?"
"I don't advise worrying yet. My father has his spies everywhere. He was bound to find out sooner or later. For all I know, my bodyguard has been filing weekly reports of my activities."
"Your father is a unique man."
"There's only one thing that we have in common," Hangeng said. "This hotel chain."
Another moment, and Hangeng said, "You have half a minute left."
"Yes," Siwon said. "Well, this won't take me half a minute to say. I've withdrawn from the takeover."
Hangeng had to blink several times before managing to say, "Why?"
"It's what you want, isn't it?" Siwon said. "You can't bear to sell your hotels, so I won't make you sell them. I have several other moneymaking schemes to attend to. About a dozen others, in fact."
"Siwon-sshi…"
"Yes?"
"You're twenty seconds overtime."
"Is that so?" Siwon sounded amused. "Perhaps you should leave your company and come work for me as my secretary."
"That would be so cliché."
"I like clichés," Siwon said. "Certain ones, in particular."
"I don't believe in office romances," Hangeng said.
"I just like the idea of mahogany desktop sex," Siwon said, almost teasingly. It turned up the corners of Hangeng's mouth.
That was, he believed, the first time he thought that maybe, just maybe, he understood a little of why people talked about being together forever.
… …
Beijing is Beijing, his hunting ground and sanctuary. Beijing is where he doesn't have to think about Siwon. Beijing is where, he thinks, Siwon will begin to think about him.
In between the long drawn out corporate meetings and formal, indirect mud slinging and construction projects to oversee, he manages to get himself involved with Bai Guocheng, a young actor who had recently become an overnight sensation for his starring role in China's most popular afternoon drama.
Guocheng doesn't calculate the minutes that he can spend talking on the phone; stays in bed the next morning if he doesn't have any early appointments. Hangeng thinks he could get used to that.
They're having drinks one night at an ordinary pub when Guocheng warns him that tomorrow's Apple Daily headlines will be about them. "My PR person found out only a couple of minutes ago," he says. "They've already started printing, so we can't stop it. They have a couple of photos and whole lot of speculation."
"As always," Hangeng says. Reflects a little on Siwon's paranoia. "Well, if you don't mind, I don't."
Guocheng laughs. "I'm a celebrity! Any publicity is good publicity."
"Point made." Hangeng knocks his shot glass against Guocheng's. "To the publicity that we've generated."
"May we be this week's hot topic," Guocheng says.
He wakes up six hours later to Guocheng's morning breath on his face and approximately twenty messages on his phone. Discards it over the side of the bed when he doesn't see Siwon's name on any of the messages.
Perhaps he should send an issue of Apple Daily to Siwon's office?
He wants to laugh, though whether it's in amusement or at himself, he's not entirely sure.
Instead, he pulls the blanket over himself and goes back to sleep.
… …
It takes fifteen hours for Siwon to call, and he sounds weird. Like he's trying to excuse himself for breaking the rules by being oddly, informally, awkwardly cheerful.
"Thought you would have missed my voice by now," he says in a tone that's almost chirpy.
"A little," Hangeng acknowledges, hoping that the smile in his voice is adequately suppressed.
"So," Siwon says. "How have you been?"
"Not too bad. I've actually managed to oversee a major rooms renovation project to its completion, and implemented a few successful innovations in the hotels. Think of the revolutionary changes I'll bring to Tang Hotels when I finally take over!"
Siwon laughs along with him and Hangeng has to admit, it feels pretty good.
"I saw the article today about you and this actor," Siwon says, mellowed after their laughter. "Don't think I went hunting for it though; a couple of girls in the office were discussing it and were only too happy to fill me in on the sordid details."
"Ah," says Hangeng. "The Chinese paparazzi is far more efficient than the Korean one, it would seem."
"Do they print the same bullshit that the Korean tabloids do?"
"Maybe," says Hangeng. "Sometimes they print the truth, and that's when everyone really gets angry."
Siwon laughs again, and they spend a couple of moments in silence. Strange, Hangeng thinks, how they're not lovers anymore, not exactly friends, and yet, when they talk like this, it seems like they're something much more than acquaintances.
"How does it feel to have your name splashed in multi colours over the front pages of disreputable magazines?" Siwon asks.
"Not as bad as you would imagine," Hangeng says. "By next week, I'll be yesterday's news. The media doesn't stay fixated on any one topic for too long, you know. Even major natural disasters merit about two weeks' worth of coverage before they get pushed to page five."
"That's true," says Siwon. He clears his throat. "Well, I won't say anything as tripe as don't let him break your heart."
"I don't care enough for him to break my heart," Hangeng says.
"I know." Siwon laughs, but it sounds more like a sigh. "That's one thing I'm beginning to envy a lot about you – you never care enough."
"I do care about some things."
"Never the unimportant things."
"It depends," says Hangeng, and leaves the pause uninterrupted. At the end of it they're talking about something else and he listens to the moderately deep tones of Siwon's voice, the way he pronounces his consonants and vowels, and if it seems as though there's something missing between them he doesn't mention it and so they let it be. If they're talking like two people who share a deep and loaded history, he doesn't mention it and so they let it be.
It's three a.m in Beijing; four in Seoul. Dark out. The phone line flickers a little, but holds.
… …
"You care a lot about him, don't you?" Guocheng says lazily one night as they lie side by side, watching their cigarette smoke curling up into the air.
"Who?"
"The guy called Siwon. You said his name just now."
Hangeng blinks, pulls away a little. "I did not."
"Don't be so lame, you did. I wouldn't have known about him otherwise."
"Did I really?"
Guocheng playfully blows smoke into his face. "I believe that you're generally in big trouble when you sleep with someone and say someone else's name without knowing it."
Hangeng suddenly finds it hard to look directly at him. "I'm sorry."
"Nah, don't be. I figured out a while ago that you liked someone else. It's okay, you know. No hard feelings. What's he like?"
"Nothing like you." Hangeng thinks more. "He calculates how long he can talk to me when we're on the phone. And I mean he really calculates it down to the minute. The only club he ever goes to is the one he owns, sixty floors above ground level. He doesn't stay in bed in the mornings. He has this insane fear of publicity. He likes Chinese breakfasts. He likes reading about warfare. He dimples when he smiles."
"Sounds like you got along pretty well," Guocheng comments, stubbing his cigarette out on the ash tray beside him.
Hangeng exhales slowly. "I guess you could say that."
Guocheng shifts himself down the bed and goes to sleep. Hangeng would like to follow his example, but when his cigarette ends, he lights up another.
How many cigarette butts does it take before two people can be together?
He wishes now that he hadn't rubbed out the opaque heart that he'd finger-drawn on Polaris' windows.
… …
When he started thinking of forever, he knew he was lost.
Forever had never been on the cards. They had always been just for now. And he knew that as long as they could help it, they would always be just for now.
He hated how his mind played tricks on him sometimes, showed him images of a lifetime with Siwon. Of spending the rest of his days with someone whom he could visualise quite clearly being happy with.
Other times he reflected on the possibility of unrequited love. Of walking away from it before it began to take hold.
But those other times were drowned out in the deluge of the forevers and for nows, and in the end all he wanted, really, was something very simple; to see Siwon again.
And so he spent the money for the plane tickets back to Seoul. Slept with Siwon in his echoing apartment. Woke up alone in the mornings. Braved his father's barely concealed disgust at the knowledge of his son's affair. Occasionally, he still questioned himself about 付出, but often than not he didn't. After all, the answer was really quite straightforward, if he chose to make himself see it.
… …
Later, Hangeng thinks that there should really have been an element of romance.
He should have been sitting at his desk, preferably in the foreground of golden sunset, typing something complicated on his computer screen when Siwon would walk in completely unannounced and stand by the door smiling at the shock on his face.
There should have been an emotional song playing as the background music, at least.
Instead, what happens is that he's having a business lunch at a Muslim restaurant when Siwon calls against an incredibly noisy background. He can't make out the first few words.
"…now," Siwon says.
"What? I can't hear you."
"I just arrived in Beijing," Siwon clarifies. "I'm at the airport."
"You're at the airport?"
"I can only spend one and a half days here before I have to go back to Seoul, so you'd probably want to make some time to see me."
"What are you doing here?"
"To see you, of course," Siwon says, and Hangeng suddenly feels all the blood in his body rushing into his head.
"Do I really, really believe that?"
"Yes, you really, really believe it. I'll be staying at the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel. Come when you're done with whatever you're doing right now."
"I'm in the middle of a business lunch."
"I know I shouldn't have arrived during lunchtime," Siwon says.
… …
It seems strange, a letdown almost, that after all the drama of secrecy and separation, it's surprisingly easy to move on to Point B.
They're thirty floors up – always so near the sky, Hangeng thinks; maybe one day they should be on ground level – and Siwon is eating the ridiculously overpriced Lindt chocolates that the hotel put on the dresser. He's smiling, and Hangeng wants to sink his index finger into the dimple. It's three-thirty in the afternoon, and in five hundred metres the city is shrouded in the typical Beijing haze. It makes them feel like they're alone in a white world.
Maybe Siwon says something about how expensive last-minute flights are. Maybe Hangeng replies that he should have just called instead of physically coming all the way to Beijing. It is the twenty-first century after all, the digital age. Who, besides people in Korean dramas who never seem concerned about flight fares, flies five hundred miles just for a conversation?
"Some conversations are too important to be held over the phone," Siwon says.
"Like this one?"
"Yes." Siwon starts folding the wrapper, once, twice, thrice, until it's a hard little ball in his palm. "The thing is, I've decided that I made a mistake in letting you walk out that day. I should have stopped you. But I was afraid. Even though I shouldn't have been."
Hangeng remains quiet, and Siwon takes it as a cue to continue. "I think I've been pretty dense the whole time we've been together. I never did much for our relationship, did I? You were always the one making time to come to Polaris."
"I was the one flying back to Seoul, too, even when I didn't have any business there."
"You were. So this time, I've come to Beijing. I'm hoping that it proves how sincere I am." Siwon grins, and Hangeng feels the tension in the air slipping away.
"Siwon-sshi…"
"Yes, Hankyung-sshi?"
"Are you trying to confess to me?"
Siwon rolls the wrapper between his fingers. "In a very roundabout way, yes."
"What took you so long?"
"Hesitation, oblivion, denial…or just plain idiocy." Siwon presses his fingernail into the wrapper. "Are you going to hold it against me?"
"I was planning to," Hangeng says, "but I don't think I will."
Siwon's mouth tastes of mint chocolate. The skin beneath his pressed shirt is warm. Hangeng lays his head against the curve of Siwon's neck and shoulder for a moment before they undress.
"I missed you," he says, quietly.
"I love you," says Siwon. It sounds like everything that Hangeng has ever wanted to hear.
Half an hour later they're on the bed, breathless, and Siwon still looks dazed. Hangeng closes his eyes. Feels the weight of Siwon's quick breaths on his face. They're touching, but barely. Just the impression of each other's skin.
"You know," Hangeng says, "you were too hard on yourself. You gave up on the takeover for me."
"That wasn't anything," Siwon says.
"That was something, and don't try to trivialise it," Hangeng says, "because that was when I let myself fall in love with you."
"That long ago?"
"That long ago."
"We're a couple of fools," Siwon says in a wondering sort of way.
"Luckily, we got out of it," Hangeng says. "It took courage. We don't need to blame ourselves anymore. We're here now."
Siwon rests his palm on Hangeng's cheek. "You're right."
They fall asleep together.
… …
What he thinks about almost every night now:
They'd been lying in bed together early one morning, or late one night, however one chose to look at it. When Hangeng dragged his hand from Siwon's chest to his abdomen, his skin was still slick with sweat, smooth under his palm. He rested his hand on the curve of Siwon's hip, chin on Siwon's shoulder. The stillness around them was so thick, so palpable, that it seemed to resonate in their ears. They were so high above the earth that it was effortless to imagine that they were in fact truly alone, and in that loneliness, Hangeng breathed into Siwon's skin.
Siwon spoke only once, voice slightly raspy, distant, wandering. "What would happen if this was to last forever?"
He turned his head, and they were nose to nose. In the darkness, he could just about make out Siwon's eyes. "We just stay where we are and see where forever goes."
Siwon remained quiet, drawing circles on Hangeng's arm.
"I suppose," Hangeng said.
His memory is rusting over, but he thinks they fell asleep after that.
It had seemed so ordinary then.
So beautiful now.
… …
The café is tucked away in a corner at the bottom of a flight of stairs; one floor below ground level, paper hearts pasted on the windows with multi-coloured messages from other customers, the menu presented in squiggly cute font. Siwon squints at the menu as he shrugs off his stiff black jacket. It makes Hangeng want to smile.
"There better be a good reason for bringing me here," Siwon says, turning his head to stare at the bottles of paper stars lining the shelf behind the counter.
"It's a place that people refer to as quaint and romantic."
"Not a good reason, then," Siwon says. "Seeing as neither of us is quaint nor romantic."
Hangeng does smile at that.
All the cakes are too pretty for two grown men to eat, and so they order coffee instead; black for Siwon, cappuccino for Hangeng. Before the coffee arrives they make small talk about who and where and what; when the coffee finally arrives they fall silent, stirring, sipping, looking out of the window. The tree outside is green. It had been summer, Hangeng remembers, when they first noticed each other.
"And you had wine on your pants," he muses, aloud.
"What?" Siwon asks.
"The waitress dropped a glass of wine on your pants," Hangeng says.
"Oh," Siwon says, a smile quirking the side of his mouth. "Yes. And you had the goddamnest eye bags."
"You brought me the Gurkhas."
"You had at least three vodka shots."
"You tried to buy me out."
"Your old man hated me."
"I always hated what he loved," Hangeng says. "And loved what he hated."
Siwon grins, suddenly, and his cheek dimples. It's distracting. "Is that a confession?"
"I don't think I need to make one."
"Be quaint and romantic," Siwon says. "We're in the right setting, anyway."
Hangeng holds his gaze steadily. There are, he knows, a multitude of things to say, and do, and worry about. There are a lot of things that aren't going to work out.
But a lot of things that are.
Slowly, casually, their hands meet.
"Better to be one level below the ground than sixty floors up?"
"Hey," says Siwon, warningly. "Don't pretend to get all snotty on my Polaris. It has served us well."
Hangeng laughs, and after a while Siwon laughs too, and his cheek dimples, distractingly, and after even an hour, or maybe two, or three, it still feels like they're laughing.
end
I fail. 5 months and everlastingever to write 8,000 words. But I hope you don't hold it against me anyway. ♥
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Date: 2011-04-19 04:38 am (UTC)i'm fixated on this one line - How many cigarette butts does it take before two people can be together? because it just show to me, everything. it's like fate- where what's yours is meant to be yours, and all you do in the meantime is to wait. <33333
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Date: 2011-04-24 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-19 05:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-24 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-19 06:55 am (UTC)as always, i love the flow of your writing, just the way it moves along, quiet but powerful. siwon and hankyung's relationship is complex and not sugar-coated sappiness, which is refreshing. it's not all roses and sunsets and fancy dates, but something deeper, more profound even if it is more subtle. i like the fact that they have such issues and obstacles to overcome, the takeover of the companies, the secrecy and hiding from the paparazzi, their own walls they've both built up around themselves...and when they finally come together, it's not rushed; there's such weight in each little action/gesture.
gorgeous ♥
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Date: 2011-04-29 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-19 08:11 am (UTC)Will look forward to more stories!♥
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Date: 2011-04-29 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-19 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-19 02:26 pm (UTC)Lovely. ♥♥
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Date: 2011-05-08 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-19 05:01 pm (UTC)thanks so much :)
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Date: 2011-05-08 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-20 05:57 am (UTC)i'm going to finish reading tm and give you a more quotatiously adequate comment pqoweirumz,xvb *~*♥
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Date: 2011-05-08 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-20 06:14 pm (UTC)that wuz just so beautifully written with such details that i culd picture in my mind. :)
just magnificent. i loved how u portrayed wonderfully how hankyung wuz struggling with unwanted feelings. :D
and just saying....siwons confession just made me die on my desk. THANK U VERY MUCH FOR LEAVING ME AS A PUDDLE OF HAPPY, FANGIRLING GOO.
<3 thank u for sharing :D
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Date: 2011-05-08 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-21 09:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 08:04 pm (UTC)Second, I really like the setting of this, high rise, high power and Geng and Siwon as competent and competitive equals. There are lots of little moments that stood out to me, like casual talk about sex across the mahogany table and promises in strobe lit rooms that were like little spotlights on their relationship.
Third, it's something that I've said before, but I really really enjoy the fact that you made Geng and Siwon equal in their relationship to each other. There are plenty of fics that make one of them more superior, more "top" to the other, but I think it's fantastic that you made them both equals here. It's not like one of them is solely dependent on the other and they both do have separate lives outside their high risk ventures with each other.
I don't really have a suitable conclusion for this, so please to have another Eunhae picture that I ruthlessly stole of the interwebs and was too lazy to resize but I don't think you'll mind all that much. (hurhurhur)
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Date: 2011-05-08 04:04 am (UTC)Second, I think SiHan works really well in such a setting. Probably better than any other Suju pairing, come to think of it. Mmmm. Probably has something to do with Siwon being such a power-monger-ish-looking person. And Hangeng matching him in that. Your otp is 厉害, yo.
Third, I totally dislike fics where one is made out to be weaker than the other D:
Fourth, adls;kaj;lkj EUNHAE PICTURES /noms on
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Date: 2011-06-05 09:48 pm (UTC)STUPID ME!!
this is beautiful, stunning, gorgeous <3 and i remembered why i love you as an author. your style must be the most perfect thing i have ever read, and with that, i mean that there's not 1 or 2 of your stories that are good, all of them are! jesus christ, woman, write a book..
but before that: FINISH WHAT YOU'VE STARTED HERE! grrrr
with all my love <3
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Date: 2011-07-31 06:36 am (UTC)Mainly because I was stalking you for this update and didn't see it, even though I should have!! T^TANYWAY. This is gorgeously written and it's true to life... People fall in love but they don't act upon it, they don't admit it and somehow, we accept that we can be in love with someone who we're sure loves us back but still date and sleep with people we know we'll never love, at least not like that one person.
Sometimes it's nice to read fics where they're more like a TV drama; where someone will go to extreme lengths to keep the person they love or whatever, but personally, I find something like this, something believable and recognisable is much more satisfying.
We don't need great long descriptions because this sort of thing is something that people know- we all know someone as infuriatingly proper like Siwon or someone as passive as Hangeng and if we don't know them, then we are them.
So I'm rambling. I like what you've done with my OTP here, although it's SiHan, it's not because although I assume he's doing the literal topping, there seems to be no dominant one on the relationship and that's how they should be because they're effortlessly perfect together anyway... //fangirls
And of course, as always, your style of writing helps them be even more effortlessly perfect. I think every time I comment, I say that I love and envy your writing style, I won't go into too much detail though, because it's embarrassing ^^;;
I'm only sad that I didn't see this update sooner because every now and then, I'd think to myself: I wonder if she's gonna update that fic..? and all along, it was here!!
I know SiHan isn't your OTP, but if you ever fancy a change, you should definitely write them again because you do them justice.