Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Am I homophobic?”

The words leave Sungchan’s mouth without him registering, and he flinches at the speed Jungwoo’s head shoots up. His eyes widen, narrow, and widen again in the matter of a second and Mark raises his head too, blinking.

“What?” In his silence, Jungwoo leans in closer, eyebrows furrowed. “Sungchan,” he presses, “what?”

It’s too late to laugh it off as a joke now, or to attempt a “haha I asked if my home phone was big!”. “Am I-” he swallows back the bitter taste that’s risen in his mouth- “homophobic?”

It feels less scary saying it a second time, and Sungchan breathes out a sigh of relief. The question has been whirring around his head for the entirety of the work session. It’s some sort of twisted homophobic carnival carousel, the ups and downs leaving him cross-eyed and dizzy. Saying it at least lands his feet on solid ground, regardless of whether or not his vision still swims.

“Sungchannie.” Jungwoo’s voice is gentle as he reaches a hand over to cup his own. “Do you want me to die a horrible, gruesome death and live my afterlife burning in the deepest pits of hell?”

“No!”

“Okay,” Jungwoo murmurs slowly, then snaps his fingers. “What about Mark? Hypothetically speaking—”

“Wait a minute.” Mark frowns. “What do you mean hypothetically—?”

“Hypothetically speaking,” Jungwoo interrupts, “if Mark was gay, would you want him to die a horrible, gruesome death and live his afterlife burning in the deepest pits of hell?”

Countless memories of Mark “borrowing” his nice mechanical pencils and forgetting to trim his English ivy resurface, but at his friend’s kicked puppy expression, Sungchan stresses, “No. You guys are my friends! Why would I want that?”

Jungwoo’s eyes dart around the library, the usually crowded area more empty with the Sunday afternoon pushing later and later. He points to the middle-aged librarian behind the counter. “What about her? If she was gay, would you want her to die a horrible, gruesome death and live her afterlife burning in the deepest pits of hell?”

“No-o?” Sungchan tries. “I mean, not unless she was a mass murderer or a secret puppy kicker or something, no.” Is there a right way to answer? “I don’t think damning someone to hell is a good solution to anything.”

“That settles it!” Jungwoo snaps his fingers and beams. “You’re not homophobic!”

The declaration probably has some validity coming from a gay man, yet it makes Sungchan squirm more in his chair. He’d rather eat his foot than use his friend’s identity as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Mark seems to notice his unease and props his head up with an open palm. “What happened? Why are you asking?”

“My, um.” The words crawl out of Sungchan’s mouth and down his throat, where they curl up and start withering away. “I. Uh. It’s.”

Jungwoo puts both of his hands over his. “Sungchan, whatever it is, you can always tell us. As you said, we’re your friends.” Mark nods and makes a noise of agreement.

“My new roommate is gay and he makes me really uncomfortable like really really uncomfortable,” Sungchan blurts out, squeezing his eyes shut. After a torturous three seconds, he peeks an eye open and sees Jungwoo’s face flit through a character selection’s worth of emotions while Mark sports his branded contemplative expression.

“How do you know he’s gay?” Mark asks.

“I, uh.” Walked in on him making out with another guy at our apartment the day after he moved in. “He is. I know that for sure.”

Mark doesn’t look convinced, and Jungwoo jumps in at his silence. “Does he make you uncomfy because he’s gay or because you don’t vibe him?”

“I don’t know.” Sungchan stares at the worksheets he’s writing up for his student, wondering if calculus will help him with his dilemma. Maybe his homophobia is a series of curves, closer to the x-axis for Jungwoo and further away for his roommate. Maybe the integral is the key to understanding his bigotry.

He glances up and sees that his friends are silent, expectant. “I don’t know, honest! I don’t—I don’t not like him. He’s fine. He’s fine! He just.”

“He makes you uncomfortable,” Mark reiterates, “and he’s gay?”

Sungchan makes non-committal noise.

“What about him makes you uncomfy, then?” asks Jungwoo.

“He’s super touchy and physically affectionate,” Sungchan rushes, “and he’s so flirty like if a girl did it to me I’d still be uncomfortable and it might his personality but it’s still a lot and it gets overwhelming really fast, and he wears a lot of makeup and paints his nails and does theatre I don’t know why that makes me uncomfortable and it shouldn’t bother me because men can do those too but it does and it’s like I can’t connect with him at all and—and if those things weird me out, that means I’m homophobic, right? It’s toxic to think that way, right? Right?”

Jungwoo and Mark’s gazes meet from the corners of their eyes, almost holding a silent conversation. Sungchan’s heart swan dives into the deep recesses of his gut, his lungs racing to catch his breath.

“Sungchannie.” Jungwoo squeezes Sungchan’s hand tighter. “Homophobic or not, it’s okay if you need to unlearn some things. Everyone does at some point in their life.”

Mark pipes, “Society sucks but it gets in your head anyway. People don’t address it enough, but internalised homophobia affects everyone, not just queer people.”

Anything Sungchan thinks to say sounds stupid in his head, so he opts to nod meekly instead.

“Besides!” Jungwoo’s smile is a beam of sunshine, too bright coupled with the indoor lights. “I thought I was homophobic back in high school. Look where I am now!”

It’s not as if Sungchan’s experience with queer people, in general, falls short by any means, though.

He was the first person each one of his friends came out to over the years. He’s third-wheeled countless amounts of Chenle and Renjun’s dates, he’s Jungwoo’s go-to DD, and he and Jisung cried buckets watching Brokeback Mountain together. He doesn’t have a lot of friends, sure, except the fact that he and Mark are the only straight guys amongst them has to mean something, right?

It doesn’t make sense that after all these years, homophobia magically manifests in him the moment he starts rooming with Donghyuck Lee. Donghyuck isn’t any—any gayer than Sungchan’s other friends, at least not that he thinks, but he doesn’t know how else to explain it.

Sungchan can’t explain why he flinches when he gets back to the apartment at the sight of Donghyuck in the living room, lacing up a pair of knee-high black boots—the stilettos of which would give an OSHA inspector a heart attack.

“There’s my roommate,” Donghyuck sings, finishing both his shoes off with double-knotted bows; they hug his calves tight. “I was starting to think you didn’t exist. You’re always out or in that gloomy man cave of yours.”

“Hey.” Moulding his face into a smile feels like trying to bend the plastic of his computer keyboard. “Are you leaving?”

“Yup!” Donghyuck pops the “p” sound and stands up, crossing the distance between them. Sungchan can’t explain why still being half an inch taller than Donghyuck leaves his throat dry and scratchy. Up close, Sungchan can see smudges of rouge pink eyeshadow tracing his lids. “It’s a tech rehearsal, so I won’t be back until super late. I love the new plants, by the way, they look like a bunch of little asses. Oh, and I saw that you wrote in your schedule here, so I filled it out too!” He taps the calendar above the shoe shelf.

Right under the rollerball marks of Sungchan’s sharp letters is curvy handwriting. Sungchan highlights his own writing (blue for classes, green for tutoring, purple for friends, orange for personal things, housework, and plant care) and the gel ink follows the same fashion. Blue rehearsal and show dates fill out the next couple of weeks, there are a few purple meetups with Renjun and someone named Yangyang, one in green with two people named Taeil and Doyoung, and an orange grocery trip is written in for two weeks from now.

“I made food and threw it in the fridge if you want some,” he finishes.

That snaps Sungchan out of his daze, and he decides on ordering takeout later. “Thanks, I really appreciate it. The, uh, the new plants are called lithops.”

Donghyuck reaches up to poke Sungchan’s nose with a laugh. “Don’t give me that look. It’s not laced, I promise. You’ll like it.” In a staged whisper, he says, “Renjun thinks I’m a better cook than Chenle. Don’t tell him I told you that.” He looks around the room as if their friend will teleport in, then winks and leaves the apartment with the final click click click of his heels.

Sungchan can’t explain why his nose stings for the next five minutes, nor can he explain why giving in to eating almost all of Donghyuck’s stir fry for dinner while he annotates his biomechanics textbook leaves his mouth warm but his stomach in a painful knot.

He can’t explain a lot of things, and Donghyuck seems to be the most enigmatic of them all.

“Jesus Christ,” Sungchan wheezes, his body collapsing onto the stack of boxes, “When you guys asked me to move your things, you could’ve given me a heads up that you were taking the brick foundation of your old bedroom with you too.”

The backstabbing blow of Chenle’s supersonic cackling at his demise is softened by Renjun’s sympathetic eyes and the chilled box of chrysanthemum tea he passes over. The almost comical amount of condensation buildup on the side soaks Sungchan’s hand; the seasons have barely turned yet the sun beats down through the window in all its fury.

At the very least, the new living room is stunning in the light. All that’s left of their upperclassmen couple’s dream is furnishing, something Renjun and Chenle have always been better at than Sungchan. If they took all the furniture they bought for what was now his and Donghyuck’s apartment, only Sungchan’s plants would remain, and as many of them as there are, they can’t fill in furniture-shaped voids. 

“You’re paying reparations.” Chenle sounds winded despite having barely lifted a finger, and if Sungchan had any more energy, he’d pounce on his sudden urge to point and laugh. It serves Chenle right for abandoning their morning runs together in favour of extra classes, like a nerd. “You have to counterbalance societal homophobia by doing our bidding.”

The urge to point and laugh dissipates. The words dump a bucket of ice-cold water over Sungchan’s head, chilling him to the bones. His hand shakes as he jabs his straw into his tea, causing the hole to puncture at a sharp angle. Drops of tea splatter out and hit his hand. Realising he hasn’t replied, Sungchan deflects the comment with a laugh that sounds more strained than he intended if the curious glance from Renjun means anything.

“Was that the last box?” asks Sungchan.

Chenle doesn’t seem to notice the weak attempt at a gear shift, replying with a grunt. On the other hand, Renjun crosses his arms, eyes too keen for Sungchan to handle. Renjun always regards him like that, like he’s some thousand-year-old fortune teller ready to tell him the different near-death experiences he’ll have in the future deduced from analysing the pores on Sungchan’s nose. “Everything else is furniture waiting to be shipped,” Renjun confirms, leaning against the wall. It gives him the usually lacking height to look down at Sungchan, who still pointedly refuses to meet his gaze.

“Renjun bought the world’s most hideous couch,” laments Chenle, sprawling on the hardwood floor next to the electric fan. “The box is in the bedroom and you can help him assemble it. It’ll save my eyes from nerve strain.”

Renjun rolls his eyes so far back into his head, that it makes a good possessed horror doll impression; it breaks his stare away from Sungchan, who breathes out a sigh. Any longer and he might’ve started crying on the spot. “It’s not hideous.”

“It’s piss yellow!”

“It’s lemon cream yellow. It complements the off white walls.”

“We should’ve kept the leather one.” Chenle glares at Sungchan, though the magnitude of his intimidation is diminished considering how his deep-fried hair flies into his eyes from the air blown at his face. “You should be grateful you have it. That’s my money you’re bumming off of.”

“You’re welcome to take it.” Sungchan finishes the rest of his tea. “I haven’t used it since you two moved out and Donghyuck isn’t at the apartment that often.”

“I knew I was forgetting something,” Renjun murmurs, then louder, “What’s living with him like?”

The shrug Sungchan goes for has his chest flopping against the box stack in a strange worm wiggle. “We don’t cross paths a lot but he’s a good roommate.” Sungchan brought up that he was comfortable doing all of the housework. The mere idea had Donghyuck gasping in offence and since then, they’ve split all of the chores down the middle. He always cooks and Sungchan always does the dishes, everything else alternating with trade-offs. 

“That’s good,” Renjun hums, eyes drifting back to Sungchan. “Thanks for letting him take the extra room, even if it was as a favour from us. His last landlady gave him hell and he was rushing to get out for a while.”

It’s the first time Sungchan’s heard it, and it leaves him silent for a moment of contemplation. Donghyuck’s kind of a little perfect, Sungchan in all of his unease can recognise that much. How could a landlord have beef with him? Sungchan’s landlord doesn’t have beef with him, despite the fact that he and Jisung got so drunk playing Mario Kart once that they dented the floor on a particularly extreme race in Electrodome. “Why? Did he carve clown faces into the walls or something?”

“Homophobic sack of shit,” Chenle answers. With the fan in his face, his voice comes out all warped, the second “o” in homophobic a noise straight out of a sci-fi film. “Rinsed him for having sex with guys by disguising all her attacks as ‘investigating noise complaints’. Would’ve gotten away with snooping through his stuff if his neighbour didn’t step in and call her out on her shit.”

“Couldn’t he have hooked up outside of his apartment?” asks Sungchan before his filter can catch up with him.

The regret is intensified by how much more sad Renjun looks than normal when he shakes his head, which is a feat considering his resting expression is equivalent to that of a newly widowed Victorian woman. “There’s a lot of shitty people out there and Donghyuck lived in a safe neighbourhood. I don’t blame him for bringing them to his apartment.”

Has Sungchan ever made Donghyuck feel unsafe?

Deliberating the answers makes him feel worse and worse. A twisted kind of reassurance comes from knowing he hasn’t brought up Donghyuck’s late-night escapades nor has he snooped through his stuff. At the very least, he’s better than Chenle’s standards of what constitutes a homophobe.

“That’s…awful. I’m so sorry.” The words are genuine, but they leave a bitter taste lingering in the back of Sungchan’s throat. Sometimes, he really fucking hates people. The world is a cruel place to the people that never deserve it. The world should recentre it’s aim on Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. “Is there anything I can do to make it better?”

“All you need to be is supportive,” Renjun says, words and pauses measured, “Queer people aren’t as different from you as you think.”

The final pause Renjun takes breaks the remainder of Sungchan’s composure. “I think I’m homophobic.” 

The scoff Chenle lets out is loud enough to catch in the path of the fan again, firing off another set of laser noises. “Are you serious? You think you’re homophobic?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Renjun chides, kicking Chenle’s foot. To Sungchan, he asks, “What makes you think that?”

“Donghyuck makes me feel—” Sungchan swallows. He doesn’t know where to begin to describe what Donghyuck makes him feel, and he doesn’t want to say “he makes me so nauseous, I want to die” considering what he knows now about Donghyuck’s old landlord. What he settles for is, “I can’t figure out why he makes me uncomfortable, and all the possible reasons are kind of homophobic. I talked to Jungwoo and Mark about it and they both said it might be something internalised. I don’t know.”

“First things first,” Renjun starts, “this may not mean a lot to you, but I’ve never felt threatened by you nor have you ever even hinted at an opinion that could be offensive or toxic. You have a lot of queer friends, too, and I’m sure they would all agree.”

“You’re the template of a Nice Guy,” Chenle adds. “Nice Guy T-M. If you’re homophobic, I’m pretty sure everyone under the sun is homophobic. Renjun would be homophobic because he bought that stupid fucking couch and it’s corroding my vision and I’m gay.”

“My God, will you let go of it?”

“Will you let go of it?”

Renjun shakes his head and trucks on. “Jungwoo and Mark did bring up a good point to note,” he muses, nibbling on the end of his straw. “Internal prejudice takes a lot of time to chip away at. I realised I was gay pretty early on, yet I’m still working on things myself. Recognising it is a big step already, and as long as you’re willing to change, you will be able to break those biases.”

Chenle cuts in, voice loud and immediately garnering another eye roll from Renjun. “Sungchan, hold tight. I’m going to tell you a short story about a boy named—named Chenyue. Once upon a time—”

Sungchan scowls, lifting his head from on top of the stack. “Chenle, I’m not twelve.”

“Once! Upon! A time!” bellows Chenle, and smiles his satisfied smile—the one that makes him look like a cat—at Renjun and Sungchan’s silence. “Once upon a time, there was a handsome, suave, talented little boy named Chenyue.”

“Was he effortlessly charismatic?” 

“Obviously—”

“Outrageously sexy?”

“Of course—”

“Was his last name Zhong?” Sungchan snorts. “Did he play the piano?”

“No. His last name was—Zheng. And he played the recorder.”

Renjun raises an eyebrow. “I bet he was a recorder prodigy.”

“Quiet! He was, thank you for asking, but you’re interrupting my story.” Chenle clears his throat. “Once upon a time, Chenyue Zheng thought he was straight, because every little boy raised in an Asian family is brought up to assume a life of straightness is the only happy life, just like life as a doctor, lawyer, or engineer is the only successful life. Chenyue lived his whole life wondering why people were gay if being gay guaranteed a sad life. Chenyue was a pathetic high schooler that made AIDs jokes to compensate for his crippling inferiority complex and repressed sexuality.”

“Chenyue Zheng reminds me of one of my friends,” Sungchan mutters. “He’s not effortlessly charismatic or outrageously sexy though.”

“Then, the beautiful golden gates of college bestowed themselves on Chenyue. He decided to fight off the nasty claws of his parents and majored in business, whereupon he realised all of his insecurities stemmed from his repressed sexuality. Chenyue accepted the fact that he was gay and his life became a wondrous land of sparkles and gay porn and rainbows and excellent grades in his economics classes. He landed himself a sexy boyfriend that wasn’t quite as sexy as him and lived happily ever after. The end.”

“What was his boyfriend’s name?” prompts Renjun.

“Tony.”

“Cute story,” Sungchan says dryly, “but I’m not gay. You literally witnessed all three of my girlfriends and my Chungha phase.”

“I’m not saying you’re gay,” Chenle articulates, “but I am saying that a little private time with yourself and your left hand might answer some questions. Besides, if you were gay, that would explain your shitty taste in girls. Chungha aside, Sua was an insecure piece of work.”

Renjun rubs between his eyebrows. “What Chenle is saying,” he exasperates, “is that internalised homophobia tends to manifest at stronger intensities in people that weren’t given a chance to explore their sexualities: gay, straight, or otherwise. It’s worth keeping in mind. And it’s okay to be confused.”

“Just gonna throw it out there,” Chenle ventures, “Chenyue’s life got a lot better when he let himself thirst over pro basketball players without pretending it was for the sake of enjoying sports and other hetero activities.”

Thing is, Sungchan really isn’t gay.

His history with romance is on the blander side, sure, and it’s never been at the top of Sungchan’s priorities. His three previous relationships were with girls, and he’s certain he liked them all. His first girlfriend helped him commit to secondary education, his second girlfriend introduced him to his favourite video games and his third girlfriend—

Okay, his relationship with Sua wasn’t great. Still, he liked her enough to stay with her for a couple of months before she, like his exes, decided they never wanted anything to do with him ever again.

He can tell certain men are attractive the same way he can tell when a chef on Chopped has fucked up a dish without knowing a lick about cooking, but he’s certain he’s never felt attracted to a man. 

He takes a “how homophobic am I” quiz on the elevator up, only for it to crash his browser before showing the results. 

Ironically enough, Donghyuck is both at the apartment and lounging across the leather couch when Sungchan arrives back at the apartment—in shorts so short, they’re almost covered entirely by the bottom hem of his oversized hoodie. His legs stretch out a mile to where his fuzzy-socked feet are kicked up on the coffee table, his exposed skin the same sun-kissed shade as his face. White, jagged stretch marks race up the planes of his thighs, and Sungchan can’t bring himself to look away until Donghyuck shifts to grab the remote. 

He pauses the TV and peeks over the couch, over the parlour palm behind the couch, with bright eyes. “Hey, Mister Mister—ooh, what’s in there?”

“It’s for you.” Sungchan kicks his sneakers off and toes into his house slippers, careful to keep the box in his shaking hands steady. “There’s included forks, knives, and napkins.”

Donghyuck rips into the box with gusto, and for at least half a minute, he stares at the contents, unmoving. It’s the slowest, most nerve-wracking half a minute Sungchan’s ever experienced, his mind speeding a mile a minute while his heart runs along the side of the road trying to keep up.

“I’m not gonna say no,” Donghyuck says, eyebrows creeping closer and closer to his hairline, “but what’s the point of this?”

The rainbow dyed slice of cake Sungchan bought, which seemed to be the right purchase at the time, makes him feel more idiotic by the minute. What if Donghyuck hates cake? What if he can’t eat it because of a diet? What if he can’t eat it because he’s allergic or lactose intolerant?

Sungchan might hurl.

“Reparations!” He wrings his hands together, resisting melting into the floor and seeping through the cracks, never to be seen again. It’s tempting, but he doesn’t know what he’ll do if the neighbours below complain about their ceiling leaking with the liquid body of one Jung Sungchan. “To counterbalance being homophobic.” Renjun and Chenle’s reassurances bounce around his head, but he sets them aside for now. Even if he isn’t homophobic, he can’t help but feel ashamed at the discomfort being around Donghyuck sparks. “I’m sorry if I ever made you feel uncomfortable or unsafe living here. I’m still learning a lot.” 

He wonders whether or not he’s overdoing it with the kindergarten teacher’s enthusiasm, but it makes Donghyuck laugh another one of his signature eardrum-piercing laughs. “Oh my God,” he giggles, stabbing his fork through the cake, “You’re such a virgo.”

Sungchan doesn’t know what the hell that means. He laughs anyway because the way Donghyuck smiles like he’s the world’s best comedian is worth it.

Looking at Donghyuck’s face gets too hard, and the thought of looking at the low dip exposing collarbones or his sleeve drowned hands or his fucking thighs is a worse prospect, so Sungchan turns his gaze away from him entirely and glances at the TV. The screen is paused to a blurry shot of a blonde woman mid-scream. “What are you watching? Looks like bad Hollywood horror.”

“Pretty Little Liars.” Donghyuck pats the space on the couch next to him. “I can start from the top if you want to watch with me since I’ve barely started episode two. It’s so bad, I’m obsessed.”

Half an hour into the pilot, Sungchan finds himself agreeing with Donghyuck’s assessment: it’s pretty terrible. They both lean too close to the TV regardless. Sungchan uses the extra fork given to him by the bakery to finish Donghyuck’s slice when he can’t stomach the rest.

It’s pretty terrible, yet Sungchan still chokes on a bite of cake in shock and Donghyuck screeches in glee as Emily and Maya kiss on screen.

It’s pretty terrible, yet hours later, Sungchan rouses from sleep with little to no recollection of what’s happened throughout the little to no plot of the season. The living room clock displays two in the morning, and he’s sunk so deep into the couch, he can feel the wooden frame.

He blinks out the spots dancing across his vision and his gradual coming of senses includes the gradual realisation that his arm is warm—very warm.

All of a sudden, Sungchan’s mind goes from a blank state of groggy semi-consciousness to absolute overdrive. He blinks faster and turns away from the reflection on the black TV screen to his side, to confirm his brain isn’t playing sleep-exhausted carnival tricks on him.

It isn’t, because there he is; Donghyuck, in all of his glory, is curled up by his side, every one of his breaths blowing a strand of hair near his sepia-stained lips up and down.

Since the first time they met, over coffee and a copy of the apartment lease, Donghyuck has held himself with a bravado that could kill God in one snide breath. Now, he’s quiet, placid—small. One wrong move and Sungchan’s too-large body could run him over. The sight feels wrong: a red sky, a white sunflower, a yellow orange, something breathtaking despite its glaring contradictions.

Maybe Donghyuck himself is a contradiction. A strange, disorienting, breathtaking little contradiction. 

Staring at the neat constellation arrangement of moles on his face has Sungchan’s discomfort splitting into two opposite roads, both unfamiliar to him, both amplifying the pounding of his heart. It takes a herculean effort to tamp down the urge to adjust Donghyuck’s posture and brush the little strand of hair behind his ear. The idea of changing his position terrifies him, so Sungchan stays on the couch, letting Donghyuck snuggle further between his shoulder and his neck, and wonders.  

He doesn’t know what it all means, but his newly dubbed Carousel of Discomfort starts moving slow enough for him to count the spaces in between. He isn’t left light-headed at the motion anymore, yet each horse staring down at him makes him feel something else entirely, something he doesn’t know if he wants to feel.

Hey, I saw on the calendar you have show dates coming up and I wanted to come see one of your performances if you’re okay with that. How can I buy tickets?

Sungchan nibbles his lip. It has to be at least fifteen minutes of deliberation now.

“So I told her to dial back the attitude but then she tried to gouge out my left eye with those egregious extensions of hers—they’re green, who even does that? And I—are you listening?”

Sungchan jabs down send, clicks off his phone, and glances up at Yujin, who balances a pencil on the tip of her nose with a pout. He still doesn’t know how she does it, what with how tall and angled her nose is. “What was that, sorry?”

“You weren’t,” she gasps, the pencil wavering at the way her face contorts. “Chani, I need your input here! That’s your whole job!”

“Jin, you pay me to teach you calculus,” Sungchan says, “not to give you advice on how to hook up with your roommate’s best friend. I think that’s a lost cause, for the record. You’re better off sticking to your parasocial relationship with Seulgi.”

“I need help in calculus because of her,” insists Yujin, “She’s so sexy, it makes my baby lesbian heart go bonkers but my roommate is, like, gaslight gatekeep girlbossing me out of this. If I get my roommate out of the picture, my quest for love will be a wild success and I’ll pass all my calc tests!” 

“I don’t think your success is measured by whether or not you have a girlfriend. I think your success is measured by how well you do these practice problems.”

“It is, it is.” The huff she lets out tips the pencil off balance, sending it clattering onto her worksheets. She tries to rebalance the pencil but gives up after a few seconds. “Dating makes me happy! And if I date, my happiness will cancel out my crippling calc depression. It’s basic math. You don’t get it ‘cause you’re emotionally unavailable. On that note, I’m so glad you broke up with Sua. She was a mess. I never wanna see her face again.”

“Hey, Sua wasn’t—” She stares him down and Sungchan hesitates. “I’m not emotionally unavailable.”

“Are you kidding?” Yujin starts wiggling her pencil up and down and Sungchan’s eyes trace the way the wood seems to go limp until snapping out of it and refocusing on her eyes. “You’ve been tutoring me for a semester and a half now and you don’t even talk about your day. I don’t even know your major! I have to go nuts bugging you to get a word out of you that isn’t—”

She pitches her voice lower and drops any inflexion in her voice as a supposed imitation of Sungchan’s voice. It doesn’t sound anything like his voice. “‘Jin, do the worksheet.’ ‘Jin, you got another B minus, you need to study harder.’ ‘Jin, you pay me to teach you calculus, not blah blah blah.’ You smile and laugh and nod along but it’s all empty, like one of those inflatable tube men wiggling around aimlessly for the entertainment and attraction of unassuming passersby. All you care about are your grades and your shrubs. Dating you has gotta be a nightmare if talking to you is equivalent to talking to a brick wall. I know I’m shallow but at least I’m self-aware.”

“I—” Sungchan all of a sudden feels so much worse about the piles of unanswered texts in his messages, and that he planned on giving them all monosyllabic responses and smileys tacked on to make them feel less soulless. “My day was good. I’m going to pick a restaurant after this to take out since my new roommate is getting back late and every time I cook ends with the emergency room on speed dial.”

“Get sushi! I love sushi. I’ll text you this place downtown I go to all the time; the prices are so cheap for out of the world quality. What’s your new roommate like?”

“He’s.” He’s Donghyuck. Sungchan doesn’t know how to encapsulate him in any other way. “He’s loud. Chatty. You’d like him.”

Yujin nods approvingly, balancing her pencil on the back of her pinkie finger. “You need loud in your life. You need chatty in your life, too. You need a lot in your life, actually. You need—” She puckers her lips in thought— “You need living, laughing, and loving in your life!”

He doesn’t know what other advice he should’ve expected from a freshman. “I’m majoring in kinesiology.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the study of body movement. I’ve wanted to be a physical therapist since high school.”

“Oh, cool! That checks out. You’re all ‘hrr grr masculinity sportsball shooter games testosterone sportsball’.”

He’s not like that. “I’m not like that.”

“Whatever you s—” His phone lights up as a series of messages flood his notifications and he jerks forward to check them. It makes Yujin’s eyes widen to the size of the moon and she spins her pencil into her grip in an excellent display of dexterity. Sungchan never knew she could pen spin, and he’s left impressed before she demands, “Are you seeing someone? Who are you waiting on to text you back? Do you have another girlfriend? She better not be a bitch.”

“I don’t—I’m not—No one,” Sungchan splutters out. “I don’t have another girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend or not, you totally met someone new. And don’t try to worm your way out of this one. We’re both September virgos, that won’t work on me.”

What does that even mean? “It’s none of your business.”

“Wow, you’re never this cagey! C’mon! Tell me tell me tell me!” She bats her lashes and laces her hands in front of her. “Please? Pretty please? For your favourite student?”

“You’re my only student.” He points to her worksheet. “And you forgot to factor the cubed secant.”

“You’re no fun,” she huffs, crossing her arms to rest her head on top. Reluctantly, she erases the problem and Sungchan pretends his heart doesn’t sink seeing that they’re all texts from Jungwoo discussing the logistics of cats on Mars. 

Thing is, Donghyuck Lee isn’t technically gay, either.

“Yeah, that’s the asexual flag. Why?”

Sungchan clicks off his phone, plugs it back into its charger, and resumes eating his sandwich. Between mouthfuls of food, he asks, “Can someone be bisexual and asexual at the same time? Shouldn’t they cancel out?”

“Not necessarily.” Shotaro scribbles something on his notebook, closes it, and shuts down his laptop. It always weirds Sungchan out that his best friend shuts down his laptop completely between uses. “Your romantic and sexual orientations don’t need to align. Just because I’m aromantic doesn’t mean every other ace person is. They’re on separate spectrums. He could be biromantic.”

Each bite of his sandwich tastes mustier by the minute. It reminds him of cardboard. “How does that work?”

“It’s like.” Shotaro puffs out his cheeks and cups them with his hands the way he does whenever he’s preparing to explain something to one of the children he teaches. It doesn’t make Sungchan feel stupid, but, well. It makes him feel a little stupid. “What’s in your sandwich?”

What? “What?”

Shotaro reaches a hand across the table and pokes at the remaining quarter. “What’s in it?”

“Egg, ham, cheese, tomato, lettuce.” Flipping over the top slice reveals a layer of white. “Mayo.” The sandwich was displayed on the café menu as one of their best sellers, though the more Sungchan eats it, the less he wants to. “It’s not that good.”

“What would make it better?”

“I don’t know.” Sungchan scratches the hair behind his ear. “I think I’m not a fan of sandwiches. Bibimbap is a tastier source of macronutrients.”

Shotaro slides over his muffin with a smile and Sungchan breaks off a piece after finishing his lacklustre sandwich. It’s lemon poppyseed and the taste is a chunk of heaven.

“Pretend sandwiches are sex,” Shotaro says, and it would have burst Sungchan into laughter had Shotaro’s voice and face been so earnest. “Some people love sandwiches, some don’t like sandwiches at all. Some eat sandwiches a lot even if they don’t have any particularly strong opinion about them because it’s a good source of carbs and protein. Some like all the ingredients separately on their own, not together in sandwich form. Everyone has different preferences, and that’s what it all is in the end. People with preferences.”

In theory, it’s simple, however, trying to wrap his head around it proves to be the hardest thing Sungchan’s done all day. At any rate, he declares, “Okay, makes sense.”

The half-hearted lie is fruitless, considering how Shotaro is a mind reader. He pokes Sungchan’s left cheek and asks, “Why were you with Sua for so long?”

From any other person, Sungchan would’ve given protests and spluttering. Shotaro is different though, in the way that best friends are always different, and the first thing that leaves Sungchan’s mouth is a stifled groan. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.” Shotaro’s voice is gentle. “She was making you unhappy, yet something had to compel you to stay.”

“Because I liked having someone that was always there willing to do something with me?” At Shotaro’s nodding, Sungchan keeps going. “And it was easy to spend time with her.” After they broke up, Sungchan found out that studying with Jungwoo, fighting over video games with Jisung, and playing basketball with Chenle was more fun than it had ever been with Sua. The Earth kept spinning and Sungchan moved on.

“What about her as a person?”

“She was funny?” Sungchan doesn’t know what Shotaro wants from him. “She liked me.”

“Was that it?” Shotaro’s smile is inviting but Sungchan wants to leave the conversation more and more. “What else about her did you like?”

What else about her did he like? 

For as long as he can remember, Sungchan’s never had a type. Sua was pretty, he could see that much, but there was nothing about her looks that stuck out to him, other than the fact that she looked like Park Jihyun, and Saeyi had been his favourite character in Yumi’s Cells. Her cooking wasn’t bad, and he appreciated the company she offered whenever he wanted to shoot hoops or go on runs, despite her not liking sports. Her untidiness aside, he liked that she didn’t intrude on his own spaces or touch his plants. He didn’t mind cleaning alone if it meant keeping her from spilling bleach everywhere the way she did the first time she tried to help.

At the opening of Sungchan’s mouth, Shotaro’s phone almost falls off the table from the force of a vibrating call. “Sorry, I’ve gotta go!” Shotaro pouts, ruffling Sungchan’s hair as he picks up the call and gets up from the table. “Look some stuff up, alright? It’ll put things into perspective. We can talk about it some more another time.”

Sungchan supposes it’s the universe telling him not to rely on his minority friends for answers to his endless confusion, so after finishing Shotaro’s muffin and ordering an iced latte, he resigns himself to flipping open his laptop and staring at a new tab, tapping his foot along to the RnB crooning softly from the speakers.

So, as it turns out, Donghyuck Lee isn’t technically gay.

According to the pins on his bag that Sungchan may or may not have taken a photo of (for research purposes), Donghyuck Lee is “panromantic asexual”, words that have little to no meaning to Sungchan before he takes a deep dive hunting for answers.

Donghyuck is panromantic asexual, which means he doesn’t feel sexual attraction towards anyone, but he feels romantic attraction towards all genders (and Sungchan does know that there are more than two genders, as a matter of fact), except it starts making less and less sense upon remembering that Jisung is bisexual and defines bisexuality as attraction to all genders too, and that albeit Donghyuck doesn’t feel sexual attraction if he’s asexual, according to Chenle and Renjun, he’s very much a sexual person.

It takes some serious keyboard gymnastics for Sungchan to dodge a long list of useless information on plant reproduction, and in his desperation with trying to decipher the nuances of asexuality, he stumbles across a frozen, five-year-old Reddit thread on the third page of his Google search. The last reply has a hyperlink for an “am I gay?” quiz and, well.

Sungchan is desperate desperate.

The questions are a little too personal for comfort, and Sungchan doesn’t know how he feels about telling a website his porn-watching habits. At any rate, he puts his unease aside for the sake of the greater good; each option is clicked with total honesty, taking upwards of five minutes of deliberation.

He makes it to question fifteen (“Have you ever been attracted to a same-sex fictional character?” to which he selects yes because everyone and their mothers were attracted to Gong Yoo as Seok-woo in Train to Busan) before nearly vaulting out of his socks when a voice whispers in his ear, “Whatcha doing?”

“Nothing!” Sungchan squeaks, slamming his laptop closed. “Your mom!” 

The one and only stands up straight and considers him with an amused, easy grin. He’s on his break between his matinee show and his evening show, Sungchan remembers. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“W-what?”

Donghyuck’s smile widens, his tongue running along the inside of his cheek in a way that almost strangles Sungchan from the inside out. It’s something akin to morbid curiosity; he can’t peel his eyes off Donghyuck despite how nauseous he’s growing from the sight. “You know, the guy lucky enough to have you wrapped up in a sexuality quiz. Who’s got you doing double takes?”

“It’s not—it’s research,” Sungchan stammers, feeling his face tick up to three-digit temperatures. “I’m doing research.”

“Research,” Donghyuck drawls, settling at Sungchan’s table. “Right.”

“I’m—” Sungchan grasps at the words Jungwoo keeps reminding him of— “unlearning stuff. Trying to be a better ally.”

That softens Donghyuck, his smile smaller while his eyes are warmer. “That’s great. I’m proud of you.” 

He turns off to wait in line to order, and Sungchan takes a few seconds to spare a glance at Donghyuck. His hair is styled into neat waves today, dyed a light brown that looks almost pink at the right angle of light. Sungchan’s never seen a colour like it, and it matches the glowing bronze of Donghyuck’s skin in a way he can’t quite place his finger on. Even the slightest lift of his mouth pushes up his round cheeks and his natural aegyo-sal. It doesn’t take a genius to recognise why he’s an actor—Sungchan has the eyes to know he’s conventionally attractive, yet there’s something more about the way Donghyuck carries himself that keeps Sungchan’s gaze from leaving him.

Donghyuck reaches the barista and Sungchan shakes himself out of his dazed state, cracking his laptop open again to finish the quiz.

Waiting for the result nearly makes him throw up on the spot, as does the result itself. 

You are bi-curious! We don’t see 100% proof that you are gay, but you are definitely bi-curious. 

Sungchan chews his bottom lip and highlights the word, plugging it into the search bar. The Wikipedia article feels bizarre to read. His consciousness floats above his body, watching his body scroll through. 

A few minutes later, Donghyuck sits back down with his pager and Sungchan shoves his queasiness out of his mind to ask, “How did you find out you were, um. Panromantic asexual?” 

Donghyuck lets out a low whistle and diverts his attention from counting his change. “Not a lot of people bother to remember the full name.”

“I.” Sungchan can’t meet Donghyuck’s laser gaze, settling to study at his hands instead. They’re painted bubblegum pink today, both indexes sporting matching white flowers. “Googled it.”

“You’re adorable.” His laugh is shrill, childlike and carefree. It leaves Sungchan’s ears ringing. “I’ve sort of always known. My first kiss was with a guy, and even though it was awful, middle school me knew what the feelings that came out of it meant. My first serious relationship was with a girl, and she’s still one of the best people in my life. I’ve had crushes on girls, guys, people in between, the whole shebang. I’m easy like that.”

Donghyuck uncaps Sungchan’s latte and takes a careful sip. “Oh shit, this is good.”

“You can have the rest.” The mere idea of drinking it after Donghyuck leaves him queasy.

While crunching down on the ice, Donghyuck says, “Sex is fun.”

“I—what?”

“Sex is fun,” Donghyuck repeats, “and that’s sort of it. I’ve never experienced sexual attraction, I just like the way sex feels. Plus, I get a lot of enjoyment out of making sure the other person I’m with is getting pleasure. That’s why I fuck around a lot even though I’m ace.” He explains it all the same way someone would explain the weather.

A forecast of his roommate’s sexual activities.

“What’s your quiz say?”

Sungchan’s eyes drift back to his laptop, the results searing red-hot into his eyes. “Straight.”

Something flickers in Donghyuck’s eyes, something that makes the contents of Sungchan’s stomach sink to the floor. “Serious?”

“Yeah.” Yeah. Sungchan has no idea who he’s trying to convince. He feels close to certain that whoever it is, it’s not working.

Donghyuck finishes the rest of the ice. “Was it your girlfriend, then, that came by looking for you yesterday afternoon? When you were tutoring?” Sungchan tilts his head in question and Donghyuck clarifies, “Tall, thin, little bit of dimple, has that kind of mature visual—”

“Sua?”

“Maybe. She’s really pretty.”

Sungchan frowns. He dropped off the last of her clothes weeks ago. “What else did she need me for?” 

“Said she hadn’t seen you in person for a while and wanted to catch up.” Donghyuck rubs his neck. “Sorry if she was your friend. I was kind of mean to her.” 

After a pause, Sungchan realises he hasn’t answered the question, and he scrambles to say, “I don’t—it’s fine.” A pause. “She’s my ex.”

“Great!” He claps his hands together with a smile. “I thought it was kind of suspect, so I told her to get lost—in less nice words—in case she was a murderer hiding an axe in that ghastly purse of hers.” Gentler, he asks, “How long were you guys together?”

“Two years?” Sungchan shrugs. “We were only keeping up appearances in the last few months, though.”

They lapse in silence for a bit and he remembers what Yujin said about being closed off, and the text he sent her after the session about trying harder at opening up. He supposes his roommate out of everyone is the best person to start with. “Sua had a lot of personal issues,” he begins, fiddling with the hair by his ear, “and she would get argumentative when she felt I wasn’t doing enough to help her. We had a conversation about it after we broke up and she apologised, but even then, if I could go back, I probably would’ve ended it earlier.”

“Excuse my misogyny for a minute: she sounds like a bitch. You’re not obligated to patch up her anxiety because you were in a relationship.”

Yujin would love Donghyuck. “It’s not entirely her fault. Helping others has always been difficult for me, and that was what she needed the most. I’m not good with people, I guess.”

“Really?” The surprise in Donghyuck is genuine. “I know we haven’t known each other for that long, but you’re so easy to talk to, and everyone says you and Jungwoo are the resident extraverts.”

“She called me corporate.” Thinking about the insult in retrospect is funnier than it should be. Who uses “multi-level marketing scheme recruiter” as a gotcha card anyway? “She said every conversation we had felt like an interview.”

“She’s a bitch and a liar.” Donghyuck flicks his head to sweep his bangs out of the way of his eyes. “You’re an earth sign, obviously you’re gonna feel stilted. That doesn’t mean talking to you isn’t fun as hell. You’re a weirdo, sure, but affectionately.”

“Affectionately a weirdo,” Sungchan repeats. “My exes didn’t have the same vision. They only saw the weirdo part.”

“Maybe you haven’t found the right person?” Donghyuck gestures with a hand in the air. “That’s what everyone tells me. My track record is shit, too, you know. I’m too casual and flighty and spontaneous. Those aren’t even bad things! I’m keeping up the mindset that the whole world simply isn’t ready for me yet.”

Donghyuck’s pager goes off and Sungchan says, “That’s not true. Your coffee is.”

For such an insipid joke, the laugh Donghyuck lets out is long and loud. Now that Sungchan’s used to the sound, he finds he doesn’t mind it at all, not even when the other people in the café fix their gazes on the two of them. 

Mark sounds more entertained than annoyed, and it gives a few seconds of graceful relief until Sungchan realises it’s at his own expense. “What in the world makes you think kissing a straight guy will confirm that you’re straight? Seems kinda backwards.”

“I—” Sungchan hesitates. “Someone told me that he found out he was gay through kissing another guy. If I’m straight, kissing a guy will reaffirm it. And if I am homophobic, this will be exposure therapy to show that men kissing men isn’t any different from men kissing women. I thought about this a lot.”

Mark looks divided over whether or not he should laugh or cry. “I don’t think that’s how it works, bro. Why does it have to be someone straight?”

It wasn’t going to be, originally.

Jisung and Jungwoo were easy to eliminate from the list of potential candidates; kissing Jisung would be like kissing his brother, and kissing Jungwoo would be like kissing his mom, neither of which were prospects he was keen on exploring. He settled for Shotaro and was met with a sad smile and a head shake—Renjun later giving the same response.

Shotaro explained, “Kissing makes me want to projectile vomit,” and Renjun murmured, “I’m not comfortable being your experiment.”

Chenle laughed at him over the phone for five minutes and hung up.

For a brief second, Sungchan considered asking Donghyuck. They spend a lot more time together, and Sungchan’s gotten to the point where almost nothing about his roommate makes him as uncomfortable as it used to. The coming Monday is another Pretty Little Liars night, and he has tickets for the seats Donghyuck recommended to his closing show.

Still, he can’t get over the waves of nausea that plough him over, at the idea of Donghyuck getting physical with other men. It hasn’t happened at all over the month that’s passed, which makes the memory sear hotter into the back of Sungchan’s mind.

Imagining himself kissing Donghyuck serves to make the nausea worse.

Mark is more or less Sungchan’s hail Mary.

Sungchan gives Mark the rehearsed reasoning he practised on the way instead. Being honest would be too mean, and he can’t be mean to Mark Lee. No one can. “If it’s another guy comfortable with his sexuality, there won’t be any feelings. I’m sorry if it’s weird and I’m a weirdo and I get it—”

“It is weird, but that’s not it.” Mark leans against the window of the Gong Cha, crossing his arms. “The thing is, you know I’m not straight, right?”

The moment Sungchan processes the words over the bustle of the people around them, he can feel the pull of emergency brakes on his train of thought. “What?”

“I’m not straight,” Mark repeats, “at all. I know I’m, like, a ‘sigma male frat boy lite’ or whatever the hell Jungwoo calls me, but I’m not straight.”

Toppling over certain pillars of thought has the side effect of entire structures collapsing, and the fact of Mark Lee, his sole other straight friend, who out-straights him even on hockey match days where Sungchan turns into the human incarnation of an ape (the world’s straightest animal according to the known laws of the wild), is gay sends the neat building of how he thinks about his friends collapsing in on itself, roof first. Some basic part of the universe is being violated with Mark being not straight. 

“B-but your girlfr—”

“Boyfriend,” Mark cuts in. “He came out as trans a month ago. His name is Jeno now.”

“Wait, is that why—?”

“No, it’s not why I’m queer.” Mark’s sigh is long-suffering, and it makes Sungchan feel like utter garbage until his friend’s posture loosens and he pokes Sungchan’s arm. “Hey man, you didn’t murder my entire family. You can quit it with that look. It was an honest question.”

“Does Jungwoo know?”

“I thought he did. I had to clarify it to him after the last study session.” Mark sniffs. “Everyone thinks I’m straight. My boyfriend thought I was straight.”

“How long?”

“How long what?”

Sungchan rubs his ear and stares at Mark’s beat-up Vans. They’re black, with white soles and white stripes, the laces a pastel rainbow tie-dye. Sungchan may be stupid. “How long have you known?”

“Hard to say.” Mark crosses his legs and runs a hand through his hair. “The church I was part of growing up was nuts with their anti-gay spiel, and it left me too terrified of eternal damnation as a kid to explore myself further. I liked girls, and I kept it at that. It didn’t help that everyone slapped the ‘token straight friend’ label on me come college.”

“Brown sugar, lychee oolong, and matcha?” the employee calls out. Mark waves his receipt and smiles when he takes the three orders, handing one to Sungchan.

The two step out of the store into the city at night and Mark waits for Sungchan to programme Google Maps to the location Donghyuck texted him before picking up where he left off. “Jeno and I went on a date once to watch Boy Erased once because I read the synopsis and I thought we’d vibe with it, but dude, that’s hands down the worst date I’ve ever planned. I don’t know how he’s still with me considering how long he had to sit through me ugly sobbing in the back of the cinema. We almost got the boot from the ushers.”

They cross the street and a couple walking their dog passes them with a wave. Mark waves back, because of course he waves back. “So I’m sitting there,” he describes, “finished watching a film about religious repression of sexuality, fucking bawling, and it hits me then, like, shit, hey, maybe this means something. Took a little bit of soul searching and a lot more tears until I connected the dots. Girls are still hot—” his voice cracks on “hot”— “but I’ve expanded my horizons.”

“That sounds—” Sungchan swallows the boba in his mouth, grasping for the right words. “Intense.” The extent representation has done for him is make him throw popcorn at his TV in a fit of invested rage at Glenn’s death in The Walking Dead. He spent half an hour picking the kernels out from his plant pots. 

“It was, bro.” The way Mark laughs it off doesn’t sit right with Sungchan. “Necessary evil, I guess.”

“So,” Sungchan trails. They stop at the intersection and Mark pushes the pedestrian crossing button, afterwards turning his full attention to Sungchan. “You’re bisexual? Or pansexual? Omnisexual?”

The halfhearted shrug Mark replies with makes Sungchan want to tear Mark’s eyes out in frustration, and the thought of tearing Mark’s eyes out makes Sungchan want to tear his own eyes out in guilt. No one should ever want to hurt Mark Lee: it’s written down somewhere as a cardinal sin. “I could be. I kinda don’t care enough to specify. I just call myself queer.”

“What does it even mean, though?” Sungchan chews on a pearl. “Can you do that?”

“Gay 101 isn’t a college course.” Mark swirls his cup, the sugar on the sides mixing into the tea. “There’s no syllabus and there’s no rubric. You can do whatever the hell you want to as long as you’re not an asshole about it. As for queer, it’s an umbrella term, like—you don’t go around saying you’re a—a Gunpo native Korean, or whatever, right?”

“Seoul,” Sungchan corrects. “I’m a Seoul native. Jungwoo’s the Gunpo native. I think you ran all my ancestors over with a car at the implication that I’m from Gyeonggi. They’re dying out there, Mark.”

Mark fixes him with the most unimpressed stare Sungchan’s ever seen. “Alright, you don’t go around saying you’re a Seoul native, do you? You say Korean.”

“I guess? Sometimes I spice it up and say I’m from outer space. I have to keep everyone on their toes.”

The comment makes Mark chuckle. “My grandma goes on and on about us being Jeonju Lees that have been in Gunsan since its founding and leaving for Vancouver meant abandoning our entire heritage and cursing our family line, where I say Asian because it doesn’t matter to me. Everyone calls themselves whatever they want. Labels are the same thing, the only difference is that they can change over time.”

“Change?”

“Yeah. Sexuality is fluid.”

Sungchan sort of feels like his brain is going to explode if he listens to Mark anymore, so he says, “That’s cool. It’s like a Magic Eight Ball. ‘Am I gay today?’ ‘Better not tell you now’.”

Mark gives him another one of his looks. “You know you can tell me anything, right?” he asks, finishing the rest of his drink. “I know you’re closer to Jungwoo but I’ll always be here for support or if you want to talk about something. Anything you need.”

“Thanks.” Sungchan’s voice feels scratchy. “I mean it.”

“Any time, man. Anyway, we’re here.”

That pulls Sungchan from drowning in the ocean of his brain. He looks up and is greeted with elaborate red front doors and a marquee advertising showings for Rent. A handful of stragglers leave the theatre, all dressed in full black. His phone vibrates in his hand and checking it displays the “destination reached” screen.

“Oh, and Sungchan?”

“Huh?”

“Close your eyes for a second.” Sungchan does as told with furrowed eyebrows. “I’m gonna kiss you.”

He doesn’t get a minute to react with anything but a squeak before he feels something soft and cold pressing against his mouth. Mark’s nose bumps into Sungchan’s and he can taste the remnants of brown sugar. There’s intimacy in the lack of distance between them and the way Mark rests a hand on Sungchan’s shoulder, but the kiss is otherwise empty. He tries to relax his shoulders and lean more into Mark’s touch, though it does little to curb how clinical it all feels. 

At the very least, it is the same. Kissing women isn’t any different for Sungchan than kissing Mark. Maybe he isn’t homophobic after all. 

A beat later, he feels Mark pull away and takes that as the cue to open his eyes. Mark stops standing on his toes and Sungchan can’t tell if he feels better or worse.

“Everything you imagined?” Mark asks, eyebrows raised.

Truth be told, Sungchan didn’t know what he was imagining. His head is being dunked into a washing machine, tumbling in cycles separate from the rest of his body. All he can respond with is, “You’re a good kisser.”

“I’m not going two years strong for no reason.” Mark punches Sungchan’s arm as he backs away. “Good luck, dude. I’ll see you around.”

Under the soft light of the marquee, Sungchan glances around, breathing out when he notices the block is empty of other people. The late-night darkness has already swallowed up the street buildings and turning to trace Mark’s retreating back has Sungchan noting that he, too, has been shrouded, too far from the nearest street lamps for him to make out.

The dressing room is a chaotic mess, a far cry different from the organised rows of chairs that make up all of Sungchan’s classrooms. His shoes squeak against the wooden floors, shadows dancing across the walls. The lights of the vanity mirrors wash the room in yellow brilliance, and the room smells heavily of expensive cologne.

It makes sense that the last table is Donghyuck’s. The tidiness of his bags doesn’t change the fact that every inch of space has something resting on top. A well-loved script is cracked open, revealing annotations in all sorts of multicoloured gel ink, paired with matching doodles in the margins and around certain lines. Sungchan recognises a lot of the makeup products as duplicates of the ones in their bathroom, including the same bottle of nude lip tint Donghyuck wailed over after Sungchan knocked it onto the bathroom mat earlier in the week.

Even at his place of work, Donghyuck can’t remember to tighten his products all the way. It tugs at something inside Sungchan, in the same place where he houses all the anxiety he reserves for worrying over his friends. He wonders if the other actors are as clumsy as Sungchan is, if Donghyuck sweats bullets making sure they don’t trip over the table legs, if he ruffles their hair and reassures them that the products aren’t as expensive as they seem—even if they’re double the price.

He’s halfway finished recapping all of the open products when Donghyuck bursts through the door. The gown of a graphic t-shirt he wrestles into keeps flashing the smooth expanse of his stomach until he yanks the bottom down and ties it to the side with a hair tie off his wrist. With him comes a whiff of familiar peony perfume. “My knight in shining armour!” he cries, lunging for the tea in Sungchan’s outstretched arm. “The saviour of my hopeless little life!”

“That’s a bit of a stretch,” Sungchan laughs, sitting in the empty chair in front of the table. “I’m not sure how shining I am. Maybe ‘peasant boy in thrifted flannel rags’ is more fitting.”

In two seconds flat, Donghyuck gulps down half of his tea. “How’d you know my order?” he asks, putting away the products into his bags with lightning speed. “Everyone forgets the coconut jelly.”

“You said you go to the Gong Cha around the corner pretty often.” Helping him zip up the bags earns Sungchan a grateful smile. “I didn’t want to guess your usual so I asked if they knew the order of a short, loud, tan Korean kid. It turns out, you’re a regular. The person that makes your drinks wanted me to tell you they think your taste is gross. I think their name was Minjae or something.”

“I’m not short!” Donghyuck huffs. “You’re a freak of nature. And Jaemin can fuck off. My tastes aren’t gross, they’re healthy. I’d pick a dairy option if it didn’t destroy my throat and boba if it didn’t make me gain, like, fifty million pounds per cup. My body is a temple, you know.”

“Do you want mine? It’s soy milk. I ate all the boba already.”

After a second of deliberation, Donghyuck swaps their straws and trades their drinks. The first sip makes him groan. “Why are you so much better at ordering things than me?”

“I’m a professional East Asian. Matcha is the classic choice.” Sungchan fiddles with the cup in his hands. It’s still cold to the touch.

“Try mine, it’s good, I promise,” insists Donghyuck, bumping his shoulder against Sungchan’s—sort of. Their shoulders don’t line up, so it feels more like Donghyuck is bumping his bicep. “And bring extra straws next time. I know sharing utensils grosses you out.”

Sungchan takes his first sip. The drink is odd, that’s for sure, the flavours clashing and the texture too strange for Sungchan to describe. He keeps drinking it. Donghyuck stuffs the script in his backpack and hops onto the counter, his feet dangling above the floor; he’s wearing pastel pink Doc Martens, looking straight out of the box. Sungchan looks down at his shoes: black Converses that sport a perpetual scuff at the toe despite how many times he’s attacked them with a magic eraser.

“I hate this part,” Donghyuck whines, opening a small compact to balance on his knee. Sungchan takes the compact and holds it up for him, rewarded with a smile. 

“What part?” Sungchan decides that the drink isn’t so bad after a few sips.

“Taking off my makeup.” Donghyuck raises a wet wipe to his right eye and pats his eyelids while biting his bottom lip. He pulls his hand back and examines the wipe in his hand, sulking at the sparkling residue. “I do full face for every show myself because the makeup artists here don’t work well with Asian faces. So much hard work and for nothing.”

“You don’t need to wear makeup.” Sungchan falters. “I think you look better without it.”

“You’re so cute,” Donghyuck giggles, poking the tip of Sungchan’s nose with the wipe. In the mirror, he can see the bits of glitter sticking to his skin. Maybe this is what Rudolph the Reindeer looks like if he had a gangly, emotionally unavailable Korean boy form. “Stage makeup is required, but on my own, I still don’t wear makeup to impress people or to cover anything up.”

Donghyuck reads the question that must be written all over Sungchan’s face. “Everyone has their reasons but I think it’s pretty and that’s all there is to it. You don’t need a dissertation defending why you do certain things if you like it and it’s not hurting anyone. Sometimes there’s no reason. Who cares? My body, my choice.”

Each swipe of Donghyuck’s hand uncovers strips of rosy skin underneath, moles and spots of faint discolouration returning to view. His face soaks in the light, and Sungchan swears he glows as bright as the bulbs haloing him, an angel in the dinky backstage dressing room. 

It occurs to Sungchan then, as his breath stutters to a stop watching Donghyuck blink out the last bits of mascara, that he finds the boy in front of him a little bit beautiful—a lot bit beautiful. The realisation is small, a tiny gear that clicks into place and starts to turn a dust-covered machine somewhere in the far back recesses of Sungchan’s mind. 

The way the system turns, creaking under the weight of new movement, makes the lights of his Carousel of Discomfort blur together as it starts, slowly, then all at once, to accelerate.