Chapter Text
Jiung
Jiung gets dumped less than a week before Christmas. It happens over a candlelit dinner at Jiung’s apartment, right as he shoves a forkful of spicy takeout into his mouth.
“I want to break up” is the last thing he expects to hear from his boyfriend of three years. Dandan noodles clog his throat (fucking ow, because that shit is spicy) and as he chokes (not in the fun, sexy way), Jiung sets his carton of takeout down on the table, calmly and cooly because there’s no way he just heard those words.
“Sorry,” he coughs to clear his throat, “what did you say?”
His boyfriend stares back.
“I want to break up,” he repeats as if Jiung is extremely fucking stupid.
Jiung waits for a couple of moments to respond, partly because he’s waiting for the ball to drop and a camera crew to come out of his pantry and applaud him for being so awesome despite the cruel prank his boyfriend is trying to pull on him.
A minute passes. No camera crew. No laughter. No knee-slapping. Jiung coughs again.
“Why?” Something wet tickles at the corner of Jiung’s eye. The food must be really spicy tonight, he thinks, to make his body react in such a way.
His boyfriend shrugs. It’s so nonchalant that Jiung kind of feels like he’s missing out on some cosmic joke.
“You’re not who I’m looking for,” says the man picking at his teeth across Jiung’s table. He stops digging at his canine for a second and pulls a face. “Sorry.”
Not who he’s looking for? So what the actual fuck have they been doing for the past three years?
“What do you mean by that?” Jiung asks, struggling to keep his calm/cool/collected/etc. facade as it becomes increasingly clear that he’s just wasted three years of his life on an ape of a man who flosses his teeth with his tongue at the dinner table.
“I dunno,” his boyfriend replies. “I just like someone else now, I guess.”
Oh! That’s a wonderful thought. Jiung doesn’t know whether to be confused or betrayed.
“For how long?”
“Couple of months.”
Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. This guy must have some nerve, dragging Jiung along like this.
Jiung can’t stop himself from asking, “What do they have that I don’t?”
The man across the table glances at his phone. Geez. He really doesn’t want to be here, does he?
“Lots and lots of cash.”
“So you’re dumping me because I’m what, poor?”
“Well…”
Jiung feels the spicy noodles sour in his stomach.
“I’m not poor,” Jiung defends himself. “You’re really willing to throw three years down the drain for that?”
At least the man thinks for a second before nodding. Jiung doesn’t know what’s hurting more right now—his heart or his pride.
His boyfriend, well, ex-boyfriend, throws a wad of cash onto the table.
“That should cover half of the food,” he says before shoving his phone in his pocket and pushing his chair back. All Jiung can do is just sit there, dandan noodles forgotten as his ex grabs his jacket off the back of his chair and marches out of Jiung’s apartment and life.
Jiung’s damn well lost his appetite by now. He feels like he’s a derailed train with no conductor at the steering wheel. Do trains even have steering wheels? He just sits there at his kitchen table, alone, wondering a), what the fuck just happened, b), why the fuck did that just happen, and c), did he just get called “broke” by a bitch whose parents pay him back on his taxes so he has no net loss on his finances?
It’s funny too because earlier that day, Jiung had wrapped his ex’s Christmas gifts and shoved them under his (fake) Christmas tree.
Jiung scoffs. Would a broke bitch buy his boyfriend an assortment of his favorite internationally-sourced chocolates? He thinks the fuck not. Sure, his bank account had taken quite the hit when he’d thrown down a hefty chunk of change for the chocolates, and maybe he doesn’t have the highest paying jobs in the world, but Jiung most certainly isn’t poor. His credit score is well above 750! He pays his bills on time! He donates to charity every time he checks out at the grocery store!
Jiung stares at the pile of boxes under his tree. Now, instead of a heartfelt and clever gift, they all seem like a slap to the face.
“Who the fuck is going to eat all this damn chocolate?”
Intak
“Mr. Hwang!”
Intak looks up from his phone. The light rail car sways as they round a turn and the wide-eyed woman enthusiastically waving at him from across the car almost falls on her ass.
He peers at her over the rim of his glasses. He doesn’t recognize her in particular—maybe she’s involved in one of the cases he’s worked on?
Striped white-and-red scarf. She looks like a candy cane. Knockoff Louis Vuitton bag. Four-inch stilettos. Green cable-knit sweater. Shit-brown tights. She’s the living embodiment of Christmas, all mismatched and loud and cheery.
Ah. Intak knows who she is. He tucks his phone into his pocket and plasters on a cordial smile.
“Mrs. Song,” he greets her. She keeps waving like a lunatic. “How are you?”
Mrs. Song finally puts her hand down.
“I’m wonderful!” she exclaims across the car. “Much better now, now that my husband’s in prison!”
Of course; Marie Song, age 28, had brought her case to Intak’s court a couple of weeks ago. She accused her husband of auto theft after she’d come home one day and found a spanking-new American muscle car in their garage—a car that she’d seen in their neighbor’s driveway a few days before. Marie had known they couldn’t afford the Mustang and saw that her husband was selling the Mustang’s parts on eBay for highly inflated prices. Personally, Intak had respected her opinions, and professionally, he helped convince the jury that her husband should go to prison for his crimes and that the car should be returned to the neighbors. It was one of Intak’s simpler cases, nothing compared to the homicide and violent crimes he’s worked with, but Marie had sent him more than one gift basket for his work. Intak still has two unopened wine-related baskets sitting on his kitchen table, and unfortunately, he’s not much of a wine aunt.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Intak replies.
“Are you enjoying the gift baskets?”
“Absolutely, thank you, Mrs. Song,” he lies, taking a quick glance at the LED display at the front of the car to see if his stop is coming up.
“Which one is your favorite?”
Intak understands her genuine interest, but he’s had a very long day, defending and accusing people and all that. He just wants to go to his apartment and sleep, preferably on his couch while a crappy Hallmark rom-com plays in the background.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly choose,” Intak spitballs. “They’re all so thoughtful and beautifully arranged.”
Mrs. Song leans a little closer. With a coy look, she smiles, red lipstick seeping into the cracks in her lips.
“Do you have anyone to share them with?” she asks, coming off as much too enthusiastic for a small conversation with a man of the law.
Technically, yes. Intak has a multitude of people he can hand the baskets off to, like people at work or his mother, but he knows what Marie wants to know. She’s being entirely too obvious. Intak wonders how long she’ll keep trying to win him over before she realizes he’s gay.
“Not really,” Intak decides to say, wishing his stop comes before this conversation spirals into something really, really awkward.
Mrs. Song’s smile only grows.
“Really?” she asks, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “A handsome, successful man like yourself doesn’t have anyone to share a bottle of wine with?”
Intak forces a laugh. “No, not in that sense.”
That seems to be music to the woman’s ears. “So, no girlfriend? Wife? Fiancé?”
Damn, did she just call Intak a lonely fucking loser? Sure, Intak hasn’t really devoted much of his life to romantic endeavors, but his job is much more important to him! There’s not a lot of time in his day to ponder the emptiness of his apartment or the amount of taxes he pays because he has no marital tax benefits!
“No, not at all,” he says. Definitely not a girlfriend or wife.
Before Mrs. Song can literally throw herself at him, the light rail stops. The abrupt stop causes her to stumble over her own feet, and Mrs. Song falls back into her own seat. Intak breathes a sigh of relief and takes a step toward the sliding doors of the car.
“Have a nice day,” he tells Mrs. Song before booking it out of the light rail. He steps into the bustling crowd and begins his walk home.
Jiung
Jiung glares at the wrapped chocolates, now stacked on his kitchen table. He has half the mind to throw them out the window, but that’d be a depressing waste of money. He could give them to his parents, but they live two hours away and Jiung won’t see them till the 26th. He already got them gifts anyway. He mulls over his choices for a few minutes, drumming his fingers on the tabletop.
Then, an epiphany!
“I’ll just give them to one of my neighbors,” Jiung decides. “Surely I live near someone who likes this expensive shit.”
So, Jiung gathers the chocolates in his arms and (after opening his front door with much difficulty—he’s too lazy to put the packages in a bag, sue him) marches out of his apartment. He goes to the door to his right, knocks on the wooden surface, walks away after no response, and goes to the door to his left. No response again, so Jiung goes to the door directly across his—Apartment 705.
The door swings open after his third knock. Jiung almost gasps in surprise.
“Hello,” says a tall man with dark circles beneath his eyes. He leans against the doorframe and looks Jiung up and down through his glasses. “Can I help you?”
Meet Jiung’s elusive and mysterious neighbor: Hwang Intak. Nobody on their floor knows what he does, why he’s almost never home, or who he is. Jiung’s only seen the man a total of two times—once while the tall man was moving into his apartment (about two years ago), and again when the fire alarm in their building had gone off and the residents had had to evacuate to the front yard of the building.
The man clears his throat. Right. He’s waiting for Jiung to explain why he’s bothering him this late into the night.
“Erm,” Jiung tries to smile, but it probably looks more like a grimace, “you see, I’ve…”
Jiung starts to sweat. How exactly can he explain his situation to a complete stranger without coming off as a big fucking weirdo?
“You’ve…” Jiung’s neighbor raises an eyebrow. He looks so exasperated and annoyed and tired that Jiung feels so bad that he might burst into tears. He really shouldn’t be bothering his neighbor, should he? God, Jiung should just mind his own business and choke down all the chocolates so at least he gets some benefit from them.
“…”
“Look, I’m not trying to be rude, but if you’re just going to stand there all night, I’ve got better things to do—“
All of his pent-up anger and sadness shatters Jiung’s unbothered mask. He feels like shit for wasting this guy's time. He bursts into tears.
“Oh, fuck,” his neighbor says, sounding worried instead of annoyed. The tears just come harder. Jiung feels bad for making his neighbor worry for him. He shoves a hand over his mouth and tries to muffle his sobs.
“No, wait, it’s okay,” his neighbor quickly says. “Fuck. I mean, do you want to come in?”
Jiung doesn’t even know what he’s doing, just lets his feet lead him into Apartment 705 and tries not to drop the chocolates in his arms. Tears blur his vision and he barely realizes he’s being sat down on a couch.
The couch cushions shift when his neighbor sits down next to him. Jiung does his best to wipe the tears away from his face and swallows hard.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” his neighbor says, looking panicked. “I was just so tired, and I was really looking forward to chilling on my couch and rotting there until tomorrow morning, and you caught me off guard—“
“No,” Jiung interrupts, looking anywhere but his neighbor’s eyes, “it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have bothered you. God, I don’t even know what I’m doing right now, this was probably a mistake—goddamnit, I should just go back to my apartment and just disintegrate like the fucking loser I am.”
And there Jiung goes, rambling like a hysterical maniac. God, he wishes for a lightning bolt to strike him down.
Intak
Intak looks at the man across from him, guilt gnawing at his stomach when the man wipes another tear off his cheekbone. It’s a very high cheekbone, and it compliments the sharp angle of the man’s jaw—Intak has the distant thought that his neighbor would make a very good model.
“I’m sorry,” he apologizes again, wincing when that only makes the man’s face fall more. “Are you okay?”
His neighbor bites his lip, looking very much like he’s trying to hold back another wave of sobs, and rocks back and forth in his seat. Instinctively, Intak reaches out and sets his hand on the man’s shoulder, keeping his touch light but solid.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but it might help to let some of it out,” Intak tries.
The man looks up and sniffs.
“Are you sure?”
Intak nods. “Yeah, man. Go for it.”
His neighbor looks down again, almost as if he’s embarrassed.
“My boyfriend broke up with me.”
“Shit.” Intak grimaces. He’s not been in many relationships, but of the few he’s had, Intak’s always been the one to cut it off. He tries to do it kindly, of course, but he hasn’t been on the receiving end of the dumping train yet. Seeing his neighbor so distressed about getting dumped makes him feel something awful. “How long were you guys together?”
Another sniff. “Three years.”
Intak’s jaw drops of its own volition. That’s a long time, isn’t it?
“Why?”
“He inadvertently called me poor.”
Intak can’t stop himself from asking, “Are you?”
The man meets Intak’s gaze with a sort of sad glare.
“Not really.”
“Not really?”
His neighbor sighs, resigned.
“Look,” he says, “I admit—I don’t have the best-paying job in the world. Well, both of the jobs I work. I make enough to afford my apartment and my groceries and my car, but I don’t have a lot of extra funds for additional purchases. Fuck, it’s not like he makes a bunch of bank either. But yeah, I’m not poor, but I sure as hell ain’t rich.”
Contrary to his neighbor’s predicament, Intak’s government job pays him incredibly well. He can’t exactly relate. He took some finance courses in university, so he knows how to manage his money, but Intak certainly lands on the higher end of the tax bracket. Maybe he can give his neighbor some financial advice?
“What do you do?”
His neighbor purses his lips and bites his lip again.
“I’m a receptionist at a veterinary clinic.”
“And the other job?”
“Erm.” He pauses. “I’m sort of…a model?”
Well. That makes sense. Even though he’s all puffy and red from crying, Intak can clearly see that his neighbor is no ordinary dude. Hell, he’s got the vascular hands and forearms of a marble statue. Intak may or may not be jealous.
“Sort of?”
The man nods. “I model part-time, or whenever I get booked,” he explains, picking at the hem of his shirt with those beautiful hands of his. “It’s just kind of embarrassing, I guess.”
If curiosity killed the cat, Intak would definitely be dead.
“Why would that be embarrassing?”
He shrugs. “A lot of people assume I just like walking around half-naked because of my ego, or whatever. Or they think all I do are boudoir shots.”
Oh god. Now the image of his shirtless neighbor fills Intak’s mind. That’s not good, he’s just met the guy, for heaven's sake—
“—So what do you model?”
His neighbor laughs, nervously.
“I work with Calvin Klein?”
Oh.
“Yeah.”
“Just for confirmation, that means you model…”
“Underwear, yeah.”
Oh.
Jiung
Great. Now his neighbor is all bright red, probably because Jiung’s made him uncomfortable with the knowledge that he stands in front of a camera in underwear all day long.
Jiung needs to change the subject before he dies from embarrassment.
“What do you do?” he asks his neighbor.
“Oh!” his neighbor exclaims as if pulled out from deep thought. “I work for the government.”
Jiung sighs, relieved. His diversion was a success.
“Which branch?”
His neighbor actually blushes. Like, legit. He looks kind of bashful, and Jiung fully expects him to say he works as a secret service agent. He’s not prepared for the man to admit—
“I’m an attorney.”
It’s Jiung’s turn to “Oh!”. He was expecting a bailiff or some hotshot billmaker. His neighbor seems to be one of those serious, stoic types. (Boy is he wrong.) But an attorney makes sense the more Jiung imagines his neighbor standing tall in a courtroom, all wrapped up in a smart-looking suit with his glasses.
“You seem awfully young for an attorney,” Jiung says, trying to place his neighbor’s youthful face in a stiff, harsh courtroom filled to the brim with rough-worn criminals and angry defendants.
His neighbor makes a sound that resembles a dying car engine—half laugh, half dying horse noise. It’s kind of funny. Jiung almost laughs, too.
“No need for flattery, man. I know I look like shit right now.”
Shit. No, he doesn’t. Jiung didn’t mean for him to take it that way.
“No you don’t,” he rebuts, adding in a head shake for added effect.
“No, it’s okay,” says the other man with a grimacey smile. “It’s just a side-effect of the shit I’ve had to deal with at work. No biggie.”
Jiung feels bad for the guy. Here he is, feeling sorry for himself for getting dumped by some douchebag, while his neighbor is out arguing and defending people who may or may not even deserve protection. Jiung wishes there was something that could make the both of them feel better.
Well. There’s the chocolates.
Jiung tosses a chocolate bar onto his neighbor’s lap.
“Want one?”
His neighbor looks up, eyebrow quirked in confusion. He kind of looks like a puppy.
“What’s this for?” he asks, picking up the bar and turning it over in his hands.
“My asshole ex dumped me and lacked the courtesy to do so after the holiday season. These used to be his Christmas gift, but he walked out of my apartment before I had the chance to shove them up his ass.”
His neighbor laughs again. “Shit, I guess I gotta thank him for the chocolate, then.”
His expression brightens when he unwraps the bar and breaks a square of chocolate off of the bar. He pops it into his mouth, and Jiung nervously waits for his review. If his neighbor won’t take the chocolate, then who will? He doesn’t want to go knocking on his other neighbor’s doors again. That was like playing Russian Roulette (stream Red Velvet) but at midnight and the bullets are his middle-aged Karen neighbors who scream at him when he vacuums his apartment on Saturday mornings.
“Oh my god.”
Jiung winces. “That bad?”
His neighbor shakes his head, slack-jawed in awe. “That guy may be living scum, but he sure has great taste in chocolate.”
He continues on to the rest of the bar. Jiung sets the rest of the chocolates down on the coffee table by the couch, relieved beyond words.
“That was rude of me,” says his neighbor when he frowns down at the empty wrapper. “I didn’t offer you any.”
Jiung shakes his head. “No worries, I’m not much of a chocolate guy anyway. You can have the rest of them, too.” He’s just glad he’s been able to use them to make someone else’s day (technically, night) better.
His neighbor pouts. Not exactly what he would expect from a court-hardened attorney, but hey, it’s actually kind of…cute?
“But I don’t have anything to give you in return!” he protests, eyes darting around his apartment.
“Oh, that’s not necessary, I woke you up—”
“—WAIT.”
Jiung stops. He waits. His neighbor shoots up and off of the couch, disappears into the kitchen, then returns a couple of seconds later with a basket in his hands.
A wicker basket. Who even has those anymore?
“Do you like meat?” his neighbor asks, eyes wide.
Yeah, both kinds. “Yeah,” Jiung replies. “Why?”
His neighbor grins.
“One of my clients is trying to hit on me with gifts and shit, but she still hasn’t taken the hint that I’m not interested. She gave me this basket this morning—along with a mildly suggestive note about meat and…genitalia.”
Jiung cringes, but takes a look at the basket anyway. His stomach rumbles when he sees a prime cut of ribeye steak.
“I could eat,” Jiung admits. “You up for a second dinner?”
Intak
Sixteen minutes later, Intak’s neighbor sets down a carefully arranged platter of deli meat and crackers on the coffee table. Intak won’t lie—now that the meat is out of the bag, so to say, it does look pretty appetizing.
“Bone apple tea,” his neighbor proclaims with a hand flourish. “Dinner is served.”
“You mean bon appétit?”
“What?” His neighbor gives him a confused look.
“Never mind.” Intak sets his sights on a beautiful arrangement of pastrami rolls. His neighbor grabs a slice of salami.
The salty, preserved meat hits his tongue and sends Intak back in time to a primitive age, a time when people devoured only the meat they hunted and lived in caves. His sights narrow onto the pile of meat in front of him—oh yeah, Intak forgot to eat dinner. He was so set on his Hallmark romcoms that he forgot to eat. Whoops.
Jiung
Jiung watches flabbergasted as his neighbor shovels pastrami into his mouth. He’s reminded of a past crush he’d had on a frat boy from his university, a boy with a backward baseball cap who devoured an entire platter of deli meats at a frat party. He’d eaten with so much vigor, so much passion and determination—Jiung had never been so intrigued by someone.
His neighbor lays back once the pastrami is all gone. His back hits the couch and he groans.
“That was too much too fast,” he bemoans. “I’m definitely going to be feeling all that meat in a couple of hours.”
“That takes me back to my uni days,” Jiung laughs. “I once saw this guy down a huge plate of Costco deli meat. I never thought eating a shit ton of meat could be so hot.”
Jiung’s neighbor chokes on his spit.
“What?”
“Oh come on, don’t judge him too hard. One of his frat brothers dared him to do it.”
His neighbor sits up, eyes narrowed. Jiung wonders why he seems so agitated.
“What uni did you go to?” he asks.
“Um. My hometown’s university. I think our mascot was a naked mole rat named Lucius?”
The man pales. “No fucking way.”
“What?”
“Was the frat bro from the Alpha Alpha fraternity?”
Wow. As a matter of fact, he was. “How do you know that?”
Wordlessly, his neighbor rises to his feet and walks over to one of the doors by the doorway, a closet if Jiung had to guess. After rummaging around in the closet for a couple of seconds, he turns back around and returns to the couch.
He hands Jiung a royal blue baseball cap. It looks awfully familiar. Jiung gasps.
“No fucking way.”
“Not one of my finer moments, was it?” His neighbor laughs sheepishly.
Jiung traces the name sharpied in black on the cap’s tag.
“Hwang Intak, huh?”
His neighbor nods. “And you would be?”
Jiung reaches out with the cap and fits it over Intak’s head—backward. And hot damn—it really is him, isn’t it?
Before he can help it, Jiung grins. He has the faint thought to thank his ex for breaking up with him tonight, of all nights.
“Choi Jiung.”