Work Text:
you don't know where to begin
spent a lifetime fitting in
only to wind up on the other side.
Bin didn’t know why he was here. Or rather, he didn’t know where exactly here was, and why, exactly, he was sent here of all places for a business meeting. As far as he could tell, he was in a town nestled in the countryside mountains, only one road leading in or out. The narrow, stone-paved streets were lined with small shops and paper lanterns of all things. Finding the correct café he was supposed to be at was proving to be surprisingly difficult, the endless twists and turns of the streets each leading to three others that looked identical. Bin felt more out of place with each step he took. Shouts from street vendors and smoke from food booths bounced off his cleanly pressed suit. He paused to look up at the signs around him, trying to see if he was anywhere near the right place.
It turned out that stopping right in the middle of a crowded street was far from the best idea. The moment he did, he was being stepped on, bumped into, pushed into the side of a brick wall.
“Sorry,” Bin heard, clear over the noise of the street, accompanied by a pair of hands on his shoulders, steadying him.
“Would you watch where you’re go–” Whatever thoughts he had of annoyance at the prospect of his polished shoes and tailored suit being dirtied, every one of them faded into the smoke as he looked at the one who dared run into him. The man in front of him was tall enough to look Bin straight in the eye, didn’t look any older than Bin himself, but what surprised Bin was how delicate he looked. There was no way he was from around here, Bin thought, with a face like that.
“My apologies,” the offender shot Bin a smile that further dissipated his anger. “Enjoy your time here, yeah?”
Bin peeled himself off the wall, straightening his suit and dusting himself off. “It’s fine,” he replied, shocked at his own calm, but the other was already disappearing into the crowd again.
After several more wrong turns and an ungodly number of staircases, Bin pushed open the door of the tiny, elusive coffee shop and bakery, Mr. Cha. He went up the stairs why were there so many stairs to the second floor where he spotted the only other person in this town wearing a suit, and concluded that was the one he was looking for.
“Mr. Park?” Bin strode over, hoping he didn’t look too disheveled from his trip here.
“Ah, Mr. Moon, glad you could make it.” Mr. Park stood and shook Bin’s hand. “I went ahead and ordered your coffee, your assistant contacted me and told me how you take it.”
“Thank you,” Bin nodded and slid into a hard, wooden chair which creaked slightly under his weight. He stared down into his coffee, black enough for him to see his reflection, and let out a quiet sigh of relief. Not a hair out of place, as usual.
It took one more coffee and a sandwich each before they finished up discussions of investments and projects between their respective companies. Just as Bin was about to thank Mr. Park for the meeting, the short man spoke.
“Do you know why I asked you to meet here?” Mr. Park’s small eyes were questioning, and Bin suddenly felt like he was in an interview.
“I don’t think I do,” Bin admitted, shifting in his seat.
“Take a look around.”
“Excuse me?” What did that have to do with anything? Nonetheless, he looked out over the balcony they were seated on for the first time since arriving. There were houses, small like everything else in this town, sprawled across the mountains. The mountains rolled into the sea, the sea disappeared into the horizon, kissing the clouds.
“Beautiful here, isn’t it?” Mr. Park was looking out at the sea, fingers tap tap tapping on the tabletop. Bin frowned. Indeed, the scenery was nice, but he still didn’t know why he was here. “That’s it,” Mr. Park said, “I invited you here because I wanted to look at the scenery.”
Blinking, Bin swallowed the disbelieving words threatening to jump out of his throat. “I’m not sure I understand?”
“You’re still so young, Mr. Moon. Remember to take a moment and appreciate everything beautiful in life.”
Bin sat on the balcony until the sun dipped low and the stars began to sparkle, still mulling over Mr. Park’s words. He did appreciate beauty. After all, his apartment in Seoul was nothing less than perfect. Bin didn’t need stars when he had the city lights.
With a sigh, Bin shook his head and stood up. The café was empty now, and he walked back down the stairs to look for someone who could tell him how to leave.
“What’s the best way out?” He addressed the man diligently wiping down the counter.
“Oh, it’s you,” he looked up at Bin and smiled.
Taken aback for the second time that day, Bin gaped at the pretty man in front of him: the one he’d snapped at for pushing him and his expensive suit into a wall. Bin was not a person who was easily flustered, much less one who openly gaped at people. But here he was, in a café in the middle of nowhere, gaping. “You work here?” He asked, forgetting that the other was not only in the middle of cleaning the place, but also wearing an apron with the name of the shop.
“I own this place, actually. I’m Lee Dongmin.”
“I’m Moon Bin, pleasure to meet you,” habit kicked in, and Bin instinctively reached for his wallet to pull out his business card and hand it to Dongmin. Just a little too late, Bin realized Dongmin probably had absolutely no use for it. “Wait, you probably don’t need my card. But keep it anyway. In case you want to call me. For, uh, business purposes.” Damn, Bin thought, somewhat painfully, I need to get out of here before this fresh air makes me delusional.
Dongmin stared at him. Bin stared back. “Right,” said Dongmin, smiling again.
In a desperate attempt to save his dignity, Bin continued. “So, do you live here, too?”
“In the store? No,” Dongmin teased. “I live over there,” he pointed somewhere outside the window, towards the houses spread across the mountainside that Bin saw earlier.
“Oh.” Bin had been so sure that Dongmin couldn’t have lived here. He looked like he didn’t belong, all fluttery eyelashes and soft features and the kind of pretty that belonged in a museum. Finally, Bin remembered his purpose, returning to the perfectly composed person he told himself he was. “Can you tell me how to get back to the parking lot, then?”
Bin drove off in his sports car, watching the twinkling lights of the town disappear in his rearview mirror, the roaring engine nowhere near loud enough to drown out the thumping in his chest.
…
One of the things Bin loved the most was his wall of crystal sculptures. It started with a gift from his parents, as congratulations for getting a job at his dream company soon after graduation. Now, the crystal image of a cat and dog sat on the centre shelf. Not the biggest or the most expensive, but it remained Bin’s favourite. As the years went on, Bin started making more money than he could reasonably spend, or even save, so he’d put much of it towards expanding his collection. He couldn’t remember how he’d ended up with quite so many.
Three weeks after his strange meeting with Mr. Park, Bin was still bothered by his words. He felt an increasing desire to go back to the middle of nowhere and sit in that tiny café again; uselessly he told himself it had absolutely nothing to do with the bright smile he knew he’d find there. So Bin distracted himself with his ridiculously sparkly wall, believing he understood how to appreciate it. Watching it glitter from the sunset through the window, he sipped his drink from an equally sparkly glass, and made a call to work to inform them he would be late tomorrow.
Sunrise found Bin tearing down the highway and into the mountains. It looked different in the early morning, the chirping birds welcoming him to the quiet light and emptier streets. With less difficulty than last time, Bin located Mr. Cha and entered.
“Welcome to Mr. Cha,” Dongmin popped out from behind the counter, smile already competing with the sun, and winning. “Bin, you’re back again. What brings you here today?”
Bin had been in the store for all of ten seconds, and he was already at a loss for words. With a sort of horror, he realized he had absolutely no reason to be there at all.
“I –” There were many things Bin could have finished his sentence with, but it was a bit early in the morning to admit to anyone he didn’t know why he was standing in a place he didn’t care about for the second time that month. “I’m here for coffee,” Bin stated firmly. If he could convince himself that he’d driven two and a half hours out of his way for coffee, maybe he could convince Dongmin, too.
Dongmin looked him up and down, reminding Bin that he looked incredibly out of place, dressed for an office in a place like this. He’d at least had enough sense to leave his suit jacket in his car, but a dress shirt and polished shoes weren’t a significant improvement. Insistent on not looking one hundred percent ridiculous, Bin put on his best I-know-what-I’m-doing smile.
“Coffee it is, then,” Dongmin didn’t question it, picking up a fresh pot and sliding a cup across the counter. “Anything else for you today?”
“That’s everything,” Bin replied, hating how fake he sounded. (And he was an expert in being smooth and not-fake.) “I’ll get going now.”
“Do you remember where the parking lot is?”
“Tell me again.”
The second trip turned into a third, and then a fourth, and continued until Bin was sure if he ran out of the office in a rush one more time, he’d be fired for causing a disturbance. On his eighteenth weekly Tuesday visit, Bin told himself it was definitely the last time (he’d said it was the last time eighteen weeks ago, and every week after that). And like every Tuesday before, Dongmin welcomed him back with a smile and asked what Bin wanted.
“Would you like anything else?” Dongmin asked as he handed Bin his coffee, since apparently that was all he ever came for.
“Yes,” Bin nodded, finally saying what he should have said eighteen Tuesdays and longer ago.
“What is it?” Dongmin looked at him in surprised and pulled out a pen from his stupidly cute apron.
“You.”
Bin ran out of the café and back to the parking lot. Five hours later, his phone rang.
(Maybe Dongmin had some use for Bin’s card.)
…
The first time Bin showed Dongmin his apartment, the other asked about what Bin referred to as the wall, now more sparkly than ever and potentially on the brink of collapse.
“Where did all of these come from?” Dongmin regarded the wall with an expression of awe.
“I got the one in the middle from my parents, and bought all the rest,” Bin explained, handing Dongmin some water in the absolute most sparkly glass he owned.
“That’s…wow.”
With Dongmin standing in his living room, suddenly nothing else Bin owned seemed as bright as before. It was then that Bin decided he wanted Dongmin to stay there.
Selfish, Bin thought, as he asked Dongmin to move in with him ten months later. He knew, he knew how unfair he was being, yet he didn’t stop himself.
“Dongmin,” Bin said, watching the setting sun fall across his wall, sending handfuls of rainbows across the room. “Stay with me. Here, I mean.” More of a request than a question, not the way it should’ve been, and Bin already knew it would end in Dongmin saying yes.
“Here? But what about my store?” A small crease appeared Dongmin’s brows. Bin smoothed it out with his thumb and pulled Dongmin closer.
“What about it?” Bin ignored the feeling in his chest sounding a lot like selfish, selfish, selfish. He still believed Dongmin would be better off here.
“I…I guess I could figure something out. Do you really want me here?”
“I really do,” Bin spoke into Dongmin’s hair, breathing in the scent of everything that wasn’t the city.
And so, on a Tuesday a week later, Dongmin became the prettiest thing in Bin’s apartment.
Bin loved having Dongmin with him. His increasingly late nights became easier with the other around, curling into his arms when he crawled into bed at hellish hours. These occasions only increased in number as Bin received promotion after promotion, his company stocks flying off the charts after the successful deal with Mr. Park that Bin had scored.
More often than not, Bin woke with Dongmin standing over him and gently shaking him awake, placing a mug of coffee on the surprisingly not-offensively-sparkly bedside table.
“Hmm, why are you always up so early?” Bin lifted an arm, clothed in silk pajamas.
Dongmin caught his hand and laced their fingers. “It’s habit. Be careful, you’ll knock the coffee over. It’s time to get up,” he brushed softly smiling lips against Bin’s hand.
“I don’t want to,” replied Bin, pulling Dongmin back onto the bed. “Just stay with me.”
Every morning was a variation of this. Dongmin convincing Bin to get out of bed, and Bin complaining until the last possible moment. It’s a wonder you make it to work on time, Dongmin had told him. And in the evenings, when Bin came home from work tired, Dongmin was almost always back from his own job, greeting Bin with some form of dinner.
(They settled into this easy rhythm until Bin started to have trouble distinguishing the terrifyingly fine line between familiarity and disinterest.)
“Doesn’t this seem a little unnecessary?” Dongmin asked, arms around Bin’s waist, watching two men struggling to carry in a large shelf.
“What?” Bin was too distracted with giving instructions on where he wanted his newest display location to be to properly answer.
“You know, having to buy a new shelf for your collection because you have too many. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just buy fewer crystals?”
“Hmm,” came Bin’s reply. He hadn’t really considered it before, and now was certainly not the time to start. “But they’re pretty.”
“I don’t think you need that many of them if you only think they’re pretty,” Dongmin chuckled.
“What do you mean?” Bin signed the delivery slip and turned his attention to Dongmin.
“Isn’t it a little meaningless that way?”
Bin didn’t understand, so he stayed silent. Then, a few nights later when Dongmin was out, Bin looked at his sparkly wall, holding a sparkly glass, and thought again about what the other had said. How could something pretty be meaningless?
Dongmin found Bin sitting on the floor when he walked in.
“Bin, why are you staring at the wall?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, and took another sip from his glass.
…
Dongmin was growing frustrated, Bin could tell. Bin came home one afternoon to see him seated at the window, gazing in the direction of the mountains. He felt the bitter taste of guilt creeping up on him. The hold he’d had on his belief that he hadn’t done anything wrong by asking Dongmin to stay was starting to slip, but still, Bin ignored it.
“Min?” Bin walked over and ran fingers through the other’s dark hair.
A smile in return, just as pretty as the first time Bin had seen it, yet there was something missing. Bin didn’t like the uncomfortable tightening in his chest.
Hours passed and Dongmin hadn’t moved from his position. Quietly, Bin spoke, “you miss it, don’t you?”
“You know the answer to that,” Dongmin sighed, turned to Bin, the corners of his lips pulling with something that wasn’t happiness. Dongmin was right, though Bin hadn’t been able to admit it until now. Hearing it made it real.
“Why would you want to stay there? Isn’t it better, here?” So much time had passed, and Bin still couldn’t understand how anyone would prefer living in a place with only one gas station. Dongmin looked like he wanted to snap at Bin for saying something so insensitive. Instead, he walked into their room and shut the door with enough force to rattle Bin and his wall.
Bin slipped into bed carefully that night, waiting until he thought Dongmin was already asleep. But, so softly that he thought he was imagining it, Bin heard a sniffle from beside him. “Dongmin? Are you awake?” He whispered and reached over, his hand met with a weak attempt from Dongmin to swat it away.
“No,” came the muffled reply.
Forcing down the fear risen in his chest, Bin shifted closer. “What’s wrong?” It was a pointless question. Of course he knew what was wrong. Dongmin let out a breath, wobbly in the night, turning so his face was in Bin’s chest. Within seconds, Bin could feel his pajama shirt being soaked through. He suddenly hated himself for wondering if tears would ruin silk. “Don’t cry, Min,” I’m here, he wanted to scream.
“There’s no stars here,” Dongmin spoke again, an eternity later.
And still, still, Bin held Dongmin a little tighter and said, “just stay with me.”
There was a limit to how many times Bin could ask Dongmin to stay with him. The words had no more room left in his heart, and Bin couldn’t simply buy a new shelf for them. He’d said it so often that they’d lost any meaning. Bin should have stopped saying it long ago, but it was too late now, and everything was overflowing and there was no going back because they were already drowning and he was shouting and Dongmin was shouting and –
“You wanted me here, and so I stayed, because,” Dongmin paused, suddenly looking hesitant. “Because I love you, Bin, damn it. But did you ever stop to ask yourself if I was happy here?”
This wasn’t how Bin wanted to hear that Dongmin loved him.
Bin didn’t say anything. Couldn’t, because he had asked himself if Dongmin could ever really be happy here. He’d asked himself and the answer was no, and he’d gone ahead and begged Dongmin to stay anyway.
“I’m leaving. Tonight.”
Through the twinkling of the false stars in Bin’s living room, he watched Dongmin leave.
I love you, too. I wish I’d realized it sooner.
When had he let himself become so jaded?
One by one, Bin sold the pieces in his collection. When he picked up the only one remaining, the one that had started his entire fascination, he discovered he couldn’t bring himself to let it go. But why? He thought, It’s not even the prettiest, so why?
(He’d been too caught up in thinking about how nice he thought things looked to stop for a moment and think about how they made him feel.)
All at once, Bin understood.
…
(A year and a half later)
Bin drove off in his sports car, watching the towering city disappear in his rearview mirror, the roaring engine nowhere near loud enough to drown out the thumping in his chest.
Please be here.
He ran up an ungodly number of stairs until he found the café he was looking for.
Please be here.
Pushing open the door to Mr. Cha, Bin strode inside and stopped in front of the counter. He pressed the shiny, silver bell more times than necessary until the man standing behind the counter turned around.
“Welcome to –”
(You’re here.)
“Oh, it’s you.”
(I’m here.)
“I can go, if you don’t want me here. But I – I kind of sold my apartment. And quit my job. Oh my god, Dongmin, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I had to tell you.” Bin was rambling, having forgotten how to be the composed person he told himself he was. Finally, Bin said what he should have said eighteen months and longer ago. “I’m sorry. I was wrong to keep asking you to stay.”
Dongmin stared at him, gaping. Bin stared back. He’d run out of words, and was ready to run out of the store and regret it for the rest of his life, when Dongmin stepped out from behind the counter with remarkable speed.
Bin felt the edge of the counter pressed into his back, the metal edge cold through his thin t-shirt. There was a pair of hands on his shoulders, steadying him. The most beautiful person he’d ever met pressed against him, soft lips on his own, and then, the voice he didn’t know he missed so much until now:
“Don’t go.”
(Bin thought he didn’t need stars when he had the city lights. He was wrong. It turned out he didn’t need the city lights when he could have Dongmin.)
it’s just the start of everything if you want a new life.