Chapter Text
San Francisco parking sucks. Like truly, fundamentally sucks.
You drove into the city, as the GPS told you you would, at three pm. Now it’s almost five and you’ve only just found a parking spot here in the Mission District! On what feels like it’s your hundredth lap of the block! And there’s no less than a monster truck parked right behind you! You’re not quite regretting the move yet, but any more nonsense and you might pack up and go right back to Virginia.
The worst part is that you can’t even open your trunk because of said monster truck. You stand on the sidewalk with your hands on your hips for more time than is sane, trying to figure out if you can get your boxes out of there. You’re definitely not going to be able to, which means you’re definitely going to have to move your car, which definitely will lead to one hundred more laps. You can feel the sweat pooling under the cotton of your tee, your cheeks burning up under the sun, and you’re so pissed off that—,
“Hey!”
You’re not sure if the scalding twinge on the curve of your cheek is still from the sun or from something else entirely. There’s no one here in the city who knows you - but there actually is, and he’s standing right there on the sidewalk.
“What?” You fumble through the fog of memories from three months ago, failing to come up with a proper response, “Do… young? You’re here? At my apartment?”
Doyoung Kim, William & Mary Valedictorian, Medical Society chair, Sigma Mu president, and your former hallmate is indeed in front of your apartment building. The Facebook pictures didn’t really do him justice - the crisp jeans and pressed tee make him look more like a catalog model than a surgeon, and you don’t remember his boxy, bright pink smile being quite this handsome. You don’t remember thinking he was handsome, period, but you don’t think you thought about Doyoung Kim a lot back in college. You’re not sure.
He’s confused you’re confused, and turns back and forth from the apartment complex trying to make sense of it, “Yeah? Didn’t you say you needed help with your boxes?”
You don’t bother to conceal the blatant check of your phone, not recalling any messages of the sort. To be honest, you’d messaged him once and promptly forgot about it - any number of exchanges could’ve been in there, but you don’t think he's right. You don’t tend to ask for help, let alone from basically complete strangers.
[Doyoung Kim]: I’d use NCT movers if I were u, I’ve moved a gazillion times in sf, they always work
[you]: I’m just doing the road trip myself, I’ll be fine!
[Doyoung Kim]: no, not that. The stairs. If u don’t have movers u’ll hate yourself.
[you]: I don’t think I need help with my boxes, but thank you!
There it is, straight up proof that you hadn’t asked for help and in fact had made the opposite known. The thought pokes at you anyways, that it’s possible he may have just not seen the don’t, or that somehow, someway that last message hadn’t actually sent. You won’t say anything then, better not to embarrass him. You quickly shutter the screen away, deciding this little white lie won’t change much.
“Either way, the stairs here are ass, they’re like five feet tall each.” Doyoung’s still talking, unfazed by your moment of distraction, and you don’t know if he’s talking about San Francisco stairs in general or if he’s saying what you think he’s saying. He takes in your blank expression, then sheepishly hikes a thumb over his shoulder. “Fifth floor.”
This little memoir from freshman year of college takes a frolic through your consciousness - when you’d leave your dorm room door open and spot him and his friends leaving for a night out in the town. He’d gel his hair just for those occasions, had this one silver chain he’d like to wear. It’s still looped around his neck now, right above the low collar of his black tee.
“You’re my… you’re my neighbor and didn’t say anything?” When have you ever stuttered this much in five minutes? You can’t hide the shock or do anything to close your gaping mouth, “Aren’t you like, rich? Why are you living here?”
You don’t want to open up the messages again, but you swore you sent him your address at some point, which is not at all in the nice parts of San Francisco. You definitely remember the multiple times his family visited him in college - his little sisters wore nothing but designer, the family always rented the fanciest Porsches to drive around Williamsburg, would cater multiple meals for the entire floor, top it off with a nice three tier cake from the one nice bakery downtown. That doesn’t fit with the image of him living in this cruddy old building, which was all you could afford even with your decent patient services salary.
“I also just moved, to be closer to the hospital,” he explains. The corner of his eyelid dips in this curious little tremble and his tone takes a turn, “And I’m more than a pretty face. Let me help you.”
You feel funny all over to the point that you can’t stop him when he takes initiative to open your car door and start lowering your seats - the easiest, smartest solution to get around the Blockade of The Monster Truck. And then you’re looking at the strain of his back through his tee and still not stopping him.
It’s not until he has the most precious box in the entire car cradled in his arms that you come to your senses and actively protest, “I can do it.”
Doyoung shakes his head. “I have dinner plans at six, it’s okay.”
You have no idea why that makes a difference - it only makes you want to deny him further, figuring those dinner plans are probably a date. You try to pull the box out of his hand with a stern, “Then it’s really okay for me to do this myself, no worries.”
“I can’t, in good conscience, let you do that,” Doyoung quips back, strength overpowering you as he yanks the box out of your grip and starts nonchalantly strolling along towards the building. You race to lock your car and open the door for him, feeling all flustered in compared to his easy conversation. You're dumbfounded when you go inside the creaky front entrance and see the Mt. Everest of staircases looming in your vision. You can hear just a hint of sarcasm in him proving his point, “I threw out my back when I moved in and so did my dad and my sister.”
Oh, so he’s truly doing this just to be nice. He knows from experience how much this sucks. That’s what this is.
You have to try one more time, it’s your mom’s etiquette coming out at the worst moment, “I just have four boxes and an air mattress, I’m buying all my stuff later. It’s really fine.”
Doyoung, already up the first flight of stairs, is unfazed yet again. He turns over his shoulder and his smile is nearly blinding, “Perfect. Just enough for a strong guy like me.” You really are not going to look anywhere near his arms, so you stick your head down and jog up the stairs to meet him, ignoring the intense strain on your stamina. When you’re walking side by side up the not at all wide enough staircase, he continues on, “You make the drive alone? No parents, no boyfriend?”
“Nope,” you respond, and oops, you look at his arms.
You went to a Sigma Mu party only once in a while - your roommate’s boyfriend was in Epsilon Chi Omicron and you got free invites there instead. That’s your excuse, not that every time you somehow ended up at SM instead of EXO, you would see Doyoung doing keg stands on his own, using nothing but his upper body strength to keep him upright above the keg. You’d taken anatomy on a whim that semester, you could pluck out each of the muscles rippling in his arms, same as now.
“That’s no boyfriend made the drive or no boyfriend in general?”
“Huh?” You make a noise out of fear, thinking he’s somehow caught onto your internal line of thought, and race to make sure the conversation stays on track, “Oh, no boyfriend in general. Wait, is it easy to get to UCSF from here?”
It’s less important that you’re unattached right now and more important that you can get to your job without spending two years in traffic. But you also need to forget that you’re not only neighbors with Doyoung, you’re going to be colleagues with him, too.
“Yes, I usually bike ‘cause I love it, but we could drive too,” he says, and you’re not sure if he’s trying to make a joke or imparting information in the professional, friendly way you’ve learned he tends to operate in. “It’s gonna be nice to have someone to talk to in the mornings or after call.”
It wasn’t a joke or imparting information. He wants to… he wants to carpool? Why?
“I doubt you don’t have friends,” you deflect, in a way that doesn’t call any attention to yourself any further. He had legions of buddies in college, you’re sure that extended to med school and residency. There’s no reason to imply that you being here means he’ll finally have people to hang out with.
And Doyoung chooses a curious comment in his response, “Yeah they’re all ugly guys, except for my sisters.”
You have no clue what his friends’ attractiveness ranking has to do with what you’re talking about, “I don’t care if they’re ugly—,”
The two of you have made it to the top of the third flight of stairs, and because you’re unburdened, you manage to notice that the final step is just a bit higher than the rest that you’ve been trekking up. You skip over the step with ease, but Doyoung can’t see over your box, misjudges the step, and nearly eats shit trying to make it on the landing. He catches himself on the wall at the expense of the cardboard, which goes flying across the space and lands on the floor with a dull thud. It’s not exactly a handle with care type of box, but you flinch anyways, thinking of the contents inside.
“Oh god, that was bad, I’m sorry,” he groans, rushing over to try and make up for the damage. But he pauses when he’s a foot away and can see the tape has ripped off, revealing the contents inside. His voice wavers just a tiny bit, “You have a lot of high heels.”
You know the pair he’s seeing, the bright red Jimmy Choo strappy sandals, and goddamn, you kind of want to fall back down those stairs and never see him again. You don’t think that blatantly sexy pair of shoes jives with anything he knows about you.
“Yeah, it’s just my thing,” you reply, not sure if you’re supposed to explain or not.
How could you even find the words to explain when he looks at you over his shoulder - in your head, it’s not quite a look, more a gaze, one that firmly centers on the exposed length of your leg past your shorts. Almost as if he’s trying to picture you with the heels on, how they transform the way you look, the confident vision of you that is always conjured up - a manifestation of a siren that lured sailors along not by your voice, but just by the sight of you.
And you think it’s the most ludicrous crock of shit you’ve ever dreamed up. You rush to move past Doyoung and take out your keys, ignore the fact that he was probably dumbfounded someone as plain as you liked to dabble in things as extravagant as that.
“Nice thing,” he breathes, but you’re too preoccupied unlocking your door to hear.
—
Like the icon of efficiency he is, Doyoung has all of your boxes neatly lined up in one corner of the living room in less than twenty minutes. He doesn’t trip a second time, doesn’t even break a sweat, but you think he might be loitering when he’s done. You don’t have any glasses, so it’s not like you can offer him water, and your fridge is empty, so you can't gift him food. You’re not sure what you’re supposed to do at this point besides stand there awkwardly after what feels like your seventieth thank you, and wait for him to leave.
It seems that finally he can’t take the silence any further. He checks his watch one last time, aligns the corner of your air mattress to fit in with the rest of the boxes, then announces, “I think that’s the last box, so we won’t be late!”
Using the term we is a bit strange. You don’t need him to invite you out on his date just to make you feel welcome to the neighborhood or whatever. You’re new to the city, not indisposed.
“Oh, I’m gonna ubereats chipotle, I’m cool,” you rebuff as politely as possible, waving a hand toward the rest of your things. “I should get unpacking and stuff.”
Doyoung pouts, like legitimately pouts, his - gulp - cute pink lip prodding out with his protest, “I said I had reservations…”
“Uh… okay.” Your mouth is agreeing before you’ve even mentally processed what you’re getting yourself into, “Go outside, let me change.”
You are not going to let Doyoung Kim stand in your tiny studio and watch you peel off your clothes. No way.
As soon as he’s gone, you have the thought to lock the door and not let him in again, in any way, shape or form. You’re acting like a crazy person - he’s simply being friendly and you’re out here with what feels like a massive, straight up schoolgirl crush for no reason. You’ve been together less than an hour and you can already feel the confirming signs - your heart rate careening to new heights and not from the stairs, all of your skin feeling like it's still sizzling with the sun nowhere in sight. Which is bizarre considering you have never talked with him in person before this, never got close enough to him in college to find out anything about him besides his reputation, and it’s been like, almost ten years since you graduated. You can say - with full confidence this time - that he hasn’t crossed your mind more than once or twice since.
Yet there’s no explaining the way you tear through your boxes to find the one nice dress you managed not to wrinkle - navy dark enough that it’ll subtly go with the outfit he has on. You feel dumb for worrying about if your ponytail looks good, or if your face can give away you're tired from the move. And really, you need a smack to the head to wake up from whatever has hypnotized you into not thinking twice about putting on those red Jimmy Choos. Here you are, all dressed up and freaking going to unlock the door, which is such a mistake, oh god, he’s not going to like it, he’s going to laugh and ask why you thought you should be done up this nicely—,
“Oh, wow.”
You blink several times, not expecting to walk out and see Doyoung looking wildly different than he did when he left. Now, he's in a pale blue button down, with his hair up the same way he used to wear it, eyes all sparkly in his freshly washed face as he stares. You check the time and find you spent nearly twenty minutes gussying yourself up... which means he must’ve gone upstairs to his apartment, changed, and came back down to meet you. Which is nice but unnecessary - it’s not like he was gross from sweat or anything, he didn’t have to go above and beyond.
It seems all you can do today is make noise and not be a proper human being, “Huh?”
“Nothing,” he murmurs, though he doesn’t stop the stare yet. “Let’s go.”
You end up walking through your new neighborhood together, mostly listening to Doyoung as he chatters away about the bagel places he knows, where he goes to pet puppies after a particularly bad day at the hospital. It’s endearing and enchanting and not at all good for you to walk this walk with him. You can feel how much he loves the city, and it only makes this ridiculous crush even worse. There’s just something about a man who’s so unashamed about his love for himself and where he’s from, and perhaps it has to do with the fact that you’ve never felt that way about anything.
The crush is ridiculous because Doyoung is so out of your league it hurts, and that is only confirmed when he brings you inside the restaurant he’d made reservations at. This is Loveholic, SF’s newest Michelin star awardee, and you can’t help the blatant gawking you do at the space inside. One entire wall is made of glass and nothing else, peering out into this beautiful tableau of the blue bay water. The interior is more glass and more diamonds, transforming the space into a sparkling jewel of a galaxy you feel far inferior to be a patron of.
Even the hostess is a stunning woman, dressed in all Chanel with Cartier jewelry. She greets Doyoung with a hug that is familiar despite her proper greeting, “Welcome, Mr. Kim.”
“Hey, Jennie. Good to see you,” he responds with more informality than you’d expected - implying he’s a usual here and has spent a lot of his time getting to know the employees.
Jennie confirms it with her following actions, forgoing the menus to gesture you along like you know what you’re supposed to be doing, “We’re skipping the regular spot for the patio today, follow me.”
The regular spot? You're feeling lamer by the second.
You poke Doyoung in the side as you start to walk along and mutter, “They know you by name. Fancy pants.”
“I’ll have you know I have good taste. With everything,” he whispers under his breath so only you can hear. You steel every nerve in your body not to flinch when he puts a hand on the small of your back to allow you pass through the door first.
Now, you feel grateful you’d had the stupid idea to wear the Jimmy Choos. At the very minimum, you don’t feel too out of place simply because you have them on. Everyone here is so fancy and high class, with their luxury bags and creaseless, perfect suits, and you cannot fathom why Doyoung thought it would be a good idea to bring you here. Even the seat they escort you out to - the lone table on this intimate square of balcony - feels like you should be paying to just stand in the vicinity of it.
Apparently reservations for someone who’s on a first name basis with a Michelin star restaurant means that your food and wine is already served by the time you’re sat down. He has a pristine steak waiting for him, laden with butter and herbs that are a tantalizing beacon. You wonder what he’d ordered for you, or if it was the chef’s choice, and glance down to see a stunning plate of angel hair cacio e pepe prepared. You’re taken back to the tiny corner kitchen of the old dorm, where you’d shovel down a bootleg version of this, made with powdered parmesan cheese and not at all fully boiled noodles. But you doubt he remembers, this is probably a special or something.
You don’t know if this hoard of butterflies in your stomach is ever going to allow you to eat, but you will not! waste this food.
You shovel away at the pasta, not at all ladylike, but the effort is what's necessary to not taste it enough to swoon at the table. He’s much more elegant and practiced with his steak, cutting it with all the precision of a surgeon, and when he’s a few bites in, he questions, “So, why’d you message me?”
There are a thousand different lies to tell to make yourself sound better, but the honest truth comes blabbing from your mouth, “You were the only person on my friends list who lived in San Francisco.” The corner of his lip downturns, like he’s right in interpreting that he was your only option, last resort, and you feel compelled to add on the rest, “I didn’t want to just trust Yelp reviews and messaged figuring you could get me a better perspective. Why’d you respond?”
Which is true, you wanted to hear thoughts from an actual resident and someone you knew, not just randoms from the internet. And you're hoping that will convey to him that you trusted him enough to reach out after so many years of silence. Plus, you’re curious to know why - after said years of silence - he’s been acting like you were good friends this whole time.
That seems to do the trick. That minute crease of discomfort disappears into a glow that outdoes even the brightest candle on the table, Doyoung's smile transcends the fiery rays of the setting sun, and his dreamy voice takes up free space in your heart, “Well, I love the city. Anything I can do to welcome someone to it, I will.”
He is so kind, but this isn’t something exclusive to you. He’d do this for anyone, and you are such a loser for being disappointed.
You gulp down a hefty glass of wine to try and ignore that feeling. He watches you do that with much curiosity, then pries, “Why’d you move here?”
“It’s the furthest away possible from my mom?” you blurt, choosing to place the blame for your outburst on the alcohol you just downed, though it’s far too early for it to have had any effect on you.
It’s not like you willingly choose to be open about just how hard it is to be at home - even now, as a full on adult. You don’t think any of your previous coworkers or your old roommate knew the extent of it. That it sometimes feels like you have no emotional capacity for yourself because your mother sucks up all of it, that it bothers you she still pretends she’s your sister and not your mother. You needed just a bit of room to breathe.
When you were weighing your job offers, you’d thought about the one in DC for far too long. It'd be close, and you felt guilty about leaving your mother on her own. But the memory of your grandma chose that moment to bless you - she’d advocated for you to go to University of Chicago for college, so you could grow away from your hometown. But you ultimately didn’t have the money and picked William & Mary instead, and more than a lot of times regret it. Now you’re here, telling this total stranger that you somehow trust.
“You serious?” Doyoung’s eyebrow lifts a little at the honesty, and you’re sure it’s a foreign concept for a family man like him to hear something like that.
“Only a little,” you amend, a bit sheepish at the fact you’d opened up that easily. “I’ve lived in Virginia my whole life. I thought for this chapter, you know, why not go somewhere as different from my hometown as possible?”
To your surprise, he nods, “I totally get it.”
“But you went to Stanford and—,” you catch yourself at the technically incorrect assumption, and feel your cheeks pool with embarrassment, “Oh yeah. Okay.”
He’d chosen to go to William & Mary for college, all the way across the country just as you did with your move. You’re sure he must’ve gotten into Stanford for undergrad and then turned it down. The recollection of the carefree kind of life he used to live in school - a direct contrast to how he has a more silent overcoat of propriety around him now - clues you into the fact that he’s being genuine in his empathy about this. The other clue is that his gaze has softened completely, like the stars emerging in the night sky have worked their magic, arranged his features into this pearly, vivid understanding.
“It gives you a little breathing room,” he murmurs softly, plucking out the exact thought that you’d had. “I enjoy being tied down to my family too much to ever give myself enough personal space.”
It’s different situations that lend themselves to the same understanding. You remember what Doyoung's parents were like, that they’d fit right in among the patrons here, even his little kid sisters were more put-together than the girls on your floor. Yet that was just a product of the class they lived in, not their personalities - and you can see he was running from weighty expectations in his youth more than he actually wanted to be separated from the people he loved. He'd returned to SF when he’d grown up to have enough emotional intelligence to handle the expectations of his family with the desires of his life, and that makes the feeling swirl again.
“Wish my family was like that. But that’s not a conversation for now,” you admit, having the itch to confess the rest but not wanting to scare him away from what? the burgeoning friendship? this early.
“We’ll save twenty questions for the second meal, yes?” he suggests, in the softest, most inquisitive tone yet.
You’re floored he’d suggested you might hang out again without any prompting. “I guess—,”
“Mr. Kim, are you enjoying your night?” Even the chef here is handsome - all serious chiseled features and these beautiful, thick eyebrows, embroidery on his jacket reading Kyungsoo Do, Head Chef and Owner. Doyoung is friends with the owner of this place, who’s looking at you with a stunning smile that somehow pales in comparison to the other man’s, and cheekily asking, “Who’s your friend?”
Doyoung’s smile goes just a bit cocky as he does the introduction, “This is y/n. We went to William & Mary together.”
Kyungsoo’s heart shaped lips form this saucy o, “Oooooh.”
What the hell does that mean? Oooooh doesn’t give you a clue one way or another on the underlying emotion of the interaction, but the silent moment of eye contact the two men share might imply that they’ve… talked about you in some capacity. That was an Oooooh of recognition. And it makes you feel hot all over.
“What do you want for dessert?” the chef asks, handing over a small slip of paper with handwritten calligraphy and a wax seal in the corner for you to pore over.
Your meal is done and you hadn’t even noticed, plus the wine bottle is on its last leg, yet you’re still feeling nothing but this bundle of nerves. Talking to Doyoung quelled that trembling tide of unknowable emotion that bubbled since he was in your apartment, now it’s high tide and those waters are rushing to take over once again.
You gulp back the trepidation and turn down the offer, “I’m good.”
Doyoung juts his chin out towards the menu with encouragement and prompts, “Get something.”
“We have a lot of shareables, peach galette, blackberry crisp, choc—,”
“Oh! The chocolate lava cake, thank you!” The chocolate lover inside you takes over in that moment, the dark chocolate and raw cacao garnished lava soufflé cake with vanilla bean ice cream is too delicious sounding to ignore, especially knowing you won’t be able to afford anything like this again.
Kyungsoo chuckles, amused at your enthusiasm, then slightly side-eyes your companion.
Doyoung lets out the barest of exhales, then requests, “Just one spoon.”
You smile graciously at Kyungsoo, then look back down at the table to try and make space for the new plate that’ll be coming - moreso to further avoid Doyoung’s gaze. That is when you spot the marvelous little ladybug taking its slow stroll through the immaculate whiteness of the rose arrangement in the middle of the table. You can’t help it, your heartbeat incinerates into a steam engine of stupid affection for the moment, the glow of the stars and the backdrop of the city, how handsome Doyoung looks, and you never get like this. This must be a special night, designed just for you.
“Got it,” Kyungsoo confirms. “Chocolate lava cake and one spoon, just for your date.”
As you simultaneously watch the chef leave and Doyoung’s smile transfigure into pleased exquisiteness, that steam engine of affection barrels right into your chest. You feel like that trite little organ controlling your feelings might never recover from this.
“S-sorry, d-did he say I’m, I’m y-your w-what…?” You stumble over every idiotic word, the impossible possibility of this not allowing you to breathe, “This dinner, the dinner plans were...”
You thought Doyoung was supposed to be going on a date this whole time. That date was you?
The moon is your comrade-in-arms in these implausible two seconds. Its silvery glow disguises the hue of that ladybug’s coat painted over every tiny bit of your insides, the burning blush of fondness crisping you up. Doyoung appears unaffected, nowhere close to this scary little edge of feeling you’re about to drop off of, but again, it’s as if each star in the sky has come to form this perfect halo around him.
He leans forward on his elbows, chin resting in the palm of his hand as he takes a blatant ogle at all of your silly little features, and he lowly cops to it, “I have been flirting with you all afternoon, did you not notice?” You don’t process his question, you just shake your head faster than you thought it could ever move, and even his laugh is unbelievable in how delightful it is, “Damn, I really thought I was being obvious. I have to be blatant?”
You try to rewind, pick out all the sly comments you hadn’t understood, try to fit them into a puzzle you can’t fathom is real. But you’re too damn focused on the fact that Doyoung Kim spent the whole day flirting with you. On purpose. And now he wants to know if he should be open in his affection and make his intents clear.
“I have no idea,” you admit, never been remotely close to this situation before. “I’ve only really had one boyfriend.”
And you don’t think dating seventeen year old Taeyong, who lent you his basketball jersey and only kissed you with his mouth closed behind the bleachers after his games, is the same situation as this. The man at the table now is a pediatric surgeon, a family man, kind and intelligent and brash and handsome, everything in between, and he brought you to a Michelin star restaurant on your first date.
“Hmmm. High school?” You swear Doyoung must be able to read your mind with how he’s been pinpointing your thoughts and details you don’t give up yourself, “One who swore then he wanted to marry you?”
You can picture it perfectly, the day before Taeyong went up to Northeastern for school - him crying so sweetly and promising he’d come back as a senior and propose. How your mother cried in return when you didn't, egged you on to accept, and you’d broken up with him instead.
“Yeah,” you confirm, trying hard to tamp down the thought that Doyoung predicted that since he could understand where your ex was coming from. “Knew I didn’t want to end up married to him, though.”
That was when you were fresh out of high school, closer to two decades away than ever before, and you’ve been holding out since. There were hookups and flings, a few boys that came close to being boyfriends, but not one of them was the the all encompassing pinnacle of what you wanted, a kind of special stage you felt okay being in the spotlight in. Not once did you look one of them in the face and just know.
But now you’re looking at Doyoung - who's taking an arrogant lean back in his chair and running his hands through his gorgeous dark hair, shirt stretched all over his lithe torso - and you can kind of see it. Driving back and forth from the hospital, trying to replicate this pasta recipe in his tiny kitchen, him organizing your shoes, wearing a dress that matches those roses. Letting him smile at you in this intoxicating manner for the rest of your life.
And he just says it as soon as it comes to your mind, “You know you’re going to end up marrying me, right?” You try to convey in your face that you’ve never heard something so ridiculous in your entire life, but all that comes out is this affected, smitten little laugh - not a denial. His face lights up in smug victory, “Was that obvious enough?”
“Yes,” you whisper, wishing you had taken your hair down from the ponytail so you could have a drapery of it to hide behind.
“Good.”
Doyoung is the most confident man you’ve ever met. It must’ve never been a question in his mind that you felt similarly, he doesn’t look relieved or reassured or anything. He likes you, gambled on the fact you did too, and now here you are, a girl under the spotlight of a whole Milky Way of his adoration.
You’re so flustered you eat your dessert without thinking about how it tastes. You think all your senses have diverted their energy towards controlling your heartbeat to not completely give out on you. He simply lounges back, content to watch you enjoy yourself with the sweet treat. There’s no check that comes, which means he must’ve given them his card in advance, confirming yet again he’d gone to these lengths to treat you right on your first day in a new place.
When you leave to walk home, you feel the graze of the side of his hand by yours the second you’re past the doors. He’s been putting so much effort in and you’ve been blindly in the dark, so you have to seize this moment yourself - take initiative and tuck your fingers in the palm of his large hand, relish in the feeling of warm protection his fingers curling around yours provides.
Now that he’s actually touching you is when the hesitation and the shyness seems to creep out from him. You can spot this crescent of pink behind his ear as he quietly admits, “To answer your question from before, I responded to help you with your move, sure. But also because, even back in college, I thought you were totally cute. I thought you were out of my league.”
All of this has been unbelievable, but none so more than this.
You have the instinct to let go of his hand and he has the opposite, clutching your fingers tighter through your denial, “No I wasn’t.”
He was Doyoung Kim for heaven’s sake! Everyone on campus knew who he was, all the frat bros wanted to be in his circle, sorority queens wanted invites to his date parties, basically all of them didn’t have a chance because he was too loyal to the friends he found himself. You were a management major with a handful of acquaintances and no social life, spoke to him a total of zero times, you thought you had nothing in common!
“Yes, you were,” he echoes himself, knowing his feelings better than you. “I thought that if I took you on a date, that was my chance to brag to my friends that I ended up with someone like you.”
He admitted himself he was going to be blatant, and you’re never going to get used to it, “Oh my gosh, I get it, I get it.”
“That wasn’t flirting, but I can keep going.”
You want to hear every little thing Doyoung has ever thought about you. “Okay.”
You’ve been walking hand in hand through the moonlight covered sidewalks of San Francisco together, past these beautiful brownstone townhouses that you might be interested in owning one day because they look perfect for a family. But you have one destination, your junky apartment, and all of the opportunity it inspires. He leans on the concrete pillar right outside and tugs you close, so close, so unbelievably close you can smell the spicy cologne he must’ve put on in the haste to get ready - for you.
Then, he’s holding your waist with one hand and pushing away these flyaway strands of hair by your forehead with the other and whispering right in your ear, “It wasn’t just that you were cute. I always knew you were super friendly, and I saw you studying in the lounge which meant you were smart, too. You had that little group of girlfriends you did everything with, loyal, made cheese pasta for the RA when she had late nights, compassionate.” You swear the burst of his lip ghosts by the shell of your ear in a kiss when he chuckles, then teases, “And I saw you at the Sigma Mu house once in a while. Party girl on the inside, huh?”
Okay, maybe you thought about Doyoung Kim more than you realized.
It wasn’t just that all the sorority queens liked him, not a single person in your hall had a bad thing to say about him, from the nerds to the jocks and everyone in between. And of course he was smart, everyone knew he was going to become a hotshot doctor just like his father. You’ve already had the memory of him at the keg, but he was more than that - he never went anywhere without his buddies Jaemin and Ten, was in the club that trained service dogs just for fun, and he would sign up for every volunteer drive that was advertised on your dorm’s bulletin board. Separated by the cruel hands of ignorance, you’d managed to have the same exquisite little thoughts about one another.
You figure you will have more time than you think to tell him these things in return. So you can be a bit selfish in this moment and prompt him, with a nudge of your nose against his cheek, “Keep going.”
“Sometimes I’d wonder what you were up to after college. I really regretted not talking to you,” Doyoung admits right away, palpable regret in his voice. “Still think you’re outta my league.”
It’s never too late. You might have a lifetime to make up for that now.
“Just a little more,” you murmur.
And there’s no control left, you stand on your tiptoes within his hold and press this delectable kiss to the side of his jaw, can see for yourself all the goosebumps that provokes. He hugs you then - you thought you were close, but you’re brought to a point where you’re all him and he’s all you, no stethoscope necessary to expose how both of you are losing it because of the other. He takes his turn to do the same, nestle his cherry blossom mouth right in the epicenter of your soft cheek, one, two, three tender kisses.
Then, what comes isn’t blatant flirting, nowhere close. It’s a plain confession, a biopsy of his heart served up in unrelenting honesty through his swooning sigh, “My coworkers are going to be so jealous of me. The most beautiful girl moved to San Francisco and fell in love with me at first sight like this.”
It’s only halfway, you cocky fool, you should protest, It’s like at first sight, not love. But you don’t know if you have the legroom to make such a protest - because it might not be true, and because Doyoung really kisses you then.
There’s no uncertainty, there’s no wondering, only firm confirmation of sweet destiny. He tastes just like the cherry wine you’d had at dinner, ah, and there’s the distinct flavor of relief, he must’ve been waiting for this long to kiss you and you don’t think you could imagine something better. This is a man who knows what he wants, the kisses bestowed with purpose, his lips taking their time to tease out the sighs of contentment from yours, fingers meandering under the sleeves of your dress that might’ve tempted him a little bit too much. Behind your closed eyes, you float away in the middle of the dreamiest dream, unraveling this way and that as his lips part for just a bit longer, to slick right into the complementary space between yours.
He doesn’t fully remove his mouth from yours after to whisper, “You wanna come to a party?”
“Huh?”
“It’s an excuse, I’m trying to not be a sleaze on our first date.”
Wow. Wow, he wants to come up to your empty apartment, knows exactly where he left the air mattress for you. You want to invite him in, you’ve never wanted something this badly in your life, but maybe you should control this and figure out where it’s going before you can lose yourself in it entirely. You haven’t lost your pragmatism yet.
You kiss the very corner of his mouth, the stunning grey area between his lips and the expanse of his cheek, and ask, “What’s the party?”
He gathers up your face in his hands, so you can have this poignant moment just to stare at each other before he answers, “A goodbye party for my best friend Jeff. He’s going to Bolivia for Doctors without Borders,” then he kisses your lips and your neck and your hairline, breathing out the explanation in between the dots of affection, “He’s a total scumbag, not cool or good-looking.”
Which means his friend is for sure way beyond the point of good-looking and is probably pretty fantastic and not at all a scumbag. As if to make you forget about his words once he’s said them, Doyoung presses his lips right back into yours, this time taking much careful effort to slip his tongue in your mouth, brush it past yours, lick this slick little spot across the middle of your bottom lip.
“I’m already kissing you, don’t worry,” you half-laugh, half-gasp, in between his dynamic, trying-to-prove something kisses. He is unreal cute, you like-love him so much already.
“Still,” he whines, though you can tell he’s holding back his giggle as he kisses you once again. “Can’t be too careful.”
You don’t think you can gather up much interest in this not cool not good-looking friend of Doyoung’s, anyway. It’d be hard to compare.
Despite the action roaring against your every instinct, you reluctantly extricate yourself from Doyoung’s grip before you lose all premise of public decency and rip his clothes off right here on the front step of your apartment building. His breath peals out in this dismayed, tiny gasp as you take that moment when his eyes are closed to run up the stairs to the landing. He looks even better from up here, where you can see the rosy bloom of his cheeks, and the way he fidgets with the loop of his belt in the effort to control himself. You have to do the same, tighten the ponytail where he’d rustled all your hair up, straighten out the sleeves he’d nearly pushed off your shoulders in an effort to see all of you.
You arrange yourself so you’re leaning off the side of the landing, a princess calling to her prince from her run-down balcony, “Hey, cute boy over there!” He turns to see you and goes downright ruddy, even in the moonlight, and nearly purpling when you take your turn to blatantly flirt, “You go, and I’ll still be here when it’s done. You know where I live.”
If this Jeff is really his best friend, and today is the last day they have together, of course you’ll never keep Doyoung from that. The rest of it was an invitation, though. Not just into your home for tonight, but for whatever he’s imagined in all that time you’ve been apart. You want to see if it’s what you’ve dreamt up, too.
He clears his throat, all that unleashed lust doing a number on his throat, and he one ups you, “You know where I live. And I have a real mattress.”
You really don’t want him to go to this party.
“You’re not as charming as you think you are,” you poke at him, one hundred percent charmed by every little bit of Doyoung Kim. He’s it, you think, the kind of person you know your heart was meant for.
“You’re gonna marry me anyway!” he proclaims, blowing you the silliest kind of kiss before he goes strolling down the street.
You watch him and watch him, and when he gets to the corner, right before he disappears out of your view, you catch it. The little skip he takes, then the tiniest fist pump of victory. You’re going to kiss him all he wants tonight just for that. You like Doyoung, maybe you love him, whatever, but you’re still going to think it’s outlandish he’s that convinced you’re going to get married. You think it’s ridiculous up until the very second you’re standing before him at the altar, watching him tear up as you take your turn to read your vows.
You’re still not as charming as you think you are, but here I am, marrying you anyway.
fin.