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The drinks were wearing thin. After hours of this inane pool party, Gunwook wanted out. It was all he could do to helplessly clutch his opaque, golden cup bubbling with whatever the bartender had shoved into his hand. He probably didn’t need to drink this much, probably would get into a fight about it later, but water wasn’t good for the camera and the producers had made that abundantly clear. He’d taken a moment to stand by the pool, stare at his own reflection, and sweat alone in the Baja heat.
“D’you know where Mattie went?” the voice from behind him came, perfectly sweet and hiding the drunken slur with practiced precision.
Gunwook turned to see Matthew’s fiancée. Who else would be asking after him? She was tall and tan and laughed loudly. Matthew had talked about her when he’d return from the pods from nearly the first day, back when Gunwook was still fumbling through his sentences and trying not to let his nerves show his hand for how young he was. She was everything Matthew had described her as. There was a brief moment, a flash, wondering where his own fiancée had went and if Gunwook should try to find her instead. He should, shouldn’t he? She’d been excited to meet up with the girls after the trip had started, but her introversion crept quick and fast, and maybe she’d want to leave early. Gunwook let the thoughts marble and swirl in his head like he had a choice.
“I could go talk to him,” he said, at last, giving her a careful nod.
“You’re sweet, Gunwook,” she nodded, tilting her head to the side, her sleek brown hair swishing with movement. He couldn’t shake the feeling she was looking for something. Through him? In him?
“Are you okay?” He asked, trying not to make his words curl into, is he okay.
“No, I’m okay,” she started, shrugging and glancing off to the side. “I think Mattie just hit his limit a little too soon, he was acting off, kind of getting on my nerves,” she finished.
Her smile was a private one, like she was confiding in him. Gunwook couldn’t remember how many dates they’d gone on in the pods. Maybe a few. He couldn’t stop his eyes from wandering to her hands, tan and slim, no ring in sight. It made his head pound with liquor. It made him want to ask, though he knew he shouldn’t. Her and Matthew were a model couple in most ways. Matthew’s hand always around her waist, his swim trunks sweetly coordinated with the color of her bikini. The more Matthew had fallen for her in the pods, the deeper his and Gunwook’s friendship had gotten. As the days passed and Matthew realized that in most ways he couldn’t stand the lot of men, so obsessed with income and speculating on the physical and posturing their egos in ways that made him sick. Because of his stature, the men treated him like a threat. It made his anxiety swell.
“I’ll let him know you’re looking for him,” Gunwook said, his words stammering like an excuse. He really should find where his fiancée was.
They hadn’t fought yet. She was smart, reasonable. Older than him with enough sense not to tease about it too much. Their relationship made sense. She was pretty, strong from their shared hobby of spending too much time at the gym. The sex was good, the chemistry was fine. It was nice to wake up next to somebody. It was nice that his going on this show wouldn’t be written off as pure desperation, though, of course that’s what his friends thought. If Gunwook left the pool party now to try and find Matthew, would that jeopardize what they had? Or would she think it was admirable that he wanted to take care of his friend who was probably off puking in a bush somewhere? Would she think that he was doing a favor for Matthew’s fiancée, and thus trying to make her jealous? When they left the honeymoon for the next phase of the experiment, would everything unravel the second Matthew wasn’t there to keep him balanced?
The last thought made his stomach pool with dread like ice. He should go and find Matthew.
Gunwook the swimming pool and bar without a second thought, trying to speed his steps despite his drunkenness to outpace the camera operator who would inevitably chase after him. It was better now, away from the pods, as they didn’t need to wear microphones beneath their shirts and could rely on only the locations being mic’d up for their every confession and harshly spoken word. Maybe, just maybe, if he was efficient enough, he could have a real conversation with Matthew.
During the first day before the entered the pods when the men were released into their quarters, Matthew stood out to him immediately for his warm smile and the friendly way he tried to carry on conversation with all the men, no matter how brusque they were. The first words they spoke to each other was when Gunwook waited to be called by the producers to introduce himself in the diary room, nearly trembling due to some unexpected anxiety plaguing him. It was unheard of for him. In school, he was an ace at public speech and debate. Wouldn’t reality television put those skills to use? But he wasn’t expecting to be the youngest here, poked and prodded by everyone by whether or not he could really handle marriage at 23. Matthew had given him that smile, that smile like a thousand fucking suns, and gently put his hand on Gunwook’s shoulder.
“Cheer up, you’re a catch,” he grinned. Even before he knew his name.
Gunwook chased through the vacation villa’s sidewalks, the fronds tickling his ankles and the sun beating down on him like there was a timer, tipsily scanning every corner for where Matthew could be sitting. He couldn’t be back at his and his fiancée’s private suite already, could he? The thought made Gunwook’s heart hammer uncontrollably. That would feel like something almost too intimate. But the reality dawned on him that if he was going to find Matthew, anyplace, it might just be there. Matthew’s bungalow door felt like it was looming, but Gunwook knew he needed to approach it. He didn’t have much of an option. He didn’t have any sense of time left. Gunwook caught his breath as he caught up to the door, having outpaced the cameraman. Yes, there would be the cameras built into the bungalow, but those shots were limited, anyway, and his fiancée had taught him a rather clever way of covering the camera and feigning accident when the producers questioned it. Gunwook lifted his knuckle and knocked gingerly.
He heard a stirring from inside. Gunwook took a breath.
“Babe, I need a minute,” called Matthew’s voice, leaving Gunwook unexpectedly breathless. He thought it was his fiancée, obviously. It left him completely unarmed, nonetheless.
“It’s me,” Gunwook said, his voice sounding young and dumb, even to his own ear.
Inside the bungalow, Gunwook could hear Matthew walking around, not yet having responded. Gunwook steeled himself. Matthew opened the door and Gunwook felt his heart bottom out into his stomach. There he was, standing in front of him, this sunlight of a man looking more disheveled than he’d ever seen him—even when one of his matches had callously dumped him before leaving the pods for good—since they’d met. Matthew’s chestnut hair was pushed into a messy, quaffed up look that spoke to how much he’d anxiously been running his hair through it. He had dark circles, even. His body was still thick and muscled and tight (not that it meant anything for him to notice that), but there was a tense way he held his posture as he looked at Gunwook, his eyes dark and searching.
“Why are you here?” Matthew asked, blearily, a slight drunken edge twisting the clarity of his words. Gunwook felt like he couldn’t answer. He didn’t want to say the truth, that his fiancée had been a part of this, in some way. Selfishly, he wanted this moment for him, for them.
“Because you left,” Gunwook said, feigning easiness, like all of this came simple to him. Like he hadn’t spent the past few weeks fretting of when the separation of the quarters and the pods ended, and God forbid, the end of the experiment altogether. Like he hadn’t laid in bed the night before he proposed knowing the pods were ending soon and if he didn’t find a way to get to Baja he wouldn’t see Matthew again. But that wasn’t it, was it? He loved his fiancée. He loved her serrate wit and humor. He wanted to be here with her. Gunwook felt the drink in his system surge to his throat. He swallowed it away.
Matthew looked at his face, searching. He sighed. There was none of that sun on his expression.
“Come in, Gunwookie,” he said, quietly, and Gunwook could do nothing but listen.
The bungalow’s interior was a mess, smattered with camisoles and sunhats and suncream and workout clothes belonging to them both. Gunwook felt a quiet sense of concern when it came to keeping things tidy, as though his fiancée would look at him differently, look at him immaturely, if he let one extra thing seep out of his bag.
Matthew flopped back onto the bed, the mess of sheets and duvet. He groaned. Gunwook felt his heart pounding again.
“I’m so fucked up,” he said. Gunwook wanted to get him a glass of water, but he already felt like he was intruding on this intimate space.
“I’m kind of drunk,” Gunwook agreed, though it didn’t stop him from emptying the stupid gold glass he’d carried with him all this way.
“I thought it would be good if I left early. She told me I was being annoying,” he said.
Responding was a dangerous and tricky game. He remembered in the quarters, how one night, after the two of them had stayed up in the lounge long after all the rest of the men went to sleep how the next day everyone was joking about their “bromance.” Right.
“That’s not very nice,” he said, flatly.
Matthew laughed. “No, she’s right. I was being fucking annoying. Things were just so awkward between the guys I just couldn’t help myself from filling the space,” he admitted. And it was true. There had been two love triangles right up until the last phases of the pods.
“She calls you Matty,” Gunwook said, dumbly observant.
“Yeah, guess she does,” Matthew said, glancing up at him, as though he was expecting an explanation.
“I don’t call you that,” he added. This was dangerous. Stupid. What was he even saying?
“No, I guess you don’t,” Matthew laughed, pushing his body up so he was sitting, his body heavy and drunk and beautiful. “Can we sit?”
Gunwook didn’t know how to say no. He sat next to Matthew on the bed him and his fiancée shared.
“She’s great,” Matthew opened, like he was thinking about how to even broach this thread. “She’s great.” He repeated.
“Okay.”
“And yeah, we’re getting used to each other,” Matthew nodded. Gunwook couldn’t ignore how his and Matthew’s shoulders were pressed against each other, skin blooming warm from the captured heat of the sun and the internal churning warmth of the alcohol.
“Her ring,” Gunwook mumbled quietly, immediately feeling as though he’d crossed the line, the one line he couldn’t.
“Her ring,” Matthew echoed, shrugging. “Yeah, she took it off. We’re not there yet. We argue all the time, about stupid shit,” he admitted. It didn’t line up with the playful, teasing Matthew he’d come to know, always warmly sharing a joke or earnestly expressing his every emotion. He hadn’t known that Matthew and his fiancée were having issues. He felt guilty, somehow, like he should’ve known about this.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” Matthew smiled, knocking their shoulders together. Gunwook felt a guilty responsibility spreading through his chest.
“I don’t know if I can get married,” Gunwook blurted. The guilt bloomed through his chest again.
“What are you talking about? You two are great,” Matthew said, patting at his back. With Matthew this drunk, Gunwook felt awful that he was the one being comforted in this moment, about some nonissue-nonthought he hadn’t even articulated before this very moment.
“She’s great,” Gunwook corrected. “I’m… I don’t know.”
“You’re Gunwook,” Matthew repeated, in a hyped tone, like he could somehow forget. “You’re my Gunwookie, of course you’re great.”
The words, the my, flipped through his chest. The way that Matthew had called him babe through the door just moments ago when he’d been mistaken for his fiancée.
“Yeah, that’s kind of the problem,” Gunwook laughed, unable to stop the way the emotions of all of this rocketed and surged through him like whatever cocktail he’d drank all shook around in its shaker. All this fucking time. All this time, he’d spent more time thinking about Matthew more than he’d ever spent thinking of any of his options in the pods, of the woman who just days ago he was professing to the glowing wall that he’d want to spend the rest of his life with. He was awful, he was certain of this. He was consumed with nothing but the experience. Nothing but Matthew.
“Yeah,” Matthew said, shaking his head. “I know what you mean.”
“No, Matthew, you don’t,” Gunwook said, feeling frustration well up in his throat and tear ducts like the emotions were trying to claw their way from his body. This must be so easy for someone like Matthew.
“Don’t say that,” Matthew said, shaking his head and adjusting himself on the bed so he could look Gunwook in the eye. Gunwook was overwhelmed by the sight of him like this, so vulnerable and undone.
“All I can think about is you,” Gunwook said, his voice unexpectedly shaking as it left his mouth. Matthew’s expression changed, filling with something that Gunwook could only read as pity, as regret.
Matthew leaned toward him and there was nothing Gunwook could do to resist this moment. As they pressed their lips together, Matthew curled his hand around Gunwook’s bicep, his clutch firm. Matthew tasted like coconut liquor and his lips were chapped but his mouth was smart and felt like it knew him already, his tongue darting into his mouth as Gunwook let the kiss be deepened. Everything about this felt like pure catharsis, the feeling of complete and utter release that he’d all but wished would have happened when the door parted in that long hallway and he first saw his fiancée, the rest of his life, standing there with a huge smile on her face. Gunwook couldn’t sob into this kiss, its impact too big and the moment so fleeting. It was this. This was going to undo everything, but there was nothing he could do from stopping himself from this moment. Gunwook placed his hand at the back of Matthew’s head and clutched desperately at his fucked up hair, pushing him into the kiss and letting his mouth be fucking ravaged. He was Matthew’s. In this moment, there was nothing that could be done to fucking deny it.
When the moment passed and their teeth clacked together and Gunwook felt himself breathless and clawing and more confused than ever, he pulled back and saw Matthew’s face reflecting back to him a mirrored echo of his own.
“Gunwook, please go tell her I’ll be okay,” Matthew said, quiet and desperate. “I just need to pull myself together.”
Who was he to ever think he could deny Matthew this moment, this request. There was nothing Gunwook could say but okay.