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6pm
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It’s a grey London day, a steady drizzle held back from Minho’s face by the umbrella a bodyguard holds over him. And then, like lightning, come the flashes of the cameras as the waiting paparazzi track his progress between the car and the stadium entrance.
“Someone must have tipped them off!” Greg yells, and Minho rolls his eyes at him. Of course, there’s a leak. There’s always a fucking leak. The personal business of Premier League footballers leaks to the press like this cold and dirty rain leaks from the clouds. Minho wore his Armani shoes today, to look good for the judge, and they’re never going to be the same.
“Is it really the brightest fucking idea for him to be here?” James asks Greg, when the player door is finally closed behind them all; Minho and Greg and the bodyguard, and Greg’s assistant Katya and some other girl interning with her.
“Come on, James,” Greg shoots a nervous glance at Minho. Minho raises his eyebrow. “Come on,” Greg repeat, “it’s the gala, right? What kind of message does it give if he’s not there with the other players? The whole club’s standing behind him, that’s the line. And particularly now.”
James looks at Minho, assessing him and up down, and sighs. James’ job title is something meaningless like ‘Assistant Executive Support’, but everyone knows what he does: fix things the club’s owners are annoyed about, subtly if possible, but ultimately by whatever means necessary. And Minho, right now, is probably top of his list.
Minho wants a drink, but that’s nothing new. It crawls under his skin, the wanting, just like always.
“You’re going to be OK, though, right?” James prompts. He always speaks slightly slower with the players who don’t have English as a first language, even though every single thing he says is so tediously predictable that no one would need translation. “I know today was a lot, mate, but you’ve got it together for this, right?”
“I’ve got it together,” Minho repeats, tonelessly. He tilts his head to one side. “Mate.”
“See? Absolutely fine!” Greg gives a high, quick laugh and takes hold of Minho’s upper arm, starting to draw him deeper into the stadium. The shouts from the paparazzi are still audible outside. “And it really was totally fine, actually, Sunny was very dignified like she always is, she’s not making anything of the Grindr stuff at all, no tidbits for the press, nothing.”
“Well, they’re still barely halfway through digesting the first lot,” James comments. “But OK, that’s something.”
Greg’s hand is warm on Minho’s bicep. Sunny had touched him there too, briefly, during the arbitration, and given him a small little smile, her expression sympathetic. She’d said, wistfully: If only we could have talked to each other. This would all be so much easier if he hated her. But, if that were true, they’d have to be in a world where he’d cared enough in the first place.
Minho shivers, closes his eyes.
“Come on,” Greg encourages him. “Come on, it’s only a couple of hours until it starts, let’s get you some food, yeah? Katya?”
“Fried chicken and chilli chips sixteen minutes ETA,” Katya confirms, holding up one of her three phones. The intern blinks at her, and then at Minho.
“Aren’t I supposed to be on a diet?” Minho prompts, as they walk through the stadium corridors. Windowless, and in this, the private player area, heavily carpeted, there’s something tomb-like about it.
“Oh, you can indulge one time,” Greg is reading something on one of his own phones, chewing at his lip. Notionally, Greg is the personal handler for Harry Freeman and Karl Theiger as well as Minho, but Minho knows he’s occupied all Greg’s time recently.
“That’s not what they said to me in Alcoholics Anonymous,” Minho points out, and rolls his eyes again at Greg’s nervous giggle. “Greg, I’m not stupid.”
“Addiction is not a personal failing,” Greg tells him earnestly. “But… uh. Yeah, that’s good. If tonight goes well, you know, that would be great for the image, the narrative, you know? Just another Lambeth FC player, participating in a lovely public event, raising money for cancer patients. Nice and sharp in an evening suit, some candids chatting to the celebrity guests, a few words to camera for the socials,”
“… and not falling drunkenly over anything, or talking about the divorce. Or anything else. Got it.” Minho sighs.
“And, uh, if you were seen flirting with some of the women…” Greg swallows, clearly uncomfortable. Greg is gay, Minho is 80 per cent sure, with the very specific way he winces at some of the player banter. But despite or perhaps because of that, Greg knows just how much of a problem Minho’s situation is for them all. So perhaps Minho ought to be nicer to him, ought to have gained some kind of insight into his life, but it’s been a hell of a day, there are spiders crawling through his bones, the creeping itch of the cravings that there’s nothing to do but exist through, and three hours ago he watched his soon-to-be-ex-wife holding hands with her new guy and he didn’t even care.
He used to have those emotions. He must have done. When he got married. When he proposed. When he got selected for a Premier League team, the second Korean player ever to do so. When he scored his first hat trick. When his penalty goal got Korea into the Quarters of the World Cup two years ago. He can think through those moments in his life, all the way back to being a teenager, to when he convinced his father to let him train in football and realise his dream, the decision he’d expected to shape the rest of his life. But now all those memories feel like something behind glass in an aquarium, inaccessible.
And he’s the one in the water. He’s the one drowning.
He doesn’t even know why he downloaded that app in the first place, except that a drowning man will clutch at anything.
“What’s that song?” someone asks. Minho turns. It’s the intern, blinking at him.
“What song?”
“The one you were humming?”
“I wasn’t humming.”
“You were,” Katya asserts. “But it wasn’t polite to interrupt you,” and she makes rapid eyebrow movements that leave the intern drawing back, crushed.
“Hey, it’s OK.” Minho sighs. This is as good a distraction as anything. “I must not have noticed. So, you tell me, what did it sound like?”
The intern looks at Katya, then Minho, then Katya again.
“What did it sound like, Jess?” Katya prompts.
“Um,” the intern tries. Then she hums out a section of melody. It’s catchy, some kind of pop hook. Perhaps it’s another viral kids’ thing like Baby Shark, Minho supposes. She gets through about three beats and stops, and he finds he know the next two bars, finishing it up for her.
“See!” the intern gestures at him. “You do know it!”
“No idea what it is,” Minho points out. “Is it an advert for something?”
The intern shrugs.
“Chicken incoming,” Katya announces, waving her phone again.
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7pm
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Minho wakes up suddenly, shocked, and feels something in his neck cramp.
At least he got some sleep, even if it was sideways in a chair in the player lounge where they’ve all been assembled, full of chicken and some crap sugary drink that was no substitute in any way for beer. Lately he’s been waking up, every night, and the tiredness goes down to his bones.
But even here the dream found him. The same one that’s been coming to him for weeks, months. He’d thought it was something to do with the drinking, then that it might be being fuelled by the withdrawal, but he’s nearly thirty days clean and it’s still with him.
In the dream, he’s in the stadium, just like a normal game day. There’s a full crowd, packed in and cheering, as there always has been for his whole professional career. But rather than sunshine or floodlights, the whole place is dark. And then, in the darkness, the torches. The whole crowd has these weird flashlights, like they all knew there would be a power cut and they all brought torches. But for some reason all the torches are blue. They dance, in the darkness, the crowd waving these blue lights at him, and he feels…
It's like a word on the tip of his tongue. Like a quiz answer just out of reach.
He catches a movement out of the corner of his eye, turns, and finds the intern holding her phone out towards him. She’s changed into a dress for the evening, wobbling slightly on heels that she probably can’t really afford.
“I was just trying to Shazam you!” she explains, turning red, hands held up in defence. “You were humming it again!”
Minho shakes himself, tries to focus. “Oh yeah? Any luck?”
She looks at her phone and makes a face. “No. Not yet.”
“Well, it isn’t my lucky day, clearly,” Minho sighs, runs a hand over his eyes. His head is pounding. He ought to hydrate. The aftermath of the fried chicken lingers greasy in his mouth and acid in his stomach. He wants to run – not just as in get away, although that too, but as in moving, physically moving. It’s always been the thing he could rely on, the one thing he could cling to, the simple relief of moving his body. The pitch is just out there, those hallowed square feet of grass the fans of this club half-worship. He could run laps, like they used to have to in training, like they’d be punished with.
If only he could be punished. If only he could do a penance and atone, and be fixed, whatever it is that is broken inside him.
So broken he downloaded a gay hook-up app even though he’s obviously always been straight. So drunk, one night, so miserable about the failure of his marriage, that he’d actually arranged to meet a guy through it, for God knows what reason that had made sense through his whisky-haze. And then when the man had shown up, all Minho had done was cry into his shoulder – and he’d been nice enough about it, in the moment, and the breathless Instagram live he’d done on the way home about his encounter with a Premier League player, was probably never intended to go beyond his double-digit number of followers.
“Alright everyone!” James is shouting, across the room. Minho looks around. He catches a few of the other players’ eyes, and gets a mixture of sympathetic and suspicious glances. They’ve all had their run ins with bad publicity, they all resent the intrusions of the press, so to an extent they’re always going to side with him. And they’ve all bought the idea that the ‘alleged’ Grindr hook-up made it up, which is the official line. But when someone fucks up, that risks them all. When someone gets so messed up inside that one day they break down crying on the pitch, gasping sobs for a sorrow they can’t even describe, that reflects poorly on everyone. It’s a team sport, at the end of the day. If he gets back to his form, they’ll call him ‘brother’ again, but if he drifts downwards, they want to be sure to kick well clear in time, in case he catches them in his undertow.
And there’s that suspicion too, lurking under the surface, he can sense it. Could he be gay? Could that man be gay? How could I tell? How could I be sure, absolutely sure, that I hadn’t been naked in front of a gay man? Minho would have been the same, if it had happened to someone else. In other worlds, nowadays, maybe it’s OK to be ‘like that’, but in football it’s unthinkable.
His richest English dialect is words for homosexuals, all the ones thrown onto and around the pitch over the years. If you play football you aren’t gay, and reciprocal and opposite: if you’re gay you shouldn’t play football, and he’s known from his first shots into a tiny plastic goal when he was a toddler that he wanted to play football. So, there wasn’t even a question about it.
“Alright?” Harry murmurs to him, deliberately coming up and grasping his hand. Minho grasps back, but he can see Kamar and Freddie over Harry’s shoulder, whispering. And on the other side of the room, Karl is saying something to Greg, but maybe it’s about his own schedules and contracts. Minho didn’t used to be this paranoid.
“You have to sell her down the river, right, you know that?” Harry is saying, even as James continues to drone on something about the stellar reputation of the club and the importance of stakeholder relations and ‘brand storming’. “Look, mate, I liked Sunny as much as anyone, but she cheated, yeah? She was the one who asked to end it? You gotta tell the press that. Like, they don’t care, they’re tearing you apart today and worshipping her, but they’ll turn like that,” he snaps his fingers, “and she’ll be the Wicked Witch of the West. Everyone knows if women do you wrong, you do weird shit. We’ve all wondered if the pussy was even worth it, it doesn’t make you a poof, yeah?”
Minho clenches his fists at his sides. He can taste it on his tongue, the scent of the whisky on Harry’s breath.
What does any of it matter? He didn’t care enough about Sunny to fight to keep her, and he didn’t care enough about this team to let them carry him through the mess of the divorce and the media fallout, when Sunny is a beloved morning TV show host and he’s the scandalous shame of the club. He could have focussed on them, he could have had them be enough for him, but it wasn’t.
Alcohol doesn’t make him feel good. It just stops him noticing that he doesn’t feel much at all.
“…and above all, if anyone asks you about Minho, just say that’s his private business, yeah?” James raises his hand to Minho like some kind of absurd toast, and everyone turns to look at him again.
He doesn’t care. He just… doesn’t care.
“Oh my God,” he hears the intern murmuring under her breath, as the doors start opening to let them into the conference space that’s the main venue of tonight’s event. The big arrival, the players! More cameras (in house and approved only), and that weird ripple of excitement even through this crowd of celebrities, at the men they’ve seen on the pitch appearing in front of them. She’s not even going to go into the event, but she’s clearly thrilled just to be near it. If he could remember how, he might laugh at her.
Minho sets his teeth forcefully into a smile, and walks through the door. There’s another ripple, as he enters. Some people must have been wondering if he’d appear. If they follow gossip at all, (and who in this world doesn’t?) they’ll have seen him across the papers for days now. And that’s before those kids online decided to make him a meme, recycling the footage of him crying, over and over. It’s even broken through to late night talk shows, or so Katya says. Minho doesn’t watch television, alone in the house Sunny’s left behind her, with its stupidly huge, sterile kitchen and the guest bedrooms for the friends who don’t call him now. His mother wants him to move back to Korea, but even supposing his dad would forgive him for walking away from this team, the idea of it feels worse, somehow. At least here he has some kind of justification for this endless sense of alienation.
He just wanted to not be alone. That, as much as he can remember anything through the drink, is what he remembers about downloading Grindr. Sunny had told him about her new guy, and he’d been numb, and she’d gone off in a taxi, and he’d been numb, and at that moment being alone and feeling that way was so terrifying that he’d just gone for a service he knew would give him a way to get someone to him immediately. Someone else might have called an ambulance.
Now, numb, he meets, he greets. He talks about football, he answers dumb questions about Korea, and, of course, because it’s England after all, he says the same three things about the weather, over and over. Yes, it is very rainy today. Yes, that is unusual at this time of year. Yes, it is nice when the sun shines. But the thing is, there are no windows in this room. They could all just be sealed in, a hundred miles underground.
Finishing a desultory encounter with the wife of one of the managers, Minho wonders if the spiders in his skin will crawl right through and peel him open. He’ll fall apart and all there will be inside is dust.
He casts a glance at the bar. There is a bank of glasses of champagne just there on a tray. He could…
“Minho!” James hisses, and Minho twists, startled. James is rapidly closing the distance between them, a scowl worse than usual on his face.
“Minho, listen, he’s here. We tried to put them off, yeah? We tried to tell them we’d got the ticket numbering wrong and there wasn’t space but that got back to the owner’s wife somehow and it turns out she loves the little faggot’s brand so she said we had to boot someone else, stupid bitch.”
Minho blinks. “Who?”
James rolls his eyes, and gestures furtively with an incline of his head. “The fucking designer? The Korean one? Some bright spark thought it was clever, one of the first Premier League Korean footballers and first Korean designer to headline at London Fashion Week, or something, I don’t fucking know. Maybe it would have been clever six months ago, but now…”
Minho follows James’ gesture. And yes, there, talking to three women in a little huddle, laughing, is a Korean man. A Korean man in a skirt. He looks up, meeting Minho’s gaze, and suddenly freezes, shocked eyes staring back at him.
It’s electric.
Every single cell in Minho’s body thrums.
It’s like waking up. Like being dragged out of a deep, feverish sleep by a sudden wave of freezing water. Bracing and shocking and enough to make you gasp. Lungs filling, bright, alive.
The man is a good several metres away, but Minho can see right into his eyes. They’re a bright, clear, artificial blue, shockingly colourful. They look at Minho and Minho feels as if he’s been x-rayed, as if he’s naked, as if this man can see through him to the individual bones that build his spine.
The man recovers first. He blinks, shaking his head. He makes a clear effort to laugh and turns, focussing back on the women.
Minho keeps staring at him, mouth dry.
“Right?” James is saying, still at his elbow. “I mean look at that the state of that. That’s the absolute last thing we need a photo of you with, you know? Although I could wish you were chatting up Michelle Mega half as well as he is, hah! But then girls like ‘em, don’t they?”
Minho swallows. “Who is he?” he asks, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice. But he feels… he feels, he…
“Key Pick? Key Point? Something like that.” James shrugs. “Keyhole, from what I’ve heard, if you know what I mean. But whatever, each to their own, we just have to be clear that you are not one of their own, you get me?”
Minho darts his gaze away from – Key? Ki-something, perhaps? – “I get you, James.”
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8pm
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Minho looks up urgently from his phone, and checks that Key is still where he last saw him. And yes, there he is, moved on from the Page 3 girls (one of whom is Karl’s current girlfriend) and chatting to the owner’s wife, who is dripping in luxury labels as always and looks delighted to have cornered him. He’s making her laugh too, arching his immaculately shaped eyebrows, but Minho thinks he’s bored, something in the tilt of his hip.
He might move on, soon, Minho suspects. Fears, because what if Key leaves the event? What if he just disappears? Minho feels convinced, somehow, in a way he can’t explain, that Key can work a room expertly. That he knows how to get rid of people, that he can leave everyone wishing for more of him and yet feeling lucky to have had just whatever they did.
But maybe that’s just what he’s picking up from everything he can find in this hurried Google search on his phone. There’s so much about Key’s brand, Key Point - he does go by ‘Key’, the official webpage tells him that, although older articles clarify his full name is Kim Kibum – but precious little about him. He’s famous but not notorious, although there are articles linking him to large donations to LGBT youth charities, and the usual food drives. Nothing has much about his personal life. He’s been active and visible on the fashion scene from a young age, developing a label in Korea which has in the past ten years pushed into prominence in Western fashion shows as well. And it’s not just clothes, he has a fragrance line, a series of cosmetics and even homeware. There are beauty shots of him cradling kitchen equipment, the handle of a wooden spoon pressing the perfect pout of his lips.
Reflexively, Minho looks up again, checking: Key is there. Still there, still in the same room with him. And James would want the heat thrilling over Minho’s skin right now to be anxiety, but it’s something else. Something chasing out the spiders until Minho can barely even remember them.
He has no idea why he’s feeling this way, all he knows is he wants Key to look at him again. He wants.
Across the room, Key has managed to dance his way out of the conversation with the owner’s wife, and is talking, perhaps by accident, to Gunther, who looks wary, and Gunther’s fiancée, who like the other women looks delighted. Key takes her hand, ceremoniously, playing courtly, and she almost doubles up with laughter, whilst Gunther stiffens.
Minho puts one of his own hands on the back of the other.
He looks at his phone.
When he looks up, Key has vanished. He turns, desperate, trying to spot him.
“If you want me to leave that much, just get one of your henchmen to kick me out. Or you could leave, that could work. But I promise you, I’m not so dangerous that you need to monitor me that closely.”
It’s Key, standing next to him. Minho reels back. He can feel himself blushing. Guiltily, he tries to stuff his phone into his pocket.
“I’m sorry!” he says, in English by habit and then in Korean. And then he bows. “Key-ssi, I’m sorry.”
Frowning, Key folds his arms. Huffs. “What is your deal?” he asks in Korean, not remotely polite. “We’ve never even met before. Oh, please tell me I didn’t say something about you an interview once or something and you’ve taken offence ever since. I have to be rude about sports, it’s part of my brand, honey.”
He’s speaking quickly, dismissively. But his ears are pink, his eyes bright, and he keeps darting glances across Minho’s face. Can he feel what Minho does?
Minho holds up his hands: “Oh no, it’s not that!”
“OK, so it’s just that the skirt terrifies you? Like every other man here?”
Minho looks at him. At the skirt, the gathered ruffle of it, some combination of silk and net and lace, held together by leather ties and a kind of fabric engineering Minho would never even seek to guess at. It falls beyond Key’s knees most of the way around, but there’s a high thigh-slit, and there are Key’s legs, pale and hairless and nothing at all like Minho’s own.
“I like the skirt,” Minho says, dumbly.
Key raises one eyebrow. “Oh yeah? So maybe that’s the problem then. Huh?”
“I don’t…” Minho closes his eyes again, tries breathe. Tries to organise his thoughts. “Are you totally sure we’ve never met?”
“Mmmhmm,” Key looks him up and down. Minho is suddenly conscious of his official club-issued Gucci suit, tailored to him but not… interesting. He’s sure, again, that Key likes men to dress in interesting ways. “I’d remember.”
“I just…” Minho winces. “Don’t you… Don’t you feel like we have?”
“If this is your idea of flirting it isn’t even original.” Key rolls his eyes. But he swallows. Minho is watching him carefully and he’s sure he catches it. A little moment. “What’s next? No, I didn’t fall from heaven. No, I don’t come here often. In fact, I’m going to make it my business to never come here again, the English idea of canapes was bad enough anyway and the stuff here I wouldn’t feed to a dog.”
It's the way he says it. Minho can’t help laughing, just like all those other adoring people earlier. His heart is pounding but he feels… fond. He can’t… It’s almost dizzy, now, how many emotions he’s having at once. Like a dam burst and the water is still rushing, frenzied, one side to the other.
“So, I’ll ask again: why are you staring at me?” Key’s voice drops just a little, soft and intimate. Dangerous. This whole thing should feel so dangerous, Minho should be scared.
Minho takes a deep breath. He doesn’t have an answer, nothing he can put into words. He lifts his hand, reaching…
“What’s all this then?” James almost yells, barging into the space between them. He doesn’t look at Key at all, focussing a rictus grin in Minho’s direction. “My goodness, Minho, I have someone over here you simply must meet!” He grabs Minho’s arm, iron-tight. “So sorry, I’ll just be stealing him, thank you so much for coming!”
He drags Minho away, and clear across the other side of the room.
“What the fuck, Minho? What were you thinking, talking to him like that?”
Minho twists, looking back through the crowd of people. He can’t see where Key is, now. “He came up to me! Wouldn’t it be worse if I made a scene? Like you just have?”
“You could have run for the bathroom, you could have faked a phone call, come on lad, think for fucking once!” James hisses the words, and gets a handkerchief out of his pocket, a tacky silk one decorated with the club logo. He wipes the sweat from his red face.
“I. Am. Not. Stupid,” Minho tells him.
“Oh no, clearly, you’re making great fucking decisions at the moment, highly intelligent.” James heaves another deep sigh, visibly making an effort. “Look, you’re tired, right? I get it. I knew it was a bad idea for you to come here after the day in court. Why don’t you go home and get your head down, eh? Rest might be best for you.”
“And that would get me out of the main photos of the evening too. Convenient.”
“Fine, Minho, what do you want?”
An hour ago, that question would have choked him.
“I want to talk to Key,” Minho tells him.
James rolls his eyes. “Well tough titty, mate, because his evening here has finished,” he takes his phone out of his pocket, looks at it and nods, satisfied. “Such a shame when a car gets keyed even in our corporate parking area. Hah! ‘Keyed’! I didn’t even think of that. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll have the staff assist him with getting it taken to a garage, checking out the CCTV and so on, although we’ve been meaning to replace that particular camera for months now, it can be so unreliable, turns off quite randomly.” He tilts his head, then puts his phone away once more, and narrows his eyes. “Now go and chill out in the lounge, eh? Have another snooze, I’ll get you some of the salmon things brought in,” he beckons over one of the bodyguards. “Stefan here will keep you company, make sure you don’t get lost. And then maybe later you can be in the precious photos after all.”
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9pm
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“But did they say where they were going?” Minho asks again. Out in the car park it’s still raining, a steady lamentation invisible in the gathering dark. The skies are purple-streaked with sunset through London’s pollution, the eastern sky edging into the solidity of night.
The car park attendant in the yellow high-vis vest gives him an anxious smile. He’s not dressed for the weather – doesn’t the club even pay enough to give these guys some kind of fleece? Minho’s never really thought about it before. He’s huddled up, hugging himself against the cold. Minho only grabbed one of the complimentary club umbrellas as he snuck out, under which the two of them can’t quite fit, didn’t risk trying to get to his coat in the five minutes window he had when Stefan went to the toilet, and he’s cold too although at least he has the suit jacket.
“No, just got in the taxi and left,” the guy repeats, shrugging. He’s got an accent of his own, not one Minho can place. “I told you, the little guy in the skirt was laughing, but you could tell he was pissed off, man. And that was a nice car, for real, if I had a car like that I’d be pissed if someone scratched it up that way too. The guy coming off shift before me, he said, don’t worry, they’ve told the owner, the club’s sorting it all out, you stay out of it. So, I just waited over in the hut, you get me? There was all people in suits talking to them, doing forms and all of that. I only heard what they said when they was walking out past my barrier.”
“Key – the guy in the skirt – and two women?”
“That’s right. Two women, nice looking women, I will say that! They walked past and got into a taxi, with the little guy, didn’t say where to until they were inside it maybe? But hey, it was one of the locals, Star Cars. You could ask them where they took them, and book to follow?”
“You’re right! Oh, my goodness you’re right! Thank you so much!” Minho seizes the man by the shoulders, filled with sudden hope. Then he takes his jacket off. “I’ve got you soaking. Take this.”
“What? Won’t you be cold?”
Minho shakes his head. It’s like a fire in him, even as he googles the taxi firm and calls them. “Yeah? Yeah? Hello, my party got picked up from the Lambeth FC stadium about ten minutes ago and I missed them, could you possibly… yes? Oh, yes, uh huh, yes, yes it was ‘Anvil’ I remember now… yes? Yes, if you could send another car right away that would be perfect”
He’s ruining another pair of shoes, the rain deflected from the umbrella nonetheless accumulating on the ground and running down to puddle at his feet, but his blood is on fire, and he feels entirely warm.
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10pm
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Even with the sleeves of his designer shirt rolled up and the collar open, Minho’s outfit sticks out as he makes his way into the ‘Anvil’ club, Soho. The only other people here in fitted suits are, as far as he can tell, women.
But that doesn’t matter, not compared to the fact that he still can’t see Key. He isn’t sure why he expected to, right away, except that the rising, burning thing inside him feels like it must glow brightly enough to be a beacon, summoning Key like a moth. He shakes his head to clear it, looking around. Rubs the back of his hand over his eyes. Despite the excitement he’d dozed off in the taxi over, woken with a start again from the same dream. It had been more detailed this time, he’d been able to smell something in the back of his throat, a salty sweat, something he thought was makeup, although how could he know that? In the dream he could feel the scratch of sequins under the tips of his fingers, the clutch of sweaty clothing. The sour/sweet cold of a sports drink, familiar and not. And a laugh, and a smile, an echo of a voice that in the dream made sense, and when he woke, didn’t.
This club smells of bodies and of liquor, but he finds himself able to note it and move on. The yearning coursing through him isn’t for a drink, not now.
Did Key and his friends even come here, in the end? Did they give the night up as a bad job and just go back to wherever they’re staying? Key is famous but not so famous that Minho has found anything online about where he’s based whilst on this trip to England and Europe, he doesn’t have those kind of fans. Minho has been avoiding social media, but earlier he’d found Key had an Instagram and, ignoring his own two thousand or so unread DMs, followed him. Key’s posts are mostly work-oriented, the occasional meal out or a celebrity meet-up, but a certain amount of the London trip is documented, and Minho gets his phone out to refresh the feed now, in case Key has updated recently with a current location. But the latest post is still him arriving at the Lambeth FC charity event three hours ago, throwing a cute pose, smiling coyly next to the two women who from the tagging Minho has identified as Key’s agent and a K-pop idol.
There’s a song pounding through the speaker system, and on the central floor there’s already some clusters of people dancing, even this early in the evening. Mostly, the sparse patrons are seated in the clusters of booths around the edges of the room; the whole space has been designed to wander through, intimate like a series of caves; Minho can only see a couple of the booths from where he’s standing near the entrance, and not even properly into all of them, Key and his party could easily be tucked away out of sight.
Minho cracks his neck. Sets his shoulders. This is a gay club, that much he’d already guessed, and the location and visible patrons confirm it. This, here, is the last place he should be right now. The last place he would ever have thought he’d want to be. Not three feet away from him, nestled in a booth area, two men are kissing each other, deep and hungry like they don’t even care. One of them has his hands cupping the other’s face, tilting him for the kiss, some balance between hungry and gentle.
Minho swallows.
His phone dings in his hand and when he sees the Instagram notification he taps on it eagerly.
It’s a DM from Sunny.
Minho, honey, I don’t know how to write this. I think I might be a little tipsy, but I’ve been thinking all night, even since seeing you at court. Minho, did I make a terrible mistake? I thought you didn’t care about me, I thought you wouldn’t even notice if I slept with Lenny! But seeing what’s happened to you since then, baby, I can see how much it’s hurt you! I never wanted that. And… I guess I must still love you. I don’t know what I’m saying, but would it be totally crazy to try again? Hahahaha, maybe I’ll try and delete this later, but maybe if you see this it’s just fate, right? Text me, babe x
Minho stares at it. Whilst he’s doing so, the phone starts silently ringing, a call notification from James. There are five missed calls from Greg, and three voicemails already showing on his screen.
He turns the screen off.
Starts walking around the club, searching.
It’s dimly lit in the club, and probably some of the people here couldn’t pick any footballer but Beckham out of a line-up, but he can see it on the faces of some of them as he looks and looks, studying everyone he passes. And at least one flash goes off. There’ll be terrible pictures in this lighting, but depending on the phone may be good enough for the gossip sites to buy at some huge price, and good luck to them. He doesn’t care about that right now, can’t see in any way how it really matters.
The yearning is coalesced in his chest, throbbing. Because he can feel it slipping, ebbing, that sudden, perfect rightness he’d found, when Key was in his sights. That electrifying life he’d been given back, a miracle, a resurrection. He’s searching like a drowning man thrown an oxygen tank reaches for another with increasing desperation as the dial ticks down.
And then, there, round the corner, on another small dancefloor, is Key.
Minho is frozen again, watching, even as the fire inside him flames and rushes like a burner suddenly fed with gas. Key is dancing in a half-serious way, one hand casually raised, a smirk on his face as if to show how droll he finds himself, eyes closed as he loses himself in the music. His hips weave and sway to the rhythm, skirt swishing, and his feet shuffle, this way and that, all of him uncommitted. The two women are dancing with him, giggling and intermittently showing off, and already there are others gathering nearby, attracted, watchful. And from further away, Minho can see, some are just observing and waiting, the same assessing interest in their eyes.
If you’re a gay man, you probably would like someone like Key, Minho supposes. Key is chic and slight and pretty, and in that skirt… There’s a familiar, well-trodden revulsion to it in his mental associations. Standing here in this club, seeing it, smelling it around him, there’s a visceral immediacy to the idea. The idea of men touching. Skin and sweat, and nothing soft, nothing yielding, pressing and hard…
Key’s eyes open, and meet Minho’s, and widen in alarm. Key stops moving, mouth dropping open. Minho grips the railing of the couple of stairs he’s started descending from the booth area down to the floor. And then moves, as fast as he can, because what if Key leaves again? What if..?
But once more, rather than running, Key is marching toward him, pushing past his companions and his crowd of admirers. The floor is getting busier with every passing minute, and by some providence a hen party materialises, shrieking with joy, cutting off from most of the rest of the club the view of the corner by the stairs where Key has got Minho pinned.
“Are you a fucking stalker now?” Key demands in Korean. “Or didn’t you get enough fun with what you did to me at the party?”
“That wasn’t me!” Minho leans forward earnestly, raising his voice above the pounding beat of the music. He studies Key’s face. “You can dance better than that!”
“Excuse me?” Key puts a hand on his chest. “What the fuck?”
“You’re a really good dancer!” Minho tells him. His head is spinning again. It’s been a while since the food, a long while since he’s hydrated. This close, he can smell Key’s cologne, and it’s annoying him, because he can’t smell Key, he ought to be able to… “Better than me.”
“Yeah, OK, why not?” Key closes his eyes for a moment. “And sure, nothing to do with you that two seconds after I caught your attention my car got its fresh paint totally ruined. I expect this kind of thing from some men, but just so you know, I think it particularly sucks from a club that put a fucking pride flag on their stadium every June to try and claim some kind of moral high ground. Hate yourself for being gay if you must, but no need to do that to me.”
“It wasn’t me! And I’m not!” Minho repeats. He tries to take Key’s arm. Immediately, Key shakes him off, showing his teeth. “I just wanted to talk to you,” Minho continues. “And then… yeah, I know, the Assistant Executive did that, it’s awful. And I’m sorry, but it wasn’t me. That was why he did it, because he wanted you to go, because I was talking to you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re…” Minho stops, runs his tongue over his teeth. Looks Key up and down.
Key nods his head slowly. “An absolute flaming queen, honey, you can say it. Or I guess you can’t. Poor baby.”
Minho stares at him. He’s never really imagined a man saying words like those, like that. Proudly. Calmly. Without embarrassment. What Key has just said is supposed to be an attack, something to deny, but he’s owning it like a badge of honour.
And suddenly Minho gets it again, like the dream, but he’s awake, standing here, in this club in London and yet for a moment there’s the sea of lights, and a song, and he’s… he’s dancing, relaxed, liberated and he’s… and… It’s like déjà vu, like the moment between missing a step and realising it. And then it’s gone.
“I don’t think we’ve got anything else to say to each other,” Key announces, and starts to turn.
“Do you dream of blue torches?” Minho shouts at him.
And Key stops. And turns back again to look at him.
“Please,” Minho asks. “Please. Hyung. Talk to me.”
-
11pm
-
“What the fuck even is your deal? Aren’t we the same age?” Key mutters, leaning back against a brick wall to shield himself and his lighter from the wind. The rain has finally stopped, and out here on the street the pavements glisten slick and reflect the neon lights of their Soho surrounds. People are passing to and fro, on their way to the clubs or home from the theatres, or just passing through as Google Maps leads them to some Underground station or other. The air smells like the Japanese grill restaurant further down the street, and now of the smoke of Key’s cigarette. He takes a first, deep drag and then exhales as if with relief, sighing heavily, slumping back against the wall.
They’re just off the main pavement, in a little side-street, a narrow passageway connecting two thoroughfares, fairly clean although pasted over with posters for nearby girlie shows, and someone has tucked a discarded polystyrene takeaway container against a wall, curry sauce slowly drooling away towards the gutter.
“You are technically a few months older than me,” Minho points out.
“Well that you got from the internet,” Key accuses, those chemical-blue eyes flashing, pointing the cigarette. Minho waves the smoke away, frowning.
“I did,” Minho agrees. “But I never heard of you before today – “
“Thanks!”
“- and yet as soon as I saw you, I realised I knew you! And I know you feel the same! Can you explain that?”
Key studies him, eyes narrowed as he takes another drag. He’s wrapped up in a coat that honestly looks like it can’t have the structural integrity to provide much warmth. Minho feels an itch to reach for him – just to put an arm around his shoulders. He can’t, and yet he also can’t shake the feeling that he could. That he ought to be able to.
“I started dreaming about eighteen months ago, I think,” Minho offers. He looks down at the pavement, at that curling escape of orange sauce, and then up again. He’s never told anyone about any of this. “I thought it was about matches, at first, I was stressed about the World Cup qualifiers. And I needed sleep, I needed so much sleep, but I was waking up with… the lights. In my eyes. A sea of them. And I felt… I can’t describe it.”
Darting a glance across, he can see Key staring at him, rapt. Something about his expression makes Minho want to be bold. Real men don’t talk about their feelings; men don’t admit things. But he can, with Key. He knows that, somehow. With Key, now, so many beliefs that have defined his life until this point seem fragile, less to be feared. He had thought he was someone who had to be what others expected, until he didn’t even know what else he might be, otherwise. Under Key’s gaze, he feels sharper, closer to something of himself that feels stronger than judgement.
Minho takes a breath: “Have you ever seen those machines you can get, that punch the cores out of apples? My wife used to have one, it was something to do with a juicing diet, it was supposed to… Anyway, that’s not important. You put the apple on the holder and then the thing comes down, schwep! Like that. And the middle is gone. That’s what I would feel like, when I woke up from those dreams. But it wasn’t…” Minho hesitates, biting his lip. But when he glances up, Key is still looking back at him, cigarette forgotten and burning away to ash between his fingers. “It wasn’t like the dream had taken my core. It was like in the dream I had a core, for the first time in my entire life. And then when I woke up it was gone. And I had been living my whole life without it and I didn’t even know.”
“We’re in a fucking street people piss on, and you’re going to get existential?” Key gripes. But his voice is shaking, slightly. “They do that here, you know? No, of course you know, you’re a footballer.” He raises his hand, which trembles, to his lips, and then frowns at the meagre remnants of his cigarette, flicks it away and goes to his pocket for the packet.
“Is it like that for you?” Minho prompts.
“You’re a footballer,” Key repeats. He says it like an insult. “Who taught you to talk like this?”
“It’s like that for you too,” Minho deduces. “Or you’d deny it.”
Key, second cigarette lit, snaps his fancy lighter shut and sighs. “Look, we’ve established we’ve never met. We’re both from Korea but what does that mean? So are thousands of people in this city. So, we’ve dreamt a similar dream, so what? It’s probably normal at our age, or, or based on some kids show we both watched in the 90s and just don’t remember now. Some fucked up educational series about something, it’s more than likely.” But as he talks, he’s looking at Minho, still looking at Minho, the intensity of his stare undermining his flippant tone. “It’s fucking cold. Do you want to go and eat some of that teriyaki grill we can smell? You look awful. You need to sit down. I haven’t seen you sit down yet, tonight.”
“Soondae guk-bap,” Minho corrects him. He doesn’t know where the words are coming from, only that he’s sure of them, the way he’s sure of his shoe size or the number of his player vest. “It ought to be soondae. For us. That’s what you and I like to eat.”
Key stares at him for another long moment. “Nowhere in London does that well,” he says, softly, his tone wondering. “I’ve tried when I’ve been here before. I always…” he trails off, swallows. “I always crave it. It’s always been my favourite meal. There’s a place I go in Seoul, it’s…” He stops and laughs self-consciously. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. How did you know this? Did you Google that somehow? Did I say it in some Vogue interview?”
“Tell me,” Minho urges him eagerly. Something terribly like hope is rising in his chest, unfamiliar, creaking, painful like blood flowing back to a limb. He gestures back at the club behind them. “Text your friends again, say you’re staying with me a little longer. Come with me to eat the chicken, since it’s here, and tell me about your soondae place.”
Key tilts his head again, and takes another drag on his cigarette. Then he stubs it out against the wall, flicking it to the curb. “Alright. Fine.”
-
12 Midnight
-
“And just like that,” Key murmurs, sitting back in one the cheap plastic restaurant chairs and looking at the fancy watch on his wrist, swiping away some alarm reminder from the screen, “it’s tomorrow.”
A spike of anxiety pushes through Minho’s chest and he frowns: “No, it doesn’t work like that. It’s not tomorrow until you sleep. While you’re awake, it’s still today.”
Key raises an eyebrow. “What if you take a nap?”
“That kind of sleeping doesn’t count!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, are you a sleep scientist now? OK, Minho-ssi, how many minutes of sleep, exactly, are required to convert today into tomorrow? Or is it about REM cycles? Do illuminate me.”
Minho pouts. “You know what I mean!”
Key cackles. “No I don’t! Pabo,” he adds, and smiles slightly, sitting back in his chair. Then he belches, and looks very pleased with himself. Minho can’t keep himself from smiling in response. Smug, Key is in some ways even prettier than ever.
Between them, the remnants of the grill food have yet to be tidied away. Vegetable and duck gyoza, tofu agedashi, yakitori, scallops, seabass, noodles and even dakgangjeong, all now just scrapes of colour and flakes of pastry on the simple white plates. It’s a much cheaper place than Minho’s frequented in recent years, but he’d eaten with a relish and satisfaction he’d forgotten ever feeling. The salt, the sweet, the crunch of it, the tang of the vinegar, the hints of different spices, it was like coming through a terrible head cold and rediscovering flavour. Key had eaten well too, smacking his lips, calling for second servings of several dishes. The wait staff were mostly Eastern European students, no reason for them to be familiar with Korean dining customs, but they seemed unbothered by the request for clean plates each so that they could share.
When they’d sat down, Key had suggested sake, and Minho had felt a roil of embarrassment for the first time since he’d found him again. But before he had said anything, Key had seemed to pick up on it, and easily added but I’ve got an early flight, and the last thing I need is a hangover, let’s stick with tea.
“It’s tomorrow,” Key repeats again now. “My flight is booked at London Heathrow at seven thirty am. I told you how important this meeting is for my business.”
Minho waves that away. He can’t allow himself to think of it, can’t begin to accept it. “Why do you have an alarm set for midnight anyway? Doesn’t that get annoying?”
“It’s eight in the morning back home. That’s what the alarm is for.” Key sighs. “It’s for a medication, I have to take it on regular intervals.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small case which he opens, revealing two unremarkable pills. Lifting the remains of his tea, he chucks them back and swallows. “It’s absolutely tomorrow in Korea.”
“We’re not in Korea,” Minho points out. “And it’s still yesterday in America.”
“Hah! Yesterday!” Key squawks and gives a little clap. “So, you admit it’s tomorrow!”
“That’s not what I said!” Minho leans back in on his chair, and looks hopefully in his own teacup, but there’s nothing left but the leaves in the cold ceramic, and pot is running empty now too.
Key’s gukbap place in Seoul, it has emerged from their past hour of conversation, is somewhere Minho went the last time he was back home. They didn’t cross paths, of course – Minho’s completely sure that if he’d ever seen Key before he would have known about it. But if they were both drawn there, surely that means something?
Because aside from that, they’re wildly different. Different lives, different tastes, different hobbies. Key doesn’t follow any sports at all, claims to only have become aware of Minho when the publicist from Lambeth FC phoned him up regarding a staged meeting, and Minho has never cared about fashion – if his clothes fit and are reasonable quality, that’s all he needs. Key doesn’t work out, Minho doesn’t have a skincare routine, Key cooks and Minho can’t, and… And Key is gay. And Minho isn’t. Minho’s married. Used to be married.
As if following his chain of thought, Key gives him a studying look. “Won’t your wife be wondering where you are?”
Minho gives a short laugh. “You must be the last person on the planet not to know I’m getting divorced.” And then he thinks of that message from Sunny. Is that a chance that maybe he isn’t? Shouldn’t he care more about that? About tomorrow, coming fast, the thing that is supposed to be his reality?
“Ah,” Key looks away and then back again. “That’s funny. Marriage seems right, for you. Husbanding. You seem like the type.”
“Like what?”
“Reliable? I don’t know,” Key shifts, throwing up his hands. “It was just a comment, we don’t need to analyse it.”
“Uh, sirs?” someone interrupts from the side, in English, and Minho turns to see an older waitress hovering next to them. “I apologise, sirs, but we really should have closed thirty minutes ago.”
“Ah, of course, so sorry,” Key replies, with his American accent, and gets up, wincing and stretching as he does so. “And we need to pay.”
“I’ll pay,” Minho offers.
Key looks at him. “Why?”
“I have a stupid amount of money?”
“Money your wife is about to take, then, if she’s got any sense at all. And I don’t think you’d marry somebody stupid. I’ll pay.”
“Do you…” Minho stops. He’s half standing, half sitting and he completes the motion, getting up and watching Key put the nearly-a-coat back on. Minho is just in his shirt sleeves, still, and he suspects after the warmth of the restaurant the outside air will come as a shock. “Do you… have someone? Anyone wondering where you are?”
“No,” Key tells him, voice very calm. He smooths a hand over his hair. “I wasn’t being careful, earlier, telling you about my home life and not mentioning anyone else. It is just me.”
“And the dogs.”
“Dogs? What dogs? I don’t own any dogs.”
Minho blinks at him. He could have sworn…
“I’ll pay,” Key repeats, “and then I really ought to go.” He doesn’t move though. Throughout the meal he’s been teasing, casual, sarcastic, snarky, but he kept looking at Minho and he isn’t moving now. Can he feel it like Minho can, the hook in his chest tethering them, so deep it’s wedged through bone and heart and lung, powerful as a defibrillator?
“Walk with me,” Minho implores. “Do you know London? The river Thames isn’t as impressive as the Han, but the sights are prettier, especially at night. Come, let me show it to you.”
“I don’t…”
Minho takes his hand, gathering it up into his own. It’s the first time he’s touched him, and it feels even better than he’d thought it might. Key’s hands are warm, and shockingly soft to touch, nothing like a footballer’s after days and weeks training outdoors in the English weather. His palm fits against Minho’s like they were each built for that exactly.
For a moment they just hold – their hands, their breath.
“OK,” Key concedes, piercing the tension, and then draws away, giving a half-laugh as he meets Minho’s resistance. “You have to let me pay, though. So that the poor woman can go home.”
When they do get back out onto the street, it’s busier than before, distinct crowds of clubbers now, raucous and joyful, and still the gaudy glare of the passing tourist rickshaws that pump music to attract fares, and some guy setting up with a sandwich board decorated in Bible verses, brandishing a book and yelling incoherently.
“Nothing to Paris, but better than Berlin,” Key adjudges, side-stepping neatly around a trickle from where, indeed, a man is urinating against a wall as two of his friends yell encouragement, and then falling back towards Minho as a couple coming in the opposite direction to them look set to occupy most of the pavement. It’s two men, not unusually for these streets and they’re holding hands, easy and unselfconscious. Key turns to watch them as they pass, something across his face that makes a deep ache resound in Minho’s chest.
“That feeling, that you talked about?” Key says, as he turns back. He starts off walking again, and Minho falls into step with him. “That feeling, like you’re missing something, something deep and essential, some part of yourself. I thought I could find that, somehow. I thought maybe there was a guy out there that… But there wasn’t. Not for me.” He sniffs and sets his shoulders back, carrying on speaking before Minho can think what to say. “Maybe you should try and make it work, with your wife. Something like that… it’s not come by easily.”
“It was, for me,” Minho tells him. “It was very easy. She was a friend of one of the other player’s girlfriends and they set us up. We went on a couple of dates. She has a lovely smile, she’s very… her name’s Sunny, and she is. She was so happy, and I thought, I don’t know… I thought how could I not be happy, with someone like her? And I proposed and we got married twice, once on a beach in Hawaii and once in Korea, which was all her idea…” he trails off, thinking. He’s never thought about it this way, never tried to express it. “I didn’t feel… I remember, on my wedding day, I didn’t feel…” He looks across at Key – Key is looking at him, pace slowed. “I didn’t feel like I do now. With you.”
Key hold his gaze for a moment, then huffs, breaks. “This is the wrong direction for the river,” Key hisses, quickly, striding forward and away.
-
1am
-
“That’s St Pauls, the old church,” Minho points out, as they come out into the open of Waterloo Bridge, the city laid out around them like a Christmas light show. There’s a distinct scent to the air here, the petrichor following the rain and a deeper, saltier smell of the river itself, rumbling away beneath them. On the banks, the black-grey mud, the silt of millennia, all running eventually to the sea. “And then, over in the other direction, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. And the Eye.”
Key gets out his phone and snaps a picture. This is how they’ve made it south from Soho to the river, Minho as the tourist guide, Key admiring and mostly silent, the odd quip here and there, a commentary on the fashion choices of some of the others they pass. Now, deeper into the night, most of those they see are out on the town, although there was an insomniac jogger pounding his way around one of the squares, and they ran across a whole group of rough sleepers transporting piles of bedding and cardboard from one place to the next. It’s been a long time since Minho was just out, out and about like any other person. Perhaps that is one reason he’s feeling sharper, brighter, now, but each time he looks at Key it’s like he gets another jolt of it.
It's frustrating, the way Key doesn’t want to be serious. And yet Minho feels a deep conviction that this is normal, for him. That Minho should tread gently, and keep trying. Let him know he’s safe. Coax him.
As if Minho knows any better, but then he does. He knows this, them, somehow, deeper than he’s ever known anything.
And so, he’s spoken simply and casually about the sights they’re passing, blurring the details when he doesn’t know them. They walked through Theatreland, and it was easy to give commentary on ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Mamma Mia!’, which was a movie Sunny watched endlessly. Some of his happiest memories of their marriage are dancing together to the songs in their living room. He can’t sing – men shouldn’t, anyway – but he likes to. There’s a joy in music he’s always felt embarrassed about, but Key chatted easily enough about Meryl Streep, and even burst into song himself, in parts.
“All cities look the same at night,” Key declares now, even as he’s wandering further away along the bridge, taking further photos of the skyline. A red double decker bus rumbles past, and Minho scurries a few steps to catch up with him and ensure he can hear what Key’s saying. “Skyscraper boxes of lights. You could be anywhere. We could be anywhere.” And then he stops, and turns to look at Minho again, another long, studying gaze from under those perfectly shaped brows.
“But we’re both here,” Minho observes. He steps closer.
“That’s not my point!” Key sighs, rolling his eyes. “I was trying to say something profound about globalisation, and…”
“It doesn’t matter where we are, it matters that we’re together,” Minho looks at him, at his beautiful face, his pale skin in the yellow-wash-glow of the street lights, the expertly outlined bud of his lips.
Another bus passes, a brief roar of sound. The rain from earlier lies in puddles on the road surface and there’s a swish, swish, swish sound as the vehicles cross the bridge. One car accelerates across, well above the legal 20mph limit, and anticipating the spray Minho instinctively crowds Key against the parapet, putting his body between him and the water. Which does rise, and fall, striking cold against the back of Minho’s dress shirt.
At his front, Key takes another breath and Minho feels it too, from where their chests press together. He can feel all the warmth of Key, now, thrown into even starker relief by the cold at his back. He notices even the exhalation of the air across his lips as Key lets the breath go.
“It’s really not fucking fair to look at me like that,” Key tells him, his voice husky, almost a whisper, “when you don’t even want to kiss me.”
It feels like the next step in an argument, like just the logical way to answer: Minho does.
Key tastes of Japanese food and tea, and lipstick. He smells like cologne and warm skin and cigarettes. He moulds to Minho’s body in a way that makes Minho’s stomach ache, makes his blood pound, makes something catch and ache in the back of his throat with the sheer intensity of how good it feels. It’s nothing like Minho has ever known, and it’s familiar as breathing. He puts his arms round Key’s back, feeling the shape of his ribs and then the swell of his hips, and his hands know what they will feel before they feel it, and he’s never touched anyone like this, never known anything like this in his life.
And Key’s hand in reply, on the back of Minho’s neck, scratching into the short hairs around the bottom of his skull, like he knows too, and…
“I shouldn’t do this,” Key hisses, as they draw apart. “I shouldn’t do this, we can’t do this. I have to catch my flight, I have to go. I just met you, tonight, I shouldn’t…” his breath hitches, he swallows, “…trust you.” His hands, reaching out, are playing with the collar of Minho’s shirt. His fingernails are beautifully manicured, there’s a tiny gem on the centre of each pinky.
“Trust me,” Minho prompts him. “You can trust me, I promise.”
But a shadow passes over Key’s face at that, some kind of shiver, an echo, something Minho can’t reach. Something not familiar at all. And Key draws back, frowning. Key shakes his head.
“That isn’t true,” Key says shakily. “That’s never true. I’m not making that mistake again.” He takes another deep breath, looks at the sky, then rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes like a child. “I have to go. You have to go, you have to leave me alone! This isn’t real, whatever this is” he gestures between them. “Whatever weird déjà vu thing this is, it’s nothing! Go, please. Before you do something you regret, before I do! Before you hate me, before the best stupid night of my stupid life is ruined the way delusions always are.”
“But I…” Minho begins, and takes a step closer again, one last gasp of his fire flaring like a burner knocked to full, terror transmuted to anger: “Will you just…”
“I said no!” Key yells, throwing up his arms almost as if to… protect himself?
It’s horrible. It’s like that moment in a plane when your ears pop, the release of pressure, the sudden return of sound. Abruptly, Minho is cold and damp, and so tired, on a concrete bridge on a chill night surrounded by traffic fumes and electricity burning light into the night for no purpose. He stops at once, and staggers back as if he’s been hit. But Key still isn’t looking at him.
Minho turns. He forces himself to turn. Not all the way away and around, not to put his back to Key, he can’t quite make himself do that, but he turns until there’s nothing in front of him but the river. The great dark swell of it, that all-consuming liquid, silent and black, filling his vision. A giant drain, leading down to a giant gutter. He can see it flowing under him, under this bridge, ready to carry everything away, eventually. He shivers.
His feet will take him to the nearest Tube station. He can get himself home, easy as a robot. He can sit in his four walls and… then what? Tonight he started feeling things again, and the pain rising in him now looks set to breach and flood, and he is going to be helpless in its path.
“Wait,” someone calls, behind him.
“Wait!” Key calls again, and then there’s footsteps, closer, rapid, and Minho turns just in time for Key to fling himself into him, grasping him tightly.
“Hyung!” Minho gasps against him, burying his face in his neck.
“You dumb, dumb, dumb fuck,” Key is muttering. He’s shaking. “You were going to do what I asked you to.”
“Is that… bad?”
Key reaches up slowly, from within the cradle of his arms, and touches Minho’s mouth. “Before you put this on me again, you should know. You should… It’s the reason I don’t trust men. Trust anyone. Because there was a man, once, who told me I could trust him. He made me serious promises. Really important ones. And I did trust him, But I shouldn’t have.”
Minho growls, he can’t help it. He runs his hands up and through Key’s hair, cradling his head.
“He didn’t give me any of the things he said he would,” Key says slowly. His voice is thin, as though it’s escaping through the narrowest of cracks in a stone edifice. He takes another breath, shudders on it. “But, from him, forever, I have HIV. Undetectable viral load, since I take my medication so diligently, which means I can’t transmit it, but… But you should know.”
Minho kisses him. Once, twice, three times, and somewhere in the third Key seems to realise he means it and kisses back, opening, pushing his tongue into Minho’s mouth until Minho’s hard and panting and desperate, here beside a major arterial road, a few passing cars honking approvingly, because this London after all.
“I don’t care,” Minho tells him, when they break. “I don’t care, except that if you tell me his name, I will find him and I will hurt him however you like.”
Key widens his eyes, tightens his grip on Minho’s arms, shudders. There’s a wondering kind of delight across his face, and for a moment something dark and wrathful and pleased that sends another bolt of electricity through Minho’s body. And then Key blinks, and the lines of him soften a little. “Hey, straight boy,” Key says, “I think I’m more interested in what you want to do to me.”
“Marry you, if you want,” Minho offers back. And then as Key’s mouth opens again in shock; “It’s legal here. I’ll do it tomorrow. Pick your ring.”
“Baby,” Key murmurs, and kisses him, gentle, quick. “It’s already tomorrow.” And then, softening, lifting his hand before Minho can protest; “But if yesterday was the wedding, doesn’t that make tonight the wedding night?”
-
2am
-
Key’s hotel is in South Kensington, one room in a huge old-fashioned building with chandeliers in the reception and a twenty-four hour concierge who is impressively unmoved by their arrival, only a murmured ‘Good evening, Sir,” across the lobby.
“I couldn’t afford a suite, it’ll be nothing like you’re used to,” Key warns, as they ascend in the lift, and Minho kisses him once more, because he can. Because they do that now, have been doing that, intermittently, as two more double decker night buses conveyed them slowly here, incognito amidst the small hours riders. One or two people looked, people do look at each other, on public transport, but there was no shock of recognition and why would there be? A Premier League footballer on the 188 bus at one-thirty in the morning, making out with a man, both eating from one Five Guys chip packet?
“I’m suffering terribly,” Minho assures him, and Key laughs and smacks him, and then kisses him again. He grabs Minho so easily, so possessively, it’s intoxicating. Minho feels the press of his lips, and then of his body, and his own body reacting. He ought to be more nervous, about this. This is a man, he’s touching a man, he’s going to… have sex with a man.
But this is Key. Everything, anything with Key, has been righter than anything he’s known.
And he can, he’s sure he can, if he tries – anything will be possible if he tries! He thinks he used to believe that, once, he must have lost it somewhere along the way but with Key it feels true; that he can overcome anything. This will another piece of Key for him to know and to have, another piece of himself to share with Key. And that is all that matters.
And as they get through the hotel room door – “Horrendously small, I’m oppressed,” Minho comments, and gets kissed quiet again between shedding clothes – he finds that touching Key is just as instinctual as that first draw to him. He settles his hands on Key’s slim hips for the first time and it feels as easy as a hundredth time, a thousandth. He runs his hand up the pale, smooth skin of Key’s thigh, into that slit in the skirt which he’s been conscious of all night. The contours of Key are known, the swell and the curve, the texture of his skin, the concavity of his back, the secret valley of his spine, and down. Minho knows, before it happens, the moment in the journey of fingers where Key will gasp and cling, and arch towards him.
More terrifying are the reactions of his own body. The way Key touches him. Things it took other partners weeks to learn, things others have never discovered, things he didn’t even know about himself. Key sucks at the thin skin at the base of Minho’s throat, the tender, vulnerable place over his sternum, and Minho has to throw out his arms to clutch at something like he’s a child falling.
They kiss and collide, against one surface and then another, until they’re both on the bed. Minho’s never been so hungry for a lover’s body before, never wanted with such a mixture of focus and dispersion – he can think of nothing but Key, but any part of Key is pleasing, any touch from Key is delightful.
“Getting a bit ambitious aren’t we, champ?” Key teases, as in a moment where they are arranged with Key on his back, laid out, Minho above, and Minho is nosing a path down the skin under Key’s navel, tugging at the elastic of his boxers. And then Key gasps, breath hitching, as Minho puts his mouth on him through the fabric and sucks gently.
“You love how I do this,” Minho contests, unthinking, and Key doesn’t argue further. Minho hooks the boxers and tugs them completely off, pushing his nose into the musky heat of Key’s pubic hair, mouth already watering. He knows the shape and taste that’s coming, knows it, wants it. He can feel the pre-echo of the ridge of the head on his tongue.
Key’s hands in his hair stall him, pause him for a second: “I do have condoms, somewhere in my case.”
“You said it’s fine, right?” pulling back, Minho takes a chance to look at him, at Key all pink and panting under him, twisted in rumpled sheets. It’s perfection. “I trust you.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Key murmurs, so, so softly, and pulls him close, hands clutching at his back, and then nails digging in, a shiver passing through him. Minho feels it too, the need to cleave close, to remove any possibility of separation.
“Let me,” Minho asks him, then lifts one of Key’s legs over his shoulder, pausing to kiss the inside of his thigh, all the way up and in, Key squirming under him, Key’s dick hard and leaking on his stomach, the tiny tight pucker of his ass beneath. “I missed you so much,” Minho tells him, heart pounding, starving, aching, and licks his lips.
-
4am
-
“Do you really have to pack?” Minho asks, lying on his stomach on the bed, watching Key move to and fro between the wardrobe and the huge designer suitcases.
“It’s tomorrow, baby,” Key answers absently. He’s still completely naked, and although he gave them both a wipe-down with one of the towels from the ensuite, there are the lingering stains of one or other of their cum still on his stomach, and Minho watches the marks move as Key bends and reaches, and feels his dick twitch again under him. “And I have got to make this meeting, I know it doesn’t feel romantic of me, but,” he takes a sharp breath, looks up properly at Minho, “if this is going to have any chance of working at least one of us is going to need a stable income, and darling it’s not going to be you. Not unless…” he pauses, frowning, “… I suppose if you kept it secret, then…”
“I couldn’t,” Minho says at once. “Even if I wanted to, even if I would try and do that to you, I couldn’t pretend I’m not in love with you.”
Key gives him that smile, the one that means he’s touched and not about to admit it. Minho is already addicted to conquering that smile: “You met me like three hours ago!” Key protests.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, more like ten, perhaps, but…”
“I didn’t meet you today. You know this wasn’t the first time, today.”
“It’s tomorrow, baby,” Key repeats. “That was yesterday.”
“This isn’t our first meeting!” Minho insists, kneeling up on the bed. “Or it isn’t supposed to be! Wasn’t supposed to be, or…” he collapses down again, huffing in frustration, feeling the mattress bounce beneath him. “It’s wrong, isn’t it? It’s wrong, somehow, this, all of this? It’s not supposed to be this way.”
Key gives him a small smile. He’s taken out the blue contacts, now, and his brown eyes are even softer, when he lets them be. “You think you’re the first gay guy to feel like you woke up in the wrong world? Like, how could what you feel be real, when it seems like almost everyone doesn’t believe in it?” And then he swallows, carefully puts down the shirt he’s been zipping into its carrying cover, and comes to sit down on the bed by Minho’s side. “But I know what you mean.” He pauses, swallows. Takes Minho’s hand into his own, intertwines their fingers. Clasps tight and then looser, and then tight again, swinging their grip. “Do you… when you dream. Do you dream about the others?”
Minho blinks at him. “Others?”
“The ones who are supposed to be with us, wherever that place is. Do you see them?”
“Not well,” Minho frowns. He thinks about the sea of lights, the sound. And shapes, perhaps? Around him? Something… he can almost hear something, an echo of a voice, he can’t quite… And then, at the edges, that tune, the one he can’t summon unless he forgets to think about it. “No,” he hisses, frustrated, opening his eyes again. “But you do?”
“Not well,” Key echoes. “But I know they’re there. Maybe one day…” He takes a quick breath, sets his shoulders. Minho leans over and drops a kiss to the back of his scapula. Then moves to the centre, to the points of his spine. Gently he rests his hands on Key’s arms.
“I have to pack,” Key protests.
“Not quite yet, not yet,” Minho murmurs, angling himself to hunt for Key’s mouth, and then Key is bearing him down again, but rather than a kiss he just holds him, this lightweight fashion icon pinning him to the bed. It’s the power of his gaze more than his arms. When Key is looking at him, Minho can’t think of anything else.
“Look at your phone,” Key prompts him, not ungently. “If we’re going to do this, we have to do it, you can’t… I’m not your refuge, from your life.”
Minho looks over at his trousers, discarded on the floor. The shape of his phone in the back pocket. His stomach sinks in dread.
“Overcome it,” Key tells him. He leans down and does peck Minho’s lips. Quick, fast. “Overcome this, and then be with me. I know you can.”
-
5am
-
The airport is horribly bleak, as airports are. An inhuman space with no country and no culture, just glass and metal and things that are forbidden. An immersive experience in depersonalisation.
Minho holds onto Key’s hand up until the last possible moment, until the security barrier. If he only had his passport with him, he’d buy a ticket to anywhere just to pass through too. Or a ticket to go to Florence too, to stay with Key, to never let go.
But Key had made him promise to deal with things here, and he will keep to that. And yet despite that, despite the urgency with which they’d made their way across London once more to get here on time, Key’s grip on him here at the moment when they must part is still iron tight. And so, they stand together, waiting to separate.
It’s early, not so many people around, but Minho does hear someone gasp in passing, and the click of a camera phone. He doesn’t care. Soon, everyone will know.
“The rest of my people are already on the other side of the barrier” Key says, which they both know anyway, because Key had been texting them from the train. He’s still holding Minho’s hands, tight between them. His thumbs stroke up and down Minho’s skin, slow and steady as though there’s no need to run. “I don’t want to leave you. But I’ll be back in London again in three days. And I’ll call, when I’m there. And you don’t… if you don’t…” he takes another, shuddering breath. “You don’t have to answer me. Now that it’s tomorrow for sure.”
“Forever,” Minho tells him. He’s lowered his voice; he can hear a growing rumble around them, the steady gathering of interested people. There’s nothing much to do at an airport, and in this sterile, scientific light he and Key are studied, his name passing between the crowd and then the questioning, ‘who?’ ‘who?’ ‘who is that other man?’
This is going to be a challenge for them both, Minho is swiftly realising that. They are so new, so tender. They have grown fast as pea shoots after sun and rain, following paths that are instinctual, but they need to know each other, to find something of their own, and how can that be managed in the days and weeks and months to come?
“I will answer, any time you call,” Minho tells him. He tightens his grip again, brings Key’s knuckles to his lips and kisses them – the cameras go off again. “We can do this. We can. I promise we can.”
Silently, Key is crying. And Minho doesn’t know him, this man in front of him, enough yet to know what that means. Only that Key nods, and then releases him – they had to part, they always had to, Minho reminds himself – and starts to walk away towards the barriers, turning at the last moment to stare back, his gaze wide, yearning, as if across more than distance.
-
6am
-
6am
-
Comme Des is woken by Human’s Mate, which often happens. Human’s Mate, like Human, will sometimes get up and go out at any hour, like a cat. Usually, though, Human’s Mate sleeps in the bedroom past the Forbidden Gate, not outside on the couch with Comme Des and his brother. But tonight the gate was Forbidden for Human’s Mate too. Comme Des had considered at first that this was quite right, and that people also had to know their place under Human’s authority. But Human’s Mate has found a new place occupying several of Comme Des’ preferred couch snoozing spots at once, which is unreasonable.
And now yelling, waking up and making a loud noise, like he was scared in his sleep. Comme Des has done that, everyone has – you think you’ll catch a squirrel and then it turns into a cat, or a toe-nailing clipping person. But the dignified thing to do is pretend it never happened. Not sit up, still making noise, waking peace-loving poodles in the vicinity from their own (very pleasant) dreams of the night the leftover beef was placed on the floor by a visitor and Human didn’t notice.
Almost at the same time, the bedroom light goes on, and Human appears, and walks into the Forbidden Gate and yells more things.
Human’s Mate stands up, walking poorly the way people do when they’ve been asleep. He keeps saying the name he calls Human, and Human keeps saying his name in return.
…can’t remember, it was some kind of nightmare, but I didn’t… Kibum-ah, I didn’t have you, I…
…felt like I couldn’t reach you, Minho-yah, what the fuck did you even put in that jjigae, to give me a nightmare like that? I was… it’s slipping now, but I was, I was empty, I didn’t…
…I didn’t have you, it was awful... Bum-ah, it was the most awful…
…I’m so sorry, for what I said earlier, that was stupid. I was being stupid, but you know that, right? You know I would never wish I hadn’t met you? You know I was just drunk and dumb and annoyed and…
…I’m sorry, I'm the one who should be sorry, I should never have…
They get so close to each other that they hug, and the words get muffled, and then they start pushing their mouths together in the way they like to, the way Comme Des has noticed people do, which is just unsanitary really. Anyway, none of what they are saying seems to be about food, or going anywhere, so Comme Des settles his head back on his paws.
Then Human opens the Forbidden Gate, and Human Mate gets to go through, which has Garcons standing up and dashing over in foolish hope because he’s young and silly. Comme Des, who is older, knows that they will not be let through until morning, if then, because Human and Human Mate show every sign of wanting to do Special Mutual Grooming, which always means the gate is closed.
It's annoying to have been woken up, but Comme Des can still almost taste the beef, nearly as if it was real. And if he falls asleep again soon, perhaps it will be. He closes his eyes and listens to the in the peaceful night, the gentle thrum of the ring road outside and the song only dogs can hear of the dance of the quiet moon over Seoul.