The Art of Climbing the Corporate Ladder Part II (San x Reader)
Summary: With the newfound information about who San really is, your relationship comes to a screeching halt. Situations at the office grow more and more awkward, and each interaction is laced with uncomfortable bitterness. It breaks San's heart, and he knows he has to win you back. But can he?
Word Count: 14.48k (again somehow??)
Genre/Warnings: smut (mdni!!!) slowest of slowburns, strangers to friends to lovers, touch-starved!reader x attentive!san, but more importantly: heavy dose of angst, some fluff, soft sex, protected sex (we put condoms on in this household), multiple orgasms, aftercare, San is so caring and gentle (one chance choi san please), reader experiences an anxiety attack, mentions of alcohol, mentions of death, reader overwork herself, poor attempts at comedy lol, sprinkles of Wooyoung being a menace, Yunho being cute, and last but not least barista!yeosang
Author's Note: Please ignore my inability to write a comprehensive summary lmao. I had several assignments due today and decided it was the best time to edit this entire part AGAIN in one go. So here she is!!! (I did get my assignments done dw lol) The support I've gotten for part one is so overwhelmingly amazing 😭 Thank you once again to everyone who's supported this fic by liking, commenting, and reblogging <3 Please let me know what you think of part two! I'm really proud of the amount of work I've put into taccl, and would love to hear your thoughts!!!
🎧 playlist 🎧: dean: die 4 you 🐈⬛ tabber: being 🐈⬛ yerin baek: interlude 🐈⬛ bibi: hongdae r&b 🐈⬛ OoOo: fuxxin' love 🐈⬛ so!yoon!: love (a secret visitor) 🐈⬛ sogumm & keumbee: salt rain
This is a work of fiction, and it is not meant to be a realistic representation of any real person mentioned in any way, shape, or form.
Lushpin’s excited expression at the news replays in your mind. So does the chairman’s giddy one, Wooyoung’s shocked one, and Ms. Daisy’s disappointed one. But the one that wouldn’t leave was San’s ashamed one. As if he knew. As if he had known all this time.
Whatever the chairman may have said after in between the confused applause that came from the crowd, you were struggling to recall now days later, because you had done what you do best. Evade.
You evaded when your ex left, your thoughts and feelings reserved inside the thinnest glass bottle kept safe in the most fragile glass cupboard that was your heart. It was stupid of you to think that San would be any different.
When a faint ringing had begun in your ears, you had blinked away the surprise quickly and escaped the suffocating floor with your head kept low. Outside, the early spring weather was chilly, but as the cold air filled your lungs, you were able to keep your tears at bay until you reached your somehow colder apartment.
Then, the dam broke.
In the empty silence of your apartment, tears flowed down your face without a sound. More fell and some more after that. Then, when the torrent of anger surged, you start sobbing, loudly and unforgivingly. Despite the ache in your shoulders, you stooped down to remove the dark red shoes and toss them as far away from you as you could, ridding yourself of the fresh memories they carried.
The remainder of your night is spent collapsed and crumpled in your bed as a ceaseless supply of tears stain your pillows. You cry for the three years you spent with your ex. You cry for the past year you worked yourself to the bone. You cry for the dedication you put into your company. You cry for the fact that San was merely a boy, just an undeniable truth you’d come to ignore over the past few weeks. You cry and cry and cry. The cascading convergence of sorrow and pain lulls you to a cathartic sleep.
The next day, it doesn’t surprise you when you wake up with a high fever, throbbing headache, and sore throat. You swiftly call out of work and spend the day in bed. You do the same for the day after and the day after that. Days blurred into each other as you continued your self-imposed exile, wandering aimlessly through your gutted apartment in search of something, anything, to get rid of. When you’re able to come up with nothing, you slump down onto your cold couch.
In the middle of the week, you decide to take the rest of the week for yourself. But it wasn’t for yourself, it was for your rampant thoughts. Without the distraction of tasks to complete and deadlines to meet, you realize you weren’t a person you’d come to like. You had become a stranger to yourself, and in the pursuit of working for a company that you were replaceable to, you had dropped everything else. Everything that made you human. New recipes were left unexplored, the thrill of discovering new places was gone, and you weren’t even sure if you could remember the last time you’d indulged in a hobby.
This epiphany brings tears to your red-rimmed eyes once again on Sunday night. It wasn’t merely about losing the person you’d thought about marrying or working endlessly, it was about losing touch with the essence of who you were. In your sickened state, the clarity hit you forcefully— this couldn’t continue. You couldn’t neglect and abandon yourself like this.
You remember San’s solemnly whispered words. There are things outside of work.
*****
You’re here too early. Way too early, even for you. Standing in front of your building after a week makes you suddenly feel queasy, just as you did on the night of Lushpin’s retirement party. The swirling winds and slight downpour of the dawn don’t help your worsening mood. Taking a deep breath, you turn around.
The golden light from the cafe across the street pulls you in. Filtered. You’re surprised it’s open, and even more surprised when there’s a good amount of people inside.
Your wet shoes roughly scrape against the thick cloth mats at the entrance. The cool air of the downpour greets the warmth of the building as the door opens and closes. The aroma of sugary coffee coats your throat as you inhale deeply and observe the café.
Behind the register, a several meters long chalkboard is colored with a wide variety of teas, coffees and sandwiches, some accompanied with sketches. The clinking of utensils and constant hissing and release of espresso machines suggests a busy day for the young barista behind the counter. Yellow lantern lights string in diagonal rows across the high ceilings of the café. Green foliage loops around the lights and hangs limply above tables. The rows of brown cushioned chairs and booths occupy the early morning risers of the city.
In awe at the interior, you stand still on the mat, eyeing the menu from your place. With your throat still scratchy from the week before, you swallow painfully before going over the options. The fizzing wheeze of espresso machines and pouring of the steaming milk settle softly into your ears, and you breathe out a peaceful sigh. Why haven’t you come here before?
“Hey!” a familiar voice calls out. Next to you, along the windows, you spot Yunho sitting on a wooden bench with a steaming ceramic mug and an open journal. He scoots over to make some room for you. Finally moving off the mat, you step towards him.
“Hi,” you sit next to him on the bench, leaving several inches between the two of you.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Yunho says, following your reserved movements.
“You, too,” you say, setting your bag down on the raised countertop. Outside, the cars splash rainwater onto the sidewalks and splatter against the windows of the café. “Isn’t this place a bit of a drive for you?”
“Yeah,” Yunho shrugs, “but I figure I might as well start finding a spot if I’m going to be spending more time in this part of town.” He sips from his mug, “And this place might just take the cake. Literally,” he moves his journal aside to reveal a small dish with a half-eaten slice of crumbling coffee cake. He takes another sip before taking a large bite and adds, “Besides, you can’t beat the convenience,” he nods over to your office building across the street.
“Yeah,” you sigh. You swallow the discomfort in your throat and turn back to look at the menu. “Any recommendations?”
Yunho turns next to you and quickly eyes the chalked menu. As you clear your throat, a painful cough escapes with it. “You doing okay?”
“Just recovering from a cold, I’m fine,” you let him know.
Yunho doesn’t push and rubs his chin, jokingly, “So you’ll be sticking with tea then?”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” you chuckle with a smile.
Soon after, you’re sitting with hot peppermint ginseng tea next to Yunho watching the awakening city. The rain lets up a little, but the number of people heading to work only increases. Through the window, you watch suited men and women sip at their to-go drinks and schedule the rest of their day over the phone.
Your thoughts loom like the clouds overhead, and before you’re able to send yourself down the depressing path you’d somehow escaped from just a few days ago, Yunho speaks up.
“I was hoping to run into you last week here,” he closes his journal and places the plate with the cake on top of it.
“Yeah… I took some time off,” you blow on your tea. It wasn’t entirely untrue and Yunho doesn’t question it, so you taste the hot tea. The honeyed liquid slides smoothly down your throat and provides some much needed relief.
“Must’ve been one hell of a cold.”
You scoff lightly, “You have no idea.” You eye his delicious-looking coffee cake, suddenly hungry, but clear your throat again. “How much time will you be spending with us?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure, but you’ll definitely be seeing my face a couple times a week. It’s not tentative for the time being, but I’ll be handling the collaborative aspects of the project while Stevey handles the work back at TechTots.”
“Stevey? What happened to Danny?”
Yunho is much easier to talk to without the overshadowing presence of Danny, and you find yourself admitting that to him along with your anxiousness with his old co-manager.
“Danny? Danny the dick? Yeah, no wonder you were stressed,” Yunho laughs, gulping down the rest of his drink. “I think you’ll be happy to know that Danny's been fired. It’d been a long time coming, anyways. For someone who didn’t like kids, it sure was a strange place to work.”
You breathe out a light laugh. “Is that a requirement for working at TechTots? You have to like kids?”
Yunho reciprocates your laughter and says, “Well, I guess not totally if Danny got a job there, but I’d say it should at least be on the list of reasons you want to apply there.”
A speeding car splashes water loudly against the window of the café, and the boom of the barista’s voice calling out an order rings throughout the space.
“I actually did,” you confess after some moments. Out of your periphery, you catch Yunho's lips curling into a surprised smile. You had given this piece of information out to more people than you had ever expected to, but you take his surprise lightly and continue. “It was a while ago, but I had gotten in and everything.”
Yunho shifts to face you, finishing off the last bits of his coffee cake. “So how’d you end up here? I mean, I get why you did, we didn’t have half the man-power we do now a couple of years ago, but still,” he questions.
“Just the circumstances,” you don’t bother clarifying, sipping on the minty tea.
“Are they different now?”
You look at him confused.
“The circumstances, are they different now?”
“Of course,” you laugh out. “I mean, I had just graduated university then and didn’t know what I was doing, so yes, the circumstances are definitely different now,” you tell him with a smile.
“So, what’s stopping you from applying again?” he nonchalantly asks.
Your smile falters, and another car splashes the rainwater against the window. The remnants of the headache from the week before make themselves known.
“I’m just saying, I hung on to some of the alternative designs you dropped off, and I think you’d fit in with us well,” Yunho shrugs.
You just hum in response and sip your tea, ignoring the throbbing in your head. There are things outside of work.
*****
Upon your entrance on the 22nd floor, you weren’t sure what to expect, shrouded in a veil of uncertainty. Yunho had ridden the elevator up with you, but gotten off earlier on the 18th floor. Alone, you tried to push down the nagging queasiness that had returned.
You were still early, but there were a scattered number of employees already at their desks, the floor humming with activity. Taking a deep breath and trying to summon the courage buried deep within, you pushed open the door. A couple of greetings and welcome backs were shot your way, and you responded with your usual polite nods. Your spotless desk looked as if you’d never left. It was clear of everything except for the disrupting cat bank toy that sat tucked under your computer.
You sit down heavily. Just last week, you had been preparing to say good-bye to this desk. Your eyes flicker over to what used to be Lushpin’s office. Now, through the lowered blinds, you could make out a neatly aligned row of figurines.
You look back at your desk. The cat bank toy seemed to mock you, and in a bitterly spontaneous decision, you decide to shove it in your top drawer before anyone else can look at it ever again, mentally reminding yourself to return it sooner rather than later.
With a swallow, you power on your computer and start making your way through updates and emails, and the work comes easily, almost as if you’d never left. Time passes as it does, and you fall back into the comfort of your repetitive tasks.
The minute the clock above the water dispenser displayed 9:00 am, the door to the floor swung open and in came San.
It was as if he’d gone through a metamorphosis in the week’s span of your absence. He looked bigger, stronger, sharper. The glasses on his face accentuated his cutting features. He had suddenly grown into the role and was no longer boyish. The dark gray suit he was wearing was well-made and tailored, no part too long, no part too short, and no lone threads, and it draped on his body like a second-skin. He had achieved the seasoned look he had been trying to imitate some weeks back and was effortlessly embracing his new role.
On the way to his new office, he caught your eyes and widened his own in surprise. Before a smile could even grace his lips, you turn back to the computer and click through your open tabs in an attempt to look busy.
You can hear the murmured gossip behind you as San closes the door to his office, and when you look up, you see your co-workers’ pitied and sorrowful smiles. You train your eyes to the computer screen and try your hardest to focus on responding to late emails.
You feel a pair of hands slap down on your desk.“Oh my god, are you a sight for sore eyes,” Wooyoung dramatically whines, the data analyst snickering behind him.
You send them both a soft smile, and after sending each other a knowing look, they drag your chair over to their desks.
“Let’s get you caught up,” Wooyoung says, plopping down into his chair across from you. The data analyst opens a journal full of notes, scratches and bulleted points. “We’ve got a lot of material to cover.”
And it was a lot of material, indeed. From the messy journal page, you learn of the uncomfortable tensions that had settled into the office after the promotion announcement. Ms. Daisy’s loud and resonating voice could be heard throughout all the floors of the building when she had begun to rip into the unaffected board of directors days after the party. The lack of balance between the employees. The sensitive environment.
“‘It’s just business’ that’s all they said. Can you believe them?” the data analyst scoffs with a roll of her eyes.
“Yeah, and turns out it was Lushpin’s idea. That motherfucker. If I had known he’d been planning this, I would’ve up and left before this project ever started,” Wooyoung whispers to you angrily.
The throbbing in your head was more prominent, and you were trying to absorb the information that Wooyoung was throwing at you the best you could.
“… So?”
“So what, Wooyoung?” you sigh, leaning back in your chair.
“Will you leave?” he searches for the answer on your overwhelmed and exhausted face. “Because if you leave, we’re both coming with you, no matter where you go.”
With another sigh, you look at the two of their eager faces. “I… I don’t know. Not yet, anyways.”
Wooyoung’s words leave you fatigued and the growing pain in your head and throat feels unbearable, and soon enough, when lunch hour rolls around, your condition only worsens. You stay at your desk, gripping the corners of your table as the rest of the employees file out.
Your feverish state was only emphasizing the sorry looks and comments thrown your way by the exiting co-workers . Your head continues to throb, and the ache in your throat sharpens. You thought you surely must have run out of tears after the crying you did last week, but your body shocks you as your eyes wet once again.
You had to get out of here.
With an abrupt push of your chair, you stand. Your choppy movements were paid no mind to the few employees still on the floor as you tucked in your chair and walked out the floor with heavy breaths and head hung low.
You rushed out the room and made your way briskly to the spare room. As you’re squeezing yourself into your spot, you try to regulate your quick breathing. It felt as if you were breathing through a swirly plastic straw.
Unbeknownst to you, San had watched through the partially open blinds of his office. And followed.
He stumbles into the spare room behind you, squeezing through the piles of cardboard and steel. When you slump down onto the box chair, San stops a few steps back. He watches you take in big gulps of air.
He softens his steps as he moves closer. “Are you okay?”
Your head whips in his direction. San stands only a foot or two away from you and fiddles with his fingers. You didn’t want to see him now, and you most definitely did not want to talk to him. Despite your better judgment, you quickly shoot up and start to leave.
With San still standing in the way, you struggle to move past him in the tight, narrow space.
Laughter at the opening door of the room makes you stop. A man stands in the doorway, deep in conversation with someone else outside your line-of-view.
In the cramped space, San’s chest bumps into your head. You panic and gasp at the contact. “I’m sorry,” San whispers and attempts to move back, but stops when he realizes there’s no space to move back into. He tries to shuffle his feet to the side to give you more room. He was still being so watchful, but at his constant movement, your breathing quickens, and you place a hand on your heart to calm yourself.
“Please stop moving,” you quietly plead.
At your suffocated and troubled voice, San stops and looks down at you. Your hand clutches down over your heart, making your elbow jut out between your body and San’s. Your elbow becomes the only part of you that’s touching him, but you can still feel his soft breath against your cheek. The warm and chocolatey smell from his cologne is dizzying.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats.
“I, I think I’m having—” you take quick, short breaths and clasps your blouse tighter. You try to regulate your breathing the best you can but your chest is hammering and your shaking hands are doing nothing to stop it.
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in this space with San. I don’t want to work here anymore. Why is this happening? I want this to stop. I am not enough. I haven’t been enough. Did I truly think I would ever be enough? I’m a joke. I deserve this.
San couldn’t see the racing thoughts inside of your head, but your panicked expression, tight grip on your blouse, and your uneven breaths worried him. He quickly looked over to the door, but whoever was standing there wasn’t planning on leaving any time soon. Being caught here with you while you’re like this wasn’t going to help either of you. He takes one quick look at your hyperventilating form, and with much hesitation, he tells you, “I’m going to hug you, okay?”
His words don’t register, and you start to feel tears filling in your eyes. You are not enough, you haven’t been enough for me for a while. Your lip trembles as a tear makes its way down your heated cheek. Crying at work? You’re pathetic.
At your tears, San quickly wraps one arm around your shoulders and with the other, he strokes your hair, trying to ground you. “Here, breathe with me, breathe in” he says, his calm voice weaving through your hair. With his other hand wrapped around your shoulder, he taps his pinkie on your upper arm five times breathing in and says, “Now out,” with a deep exhale.
When San’s arms envelop you in a tight hug, the compression helps you take your first big breath, and your lungs fill with the cool air of the office. His consistent tapping fingers and low guiding words slow you down and reorient yourself. You stay in his arms for a long time, and he lets you, tapping his finger continuously. San doesn’t let his tight hold go, but you can feel his form relaxing when you start breathing out into his neck.
You regain control of your senses slowly. As the tears subside, you’re able to see the expanse of San’s back in his dark suit. You see the steel shelves and the towers of cardboard boxes behind him. You smell the chocolate of San’s cologne again and breathe it in deeper. You taste the remnants of the minty tea from earlier, and you realize how dry your throat is. You hear the hearty laughs of whoever was standing in the doorway.
But you feel everything. Your drying eyes, your cold fingertips, your hot ears, San’s wettened collar, San’s warm arms, San’s tapping fingers, San’s stroking hand in your hair, San’s breath on your neck, San’s strong thighs, San’s heartbeat against yours, San.
Just for a few minutes longer, your body begs.
You realize the position you’re in. When he notices your much calmer stature, he lets out a relieved sigh. He doesn’t let go and instead, nuzzles his head further into your neck. His gentle strokes at your head and taps on your arm don’t stop either.
“Ms. Daisy told me you caught a pretty rough cold,” he exhales. You’re momentarily left confused. His tone is calming, but what he’s saying to you isn’t how you envisioned your first conversation after coming back.
“I wish you would’ve told me you were sick. I could’ve brought you some soup or something,” he adds. You know, my mother’s soup recipe—”
You clear your throat for what seems like the thousandth time today, but you didn’t want your voice breaking, not now. “I’d prefer if we’d keep our conversations within the limits of our work.” The room’s entrance shuts, whoever was there, now finally gone, and a definitive silence takes over the tense space.
“Oh…,” he stops himself. His tapping and stroking come to a harsh pause. No no no, please, your body cries out. You back away from his body and train your eyes towards the ground. “Yeah… yeah, no, I can… I understand,” he stutters out, letting go of you.
You keep your eyes trained on the ground as he steps as far as he can away from you in the cramped space. You send him a nod and start your way out of the spare room, leaving San alone.
*****
No one could deny that you had done an excellent job training San. He was running the team as you would’ve, and the fusion of his work ethic and your guiding principles, he’d been sculpted into one hell of a project manager.
But even then, he surely must have known that you weren’t going to take a mere week off and return seamlessly as if nothing had happened.
If anything, you had become more quiet and more reserved than you were before and left the modest yet vibrant demeanor you’d once embodied in the depressing week before. The only people you had frequent conversations with were Yunho, on the days he was here, and Ms. Daisy, who was more than happy to give you the pleasure of her company.
The rest of the floor looked at you with pained sympathy, as if you’d suffered a profound loss. The narrative of pity was something you realized you thoroughly despised. Everyone gave you space as if you needed the time to grieve the loss of your promotion as if they were doing you a respectable favor. Everyone except Wooyoung.
He was angry on your behalf, and he manifested it through crossed arms, rolling eyes, a barrage of snarky and sarcastic comments directed towards San. Despite the hostility, his work was being done, so San took the looks and snide remarks with a grain of salt.
And this was now commonplace for the team. While it may not have been as collaborative, the team’s functionality persisted as everyone’s work was being done. If you were to compare the workload you were handling under Lushpin versus what you were handling under San, you should’ve been elated at the amount of free time you had on your hands. But of course, you were finding other tasks, tasks that weren’t as critical or weren’t to be done until weeks later, to busy yourself with.
After the run-in with San in the spare room on your first day back, you decided you couldn’t consider the space yours anymore. You had told your boss, of all people, where you come to hide from your work and take breathers. So, with your secret spot compromised, you find yourself coming to the cafe more often, trying drinks you’d normally never even consider and eating desserts that would otherwise have you turning away in shock at the sugar content.
You also find yourself confiding in your new-found friend in Yunho.
With him, you felt comfortable doing something you never used to do: complain about your job. And so, during lunch breaks, he became the sounding board for your grievances about work.
“Being at a job you actually like is a benefit,” Yunho offers a new perspective all while stuffing his face full of carrot cake one lunch break weeks later. “And besides, not many people have the luxury of saying they actually like what they do at work. If you’re lucky enough to find a place that aligns with your passions, it’s a game-changer,” he points out.
“Okay, so I don’t like working here,” you whisper to him, almost as if you’d be fired for admitting it. “I haven’t liked it for a while. But I don’t think I ever liked it, I just took the job because of… the convenience,” you respond. “As for my passions…” you let the thought trail off and shake your head in frustration. You watch life continuing outside the café in the moving cars and colorfully dressed people walking in the warming spring afternoon of the city.
It’s silent for some time, but the bustling of the people inside the café doesn’t let up. The crowd for the lunch rush is slowly dwindling down, but you’re hyper-aware of their presence.
Yunho gulps down a large sip drink and sighs, “I think you need a change. And that’s okay, but you’ve got to invest your time in things you like to do. Do you have things you like to do outside of work?” You shrug in response, you hadn’t done much besides work in the past year and half, and even before that, you were content with your uneventful life.
“I guess, yeah…” you grab a spoonful of the warm carrot cake. “What do you do?”
“I try out new coffee places, give them a score, and decide if I want to take my girlfriend there for dates, and…” he nervously sips, “I game, so there’s that, too.” His honesty brings a teasing smile to your face. “But I tag along with my girlfriend for her hobbies, too. We literally went to a leatherworking shop last week.” He pulls out his phone from which an attached leather keychain embossed with his girlfriend’s initials dangles. “All I’m saying is that there are an endless amount of things to do out there.”
At your diffident hum, he adds, “But even if you don’t, there’s always things you can start with.”
“Like what?”
He ponders for a moment. “Well, baking, art, and gardening are the big ones,” he lists off the options on his long fingers. He turns his hand to check the time on his wristwatch, “Oh shit, we should probably start heading back.” He gulps down his drink and waits for you to do the same before returning the trays back to the counter.
Baking, art, gardening? Seemed like an easy enough place to begin.
You and Yunho cross the street to go back to the office, the phrase repeats in your head. Baking, art, gardening.
On the elevator ride back up to your floor, Yunho says, “You know, I’m not really supposed to be telling you this, what with work confidentiality or whatever, but…” he amusingly looks around the empty elevator and beckons you closer, “there’s a spot open at TechTots for a project manager in the media division.” You back up in surprise, and this time you look around the elevator, double-checking the fact that it is actually empty.
“I can put in a good word, but I’m sure if you want it, it’s yours.” You freeze at the proposition. “Everyone’s gushing over your work there already anyways.” Yunho jokes, which prompts you to roll your eyes despite the shock. “But seriously, there’s a place for you there.” The doors open to the 18th floor, and Yunho steps out. Before they close again, he turns to look at you and shrugs, “Just something to think about.”
*****
Left alone during a late night, you toiled away on a research report, the echoes of a particularly lengthy day lingering bitterly on the empty floor. Boring back-to-back meetings, an empty toner cartridge without inventoried replacements, and a malfunctioning elevator had contributed to the heavy weariness that hung over your shoulders tonight.
You wrap up one of the sections and scroll through the nearly completed report, realizing only the conclusion and formatting remained. You lean back into your chair for a moment and stretch your arms in an attempt to alleviate the soreness in your muscles.
As you’re rolling your neck in slow circles, you spot flickering movement from the corner of your eyes. You whip your head to the side and see San entering the floor with several paper bags in hand.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he takes cautious steps towards you when you send a small nod. He nervously stands next to you, watching carefully as you start to type a conclusion onto the seemingly unending report. You didn’t think you could feign being engrossed in the insufferable report any longer, so you finally avert your gaze to him. “Are you… planning on staying long?” he asks.
You’re suddenly pulled weeks back in time when he asked the same question on his second day here. He had the same look on his face now, consideration and worry for you in plain sight.
“Yes,” you lie.
“I had a feeling,” shy dimples graces his cheeks. He places a paper bag on an empty space on your desk. “I got some dinner for you from the sandwich place down the street.” Saliva fills your mouth, and your stomach accompanies the sentiment, whining desperately for the sandwich.
You can feel the uncertainty coming from him before he waves the other bag and asks, “Do you mind if I eat with you?”
“You’re free to do what you want,” you tell him. You inwardly cringe at your own tone, dismissive and bitter. You catch yourself hoping it doesn’t offend San. After all, he is your boss.
Instead the smile on his face widens, and he sits down on the desk across from you, where he’d been just a few weeks ago. He eagerly unfolds his bag and starts eating ravenously at his sandwich. He opens another bag filled with jalapeno kettle-cooked potato chips, and as the smell fills the air of the floor, you think you’re going to start drooling.
No! You swallow the spicy smell and tell yourself to finish this god-forsaken conclusion. Words fly onto the screen as you send glances to the sandwich on your desk while typing away a storm. As you complete the last sentence with a period, you shut the laptop quickly and grab the bag, deciding you’ll format the report first thing tomorrow morning.
The wrapped sandwich is still warm from being toasted. Under San’s watchful gaze, you flip open the top of the sandwich before taking the much awaited first bite to double-check the ingredients for potential unwanted surprises. Everything on the sandwich was in order. Correct ingredients, correct sauces, and only lightly toasted. Just the way you liked it.
At the heavenly first bite, you wished you had a bigger mouth to inhale the sandwich in one go, but as you see San’s proud smile from across your desk, you take a smaller, much more dignified, second bite.
Having started earlier, he’s already finished most of his sandwich and tosses the last bite into his mouth. He leans back into the chair, hand on his full stomach with a satisfied sigh. You eye his movements but instead become distracted by San’s bag of unfinished chips and lick your lips instead.
He follows your line of sight and holds a giggle back, dimples poking into his cheeks anyways. He exaggeratedly breathes out again and says, “You can have the rest of these, I’m stuffed,” he slides the bag of jalapeno kettle-cooked chips to your table.
You look up at him and then the bag of chips, unsurely. San catches your look and lets his laughter out this time, “Really, I’m super full.” For added measure, he rubs his hands in circles around his tummy.
When hunger calls again, you seize the bag of chips without hesitance and dive in. San watches you slowly eat away at the sandwich, and the ticking clock and occasionally bubbling water dispenser create a unique soundtrack for this impromptu dinner.
“You know, Wooyoung told me to go eat a bag of dicks today as he handed his reports in today.”
At the unexpected admission, you gasp out a laugh, and it makes San laugh when you try to disguise it in a cough.
At your genuine laughter, he feels confident enough to share more, “Last week, he told me that I was validating his ‘inherent mistrust of strangers’, and it was making him want to ram his head into the copier.”
You allow yourself to laugh this time. First, soft, but then, when San shares yet another one of Wooyoung’s insults, louder.
“I think I’ve heard him talk about my having a secret family in the break room once, but my favorite one is him telling Yunho that my uncle put me here because I was the item at the ‘end of the season sale’ that the rest of my family couldn’t get rid of.”
The absurdity of the insults sends you into a fit of even louder laughter. “Yeah, he used to say that about Lushpin, too,” you giggle. Maintaining the mood, you decide to add what you had heard through a breathless laughter. “I heard him say you would be way out of your depth even in that pothole down in the parking lot.”
San laughs deeply and freely at the confession, clutching his stomach, dimples gracing your yearning eyes. Both of your laughters decorate the empty 22nd floor on this late cloudless night for minutes on end.
“He really cares about you, you know?” San remarked, catching his breath.
“Yeah,” you affirm, catching your own breath.
“In passing, I heard him say that this family wasn't this dysfunctional until I arrived,” San adds with a sad smile. He looks out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the bright moon shining into the 22nd floor.
No amount of sharply tailored suits would challenge the fragility and vulnerability of the soft pout on his face, you realize as his features pull you in. In that fleeting moment of serenity, a flood of memories rushes over you, reminiscent of his eager smile, hands scribbling down messy notes, and his tight clutch on his beloved purple folder.
A sense of longing lingers in the air, and you’re not quite sure how to place it. The unspoken language of inept politeness and cumbersome courteousness between you, hidden under the facade of professional sophistication, had become unbearable, and you’re left craving for the connection you’d created when San was just your trainee.
You catch his fidgeting fingers and the night of Lushpin’s retirement comes in waves, and you remember how warm and secure his hand felt wrapped around your foot as he fastened your heels.
“Why…” you don’t know how to complete the thought. Why did you lie? Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why did you stand by and watch me drive myself into the ground? The incomplete sentence hangs heavy in the air.
San sighs, and his pout disappears, leaving a mixture of shame and regret over his face. “I think they just wanted to see if I was capable. If I have a successful project under my belt, it gives me a legitimate in at any of the other branches,” he looks down into his lap, embarrassed on his uncle’s behalf.
As the implications of his statement settle in, you incredulously sigh, “At the expense of someone else’s career?”
“I told them no,” San softly pleaded. ‘I told them I didn’t want to do this, but my words don’t have much power against them.”
The strange music of the ticking clock and bubbling water dispenser fill the silence that’s settled between you and San once again. Searching for clarity, you ask, “What’s your plan here? I mean, what’re you going to do when we wrap up the collaboration?”
Looking up from his lap, San’s gaze meets yours. You’re taken aback at the return of his boyishness. You swallow and look away as vulnerability flickers in his eyes, he answers, “I don’t know, but I’m not staying here. That isn’t fair to anyone.”
In the stillness, the weight of the situation becomes palpable. You come to the realization that while navigating the bumpy terrain of your own emotions, you’d forgotten San’s ashamed expression the night of the promotion. The way he’d distanced himself. The way he couldn’t meet your eyes. The way his face twisted in sheer disgust during the announcement.
It couldn’t have been easy for him. To spend time with the team, aware that in a few months, their thoughts of him would quickly turn sour. Knowing they’d be wary of trusting him once his secret would become known.
“I want to start again, if that’s alright with you,” San says, pulling you out of your thoughts. “You and I both know I wouldn’t have been able to handle this had you not helped me. Help me get the team on one page again.” The feeble honesty in his voice tugs at your heart. “Please just help me get to the end of this quarter, and then the position is yours. I promise you.”
In the quiet of the pause, you gather your thoughts.
“Okay,” you run your hands over your thighs. “But, slowly,” you ask of him.
“Slowly,” he confirms for you.
*****
Things take a turn for the better after that night. Residual awkwardness and tensions still linger in the air, but work persists and progresses nonetheless, as it always does.
You had spent the weeks after San’s untimely promotion actively trying to avoid being near him for as long as you could. So when the two of you become weirdly cordial overnight, the team experiences a strange whiplash the day after when you’re preparing for the morning meeting together.
From the corner of your eyes, you see the data analyst and Wooyoung eye each before looking the two of you up and down. They settle into conference room B’s seats slowly, observing the strangely comfortable air in the room.
With the approaching app launch presentation, the intensified pace of work was too busy and hectic that it would be silly and impractical to not utilize the rest of the team to soften the increasingly burdensome days. Your return at an attempt to normalcy seemed to push the rest of the team to leave the sticky situation of the promotion in the past, and San was appreciative of the fact.
Unfortunately, Wooyoung’s attitude is slow to falter, but with a swift knock it off from you, delivered with a stern yet disappointed look, Wooyoung’s snarky comments towards San died down eventually, too.
One afternoon, several days into the strangely harmonious workweek, Yunho pays San a visit armed with the design presentation templates in his office.
“Looks like things are going well,” Yunho turns, looking out of the window to see the floor busy with interactions.
“Yeah,” San says, finding you comparing two sheets of paper next to Wooyoung. You pick one over the other and tack it onto the bulletin board before turning back to your desk and catching San’s eyes. You send him a small smile and turn back around to answer a question being thrown at you. “She’s doing a lot of my work for me… I wouldn’t even trust myself if I were those guys, so I don’t blame them.” He sighs as he looks down at the design templates, “She feels like more of a manager than I am.”
“Treat her like one, then,” Yunho suggests.
“What?” San asks.
“If she’s been doing the work of a manager, then treat her like one,” Yunho shrugs. “That’s how I got my position. I wouldn’t leave Danny alone, and boom! All of a sudden, I’m a co-manager.” He crosses one of his long legs over the other. “He definitely minded it a lot at first, but something tells me you wouldn’t care so much,” Yunho adds.
“I wouldn’t care at all, but that’s like asking for there to be a weird power imbalance. Things have just gotten back to being somewhat comfortable, and I’m wanting to keep it this way until the end of this quarter,” San retorts.
Yunho shrugs again, “Just something to think about.”
And San does. He spends the rest of the day thinking about it.
On the other hand, as hectic as work is, Yunho’s offer keeps bouncing around in your head. You knew the position wouldn’t be open for long, and there was definitely an undoubtedly long list of applicants already. The thought visits you multiple times in a day, and you shake it away harder and harder each time.
The day after, you find a poorly written pun on the corner of your desk. You rip the sticky note off the table and hold it up to your face. On the light purple color of the note, there is darker purple penmanship. “Hedgehogs— why can’t they just share the hedge?”
You snicker at the note and then even more when you make out the scribbles on the bottom of the note to be two angry hedgehogs fighting over a hedge. From the corner of your eyes, you catch the blinds to San’s office shake shut. With a soft smile, you open your drawer and add the note to your pile.
Inside the office, San let out a sigh of relief. He felt devastated when he spotted a familiar tiny plastic box of oranges on his desk a couple of weeks ago, but he had made up his mind to restore your relationship and if it meant leaving multiple puns on your desk everyday, then so be it.
Day after day, your collection of seemingly unending puns and jokes grows in your desk drawer. With each note, you come to be grateful for the fact that San’s putting in the work, both in befriending you and into the project. You’d heard nightmarish stories about the children or nephews and nieces coming into a workspace and throwing everything out of balance and doubling, or tripling in some cases, the workload.
But San does the best he can to avoid becoming that burden. He’s focused when he needs to be and relaxed when the times call for it. Gauging the energy of the team seemed like an impossible task, but he was handling that well, too. In the past couple of days, he started arriving at the office earlier and would review materials with you before he went over them with the rest of the team.
Had it been under any other circumstances, San would’ve made an incredible boss.
“He’s really pushing you for that promotion,” Ms. Daisy tells you one day over lunch. “He’s rejected a lot of potentials his family has been insisting on.”
“Hmm,” you hum, halfheartedly picking away at your lunch as Yunho’s offer crawls its way into your thoughts for the umpteenth time today.
*****
Over the past few weeks, you had been tackling the list Yunho had given you: baking, art, gardening. After some failed attempts at baking a couple weeks back, you figured it simply wasn’t meant to be and moved down the list to take on art and gardening instead.
Tonight, you were taking another crack at a simple loaf of bread after taking some oddly emotional advice from the handsome and shy barista that worked behind the counter at Filtered in the early mornings. He’d told you this time it would be a success for sure, and soon enough, you’d be making his carrot cake, whose recipe he so graciously shared.
You weren’t sure what to expect when the kitchen timer would ring in about two minutes, but it most definitely wasn’t San, in a familiar gray hoodie, to be at your door with Neko in her purple carrier on this Friday evening.
Your taken-aback expression meets San’s equally taken-aback expression, and only when Neko meows is San prompted to explain.
“Last time, you… uh, you agreed to— Actually, you know what, I’m sorry, I should’ve confirmed before just showing up here with Neko,” San turns on his heels.
“No!” Your voice shocks you both, and clearing your throat, you say “I can take care of her this weekend, it’s fine.”
“Oh, thank god,” San sighs out. “I would’ve had to drive all the way across town to drop her off to my friend’s if you’d said no. Thank you,” San walks through your door.
As he removes his shoes, his breath catches in his throat looking around your apartment. There were stringing lights hanging around your windows, and your walls were decorated with pretty art. Two healthy potted plants sat on your windowsill, and on your couch was a spread of different childrens’ books and next to them, a sketchbook.
The timer in your kitchen eventually dings, and you leave San standing in the entrance of what seems like a brand-new apartment.
Slapping the timer off, you open the oven and the smell of warm bread fills the air. He follows you to your kitchen counter, still eyeing the differences. “Your place looks… different,” he says.
“Yeah…” you look around your apartment and place the pan of bread on a cooling rack. “I got some inspiration from the café across the street.” Neko meows from inside her carrier, and you nod at it, “You can let her out.”
Distractedly, San opens the door to Neko’s carrier, and after giving his fingers a small lick, she saunters over to your familiar pile of to-be-recycled boxes and makes herself at home.
San watches you observing the golden loaf of bread and turns once you’re reaching to grab plates. Your once barren fridge was littered with pamphlets of everything. Hung up by an array of colorful magnets, San could make out menus to new and old restaurants, free workshops offered by the city library, a list of books to be read, care instructions for jade plants and peace lillies, and a sheet titled “Yeosang’s Carrot Cake Recipe” in your handwriting.
In awe, San just stands, absorbing.
In the silence, you find yourself back to when San dropped Neko off for the first time. Without having work to fall back on, your conversations were awkward to say the least. But this time, there are thousands of thoughts on the tip of your tongue you want to share with San. Things he’ll certainly find interesting and cool, but you aren’t sure if you’d made it back around to that point in your relationship.
You settle with, “Want some bread?”
San’s pulled out of his daze as he responds, “Yeah, of course. It smells amazing.”
“I hope it tastes just as amazing. If this doesn’t work out, I’m going to have to accept my losses and move on from baking,” you say with a light laugh. San softly smiles back as you start slicing into the loaf. You plate the two slices and give the larger one to San.
He bites into the warm pillowy bread. For being only a simple loaf of bread, the complex flavors surprise San. There’s a light sweetness and saltiness, but it’s not overpowering. When he goes in for another bigger bite, San thinks he can taste hints of spices as well.
“Well, it’s not perfect, but I guess it’s something,” you say, setting your plate down. In a notebook, you jot down memos about adjusting certain ingredients and are startled at San’s expression.
“You’re kidding, right? This is amazing. If I could, I’d live off of this” he stuffs the rest of the slice into his mouth. The scene is endearingly funny, so you turn back to the loaf and cut him another slice. “I hope this means you’re not going to be moving on from baking?” he asks, taking the even thicker slice.
“No, I guess I won’t be,” his compliment brings a rush of warmth to your face, and you turn to face away from him as you cut the rest of the loaf into slices. Taking nearly all of the slices, saving a few for yourself, you parcel them up into a sheet of parchment paper and place it into a brown bag. You slide the bag over to him, and he looks up, surprised. “Thanks for the sweet words, I really appreciate it.”
He looks into your genuine eyes, and suddenly, there’s so much he wants to tell you. He wants to thank you for being so kind to him at work, for trying to so hard to go back to normal, for fixing his figurine, for laughing at his piss-poor puns, for actually keeping them tucked away carefully in your desk drawer, for giving him the bigger slice, for letting him take so much of the loaf with him.
He wants to tell you that he’s really happy for you, too. Happy that you’re feeling better, happy that you’ll take his place at work soon, happy that you’ve found a friend in Yunho, happy that you’re going out of your comfort zone, happy that you’re pursuing hobbies, happy that you’re not sad about not getting them right the first time, happy that you’re happy.
But “Yeah, of course,” is all he can say back, and he thinks it’s pathetic, until you smile back at him with your sweet smile.
San goes over the unchanged instructions for Neko’s care, and you listen to them carefully, just as you did the first time. He leaves you her brown bag filled with her medicine, food, and this time, some toys, and he takes your brown bag filled with bread with him.
After San leaves, you clean your kitchen of the mess of flour, sugar, and butter. You call out to Neko, who comes happily, and with her treats in hand, you try to match her playful mood and sit down next to the boxes she had grown so fond of. Only a couple of minutes later, there are rapid knocks at your door. Stroking at Neko’s head, you stand to look through the peephole.
You slightly crack the door open to San, who’s panting with bated breath. The chilly weather has settled into his reddened cheeks and neck, and your brown bag was tightly clutched in his hand. You open your door wider and ask, “Hey, did you forget some—”
“Can I kiss you?”
Before you can completely get the word yes out, San’s lips are on yours. It feels just as electric as the first time, but this time, his cool hands find purchase on your neck. It’s an eager kiss, one that’s got a lot to say, but it lacks the words to get it across to you. But you didn’t care. The shocking touch feels so welcome on your skin, you grab hold of San’s hoodie strings and tug him back inside your apartment.
You fist the plush material of San’s hoodie at his chest and reciprocate the kiss just as eagerly, before a thought makes you stop, and his pout makes an appearance as you back up.“What about your family?”
His dark eyes roam yours and flick down to your slightly swollen lips. He looks back up to take in your features, still kind, still genuine, and still adorable. “Fuck them,” is all he says before you’re pulling him back by his hoodie slotting his lips between yours again.
San can’t believe he’s here in your warm apartment that smells like bread, that’s decorated so much like you, with you. At the realization, he kisses you deeper, and his hands leave your neck to pull you closer by your waist.
Your hands don’t leave the probably stretched material of his hoodie. Your brain is in too much of a scramble to make sense of this moment that when his hands do find your waist, you can’t do anything but tighten your grip on it. That is until the shrill ringing from his phone disorients you.
You start to pull away again, but San pulls you right back in before you can get very far, this time with desperate fervor. His hands crumple the cat-patterned apron you’d purchased some days ago which you still hadn’t removed. When his thumb grazes the exposed skin of your hip, you gasp, and San wastes no time in slipping his tongue past your lips.
But the persistent ringing doesn’t stop, and you grow unreasonably frustrated at it. And so does San. He pulls back annoyed and picks up the call, one hand still wrapped around your waist. When you blink rapidly to adjust yourself, you realize the two of you had stumbled quite far into your apartment and were only a foot or two away from your couch.
“What? What could you possibly want?” he says into the phone. With a heavy sigh, he runs a hand through his hair, “Yeah… I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah… okay. I’m on my way,” he hangs up and slides the phone into his back pocket. “I’m so sorry,” he looks back at you.
“It’s okay,” you say and loosen your hold on his hoodie. You cringe at the wrinkles you’d left with your grasp, but San doesn’t care in the slightest.
“I really am sorry…” he says again, but this time, you know it’s not only for leaving right now. He lets go of your waist and looks down. “I should’ve just, I, I hope you know I didn’t mean to—”
“San, it’s okay,” you don’t let the distance grow.
“I’ve got to go, but I, I promise I’ll—”
You place a shy, chaste kiss on his lips and smile. His thoughts slow. “I’ll see you at work on Monday,” you say and think you see him melting.
“Okay,” he says with a pout. You look away from his temptingly cute expression and try to straighten out the messy wrinkles you’ve created on his hoodie and send him on his way, a brown bag full of bread and the touch of your skin in his hands.
*****
Things become much more gentle between you and San. His enthusiasm to be near you at all times becomes quiet observance, a sweet kind of noticing that says more than his words ever could. In the everyday buzz of the office, he admires the grace you bring in doing even the most simplest routines.
As the work picks up, your interactions are confined within the area of the 22nd floor. The two of you decide to keep things professional and to not pursue anything until this quarter passes, but that didn’t deter San from decreasing the distance between the two of you.
He cherishes the time spent together during shared tasks. When you walk into the office and find a familiar row of figurines tumbling onto your desk, it prompts a pause before you rush over to delicately restore their order. San had decided the night before to bring his work outside of Lushpin’s old secluded office and set it up on the desk in front of you again, and at the rest of the team’s questioning faces the next morning, he told them it’d encourage “collaborative engagement”.
When you’re at the round conference table, San discreetly saves the spot next to him for you under the guise of your better hand at technology, and in the rare moments when someone else takes the floor, he subtly searches for your pinky under the table. The next day, he intertwines them in a silent dance under the desk, and the day after, he confidently holds your hand between his palms. In some days time, your laced hands find solace on his lap as he traces the lines embedded in your palms.
In the quiet moments of the nights you stay late, San doesn’t forget to bring you dinner, and during the hazy slump of the post-lunch afternoon, you speechlessly leave him a packaged slice of cake from the café across the street on his desk.
With your bettering moods, when the app launch presentation eventually rolls around, the team’s tempers are in significantly better places, too. Wooyoung and San are back on speaking terms, though Wooyoung doesn’t shy away from insulting him every now and then.
Yet again, you’ve found yourself in the backstage area in the auditorium. The filling auditorium elicits your increasing heartbeat to beat even faster. You shut the curtain and focus to get your breathing back in check.
“Hey,” San stands next to you. He’s dressed in a navy blue suit and looks even more put together than usual.
“Hi,” you respond and go flatten the material of your own clothes.
“Are you doing okay?” He peeks behind the curtain to see the filling auditorium. When you nod with lackluster confidence, San only stares. “You’ll do amazing. Everyone will. I know it,” he reassures you, looking down at your hands.
Over the last couple of weeks, he’s wanted nothing more than to kiss you, but he’s kept himself in check, he thinks. Sure, his puns have gotten more romantic and he’s moved to work across from you, but hand-holding is tame and surely okay, considering you’ve started searching for his touch, too. He’s itching to grab your hand. It’s just there, inches from his. He debates the thought, until you speak up.
“I think I’m going to quit.”
You expect shock, widened eyes, and pleading to stay with the company, especially when you’ve sprung this news on him minutes before the app launch presentation, but you’re surprised when it never comes. Instead, San smiles as he looks back at the growing crowd in the auditorium. “Good, you deserve to be in a place that’ll appreciate the hard work that you do and compensate you for it. Properly,” he adds.
Under the backstage lights, the beauty of his features catch you off guard. You want to pull him in close to you and feel his heartbeat against yours. You want to feel his lips on yours again. You want to feel him. Right now.
“Hey, will we be doing roll calls, or are we winging it this time around?” Wooyoung asks from the other end of the backstage area, plucking your attention away from San. You send Wooyoung a short answer and turn back to San.
This time, San bravely intertwines his fingers into yours. You look down to your fingers nestling between his and think the sight is strange when not happening under the confines of the conference table, but you embrace it nonetheless.
When San’s hands would find yours under the conference table, blood would rush to warm your face and you would always look around the table, praying nobody would become suspicious, especially Wooyoung. But this time, ignoring Wooyoung, who only stood some feet away from you, you feel your heartbeat slowing down and a surge of comfort flooding your body.
You look back up to his soft features when he says, “You’ll be okay,” with a gentle squeeze. You squeeze back, knowing the both of you would be.
*****
And you were okay. So was San. And the rest of the team.
With the app launch having gone more successfully than you could’ve imagined, you’ve found yourself in the conference room once again on a weekend as the beginnings of a party are starting on the floor.
You’re removing the tacks and tape holding up your team’s ideas for this project. Now that the app launch presentation had gone well, the project would be moving forward to the user experience design team on the 18th floor. It wouldn’t come back around to you for another quarter or so, until the app was completed and the time would come to market it to the public. It was a bittersweet thought, but you continued taking down the post-its and index cards from the wall.
“Oh my god, what are you doing here? The party’s on the floor, come on,” the data analyst pushes the door to the conference room open. She takes your arm and rushes you out onto the floor as she explains the decreasing state of the good alcohol.
Once on the glittering floor, she leaves you by the stand-up bar and tells you she’ll be back soon, which given the amount of alcohol she’d already had, you seriously doubted it. But in your happy mood, all you do is laugh and nod.
You request a cup of water from the bartender and look out onto the floor. With the successful presence of the disco ball at Lushpin’s retirement, it had made a return, this time bigger and brighter than the last time. Someone dims the lights, the music becomes louder, and you slink towards the end of the bar, closer to the door.
You continue backing up in small steps, until you bump into someone’s chest. From behind you, San says, “Hi.”
You turn around at his voice. He’s dressed in a silken black button up with the top two or three buttons left undone and plain black slacks. In the reflection of his glasses, you catch the shimmering disco ball. “Hi,” you finally say back.
San moves closer to you, arm brushing up against yours. With his back against the bar, he eyes the water in your hands. “Not drinking tonight?”
“Probably not a good idea,” you nod to Wooyoung on the dance floor. He had lifted the SEO specialist over his shoulders and was trying to show off his dance moves to the equally drunk data analyst. The SEO specialist’s head bumped into the disco ball once and then once more when Wooyoung tried to jump.
“Jeez,” San laughs out. He turns to order a glass of water from the bartender, and when he turns back around, you smell the warm chocolate from his cologne and calm.
As you continue watching Wooyoung’s antics, San takes in your relaxed form. He follows the outline of your body adorned in a simple form-fitting dress but stops when he reaches your feet which are sporting the familiarly beautiful dark red heels. He looks back up to your face. Your features are stretched in amused laughter at whatever Wooyoung was doing, and San thinks you look so beautiful.
“Oh my god, he’s going to hurt himself,” you say. Wooyoung had set down the SEO specialist who was rubbing his head, but now, he was trying to fight the disco ball, throwing uncoordinated punches at it. San flicks his eyes to the scene momentarily, but quickly turns back to a giggling you.
Unable to help himself, he leans in to place a soft kiss on your cheek. You freeze and turn to him, clearly surprised, but the smile doesn’t leave your face. San sets the water down and grabs your hands instead.
“Wanna get out of here?”
Once you’re able to blink away the surprise, you hold his hand back, nodding.
In the cool air of the spring night, your intertwined fingers lead San through the awakening city towards your apartment. The advertisements light up the skin and bright artificial hues color your skin gorgeously, and San wants to pull you close to him and kiss you right there, but he’d waited this long, he could wait a few more blocks.
But his resolve runs out when you get into your apartment building’s empty elevator. He checks the corners of the elevator for cameras and when he finds none, he pulls you in by the waist and finally kisses you again. Little did know that your thinning resolve had been crumbling away, too.
When the elevator dings much earlier than it’s supposed to, you push San away and look away from him. A family climbs aboard, too absorbed in themselves to pay the two of you any attention. When you turn back to San, you recognize the remnants of your lipstick smudged against the corner of his lips. The family’s backs are turned to you, so with a shy smile, your thumb meets his lips to wipe the red away from his face.
When he meets your loving gaze, you see his dilated pupils. The elevator dings again when it’s arrived at your floor, so you take San’s hand, squeeze past the family, and run to open your door.
Once you’ve closed the front door behind you, you stand in the dark of your apartment, breathless. The stringing lights circling your windows emit a soft glow, and San steps closer to you. As you’re backed into your front door, you think you can hear your heartbeat, or maybe it’s his heartbeat, you aren’t sure.
San takes one more look at you, before he’s taking off his glasses to slam his lips into yours. He kisses you fervently, and you kiss him back, just as fervently. Your hands are at his neck, while his own press against the door on either side of your head. When you’re struggling to catch your breath, he pulls back to leave tiny kisses against your cheeks, forehead, and temples.
Sending one more kiss to your temple, he kneels down. You can definitely hear your heartbeat against your rib cage when he takes one of your legs by the calf and puts it on his thighs. As he places small pecks along your shin, he unfastens the buckle to your shoe and very quickly, he moves to the other, repeating the same movements.
When he’s done, he looks up from his place, and you look back. Your heart and breath are racing to catch up to what’s going on, but your brain remains as clear as ever. Just as you did some weeks ago, but this time with less care, you tightly fist at San's collar and pull him up into a rushed kiss.
You stumble backwards and bring San with you. He kisses your lips deeply, before annoyingly pulling away again. You chase after him but stop when you eye him switching his phone off. Your heart beats even faster, and an unknowing anxiety builds in your stomach. That guarantees no interruptions, but isn’t that what you wanted?
He throws the phone onto your couch and doesn’t wait to watch it get swallowed by your cushions as he’s going back in towards your swollen lips. Sensing your sudden stiffness, his touch leaves your body once again. “You okay?”
You decide to take the initiative and lean in to leave fluttering kisses against his jaw. “Yeah, just got into my head for a second,” you move up to place small kisses behind his ear and hear him sigh softly.
“We don’t have to do anything,” he proposes.
“I want to,” you reassure him, fingernails scratching at the back of his scalp. He sighs again and relaxes in your touch. He twists his head briskly in search of your lips again. Eyes closed, you lead San through your living room on the way to your bedroom.
Without turning the lights on, you start undoing the buttons and knots holding the material of your dress together with San’s help. It slips off easily, and San throws the dress out the door, letting it land somewhere in your living room.
Turning you around, he falls onto your bed and pats his thighs, looking up at you with eager eyes. From the moonlight that slices into your bedroom, you find the fragility in his sharp features again. Stilling, your palms cup his cheeks while your thumbs stroke the delicate skin under his eyes.
San’s breath hitches at your gentle touch, and he leans into it, wrapping his arms around the back of your thighs pulling you closer. You don’t think you’ll ever get tired of him, and with the thought, you indulge yourself in another kiss.
Your knees dig into the mattress on either side of San’s legs as you climb onto his inviting lap. Immediately, he places a tight grip on your plush thighs, making you gasp. Taking this as his cue, San’s tongue slips into your mouth just like before. His arms slither up the curve of your ass and stop at your mid-back. He tugs you closer and closer, until all of your chest is pressed up against him.
San suddenly stands up, and at the unexpected action, you wrap your arms around his neck and hold on tightly. Hands under your hips, he drops the two of you onto your bed. The action leaves you stupidly breathless, and you try your hardest to catch your breath as San’s teeth begin to nip at your neck.
Your breathing is too fast, and San notices it all too well. “Hey,” San loosens his grip on your hips, “we can stop.”
“I don’t want to stop. I want to keep going, but I’m just… a little out of practice,” you exhale in frustration, sitting up slightly and unable to look him in his eyes.
“That’s okay,” San says, tucking a strand of your hair and busying his hand with the shell of your warm ear. “If you want to keep going, we can as slowly as you need to.”
Closing your eyes, you take a deep breath and let San’s cologne surround you. “Okay,” you look into his eyes.
San looks at you for some moments longer, taking in your eyes through your lashes. The hand that’s playing with the shell of your ear moves to hold the back of your head as San pulls you in for another kiss. This one lacked the rush of ones before it, and time slows down momentarily. The word love rests so easily in his mouth, he’s a little terrified of it, but welcomes it anyways.
His fingertips graze the skin besides the kinesiology tape that runs along your back, and with much care, he gently lays you down onto your pillows again and goes back to leaving small kisses on your neck.
Your hands pull at San’s satiny black dress shirt. As dashing as it makes him look, you find yourself wanting it off of him, laying in some obscure corner in your bedroom just like your abandoned dress that lay strewn somewhere in your living room. You meekly tug at his buttons, but when he can’t seem to pull away from your neck, you take the task on yourself.
The buttons fly off quickly, and once you’re able to catch San’s attention, he removes the shirt without hesitation. With the moon illuminating his body, your eyes follow the tan expanse of his heaving chest, his defined shoulders, and chiseled abdomen. At your gawking, San starts tugging at your maroon bra.
It comes off with one quick go, and San doesn’t hesitate to dive into the valley of your breasts. Head falling sinking into the pillow below, your eyes flutter shut at his touch. His cool hands tenderly knead at your overheated body while his lips trail lower and lower.
When he reaches the band of your underwear, he stops and looks up to meet your eyes for the third time that night. “Please,” you whisper, and he complies, kissing your hips as he follows the matching lacy maroon material down your legs. He grabs the underside of your thighs and leaves wet kisses there.
He licks a stripe against your already sensitive and wet pussy and sucks gently at your clit before looking up to see your eyes fluttering shut and head falling back. With a smirk, he dives back in, applying more and more pressure. His tongue circles patterns into you, and soon enough, your thighs are shaking.
Then, he adds a finger. And curls it up. You feel your back arching off the bed at the pleasure, and you’re quickly spiraling towards your orgasm. Just when you think it couldn’t feel any better, he adds another. Between the curling and sucking and flicking and his hot breath around your thighs, you’re embarrassingly close to coming undone.
Trying to ground yourself, your hands tangle themselves in the sheets below you. San leaves hot, open-mouthed kisses against you, and it feels too good. You can feel your orgasm creeping up on you, and normally, you’d be mortified for cumming so fast but now, you couldn’t care less.
“I’m gonna—can I—please, please, please—” your own moan cuts you off. When you mumble out what sounded to San like asking permission, he thinks he could cum on the spot. With a new-found vigor, he licks and sucks harder, he curls deeper, pulling whiny whimper after whiny whimper out of you. A shake rattles through your legs again, and when you finally do orgasm, San’s rides you through it.
He thinks he can stay here, between your shaking legs, forever, and he would certainly never mind. Before letting you fall into overstimulation, he forces himself to back away, but he ends up asking what’s on his mind, anyways. “Can I give you one more? You deserve more,” San pleads, redness flooding across his neck up to his ears.
You think you’re falling in love with him. His eyes are totally blown, his cheeks are reddened, and your arousal shines against his chin. He looks, for a lack of a better word, so beautiful, all you can do is nod dumbfoundedly.
He flashes a dimpled smile as his grip on your thighs tightens, lowering himself again. You try to keep your eyes on him, trying to catch more of his beauty, more of anything he has to offer. But when he moans into your folds, your head falls back in ecstacy. The vibrations and continuously flicking tongue has you stumbling towards your second orgasm even faster than the first.
You try to reach for the sheets again, but San’s eyes follow your movement. He grabs your searching hands and locks them tightly with his own. Now that his hands weren’t holding your legs, your thighs try to shut, squeezing around San’s head. As they shake against his ears, he knows he could happily die here.
With your second, much stronger orgasm, you feel like you’re floating. San helps you ride it out and pulls away with a pout. With your hands still intertwined, he lets you catch your breath and busies himself with placing kisses up your stomach, your breasts, your neck, and finally stopping when he reaches your blissed out face.
He brings your laced hands above your head before leaning down to kiss you again. When you can taste yourself on his lips, you roll your hips up weakly in a silent plea for more, despite the tiredness that comes in waves.
“Are you okay?” he asks into your neck. When all you can do is nod, he moves up to look you in the eyes. “I let it slide before, but I need you to tell me. Can you tell me if you’re okay?”
You don’t think you’ve ever wanted someone more than you want San right now, but you’re unable to tell him with your heavy tongue. “I’m okay,” is all you say, surprised that your voice doesn’t break. Nonetheless, it’s airy and hints of whininess are seeping through it.
San smiles at your words, and he starts to remove his slacks while placing gentle kisses against your hips. The tent in his boxers is inviting, and you pull yourself up by your elbows. San gets you sitting up straight, and in your post-orgasm haze, you follow his movements, although thoroughly confused, as he rests against your headboard after taking his boxers off. He pulls you over his legs to straddle his thighs. “For your back,” is all he says before taking your lips between his yet again.
I’m definitely going to fall in love with him, you think. You roll your hips against his, and this time, San gasps and you slip your tongue into his mouth. You leave much too quickly for him and start to bite down his neck, his collarbones, and his chest. His hands grip your waist as your wetness leaves its mark against his cock.
“Fuck, fuck, wait,” San hands stop your hips. “Condom?”
Your lips don’t stop leaving marks along his neck as you answer, “Top drawer.”
Grabbing a condom, San rips open the packet and rolls the plastic over his painfully hard cock. The moment it’s on, you roll against him again. San leans back on the headboard and sighs. He looks at you, and you look back. There’s a thin sheen of sweat glistening on your chests. “Do you want to keep going?”
Something tells you that San would stop, even as hard as he is, if you had said no. He’d do it with a smile on his face, with a stupidly silly pun on the tip of his tongue to distract you. And that fact makes you gush. “Yes, please.” You roll against him one more time, harder.
San nods at your response, and you see a relieved expression appear on his face for a split-second before it disappears. He lets you take the control and watches your folds drip over his pretty cock. As you’re sliding down, your nails dent the tan skin of San’s shoulders. Whimpers are whispered into his neck as you stretch to accommodate him.
“Fuck…” San moans. “You feel so good,” he licks the area under your earlobe before biting into it. You gasp against him, and you realize you’ve taken him all the way with the distraction. You give yourself some moments to adjust, but it isn’t before long that you’re grinding down onto him.
He feels so delicious inside, the curve of his dick hitting your gummy spot over and over and over again. San's soft grunts and groans and your own broken moans echo in your bedroom. San’s warm hands splay across your hips as he helps you move against his hips, and you want more of everything. More of his hands on you, more of his cock inside you, more of his kisses against your neck, more of him.
Your body screams for a break, but you ignore its pleas and work your thighs faster. San’s fingertips graze upwards into the dip of your back, and he gently traces the lines along your shoulder blades. He was still being so watchful, and the thought alone makes you tighten around him.
But your body is catching up with your tired state, and you eventually start slowing down. You clench down onto San again, and this time, his touch at your back falters. With a quick change, his hands wrap around your hips again and stop your movements.
With a whine, you come to a stop, and as you’re about to ask him what’s wrong, he thrusts up into you. Your words die in your throat, and a broken moan takes its place. You can’t imagine what your neighbors must be thinking. For years, they never hear a peep from your apartment. You were truly a model next-door neighbor, and now all of a sudden this? You file away the thought to bring them some baked goods as an apology when San lowly groans into your ear.
Turning your head, you lick the shell of his ear and hear him groan again. The sound shoots electricity through your body, and you can feel your third orgasm of the night building.
You feel a sharp sting in your back that you ignore. Until it comes again, this time sharper.
With a pained gasp, you put your hands on San’s chest and push against him. He lets go of your hips and brings his hands down to rub your thighs, stopping his movements completely. He lets you catch your breath, and experimentally, you rock forward into him only for the pain to return.
You slump against him in defeat. The rubbing at your thighs stops.
“Hey, you okay?” San takes your face between his hands.
“My back…” you start, apologetic. Your orgasm was slowly disappearing, and you could feel San twitch inside you.
“It’s okay, do you want to stop?”
“No, please, I don’t wanna stop— Can you just—” you try to roll against him again, but San stops you, lifting your hips up again.
“Woah, whoa, you’re going to hurt yourself, wait,” he slides out of you gently, making you wince. He gets you off his thighs before adjusting the cushions on your bed. “Come here.” You shift closer to him, and with a hand along your back, he lays you down against the cushions. You back relaxes in relief, and you thankfully sigh.
“Feels better?” he asks, leaning over you.
“Much better,” you respond, settling against the soft pillows.
San traces the outline of your lips with his thumb, and with his other hand, he runs his cock up and down your folds. The nips you’ve left around his neck and ears are beginning to darken, and you only hope to leave more soon. The ends of raven hair is dripping with droplets of sweat. All you can do is take him in, and when you see him doing the same, your heart beats faster.
You hope his marks are just as clearly present on your neck as yours are on his. His thumb traces over your cupid’s bow, and you kiss the pad of his thumb.
“Please,” you whine against his thumb. As he leans in to kiss you, he pushes himself back into you. You sigh against his lips. He grinds his hips into your slowly, restraining himself.
You feel yourself molding to the ridges of his cock, and your eyes flutter close. Your third orgasm reappears as quickly as it disappeared. You buck your hips up to match his thrusts, and it results in louder, more desperate moans of his name from your mouth.
You’re stumbling on the edge of your orgasm when San speaks into your ears. “I’m sorry,” he says, hips grinding against yours. “I’m so, so, so sorry,” he grinds deeper, stops, pulls back, and repeats. The pace of his has you hurdling into your third orgasm, and when you do cum with a tight clench, more words bubble up from his chest.
“I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’ll make you feel so, so good. I don’t care how long it takes,” he whines with a cry into your neck. His thrusts are faltering, becoming more and more uneven, but it still feels amazing. Your fingernails graze his scalp, and you give his short, dark strands a soft tug. You’re teetering into overstimulation just as he cries out, cumming.
His elbows rest against either side of your head, and the tiny droplets from his wettened hair fall onto your neck. You turn to kiss the forearm on either side of you and let San catch his breath and slide out of you only to fall next to you. He turns to you again, and as you're coming down from your highs, he busies himself with leaving another mark on the cusp of your collarbone.
Some minutes later, he speaks up. “I really meant that, you know?” At your confusion, he clarifies, “I’ll make it up to you, no matter how long it takes.” When you don’t say anything back, he gives your temples a soft kiss before getting up to grab some wet washcloths from your bathroom.
Sometime later, when one cool rag lays across your chest and as San uses the other to clean up the remnants of your orgasms, you finally find the words you want to tell him.
“You deserve more, too.” His movements pause, and he looks down at you. You take the rag off your chest and sit up. “I’ve forgiven you a long time ago,” you tell him, wiping the sweat along his hairline. “You don’t need to make anything up to me, but…” you take his hands in yours, “If you’re giving me more and making me feel good, you deserve all of that and more back.”
Your thoughts sounded a lot more cohesive in your head, but San accepts them nonetheless. You knew a better foundation needed to be laid down when the two of you would seriously start pursuing each, but this was a good start, you think.
He gives you another kiss, one that knocks the air out of your lungs, before laying you back down to finish cleaning you up.
Once you’re both showered and tangled in your bed, San quietly traces patterns into the skin of your stomach. You nuzzle closer into him, and his breathing eventually slows down. You watch his chest expand and contract as his breath tickles your neck. You weren’t sure what the future was going to hold for you. You didn’t know where you would go. You didn’t know what San would do. How he would retaliate against his family. Where would he go? You weren’t even sure if Yunho’s offer was still on the table, but right now, you didn’t care very much at all.
You pull the blanket over San’s bare shoulders and let your eyes close as his heart beats against yours.
Author's Note II: Sorry I've just got so much to say guys lol. But here she is in all her glory, taccl pt. 2. I've spent a lot of time on her and would love to hear what you guys think 🫶🫶 I've also got some ideas for my next fic, but I would love love LOVE to hear some of your suggestions! Much love to you all <3
taglist: @rockstarsanie , @itza-meee , @scarfac3 , @chngbnwf, @brown88 , @ddaeing , @imcoenffl , @santineez
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Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: I Told Sunset About You (ITSAY) Edition
[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, in a long post, I work my way through Nadao Bangkok’s cinematic motherlode: ITSAY. Thanks to everyone for your patience with this post: I did major due diligence with it, with the absolutely TREMENDOUS help of @telomeke, @lurkingshan, @wen-kexing-apologist, and @bengiyo to ensure I had facts and analysis correct. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to these dear friends for holding me down and offering your sharp eyes.]
To dive into a topic as complicated, as beautiful, as reflective, as impactful as a macro-analysis of I Told Sunset About You is to take on...a lot. As I’ve discussed with @lurkingshan, from a filmmaking perspective, as so many of us who have watched ITSAY know -- it occupies the top spot of Thai BLs by way of pure cinematic quality. (If you follow my late-night liveblogs, you’ll know that this was the first show -- not even Bad Buddy did this to me -- where I needed to stop multitasking, to just sit and watch the episodes. No drama has done that for me in the years since I became a multitasking mom.)
As with 2gether and Still 2gether last week, this watch of ITSAY is a definite milestone on the OGMMTVC list, and I really thank @shortpplfedup, @bengiyo, @wen-kexing-apologist, @lurkingshan, @telomeke, and others in advance for what we’ve talked about in direct conversation regarding ITSAY, its many influential tentacles, and the influences that the show itself may have come from.
I’d like to touch upon a couple of frames to structure this piece, but the caveat here is that by no way will I consider myself an ITSAY expert, because there’s a tremendous fandom that knows much more about the Nadao Bangkok studio, about PP Krit and Billkin Putthipong, about the director and screenwriter, Boss Naruebet, and much more. I will have a substantial postscript to capture loose notes and learnings that didn’t make it into the main analysis.
Inspired in part by direct conversations with @telomeke and @lurkingshan, I’d like to dive into the following:
1) From a question that @lurkingshan posed to me: what shows from the start of the OGMMTVC watchlist -- and, more broadly, what art out there -- do I think spoke to ITSAY and its development,
2) The important story of Chinese migration to locations like Phuket, Penang (in Malaysia), and other locations on the Malay Peninsula, and how Chinese and Thai-Malay-Chinese-Peranakan cultures flavored ITSAY’s storytelling,
3) A discussion of internal and external homophobia on Teh’s experience, and how his conversation with Hoon encapsulated our understanding of homophobia, filial piety, and socioeconomic pressures in Teh’s particular life, timeline, and culture,
and more, I’m sure. Let’s boogie.
I warned some folks prior to this review that my thoughts on what may have spoken to ITSAY may turn some people off, so I offer this as a flare to y’all in advance. Acknowledging that episodes three and four of ITSAY were as emotional as anything I had ever seen in Asian BLs, Teh was just such a PERFECTLY written character. (The ITSAY supporting documentary episodes state that the show was in part inspired by Billkin’s and PP’s personal lives, and I know there’s fanon that the show was meant to deeply depict their personal stories with each other. I don’t have primary source material to point to regarding this, so I’ll leave it alone, with the understanding that there are interpretations of the show that read between the lines to bring that lens in. I acknowledge the existence of the theories, but will not dive into that here.)
So, in regards to Teh, as I chatted with @lurkingshan as I was watching the series, I just kept thinking to myself... hello, Fuse.
CHAOS BOYS! (Fire Boys? No, no, chaos boys, ha.)
This is where I think my analytical read might get a little controversial with folks, because to compare Make It Right to ITSAY -- from a LOOKS perspective, CERTAINLY from a storyline and narrative structure perspective -- no, it’s not there, not by a long shot.
But when I wonder about what ENERGIES and inspirations opened the door for Boss Narubet to WRITE the way that he wrote, and to DIRECT the way that he directed, Teh’s ENTIRE EMOTIONAL PROCESS AND BREAKDOWNS, his back-and-forth, his hesitations -- I saw chaos, and when I think of chaos, I think of Fuse.
I think of Fuse, and how Fuse was held back, particularly in Make It Right 2, regarding Fuse’s CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ASSUMPTION that he couldn’t break up with his girlfriend, all while being in a nascent give-and-take, back-and-forth relationship with Tee. And how that ASSUMPTION held BACK the full expression of commitment, honesty, and trust that Fuse and Tee ended up having at the end of MIR2. Fuse was being rather unsophisticated while he was struggling with this, and he was bringing Tee along, frustratingly, for that ride.
Something that you said to me also really resonated, @bengiyo, in conversation with @lurkingshan, about comparing TeeFuse and TehOh, in that Fuse and Teh weren’t necessarily SPARKLING or GIFTED presences. As you two both pointed out to me: Teh had to work much, much harder than Oh-aew for the talents that Teh achieved, and somehow, chaotically, he managed to lose his grip on those talents and achievements as he gave up his hard-earned opportunities for the sake of the overall-better-off Oh-aew. MESSY, BRO.
Besides MIR/MIR2, there’s somewhere else where I saw chaos. @bengiyo, you pointed out to me that you felt that you saw more of Thai queer cinema in ITSAY than in BL. I don’t think ITSAY *doesn’t* speak to BL and vice versa (I don’t think there’s anyone who thinks that, considering what Nadao Bangkok achieved with this show), but when I think of chaos -- and of the structures of storytelling that allowed us to get such an in-depth experience of Teh -- I also think of 2019′s Dew the Movie, and to a different extent, the before-its-time show in 2019′s He’s Coming To Me.
ITSAY, Dew, and HCTM have:
a) multiple chaotic leads (including actual ghosts and dudes who see ghosts),
b) overarching cultural backgrounds rooted in extremely specific Asian cultures and/or practices and/or time periods, and
c) interplays of emotional revelations vis à vis those specific cultural backgrounds.
- Fuse introduced to us, way back in 2016 and 2017, an internal holding back of an emotional engagement with Tee that was rooted in internal homophobia by way of his negotiation with what Fuse’s girlfriend expected of him, and what HE expected of HIMSELF regarding HAVING a girlfriend, while falling in love with a young man.
- Dew featured two young men in chaos, in 1990s rural Thailand, one of whom (Dew) who had previously lived in a different city where, likely, his sexual orientation would not have been met with such dystopic scrutiny as it did in the movie. The movie made clear that Dew wanted a solid relationship with Phop, but with both Dew’s and Phop’s families and cultural expectations holding them back, they both met untimely and unfortunate ends that hammered, in extremes, the perils, in cinema, of being gay and out in an incredibly restrictive and old-fashioned Asian society.
- HCTM featured a young man (Thun) who could see ghosts, along with the ghost that he ends up falling in love with (Med). The revelation of Thun’s being able to see Med is deeply connected to Thun’s Thai-Chinese Buddhist practices, and how his family has engaged with spirituality over the course of his life. While the structure of the show has often been described as having a happy ending, I argue the opposite -- that the ending is left open-ended, as it so often is in some of P’Aof Noppharnach’s shows, with the assumed understanding on behalf of an Asian audience that Med will one day be reborn and will leave Thun’s side (unless he’s reborn into another person that knows Thun) (hello, Until We Meet Again).
So what do all of these shows/movies -- ITSAY, Make It Right/MIR2, Dew, and HCTM -- have in common?
ITSAY, Dew, and HCTM have the common background of an old-fashioned culture serving as a MAJOR anchor to their stories. Their stories are leveraged by the micro-level, individual-level interplay between their main characters and old-fashioned worlds, complete with old-fashioned notions, assumptions, and expectations. ITSAY, Dew, and HCTM negotiate boundaries with these cultural guardrails, and we see -- Teh at the end of episode 4, Thun on the rooftop in episode 5, Dew talking to his mother -- what those expectations and boundaries have done internally to our dear young men.
Make It Right’s Fuse, way back in 2016, internalized this slightly differently, without us seeing as deeply the WORLD in which he grew up. The directors and screenwriters New Siwaj and Cheewin Thanamin gave us a guy in school with a girlfriend. FUSE’S world, that we see, is a school world, so apropos for that time of Thai BLs, complete with very heterosexual expectations for a young man WITH a girlfriend. And Fuse struggles with his push-and-pull throughout the two seasons.
What I love about the OGMMTVC project is that by having watched these projects before ITSAY, I can somewhat predict what the journey of chaos, by way of internal revelation, will be for these characters.
However.
What ITSAY DESTROYED for me, as compared to these dramas and movies, was the high level of acting that Billkin leveraged to get Teh to the emotional levels that he reached. Teh, episode 4, and Thun, episode 5 = handshakes.
This is where ITSAY’s structure just brings ITSAY to the top of the cinematic list and runs away from everything else. I posted in my liveblogging that the ending of episode 3 blew me away with a subversion of the four-act structure of screenwriting. @bengiyo corrected me to say that it was, instead, a rare example of Thai BLs achieving a successful five-act structure.
Just -- fuck.
You combine this UTTERLY FUCKING BRILLIANT STORYTELLING STRUCTURE, NARRATIVE STRUCTURING PAR FUCKING EXCELLENCE, ALONG WITH BILLKIN���S PORTRAYAL OF TEH IN HEAT AND CHAOS, and I’m eating, fam. Five-star Michelin tasting menu-level.
But before I start that meal, there’s even more that ITSAY did to really hammer in what I’m referencing by way of the anchors of old-fashioned culture to this story, which, clearly, Boss and Nadao Bangkok value, in the show’s indirect commentary on Chinese culture and migration in Thailand, and what it meant for Teh and Oh-aew to grow up in Phuket and prepare to leave for Bangkok. (If you haven’t watched ITSAY, I highly recommend that you plan on watching the supplementary documentary material, because those docs give a ton of insight into the Thai-Malay-Chinese background of the show. As a SE Asian homey, those revelations gave me the wonderful warm and familiar vibes.)
Dear @telomeke (I don’t know what I’d do without you, friend!) helped me to understand, back in my HCTM days, that I inherently know more about Chinese migration, immigration, and culture into Southeast Asia than I previously gave myself credit for as a part-Malaysian, because many of the migratory patterns and cultural assimilations are similar between Thailand and Malaysia. I appreciated that confirmation, and had my inspector’s hat on during my watch and rewatch of ITSAY.
I’ve spoken with @lurkingshan and @neuroticbookworm about the impact of migration and diasporic existence, in that, I think, oftentimes, immigrants to another country often hold a more conservative view of the cultures they bring with them -- in order to hold onto the tenets of those cultures, and to keep those tenets from getting influenced or maybe even watered down by the new environment in which immigrants are living. (My example to Shan and NBW was that I find that South Asian immigrants are often MORE conservative than my relatives in my homelands -- so as to keep a tight grip on assimilation, or, say, moral/ethical weakening by way of Western culture.)
I think the background of Phuket and EVERYTHING it lent to the show...
- Teh’s mom selling Hokkien mee at a stall storefront and the boys eating it in Teh’s old-fashioned house,
- The old-fashioned o-aew dessert shop, selling a Hokkien Chinese dessert, which is often preceded by a shot of the “Phuket Old Town” sign,
- Teh’s mom’s traditional Chinese-Peranakan outfits, particularly when she’s celebrating Teh and Hoon’s successes,
- The tight streets and alleys,
...all of it, visually and culturally, reminded us that the boys live in a world that was DEEPLY INFLUENCED by the way back when. I posit that Teh’s mom is the encapsulation of this kind of old-fashioned culture, from the architectural style of her Hokkien mee stall, to the clothes she wears, to the heavy decorations and rugs and furniture of her old-fashioned house -- to her old-fashioned notions of filial piety that both her sons will be successful and will help to take care of her as she ages. I posit that this old-fashioned mindset also likely led Teh to believe that Teh’s mom would not accept him for liking men, which I will delve into more in a bit.
I mentioned cultural assimilation earlier: I brought up Penang, Malaysia, earlier, because I’ve spent time in Penang -- and Penang was referenced by Boss in the ITSAY documentaries as being similar to Phuket by way of cultural structure. @telomeke educated me on the tin-trade-influenced links from Phuket to the Malaysian towns of Penang and Kuala Lumpur, all towns that experienced heavy immigration from China and feature the strong presence of Chinese-Malay-Peranakan cultures in their social fabrics. The Peranakan population developed when the first Chinese immigrants to these regions began marrying the local ethnic Thai and Malay residents, creating a brand-new culture, complete with unique foods, clothing, architecture, and much more.
Having not been to Phuket yet, I believe Boss. As well, I want to note -- very important to me as a part-Malaysian -- that Boss referenced Teh’s nickname as the Malay word for tea. @telomeke noted for me this distinction as one that’s notable for how ITSAY differentiates the culture within the show -- again, a culture that’s influenced by Chinese and Malay migratory history -- against the backdrop of Bangkok, where tea is not “teh,” but rather is called “cha,” the Thai word for tea. [The most famous “teh” drink of Malaysia is teh tarik, a sweet, creamy, and strong tea drink that you see everywhere in Malaysia. While o-aew is a distinctly Chinese-style dessert, teh tarik comes from Indian immigrants to Malaysia (and is usually drunk with roti canai, another Indian import to Malaysia)].
In other words: we are talking a TREMENDOUS, a TREMENDOUS amount of references to cultural mixing, development, and assimilation here, all INTENTIONALLY placed by Boss Narubet and his screenwriting team -- and all of this serving as a reflection against what Teh and Oh-aew will experience as being “different” in their futures in Bangkok, where this Thai-Chinese-Malay cultural differential will make them different when they get to college. (Not having seen I Promised You The Moon yet, I wonder if IPYTM sets up Teh and Oh-aew as potential country mice, à la Ji Hyun and Joon Pyo in The Eighth Sense.)
One more pertinent note of cultural intermixing by way of the historical Thai-Chinese-Malay linkages. @bengiyo was surprised that I didn’t initially exclaim at the presence of hijab- and songkok-clad Muslim women and men eating at Teh’s mom’s Hokkien mee stall; Teh and Oh-aew’s friend, Phillip, is also shown with his Muslim parents. It’s funny, @bengiyo, as I said to you: because I was watching ITSAY with such a trained eye towards spotting the Thai-Chinese-Malay cultural mixing, seeing Muslims on screen did NOT ring a bell of differentials because -- I expect to see them there, in those kinds of spaces, anyway. (In fact, seeing Muslims on Thai television is rare, which I will get into more in the postscript.)
So we have: MANY CULTURES MIXING OVER MANY GENERATIONS. Migratory patterns intertwining. Indications of physical and emotional movement. And even though, and even DESPITE, these cultures mixing, we ALSO HAVE an OVERARCHING message of old-fashioned customs and ways of living that dominate the lives of the children in the show -- ESPECIALLY Teh. Teh and Oh-aew -- literally, their NAMES reference places ELSEWHERE than Phuket and Thailand. Phuket’s old-fashioned roots. Teh’s mom SELLS a dish that comes from somewhere else (the Hokkien Chinese population mostly hails from Fujian, China, as its origin).
What happens with migration and immigration? Cultures collide and combine -- social mores and expectations change -- one’s standards of HOW TO LIVE ONE’S LIFE changes.
Teh and Oh-aew, during the entire series, are facing a moment in time where THEIR lives, THEIR cultures, THEIR micro-interactions WITH THEIR cultures, ARE GOING TO CHANGE, definitively, by way of their burgeoning same-sex relationship. Teh and Oh-aew are already different in Thailand by way of their cultural backgrounds, as I’ve established -- and now, with a potential public revelation of their relationship, will they be even more different. And their families -- especially Teh’s mom, but Oh-aew’s family as well -- are going to collide with the very PRESENT present vis à vis their boys and their love.
As this happens with migration and immigration, CHANGE WILL HAPPEN vis à vis Teh and Oh-aew’s queer revelations as well.
Boss focused on the aspects of Phuket that were anchors to the culture that Teh and Oh-aew were raised in -- an immigrant culture, a migrant culture from China, that has had a long hold over many, many towns and societies in Thailand. We didn’t see the modern 7-11s that we know are there in Phuket, serving the tourists of these towns.
And, just like the physical dystopia of Dew, and even vis à vis the spiritual practices built into He’s Coming To Me, the slice of Old Town Phuket that we SAW as that anchor was a HEAVY PRESENCE in Teh’s life -- it was PERFECTLY matched with the old-fashioned, conservative ANGER and DISAPPOINTMENT that we saw in Teh’s mom in episode 4, when Teh shares that he dropped out of university for Oh-aew. That anchor, to me, was meant to SMASH into, FEED into Teh’s overwhelming emotionality at his queer revelation, and at the revelation that serving his mother via filial piety would be automatically made more difficult, thus maximizing the impact of his internalized homophobia and his fear of recognizing his love and attraction for Oh-aew.
COUPLE THAT with the previous hints -- and then the SMASHING WRECKING BALL -- of the visual depths of Oh-aew’s own realizations earlier in episode 4, his own internally different place, the way he reveals himself to the world vis à vis the fast Instagram post of him wearing the red bra. And how Teh reacts to it. And how it sets off such an unreal chain of emotional unraveling for Teh, the SECOND of that episode, even before he goes to Bangkok to drop out.
WHOA.
THIS, TO ME
WAS
FUCKING
STUNNING
and very important to me to see as a South/Southeast Asian. WHEW.
And, good lord. How Hoon comes in at the end for Teh. Hoon, the eldest son, the one who has very quietly borne the financial responsibility that his mom, Teh’s mom, too, has placed on Hoon’s shoulders, naturally, through generations of family custom. (Super duper thanks to @lurkingshan for talking me through this in detail with me.)
And Hoon gives his family, his little bro, Teh, comfort. How Hoon says, listen. Mom’s gonna be mad if and when you tell her about Oh-aew and your feelings for me. But guess what? She’s gonna come around. You’re a crybaby, Teh, but I’m here for you.
Hoon knows that Teh’s mom will come around -- because Hoon is also a part of the next generation of change, much like his Thai-Malay-Chinese-Peranakan community before him -- as he brings his Japanese girlfriend home to his mother and brother. (THANK YOU, @wen-kexing-apologist, for pointing this out!)
Teh’s mom, too, will move. She will move from her old-fashioned mindset, to migrate to a new mindset, where she will accept her son. Teh needed to hear that, to know that that movement would be possible.
Just like the movement of the many swirling cultures around Teh and Oh-aew, the hustle of Bangkok before them, nipping at their lives like the ocean to the beach.
What ITSAY captured for me was a cinematic moment of movement on so many levels. It was a pulsating reflection of change. It was meant and designed to insidiously shock viewers out of complacency. Like a beanstalk climbing from the ground, the movement begot movement to these two young men beginning to address and empty themselves of the homophobia that kept them back, Teh especially.
GAH, THEIR MOVING PHYSICALITY, IT NEVER STOPPED -- the end of episode 2 on the boat, the end of episode 3 in Teh’s room, GAWD -- Teh’s ABSOLUTE HORMONAL DRUNKENNESS, Oh-aew’s STARE AFTER STARE AFTER STARE, Oh-aew’s SILENT DEVASTATION AT THE END OF EPISODE 3, the way Teh would nod and FLOP his head uncontrollably in desire, the nuzzles, the sniffs, the uncontrolled reaches -- GAH. It gives me the shivers.
It was a lot.
ITSAY was just -- y’all know it. It was fantastic. While HCTM was before its time, I feel that ITSAY was RIGHT ON TIME. It brought so many elements of this GORGEOUS, HISTORIC, culturally Southeast Asian experience into the intersection of the queer lens, as well as the *migratory* lens of the Southeast Asian region specifically. It showed us, from a micro-perspective, the very tremendous macro-level implications and pressures of filial piety, of internalized homophobia, of the huge socioeconomic expectations that families have on Asian students to succeed in education, and so much more. IT WAS *DEFINITIVELY INTERSECTIONAL*, MORE SO THAN ANY BL BEFORE ITS TIME.
Yet again, for me, just like Bad Buddy, just like Until We Meet Again, I have another show in my arsenal that makes me proud to be an Asian watching these shows -- and in ITSAY, I feel particularly proud that a slice of my own personal culture, as an Malaysian, made it in there, intentionally. I will FOREVER, and ever, be grateful to ITSAY for that.
-------
I’d like to offer this postscript as a means of making some quick points that @telomeke, @bengiyo, @lurkingshan, and @wen-kexing-apologist shared with me as I was writing this review -- and I thank them all deeply for reading drafts of this post before publication.
1) I was previously unaware of the history and current state of Islamic culture in Thailand until ITSAY and Be My Favorite included women wearing hijabs in their shows. This is an important slice of culture for me to know about, as I’m part-Malaysian, where Islam is the dominant religion. @telomeke shared with me that the majority Muslim population in Thailand is in southern Thailand (although, of course, Muslims live across Thailand), and that there have historically been separatist efforts in those southern provinces that have often led to violence.
There are many reasons why discrimination of Muslims exist in Thailand, as it does around the world, including references to the separatist efforts in the southern provinces. As well, ethnic Thais can trace their heritage back to various towns and communities within China, thus possibly making northern Thailand, with its proximity to China, potentially more lauded in Thai culture, and contributing even more to a perception that southern Thailand, with its Muslim population, as potentially “less desirable.” (And I want to take a second to note @telomeke‘s excellent point to me that “Chinese” as a catch-all word is often incomplete, as Han Chinese make up a sizable portion of Thailand’s population, but as we see in ITSAY, the Hokkien Chinese population also flourishes in certain parts of the country, and there are populations of Teochew and Hakka Chinese as well, as there are in Malaysia.)
All of this combined -- the geographic proximities to China, the places where various populations have settled, from the places that various populations of Thais track their heritages, plus global and/or popular misconceptions and stereotypes of “other” communities -- can contribute to discrimination of Muslims in Thailand. Of course, that is not a universal statement, as we do see Muslims beginning to show up in Thai drama art, which is heartening. To me, it strikes me as more realistic for the region to see Muslims on screen, but I don’t know Thailand well enough to say that for sure (that’s my Malaysian-side talking). I really want to thank @telomeke for taking me on SUCH a deep dive with insight into this part of Thai culture that I think is very necessary and fascinating. (Politics in Thailand is quite complicated at the moment, but at this very second, Thailand’s current Parliament speaker, from the Move Forward party, is Thai Muslim, with a Malay Muslim name -- Wan Muhamed Noor Matha. Very cool, but this is going to change soon, as Move Forward will make way for another political party to take control of the government.)
2) If you know me well enough, I cannot leave food well enough alone in our wonderful dramas (exhibit A: Moonlight Chicken and khao man gai, exhibit B: coffee/kopi in The Promise, lol), and I want to make sure that we were all aware back in 2020, and/or make you aware now, that Hokkien mee is a VERY regional dish, with styles unique to each town in which it is famous. @telomeke, I know you feel differently, but Hokkien mee from Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia is my.... it’s my heaven, my soul, my heart, HA!
Here’s some linkies to get you educated. And also! Oh-aew prefers his Hokkien mee with rice vermicelli noodles, instead of the usual, thicker egg noodles. You know what I like to do if I see that a stall has the two styles of noodles available: I like to get them mixed together. Hokkien mee, Hokkien prawn mee noodle soup, curry laksa -- I like the best of both worlds of noodles in my bowl. YUM.
Phuket Hokkien mee
KL Hokkien mee
Penang Hokkien mee (this one is the prawn noodle soup, not the fried noodles -- omfg so good)
Singapore Hokkien mee (note the lighter color -- and the m’fing mix of thick and thin noodles, hell yeah!)
(If you made it this far in the ITSAY review, I have an easter egg for you. Guess what the Malay name is for rice vermicelli noodles? Bee hoon or mee hoon.
Hoon and Teh, two Malay names: thin noodles and tea. What Teh’s mom serves at her stall, and what Teh and Oh-aew represent, symbolically, by names and their noodle preferences, as a pairing. AND! @telomeke gave me one more easter egg! Teh O is a popular way to order tea in Malaysia and Singapore. It’s black tea with sugar, no milk. Another pairing reference. ITSAY never stopped with all the layered references!)
[WHEW! What a ride. Thanks to all y’all who held me down during my losing-it liveblogging of ITSAY. More to come when I get to Last Twilight in Phuket and I Promised You The Moon.
Next week, I’ll release my review of YYY into the wild -- listen, honestly. Yes, chaos, confusion, all of it. But I am not writing this show totally off. There was definitely stuff in it to chew on. And: POPPY RATCHAPONG. And Pee Peerawich. The acting was actually stacked on this show. There’s stuff! More soon.
And I also finished Manner of Death, so that review will drop in two weeks. I LOVE MAXTUL. UNABASHEDLY. Yes, I know I’m years late, yes, I know Tul is retired, sobs. Let me live my 2021 dreams! These guys are so good together, and MoD was fuckin’ great.
I have so much good stuff on the way: I’m fully in my ATOTS rewatch, and I’ve added 55:15 Never Too Late, very specifically its BL storyline. I may not give 55:15 a full review because I’ll fast-watch the rest of it, but: Khao, come to me, boo-boo! I have an INSANE August ahead of me as I’ll be moving in a month (GAH), but hopefully this schedule won’t fall back too much.
Status of the listy! Hit me up if you have feedback!
1) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here)
2) Make It Right (2016) (review here)
3) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here)
4) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here)
5) Together With Me (2017) (review here)
6) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here)
7) Love By Chance (2018) (review here)
8) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review)
9) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here)
10) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here)
11) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here)
12) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review)
13) Theory of Love (2019) (review here)
14) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (not a BL or an official part of the OGMMTVC watchlist, but an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here)
15) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here)
16) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here)
17) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here)
18) I Told Sunset About You (2020)
19) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review coming)
20) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) (review coming)
21) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here)
22) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (watching)
23) Lovely Writer (2021)
24) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM)
25) I Promised You the Moon (2021)
26) Not Me (2021-2022)
27) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here)
28) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry)
29) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch
30) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)]
31) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here)
32) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist
33) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here)
34) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL)
35) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023)
36) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here)
37) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults)]
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