Custom | Lee Seungri / Narimiya Hiroki | Gen
Pairing: Lee Seungri / Narimiya Hiroki
Rating: Gen - PG
Warnings: AU; angst
Length: 1900w.
Seconds tick by ever so slowly and Seungri slumps down farther in his seat, eyes trained on the clock. There’s a crick in his back he can’t manage to shift off. His lower lip, compulsively nibbled by his front teeth, tastes metallic after a while; Seungri releases it, licking nervously around the slight, sensitive wound.
He’s thinking of how he snapped at Jiyong-hyung, earlier - “just leave, who cares?” - fueled by the fatigue of the flight and the sudden, unexpected stress of being singled out.
Jiyong-hyung has this way of getting under your skin at the most inopportune times. Like earlier: the customs official checks everything once more and tells Seungri to stand at the side for a moment. His tone was polite to a fault, obviously. He was displaying the typical embarrassment of the man who’s just an employee confronted to a situation he can deal with but hates.
And in those cases Jiyong-hyung is a nuisance more than anything else, really. He gets impatient and snappish - it obviously doesn’t help.
In the end Seungri told him to leave; he’d stay at the airport until the administration deemed him free to go and that’s all there was to it.
Now the cop in front of him isn’t even trying to figure this red tape crap out. He’s only sprawled there, passively following the hands of the clock with bloodshot, sleepless eyes. A fat walrus stuffed into his chair. Seungri stares at the way the metallic armrests dig into his triple rolls of fat and thinks, inappropriately, of greasy meat, of hot kebab sauce dripping down his fingers during Saturday afternoons in Itaewon.
In a maddening loop, Seungri’s thoughts snap back to Jiyong-hyung. He sort of wants to send a text - ‘im fine’ - but the truth is he’s not and there’s no way to tell when he’ll be out of here.
Seungri watches as the fat man hungrily waits for the minute hand to strike the twelve. He then proceeds to raise himself from his seat - painfully, dragging his flesh out of the chair - and he mockingly smiles at Seungri, waves limply.
“Please wait here, dear passenger,” he says, insisting on the tacky politeness of the expression. “My subordinate should arrive in no time.”
Seungri glares hatefully at his back when the cop leaves. On the desk, his passport lies open on the photo page and his seventeen-year-old self doesn’t smile at the camera, like he knows what’s happening already.
At seventeen Seungri was in high school and doing his best to be invisible since he couldn’t be someone - he had tried. Jiyong-hyung was his sunbae; he smoked and dyed his hair. Seungri used to hate him with all his might because they were neighbors and since kindergarten, they had walked home together from school. But while Seungri always got shoved and tripped in doorways, Jiyong-hyung, as weird and inherently out of place as he looked, could prance around the place like he owned it and no one would bat an eyelash. Worse, it was like people actually admired him.
Seungri waited for high school to end and eventually grew out of this phase, with American beats in his ears and avidly waiting for the first notes of his future.
“Good evening!”
That must be the subordinate. He’s noticeably younger and slimmer for one and he’s got that enthusiastic expression only young Japanese cops can muster. This one is particularly cheerful, like he doesn’t care it’s late already and he’s going to be spending a lot of time in this tiny room where the only decoration is the map yellowing on the wall.
“’evening,” Seungri says.
The cop’s nametag reads a jumble of kanjis he can’t be bothered to decipher. It doesn’t seem to matter, since the cop is already introducing himself: “I’m Narimiya!”, bowing hurriedly and flinging his hand across the desk. Seungri stares at it for a second before shaking it hesitantly.
“Lee Seungri,” he says at last.
It’s not his real name but no one calls him Seunghyun anymore, since Seunghyun can only refer to Jiyong-hyung’s best friend.
“You’ll be Seungri,” Jiyong-hyung had smiled. “It’s easier that way.”
People started calling him that too and never stopped.
Narimiya makes them both a cup of coffee, saying that it’ll probably be a long night; Seungri isn’t even in the mood to protest anymore.
“It’s something about your visa,” the cop explains. “Err- I’m not really smart so I can’t exactly tell, but don’t worry, you’ll be free by morning!”
He grins sunnily and hands Seungri steaming coffee in a sake cup.
“Thanks.”
Narimiya takes a sip of his and sighs:
“Man, what a drag… I had promised my wife to be home early tonight!”
Seungri can’t help but note:
“You’re married?”
Shit, he berates himself, what was that for? It’s not like he cares. He doesn’t.
“Yeah,” Narimiya says, shrugging a little, with this kind of typical embarrassed smile Seungri is starting to associate with Tokyo. “I am. Second year, first kid, you know?”
Seungri takes a quick look at his third finger. Sure enough, there’s a band of silver there. With a shiver, Seungri remembers how deep a gash his father’s ring had cut in his cheek once, on a warm summer morning. There was orange juice and it was a commercial-perfect family breakfast but Seungri clashed with the picture. He hadn’t come home on the night before and had showed up on that Sunday morning feeling at the same time relieved - at least he knew, he was sure of who he was - and scared to death. The future had just become much darker.
Their barely existent conversation withers down to a stop and eventually Narimiya makes an attempt at freshening it up by saying:
“So. You’re from Korea?”
“Yeah,” Seungri says. “Business trip.”
Narimiya nods thoughtfully.
“Business trip, huh? That’s good, right? Good…”
“Yeah,” Seungri says. “You get to travel.”
He thinks of Jiyong-hyung’s moods whenever they go on trips and how everyone’s eager to please him.
“Fancy hotels?” Narimiya wants to know.
“We’re staying at the Hyatt. In Roppongi.”
Narimiya laughs, that’s good, he repeats, and makes a vague comment about lucky businessmen. “I live in this minuscule apartment in the suburbs. Our living room window opens on the next building.”
This, Seungri can relate to. “In Seoul, I live with my mother in two tiny rooms.”
“The Hyatt must feel even nicer,” Narimiya says.
“Well… yeah.”
It’s not so much the comfort of the suites Jiyong-hyung insists on booking, rather than the dizzying feeling of freedom that Seungri gets whenever he’s in Japan. This sensation of falling slowly into a comfortable, new skin, it’s like he gets to inhabit a brand new chrysalis each time he comes to this country. A multicolored painted shell of lights, smoke and pleasure that no one gets to take from him.
“I had a friend, like you, you know?” Narimiya’s thoughts seem to be slowly rolling in every direction. Sideway glance. “Korean.” He detaches the syllables: ‘kan-ko-ku-jin’, thoughtfully. “You couldn’t notice it, though.” He looks at Seungri. “With you, it’s the same. You can’t notice it.”
There’s the brief sensation of being chilled to the bone. Seungri doesn’t quite know what to make of it.
“You don’t have any accent,” Narimiya says after a pause.
“Well- I watch a lot of TV.”
They talk about baseball and football and music and eventually the conversation lands on girl groups.
“Ah,” Narimiya sighs. “I like Shoujo Jidai - they’re from your country, right? Really sexy.”
At work, So Nyoe Shi Dae is the only topic running in the coffee break room; it’s all talks of legs and short skirts and cleavages. Seungri avoids the place like the plague; he doesn’t like to mingle with secretaries and accountants. He doesn’t like the taste of instant coffee or the smell of old garlic from the lunch boxes the girls bring to the office.
“What about Morning Musume?” Seungri wants to know, because he has sort of a soft spot for them. “They’re cute, aren’t they?”
“MoruMusu are cute, that’s true, but I don’t really get this ‘wow’ feeling when I watch them.” Narimiya makes an exploding motion with his hands, then purses his lips thoughtfully. “Shoujo Jidai, though, that ‘Mister Taxi’ video…”
Seungri shifts in his seat.
When he stares at Narimiya’s profile he sees thick lips, a straight nose, laughter lines at the corner of his eyes. His hair has been awkwardly combed to a side probably in an effort to meet service regulations. Somehow, he reminds Seungri of countless faces, an endless string of men he’s met: the people he hides from the world with, the people he doesn’t dare openly like.
Seungri distracts himself with thoughts of Jiyong-hyung. He wonders if he’s gone to sleep yet or if he’s waiting for Seungri’s phone call.
“Can I call a friend?”
Narimiya nods immediately and pushes Seungri’s cellphone across the desk:
“Please, go ahead.”
Seungri counts three rings before Jiyong picks up, a short inhale at the other end of the line.
Jiyong ends up begrudgingly agreeing that Seungri will have to take a cab home and he promises to have the company pay the fare back.
“G’night, hyung,” Seungri says when he hangs up.
Narimiya is staring at him thoughtfully:
“That’s a beautiful language.”
This time, it makes a knot of heat unravel in Seungri’s lower belly.
“Hyung,” the cop says, “that’s like- ‘senpai’?”
“Sort of. Somewhere between ‘senpai’ and ‘aniki’, I guess. You know Korean?”
“I told you. I had a friend.”
There stare at each other in silence for a while.
“He’s my boss in the company and he came with me on this trip,” Seungri finally explains. “I told him to leave without me, that I’d call.”
Narimiya nods, his shoulders relaxing a bit. “I had a senpai like this. I got into police school because of him. And then…” he smiles a bit self-deprecatingly, “he was moved to Central Tokyo, and I got here.”
Seungri’s breath is catching in his throat.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I wasn’t smart enough to make it to his level.”
Narimiya’s smile seems entirely carefree when he says this; he gets up from his chair and Seungri’s hackles raise as a reflex, but Narimiya only goes to the door and exchanges a few words with the customs official behind.
They give him back his coat and his papers and someone rolls his suitcase towards him.
“Here,” Narimiya says. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
He gives that rushed little bow, instantly mimicked by the rest of the airport employees, and his grin crooks around the edges as if to apologize for the formal, rigid atmosphere.
“It’s fine,” Seungri says. “Good luck with your wife and kid.”
“Thanks. Have a nice trip.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a rush of warm air as Seungri passes the automatic door, escaping icy air-conditioning to walk blissfully into summer heat.
Behind the window of the taxi Seungri watches as the car takes him, high above the ground, amongst the sleepy outskirts, to the chore of the city: the lights of his beloved Tokyo start to fade down as dawn rises; Seungri closes his eyes. He thinks of the nights when he’ll lie to Jiyong-hyung and slip out of his hotel room. He thinks of the streets he’ll walk through and the alcohol he’ll drink.
When Seungri opens his eyes again, the world looks blurry.
Rating: Gen - PG
Warnings: AU; angst
Length: 1900w.
Seconds tick by ever so slowly and Seungri slumps down farther in his seat, eyes trained on the clock. There’s a crick in his back he can’t manage to shift off. His lower lip, compulsively nibbled by his front teeth, tastes metallic after a while; Seungri releases it, licking nervously around the slight, sensitive wound.
He’s thinking of how he snapped at Jiyong-hyung, earlier - “just leave, who cares?” - fueled by the fatigue of the flight and the sudden, unexpected stress of being singled out.
Jiyong-hyung has this way of getting under your skin at the most inopportune times. Like earlier: the customs official checks everything once more and tells Seungri to stand at the side for a moment. His tone was polite to a fault, obviously. He was displaying the typical embarrassment of the man who’s just an employee confronted to a situation he can deal with but hates.
And in those cases Jiyong-hyung is a nuisance more than anything else, really. He gets impatient and snappish - it obviously doesn’t help.
In the end Seungri told him to leave; he’d stay at the airport until the administration deemed him free to go and that’s all there was to it.
Now the cop in front of him isn’t even trying to figure this red tape crap out. He’s only sprawled there, passively following the hands of the clock with bloodshot, sleepless eyes. A fat walrus stuffed into his chair. Seungri stares at the way the metallic armrests dig into his triple rolls of fat and thinks, inappropriately, of greasy meat, of hot kebab sauce dripping down his fingers during Saturday afternoons in Itaewon.
In a maddening loop, Seungri’s thoughts snap back to Jiyong-hyung. He sort of wants to send a text - ‘im fine’ - but the truth is he’s not and there’s no way to tell when he’ll be out of here.
Seungri watches as the fat man hungrily waits for the minute hand to strike the twelve. He then proceeds to raise himself from his seat - painfully, dragging his flesh out of the chair - and he mockingly smiles at Seungri, waves limply.
“Please wait here, dear passenger,” he says, insisting on the tacky politeness of the expression. “My subordinate should arrive in no time.”
Seungri glares hatefully at his back when the cop leaves. On the desk, his passport lies open on the photo page and his seventeen-year-old self doesn’t smile at the camera, like he knows what’s happening already.
At seventeen Seungri was in high school and doing his best to be invisible since he couldn’t be someone - he had tried. Jiyong-hyung was his sunbae; he smoked and dyed his hair. Seungri used to hate him with all his might because they were neighbors and since kindergarten, they had walked home together from school. But while Seungri always got shoved and tripped in doorways, Jiyong-hyung, as weird and inherently out of place as he looked, could prance around the place like he owned it and no one would bat an eyelash. Worse, it was like people actually admired him.
Seungri waited for high school to end and eventually grew out of this phase, with American beats in his ears and avidly waiting for the first notes of his future.
“Good evening!”
That must be the subordinate. He’s noticeably younger and slimmer for one and he’s got that enthusiastic expression only young Japanese cops can muster. This one is particularly cheerful, like he doesn’t care it’s late already and he’s going to be spending a lot of time in this tiny room where the only decoration is the map yellowing on the wall.
“’evening,” Seungri says.
The cop’s nametag reads a jumble of kanjis he can’t be bothered to decipher. It doesn’t seem to matter, since the cop is already introducing himself: “I’m Narimiya!”, bowing hurriedly and flinging his hand across the desk. Seungri stares at it for a second before shaking it hesitantly.
“Lee Seungri,” he says at last.
It’s not his real name but no one calls him Seunghyun anymore, since Seunghyun can only refer to Jiyong-hyung’s best friend.
“You’ll be Seungri,” Jiyong-hyung had smiled. “It’s easier that way.”
People started calling him that too and never stopped.
Narimiya makes them both a cup of coffee, saying that it’ll probably be a long night; Seungri isn’t even in the mood to protest anymore.
“It’s something about your visa,” the cop explains. “Err- I’m not really smart so I can’t exactly tell, but don’t worry, you’ll be free by morning!”
He grins sunnily and hands Seungri steaming coffee in a sake cup.
“Thanks.”
Narimiya takes a sip of his and sighs:
“Man, what a drag… I had promised my wife to be home early tonight!”
Seungri can’t help but note:
“You’re married?”
Shit, he berates himself, what was that for? It’s not like he cares. He doesn’t.
“Yeah,” Narimiya says, shrugging a little, with this kind of typical embarrassed smile Seungri is starting to associate with Tokyo. “I am. Second year, first kid, you know?”
Seungri takes a quick look at his third finger. Sure enough, there’s a band of silver there. With a shiver, Seungri remembers how deep a gash his father’s ring had cut in his cheek once, on a warm summer morning. There was orange juice and it was a commercial-perfect family breakfast but Seungri clashed with the picture. He hadn’t come home on the night before and had showed up on that Sunday morning feeling at the same time relieved - at least he knew, he was sure of who he was - and scared to death. The future had just become much darker.
Their barely existent conversation withers down to a stop and eventually Narimiya makes an attempt at freshening it up by saying:
“So. You’re from Korea?”
“Yeah,” Seungri says. “Business trip.”
Narimiya nods thoughtfully.
“Business trip, huh? That’s good, right? Good…”
“Yeah,” Seungri says. “You get to travel.”
He thinks of Jiyong-hyung’s moods whenever they go on trips and how everyone’s eager to please him.
“Fancy hotels?” Narimiya wants to know.
“We’re staying at the Hyatt. In Roppongi.”
Narimiya laughs, that’s good, he repeats, and makes a vague comment about lucky businessmen. “I live in this minuscule apartment in the suburbs. Our living room window opens on the next building.”
This, Seungri can relate to. “In Seoul, I live with my mother in two tiny rooms.”
“The Hyatt must feel even nicer,” Narimiya says.
“Well… yeah.”
It’s not so much the comfort of the suites Jiyong-hyung insists on booking, rather than the dizzying feeling of freedom that Seungri gets whenever he’s in Japan. This sensation of falling slowly into a comfortable, new skin, it’s like he gets to inhabit a brand new chrysalis each time he comes to this country. A multicolored painted shell of lights, smoke and pleasure that no one gets to take from him.
“I had a friend, like you, you know?” Narimiya’s thoughts seem to be slowly rolling in every direction. Sideway glance. “Korean.” He detaches the syllables: ‘kan-ko-ku-jin’, thoughtfully. “You couldn’t notice it, though.” He looks at Seungri. “With you, it’s the same. You can’t notice it.”
There’s the brief sensation of being chilled to the bone. Seungri doesn’t quite know what to make of it.
“You don’t have any accent,” Narimiya says after a pause.
“Well- I watch a lot of TV.”
They talk about baseball and football and music and eventually the conversation lands on girl groups.
“Ah,” Narimiya sighs. “I like Shoujo Jidai - they’re from your country, right? Really sexy.”
At work, So Nyoe Shi Dae is the only topic running in the coffee break room; it’s all talks of legs and short skirts and cleavages. Seungri avoids the place like the plague; he doesn’t like to mingle with secretaries and accountants. He doesn’t like the taste of instant coffee or the smell of old garlic from the lunch boxes the girls bring to the office.
“What about Morning Musume?” Seungri wants to know, because he has sort of a soft spot for them. “They’re cute, aren’t they?”
“MoruMusu are cute, that’s true, but I don’t really get this ‘wow’ feeling when I watch them.” Narimiya makes an exploding motion with his hands, then purses his lips thoughtfully. “Shoujo Jidai, though, that ‘Mister Taxi’ video…”
Seungri shifts in his seat.
When he stares at Narimiya’s profile he sees thick lips, a straight nose, laughter lines at the corner of his eyes. His hair has been awkwardly combed to a side probably in an effort to meet service regulations. Somehow, he reminds Seungri of countless faces, an endless string of men he’s met: the people he hides from the world with, the people he doesn’t dare openly like.
Seungri distracts himself with thoughts of Jiyong-hyung. He wonders if he’s gone to sleep yet or if he’s waiting for Seungri’s phone call.
“Can I call a friend?”
Narimiya nods immediately and pushes Seungri’s cellphone across the desk:
“Please, go ahead.”
Seungri counts three rings before Jiyong picks up, a short inhale at the other end of the line.
Jiyong ends up begrudgingly agreeing that Seungri will have to take a cab home and he promises to have the company pay the fare back.
“G’night, hyung,” Seungri says when he hangs up.
Narimiya is staring at him thoughtfully:
“That’s a beautiful language.”
This time, it makes a knot of heat unravel in Seungri’s lower belly.
“Hyung,” the cop says, “that’s like- ‘senpai’?”
“Sort of. Somewhere between ‘senpai’ and ‘aniki’, I guess. You know Korean?”
“I told you. I had a friend.”
There stare at each other in silence for a while.
“He’s my boss in the company and he came with me on this trip,” Seungri finally explains. “I told him to leave without me, that I’d call.”
Narimiya nods, his shoulders relaxing a bit. “I had a senpai like this. I got into police school because of him. And then…” he smiles a bit self-deprecatingly, “he was moved to Central Tokyo, and I got here.”
Seungri’s breath is catching in his throat.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I wasn’t smart enough to make it to his level.”
Narimiya’s smile seems entirely carefree when he says this; he gets up from his chair and Seungri’s hackles raise as a reflex, but Narimiya only goes to the door and exchanges a few words with the customs official behind.
They give him back his coat and his papers and someone rolls his suitcase towards him.
“Here,” Narimiya says. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
He gives that rushed little bow, instantly mimicked by the rest of the airport employees, and his grin crooks around the edges as if to apologize for the formal, rigid atmosphere.
“It’s fine,” Seungri says. “Good luck with your wife and kid.”
“Thanks. Have a nice trip.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a rush of warm air as Seungri passes the automatic door, escaping icy air-conditioning to walk blissfully into summer heat.
Behind the window of the taxi Seungri watches as the car takes him, high above the ground, amongst the sleepy outskirts, to the chore of the city: the lights of his beloved Tokyo start to fade down as dawn rises; Seungri closes his eyes. He thinks of the nights when he’ll lie to Jiyong-hyung and slip out of his hotel room. He thinks of the streets he’ll walk through and the alcohol he’ll drink.
When Seungri opens his eyes again, the world looks blurry.