Xenophobia, Part 1
Title: Xenophobia (Part 1)
Pairing: Kyuhyun/Donghae
Author: Skipturnstep
Rating: R (for language)
Genre: Romance
Words: 3,342.
Summary: Sequel to Through Sickness and Health, post-Super Junior. Kyuhyun decides that moving to New York City was the biggest mistake of his life.
April 8th, 2014 was an ordinary day - it came and went like days tend to do. The sun rose in the east and set in the west just as it had for millions of years before and daily life continued like normal - people went to their nine-to-five dead-end in a cubicle and students went to school. It was not the coming of the Messiah, Armageddon did not arrive and no stock markets crashed.
Only ten people knew the significance of this day; it was the day that Super Junior decided to disband.
__________
While many of the members struggled to adjust to life sans Super Junior, many did not, although it was safe to say that it was definitely a life-altering time - Siwon’s first order of business was that he became a pastor and began devoting his time to charity work with children, while Heechul all but broke down and locked himself in his new apartment for two weeks, allowing no visitors and speaking only to his cats. Eunhyuk opened a dance studio in downtown Seoul, where Donghae and Shindong worked with him and Sungmin worked at a guitar store and, if the weather permitted, would sit outside the shop and play music for some extra cash in his pocket. Not long before Super Junior disbanded, Ryeowook came out and admitted that he and Henry had been having a relationship ever since Super Junior M debuted, and that he would be moving to Canada upon their disbanding. Kyuhyun became a professor at Kyunghee University, teaching Post-Modern Music and offering a math-tutoring service every Tuesday at four o’clock.
Donghae and Kyuhyun moved in together not long after the release of Super Junior’s fourth album; it was a nice apartment, two bedrooms and a bath. Donghae was surprised the day Kyuhyun mentioned getting an apartment together - Kyuhyun was the one who had said he wanted to take things slow not even a month earlier, but Donghae didn’t mind. After two years of consecutive dating - three years total, if you count the year before their break-up - Donghae had been waiting for the moment when things would be taken a step further.
Four years later, they were still together and functioning properly. Kyuhyun woke up before Donghae every morning at the crack of dawn, kissing Donghae on the forehead as he left for work with a pop tart in hand, and every day he would wonder why this one guy had so much emotional control over him. Donghae would sleep until nine - he quickly got used to not seeing Kyuhyun next to him in bed in the morning - and would be at the dance studio by ten. He worked every day with Eunhyuk, teaching two-hour hip hop classes three times a day, with thirty people in each class. Needless to say the pay was halfway decent.
Home life was easy for Kyuhyun and Donghae. The first one to arrive home was normally Kyuhyun, who would prepare dinner (just before moving out of the dorms, Kyuhyun had asked Ryeowook to teach him how to cook) for the two of them, then sit down and do that night’s homework.
Donghae would come home about an hour later and the first thing he would do was kiss Kyuhyun, then hopped in the shower and they would sit down to a nice meal (usually either kalbi or bi bim bop, because that was what Kyuhyun could cook best) and discuss their day. Kyuhyun’s biggest complaint was the kid that always tried to flirt with girls in the middle of class, thus disrupting the lecture, and the most Donghae would gripe over how one student always slowed the flow of the choreo.
Their nights were very simple as well; they would often just sit on the couch, Kyuhyun’s arm around Donghae, and watch cheesy romance movies and go to sleep. That is, except for one night a week, when they head into the city and hit up all of their old haunts, in chronological order - Namsan, then the N. Seoul Tower, a short stop at Myeong-dong, and then finished with a nice dinner of barbecue chicken and cheeseburgers at Bennigan’s. Often times when they returned home, they would lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, with Kyuhyun sliding his fingers up and down Donghae’s arm - which, more often than not, would lead to them making love, but that wasn’t the point.
__________
Despite the drama that surrounded him, Zhou Mi was still prominent in Kyuhyun’s life, but in a different way. With the release of Super Junior M’s mini album Super Girl, both Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi decided it was best for the group, if not each other, to at least pretend that they were friends; although, soon enough, they no longer had to pretend, and they truly were companions.
Donghae rightfully objected to this, which Kyuhyun had expected, but Zhou Mi stepped in and saved the day (“I will not lay a finger on your boyfriend as long as he doesn’t touch me first.”) It didn’t take long for the two to warm up to each other, much to Kyuhyun’s astonishment, and soon the three of them would meet up for lunch at Bennigan’s whenever Zhou Mi was in town, and when he was in Beijing, he and Kyuhyun would send emails to each other twice a week.
Kyuhyun was glad that Zhou Mi managed to stay in his life without having to be in a relationship with him - he valued Zhou Mi as a friend, a very good friend - someone who had seen him at both his best and his worst and still, for some unexplainable reason, stuck around.
“He still wants you,” Donghae said after their first luncheon together. “He still wants you bad.”
Kyuhyun could only chuckle. “How can you tell?”
“It’s the way he looks at you,” Donghae said as he took off his coat. “When he looks at you, he always looks like he wants to cry.”
Kyuhyun didn’t know what to say to this, so instead he kissed Donghae on the forehead and went to take a shower.
__________
“It’s amazing they still play this song on the radio.”
Kyuhyun was stuck in traffic, just like he always was every Thursday afternoon. That was the one day every week when his only class ended at eleven thirty, and he would meet Sungmin for lunch and would chat about any exciting events that would occur in their lives - usually, though, there weren’t any.
“What’s wrong with this song? It’s a classic,” Sungmin said, smacking away Kyuhyun’s hand from the dial and turning up the volume. “Lady Gaga is a genius - I mean, I want your love and I want your revenge? It’s so deep.”
“Yeah, if you’re a fourteen year old girl,” Kyuhyun flicked on his turn signal. “And besides, it sounds like she’s saying some sort of satanic chant.”
Sungmin ignored the comment. “How’s Donghae? You never talk about him.”
“There isn’t really much to say,” Kyuhyun glanced over at Sungmin momentarily. “We’re great, really. He’s got the dance studio with Shindong and Eunhyuk, and I guess they get a lot of people. He brings in good money, so I mean I can’t complain.”
“Not to mention it’s probably a lot more exciting than teaching bratty college students.”
Kyuhyun’s phone rang just then - Sungmin laughed at his ringtone, the Starcraft intro music - and the caller ID simply read, Hae.
Kyuhyun barely had time to press the phone to his ear before Donghae started talking. “Cho Kyuhyun, come home now.”
“Are you okay?” Kyuhyun could feel his pulse begin to race, thinking of all the worst case scenarios - someone died, the faucet broke, the apartment building burned down because he left a candle on - but that all washed away when Donghae laughed.
“I’m perfectly fine,” He was practically singing into the phone. “But we need to talk about something. Something really important.”
Kyuhyun was about to ask if he had time to bring Sungmin home, when Donghae hung up.
__________
Kyuhyun was surprised to see Donghae, Eunhyuk and Shindong sitting on the couch when he arrived home - almost as surprised as they were to see a Sungmin-looking figure in his possession. Kyuhyun rolled his eyes as the old friends greeted each other as if they hadn’t just seen each other last week, put his briefcase and jacket in his room and got into comfortable clothes. He found it bizarre how they always greeted Sungmin - as if he was some elusive being that never showed his face, when you could just walk by his guitar shop at any given time on a weekday and see him out front. As he walked into the living room, he could hear hushed whispers coming down the hall, words he couldn’t exactly decipher; the only thing he could clearly hear was “I hope he won’t be mad.”
“Mad about what?”
Donghae nearly jumped out of his skin, quite obviously not expecting his sudden return, and flashed one of his I don’t know what you’re talking about grins. Without a word, the other three backed off and sat down on the couch, allowing Kyuhyun to give Donghae his completely and undivided attention; it was then that Donghae regretted inviting them over.
Kyuhyun crossed his arms and repeated, this time with a little more force, “Mad about what?”
It made Kyuhyun’s pulse race when Donghae couldn’t look directly at him, which, in itself, was a feat - the way the older man avoided his line of vision, finding the floor much more fascinating caused numerous scenarios to flood Kyuhyun’s mind, all of which seemed ludicrous but at this point, highly possible.
“I, um,” Donghae wrung his hands together, practically curling into himself. “I got a call today...for a promotion.”
You can’t get a promotion, was Kyuhyun’s first thought. Unless Eunhyuk’s quitting, you can’t get a promotion.
He didn’t say this, though - it was more like, “I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“There’s this new singer...her name’s Giselle...Giselle something-!”
“Roux,” Eunhyuk chimed in.
“Roux, yeah,” Donghae cleared his throat. “She needs a choreographer, and they...um, they want me.”
Kyuhyun’s inability to comprehend the situation took thirty long seconds to finally fade away; the only thing he could say was, “She’s foreign.”
“Well...yeah, she’s in New York.”
Again, he didn’t get it, but it was only a matter of time; the way the four other people in the room stared at him in waiting, not to mention the growing anxiety that emitted from Donghae made the realization finally sink in. It was like the sudden burst of heat you get after biting into a jalapeno, and the way the voice in your head goes from saying oh, this is nothing to -
“Oh.”
__________
Once May came, Kyuhyun decided it was time to quit his job.
There was no point in keeping it, really. The school year was finally over, so it’s not like he would be doing much in the way of work anyway, and honestly he had other things he desperately needed to focus on at this point, things that weren’t essays about post-modern music or making up review sheets on the limits of functions.
Things Kyuhyun needed to focus on: learning the English language, handling his money more sufficiently, and surviving on only two cups of coffee.
“You know,” Donghae said one morning as he began to pack the living room décor into a large box. “If you want to survive in New York, you should probably learn how to survive with more caffeine in your system, not less.”
“That would be easy, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m already at the point where if I consume any more caffeine on a daily basis, I’m almost guaranteed to simply drop dead of cardiac arrest.”
Donghae grabbed all the candles off the mantelpiece, shoved them inside the box and smiled over to his boyfriend. “Maybe if one went to bed at a decent hour instead of playing Starcraft all night, that wouldn’t be a problem.”
Kyuhyun could only chuckle to himself, because what Donghae didn’t know was that it wasn’t Starcraft that was consuming the hours every night that could be spent asleep - it was the hours of browsing website after website, storing any shred of information in his brain. Things to do in New York City, places to eat, how much rent costs (he remembers waking Donghae up at this, screaming in his face, “You honestly expect me to pay four million won per month for an apartment in New York?”) and who exactly this Giselle Roux girl is. He couldn’t really find much on her, except really basic information: nineteen years old, born in Paris, moved to New York at the age of seven, plays the violin, blonde. She was discovered via Youtube, like most artists were this far in the twenty-first century, and she sounded like the lovechild of Lady Gaga and Mozart, which Kyuhyun wasn’t sure was good or bad.
__________
Gentleman 觅觅 is available.
Gamekyu: you.
Gentleman 觅觅: ^^ kuixian~ long time no talk!
Gamekyu: it’s been like two weeks.
Gentleman 觅觅: that’s a long time you know ;~~~;
Gamekyu: ...right. anyway, there’s something we need to talk about.
Gentleman 觅觅: talk? did I do something wrong? ;_;
Gamekyu: no, not you. Donghae got a promotion.
Gentleman 觅觅: i didn’t think he could get one, what with him...and eunhyuk. .-.
Gamekyu: neither did i. but he’s been hired by some up and coming singer in new york city.
Gentleman 觅觅: :O KUIXIAN~ that is such a big deal!! why don’t you sound excited D:
Gamekyu: because we’re moving.
Gentleman 觅觅: OOO where :D beijing i hope~
Gamekyu: ...no, mimi. New York. Because that’s where donghae’s job is.
Gamekyu: ...mimi?
Gentleman 觅觅: Q____Q YOU’RE LEAVING?!?!?!
Gamekyu: I don’t have a choice.
Gentleman 觅觅: will I be able to see you before you leave?
Kyuhyun stared at the computer screen, memorizing every word, turning the possibilities over in his head. He could ignore the message, pretend his internet connection conked out, and not speak to Zhou Mi until he was comfortably halfway around the world in a country he knows next to nothing about. He ran his fingers through his hair and replied with the only thing he could think of.
__________
Three weeks later, Kyuhyun was in unfamiliar territory. No longer did he have the comforts of the usual sights of Seoul, nor did he have his parents at his disposal on the outskirts of the city. He didn’t have Sungmin, Zhou Mi, or anyone else except for Donghae and a rather foul-tempered fat feline that went by the name of Elisa, who was Heechul’s parting gift to them.
New York was terrifying. It reminded him of Tokyo, except smelling more distinctly of over-fried pizza and sausages and there was a bizarre sickly sweet smell he couldn’t distinguish. He had his two suitcases behind him and the cat carrier, and he was desperately craving a cup of coffee and maybe a cigarette, although he wasn’t a smoker and never had been.
Their apartment was in between Times Square and the Empire State Building, which Donghae claimed “had a gorgeous view,” although their view out the window was quite similar to the view in Seoul - other buildings. It wasn’t a bad apartment, to say the least; it was spacious, had hardwood floors, a fireplace and your typical kitchen amenities, but it didn’t seem to be home.
“Well,” Donghae placed a box on the ground and gazed around the apartment. “At least the movers already brought the furniture.”
Later that night, Kyuhyun set up the wifi connection and sat on their (new, uncomfortable and bright orange) couch and checked his email, to find only one message, labeled simply kuixian.
“Dear Kuixian,
Q~Q come home.
Love,
Gentleman Mimi.”
Kyuhyun chuckled, didn’t bother replying and shut down his laptop, figuring that it wasn’t urgent enough to reply to immediately and went to bed.
__________
After sleeping for almost three days straight and finally getting his body to adjust to the new time zone, Kyuhyun figured it was time for him to look for a new job.
Well, to be more exact, it wasn’t his decision to go job hunting; it was more like, Elisa decided to scratch his face at seven-thirty that morning just as Donghae was headed off to his first day on the job, and after three hours of sitting around the apartment alone, Kyuhyun realized he was bored. He attempted to take advantage of their new free international calling on their landline phone, but was apparently ignorant to the fact that ten thirty AM in New York City was eleven thirty at night in Seoul, thus waking up an already-irritated Sungmin and had to listen to him gripe for an extra thirty minutes on learning time zones and the value of beauty sleep.
He managed to get himself presentable by noon and headed out into the city, his map (in Korean) of New York City in hand and a positive outlook in mind. This won’t be so bad, he thought to himself as he headed towards Times Square, it can’t be any worse than stuff I’ve already been through.
He didn’t realize how rude Americans sometimes tended to be. He stopped at literally every store on Broadway and seemed to be rejected by all of them - he was snubbed in Olive Garden, ignored in McDonald's and all the gift shops were so busy that it was impossible to get an employee’s attention long enough to ask for an application. Either that, or all the employees were terrifying.
By the time four o’clock rolled around, the only thing Kyuhyun had acquired was a stomach ache (he made a mental note: do not eat at the Sbarro’s in Times Square), one application from the M&M store, and had his picture taken with two fans who couldn’t stop asking why he was there.
Donghae was home when he got there, and from the look on his face, Kyuhyun could tell that his first day as Miss Giselle Roux’s main choreographer had gone rather swimmingly.
“I made spaghetti,” Donghae said as he set the kitchen table, and Kyuhyun realized it had been his night to cook.
“Shit, I’m sorry, Hae-!”
“Don’t worry about it,” Donghae smiled as he placed the bowl of spaghetti down on the table. “Where’ve you been?”
“Job hunting.”
“Any luck?”
“I got an application for a store that sells nothing but M&M’s. And I got a stomach ache.” He took a seat and began spooning spaghetti onto his plate as Donghae began to spill all the exciting details of his new job. Admittedly, Kyuhyun was only half-listening, nodding occasionally and responding at appropriate times, faintly picking out phrases such as she can’t dance to save her life, she’s really pretty though, and she sounds just like Lady Gaga when she sings.
“And she said that she wants me to sing on one of her songs, too!”
“Well, Hae, I’m really happy for you,” Kyuhyun said in monotone as he took a sip of his water; he could feel a piece of spaghetti caught in the back of his throat. “I’m glad this is working out for you.” He kissed Donghae on the forehead before putting his plate in the sink and wandering into the bedroom.
He opened his email again to find a message from Sungmin - an article on the pros and cons of getting a good night’s sleep. He deleted it before he even thought about reading it, and decided it was time to reply to Zhou Mi.
“Mi,
New york is weird. It smells like sugar all the time and the food is disgusting. People act like I don’t exist but Donghae seems to be enjoying it.
I want to come home.
Hope you’re well.
Kuixian.”
__________
End of part one.
Pairing: Kyuhyun/Donghae
Author: Skipturnstep
Rating: R (for language)
Genre: Romance
Words: 3,342.
Summary: Sequel to Through Sickness and Health, post-Super Junior. Kyuhyun decides that moving to New York City was the biggest mistake of his life.
April 8th, 2014 was an ordinary day - it came and went like days tend to do. The sun rose in the east and set in the west just as it had for millions of years before and daily life continued like normal - people went to their nine-to-five dead-end in a cubicle and students went to school. It was not the coming of the Messiah, Armageddon did not arrive and no stock markets crashed.
Only ten people knew the significance of this day; it was the day that Super Junior decided to disband.
__________
While many of the members struggled to adjust to life sans Super Junior, many did not, although it was safe to say that it was definitely a life-altering time - Siwon’s first order of business was that he became a pastor and began devoting his time to charity work with children, while Heechul all but broke down and locked himself in his new apartment for two weeks, allowing no visitors and speaking only to his cats. Eunhyuk opened a dance studio in downtown Seoul, where Donghae and Shindong worked with him and Sungmin worked at a guitar store and, if the weather permitted, would sit outside the shop and play music for some extra cash in his pocket. Not long before Super Junior disbanded, Ryeowook came out and admitted that he and Henry had been having a relationship ever since Super Junior M debuted, and that he would be moving to Canada upon their disbanding. Kyuhyun became a professor at Kyunghee University, teaching Post-Modern Music and offering a math-tutoring service every Tuesday at four o’clock.
Donghae and Kyuhyun moved in together not long after the release of Super Junior’s fourth album; it was a nice apartment, two bedrooms and a bath. Donghae was surprised the day Kyuhyun mentioned getting an apartment together - Kyuhyun was the one who had said he wanted to take things slow not even a month earlier, but Donghae didn’t mind. After two years of consecutive dating - three years total, if you count the year before their break-up - Donghae had been waiting for the moment when things would be taken a step further.
Four years later, they were still together and functioning properly. Kyuhyun woke up before Donghae every morning at the crack of dawn, kissing Donghae on the forehead as he left for work with a pop tart in hand, and every day he would wonder why this one guy had so much emotional control over him. Donghae would sleep until nine - he quickly got used to not seeing Kyuhyun next to him in bed in the morning - and would be at the dance studio by ten. He worked every day with Eunhyuk, teaching two-hour hip hop classes three times a day, with thirty people in each class. Needless to say the pay was halfway decent.
Home life was easy for Kyuhyun and Donghae. The first one to arrive home was normally Kyuhyun, who would prepare dinner (just before moving out of the dorms, Kyuhyun had asked Ryeowook to teach him how to cook) for the two of them, then sit down and do that night’s homework.
Donghae would come home about an hour later and the first thing he would do was kiss Kyuhyun, then hopped in the shower and they would sit down to a nice meal (usually either kalbi or bi bim bop, because that was what Kyuhyun could cook best) and discuss their day. Kyuhyun’s biggest complaint was the kid that always tried to flirt with girls in the middle of class, thus disrupting the lecture, and the most Donghae would gripe over how one student always slowed the flow of the choreo.
Their nights were very simple as well; they would often just sit on the couch, Kyuhyun’s arm around Donghae, and watch cheesy romance movies and go to sleep. That is, except for one night a week, when they head into the city and hit up all of their old haunts, in chronological order - Namsan, then the N. Seoul Tower, a short stop at Myeong-dong, and then finished with a nice dinner of barbecue chicken and cheeseburgers at Bennigan’s. Often times when they returned home, they would lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, with Kyuhyun sliding his fingers up and down Donghae’s arm - which, more often than not, would lead to them making love, but that wasn’t the point.
__________
Despite the drama that surrounded him, Zhou Mi was still prominent in Kyuhyun’s life, but in a different way. With the release of Super Junior M’s mini album Super Girl, both Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi decided it was best for the group, if not each other, to at least pretend that they were friends; although, soon enough, they no longer had to pretend, and they truly were companions.
Donghae rightfully objected to this, which Kyuhyun had expected, but Zhou Mi stepped in and saved the day (“I will not lay a finger on your boyfriend as long as he doesn’t touch me first.”) It didn’t take long for the two to warm up to each other, much to Kyuhyun’s astonishment, and soon the three of them would meet up for lunch at Bennigan’s whenever Zhou Mi was in town, and when he was in Beijing, he and Kyuhyun would send emails to each other twice a week.
Kyuhyun was glad that Zhou Mi managed to stay in his life without having to be in a relationship with him - he valued Zhou Mi as a friend, a very good friend - someone who had seen him at both his best and his worst and still, for some unexplainable reason, stuck around.
“He still wants you,” Donghae said after their first luncheon together. “He still wants you bad.”
Kyuhyun could only chuckle. “How can you tell?”
“It’s the way he looks at you,” Donghae said as he took off his coat. “When he looks at you, he always looks like he wants to cry.”
Kyuhyun didn’t know what to say to this, so instead he kissed Donghae on the forehead and went to take a shower.
__________
“It’s amazing they still play this song on the radio.”
Kyuhyun was stuck in traffic, just like he always was every Thursday afternoon. That was the one day every week when his only class ended at eleven thirty, and he would meet Sungmin for lunch and would chat about any exciting events that would occur in their lives - usually, though, there weren’t any.
“What’s wrong with this song? It’s a classic,” Sungmin said, smacking away Kyuhyun’s hand from the dial and turning up the volume. “Lady Gaga is a genius - I mean, I want your love and I want your revenge? It’s so deep.”
“Yeah, if you’re a fourteen year old girl,” Kyuhyun flicked on his turn signal. “And besides, it sounds like she’s saying some sort of satanic chant.”
Sungmin ignored the comment. “How’s Donghae? You never talk about him.”
“There isn’t really much to say,” Kyuhyun glanced over at Sungmin momentarily. “We’re great, really. He’s got the dance studio with Shindong and Eunhyuk, and I guess they get a lot of people. He brings in good money, so I mean I can’t complain.”
“Not to mention it’s probably a lot more exciting than teaching bratty college students.”
Kyuhyun’s phone rang just then - Sungmin laughed at his ringtone, the Starcraft intro music - and the caller ID simply read, Hae.
Kyuhyun barely had time to press the phone to his ear before Donghae started talking. “Cho Kyuhyun, come home now.”
“Are you okay?” Kyuhyun could feel his pulse begin to race, thinking of all the worst case scenarios - someone died, the faucet broke, the apartment building burned down because he left a candle on - but that all washed away when Donghae laughed.
“I’m perfectly fine,” He was practically singing into the phone. “But we need to talk about something. Something really important.”
Kyuhyun was about to ask if he had time to bring Sungmin home, when Donghae hung up.
__________
Kyuhyun was surprised to see Donghae, Eunhyuk and Shindong sitting on the couch when he arrived home - almost as surprised as they were to see a Sungmin-looking figure in his possession. Kyuhyun rolled his eyes as the old friends greeted each other as if they hadn’t just seen each other last week, put his briefcase and jacket in his room and got into comfortable clothes. He found it bizarre how they always greeted Sungmin - as if he was some elusive being that never showed his face, when you could just walk by his guitar shop at any given time on a weekday and see him out front. As he walked into the living room, he could hear hushed whispers coming down the hall, words he couldn’t exactly decipher; the only thing he could clearly hear was “I hope he won’t be mad.”
“Mad about what?”
Donghae nearly jumped out of his skin, quite obviously not expecting his sudden return, and flashed one of his I don’t know what you’re talking about grins. Without a word, the other three backed off and sat down on the couch, allowing Kyuhyun to give Donghae his completely and undivided attention; it was then that Donghae regretted inviting them over.
Kyuhyun crossed his arms and repeated, this time with a little more force, “Mad about what?”
It made Kyuhyun’s pulse race when Donghae couldn’t look directly at him, which, in itself, was a feat - the way the older man avoided his line of vision, finding the floor much more fascinating caused numerous scenarios to flood Kyuhyun’s mind, all of which seemed ludicrous but at this point, highly possible.
“I, um,” Donghae wrung his hands together, practically curling into himself. “I got a call today...for a promotion.”
You can’t get a promotion, was Kyuhyun’s first thought. Unless Eunhyuk’s quitting, you can’t get a promotion.
He didn’t say this, though - it was more like, “I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“There’s this new singer...her name’s Giselle...Giselle something-!”
“Roux,” Eunhyuk chimed in.
“Roux, yeah,” Donghae cleared his throat. “She needs a choreographer, and they...um, they want me.”
Kyuhyun’s inability to comprehend the situation took thirty long seconds to finally fade away; the only thing he could say was, “She’s foreign.”
“Well...yeah, she’s in New York.”
Again, he didn’t get it, but it was only a matter of time; the way the four other people in the room stared at him in waiting, not to mention the growing anxiety that emitted from Donghae made the realization finally sink in. It was like the sudden burst of heat you get after biting into a jalapeno, and the way the voice in your head goes from saying oh, this is nothing to -
“Oh.”
__________
Once May came, Kyuhyun decided it was time to quit his job.
There was no point in keeping it, really. The school year was finally over, so it’s not like he would be doing much in the way of work anyway, and honestly he had other things he desperately needed to focus on at this point, things that weren’t essays about post-modern music or making up review sheets on the limits of functions.
Things Kyuhyun needed to focus on: learning the English language, handling his money more sufficiently, and surviving on only two cups of coffee.
“You know,” Donghae said one morning as he began to pack the living room décor into a large box. “If you want to survive in New York, you should probably learn how to survive with more caffeine in your system, not less.”
“That would be easy, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m already at the point where if I consume any more caffeine on a daily basis, I’m almost guaranteed to simply drop dead of cardiac arrest.”
Donghae grabbed all the candles off the mantelpiece, shoved them inside the box and smiled over to his boyfriend. “Maybe if one went to bed at a decent hour instead of playing Starcraft all night, that wouldn’t be a problem.”
Kyuhyun could only chuckle to himself, because what Donghae didn’t know was that it wasn’t Starcraft that was consuming the hours every night that could be spent asleep - it was the hours of browsing website after website, storing any shred of information in his brain. Things to do in New York City, places to eat, how much rent costs (he remembers waking Donghae up at this, screaming in his face, “You honestly expect me to pay four million won per month for an apartment in New York?”) and who exactly this Giselle Roux girl is. He couldn’t really find much on her, except really basic information: nineteen years old, born in Paris, moved to New York at the age of seven, plays the violin, blonde. She was discovered via Youtube, like most artists were this far in the twenty-first century, and she sounded like the lovechild of Lady Gaga and Mozart, which Kyuhyun wasn’t sure was good or bad.
__________
Gentleman 觅觅 is available.
Gamekyu: you.
Gentleman 觅觅: ^^ kuixian~ long time no talk!
Gamekyu: it’s been like two weeks.
Gentleman 觅觅: that’s a long time you know ;~~~;
Gamekyu: ...right. anyway, there’s something we need to talk about.
Gentleman 觅觅: talk? did I do something wrong? ;_;
Gamekyu: no, not you. Donghae got a promotion.
Gentleman 觅觅: i didn’t think he could get one, what with him...and eunhyuk. .-.
Gamekyu: neither did i. but he’s been hired by some up and coming singer in new york city.
Gentleman 觅觅: :O KUIXIAN~ that is such a big deal!! why don’t you sound excited D:
Gamekyu: because we’re moving.
Gentleman 觅觅: OOO where :D beijing i hope~
Gamekyu: ...no, mimi. New York. Because that’s where donghae’s job is.
Gamekyu: ...mimi?
Gentleman 觅觅: Q____Q YOU’RE LEAVING?!?!?!
Gamekyu: I don’t have a choice.
Gentleman 觅觅: will I be able to see you before you leave?
Kyuhyun stared at the computer screen, memorizing every word, turning the possibilities over in his head. He could ignore the message, pretend his internet connection conked out, and not speak to Zhou Mi until he was comfortably halfway around the world in a country he knows next to nothing about. He ran his fingers through his hair and replied with the only thing he could think of.
__________
Three weeks later, Kyuhyun was in unfamiliar territory. No longer did he have the comforts of the usual sights of Seoul, nor did he have his parents at his disposal on the outskirts of the city. He didn’t have Sungmin, Zhou Mi, or anyone else except for Donghae and a rather foul-tempered fat feline that went by the name of Elisa, who was Heechul’s parting gift to them.
New York was terrifying. It reminded him of Tokyo, except smelling more distinctly of over-fried pizza and sausages and there was a bizarre sickly sweet smell he couldn’t distinguish. He had his two suitcases behind him and the cat carrier, and he was desperately craving a cup of coffee and maybe a cigarette, although he wasn’t a smoker and never had been.
Their apartment was in between Times Square and the Empire State Building, which Donghae claimed “had a gorgeous view,” although their view out the window was quite similar to the view in Seoul - other buildings. It wasn’t a bad apartment, to say the least; it was spacious, had hardwood floors, a fireplace and your typical kitchen amenities, but it didn’t seem to be home.
“Well,” Donghae placed a box on the ground and gazed around the apartment. “At least the movers already brought the furniture.”
Later that night, Kyuhyun set up the wifi connection and sat on their (new, uncomfortable and bright orange) couch and checked his email, to find only one message, labeled simply kuixian.
“Dear Kuixian,
Q~Q come home.
Love,
Gentleman Mimi.”
Kyuhyun chuckled, didn’t bother replying and shut down his laptop, figuring that it wasn’t urgent enough to reply to immediately and went to bed.
__________
After sleeping for almost three days straight and finally getting his body to adjust to the new time zone, Kyuhyun figured it was time for him to look for a new job.
Well, to be more exact, it wasn’t his decision to go job hunting; it was more like, Elisa decided to scratch his face at seven-thirty that morning just as Donghae was headed off to his first day on the job, and after three hours of sitting around the apartment alone, Kyuhyun realized he was bored. He attempted to take advantage of their new free international calling on their landline phone, but was apparently ignorant to the fact that ten thirty AM in New York City was eleven thirty at night in Seoul, thus waking up an already-irritated Sungmin and had to listen to him gripe for an extra thirty minutes on learning time zones and the value of beauty sleep.
He managed to get himself presentable by noon and headed out into the city, his map (in Korean) of New York City in hand and a positive outlook in mind. This won’t be so bad, he thought to himself as he headed towards Times Square, it can’t be any worse than stuff I’ve already been through.
He didn’t realize how rude Americans sometimes tended to be. He stopped at literally every store on Broadway and seemed to be rejected by all of them - he was snubbed in Olive Garden, ignored in McDonald's and all the gift shops were so busy that it was impossible to get an employee’s attention long enough to ask for an application. Either that, or all the employees were terrifying.
By the time four o’clock rolled around, the only thing Kyuhyun had acquired was a stomach ache (he made a mental note: do not eat at the Sbarro’s in Times Square), one application from the M&M store, and had his picture taken with two fans who couldn’t stop asking why he was there.
Donghae was home when he got there, and from the look on his face, Kyuhyun could tell that his first day as Miss Giselle Roux’s main choreographer had gone rather swimmingly.
“I made spaghetti,” Donghae said as he set the kitchen table, and Kyuhyun realized it had been his night to cook.
“Shit, I’m sorry, Hae-!”
“Don’t worry about it,” Donghae smiled as he placed the bowl of spaghetti down on the table. “Where’ve you been?”
“Job hunting.”
“Any luck?”
“I got an application for a store that sells nothing but M&M’s. And I got a stomach ache.” He took a seat and began spooning spaghetti onto his plate as Donghae began to spill all the exciting details of his new job. Admittedly, Kyuhyun was only half-listening, nodding occasionally and responding at appropriate times, faintly picking out phrases such as she can’t dance to save her life, she’s really pretty though, and she sounds just like Lady Gaga when she sings.
“And she said that she wants me to sing on one of her songs, too!”
“Well, Hae, I’m really happy for you,” Kyuhyun said in monotone as he took a sip of his water; he could feel a piece of spaghetti caught in the back of his throat. “I’m glad this is working out for you.” He kissed Donghae on the forehead before putting his plate in the sink and wandering into the bedroom.
He opened his email again to find a message from Sungmin - an article on the pros and cons of getting a good night’s sleep. He deleted it before he even thought about reading it, and decided it was time to reply to Zhou Mi.
“Mi,
New york is weird. It smells like sugar all the time and the food is disgusting. People act like I don’t exist but Donghae seems to be enjoying it.
I want to come home.
Hope you’re well.
Kuixian.”
__________
End of part one.