be my romeo, please be my voice in this world

[boomvox]

Who: Jae and various people.
What: Various activities.
Where: Various places.
When: ... Various times.
Notes: Thread starters for a couple of characters! Otherwise feel free to fling anybody at Jae, I am easy. If you want to work out something specific vs meandering, ping me and I shall work something out for you. :>
Warnings: Various threads have simulated drug use + references to real drug use, and TMI discussions.

Jae is not, in any kind of traditional sense, a celebrity in Baedal - he'd even hesitate to call himself particularly well-known, though since the crisis and his work on the radio, the general public would have to disagree. Percentage-wise he's more famous here than he was back home (D-list radio host and DJ, a cult following and niche celebrity at best), and while it's working out fine in terms of career opportunities, he can't shake the melancholy of being primarily known for something quite so dire. When people recognize him, more often than not it's polite appreciation masking the horror of memory that he triggers.

A girl at the coffee shop he frequents offers him a wasabi and chocolate candy cane. It's horrible, but he eats it anyway, the curled end of the bright green candy sticking out of his mouth as he descends off the train, laptop bag slung over his shoulder, leaf of fliers in his arms, heading off to a printer shop. And then - the world! it's a day for running errands.

Comments

[yeouiju]

(Hiking.)

Okay :) I'll check my shifts.

He is not, as it turns out, completely informed as to Jae's hiking related pearl clutching, but probably won't feel too bad about it unless the other man literally has a heart attack. Sunny hesitates anyway, teeth against his bottom lip, and he twists to observe the time. It is not yet dinner, but--

But do you want to go to that place we keep saying we'll go to tonight? If you arent busy.

[boomvox]

I'd love to. I don't have work until midnight.

In the midst of the giddy panic of Did he just ask me out to dinner?! there is one lingering--

Did you oppa me?

[yeouiju]

opPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaa~

no

And that works out, I don't sleep until around then.

When he does, anyway. He's already moving as he texts, drifting towards where he keeps clothing, because he's going to worry about it for a good ten minutes more than usual.

[boomvox]

Nuna :)

8pm?

A hundred bad pickup lines exist in Jae's head.

He withholds.

[yeouiju]

Not many exist in Sunny's-- there was probably a missed opportunity when Jae asked if Sunny oppa'd him-- but this seems to be working.

;)

C u @ 8.

Sunny is prone to getting places first; his bike is tied up outside the restaurant. Spit Hearth is a fair trek from Chimer, even by bike, but as long as the bike isn't complaining, Sunny isn't either. He checked himself for dirt in the bathroom after finding a table, but biking through Baedal is different from biking through a city choked with traffic, a thing he is glad for.

He is in the customary assortment of jeans and flashy T-shirt, with exception to the satin-backed waistcoat, the somewhat informal kind you find in a second hand store, a smiley face pin through a button hole. The smells and the language both coming from the kitchen are familiar in a visceral sort of way.

[boomvox]

Jae tends to be punctual, and between the evening El Train rush hour and the amount of prep he puts into his appearance before work, it's impressive he manages to get there as sharply on time as he does. Dressed in black with tiny chrome and colored details here and there, Jae's neon hair is styled perfectly, and he's carrying a garment bag with him - presumably whatever coat he'll be wearing tonight at The Vault; he'd be overdressed with it on at dinner.

A few of the girls working at the restaurant recognize him immediately - not from his pseudo-celebrity but from having been in enough times to be known as a regular, and a native speaker at that. He's greeted enthusiastically by the hostess and an older woman who comes out from the kitchen, and he chats with them a bit before excusing himself to slink over to where Sunny is, though it's obvious they'll be visited by an employee or two before the night is over.

"Hey," he greets, smile on his face. "You look great."

[yeouiju]

"Thank you," Sunny says almost too easily, bright and entirely un-self-conscious. His hands are folded on the table after propping up his chin watching the window and then watching Jae course his way inside. "So do you."

He hasn't actually visited Jae at the Vault-- in fact, Sunny hasn't gone to the Vault, and mostly because he doesn't actually possess anything that would qualify him as overdressed for dinner. Yet. But he likes to think it resembles this, the easy interaction, and the easy attention, whether it be with high rollers or dedicated Korean cooks he sees all the time.

"Handsomely masculine even," he adds, picking up a menu that obscures his own grin.

[boomvox]

In the process of tucking his garment bag against a chair he won't be sitting in, Jae makes a little half-embarrassed pause and if he wasn't as in control of himself as he is, he might have turned red a bit. "Sorry," he says, sheepish. "I didn't go stalking, I swear." But he knows the mermaid a bit and he'd held up a Korean name, and... then he felt too shy to say anything, but anyway. He sits down.

This - dinner - seems better, feels safer, than having Sunny come see him at work at an erotica venue. Jae's not sure what he'd do, there. (...He's thought about it though.) He picks at the corner of a menu.

"Sometimes if I really focus when I'm in here, I forget it's not Earth." A little noisy, 70s Korean ballads, everything smelling like red pepper paste.

[yeouiju]

"You didn't need to go stalking to see it," he assures, lowering menu down enough so that grin can shine through. Jae should not be sorry, is what it says, and Sunny darts a look down to familiar names, familiar ingredients, the Hangul printed along side the English alphabet.

The sentiment makes milder his smile. "Sometimes I wonder if that isn't weird? Existence across dimensions and galaxies feels like it should be too big for a little Korean restaurant to make it just for us. Ooh, look at these." Because discussing the vastness of the universe, where the scale of time means worlds can be unmade in the blind of an eye, whole civilisations reduced to 5 mm of archaeological dust with a few apocalyptic shakes and shudders, can be derailed at the promise of certain Korean barbecue dishes.

It is, after all, a date. "What do they do best here?"

[boomvox]

"I think it's all right," he says, a little soft - and apparently deciding to accept Sunny's reassurances about stalking. "Everyone else gets a hundred things that look like California or London. There should be at least this, what with how they borrowed the name."

Jae lays his menu down flat so he can point at it, curling the edge of one page and then smoothing it out, displaying the appetizers. "I like everything," of course, "but they do grilled intestines for starters, and it's just. Perfect. No one ever even served that in Manhattan, when I lived there." And that city has the most ex-patriot Koreans outside of the motherland in the world.

[yeouiju]

"Oh, I think it's weird for California and London too," Sunny says, without looking up from the menu. It occurs to him only then that maybe he missed a cue to replace his facetious James Bond story with more reality, but he thinks, perhaps, it was a pretty glorious mental image, and also that they could at least order first. "Weirder, maybe. But you're right. If Earth's going to be repeated over and over, in a place called Baedal--"

Then there had may as well be some BBQ. His smile widens briefly, looking up to watch Jae advocate for menu items, leaning to look where there is pointing. "Then I might get that and then the steamed tofu noodle thing. Or just give into my carniverous ways and order the bulgogi."

[boomvox]

Jae, if he was more aware of it, would realize Baedal's changed him in ways he hasn't recognized yet; in London he'd be suspicious of Sunny over his name, but here, he's written it off as a nickname. Maybe Sunny just didn't want to submit his address and social security number to a multiversal kidnap city.

"I'm going to get everything," he says serenely, and then beams up at the waitress (whose skin is blue, though her accent is well-learned Seoul, from her mother). Jae does, in fact, order a potentially alarming amount of food, but Sunny should be used to that by now. In daily settings, Jae is as fussy about calories as the next person with an entertainment industry career, but presented with freshly prepared meat and that goes out the window. Bulgogi, gopchang, the boiled whole fish that comes with tofu pots - he will inhale all of that. Happily.

And some soda.

[yeouiju]

Sunny matches this indulgence if on a slightly lesser scale, but varied platters, sides in ceramic and metal, things to share as well as to eat whole. Some sort of short-glassed cocktail as well, full of ice and herbs, and not because he requires booze with his food, but mostly to mark the occasion in some gesture of legitimacy.

"I see now why they love you so much," he states, brightly, a tip of his head towards the kitchens.

[boomvox]

He smiles at Sunny with a cocktail and him without, and inches his soda glass towards the other's, a shy toast. For all his dancefloor swagger, Jae has not been on many dates. (He has not been on any dates. Not real ones that were meant for something besides strategizing his way into someone's pants and then out the door again.)

"I love them too." He can't spread out his patronage, in Baedal. It's this restaurant or cooking it all himself, and that would be a sad state.

His free hand, forearm resting on the edge of the table, moves, then - the back of his index finger brushing against the side of Sunny's hand, a tiny echo of when he'd grabbed it desperately weeks ago.

[yeouiju]

Toast answered, Sunny has his drink up to his face when that touch registers, and Jae can see his smile widen all the more even as he completes his sip, setting the glass back down. His fingers sort of twitch up fractionally to rest the tips of them against Jae's knuckles in like but definitive gesture.

Hi.

"As long as it's an inclusive affair," he says, "because I might have to come here a lot too."

[boomvox]

Jae raises his hand, splays his fingers just enough to link with Sunny's. While they've been drowning in books and note-taking and tedious research, he's wanted to, in fleeting moments, but it seemed inappropriate and he wasn't - well, sure about it. About anything. Now it seems okay, if a little childish. That's okay.

"We might have to switch to takeout, you're too cute to share, I think."

(He's going to warm up to horrible lines, Sunny. Run while you can.)

[yeouiju]

That was pretty good though, and he gives what would sound like an abashed laugh if Sunny was capable of being sincerely abashed, which by now, Jae might know to be untrue. His hand settles easily and relaxedly into the tangle that he doesn't actually remember to affect self-consciousness.

Baedal works on different rules, anyway, or so he likes to think. "I think I could be okay with that," he says through a bright grin. "Also I don't want you to never cook for me again."

[boomvox]

That Sunny lacks that ingrained insecurity all people have in degrees at first made Jae uneasy; there's something coded into humans in modern society, in the way they interact, that makes mutual fear comforting in its familiarity. Everyone gets awkward, everyone postures to cover up for nervousness. Except Sunny, who smiles, and seems sincere instead of vacant. When he smiles, Jae feels a little bit like he did watching him hack up that monster.

Safe.

And then-

"Hopefully that's not all you want me to heat up for you, though."

/slide

[yeouiju]

Nooo. This time there is a cringe to Sunny's laugh, but it's friendly teasing, head flopping down into free hand and smile at that easy crescent white. Perhaps the only true ode to self-consciousness is being aware of the boundaries that people have, and it plays easily into the fact that Sunny likes people who like him; they also make clear things like boundaries.

Handholding and bad pick up lines. "I'll think of one or two things," he counters immediately. "You know you're meant to say things like that before you take people out to dinner."