Title: At sea in the same drunken boat
Fandom: The Time of Fever/Unintentional Love Story
Rating: G
Length: 2k words
Notes: OMC, Outside POV, Pining, Alcohol, New Friendships, University Setting.
Summary: When Sunwoo first met Kim Donghee, they were both very drunk.




When Sunwoo first met Kim Donghee, they were both very drunk.

Sunwoo had been out with his roommate, Youngjae, and about twenty of their loudest, most boisterous classmates, celebrating Youngjae’s birthday. In theory, they should have come back to the university as a group, but around nine o’clock someone inevitably suggested karaoke, and Sunwoo knew that if he spent any more time with these happy, laughing, all-probably-straight people tonight, he was going to get so secretly miserable and angry that he’d give in and call his ex.

He definitely couldn’t do that. Never again. He’d left Minjun for a reason. So he pleaded a headache, zipped his phone firmly into his inside jacket pocket, and reeled off back to the dorms alone, via a convenient convenience store.

There were still a couple of hours till curfew. The night was pleasantly warm, and the air quality was good for the time of year. Students thronged around the streets near the university, amid flurries of falling cherry blossom petals, taking group selfies and cheerfully debating weighty topics like politics, philosophy, future job prospects, and the merits of fried chicken versus grilled pork belly. On campus, half a dozen were even holding a late-night study group on the lawn by the engineering school. So diligent. So studious.

The sight of their heads bent over their books, haloed by the glow from the lamps that lined the path, made Sunwoo feel like a woozy alien. Wow, he was drunk.

As if to prove his point, when he reached the top of a set of shallow steps, he somehow tripped over how own feet and stumbled into a fat metal lamppost with a clang. He managed to hook an arm around it rather than bouncing off to faceplant on the pavement and probably break his nose. But still, the impact was going to leave bruises.

The violent lurch had broken something loose from its moorings, too. His heart ricocheted around his ribcage. The soju and beer in his system sloshed messily. That was it. He should definitely call Minjun now. Minjun needed to know Sunwoo had survived this dangerous incident. He needed to hear about the bruises. Sunwoo patted his pockets to locate where he’d hidden his phone from himself, took it out—

And finally registered the startled squawk that had come from his knees.

“Who’s there?” said Sunwoo.

The voice from his knees echoed him. “Who’s there?”

“I nearly fell over.” Carefully, with both hands on the lamppost for balance, Sunwoo lowered himself into a crouch and leaned around. A figure was sitting with his back against the other side of the very same post.

It was a student. A guy, with floppy curling hair and a nice face. He had his knees bent up, which gave him a huddled air, and he’d leaned his head back, squinting blearily up into the lamplight to see Sunwoo.

There was a lit phone screen in his hand.

“Were you going to call someone?” asked Sunwoo, accusing and probably too loud. “Don’t. You can’t.”

“I know, all right? I’m not going to,” the guy mumbled.

It wasn’t hard to decipher. Mournful and drunk was Sunwoo’s language. It was like talking to himself. Ah, that was it, then—Fate had externalised his problem so he could scold himself. “If you call, it’ll just make it worse. Missing them, I mean.”

The guy tipped his head back further to look at Sunwoo, and nearly fell sideways onto the ground. In a gust of alcohol fumes, he said, “Who are you?”

“Me? Kang Sunwoo, first year business studies. You?”

“Kim Donghee, first year medicine,” said the guy, frowning. “Do you know me?”

“We just met,” explained Sunwoo. Kim Donghee must be thoroughly drunk if he’d forgotten that already. Had he been drinking alone?

“Then—how did you know? How did you know I can’t call?”

“Because I can’t either.” Sunwoo slid the rest of the way to the pavement, putting his back against the lamppost so they were shoulder to shoulder, but his legs were angled away. “Is it your ex?”

Kim Donghee shook his head, then groaned and pressed his phone hand to his temple in the universal gesture of being nauseated by sudden head movements. “’S complicated.”

“It’s always complicated.” Sunwoo held up his phone. “For me, it’s my ex. He wants to get back together.”

“You don’t?” Kim Donghee didn’t seem at all fazed by the pronoun slip.

“I want to? I shouldn’t. I keep thinking about it. But long-distance is shit, you know, and he’s in love with someone else,” said Sunwoo, too drunk to be discreet.

Kim Donghee lowered his phone back to his knees and narrowed his eyes like he was trying to do complicated mathematical equations. “If he loves someone else, why does he want to get back together? Why?”

Sunwoo was more than happy to be a distraction if it would save them both from disastrous drunk dials. He hadn’t had anyone to talk to since the breakup, and that had been weeks and weeks, punctuated with two regrettable phone calls. So now the whole sorry story came spilling out. “My ex, Minjun, has been crushing on another guy as long as I’ve known him. His first love. And not just that—his first love is 23 years old, now, with a wife and baby already. They kissed, like, one time when they were fourteen. And whenever that guy needs something, Minjun drops what he’s doing and goes running, even if the thing he’s doing is me. I think he just wanted to try out having a relationship, or I was, like, methadone.”

“Ouch.” Kim Donghee looked sympathetic.

“Yeah. We broke up when I decided to come to Seoul for university, but he didn’t want me to leave, and whenever I call—” Sunwoo swallowed, remembering Minjun’s voice in his ear. The push and pull of feelings mixed up with the physical pleasure of being held. He could call right now. “I mean, it wasn’t so bad. He’s a nice guy, we’re friends, I care about him. But—”

“But you don’t want to be second best,” Kim Donghee finished for him. “That sucks.”

Sunwoo shrugged. He could already tell he was going to call Minjun at some point tonight. The knowledge was accompanied by guilt, anticipation, and the looming shadow of tomorrow’s self-reproach. But he could blame it on the alcohol, and that was Youngjae’s fault. It was the perfect excuse, really. In fact, if he went to his room and called now, they could have phone sex before Youngjae got home from his stupid birthday celebration. That was really tempting. It wouldn’t have to change anything.

Sunwoo didn’t move.

What kind of person would he be if he left Kim Donghee sitting on the ground, possibly about to make his own terrible drunk-dial mistake? That would be immoral, and also a waste of perfectly good Fate. Maybe this was a meet-cute, the start of his future happiness, and he just didn’t know it yet. He leaned forward, one elbow on his knee, and surveyed Kim Donghee’s profile. “What about you? Who are you not calling?”

“Oh. Just someone.” Kim Donghee smiled sweetly. It did nothing whatsoever to disguise his misery.

“Hey, no fair. I spilled my guts. You have to at least give me something. Who is it?”

Kim Donghee chewed his lip. “It’s—ugh, I can’t say. It’s someone who needs me.”

A tremor shook his voice, so heartfelt that Sunwoo nudged him comfortingly. “You’re sure it isn’t the other way around?”

“Does it matter? They begged me to stay, they said they’d—and I left anyway.” He stared down at his phone screen.

Sunwoo sighed. This all sounded horribly familiar. “Do you regret it? Do you want to call and tell them you’ve changed your mind and you’ll go back after all? Are you going to drop out of school and—”

“What? That’s crazy!” Kim Donghee sighed, then smiled that heartbreaking smile again. “There was nothing else I could do. We can’t be together as long as—as I— As long as my feelings keep getting in the way.”

Sunwoo was curious, and now that Kim Donghee was talking, he might actually get an answer. “Guy or girl?”

Kim Donghee jerked back slightly. He glanced around to check no one was within earshot, even looking up at the flurry of moths circling the lamp overhead. Then he met Sunwoo’s eye, grimaced eloquently, and buried his face in his arms.

Guy, concluded Sunwoo. Kim Donghee had left some guy behind just like Sunwoo had—but not an ex.

Sunwoo had been around enough to know what a hit-and-run kind of person looked like; Kim Donghee wasn’t the type. He was soft and thoughtful, not flashy and careless. He seemed like someone who’d suffered but had decided to bury his pain rather than taking it out on anyone else. Sunwoo wanted to ask, There was really nothing else you could do? But who was he to question someone else’s bad decisions? Especially someone who was clearly hurting because of them.

“I’m sorry, man. That sucks.”

“It’s horrible.” Kim Donghee sighed into his knees. “I could just—just message to see how he’s doing, right? That couldn’t hurt?”

“I don’t see why—” Sunwoo was about to agree when a reef of sobriety reared up in his drunken sea. He interrupted himself. “I mean, I don’t know your situation. But if you have to ask—maybe wait till morning?”

“You’re right. You’re right. Here, take this before I do something stupid.” Kim Donghee thrust his phone at Sunwoo.

“Okay. That’s a good plan.” Sunwoo steeled himself and handed over his own phone in return. “If you don’t take mine, I’m definitely calling my ex tonight.”

“Okay, so—the deal is, we can’t return them until we’re completely, totally sober, right?” Kim Donghee looked a little better now, a little less pale and tragic, as if externalising his decision had helped.

Sunwoo felt the same. “Right,” he said, sliding Kim Donghee’s phone into his outer pocket. His hand bumped into the water bottle he’d bought at the convenience store. He’d forgotten about that—luckily, it had survived his slam into the lamppost. He pulled it out, twisted off the cap and offered it to Kim Donghee. “Here.”

Kim Donghee obediently drank a few mouthfuls and handed it back, and Sunwoo gulped down the rest.

They sat together under the lamppost, looking out at the campus landscaping and the glow of the city beyond. It was weirdly companionable for someone Sunwoo had just met. A burst of laughter came from somewhere down to the right, and in the background was the constant hum of traffic, the sound of fifty million people living their lives. Sunwoo couldn’t help thinking of Minjun, and he could feel tension in Kim Donghee. Holding back, probably wanting to ask for his phone, too.

“Okay,” said Sunwoo, at last. He needed to drink some more water, and also to pee, so he clambered to his feet. “So, I’ll meet you back here tomorrow—say eight a.m.?”

“Sounds good.” With help from the lamppost, Kim Donghee gained his own feet. “Hey, Kang Sunwoo, next time you go drinking, leave your phone with me. I’ll keep it safe for you.”

“Same. We can take turns.”

Kim Donghee laughed a little. It was a strange agreement to make, after all. Then he ducked his head, humour fading. “Hey, uh, thanks for stopping me.”

“Thank Fate,” said Sunwoo, stepping back. “Anyway, it’s good to meet someone else.” Someone else who wasn’t straight, he meant. And who wasn’t annoyingly, uncomplicatedly happy. Maybe between them, they could find others, and Sunwoo would have a group to drink with other than Youngjae’s lot.

Kim Donghee nodded as if he understood completely, and they shook hands like they were founding a business empire. Sunwoo grinned. The possibility that this was a cosmically orchestrated meet-cute had been dispelled when he’d learned Kim Donghee was hung up on the mysterious someone. Sunwoo was never going to date another guy who was pining for someone else. But this could be the start of a friendship.

Even if it wasn’t, it was a win. He’d eliminated any possibility of calling Minjun tonight and messing both of them up even more. And he’d helped someone. That actually felt pretty good.

Maybe all his choices would be healthy from now on. He could start by drinking a lot of water.



END