Jean-Paul did not have a lot of experience drinking, and at first he had felt completely fine, as if he had just had a soda or something like that. Then he had several more glasses, he was thirstier than he had realized. It made some sense, he had burned a lot of energy earlier. He was fining kind of weird, was this what being drunk was like? He couldn’t tell.
Looking at Hyeon for reference of what being drunk looked like implied to him that he wasn’t. At most just tipsy. Looking at the other man a question couldn’t help but form, and before he really considered implications or consequences he had asked it. Then asked it again as Hyeon seemed to misunderstand.
Somewhere beneath of the fun fog of alcohol some part of him knew he had just made a social misstep, a really bad one. One that would would normally ave his face go as red as a rose. The fog covered that up though, only in the morning will e have the clarity to understand what he had done and said.
“I’m sorry, what?” He could understand Korean, to a point, he had not yet learned the less formal versions of words, and actually speaking it was a whole other matter.
Jean-Paul leaned onto the bar, both elbows on the surface, resting his cheeks on both his hands, like a drunken, and dopey version of The Thinker. “About me or you? I wouldn’t want to that myself, that would just be weird… you seem like you’d be nice on a date.”
If Mila was around, she’d have split her sides laughing by now.
Her older brother, socially inept office worker Park Tae Joon who couldn’t hold a normal conversation with a female co-worker was actually... having his moment! Someone was actually shooting their shot with him, and it was with a decently cute guy at that. And yet unbeknownst to Hyeon-- this was an actual, living, breathing human being who seemed to have a flicker of interest in him. Hyeon just chalked it up to Jean-Paul being polite.
“Yeah.” Seemed like the safest, no, easiest thing to say for a man who had lost track of the conversation ten loopy seconds ago. Sure, he’d give it a try. Whichever question he was attempting to answer was easily anyone’s guess. Then, a nonchalant “Okay, let’s go,” like he was keen to go through with Jean-Paul’s suggestion after all. Literally. Right that instant.
Hyeon laboriously pushed himself up from his seat with as much force his spaghetti limbs could muster, took a dignified moment to collect himself, and reached out. One semi-gloved hand curled in the material of Jean-Paul’s shirt on the shoulder, tugged at it as though urging him to stand. In his drunken stupor it had occured to Hyeon he was trying to drag along another human being, so he let go, and pulled himself closer to the exit.
In Hyeon’s mind, he was in no man’s land between the bar and his bedroom, and the threshold he’d just crossed was the doorway of his apartment. The flowerbed on the sidewalk did seem to have the same shade of brown as his couch, so he lumbered towards that and lowered himself to sit by the curb.
