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stolligaseptember

Aug 7

I'm homesick (but I don't know where home is)

Kim goes back to Korea, alone. It’s for the best.

Or, so he keeps telling himself.

On AO3.

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It was a relief, coming back to Seoul.

It was nice, finally being back home.

He took a cab in from Incheon, the commute old and familiar. The Han River greeted him like it always did, wide and proud. The Jayu-ro was the constant and comforting chaos that it always was, while Hongdae was vibrating with life and light the way only downtown Seoul could on an early Saturday night.

Kim, at 19, had gotten a hold of his first apartment just on the outskirts of Yongsan. He had eventually managed to buy his way up from the tiny little shoebox that he had first rented, but he had stayed in the district, the narrow alleys and the tight corners as close to home as he would probably ever get outside of Busan. When he had packed up to move to Thailand he had rented his apartment out to a young Vietnamese girl who studied art at SNU. She had been a little bummed that Kim was returning, seeing how she only had a single semester left before she graduated, and Kim had felt a little bad about displacing her, but luckily she had managed to move in with another senior just a few blocks away.

And Kim was mostly just grateful to have his space back again.

The taxi dropped him off just outside of his building, taking up most of the street even when halfway up on the sidewalk. The driver helped him retrieve his sparse luggage and after paying him he sped down the busy Seoul streets again. Kim watched him disappear around the corner before heading inside.

The elevator clucked the way it always did as he ascended up to his floor. His key snagged in the lock as usual and the sushi bar on the other side of the street illuminated his living room all the way out to his hallway before he managed to get the lights on.

The place was tidied but mostly empty. Most of his things were stored up in Chuncheon at his parents’ and he only had the bare bones of his furniture remaining. But it was still his apartment, with its asymmetrical corners and slanted ceiling and panoramic windows overlooking Namsan. His persian rug still took up most of the living room, the abstract expressionist paintings that he had bought in a fit of youthful folly still hung on his walls and his mismatched lamps still stood where he had left them.

It smelled different from how he remembered though. He was assaulted by the clogging smell of ginger and mint and a floral air freshener, and not the garlic and fresh jasmines that he had somehow expected, and mostly not at all like how Kim remembered his apartment smelling like. Underneath all of that though there was a faint hint of the cinnamon that he associated with home and his shoulders relaxed marginally.

Dumping his suitcases in his living room he made his way out onto his balcony, wanting the Seoul air to cleanse his senses and to refamiliarize himself with the sight of the Namsan Tower. It was still early enough in the evening that the streets were buzzing with life and rapidfire Japanese drifted over from the bar across the street. Leaning against the balcony railing Kim closed his eyes and let it all wash over him.

He liked Thailand and he had enjoyed Bangkok much more than he initially thought he would. But it was a relief to be back home and he felt a weight that he hadn’t even known he was carrying drop from his shoulders as he took in the Seoul night.

God, it was good to be home.

And smiling a little to himself, Kim turned around, fully expecting a surly and yet so dearly beloved face to greet him, the way it always did, and-

He stopped.

Because. Right. He might finally be home again, but he was also alone again.

Kim forced himself to keep turning and walked back into his living room, reminding himself that that was a good thing.

Kenta needed space. Kim needed space. To deal with the shitshow that his sejour in Thailand had been. To re-familiarize himself with a life that didn’t involve trafficking rings and secret labs and frighteningly real caricatures of cartoon villains. To learn how to be a normal person again, without blood on his hands and gunpowder clinging to his clothes.

And Kenta needed to find himself. To learn who he was underneath all of his fear and compliancy and trauma and guilt.

And Kim wanted to stand by him through that. He did. He really, really did.

He also wanted to be Kenta’s everything. He wanted to be the reason Kenta got up in the morning, the reason he longed to come home after a long day, the reason his face split up in the blinding smile that Kim with an unrattled certainty knew lurked underneath that constant scowl but that he’d never actually gotten to see.

But Kenta didn’t know how to dedicate himself to someone without also signing away his very own personhood. And Kim wanted Kenta, not some shallow afterimage of him that wore his face.

He wanted the snarling and the petulance and the obstinance. And he wanted Kenta’s kindness and his consideration and his tenderness.

Kim wanted Kenta’s devotion. But not at the cost of his wellbeing.

He wanted Kenta, but he couldn’t actually have Kenta until Kenta was his own man to offer himself up for Kim to have.

So. Space was good for them. Time would be good for them.

Or so Kim kept telling himself every time he remembered that he had left his heart over 2 000 miles away with no way of knowing when he would be able to reclaim it.

Walking over to where he had just dumped his suitcases he started the painstaking process of unpacking. He had packed lightly considering that he had packed up the three last years of his life in just two cases, but it would still take its time to sort out again.

And he hadn’t even stopped at his local corner store yet. He needed to find his toothbrush.

He was elbows deep in his not inconsiderable collection of button-ups when his phone pinged in his back pocket. Abandoning the toothbrush-mission for the moment, he dug his phone out and saw an incoming LINE-message that he immediately swiped open.

Kenta

Received 21:23

I hope your flight went well.

Kim couldn’t have stopped the stupid smile that took over his face even if he had wanted to.

He’d told Kenta to have the guts to actually call, but that was still a better start than he’d even dared to hope for. -------------------

The first few days back home again were a whirlwind of chaos.

His parents knocked on his door early the morning after he had landed, before he had even managed to drag himself out of bed, having driven down to Seoul to deliver his stored belongings. Kim had barely managed to accept the fact that he was even awake again before his mother had dragged him into a soul crushing hug, it having been years since she had seen him in person last, and then she had swept into his apartment to start her motherly pottering about with both the things he hadn’t managed to unpack yet and with the boxes upon boxes she and his father had brought with them.

His father had just smiled knowingly, grabbed a steadying hand of Kim’s shoulder, and said that it was good to see him again.

Kim had needed a few moments, but then he had gathered enough wits about himself to drag his father into a hug too, returning the sentiments.

His parents stayed in the city over the weekend, helping him get settled again, and catching up with the years that they had stayed apart.

Kim hadn’t told his parents about everything that he had gotten up to in Thailand and he didn’t plan to do so anytime soon. His parents thought that the only recklessness and stupidity that he got up to was in the fact that he was still a racecar driver and he was happy to keep it that way.

He still had plenty of stories to tell his parents, of the friends he had made, of the actually normal experiences he had gotten up to in Bangkok, of the races he had competed in. The weekend passed by in a blur and soon enough he was bidding them goodbye again, comforted by the thought that there wasn’t half a continent separating them anymore but just an hour drive.

More friends and family dropped by after that. Dohyeon, his downstairs neighbour, burst into his apartment one afternoon, shrieking about Kim being back, and had then promptly drank Kim out of what little alcohol he had in storage. His cousins on his uncle’s side of the family, also situated in Seoul, came by one evening bearing boxed food and news about both the extended family and the city. Jisu, a driver from the team Kim had been signed to before he moved to Thailand and who had since then retired but stayed in the city, came by to see if he could help with anything and they ended up spending the entire evening splitting a six pack and reminiscing about the old days.

And in between start-up meetings with his new team and the general confusion of a cross-Chinese-Sea move, two weeks had passed without Kim really noticing it. At the end of that week his parents returned, with Kim’s grandfather in tow.

His grandfather was Thai but had moved to Korea almost 60 years prior when he had found the love of his life on the peninsula. Now a widower and with the years creeping up on him, he had a bad heart that prohibited him from flying and that was the only reason he hadn’t come to visit Kim in his old homeland and why he was very glad to finally see Kim back home again.

Kim wasn’t grateful for his grandfather’s declining health, but he was infinitely grateful that none of his family had ever come to visit him. He would of course have been happy to see more of his family in the years he had been away, but he didn’t want his family anywhere near the clusterfuck that was the Chen Foundation.

(Well. He wanted his family to be close to Kenta, but that was an entirely different issue. Kenta had clawed his way out of the Foundation the same way Kim had; bloody and broken and traumatized and trying to find his footing again in the aftermath of it all.

And now that Tony was finally dead for real, maybe Kenta could finally, finally be free of the ghosts and the demons that the Foundations still haunted him with. And maybe he could meet Kim’s dtaa one day, and be appreciated and doted on the way he had always deserved to be.)

Kim’s grandfather pinched his cheeks as if he was still a child and fed him too much mandu and demanded that Kim tell him everything about Thailand at least three times.

Kim had missed him something terribly.

Their visit was over much too early for Kim’s liking but his grandfather’s energy wasn’t what it had once been. So grasping his dtaa’s hands Kim promised to keep in touch much more frequently now that he was back in the country. Then his mother had pulled him into a quick hug and his father had squeezed his shoulder and then they were gone.

And as much as Kim loved and appreciated his family, it was nice to finally get to be alone again once everyone had stopped by for their first visits. It was nice to get the space to finally be on his own again.

He lasted all of two days before he started getting lonely.

He had almost daily meetings with his team and he met up with some of his old friends regularly and he kept up his promise to his grandfather to keep in touch and yet he couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that had wormed its way under his skin.

He missed X-Hunter.

He didn’t miss the constant shitstorms that they got him dragged into, and yet, despite that, they were his friends, and he missed them.

He’d only been out of Thailand for three weeks and he still kept in touch with his former teammates. North frequently blew up his phone with whatever new meme was trending, Alan would occasionally check in on how he was settling, and he had gotten strict orders from Jeff to reach out to Babe from time to time.

He’d even found a previously unexpected kinship with Sonic, what with both of them being far away from the little makeshift family that they had carved out for themselves in between the gasoline and blood and horrors of the last couple of years.

What with both of them having left their hearts behind in Thailand.

He missed other things about Thailand too; now that he had unlimited access to Korean food again he found himself getting cravings for tom kha gai and gai pad med mamuang. Seoul would always be the perfect city in his eyes but he still missed the Bangkok skyline at night. And he had gotten used to the Thai warmth, the cool Korea spring having seeped into his very bones.

Most of all, he missed Kenta.

Kim had always been a lone wolf. He had always had friends but he had always preferred to keep by himself. He had always preferred his own company.

Then he had been handed the care and keep of a half-feral ex-convict and everything that he had thought he had known about himself had been turned on its head.

Kim had lived alone for the big majority of his adult life and he still liked having his own space, grateful to come home after long days at his new team’s garage filled with new people and impressions and loud noises and just being able to decompress by his own in the peace and quiet. But once he’d done that and once he’d gotten himself up and moving about his space, tidying and cleaning and cooking, he kept turning around, always expecting to find Kenta just behind his shoulder, only to find cold, empty space there instead.

It always made the bottom of his stomach drop out from under him a little bit.

Kim had always prided himself of having a steady center of gravity, of always knowing exactly where he stood in the world.

And suddenly he was always just half a step out of synch with himself, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

He and Kenta still kept in touch. Their LINE chat was filled with scattered Good morning’s and How are you’s. But his very last words to Kenta in Thailand had been a challenge for him to have the guts to actually call.

Three weeks later, and he was still waiting for his phone to ring.

It had been an unremarkable Tuesday night. He had been putting away the dishes on the evening after his first time behind the wheel of his new GT, sore and tired in the way he only ever got after having spent hours in a car that wasn’t yet perfectly modified to his wants and needs, when his phone rang. He had been expecting a call from his mother, seeing how she wanted to schedule a time for her to come down with his aunt sometime soon, and he was just about to mindlessly answer the call when his eyes caught on the caller ID.

Kenta.

Kim blinked down at his phone, frozen for a moment, before his thumb finally proceeded with its task of answering the call.

It still took him a moment to actually say something.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment.

“How are you?” Kenta eventually asked.

Kim smiled as he dried his hands off properly and then moved through his kitchen and out onto his balcony, the Korean evenings finally warm enough to comfortably spend out there. “Tired,” he answered honestly, settling himself against the balcony railing. “It was my first time back on the track today.”

“You said,” Kenta said, and he was right; Kim had sent him a message the night before about finally returning to the track. “How was it?”

“Good. I’ve missed it. It’s good to be back,” Kim said, and then, before Kenta would manage to drag him into a detailed breakdown of his lap times and his currently abysmal downforce, “How are you?”

“Good,” Kenta answered with a speed that told Kim that he was not to push it.

Kim had never been good at not pushing when he thought that Kenta needed it though, so before he even got the chance, Kenta continued with, “How are you settling in?”

“Okay,” Kim said, allowing him to distract them both. He leaned more fully against the balcony railing, watching Seoul sprawl out up against the hills before him. “Not much has changed here. Even my old corner store is just how I left it. The owner’s cat has gotten kittens, but that’s about it.

“How about you?” he asked. “How’s the apartment treating you?”

Kenta was quiet for a beat too long.

“It’s,” he finally said, obviously searching for the right word, “quiet.”

Kim smiled. “Are you saying I made a lot of noise?”

“Yes,” Kenta said, always so very earnest, either not picking up on Kim’s teasing or choosing to outright ignore it. Kim could never quite tell with him.

“You weren’t loud,” Kenta continued. “But you made just enough noise to make it unmistakable that you were here. That you were alive. That you were safe.”

Kim had to swallow around the lump that had appeared in his throat.

“It’s quiet here too,” he said, scratching at a nonexistent bump in the railing.

Kenta hummed a little over the line. “How do we make it go away?”

Kim smiled again, wider than before, latching onto the opening faster than he would in a race. “You could keep calling me,” he said, “I can make so much noise even over the phone.”

And before he got the chance to have a minor meltdown over the unintentional innuendo in that line Kenta let out a frustrated breath, once again blowing right past Kim’s social missteps.

“Why does the entire responsibility of calling have to be on my end?” Kenta asked, his trademark annoyance shining through.

Kim’s smile turned into something smaller, something softer.

“You really don’t want to open that door, Kenta,” he said. “I’ll bother you nonstop.”

“Good,” Kenta said, sounding oddly satisfied. “I don’t like the quiet.”

Kim’s smile widened again. “You’ll eat those words one of these days.”

“Try me,” Kenta said, and it was a challenge that Kim was more than happy to accept. -------------------

It was almost strange, the way Kim’s life returned to normalcy. No more scrambling just to stay alive, no more plots or schemes from the people who were supposed to be his closest friends, no more morally corrupt venture capitalists aiming for world dominion. Kim got up in the mornings, he went to the track for his daily training sessions, he got familiar with his new teammates, and he got reacquainted with Seoul.

He got home in the evenings, usually cooked, and he talked to Kenta.

True to his own threat, he had fallen into a habit of calling him a lot of the nights. They didn’t always call though, rather they usually just kept up a scattered LINE-conversation throughout the evenings. And more often than Kim would have expected, Kenta called himself before Kim could even think about it.

The time difference, and their different schedules, meant that Kenta was usually on his way home from work by the time Kim had already sorted himself out for the evening. Kenta had started working at Beyond Group, in a position directly below Pete, and Kim figured that if nothing else it was probably a good thing for him to get some regular routines into his life.

Kim wasn’t thrilled at the idea of Kenta and Pete working together in such close proximity.

Kenta had been adamant in his proclamations of not being interested in Pete anymore. And Kim believed him. He did.

He wasn’t blind. He had noticed the way Kenta would sometimes return Kim’s own interested looks. He had prioritized Kim’s wellbeing over Pete’s intel. He got home from most days at Beyond Group complaining about their - his - apartment being too quiet, too empty without Kim there. He would even call to have Kim fill the silence and the space with his inane rambling.

He had willingly stuck his tongue down Kim’s throat.

Kenta wasn’t indifferent to Kim. He was quite the opposite, if Kim dared to hope.

And if his entire debacle with Chris had proven anything, it was that Pete was never - ever, in a million years - getting over Way.

So the chances of anything coming out of Kenta and Pete being forced into close proximity again were slim. And Kim was certain of that fact. Still, even with the howling wolf of his jealousy somewhat soothed, Kenta’s place in Beyond Group still didn’t sit right with him.

Kenta was supposed to start living for himself, not continue to be dragged down by his past.

Pete wasn’t a bad man. He was actually quite a good one and he always tried his best to do the good thing. And who knew where Kim and the rest of the X-Hunter team would be without him.

But Pete had never treated Kenta the way Kenta deserved to be treated. He wasn’t cruel and he wasn’t unkind but he was almost… Indifferent. He didn’t appreciate Kenta’s blind loyalty to him, he almost expected it, and he saw Kenta as more like a tool than a man.

He didn’t see the kind, selfless young man that Tony had tried to eradicate, he just saw the weapon that Tony had honed him into, as much as he tried to claim otherwise.

And that turned Kim’s stomach.

Kenta had a professional title, and it wasn’t as Pete’s assistant, it was some other corporate bullshit that Kim could never quite decipher - Strategic Transactional Executive Something Something - but the fact still stood that he answered directly to Pete. And as little dirty work that Pete got up to, Kim was fairly certain that it all went through Kenta. Kim was also fairly certain that Pete didn’t have Kenta doing any physical cleaning-up work (or he would have flown straight back to Thailand just to kick Pete’s teeth in), but that was only a small consolation.

Kenta was still a leashed dog - his leash had only been taken from an outright monster and handed to an at the surface benevolent master instead. And he deserved better than that.

Kim wanted better than that for him. He wanted it so badly he was sick with it.

Kenta’s position at Beyond Group was a necessary evil though, and as much as Kim despised it, he also understood it. It would be kind of hard for him to go up to any other employer with the limited experiences he had. “Oh, that year long gap? That was my stint in prison, due to the kidnapping and torturing and trafficking and killing I did when working for the Chen Foundation, which you can see under my experiences, by the way. My time at the Foundation made me an extremely good manager though, and I’m great at accounting.”

So, yeah. Beyond Group was the safest, and most likely only, option that Kenta had for the time being. Soon he would be able to show off some more, and cleaner, experiences though, and Pete better give him one hell of a recommendation, and Kenta could finally move on.

Pete better, or Kim really would fly back to Thailand just to kick his stupidly perfect teeth in.

While Kenta got settled at Beyond Group, and no doubt, in Kim’s completely unbiased opinion, excelled there, Kim steadily approached the start of his first championship back on Korean soil again in almost half a decade. Kim’s integration into his new team hadn’t been all smooth sailing; in-team posturing was always a hassle to get through, but Kim had settled himself properly enough. His car was finally modified and tuned the way he needed it to, he got along nicely enough with his teammates, and he was in a good shape.

And he was more than ready for the season to actually start.

It was an early summer afternoon when Kenta called out of the blue.

It was just a pure coincidence that Kim hadn’t been out on the track that day; one of the mechanics was the father of several small children and had accidentally gotten the entire pit crew sick with a stomach bug and the garage had been declared off-limits for a couple of days until the team could get it sanitized. Before the bug incident, Kim had been scheduled to be doing tire tests all afternoon, and he wouldn’t have been able to pick up.

Kenta usually never called that early. It was barely lunch time in Thailand.

Kim had to swallow down the panic that something had happened as he picked up his phone.

“Hey,” he said, managing to sound deceptively cool, at least to his own ears.

“Charlie woke up,” Kenta said without preamble.

Kim almost dropped his phone.

“What?”

“Charlie woke up today,” Kenta said again.

“That’s good,” Kim said, daring to smile a little. “That’s great.”

“He can’t remember anything from the last couple of years.”

Kim’s smile immediately fell.

“That sucks.”

Kenta hummed a little in agreement on the other side of the line.

Having paced around his living room, Kim finally got himself settled on his couch, needing less sensory inputs. “How’s Babe’s taking it?”

“Don’t know,” Kenta said. “He’s mostly just glad that Charlie’s awake again. I don’t think the memory loss has really set in for him yet.”

“That’s fair,” Kim said, dragging a hand across his face. “Poor Charlie. Kid can’t catch a break.”

Kenta hummed again and then they just sat with that silence for a while.

Wasn’t that the constant state for their little ragtag group? Always two steps forward, followed by one step back again.

“How’s your training going?” Kenta finally said in an obvious and desperate attempt at steering the conversation to a topic that was hopefully not as depressing.

Kim let him.

“Good,” he said, allowing himself to smile again. “I’m settling in with the team. They’re nice, but they’re no X-Hunters.”

Kenta snorted. “Are anyone?”

Then, when Kim didn’t immediately offer any more information, “So how are you feeling about the season?”

“Optimistic,” Kim said, drawing his feet up to lay down properly on the couch, staring up at his apartment ceiling. “We’ve made some new modifications to my car that will hopefully give me an edge. And I got a new tire brand that I’m feeling good about. My current lap times are right where I want them. And…”

By the time they hung up and Kim glanced down at his call history, they had been talking for over an hour.

Kim smiled a little as his fingers brushed over Kenta’s name on the screen.

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