Work Text:
The sheet of paper is crumpled — folded and smoothed out again and again, little tears from where it hit the wall when it had been a paper airplane. Choi has to put a stapler on the side to prevent it from folding up.
He’s always hated filling this form out.
Name:
That’s easy. Agent Choi, Agent Choi writes.
Agent Codename:
Also easy. Agent Choi, Agent Choi writes.
Next: date of birth, blood type, registered bureau issued devices, address, emergency contact, sex, medication, an endless list of information he has to fill out, handwriting becoming progressively careless. What will Jaekwan’s emergency contact be, he wonders, when I’m dead? They’re each other’s contact, which really should be changed because they’ll probably be next to each other in an emergency.
Pronouns:
“…Is this a new addition?”
Jaekwan looks up. He’d filled his form out long ago, as is typical of Choi’s steadfast and responsible junior. “They’re trying to be more inclusive,” he says.
“Ah.”
He/Him.
Gender:
Choi paused, the hesitation infinitesimal. Male, he wrote.
“You paused.”
“Huh? No, I didn’t,” he says, playing dumb. His smile is frozen on his face.
Ryu Jaekwan is not convinced. His eyes narrow instead, turning his complete attention to Choi instead of the never diminishing mountain of paperwork they’re both subject to on a daily basis.
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“…”
“…”
“…” Kim Soleum says as the door to Hyunmoo-1 waiting room swings open. He pauses, taking in the odd atmosphere. “…Sunbaes?”
“Perfect timing,” Agent Choi says. “You need to fill out this form.”
“I already filled them out. It’s just you left, sunbae.”
Choi’s eyes drift down again to the word on the paper. He looks back up to smile. “Whatever shall I do with such responsible hubaes,” he muses. “Let’s go out for dinner then. My treat,” he adds, as if he isn’t nearly broke.
He looks back down. Male. An easily dismissed sense of disconnect is brushed away as he moves onto the next line. Jaekwan looks his way for another second more. “You can change the form details at any time,” he says.
Choi signs the form off with a flourish. Choi, it says. “Great,” he says.
Last week Choi had tried to sleep with Soleum’s ex colleague, Eun Haje. He hadn’t gone very far — a drink, a look, heavy consideration, nothing else to do, really…
Eun Haje had had the same thoughts. They’d paid, stood up, and then went outside the bar to consider the state of their lives for a moment. Ah, he thinks. I should initiate. The thought strikes him as tiresome.
“…What do you say we get to know each o —”
“Let’s not, actually. Later.”
Choi was left standing under the shelter of the bar he’d wandered into a mere hour before, oddly relieved. A man who’d been sitting next to him wandered out.
“Bad luck,” the man said sympathetically. “She was hot.”
Huh. Choi supposed Eun Haje was attractive. The thought had registered on the same level as everything else: a catalogue of where any weapons could be, the way her knuckles were white as she’d gripped the glass even as her shoulders were deliberately untense.
The man was nodding knowingly. “I could hook you up with some…” he started knowingly. Choi tuned him out.
“I’m a bit sleepy, actually.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he walked away casually, shoulders deliberately untensed.
Something about the interaction kept bothering him.
As a person of many hobbies, talents, and time, Choi often stalked group chats with his 2 rotating fake accounts. The Supernatural Disaster Management Burea had many group chats.
agent choi is so hot, someone in one such group chat texted. he’s so handsome wtf
Choi clicked off. Leant back. Stared at the ceiling, not feeling much of anything at all. His phone swung idly between his fingers, close enough to the ground to almost touch it. Jaekwan’s rhythmic tapping filled the silence.
“Jaekwan-ie,” he says. “Being handsome really is a curse.” His tone turns despairing as he sinks even further in his chair, throwing an arm over his face. “Whatever shall I do,” he asks as he lets out a deep, melodramatic sigh.
A grunt. “It’s ten in the morning.”
Choi nods knowingly. “I am a ten,” he says. He thinks about taking the joke further, maybe imply something that’ll make Jaekwan’s ears turn red. Decides against it, a sourness in his mouth.
“Is it narcisstic,” he begins, “to say that I don’t want to be handsome.”
The resounding silence echoes back at him. “Ten o’ one,” Jaekwan says.
“I mean. I’m a man.” The words taste odd in his tongue, like a lie, except it’s not totally a lie. “I’m meant to want to.” He pauses here, wondering how to encapsulate everything: the asking out, the wanting sex, the expectation to be flattered about being called handsome. “To have fun,” he finally decides on. “Urgh, that’s terrible.”
He has Jaekwan’s attention now.
“…Are you,” Jaekwan says haltingly, “not a man?”
Then, even more uncertainly: “Non-binary?”
Agent Choi has no idea what that is. “Have you been researching?” he jests, before realising Jaekwan probably has, ever since a few days ago when he’d paused over filling in the form.
“It’s a gender identity that doesn’t align with man or woman.”
Choi mulls over it. "Nah," he decides.
“Agender.”
“Huh?”
“No gender.”
That sounds closer, but still…
He’s tired of this. He stands up, waving a pack of cigarettes and taking delight in Jaekwan’s disgruntled expression. “I’m going out for a smoke.”
The cold wind makes him shiver; he’s never liked the cold.
Click. Flames flicker, he hates it, really: smoking. Always a terrible experience, the sudden tingling and jolt. The burning in his throat at odds with the phantom sensation of cold metal is fine, though. Makes this tolerable. Smoking, he imagines his lungs blackening.
He’s definitely not nonbinary. Agender sure is a word to describe it, but really it seems like too much trouble to use. Convenient, maybe, but it sits the same way man does: odd, and a bit out of place.
Really, he thinks. He’d much rather not be anything at all.