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Seungkwan honestly doesn't fully understand the hype that has been going on around this double feature films thingy dominating his naver timeline. He may have spent a considerable amount of time looking up each of the respective film's premises but Seungkwan feels like he's too out of his element about this matter. More than what he cares to admit, he's still torn to which he'll be watching soon. Both films have already begun their screening a couple days ago and coincidentally, Seungkwan has been given his well deserved breaks for the rest of a month as the enrolling season for his piano teaching lesson has just ended and the new semester won't start until after the papers get sorted. So far, he's only been laying around witnessing the similar topic being repeated by a bunch of different people with uncharacteriscally divided opinions (some he reads religiously since he's been following them for a much differently local tastes)
Seungkwan is currently having his head upside down on the bed while the war film guy,—Oppenheimer's actor he thinks, if he isn't totally mistaken, Cillian murphy talks actively through his eyes about his excitement of getting this role. Seungkwan has been steadily watching the way their marketing moves vary and how both films can somehow get intertwined by the persistent reporters keeping tabs on the same double feature questions for the past week.
Not that he's irked by it but Seungkwan just feels odd and a little awed. He bets this is like when Avengers: Endgame happened to jihoon. Being shown the collateral damage it did to the latter has made enough of an impression of how impactful a similar incident can be.
Barbenheimer is also a hilarious name for a double feature.
Seungkwan sighs and shakes his head as he scrolls down to seek around for more subbed translation given the overflowing raw contents he can find hasn't been subbed at all. Some have been by a handful of people who've been so generous to the community and Seungkwan is grateful for that but he thinks he's about to lose his mind if he can't comprehend what these actors say about their film. Seungkwan simply can't walk in blind because the last time he did, he regretted it for the rest of his life and it involved vile things like body horror, extended gore and also rats.
He's two minutes into a subbed interview video where the blonde woman whose last name seems pretty hard to pronounce by him jokes around about Barbenheimer incident when he hears a string of knocks, then a cascade of voice instantly bringing the smile to his face follows. "Seungkwannie? Are you inside?"
Seungkwan hums. "Um, get in. it's not locked."
The owner of the voice, Hansol, who happens to be his beloved boyfriend struts inside wearing only a knee length boxer and black polo shirt. His hair juts out everywhere like a bird's nest and his face still folds like he just woke up.
"Just woke up?"
"Yeah." Hansol drops onto his bed, rubbing his eyes for a moment before draping his limbs all over Seungkwan. "I was looking for breakfast but found nothing and no one."
Seungkwan chuckles, Hansol's breathing a steady rhythm to his ears. "Except me."
"Except you." He feels Hansol inches closer and tightens his hug, now Seungkwan is squeezed between Hansol's bigger limbs with his face burrowed on his neck and a mountain of pillows around him.
"Get off and wash yourself first." Seungkwan whines, noticing that he's been pausing the video he watches for a while. "Then we'll have toast for breakfast."
Hansol groans in retrospect, face scrunching when seungkwan tries to detach from him. "Later, i'm still sleepy."
"Didn't you sleep earlier?"
"I did. But I woke up in the middle of the night and stayed up for two more hours."
"Huh." Seungkwan mutters, head tilting and soon drowns in acknowledgement when he realizes he's missing a bag of chips he bought the day before. "So, that also explains my potato chips going missing?"
It's a magic that Seungkwan can guess perfectly how Hansol grins against his neck without looking down at him, but he lets it go anyway. Hansol has been known as a trained snacker between them and Seungkwan has subconsciously fallen to be a provider for him.
"I'll buy you more when we go grocery shopping again."
"Which is, when?"
"Could be today." Hansol abruptly lifts up his head and turns to face him. "Do you want to go grocery shopping today?"
He sees Hansol having this glint in his eyes he often recognizes as an adorable excitement and Seungkwan, never being the one to object, nods. "Let's go in the evening and then we grab dinner."
"'"Course."
Hansol dives back to his neck as fast as he replies and Seungkwan lets his hand rest between Hansol's tangled hair, resuming in playing the previously paused video of another Oppenheimer casts' interview, its sound splits the silence between them.
Hansol snaps up suddenly again, and seungkwan barely notices him when he presses his face against the side of his cheek, curiously peering over Seungkwan's phone.
Seungkwan glances at him sideways, "What are you doing?"
"That." Hansol points to the video seungkwan paused. "That's Oppenheimer casts' right? Why are you watching them?"
Seungkwan, feeling like he's being aimed, shrugs. "They're flooding my timeline? Can't I watch them?"
Hansol sits up, his face contorts into amusement and Seungkwan catches the way his smile escapes his lips. "No, that's not what I mean boo. I mean, Oppenheimer. Are you interested in watching it?"
Seungkwan isn't sure why his mouth won't move nor utter anything and it might have been because the whole world is raving about both the films being played together on the same timeline and he feels like he's needed to choose one, or goes both that somehow lessen something of an impression inside him that garners his obligation to put an effort to look cooler, Seungkwan just burst out, without an ounce of longer thought process.
". . .yes. Of course. I like Oppenheimer."
Hansol takes a pregnant pause and Seungkwan almost yeet himself off the bed and disappears before Hansol continues, "what about Barbie?"
"What about it?" Seungkwan rasps.
"Because it also airs together at the same time?" Hansol turns to frown at him. Seungkwan clings on whatever might save him out of this awkwardness air trapping them together that he's entirely sure is his fault, so he replies with, "but Oppenheimer is. . cooler?"
Hansol's eyebrows shoot up, possibly flabbergasted. "What?"
Seungkwan gulps a big lump forming in his throat, worsening when he finds out his mouth being sewn shut except for reverting back his confusion. "What?"
"Boo Seungkwan, really?"
"What?" Seungkwan insists, lacking any nuance of everything Hansol directs toward him.
"I thought you would watch Barbie with me."
". . . With you?"
Seungkwan deadpans, and the rush comes crashing over him like a tidal wave when Hansol lands his serious glance on him, completing with a face painted in such indescribable emotion Seungkwan can't guess for dear life. "You're watching Barbie?"
"Of course!" Seungkwan sees Hansol igniting with excitement. "I thought you would be asking me to watch Barbie together."
"I don't know?"
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I . . " Seungkwan trails off, having just put together the last piece of the puzzle and can slowly understand what Hansol has been trying to convey to him and he senses some bad feelings about it. "I thought you would ask me to pick which one is better to watch so. ."
Hansol interrupts while his face speaks of bafflement, "—so you picked Oppenheimer, first?"
"I guess so. .? Because I thought you would've wanted me to pick Oppenheimer."
"And why is that?"
Seungkwan can't find the guts to say it. Confessing means he needs to surrender and opens up to the humiliating fact that he was trying to impress him, thus leading him to lie and face Hansol whose entire intention turns out to be the polar opposite of him. Seungkwan bites the inside of his cheek, instead opting to look away and mutters under his breath.
"Because i wasn't sure what to pick and because I thought I would look cooler if I picked Oppenheimer first." Seungkwan can feel his face burn up, goosebump tickling funnily with Hansol's combustion of chuckles ringing in his ears.
"Seungkwannie." Hansol calls out. He's lurching forward in a swift motion and draws seungkwan in for a hug, shoulders vibrating with glee. Seungkwan pouts away. "Why would you think that? Do you think I would disagree and bully you when you pick Barbie first?"
"Of course not!" Seungkwan retorts, a little too loud for his own liking. "Not like that. I just—you're a cool cinephile okay. You love cool science fiction films like The Matrix and stuff! And you mentioned before that you enjoy Christopher Nolan's films so much that I couldn't help but—try to copy you."
"You're silly." Hansol echoes back at him, voice objecting yet subdued. "I would never. I love Greta Gerwig too much to be that cool dude I was in your head."
"You love who, now?"
"Greta gerwig." Hansol inhales, then grabs Seungkwan's previously tossed phone and types the name into the search engine. The picture of a woman Seungkwan recognizes has been passing back and forth in his timeline welcomes him. "That's Greta Gerwig, the director of Barbie. She makes great feminist films."
"Ah."
"Do you get it now?" Hansol asks, while seungkwan is left to observe him meddling with his phone and show him Greta Gerwig's film catalogs, those that Seungkwan has never heard nor seen before in his life but to think that Hansol does and he prides himself in adoring those films speaking more about women and feminism makes seungkwan's stomach flips. He's not even a woman yet he can't help but feel absurdly flattered by it.
"This one is about a girl named Ladybird and it's a coming of age story where it shows lots of complicated things like the relationship between a mother and a daughter—the one we also watched in Everything Everywhere All At Once, remember? We both cried afterwards driving home."
Seungkwan does remember crystal clear how Hansol was the one driving them home as they both shared the precious cathartic moment aftermath witnessing what Seungkwan thought should be hard and nigh impossible to be conveyed in film, and strange—to this second he occasionally still asks if that moment was real or if the entire film was real and it wasn't just a massive hallucination they bonded over in the middle of a summer night in june.
"I do! Is it sadder than that?"
Hansol shakes his head. "I don't think so. It's not as colorfully cinematic but it's simpler. Thoughtful and more nuanced and I definitely do not think our favorite film means less by the way."
Seungkwan wheezes. He lays his head on Hansol's shoulder as Hansol resumes in narrating furthermore about the Ladybird movie and then straying deeper to her another work called Little women. This one seungkwan is able to sense the curiosity brimming in him and he asks as many questions as possible about the four sisters described—which makes Hansol fails to hide it from him that one of the sisters, Beth, ends up dying from a disease with no cure existed during that era.
Seungkwan heaves out a sigh. He figures, since the premise has already sounded suspiciously neat. "Something always has to happen to miserable people. I mean, I thought it's enough that they're struggling with poverty."
"I agree. Marmee providing for four girls and an entire house is just insane stuff. But then again, it's based on a novel so I don't think we should riot for that."
Seungkwan nods along, "you're right."
"Which—" then as if Hansol hasn't been losing any energy from a full thirty minute brief about the director, he moves on, now eventually reaching the core subject of their whole fiasco, Barbie. Seungkwan sets himself in the most comfortable position with their arms linked together and feet interwoven, socks brushing a warm sensation. "—Brought us to Barbie. As I think you already know since the Barbie parade started a month ago and it's been everywhere."
"Oh yes, it is everywhere. That's also where I learnt that 'Kenning' is a phrase?"
Hansol practically bounces on his seat, shaking Seungkwan's bed with him. "It is a phrase! Kenough, Kenergy, Kenning. The actor, Ryan Gosling, he's going method acting this time."
"What? What does that even mean." seungkwan croaks out in between incessant laughter. Hansol merely answers by several nods in his direction, giving Seungkwan the look that he likes to throw at him whenever he can't find any words to add.
"I wish i was lying. You should see for yourself."
Both of them are redirected to an interview of The actor, Ryan gosling getting asked about how to be more Ken and develop more alleged Kenergy seungkwan genuinely can't say with a straight face, and the actor's answer has just reassured seungkwan that none of the things about this Barbie film seems real. It's borderline psychedelics.
"wow—oh my god." Seungkwan chokes and his stomach twists from too much laughter today It can last him weeks. "What is happening with this film?"
"I know. It's unreal right? I think that should prove you that we definitely need to watch Barbie. Aren't you curious now?"
"Iam curious." Seungkwan wishfully admits. He ends up being strapped off his defense weapons and he doesn't think sleep will come at him easily on many more nights in the future without him finding out the things that go down in this bizarre Barbie film firsthand. Hansol can take him on that. "I do, now. Rest assured."
Hansol's smile widens, all teeth and gums making their appearances and his eyes crinkled still caked with sleepiness. He looks picture perfect where Seungkwan imagines him to be. Surrounded by enough happiness he shares with him together while the sun rises up and its shine blanketing them in golden light, Hansol's voice melting in seungkwan's ears and his laugh an explosion of joy in seungkwan's heart.
He grabs Hansol's polo shirt collar and cuts his laugh off with a reverence kiss. Closing his eyes and feeling Hansol loosens, he kisses him back with an arm circling his waist and a palm threading on his jaw. The moment seems to last forever for Seungkwan.
They separate—panting and in form of sheepish giggles. Hansol goes to stare at Seungkwan through his eyes, unblinking and never fails to be the culprit of making his heart pound faster. They've been together for almost four years now.
"Stop it." Seungkwan breaks the silence. Hansol's eyebrows shoot up.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're thinking too hard while staring at me, stop that."
Hansol grins, growing even shameless of being caught red-handed. "I'm thinking of groceries. And chips. And Barbie date."
"Hansol Vernon Chwe, thinking of groceries?"
"Shush." He cuts off. Seungkwan is pushed to lay on his back while Hansol climbs to cuddle him again for the second time this morning. "We'll be going in a few hours."
Seungkwan raises a noise of disapproval. "Give me an exact approximate time."
"Twelve?"
"Impossible. I haven't ransacked my wardrobe for Barbie."
"Boo, You—" Hansol paused, gurgling between his words that causes Seungkwan to wheeze harder. As their small moment of delight dissipates, Hansol goes back to rest his position on Seungkwan's chest. "Safe to say you're excited for Barbie, now?"
"Yeah. Iam excited for Barbie, thanks to my beloved cinephile boyfriend." Seungkwan concedes but then scours for more coherent answer, partly due to guilt and the residual embarrassment that refuses to leave him. "And I'm sorry. For lying and being a total asshole about not getting Barbie first."
"Hey, you're not an asshole." Hansol gently reassures him, delicate fingers dancing on his skin. "There are more people deserving of that title than you. You're fine, babe."
Seungkwan shakes his head, entirely unconvinced that it can be that simple to resolve. He has issues, and he does admit he's unforgivably obnoxious sometimes. Not to mention his long list of internal problems to take care of but projecting accidental misogyny towards the thing Hansol loves, Seungkwan deserves at least a beating for it.
"But still, i should've been honest. There's nothing to be ashamed of liking Barbie as a man." Seungkwan says. his voice wavers and he's terrified of teardrops escaping their ways out of his eyes. "I'm sorry that I offended you, even if it's accidental, I could've thinked deeper about it. And not projecting horrible on hand misogynist stuff to you who's undeserving for it."
"Oh, Seungkwannie."
Hansol rises up, wrapping seungkwan in his embrace while seungkwan bursts into tears. He quickly wipes them and gathers himself up before it turns to full on sobbing. Hansol detaches their hugs and turns to rub his thumbs on his cheek. "You were just confused and you knew nothing of it. It happens."
Hansol then peppers his face with kisses, much to Seungkwan's chagrin it does lift him up better.
"I should also apologize to Barbie, I think. And Greta Gerwig along with the rest of the cast and crew."
"And I bet they would be delighted in getting your video message, sobbing. I bet Greta Gerwig will personally contact you and say that she forgives you as long as you are actually not a misogynist and able to prove that you watch Barbie in the theater. Preferably with your boyfriend at 3pm this evening."
"Oh, you're slick." Seungkwan snickers, rolling his eyes when Hansol cackles hard. "I will email her back with a receipt and a picture of my boyfriend crying."
"Fair and square."
"Nice."
"A picture of us both crying?"
"One thousand won bet on only me crying. I don't know about you, though"
"I dislike gamble but one thousand and half won on us crying. It's on."
Hansol offers a firm handshake in which Seungkwan welcomes it with a stronger one. They both ceases to an agreement to lounge around for another hour before making a beeline for a bath, twenty approximate minutes of seungkwan fussing over Hansol's lack of any pinks in his wardrobe then eventually arrives at the theater ready to be rocked several different ways by a film about the classic doll seungkwan faintly recollects playing with for a brief period of his childhood, Barbie .
Seungkwan sits and lets the magic of nostalgia by one Greta Gerwig persist.