unbox'd: heartsick/homesick

i often forget that the story heartsick/homesick began as is not necessarily the story it ended up being. it was supposed to be more relationship focused, instead of the version of it that now exists, which turns minghao in on himself. less internalized homophobia and more here is how minghao & dia simultaneously fall in love and fall in love with the bay. i was clearing out my gdocs when i found the original draft of the fic, and here's a scene i thought would be fun to share.

Seokmin is the first person who doesn’t ask Minghao what he “thinks about the city” when Minghao tells him he’s from China. And Minghao likes that. Instead, Seokmin asks him if he’s done the touristy things; the bridges, the parks, Chinatown, the museums. Yes, no, yes, only the MOMA, in that order. People go into debt to live in San Francisco and here Minghao is, tentative to go anywhere with anyone that isn’t Junhui.

Minghao’s thoughts on San Francisco: it is not a city. He’s said it before in one of his classes and someone sitting in the back had said he was calling Bay Area folks out. He still means it, though. San Francisco sprawls outwards, not upwards. People are still nice to you when you bump into them. You can move on the sidewalks; even when Minghao had visited Union Square for Christmas with Junhui, the crowd had been tame. To put it simply, time in San Francisco moves at half the speed of time in Anshan. Minghao spent his first two months learning how to pace himself to time here. San Francisco is not a city, and it’s not Anshan, but funnily enough, Minghao’s breaths come easy here, come steady here. There’s no quickening of his steps or hunching in on himself.

sometimes i want to come back to this story, not necessarily because there is more to tell to it but because it's such a vibrant, real, universe.