Chapter Text
Joong.
He felt ridiculous but… a not-anonymous dating pool just wasn’t an option for him anymore, no matter how much his mother wanted him to settle down. She kept bringing it up in ways that were meant to sound casual, and he kept pretending it was not getting under his skin.
As soon as anyone saw his name or his face, it became a game of who could help him empty his wallet fastest. He’d seen it happen too many times to be surprised by it. There was no real human connection in that, only assets to be utilized and he was done with it.
Lately he had been feeling restless, wanting someone to touch, to feel a sense of connection with. It came and went through the day, and then it showed up properly at night. It had to be on his terms though. If he ever figured them out.
For the past half hour he’d been staring at the login screen on a dating app. He’d opened it, locked his phone, opened it again. Was he really doing this? Yes. He was. If he was going to be uncomfortable either way, he’d rather have a chance at touch.
He hit the “Create Profile” button.
Basic info was easy. He could do facts. He could do boxes and lines. He didn’t have to be charming for those.
Handle: HoldMyHand_01
Age: 24
Height: 186 cm
Gender: Male
Orientation: Gay
Role: Vers Top
Looking for: Discreet meetups
Relationship status: Single
Location: Bangkok
Meet preference: Hotel / neutral
Availability: Evenings (scheduled)
And then a bio. He hated writing these kinds of things.
“Not good at this, better in the real world”
Nope. They’d think he was too lazy to even try.
“I trust what works.”
It made him want to throw his phone.
“I’m good with my h..”
Deleted it before he finished writing.
Every line that escaped from his fingers made him sound like a pretentious bastard or an incel. He stared at the box, then forced himself to stop trying to sound clever.
“Can I hold your hand?”
Not that he only wanted or needed to hold hands, but it was a start. Right? It was at least honest.
And now, the profile picture.
Posting his face was a no-go. Anyone would recognize him in an instant and they’d want for his family name instead of for himself. He didn’t want people collecting proof that they’d matched with him.
Dick-pic was obviously out of the question, but six-pack maybe? No. Everyone else did that. Well, either six-pack or them posing in front of a car. He scrolled past a few examples in his head and felt tired.
His back in the mirror sounded like a reasonable option, so he tried it. Shirt off, face out of frame, the safest version of a body photo. The result still looked like he was inviting someone to pick him apart and decide what he was worth, like the shape of his spine could buy him a conversation. He didn’t want to start that way. He didn’t want to trade a view of himself for attention. He deleted the photo without saving it anywhere.
His hands? Or just one of them? That could work. People always told him he had nice hands and more than once someone had raved about the veins. He could live with that kind of attention. It felt smaller.
He took a photo of the back of his right hand and added warm lighting. It almost looked like one of those old school sepia photos. If he had wanted to be touched, he would have wanted hands like that to do it.
He hit Save and got out of his profile. If he lingered he’d only stare at it and start hating it. He had made the profile.
In his feed the first few profiles were loud. Faces that wanted to be recognized. Bodies that wanted to be evaluated. Captions that tried to sound casual while asking to be chased. He kept moving. He was not here to be entertained, and he was not here to reward anyone for trying too hard.
One profile looked harmless until he read the bio. The words were polite. The intention wasn’t. Successful. Well connected. He blocked it and kept scrolling.
Some people were straightforward and he respected that.
Some people were bored and cruel and he did not bother.
Some profiles felt like shopping lists, and those were the worst, because they pretended they weren’t.
Another profile came up and he stopped, because it wasn’t doing any of that. It had a picture of a field of sunflowers and a minimal description.
Handle: SunflowerAlias
Age: 25
Height: 185 cm
Gender: Male
Orientation: Gay
Role: Vers
Looking for: Discreet meetups
Relationship status: Single
Location: Bangkok
Meet preference: We’ll figure it out.
The bio was one sentence, just like his own
I find beauty in simplicity.
He liked that they didn’t try to sound like they were making something up or to seduce him with a performance. It was just there, and that should not have been as intriguing as it was.
What kind of person would hide behind such a small mask?
He pressed like and went back to the feed.
After scrolling for a while, he got impatient with everything that tried to sell him a mood and opened his laptop to answer a few emails. But his eyes kept drifting back to his phone.
He stared at his inbox for a second, annoyed at his own expectation. Then he picked the phone back up because his hands still wanted somewhere to go.
The notification came in while he was scrolling.
“You have a new match.”
His stomach flipped, but he had not come this far to play games.
SunflowerAlias.
[22:47] HoldMyHand_01: Hi
Keep it real, he told himself. And then he waited.
[22:51] SunflowerAlias: Hi. What are we doing while we hold hands?
Straight to the point. He liked that.
[22:52] HoldMyHand_01: We just start there and see where the mood takes us.
[22:57] SunflowerAlias: That’s all?
He wanted to say it before anything got complicated. He also didn’t know if this was the moment to drop a line like that, because it could kill the whole thing before it even started.
He didn’t want to kill it.
So he asked instead.
[22:58] HoldMyHand_01: What would you want to do?
[22:59] SunflowerAlias: I want to see what those hands can do.
His pulse picked up.
[23:00] SunflowerAlias: There’s something I should say before we go further.
[23:00] HoldMyHand_01: Yes?
[23:01] SunflowerAlias: I don’t want you to see my face. Ever. Is that something you’d be okay with?
No face meant a meeting would be narrowed down to voice, hands, and whatever they decided to do in the dark. It also meant no mental picture to get stuck on, no details to turn over later when he was trying to sleep. That worked for him. Maybe it worked for both of them.
[23:02] HoldMyHand_01: As long as you’d be okay with no touching.
[23:03] SunflowerAlias: How exactly would that work?
This was the part he hadn’t figured out how to say out loud yet, and here he was trying to type it to a stranger.
[23:04] HoldMyHand_01: I touch you. You don’t touch me.
[23:04] HoldMyHand_01: If you agree to that, I could… put on a blindfold or something.
[23:05] SunflowerAlias: Hands off completely, or just you first?
[23:05] HoldMyHand_01: No hands.
[23:06] SunflowerAlias: What do I do with my hands, then?
[23:06] HoldMyHand_01: Keep them where I put them.
[23:07] SunflowerAlias: That sounds dangerous, in a way I will probably like.
Good. He wanted it to.
[23:07] SunflowerAlias: What happens if I forget?
He took his time with that one.
[23:13] HoldMyHand_01: Then I stop, and you do not argue about it.
[23:14] SunflowerAlias: I can do that.
[23:14] SunflowerAlias: Where do you put them?
[23:15] HoldMyHand_01: Somewhere you can keep them still for me.
[23:16] SunflowerAlias: For you? Alright. I can behave if that’s the rule.
[23:16] SunflowerAlias: What do I get in return?
[23:18] HoldMyHand_01: The undivided attention of my hands.
[23:19] SunflowerAlias: That sounds hot.
[23:19] SunflowerAlias: You just made me blush a little.
Someone out there was blushing. Because of him. It made him want to push for more.
[23:20] HoldMyHand_01: Just a little?
[23:21] SunflowerAlias: More than a little. Happy now?
[23:22] HoldMyHand_01: I could be happier if my hands had something to do. When are you free?
[23:23] SunflowerAlias: Thursday?
[23:24] HoldMyHand_01: Pick somewhere and send me the address.
[23:29] SunflowerAlias: I’ll send you the address tomorrow.
[23:30] SunflowerAlias: Goodnight, HoldMyHand.
[23:31] HoldMyHand_01: Goodnight.
Less than two hours and now he had a… date in four days.
Thursday was far away.
———
Monday a new message arrived.
[18:12] SunflowerAlias: Jade Plaza. Room 1412. Thursday 21:00.
[18:12] SunflowerAlias: I will leave a blindfold on the door for you. Please put it on before you knock, and don’t take it off until you’re outside again.
Joong copied the details into his calendar, and tried to write a reply that didn’t make him sound foolish.
[18:15] HoldMyHand_01: I’ll be there.
[18:20] SunflowerAlias: I’m sure your hands are very excited.
This person had never met him, didn’t know what he looked like, had nothing but thirty messages and a username to go on, and still typed like they knew how Thursday was going to go.
Anticipation moved through his chest and settled in his gut.
He wanted them to be right.
He was probably reading into it. He hadn’t opened the app again after matching with SunflowerAlias, hadn’t scrolled, hadn’t looked at anyone else. He didn’t know if that was strange. He had nothing to compare it to. This was one person, one match, someone he couldn’t pick out of a crowd even if he tried, and he had no way of knowing if what felt like ease was actually ease or just what happened when you had nothing else to measure it against.
Thursday would tell him something. Or it wouldn’t.
———
He found parking two streets over and walked the rest of the way. The night air was warm and he was glad for something to do with his body while his head was running ahead of him.
He walked through the lobby and went straight for the elevator.
Fourteenth floor. He watched the numbers and tried not to think too much about what he was walking toward, which was difficult because his mind had been doing exactly that since Monday morning.
He was going to a room he had never been in, to meet someone whose face he would never see, and he was going to do it blind. Literally. He had agreed to that. He had suggested it.
The doors opened.
Room 1412 was at the end of the hall. He walked slowly enough to notice the carpet, the wall lighting, a trolley outside someone else’s room.
The blindfold was on the handle as promised.
He picked it up and held it for a moment. The fabric was soft and dark.
He put it on, adjusted it and held the edges down until there was nothing. No light at the sides. Nothing at the bottom. The hallway disappeared. The trolley down the corridor, the wall lights, the number plate on the door, all of it gone.
His whole world was now the carpet under his feet and the door in front of him and whatever was on the other side of it.
This was the thing he had agreed to, had wanted for four days. And it turned out that knowing something was coming did very little to prepare you for the moment it arrived. He couldn’t see the door. He couldn’t see his own hands.
He was fine. He was completely fine. He was also not going anywhere.
His hand found the door and he knocked.
This was it. There was no way out now. Not that he wanted there to be but he was aware, very suddenly, that the choice had been his and now it wasn’t anymore.
Footsteps on the other side were getting closer.
The door was right there and whoever was behind it was almost at it now and there was no turning back, no quietly peeling the blindfold off and taking the elevator down like none of this had happened.