As usual, massive thanks to my betas, Halfaslug and mswyrr. Also as a flaily wave at the entire tumblr fbnd meta squad in general and malariamonsters in particular.
She wakes to the low beams of sunlight that dapple the sofa and the wall behind it. She squirms and presses her eyes into the crook of her elbow, shielding them from the light.
Que-geum's voice crawls up her spine:
"On a scale from handful of grapes to roast hog: how hungry would you say you are?"
Reluctantly, she opens her eyes and finds him kneeling beside the sofa, face only a few inches away from her stomach, scrutinizing the general location of her belly button with a look of deep concentration..
"What on earth are you doing?"
With the sort of solemnity normally reserved for NATO security council meetings, he informs her:
"I've taken inventory. You'll be pleased to learn that you've retained all ten fingers and toes since I last saw you. Birthmark under your left - my right - eyebrow as well as worry wrinkle atop your right - my left - are still in place. You seem a bit tired and peaky, though. And when I say "a bit" I mean "a lot", that is: very. So what's our next step?"
"Nap.", she says resolutely, blinking against the sun. He grabs a throw pillow and uses it to keep the light out of her face. Her treacherous stomach growls loudly. "That's funny," he drops conversationally, "because your tummy here says it's pizza."
She grabs the pillow from him and burrows into it. "No." she moans. "Nap. Definitely nap."
The seat cushion shifts beneath her and his flank presses into her midriff as he sits. "We have to feed you, you know? Otherwise you'll just wake up in a couple of hours feeling all weak and nauseous." In a last shot at being petulant, she tries to curl up more tightly, but her knees hit his bothersomely solid form. He lightly taps her temple with his fingertip, twice, and she withdraws form the pillow and rolls onto her back with a put-upon air. He is hovering just above her, one hand on the back of the sofa, one on the armrest next to her face.
„Hi. It's not good for your jet-lag to sleep now." he smiles, trying and failing to look authoritative. She isn't quite sure whether he's aware that his close proximity is causing her motivation to leave the sofa, which was fairly low to begin with, to plummet into negative numbers. „We have – and I swear this is true – the BEST pizza in all of Madrid at the hands of the Cane family – wonderful people – just around the corner – I should know, I used to work there – and an amazing park another 5 minutes down the street." He scrunches up his face, deliberating „Weeeell, probably ten, considering we'll be veeeery slow, as we're both veeeeery sleepy." His thumb reaches to smooth out her crinkled eyebrow. „The walk will do you good, I promise. It's stunning out there right now."
„I quite likein here right now." Her fingers have found their way to the hand next to her head, up his forearm, and are now pushing back against the rolled up sleeve in the crook of his elbow. The sinews there twitch against her knuckles. He bends down towards her, brushing an infuriatingly light kiss against the corner of her mouth, and withdraws. She follows, pushing up on her elbows, but before she reaches her goal...
"Oh good, you're up!", and he twirls off the sofa into a standing position, meeting her indignant gape with a smug giggle. "Also: snap. Come on, let me feed youuuuu!" he wriggles into his shoes and heads towards the door to retrieve his backpack.
Dok Mi flops back down with an inarticulate grunt.
Backpack thrown across one shoulder, three impossibly bouncy strides have him standing over her. "Should I remind you of the 50-year-plan?" He adjusts the second shoulder strap and then bends over the armrest, cradling her head "Beautiful places. Great food. Gazing. Laughter.", he swoops down, each full stop a bumpy peck to her forehead. "Come on. Comeoncomeoncomeon."
She squirms and smiles. "Alright. Alrightalrightalright...", her appeasements transition into limp-wristed swats at his head when pecks turn into a raspberry blown lightly into her forehead. "YES, COMING!"
Dok Mi exits the pizzeria in an over stimulated haze, followed suit by Que-geum who is still tossing banter over his shoulder.
30 seconds into the restaurant, he was showered with kisses by the patriarch, engulfed in his wife's arms, and arm-punched by the young man working the wood stove. A teenaged girl in service attire pounced him from behind, laughing manically whilst seemingly intent on choking him. All of this took place under a cacophony of rapid-fire Spanish pouring mostly unchecked from five mouths simultaneously, propelled onwards by wild gestures, driven home by constant touching and jostling. Nothing ever slowed or tuned down for 15 minutes, when the family forced a bottle of white wine and two glasses onto them on top of their pizza and, swatting away Que-geum's wallet with an air of mortal insult, ushered them out the door. He waves back through the window at four faces grinning knowingly, before ushering Dok Mi further down the street, considerably worse for wear. "I apologise for that. I didn't mean to park you, but the Canes are a bit... demanding when in a high mood. And four of them at once. Uhm, take-aways from the conversation: they all agree I probably don't deserve you – there was a lot of variety on that theme. And you're very pretty. And I am to kiss you a l...", he halts, his entire frame stalled by an elephantine yawn. Hands full with pizza and wine, he angles his fly trap down into his upper arm. Mama Cane's attentions have left a smudge of pizza flour across his cheekbone, and whilst taking the wine and glasses from him with one hand, Dok Mi reaches up with the other to rub it off.
"You got something there, Enrrrique.", she says, trying to let his name roll off her tongue with the unfamiliar Spanish inflection.
Struck by inspiration, he nips sideways to kiss her wrist, and in the span of time it takes for his pupils to dilate, her mind has test-run 7 ways of dragging him back to the apartment by the scruff of his shirt. So, of course, her actual self drops her hand to loosely hook with his and tugs him onwards down the street. She turns her face into the sun spilling out of a side street, blushing. "Come on, I'm starving.", she says.
"I knew it! I'm so perceptive!", he hisses triumphantly. This time she makes sure he catches her eye-roll.
He was right. It is beautiful outside. Groups and tangles of people are spilling out of offices and apartment doorways into the balmy evening, carrying take-away food in business attire, casually dangling cigarettes from their mouths, loosening ties. They settle into chairs outside cafes and queues at corner shops. Conversation is low and lazy.
The two of them stop at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for green. Que-geum goes to nonchalantly lean against a lamp post, but he fumbles and slides past it with a look of sincere surprise at this turn of events on his face. The unexpected tug on her arm nearly sends Dok Mi toppling after him, but she manages to brace her weight and yanks him back from the mercifully empty car lane.
"Well, that's one point for the buddy system." he giggles. "That lamp looked shifty to begin with."
"That wasn't remotely funny."
He looks up at her from squinting at the lamp. "Oh yeah? Then why are you smirking?"
"Your face was a bit amusing," she admits. "so... Disappointed with the world in general."
He curtsies. "Anything to please m'lady."
The signal ticks to green and they inch into the street. The back of her hand brushes against his hip as she lets him take the lead, trying to pull mental focus on the fuzzy edges of the day. The street markings in the centre lane seem to latch to her trainers and unexpectedly root her to the spot.
"Wait, what?" she creaks, pulling Que-geum to a stop two paces ahead of her. He turns around on abrupt momentum and looks at her bemusedly.
"Uhm... street?" he ventures, trying to catch her eye in between checking up and down the boulevard. The pedestrian signal goes back to to red.
"No, but wait," she says.
"Can't we wait on the sidewalk?"
Her eyes snap to his.
"The fifty-year plan?" she blurts out incredulously.
"What?"
Her mouth is set in a mildly peeved fashion. "Did you know that you talk without punctuation, appreciation or filters? And I'm left sieving these amazing things you've said four seconds and 14 thoughts ago, trying to organise them. You said the fifty-year plan." Agitated, she rubs her brow.
He nudges her elbow. "Right-o. Know what's a great place to have this talk? Anywhere but here."
Her hand drops from her face to tug at her sleeve and he can see that her mouth has graduated from peeved to pinched. "Don't avoid me on this." she squints, shifting her weight onto one leg.
"The only thing I'm trying to avoid are cars careening like wildebeests down this street we are standing in , Ahjumma," he quips, his free hand mimicking the trajectory of potential traffic.
She blinks. "Oh, right." Gaze down, she starts towards the sidewalk. "You can't just say such things," she mumbles. Que-geum jauntily hops up the curb behind her.
"I agree we've all been deeply traumatised by Mufasa's death, but it's been twenty..."
"Not that", she brushes over him with a jerky glance over her shoulder.
Now it's him who stops in his tracks.
"You know I'm not just saying that," he frowns at the back of her head. She turns around and he continues:
"It's real simple though I've put a great deal of thought into it. Contemplation. Mulling. In five decades' time we might want to re-evaluate our relative levels of decrepitness; make plans for man servants to carry our luggage or ourselves, allowance for old people points of interest, you know – swap delicious food for those horrible ginger and pistachio biscuits my grandmother liked so much. 50 years is an excellent amount of time to stick to the original plan." Whilst tattling, he has sidled up to her. "I am very serious about that plan."
She tucks a smile into his side.
Across the street and into the final alley, a tree line comes into view. Que-geum gestures ahead with their joined hands "Tadaa: El Retiro."
A group of students ushers past them with barbecues and blankets, textbooks jammed underneath their arms for alibies. The setting sun bounces off bottle necks in tanned hands and opened windows. At the entrance to the park, a woman in a pantsuit kicks off her heels before jogging up to her colleagues.
They make their way down a broad promenade, the sun in their eyes, before he tugs her off the path and across a green, passing through clusters of trees and people splayed on towels, straw mats and hastily shucked coats. Clouds of midges dance around tree trunks.
"You know, in cinematography, they call this "The Golden Hour". The first and last hour of sunlight in a day and BAM everything is drenched in this glorious quality of natural light. I mean, just look at the grass: sharp, dramatic contrasts - I read somewhere that the golden hour carves out every being's inner light. And look: everybody's flung about to catch the last rays. I love it."
"Ah, here's a question you'll like: which one do you like better: the golden hour or the blue hour?"
"Eh?"
"The blue hour is the last hour of daylight after the sun has dipped below the horizon - or before it comes up - resulting in ambient lighting - which is tinted blue because of the angle of the rays as they hit the atmosphere ."
He scoffs. "You're gonna have to sell it to me a bit harder than with a passage from your old physics textbook. I mean, at least I had inner light!" She bristles as he leads her through a marble colonnade encircling a plaza. Past a towering column in the centre, sweeping stairs lead down to an artificial lake. He joggles her hand in his.
"Come on, describe it to me."
Dok Mi hands him back his scoff and briefly extends the arm not attached to him towards the sun, wine glasses and all, squinting. "I don't need to describe it to you. In less than 45 minutes, you can see it yourself." Catching his puzzled face, she elaborates: "Every finger you can fit between the sun and the horizon means 15 minutes until sunset. See? Give or take."
He sniggers. "Clever fingers," and lifts the hand in his to kiss them. "I like when you describe things to me," he pouts. Unfairly. She bumps his shoulder with hers.
"Cheater. Alright, here goes: The golden hour creates sharp contrasts, right? Well, the ambient light of the blue hour blurs the edges. It makes space for might. For the great perhaps. The day is coming to a close, decisions must be made for the night, plans forged or abandoned. It's like... slowing down before an intersection. Slowing down before everything. Breath held before a leap. Promise. Potential."
Dok Mi drops his hand and walks ahead down the stairs towards the water, taking in the four bronze lions atop plinths that section the staircase.
„So what, it's a time when nothing happens?" Que-geum calls, following her.
"Which is usually when everything happens. That's what makes it profound. It's transition made visible." She pauses four steps up from the pond, where the sunset has cut a slice out of the scenery, and looks back at him over her shoulder. "The critical mass of idle Tuesdays."
„You should write that down." he motions for her to sit. She settles down, back against the warm marble of the plinth, legs drawn up.
„I don't think that's mine."
It's his turn to roll his eyes at her and he makes the most of it before circling around her to sit one step down, cross-legged, with his knee brushing up against her hip
„I think you'll find you're thinking wrong."
He flicks open the lid of the pizza box before him, separates the slices and unscrews the wine. "Change is good, then?"
She eyes him, accepts the glass he passes and deliberates for a moment. "Having an impetus for change, yes."
He stops pouring himself and catches her eye from underneath his fringe. And that is all that needs saying. She breaks eye contact and nods past him at the surroundings.
"So, is there a story to this place?"
He chuckles around a mouthful of pizza dough. "Not so much a story as a big ol' mess. Sort of. It's the monument to Alfonso the 12th, one of our many kings - as you can tell by the fact that he's the twelfth by his name."
Dok Mi nods. "I don't know whether it's quite regal enough, I only spotted six lions."
"Madam, I take it you only say that because you haven't spotted the mermaids, yet.", he replies, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.
She snorts into her wine glass "Those make sense, they'd roam the great African plains together."
He cackles appreciatively. "Okay, you're going to love all this. So: Alfonso's mum commissioned this place - Austrian royal blood, I forget her name, and so over 20 years, she builds him a monument only a mother could love. Get this: not only do we have Alfie himself high on his steed." he gestures up the central column. "And the lions and mermaids. But there's also - brace yourself: "The Army" and "The Navy" back where we came from; "Peace", "Freedom" and "Progress" surrounding Alfonso's column; and "Sciences", "Arts", "Agriculture" and "Industry" looking out onto the artificial lake with us.", his non-be-pizzaed arm flying this way and that as he indicates the corresponding bronze statues. "All of them by different sculpturers. And let me tell you: art direction wasn't very strong. The only thing that ties this together is the blind stabbing at neo classicism."
She smirks. "So, in essence, we're sitting at the centre of everything."
He nods excitedly. "ALL the things, ahjumma. Everything you could lavish onto a monument: we got it."
"You're right. This is... riveting."
He nudges the pizza box towards her. "Know what they could've used?"
She shakes her head around a mouthful of wine whilst reaching for another slice.
"A truly grrreat editor to tell them to cut the superfluous crap."
She scowls derisively. "I never said that."
"Not in so many words, no."
"I never implied that, either."
"Yeah, I wouldn't call gleeful red dashes across entire paragraphs an implication, either.", he shoots back, goading her.
"Gleeful? I've never..."
He nods vigorously, affirming his point.
"You've never seen your own face when your editing ditches words for sweeping marks. Gleeful."
Her eyebrows rise, full of scorn. "Okay. Sure. You would know a thing or two about being gleeful."
"I am a much-wanted international authority on the subject. Now, if you just make sure you continue saving manuscripts from their own sprawl for years to come, I should be able to gather enough research to become the leader of the field. I've already got the title of my next research paper."
"Oh, this should be good. Please remember titles should be anywhere below half a page long," she deadpans.
He puffs out his chest "Comparative studies of snarky undertows in still waters."
"I'd get rid of the "comparative studies" bit. It's a research paper; it's implied." she shoots back without missing a beat.
"And there she goes proving my point." he tells the lake with a tilt of his glass. Dok Mi takes in his profile against the last minutes of the golden hour. This side of the trans-eurasian flight the journey seems ludicrously, indisputably worth it. She could shove this into a weekend simply to allow for further study of the exact curve of his neck. Not to mention the cartographic demands of that group of birthmarks around his shoulder blade. There's also a jar of affectionate gazes that needs curation. She settles back against the plinth behind her, legs drawn up, to catch up on her work. The warmth of the stone seeps into her back. She observes him make a production of splitting up the last of the wine exactly between their two glasses, only to shrug and slosh the lot together into one, and she woozily thinks that fifty years sounds like a good start.