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San is your first love. He broke your heart and played with your feelings without even kissing you back when you two were in highschool. Now, many years later, you do your best to avoid crossing paths with him because there's just no way you could ever hate him, but there's also no way you two can be friends again. But his best friend is also one of your best friends, so there's only so much you can do to avoid San when he arranges a dinner you're forced to go to.
PAIRING: first love!choi san x afab reader.
GENRE: one shot (fluff, angst, smut)
WORD COUNT: 20k (yikes).
WARNINGS: SMUT ☽ (MINORS DNI) attempt !!! at comedy, unnecesary pinning, a looot of context, bad friends :(, some arguing, tension, drinking and drunk behavior, tears, making out, description of female anatomy, oral (f reciving), fingering, love making, pet names (babe, baby), flirty seonghwa, wooyoung being a little shit again but also a genius, gyuri almost commiting a crime.
NOTES: hi everyone! this is a lenghty one, i know, but trust me when I say the context is necessary to understand what reader goes through with san. also, some of this may or may not have happened to me (have fun figuring out which part) (it's quite obvious tbh). THIS IS PART OF THE SHOW AND TELL UNIVERSE BUT CAN BE READ AS A STAND ALONE, even though there's some references and characters that you can only know if you read s&t lol. this is 100% self indulgent, as all fics should be, and i think i've re-read it so many times that if you find a typo or something that just doesn't make sense, you can blame it on english not being my first language i guess lmao. i hope you enjoy it and if you do feel free to send/reblog/type in any feedback or thoughts! <3
Well, it's nine years way back? You were only fourteen when you first saw him.
He moved back to your area of the city a year after you moved from an entirely different one. You thought you knew every school secret there ever was, provided by your new best friend, Gyuri, but she didn't tell you about him at all.
She claimed that it was because he didn't cause any stir the years they studied together before and after spending a whole first period in your eighth grade classroom with him at the back of the class, silently taking notes, you couldn't phantom why.
He was great at every subject, seemed to have a lot of popular friends and was, overall, a pretty nice guy. He was also very cute, skinny but you could tell he was the kind of guy who played a sport outside of school hours and he had a cute pair of dimples that showed everytime you scanned the classroom just to lay eyes on him.
Choi San was a perfect boy to crush on, even a perfect guy just to have as eye candy during recess. You felt really strongly about him, not really forming a full opinion although your gut told you right away you were right. There was something about him… but you only figured that something until later, next year, starting your ninth grade.
Gyuri and you were avid readers. Precocious girls, with minds way above your age. All your teachers praised came laced with the same compliment so you both decided that was the truth. You rejoiced in it, thinking you shared things in common with the grown ups and decided that that was the key to feeling a little superior in comparison to the rest of your classmates, who neither of you liked very much.
Until they all decided to start dating each other and you two realized you were nothing but two kids with great imaginations and a love for school, praise and fictional men that couldn't be translated to the real world without sounding delusional and weird.
So you decided to do something about it. And so, on a random Tuesday recess, you two scanned the crowd trying to find two boys (or a boy and a girl, because you always knew you liked girls too) worthy of your affections. One for her, one for you. Bonus points if the two of them were also best friends, of course.
Double dates were all the buzz at the time anyways.
Besides, only then they could understand the bond you and Gyuri had. Sisterhood like no other, nevermind Gyuri actually had an older sister and a niece at the ripe age of fifteen.
And so when your index finger scanned the crowd and eliminated at least three potential crushes before landing on Choi San, you felt like it was meant to be.
You see, his best friend, Jung Wooyoung, was perfect for Gyuri to crush on. He was almost as tall as she was at the time and his easy, outgoing personality was compatible with her book crush at the time as well.
He also flirted with her on several occasions before that.
So it was meant to be.
Choi San, on the other hand, had never even glanced in your direction before.
Just like your book crush did before he fell in love with the main character.
See? Meant. To. Be.
It was decided then that, although Choi San was not going to be your first crush ever, he was going to be the guy that motivated you to be at school for the time being, because math gets really boring after trying and failing at least ten times.
You thought nothing of it when it felt a little forced, when you couldn't blush at all at the sight of him and you gathered that it didn't need to happen like in the books you read. You simply needed to say his name when someone asked you if you had a crush on anyone and that was enough to be in symphony with the rest of your classmates.
Your longing glances were caught once or twice by him and you brushed the weird flip your stomach did everytime he looked away, blushing a little. You never really cared when it happened, really, knowing his crowd and your crowd (Gyuri and you) would never even cross paths in the first place.
You two kept to yourselves and your little book unofficial book club, sitting on the floor at lunch time and cursing everyone who dared to call you weird for it. San and Wooyoung had a crowd of people at the loudest table laughing with them over stupid teen jokes and, uh, sports? You didn't even know.
And then the unimaginable happened.
Jung Wooyoung sat down, criss cross applesauce and everything, in front of you on a random Monday afternoon while you and Gyuri discussed the english assignment due next period.
Gyuri was not too excited about that.
Turns out, the only one excited to have a crush at school was you. She was very much still in the Lonely Hearts Club phase while you skipped all the way to your The Notebook phase and she was, in her own words, too afraid to admit it when you came up with your crush plan.
You forgave her, of course, and decided to wait for her as long as needed because you were certainly not about to be an individual and have a crush on your own.
And by the time Wooyoung smiled at you both and introduced himself to you, like you weren't in the same class for a year already, you thought your pretend crush on his best friend evaporated and joined the void superficial and fleeting interests you had.
But then Choi San sat beside him, his knee brushing against yours in the process, and you knew you would have to issue a formal apology to your best and only friend for leaving her behind on this little thing.
Because, oh boy, were you crushing on Choi San.
You felt the blush rush to your cheeks and then fell silent while your friend and his friend discussed Fifty Shades of Grey for some reason you never cared enough to discover and you knew you were done for.
It was the first time seeing his dimples in full action, so close to you, so you completely stopped functioning all together. Amazing.
When you decided to have a crush, you never took into account that you were, actually, quite shy. And he really wasn't, but you noticed that he knew when to talk and what to say and with your friend being a lot more outgoing that you were it gave you the comfort that she would speak for the both of you while you admired from the sidelines as your little duo became a group of friends you still miss deeply to this day.
He was funny and you laughed at your jokes even though you pretended to be tired and completely worn out by the school day, resting your head on Gyuri’s shoulder and stealing glances at the boy while she kept arguing with his best friend.
Wooyoung was popular and liked enough to have a few people sit with you later that week, people who never even knew you existed before that. They were good friends with San as well, so you tried your best to keep up with everyone until she sat down next to you one day.
Arin was not really a bad person. She just was a bit conceited, calling herself princess type of conceited and you never really related to her even if she was nice to you to your face. She was absolutely gorgeous and, you found out with Wooyoung’s arm around your shoulder and a whisper to your ear, she had been San’s crush since they were both in elementary school.
That would explain the sudden tension at the table when she sat down next to you, said hello to everyone, offered you a sweet she just bought from the cafeteria, and stared at San for the remainder of lunch time.
You also noticed Wooyoung glaring at her a little and he later explained to you that he didn't really like her all that much. She loved attention and San gave her attention, so she would intentionally flirt with him to get her ego stroked in return.
It didn't really matter how he felt about the girl, though, he didn't have to like her just because his best friend did. And when you caught her batting her eyelashes at San, you knew you didn't even stand a chance.
You tried to hide the disappointed look on your face but both Gyuri and Wooyoung looked at you while the two of them flirted endlessly for the remainder of lunch time and you figured you were doing a pretty shitty job at it. He didn't glance at you once either way, so it didn't really matter.
Arin did but she just complimented your eyes and then started a conversation with someone across the table, her annoying sweet and fake voice making your right ear ring in disapproval.
Either way, you ended up becoming her friend. Gyuri was not very fond of her and neither were you, but you all went to the bathroom together, did your makeup together, did school projects together and then sat everyday at lunch together with the rest of the guys who were, in one way or another, trying to get her to like them.
Because, once again, she was a sight for sore eyes.
It wasn't until later, in the middle of the year, that one of them did. Not Choi San, but Choi Yeonjun.
You remember the day you found out they were together and the gut wrenching concern you felt when you found out that San was not at school that day.
It was after summer break, you remember Wooyoung telling you that San and his family took a few more days of vacation and if you couldn't believe your eyes when you saw the new couple sharing a sweet kiss at the designated lunch table, you could only imagine how San felt the next day when he saw the same image right in front of him.
Yeonjun was his friend, right? He knew about his crush and decided to get together with her anyways. Surely, San was devastated.
But he wasn't. He just cheered them on and then laughed along when Yeonjun shoved his arm playfully after the hollering.
But you saw through it.
Your crush on San made you observant. Made you believe you knew him better than everyone else and so, after lunch, you took out your phone and pulled up the notes app. Writing a simple “are you okay?” in it and passing it to him the next second, you were surprised with yourself before you saw him frown a bit. And then he understood what you meant.
Nodding, he passed you the phone back, before giving you a reassuring smile that you treasured in your heart and saw in your dreams.
You didn't believe him, though, but stayed close enough to everything related to the situation to hold Arin in your arms when Yeonjun inevitably broke her heart.
Starting your tenth year, he moved back to his city and decided to play the I thought we weren't even that serious card on her. Which was nasty, considering love it's very, very serious for a sixteen year old girl.
By this point, you were all a little family and hanging out after school and on the weekends was not unusual, so it didn't surprise you when Arin invited you, and only you, to her house after choir practice on a Thursday.
She lent you her older sister’s clothes to wear (because her's would never fit you. Her words, not yours) and took you to a walk in the park just to break your heart for the first time ever.
“You know… I thought love was something I couldn't find in highschool anymore. But San it's really making an effort, you know? He's been there for me ever since Yeonjun left and… Well, I think he's going to ask me to be his girlfriend tomorrow.”
Grasping the park bench she forced you to sit at, you only nodded and let out a shuddering breath that gave away what she was trying to figure out since earlier that day.
“I'll say yes but only if you say it's okay to do so.”
Arin was not really your friend, the same way Yeonjun was not really San’s friend.
Because there's no way you would ever be okay with it.
And yet, you tried your best to give her a smile and pretend the sound of your heart breaking didn't bring tears to your eyes “Of course it's okay. Why wouldn't it be?”
A week later, they were officially dating. The rumors spread around like a wildfire and it took out of you with everyone calling San a nasty rebound and you doing your best to prioritize the ghost of the friendship you had with him. That whole fiasco lasted a few months.
Months in which your friendship with everyone just grew stronger. Gyuri was still your best friend, Wooyoung was crushing on her hard and everyone knew, Arin and San were a steady couple, a new girl joined your class that year, named Yeri, and the principal assigned her to you because she thought you two would get along really well.
“I like girls,” was like, the third thing she ever told you while you were showing her the school “I'm just telling you now because I don't plan on hiding it and you are wearing a pride pin.”
“Oh, that's cool. I like girls too,” you smiled, looking at your pride pin “I didn't hide it either and no one gave me shit about it, so, don't worry.”
Yeri also liked the mainstream music that you liked and soon she became a new addition to your group. And with Arin spending all of her free time with San, you, Gyuri and Yeri only grew closer and closer. You didn't have Arin’s voice in your ear telling you the million reasons she found Yeri uncool, but you saw it in her face every time the table laughed at one of Yeri’s jokes.
And so, it went on for a while:
Your mom driving all of you around in her car to the beach, to dinner, to the movies and letting you have mixed sleepovers at your house (meaning you, Arin, Gyuri, Wooyoung, Yeri and San) was fun and all, but it was not enough to distract yourself entirely. Everytime you glanced at the couple, that sinking feeling in your chest would appear and sulk your whole mood for, at least, fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes of pretending you were okay with them before forgetting completely for an hour or so and then the cycle would repeat until you were alone staring at the ceiling and doing your best to not cry about it.
All it took was your first kiss being Yeri of all people for you to decide that it was time to retire your crush for Choi San once and for all.
And for a while, it all went according to plan. You decided to tell Gyuri that it was okay because he was your friend first and the guy that you liked second and that you were not fourteen and desperate for love anymore, that it was time to go on with your life as if nothing really happened in the first place.
You were hooking up with Yeri anyways, so it seemed like you were doing just fine.
You grew closer to San as well and even though he mostly talked to you about Arin and whatever tantrum she was throwing at the time, you really started to feel some sense of normalcy within you when it came to just speaking to him.
You no longer blushed when he made you laugh, you no longer looked at him with the longing of a past life lover and you were really happy for him because, at the end of the day, he was really happy with his relationship.
Until winter break came around and Arin decided to give San his first heartbreak ever.
She decided to call for a break in their relationship because she was, in his words, too overwhelmed with the amount of love and attention she was getting from him.
Which was completely fucking insane considering the fact she forced him to save her contact as Princess Arin and all.
So naturally, you sided with him. And she didn't take it to heart because everyone knew you liked San anyways.
She told you the news herself through Facebook after asking you to explain to her the English assignment due next day and then she decided to tell you something you'll never understand because you no longer are on speaking terms with her:
Princess Arin: u know i broke up with him because of u right? :)
Princess Arin: one day I'll tell u all abt it.
She never told you anything about it. And by then, you were starting your last year and San was your best friend who hung out with you everyday after school, calling you late at night and helping you with assignments through Skype. So you didn't really care.
And as the day passed, you started understanding the connection they talked about in books and movies. You thought you did before, Gyuri being your eternal person in this world, but it felt so different with San.
Different and good. Different and achy enough for you to want to keep it in your life.
Your dynamic was friendly, sure, but it was alright. It consisted of banter and daring stares as well as laughter and soft moments you treasured till this day.
“It's way too early to be this annoying, Choi San.”
“Oh, you think this is me being annoying?”
You both got an hour of detention for disturbing the class that day.
You loved it.
But then, after almost a month of picking up the broken pieces of his heart one by one, and your mother giving him a self-help book to make him regain the confidence he lost during the breakup process, you realized that you were in love with him and there was nothing you could do about that.
You noticed one friday afternoon, when he offered to pay for your and your mom's ice cream at the drive through, when he scrambled to get all the change he had on him to leave a tip for the person who handed you guys the sweet treat, that there was no way you didn't love him.
And it was confusing as fuck when everyone else started to tell you he had feelings for you as well.
“Think about it. You text each other good morning everyday” Yeri listed with her finger and you nodded “Then, you go to school, sit together and spend the rest of the day together” another nod “Then after school you either go get ice cream together or hang out for a bit with your mom while she drives him home. And after that, you get on Skype for the reminder of the afternoon and then he calls you on your house phone and you two spend the rest of the night talking before falling asleep on the line together,” she looked at you like you were insane for even denying the accusations made against San, but she continued anyway “And then it's rinse and repeat and it has been that way since… What? Three months ago?”
You nodded again, defeated.
“Girl, he likes you.” she sighed, annoyed and a little tired, before sitting on your lap and kissing your lips affectionately “And you're here making out with me instead of him. You really are a lost cause.”
That didn't stop you from hooking up with her until she found a girl who's heart was not reserved for someone else, though. Said girl went to a different school and was a year younger than all of you, but she looked very happy and stopped secretly kissing you in the school bathroom like a week after they met.
And when she finally told everyone, you were really happy for her, but San not so much.
It was the night you thought everything was about to change. The night you thought he was about to kiss you or you were about to kiss him, whatever happened first.
Laying in your bed, facing each other in the dim light, he thought it was the biggest form of betrayal and pouted the whole time he explained to you why.
He thought you liked her and you realized he didn't really pay attention to you after all. Not the way you did with him.
Bless his heart.
You didn't kiss him that night because he wouldn't shut up about you and Yeri.
“I mean, why couldn't it be you? She clearly liked you if you two were hooking up for over a year” and when his hand came to rest on your back, under your shirt, you breath hitched enough for him to notice it but not enough for him to just don't do anything about it except trace the curve of your silhouette with the pad of his thumb “I don't understand why anyone would pass the opportunity to be with you.”
Huh. Maybe he did have feelings for you.
No. He's just being a great best friend. Don't take that for granted.
But it was impossible for you not to take Yeri’s words seriously as time went on.
You didn't want to think he was giving you mixed signals, but yet again there was that one time when you reached behind your passenger seat in your mothers car to pinch his leg playfully after he pulled on your hair a little bit from behind, only to end up holding his hand the rest of the car trip to his house.
His fingers slowly caressing the back of your hand were just too much for you not to get everything mixed up.
Or that other time when your school held a Woman's Day event, and your class president decided that all the boys in the class were going to give roses to the girls.
When it was your turn to get a rose, you knew no one would give you one. But Yeri stood in line and collected a rose from the bin before the class president had the opportunity to say anything else.
“I'll take that, thank you very much.” She turned to you, smiling. San blocked her way to you a second after.
“And just what do you think you're doing?”
“Giving my best girl a rose, of course.” She peeked around him, giving you a wink that you could only roll your eyes to.
San turned to you, the fondness in his eyes making you question the decision of not pretending to be sick that day. It was too much for you to handle.
“To the back of the line, then. I already called dibs on her,” he turned to your friend, snatching the rose from her hand in one swift move “I'll take that, thank you very much.”
He had no idea what that meant to you back then. It was true that, at school, he behaved a little differently than when you two were alone.
He was athletic, so he had some friends that you were sure used to ask him what the fuck was he doing wasting his time with a girl like you instead of getting a new girlfriend.
He had a family that didn't approve of yours, too. You felt it the first time you met his mom and, even though she was nice to you and your mom, you could feel the judgemental stare she gave both of you when your mom told her she was a single parent.
San told you that it didn't really matter, that his mom didn't have to like you because you weren't her friend, you were his.
He played with your feelings a little too well. Wanting him, adoring him and letting yourself be consumed by the thought of him loving you back was enough to keep it going. To ignore the fluttering way your heart kept beating whenever he talked to you which was all the time.
You assumed the way he behaved with you in private was the real him. The one who didn't care about appearances or his family approval.
The one who cared about you.
It was dizzying and fantastic and you thought he just might've been the love of your life.
But then he would tell you how much it hurted when he saw Arin at school and how much he missed her, the intimacy they shared before, and reality would come crashing down and setting your delusions on fire again.
He had sex with Arin. You would never stand a chance.
Or so you thought he did. Except when you overheard Arin speaking to her friends and that was the first time you ever got mad at Choi San.
“And, you know, me and San were never intimate like that so I wouldn't know but I think boys have no idea how to please a woman if they tried to.”
What?
Oh. So he lied to you.
And you were so upset by the thought of him making up stories of their intimate time together that it didn't even cross your mind that Arin might've been lying to save face.
So when he came back from the bathroom and sat at his usual desk in front of you, you didn't even think about his feelings when you decided to treat him like shit for lying about something so important like sex to your face.
“Leave me alone, San! I don't want to fucking talk to you right now!”
The hurt expression he gave you after that is one you would never be able to forget.
But you grew to be stubborn and a little overprotective of your own feelings, so you thought him playing the part of your best friend all these months and sweet talking to you was just another one of his lies.
“You guys not being friends right now doesn't make any fucking sense, sweetheart.” Wooyoung's tone is careful and laced with affection, but you knew he was playing the devil's advocate on behalf of San. With his arm around Gyuri’s shoulder (by that point, they were a thing for over two months) you could swear you saw him smirk when the nickname brought a scowl to your face.
He might've been worried, but he was also a little shit.
“You really are going to let Arin ruin what you two have?” Your best friend was, of course, on your side. But she was your best friend for a reason and her love included pointing out when you were behaving like an infant at the age of seventeen and a half.
“You two are practically dating and you're going to let the evil ex-girlfriend get in the way? Over something you weren't even supposed to hear in the first place? Come on.”
Again, Wooyoung was a little shit. And you were so upset about everything that you shyness couldn't even help the fury behind your reply:
“Stop saying that! We are not practically dating, he's in love with Arin and I'm not sure I even like him like that anymore!” Getting tired of everyone and their mother (your mother) feeding your delusions, you came to the conclusion that putting a stop to your friendship with Choi San was for the best.
And, in doing so, you ended up breaking your own heart for the second time in your life.
But he didn't put up an easy fight at all. You remember the feeling of pure joy when he grabbed your hand on the way to the cafeteria one day, pulling you so hard you almost ended up sitting in his lap, and the way his pleading eyes begged you to listen to him one last time.
“Us not being friends doesn't feel right, Y/N…” he said and the word he used to categorize what both of you had hurted you, but you pushed the feeling away “Please, let's not fight anymore. I don't even know what happened, but I forgive you for yelling at me and I hope you forgive me for whatever it is you think I did.”
Of course, you forgave him the next second without thinking too much about it. And for a while, everything went back to normal. You Skyped as usual and occasionally you let your other friends join the call even though it didn't really feel like it used to before.
The next thing you knew, your feelings were in full bloom again and when you realized it, it was too late.
Because by then, you had already let your childhood friend, Sunhee, join a few Skype calls and by the fourth one she invited her friend, Minseo, to them as well.
Terrible, terrible mistake. Because even through the screen, you could see that Minseo looked a lot like Arin with the added bonus that she was down to earth and cool and liked the same things San liked.
You liked the same things San liked as well, but it never seemed to matter.
Because not even two months after you decided to stop talking to San over a lie you weren't supposed to find out in the first place and then became friends one more time, he gets together with Minseo and you're sick to your stomach all over again.
You hated her. Not because she was, suddenly, his girlfriend (not girlfriend girlfriend, but in a friends with benefits arrangement you never even knew why he agreed on in the first place) but because suddenly she was so fucking obnoxious and didn't seem to like you either.
Was it not painfully obvious San didn't have feelings for you? Why was she mad at you then? You literally brought them together!
And all you got in return was her telling him she didn't feel comfortable with him having a girl best friend. That ungrateful bitch.
He stopped calling. He stopped texting, he stopped carpooling with you and your mom after school and he stopped caring whether your math assignment was done or not.
He stared pulling away more and more and it didn't matter how hard you tried to get him to talk to you, it seemed like he never really fucking cared about you in the first place.
And by may that year, you didn't speak to San anymore. Granted, the only person he did speak to was Wooyoung, but even their friendship was falling apart.
For the first time ever, San broke your heart firsthand. And it felt really, really fucking bad.
You cried to your mom about it, she reminded you that you were nothing but a great friend to him and that, if he didn't take the time to appreciate that, that was his loss not yours.
And she started hating him from that moment on. But you couldn't hate San, not even a little bit.
Why would you hate him for not liking you back? For not loving you the way you loved hi—
Your laptop closes down right in front of you and when you try to look up to find out who's responsible for interrupting your writing time, you get interrupted again.
“Ouch! What the fuck, Gyuri?” The slap to the back of your head is quick and filled with rage.
“What the fuck are you even writing. I can read from here, you know?”
“I'm just laying my feelings down and— Ouch! Stop that!” You try to hit her back but she turns away quickly when your hands almost knock her coffee mug out of hers.
“You can't possibly still have love for San, Y/N. It's been years.”
It's been four and a half, to be precise. But who's counting, right?
“And why are you writing it in third person? You don't usually do that.”
“I don't really know, Gyuri!”
“I’m telling you, this celebratory dinner bullshit it's affecting you way more than it should,” she sighs, plopping down on the couch of your shared living room, and you leave your seat at the table to join her “He might not even show up. He has that thing with Kyungmi.”
Kyungmi.
You couldn't get to that part on your open document, but San left Minseo when he met Kyungmi at one of the frat parties they love to attend. Wooyoung told you that he said that it was love at first sight and you even met her briefly when you picked Gyuri up from the apartment he and San got when they started college together.
She’s gorgeous and doesn't look like Arin or Minseo at all. It’s a different type of gorgeous. She's a year older than San and went to the same school as them and Gyuri.
You think you might even like her better than him.
You tried to be happy for San when you found out, but you two barely even speak a word to each other and you convinced yourself a while ago that you couldn't care less if he sees right through you and your fake smiles.
You gathered, after everything happened, that San knew you liked him and took advantage of that. Unintentionally, but he did anyway.
You sigh, resting your head on your best friend's shoulder. “It’s his best friend's celebratory dinner, though, he needs to be there.”
Two seconds pass and then you both say it at the same time: “He’s in love.”
And when San is in love, he has a one track mind with the name of his lover as the goal.
You nod, but you can't help but to be insistent “It's Wooyoung's celebratory dinner, he needs to show up, right?”
“I might not even show up, he's a pain in the ass.” She replies but you can tell her annoyance is not genuine and it makes you smile.
Gyuri and Wooyoung broke up towards the end of your first year of college but you all stayed close friends. A one year relationship was not enough to fuck up the friendship they had and they decided to stay civil until, eventually, they became close friends again.
To this day, you wonder why you and San couldn't rekindle your friendship when it became clear to you that you missed your friend and not the guy that you liked.
Because San was always your friend first and your first love second.
But it doesn't really matter anymore, because Gyuri is forcing you to shower and reminding you that you two need to keep Wooyoung on his best behavior tonight.
“That girl he used to like before me is going, he said. I looked her up, she's single and he needs to get together with her because I can't take him whining about it anymore.”
They keep things with each other way too civil, you think.
“I'm telling you, if we don't show up he's going to do that thing where he gets drunk and makes a fool of himself. I can't have that, I'm on a mission.”
“A mission to get your ex laid?” You ask, shampooing your hair.
“A mission to get him a girlfriend so he can stop crying to me about feeling lonely.”
“Maybe he wants you guys to—” The shower curtain opens and you see your best friend’s scowl before covering yourself up with your hands.
“Gyuri!”
“Don't you dare say what you were about to say or I'm divorcing you.”
You chuckle “Sure you are.”
You're left alone again with the water stream and she goes back to do her makeup “I told you back in ninth grade that we weren't a great fit and I was right. We can't get back together,” she sighs “It'll ruin everything.”
“I doubt it will but you guys have been friends longer than you were boyfriend and girlfriend, so I'll just have to deal with my parents being divorced and civil.”
“God, don't ever refer to us like that again— Oh! Speaking of parents,” you see her beam at her phone when you move the shower curtain to search for your towel and then she shows it to you “Mingi and Love just celebrated their one year anniversary!”
Love being Mingi’s best friend. Gyuri talks to you about her college friend group all the time. The drama fuels your dinner conversations, you even follow a few of them on social media.
“What does that have to do with parents?”
“They're the mom and dad of the group.”
San is in that friend group, you can see him in the back of the picture and you recognize his apartment layout too. He's not the main focus of it but he's all you can see until you notice the couple sitting near him on the couch.
The picture shows both of them, her in his lap and Mingi looking at her with stars in his eyes.
Good for them.
“Is that the girl he was friends with forever before they finally realized that they were in love?”
“Yeah,” she sighs in contempt, looking down at the picture again “I was there the day it happened. I mean, not physically with them, but they left Yunho's party together and I told Wooyoung that it was finally about to happen!”
Gyuri is not a romantic person at all. Her excitement shows you that she really loves them and so you soften at the news that would usually give you and your dry love life a headache “It was the day before you called me to get you out of that awful date.”
Ah, that also happened back then. You shudder at the memory.
“Tell them I say congrats, babe.”
“I'm bringing you as my plus one.”
You laugh, confused “To where?”
“Their wedding, duh.”
“They practically just got together,” you remind her, a year is not enough time to propose “And I don't really know them, Gyuri!”
“They love you,” she assures you as you step out of the shower “I have been speaking about your antisocial ass for years. They can't wait to meet you.”
“So you've been shit talking behind my back for years? Is that what I'm hearing?”
She laughs “No, babe, that's Wooyoung's job.”
Clearing your throat and looking at your friend through the mirror, you try to be as nonchalant as you can when you ask: “Has he… Did he tell you if…”
“No, Y/N, I have no clue if San is going or not and Wooyoung is actually mad at him at the moment.”
“Why?”
She looks at you, sighing “He's been lacking as a friend lately.”
“Hm.”
“I hope you're not planning on swooning if you see him. Fuck him, Y/N.”
“I know…”
“And by fuck him I mean he doesn't deserve you or your forgiveness.”
“He didn't do anything to me, Gyuri,” you remind her, shrugging “Not reciprocating my feelings is not a crime so I don't have to forgive him for anything.”
You can practically feel her starting the San hate train engine, so you step out of the bathroom but her voice follows you.
“And what about that time he ditched you for Minseo when you asked him to go with you to that medical appointment, huh?”
“Cut it out, Gyuri…”
But her head peaks around the corner, into the hall where you're rushing towards your room “Or that time when—”
“Can't hear you!” Turning to look at her, she gives you an affectionate middle finger and heads back to the bathroom.
Closing the door, you lean into the thin wood and sigh, getting San’s face out of your mind so you can focus on getting ready and actually show up for Wooyoung and Wooyoung only.
He just got a permanent position after completing his internship at a company that's your company's rival. He's going to crush you and steal clients from you but you are genuinely so happy for him.
You should've guessed he enjoyed books as much as you did back in highschool. The debates he used to have with Gyuri were not all about flirting with her but also because he has a passion for books.
And now he's going to work in the same field as you.
You're so proud of your friend.
As you get ready, you remember the excitement cruising through your body when your boss trusted you enough to give you the first manuscript of a new client so you could edit it. You're sure Wooyoung is going to do better than you, taking into account that he actually went to college for this.
You didn't.
You met your boss at the part-time job you got in senior year, when you were trying to distract yourself from all the pain and the horrors of becoming a grown up. She was chatty, got a little too drunk on soju and told you she was starting her own book publishing company.
When she returned months later after remembering that you told her you loved books and would love to work for as a publisher one day, she offered you a job in her company right after graduating highschool.
You took it because you didn't think an opportunity like this would show up ever again.
She was truly a blessing, the kind of person you never really believed in until she taught you all you needed to know about publishing and editing and encouraged you to take online classes during the nights so you could get, at least, a certification on what you do.
You're proud of yourself too. The opportunity found you in a specific moment of your life where both your heart and your self esteem were destroyed and now you're not the person you used to be.
Maybe that's why the possibility of facing San makes you so nervous. Collective memories are dangerous because the details never match the ones on the other person's head.
You know who you were back then but… Are you the same person in San’s head?
You don't even want to find out.
Scanning your outfit in the mirror for the last time, you take the shoes you're wearing tonight out of your closet and walk over to the living room.
Only to find Gyuri laying on the carpet under the coffee table, half dressed and on her phone.
“You're going to mess up your hair.”
“I don't care, I'm not going.”
Sighing, you sit down on the couch and staring at the wood of the table covering her face.
“What happened now?”
“The bitch canceled!”
“Wooyoung?”
Poking her head out, she frowns at you “No, his first love.”
“You were his first love.”
“You know what I'm talking about, Y/N!”
Laughing at her, you offer her your hand “Get dressed. Who cares if she's not going? He's not going to sulk because he's going to have you and his best friends there.”
She whines like a child when you pull her up from the floor “I had a plan!”
“Then make a new one, babe. We're going to be late.”
She starts to whine again but then stops mid-groan to give you a once over. You shift uncomfortably on your feet, suddenly self-conscious about your appearance for the first time in years.
“You look really hot…” she tells you and you fake gag at her words “Really pretty. Like a fairy and a smoke show at the same time.”
You can't possibly look like that when you have such a simple outfit on, floor length high waist black pants and a flowy sleeve top that ties in the middle. It's barely formal but now you're thinking too hard about it.
Blushing, you wave your hand to dismiss her compliment “Oh, my god. Go and change!”
She rushes to her room on the opposite end of the hall and you finally breathe, looking down at your choice of fit and wondering if it's too much.
Gyuri would've told you if that's the case, but either way it haunts your mind in the car on the way there, leg bouncing up and down under your best friend's judging gaze that only softens when you pout at her.
“They are going to love you, babe. I'm so serious, they've been waiting years to meet you.”
You nod because, yes, you're concerned that her friend group is not all as welcoming as she paints them to be.
And you wish your doubts would go away but you're really, really not good at making friends. You're cautious, extremely closed off to new people and not as good with conversation no matter how much confidence you gained over the past years.
When you walk to the loudest table at the laid back restaurant their friend Seonghwa made the reservation at, you think you won't be able to fit in with everyone else. You feel like an intruder, like Gyuri is supposed to enjoy this part of her life without you here.
That's why you rejected every invitation they ever made.
You celebrate birthdays with her, with Woo as well, but it's all very intimate and separate from their social circle, the one that includes the man you haven't fully faced in years.
But you can't exactly back out now, not when one of them turns to you and seems to light up when they see you.
“Oh? Is this her?” you recognize Hongjoong from pictures, he's the only one facing you when you approach the table, lowkey hiding behind Gyuri like a child.
“Who?”
“Huh?”
San is nowhere to be seen. Thank god.
Slowly, everyone turns around and you see their faces light up with both delight and surprise. Your heart is pounding, you feel it in your throat, in your eyes, in the heat that colors your cheeks.
But Gyuri just steps aside and presents you with a smile “This is her!”
“Oh, Y/N!” Wooyoung gets up, rushing towards you and crashing into your frame with a crushing hug “I'm so glad you're here,” he murmurs into your hair and then turns to his friends, quiet them down “Everyone, this is Y/N, one of my best friends in the entire world.”
He's such a dramatic human being.
You love him so much.
Raising your hand, you shyly wave at them “Hi.”
The entire table erupts with joy. Some of them greet you, some of them are saying that they are happy to be finally meeting you and Wooyoung grabs your arm and plops you down into the seat next to Gyuri, at the edge of the table.
Laughing, you apologize for not meeting them sooner and then you feel a pair of hands on your shoulders.
Panic raising, you quickly turn around to see who it is before releasing a shuddering, but calmer, breath.
“She's a very busy woman, guys. She works for the competition, my competition,” everyone gasps at that but Wooyoung is smiling at you “and she's very good at what she does. Which means she's busy, get off her case,” he puts a glass and a can of beer in front of you “Drink, babe.”
“Thanks, babe.” You whisper back and he leans in to peck your head before going away.
Gyuri groans “Stop stealing that from us! It's our thing, Y/N, don't indulge him.”
“It's his celebratory dinner…” you argue with a laugh that Hongjoong and Mingi follow.
“Yeah! Can you get off my case tonight, Gyuri?”
She huffs, wrapping her arms around you “I hate you all.”
“No you don't!”
The table laughs and everyone returns to their individual conversations when Woo sits down on his spot.
There's a few seats left, one besides Mingi and one right in front of you but you don't think too much about it because soon Gyuri gets up to ask Yeosang something and Seonghwa occupies her seat right beside you.
You think he can sense that you're more shy than you let on, because he doesn't include you in whatever he and Yunho were talking about and waits until he stops talking to him to turn to you.
“So, you work for a publishing company?”
The question catches you off guard and you swallow the beer quickly before nodding “Y-yeah, I… Yeah.”
He chuckles “You're nervous.”
“I'm just not as good at meeting people as Gyuri is. She usually does the job and I tag along.”
“I feel like I know you already, though.” He says, leaning back on his chair.
“Because she talks a lot about me?” he nods “Yeah, she tends to do that.”
“Wooyoung also talks a lot about you, San too… Sometimes,” your cheeks heat up and he misinterprets what it means “All good things, I promise.”
You doubt that.
Your brain gives you a hundred and one possible things San could've said about you.
For some reason, none of them are good. But you choose to believe the gorgeous, long haired guy in front of you.
“Well that's good to hear,” you take another sip of your drink before smiling at him “I was sure Woo was trash talking about me.”
He shakes his head with a smile “He wouldn't dare, he has Gyuri on his ass all the time and I'm sure she would kill him.”
“I'm sure she would kill him even if he didn't do it.”
His smile grows wider “That's true,” he says, looking over at them who are, very coincidentally, fighting about something. You let out a sigh and he laughs again before clearing his throat “So, the publishing company. What kind of books do you like to edit the most?”
Your smile grows wider too.
For the next hour, you talk to Seonghwa about your job and how you started in it. He asks you about your classes and the challenges that you face on a daily basis and Wooyoung overhears and ends up joining the conversation as well.
You don't even hear footsteps nearing until a voice cuts everyone off.
“I'm sorry I'm late!”
“Baby!” Mingi gets up from his seat, but no one else does so he's stuck between the table and his girlfriend.
“Oh, that's Love, huh?” you ask Seonghwa, Wooyoung too entertained messing with the couple to hear you anyways.
“Yeah… Is that how Gyuri refers to her?” He frowns.
“Mhm,” you answer, leaning into him like you're about to tell him an important secret “I'm not supposed to call her that, don't tell her.”
Seonghwa leans in too, pretending to zip his mouth shut and you laugh.
The girl wiggles her way into the seat reserved for her and everyone lets out a groan when they smooch each other. You can only giggle and the sound draws her attention to you “Y/N?”
You quickly nod “Yeah, hi, nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you! Finally, I thought Wooyoung and Gyuri had an imaginary friend,” you laugh, shrugging at the joke “Love your outfit, by the way, are those— Oh, San, hi— Are those jellyfish?”
You want to answer. You truly do, the yes right at the tip of your tongue, but words leave you when you turn your head around and find San already looking at you with wide eyes.
He looks great, he's a bit more muscular than what the pictures show and than the last time that you saw him, his arms hugging the fabric of the dress shirt he's wearing like it was tailored for him and everything.
How dare he.
You wonder if his heart is beating as loud as yours is right now. If he's surprised, disappointed or happy to see you at all.
“Her favorite animal.” He answers for you “Hi, Y/N.”
“Hi…” you whisper back and it feels like you're in a trance. He doesn't look away but the table quieting down once again snaps you out of it and you turn to the girl with a wide smile that you hope conceals whatever the fuck you're feeling at the moment “I love jellyfishes. Had a phase as a child when I would exclusively talk about them, too,” you chuckle, nervously, reaching for your earrings instinctively “Gyuri gave them to me as a present last Christmas.”
You definitely overshared just now. From the corner of your eye you catch your best friend getting ready to step in if needed.
Love looks at you, then at San (who's just standing next to you without uttering a word) and then back at you again, smiling like she just figured something out “Well, I love them.”
“Thanks…”
Coughing unnecessarily loud, Wooyoung gets up from his seat “You're late.”
It takes a second but San tears his gaze away from you to look at his best friend and you take the opportunity to chug down the rest of your beer “Sorry, something came up.”
Seonghwa turns at that and looks at him as well “You good?”
“I am. Did you guys already eat? I'm starving.”
“Nope. We're about to order. Let me get you a drink, come here.” And just like that, he disappears from your view and you almost sigh in relief.
“Are you good?” Seonghwa asks you next and you reckon he's very observant. But then again, you're not the most gracious human being when you're in San’s presence, so, you figure everyone else noticed your change of mood as well.
“Yeah, I just… I haven't seen him in a while and I didn't think he was coming. I was surprised, that's all.”
“I can see that,” his eyes move around your face for some reason, frowning a little bit but then he seems to let it go, getting the menu closer to you “Okay, good, um… I actually made the reservation here because they have the best samgyeopsal in town.”
“Do they?”
“Mhm, so…”
He helps you pick your food and when it's time to order, he moves back to his seat. Gyuri asks you with her eyes if you're okay, you nod and grab her hand under the table with a tiny smile and then everyone is moving around to make space for San and Woo once they return.
He doesn't sit in front of you.
Relief floods you and you can finally feel your muscles relax as he is so far away, at the other end of the table and in the same row of seats, so you don't really see him unless you really try.
Which you don't, so your food goes down easy and the rest of the night as well.
Until everyone but you and Seonghwa move around their seats and he ends up right in your point of view as you do your best to ignore him and focus on his friend.
Seonghwa asks you about your hobbies, you tell him that you love to write movie essays on websites no one even cares to read and he asks you to show it to him so he can look it up when he gets home.
“And you've always done this? Since highschool?”
You nod and he beams “I read like the first three lines and it looks really good, Y/N. Is that why you love books so much? Because you're a writer?”
“I wouldn't consider myself a writer but… Sure, I love to write.”
“Did you know this?” he turns to San and your smile drops a little.
“Know what?”
“Your friend is an excellent writer.”
“Oh, I know. She, uh… Used to write stories on her notebook instead of paying attention in math class,” he sips on his drink and at the detail you didn't know he knew, you turn to him fully “I used to read over her shoulder sometimes.”
“She's really good.” Seonghwa is looking at your phone, still reading “Really smart, too.”
San’s jaw tenses a little and you can't understand why “I know.” He says again.
His friend is none the wiser, blocking your phone and returning it to you “I like it,” he says, smiling and you blush “The essay.” He clarifies after a second, prompting a laugh out of you that he joins.
San doesn't laugh, but you don't pay attention to him because Seonghwa is asking you something else.
When it's time to leave the restaurant, Wooyoung suggests going back to his apartment to milk the get-together as much as you all can.
You all throw your napkins at him in feign disgust at the choice of words but you all accept his proposal either way.
So now you're sitting on the couch, legs crossed and head on Gyuri’s shoulder while you listen to all of them talk (more like argue) about something that happened at their university last week, their voices drowning the soft music playing out of the tiny speaker resting on the counter.
San is on the floor, to your right. It's hard to keep your eyes off him when you feel him looking at you when you close your eyes and let the noise fade into the background. It's not like you're able to add something to the conversation anyway and Gyuri seems to be drinking her sorrows (not being able to hook Woo up with the girl she told you about) away.
Your best friend is slurring her words already, drink in hand and index finger pointing at Jongho accusatively because, apparently, the fight they're talking about was his fault.
“You don't—” she hiccups “You don't even know why it was your fault and it pisses me off even more, you know?”
“Okay, let me take that.” Taking the drink from her hand and before she starts complaining you stand up to make your way into the kitchen.
The sink is full and a mess, so you pour the liquid into it and leave the glass sitting right beside it. Distracted by the dilemma of helping Woo out with the dishes or not, you don't notice someone else also entering the space.
That's why you jump a little when you turn and catch Seonghwa leaning on the wall by the entrance. It startles you enough to laugh the nerves out afterwards and he shakes his head, smiling.
“Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. They're boring me to death with the fight story.”
You nod, realizing that maybe that's because he doesn't attend the university anymore. He told you he graduated last year “They're too drunk to let it go.”
“Too drunk to dance to this amazing song, too. Who's playlist is that?” he frowns and you rest your back into the sink, rolling your eyes because he's pretending he doesn't know “Oh! Right, it's mine.”
“And they just don't know how to appreciate it, huh?” he shrugs and you click your tongue “They're such bad friends, Seonghwa, I truly don't know why you keep them around.”
“You appreciate it,” it's your turn to frown and he leaves his spot at the wall to walk towards you “You were singing along to it,” he explains and you let out an ah, nodding as he extends his palm to you, clearly inviting you to dance.
“Oh, I don't… I don't really know how to—”
“I'll show you.”
His kind eyes are asking you to trust him. You really, really shouldn't.
No matter how hard you try to bury the hopeless romantic little girl who decided to have a crush on a guy back in ninth grade, she's still there, begging you to let loose and live a little.
When you grab Seonghwa’s hand, you think the smile he gives you was worth listening to her.
You can't even tell the song that's softly playing anymore, a mellow r&b melody reaches your ear but you are not listening. You're focused on him, on the way he spins you around even if it doesn't fit the bit, on the way he laughs softly against your ear when he pulls you close by your hand and then pulls away just as quickly.
Laughing as well, the spell of this beautiful stranger (because you remind yourself you don't really know him that well) is hard to break.
Until it does.
Someone clearing their throat behind you stops you and Seonghwa's feet from moving any further. When the tall, older guy turns you around, you're face to face with San and his scowl.
“Sorry to interrupt but I need to get started on the dishes. Everyone else is heading out too,” he looks behind you, at the man who's still standing close to you and grabbing your hand “In case you want to ask Mingi for a ride.”
“They finally stopped fighting!” he fakes excitement, finally letting go of your hand and walking in front of you, blocking San with his body. You chuckle, barely clapping your hands to join the pretense as he's pulling up his phone “Can I ask for your number, Y/N?”
Blinking a few times, you're not sure if your heart speeds up because he's asking or because you hear San sigh exasperated behind him “S-sure.”
When you put your information on his phone, he bids you goodbye with a pat on your head and hugs San on his way out the kitchen.
Now that you two are alone, you suddenly want to run and join Seonghwa. You were doing so, so well.
Avoiding San like the plague it's much easier when you're safe hiding behind your two best friends.
Ignoring his stare would be much easier if you weren't stuck into place.
“I—”
“You—”
You both speak over each other and you force out an uncomfortable laugh that he doesn't return. Instead, he motions you to go first while he occupies the space in front of the sink, turning the faucet on. In doing so, he has to grab your waist and move you out of the way which makes you short circuit for a second “I was going to help you with that.” You finally stammer out.
He lets out what you take as an annoyed chuckle.
“You seemed busy, I don't know how you would've done it.”
Ouch.
Why do you allow his words to cut so deep when you stopped caring about what he does a long time ago?
The band aid rips, the stitches come undone and all it took him were five seconds to melt your resolve away like it was never there in the first place.
“I'll… I go get Gyuri so we can leave Woo and you to get to it, then.”
“Bathroom.” You hear him mutter under his breath as you are taking the final step to leave.
“Huh?”
“She's in the bathroom, probably puking her breakfast out,” he looks up at you to give you a tiny smile “You left her alone with Jongho and Woo for five minutes so she got ahold of another drink.”
“God damnit.”
Rushing out, you run into everyone else at the door and Mingi has to let go of his very intoxicated girlfriend when she reaches you to give you a hug “Don't be a stranger, Y/N! It was lovely to be around you, hm?”
The sudden physical contact almost makes you gasp but you cover it up with a shy giggle “O-oh. Yeah, um, lovely to meet you too. All of you.”
“Sorry about that,” her boyfriend grabs her arms and breaks the hug “She's right, though. Don't be a stranger.”
You nod once, smiling a little more sincerely now and everyone says bye to you, including Seonghwa, who grabs your hand one last time and gives it a squeeze before closing the front door of the apartment.
You think you feel your heart skip a tiny bit under all the shit San’s words pulled up to the surface a minute ago. But there's no time to dwell in that: you hear Gyuri opening up the bathroom door before gagging and closing it again with a slam.
Jesus Christ.
You two are really getting old. You stopped drinking like an hour ago, when you were starting to feel tipsy after your second beer, and you know she didn't drink as much as she used to maybe four years ago, but the visage that welcomes you when you open the door and find her crouched down in front of the toilet certainly brings back memories of those times.
“I left you alone for like… five minutes.” Sighing, you lean in to hold her flimsy ponytail and pat her back.
“I'm good,” she gags again and then holds up her hand to stop you from saying anything else “I'm fine.”
Smiling, you help her up and she grabs the counter as she's washing away the taste of whatever she ate earlier today and alcohol “Me when I lie…”
“Y/N!” she hits your arm but the movement somehow almost makes her trip.
“You want to lay down?”
“Is she okay?” Woo’s head peaks into the bathroom and when he sees his ex, he makes a face.
“Does she look like she's okay?” you help her out of the bathroom and start heading for Wooyoung's room.
“Wow, wow— Where do you think you're taking her?”
“To your room, dumbass!”
“Why mine? San's is literally right there.” He whines, pointing at the door you pass by without a second thought. You don't want to know where his room is or what it looks like at all.
“Yeah, well, did San get her this drunk?”
“How was I supposed to know that she was at her almost black-out phase? She never drinks that much in front of me!” he complains again but you're already tugging Gyuri in, who mumbles something incoherent and then flips Wooyoung off “Na Gyuri if you puke on my bed I swear to God!”
If you didn't know Wooyoung so much, the whining and the attitude would probably make you think he didn't care for her at all. But he's brushing her hair out of her forehead, securing the blanket around her and moving to take her socks off when you reach the door.
“I'm guessing you're okay with her staying the night?”
“Of course you guys can stay the night, Y/N.” He says and he stumbles a little to get to you, so you smile and shake your head, about to let him know that you're not staying anywhere near his roommate when he continues “You can come over whenever you like. You know that, right?”
“I know, Woo.”
“I barely even see you these days, I… Oh! I forgot!” he points to the end of the hall, towards the kitchen “You guys don't really like each other so maybe don't come over when he's here because I don't want to see you sad!”
“Lower your voice,” you whisper to him, bringing a hand to his face and patting his cheek a few times to wake him up “Did the alcohol suddenly hit you or something?” you sigh for the umpteenth time “Anyways, you should lay down and I'll get going. I'll come pick her up tomorrow and—”
“That's such a great idea! Oh, I'm a genius.”
“You didn't come up with it, Wooyoung.”
“San!” he calls all of the sudden and you wish he was sober enough to read the panic on your features. He seems much, much sober when his best friend starts walking down the hall and stops right beside you “Take Y/N home, please, she's going to give you a bag that you must protect with your life.”
Said best friend looks at you, his eyebrow arched in a silent question “Gyuri’s stuff.”
“Ah.”
“Go, go. It's getting late, I'll just… I'll cuddle with my ex until you get home.”
And she has the nerve to say he doesn't want her back.
When the door to Wooyoung's room closes and you're left with San on the poorly lit hallway, you make a mental note to never step foot on this place or allow your friends to drink ever again.
You don't even look at the guy before practically running down the hallway and reaching for your bag. You make sure your phone is secured in your pocket as you slip your shoes on and soon you're grabbing the front door knob and twisting it.
Keys jingle next to you but, again, you don't spare San a glance.
“So—”
“I'll get out of your hair, you don't have to… walk me home or whatever he said.”
“Y/N, it's late.”
Turning to him, your smile is as fake as the ones you've been giving him the past couple of years “And I'm a grown up, San, I can walk myself home.”
“What about Gyuri’s stuff?”
“She can wear Wooyoung's clothes, it's not like they never shared before. Anyway… Thank you for having me, it was nice to see you. Goodnight.” Your response comes out fast and it sounds as planned out as it actually is, kinda robotic and devoid of actual emotion.
San can't see through you the way you see through him. It's okay, he won't mind it.
He probably won't mind that you close his own door on his face either.
If that door is what you hear when you're making your way down the stairs in order to make a fast escape, you choose to ignore it.
You have to stop mid-way to compose yourself. You don't know why you feel like crying or why your heart is beating so fast.
You knew going in that there was a possibility of seeing him tonight. You know how San affects you, so effortless and seemingly like no time has passed at all in between senior year and present day.
You know all of this already, it's an endless loop that will keep repeating until you either move away or decide to stop agreeing to Wooyoung's plans all together.
So why is your chest heaving with emotion? Why is nostalgia playing mind tricks with you? Why do you want to turn back and hug him and beg him to turn back time so you can do it all differently now that you know how to look like and what to say to make him love you back?
Ah, you're definitely not sleeping tonight. So you start distracting yourself while walking down the stairs again. You remind yourself to tell a much sober Wooyoung how proud you are of him. You think about Seonghwa, about his kind eyes and the way he grabbed your hand to dance with him just half an hour ago. You wonder how long it will take you to get home if you jog all the way there. You—
Why the fuck is San outside when you get there?
In a comedic way, you can see your attempt to distract your mind off of him slipping through your fingers and evaporating in the warm summer night breeze.
In a realistic way, you're fucking pissed at him for taking the opportunity of a good night sleep away from you.
You pass him and start jogging like you planned a minute ago. Footsteps follow you until his arm brushes yours and you take a step to the side to stop it from happening again.
“Go home, Choi San.”
“Stop fighting it, Y/N. I'm walking you home.”
“It's a twenty minute walk—”
“Drop it.”
You do. And for the first ten minutes, no one utters a word even if the tension feels electric and the street is so quiet so you can hear when his breath accelerates when he jogs to catch up to you whenever you try to leave him behind.
Isn't that ironic. He was the one who left you behind all those years ago.
“I didn't know that you danced.”
He breaks the uncomfortable but safe silence to say that?
“Well, you saw me dance so I clearly dance when I want to.”
“You never danced with me.”
“You never asked me to.”
He laughs “I'm pretty sure I did on several occasions, Y/N.”
“Well, you're wrong,” you're getting annoyed. How dare he think he remembers better than you? “It doesn't matter anyway, what's past is past and—”
“You also gave Hwa your number,” he interrupts, his long legs taking two strides to get in front of you, still walking, facing your direction with his hands on his pockets.
It's dangerous and stupid, even if the streets are practically empty and the sidewalk barely has any bumps.
You hope he falls on his pretty face.
“I did.*
“I don't have your number.”
“Well, I changed it and you never asked for it, so…”
“You could've called me or texted me to let me know you did it.”
He's getting on your nerves.
“San,” you start, taking in a deep breath you hope calms you down “We don't even text anymore, why would you want my number?”
“Do you like him?”
“Seonghwa?” you ask, frowning and he nods “Like… As a person?”
“As a potential love interest.” He clarifies matter-of-factly and you roll your eyes.
“I met him today, San. Why do you want my number?”
“Because we're friends?” he offers after a second, shifting so he's walking by your side again.
“Are we?” you ask, laughing bitterly at that “Because we haven't spoken a word to each other in years.”
“That's not true.”
“It is, San.”
“You… You don't speak to me anymore, so…”
“Well your girlfriend at the time told me she didn't feel comfortable with me speaking to you anymore,” you sigh “so I didn't and you didn't try to talk to me either.”
“Well, I want to talk to you now.”
“And is your new girlfriend aware of that? Is she comfortable with that? Because I don't want anyone telling me what to do anymore and—”
“Why wouldn't she be comfortable? We're friends, Y/N.”
“Are we?” you insist, petty, bitter and overall very, very hurt.
He looks offended at that “I assumed we were?”
He's getting on your fucking nerves.
“We stopped being friends the second Minseo asked me to stay away from you because she didn't like me, San.”
“She’s not in my life anymore—”
The words are coming out of your mouth without even thinking it through. His demeanor, the way he's somehow reproaching you for whatever he saw between you and his friend, the way he pretends nothing happened between you and him, thinking that you two are still friends.
“We stopped being friends when you pulled away from me, saw me do the same and did nothing to stop it from happening, San.”
He stops in his tracks at that. You don't, pushing forward and quickening your step even if your calves burn.
“Either way,” you speak up “Make sure you tell your girlfriend about wanting my number and then you can ask Seonghwa for it if you want—”
“She's not my girlfriend anymore!”
Now that stops you, just a few buildings down from yours, you turn around just to find San closer that you thought he'll be.
“O-oh. I… I didn't know that. I'm sorry.”
“You didn't do anything to be sorry for.”
“Still, it must suck so I'm sorry you're going through that.”
“We didn't want the same things and so we ended it. It is what it is.”
You nod.
He walks the few steps separating you and you have to raise your chin a little to look him in the eye for the first time since you left his apartment “I wanted to tell you.”
“That you broke up with your girlfriend?”
“Yeah, I don't know why. It happened when I broke up with Minseo too, I just… You're the first person that I thought of calling when it happened. I texted you, too, but the messages didn't go through.”
You hum at that.
Why would he even say that?
You resume your step, not really knowing what to say until you reach the stairs that lead to your building’s entrance.
“And you didn't ask Woo for my number?”
He follows you up.
“I don't think he would've given it to me if I asked.”
That sounds like an excuse, so you don't let it slide as you enter the code to your building and let yourself inside, San holding the door so he can get in as well “Why would he do that?”
“Because he…” San sighs, pressing the elevator button “Nevermind. He just wouldn't.”
Frowning, you turn to him “No, now you have to tell me.”
“It doesn't matter, really—”
“Tell me, San.”
He stares for a second and then looks away, like a child, vulnerable and you can't help but soften at that “He didn't like the way I treated you.”
Eating your words from before, you shake your head “You didn't treat me like anything.”
The elevator dings and you get inside.
San follows you.
“Exactly,” he says, resting his shoulder on the metal “Like you said I just did nothing and—”
“Well, sometimes that's just what happens,” you want to end this. You want to pack Gyuri’s bag, give it to him and never see him again.
This conversation hurts, it reopens barely closed wounds and it creates new ones you don't really need when it comes to whatever happened between you two.
There's only so much a person can handle and it really doesn't help that you're a fool for San. He takes advantage of it, of the fact you can't really push him away at this point and the fact that he wants to have this conversation now instead of four and half years ago?
Mean.
He's mean. He's evil. He's… He's staring at you with a spark in his eyes that you recognize too well.
Hope.
When you get to your floor, you try to wipe the image away while busying yourself with your keys. Your hands tremble a little but you're able to open the door of your apartment and get in without inviting him.
He gets in anyway. You take off your shoes as he closes the front door.
He stays silent as he follows you around the apartment and you don't worry about turning the lights on. You get into Gyuri’s room and start picking out a comfy hangover outfit for your friend. Some clean underwear, sweatpants, two shirts and socks.
When you drop to the floor, in front of the closet, to look for a bag to stash all of it in, San silently clutches beside you.
“It shouldn't have happened to us. Never us.”
You can't take it anymore.
“San, what is this? What are you doing? I mean, why are we—”
“I know.”
“It's been years…”
“I miss you.”
He's so mean. But the softness in his tone resembles the one he used all the way back in highschool, when he told you that not being friends with you didn't feel right and you want to cave in right there and then.
Your heart screams at you to do it, your reason warns you that you both have been through this before and it never ends right.
You simply can't stay friends with Choi San.
Your love for him must run too deep, your resentment claws at it and tries to hurt it but it's an immovable force that won't budge even if you try to bury it under the years that have passed, the things he has done.
Tears gather in your eyes and you try to blink them away as you stare at your best friend's clothes on your lap and try to come up with something to close this path up again, reconstruct the picket fence you built around it the second he broke your heart for the first time.
“Yeah,” you whisper back, letting the walls fall a little “I miss you too but I don't think I miss whatever version of you you are right now, San.”
“W-what?”
His shaky voice makes the walls crumble and crash.
Turning to him, your hand shakes as you place it on top of his “And you don't miss the version of me I am right now. You miss what I was back then, the comfort and the shoulder to cry on I offered you when Arin and you broke up. You miss my availability and the way I didn't press my feelings on you because it didn't matter if I liked you or not, you were my friend first and the guy that I had a crush second but—” you choke up, tears falling down your cheeks even if you don't want them to “I can't do it anymore. I'm not that girl anymore and I won't be there for you now that you and Kyungmi broke up because I can't handle it. I can't, I'm sorry.”
He doesn't deny any of it.
He stares at you, tears wetting his cheeks as well and it hurts even more this way. You wish you had the strength to hold it together, to treat him like you did on the street a few minutes ago, but you can't.
There's no way you could ever hate him like you want to.
“You know…” he starts in a whisper, letting out a humorless chuckle “That's what I used to tell myself too.”
“Hm?”
“That you were my friend first and the girl that I had a crush on second.”
How dare he mutter the words you always wanted to hear, the ones you picture being said in a different setting, the ones that haunted your every waking thought that period of time you doubted your friends, your mom, yourself for even believing Choi San could ever have a crush on you.
He doesn't get to say them. You want to tell him but the words die on your throat and form a lump that you can't swallow down.
You don't get to say that. You don't get to say that.
Your hand drops from his and you look away again only to grab the first bag you find on the closet floor and shove Gyuri’s stuff in it.
If the lack of response it's what prompts the hurt in his voice the next time he speaks, you don't want to think about it.
“I wish I didn't. Now it's too late to do something about it, huh?”
This time the rage comes back with a mask on. Feing settlement for all the what if’s covers you like a blanket on a really hot summer night: unwanted, unnecessary.
But you can't sleep without it, so you do nothing to push it away.
“I guess it is.”
You get up from the floor, leaving the room and wiping your face with bitterness coating your movements as you wait by the door for him to get out.
When he does and he steps in front of you, you extend the bag and he takes it without missing a beat.
Voice robotic and words premeditated, you open the front door for him “Thanks for walking me home and taking this back.”
He leans a little into your space and you don't move away. But just as he did in highschool, he takes in your hitched breath and does nothing more.
“Thanks for letting me talk to you.”
He didn't give you much of a choice there but it's okay. This is closure, this is the end of your story with Choi San and you convince yourself you're glad that it is.
“Sure,” you whisper back and he steps outside, turning around to watch you slowly close the door “goodnight, San.”
He doesn't say it back.
When the darkness of your apartment engulfs you, that's when you let yourself breakdown. Covering your mouth with your palm, you descend until your knees are against the wood on the floor and closing your eyes you make it a point to let it all out.
You'll let it all out, drink some water, text Wooyoung and Gyuri to let them know you're safe and go to bed.
And tomorrow you'll begin your day with the freedom of finally knowing what would've happened if you or San ever took the next step.
This is fine. This is moving on. This is—
The doorbell rings.
Opening the door again, you crease your eyebrows in a silent question that San doesn't care to answer, so you look around the floor in case he forgot something you're missing. You wipe your cheeks and under your eyes as you turn to him again “Did you—”
Time slows down when he makes it past the threshold and you can't move an inch, gaping at who you once thought was the love of your life “What are you doing, San?”
“Something about it.”
“What?”
“Forgive me,” he asks, breathless and in a murmur, fueling your confusion. And then he's closing the distance, dropping Gyuri’s bag and cupping your face so gently that it hurts “but I'm doing something about it.”
You stopped dreaming about the possibility of San kissing you that one time you two were on your bed and, another time, you told yourself that, if it ever happened, you wouldn't kiss him back.
It's too late to kiss him back.
But sparks fly when he crushes you against the wall and takes in a breath before slothing his mouth against yours like he's been waiting to do this every single day for the past nine years you've known each other.
There's nothing you can do to conceal the way yearning takes over you, pours out of you, making you breathe into his open mouth and kiss him back like you always wanted to.
You already know it is a mistake by the time you grab his shirt to keep him in place but does it really matter when this is all you ever wanted?
Feeling warmth leave your face, you notice the way he desperately crowds your space as his chest bumps into yours, leg claiming its place in between yours, the palm that leaves you pressing against the wall, next to your head.
The kiss is filled with emotion, with longing and desire and it steals the air out of your lungs tragically and beautifully at the same time. Before, you used to dream about his lips making everything feel right, making you fit in in a world you didn't feel like you belonged to.
But this kiss drops you into uncharted territory, drags you into the depths of something that should be buried by now, after all this time. It brings the flame back to life and it's dangerous.
The fact that it feels this way, both marvelous and catastrophic at the same time, makes you so sad.
Sorrow descends down your face until your mouth is picking it up and your tongue is mixing it with whatever emotion is cruising through San right now.
You have to know.
He spent your entire youth and early adulthood keeping it to himself, knowing when to show his true colors and when to hide them, choosing who to do it with and you realize the San that lives in your head is nothing but a figment of what you wanted him to be.
Because him holding to your waist like it's his only lifeline doesn't fit the San you remember, him telling you he liked you back then doesn't fit the guy who was just your best friend.
You need to know.
“San,” brokenly, you speak into his mouth and he pulls away just enough to see your face. Your eyes remain closed, your chest heaving and your lips trembling “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I want you, Y/N.”
You push him away, weakly, almost like you don't really mean it because deep down you don't but he steps away like you're asking to.
Because, of course, your mind scraps the bottom of your resentment to give his words a completely new meaning.
“You can find another girl to fuck and be your rebound, San,” more tears spill down and you wipe them away in anger but more threat to fall down so you cover your face with your hands and groan, desperate “I can't do this, especially not when I know that you know how bad I wanted you. Y-you know what you do to me San so stop—”
“I want you in my life. I don't— What? I don't want you like a rebound, I… Can we sit down and turn on a light so I can look at you when I say this?”
His words should be reassuring but they're not, the way you tend to feel unlovable around him coming up to the surface, preventing you from thinking clearly.
You can also feel his lips on yours still. It's dizzying but you manage to push yourself off the wall and pad around until you hit the switch of the warm light lamp near the couch and the apartment comes to life just like that.
He takes in the space he's never seen before, walking slowly towards the living room and looking over the bookshelf that screams your name all over it. He smiles a bit as he looks over the book titles and you look away before your heart starts acting up again.
You can't stay mad at him for long if he's looking through something so personal to you and smiling that fondly at it. It feels even more intimate than the kiss you two just shared.
Wiping your cheeks once more, you are sure you look a mess but he doesn't seem to mind it once he comes into your point of view, sitting down on the couch, in front of your standing form. He grabs you by your hands until you're sitting next to him, close to him, cologne intoxicating your senses.
“I told you I liked you when we were in highschool, right?”
You nod.
“You seemed surprised but it was dark so I'm not really sure. I thought you knew, everyone knew.”
Oh, he's a comedian.
“How would I have known, San? I… Yeri told me you liked me one time, in senior year, but I denied it. Then, my mom told me you seemed to want me in a non-platonic way and I dismissed her as well,” you take in a deep, shaky breath “For me, the thought of you liking me just didn't make sense. You loved Arin and she's… She doesn't look or act like I did back then at all, so how would I have known?”
You didn't need clues and puzzles and what if’s, you needed words and actions that weren't confusing. You needed him to tell you back then, because telling you right now and kissing you senseless after he broke up with a girl he supposedly was very in love with means nothing but pain.
“I didn't realize you liked me too,” you make a face, about to tell him off, but he interrupts “I didn't! I thought you liked Yeri and I thought you saw me as the annoying guy who wouldn't leave you alone. I only just realized it a couple years ago, because Woo told me.”
You raise your eyebrows and mutter under your breath “I'm murdering him tomorrow.”
The corner of his lips twitch before he shakes his head in dismissal of what you said “I liked you. I really, really liked you and never told a soul because… Well, it's scary when you fall in love, right?”
“San, you had no problem telling Arin, Minseo or Kyungmi that you liked them.”
He looks down to the floor, lost in thought and you want to open your mouth to take what you just said into a new direction, but you don't “Maybe that's because I didn't love them the way I love you.”
Oh.
Love you? As in… He loves you right now too?
No way.
“You didn't love me, San. You don't love me right now either, you… Maybe we both were in love with the idea of love? Maybe that's what happened and—”
“Quit telling me what I'm feeling, Y/N. You always do that, you always assume you know what I'm feeling but you don't!”
Raising your voice a little more, you try to get your point across in the worst way possible: by being stubborn “You don't know me! How can you possibly—”
“I knew you back then, Y/N! And I loved you back then, too!” He looks like wants to say something more but he doesn't, instead, he takes a calming breath and then leans into your space for the third time tonight “And I might not know you now but I want to. That's what I meant when I said that I want you. I want you in my life, I want to know the person you became when we stopped talking, I want to talk to you every single day and I want to hold you and kiss you and be by your side however you want me to, I just… I can't lose you again.”
His confession renders you speechless and you notice his chest is heaving, going up and down in sync with yours.
But the way he pulled away from you senior year still hurts, it paints a picture of what's going to happen if you accept this.
You can't believe his words.
He must feel lonely and confused, like he did when Arin broke up with him. He must be looking for a shelter you can't provide.
“And when you find another girl that's more to your liking? What then, San?”
“There's no one that I love more than you, Y/N and I'm sorry I was shit at proving it back then and I'm sorry that it took so many years for me to come to my senses.”
He's tearing up and your heart pangs absurdly loud at that.
“I saw you with Seonghwa earlier today, laughing and dancing and flirting and I thought: Oh, maybe if I didn't waste that much time pretending I'm someone I'm not, that would be me.”
You stare for a second, you watch a single tear drop down his cheek and then look away.
“Is that what you were doing? Is that why you pulled away?”
“Maybe?” he offers and you turn to him again. Is not enough and maybe he can see it in your expression, because he goes on “I mean, I… I thought I wanted Arin. I thought I wanted Minseo. I had people in my life who were really happy to see me with them and I just…”
“Wanted to keep them happy,” you nod, understanding. He doesn't have to say his mothers name for you to know he's referring to her and maybe his other highschool friends outside of Wooyoung “Were you pretending with me as well?”
“No,” he answers right away “You and Woo were the only ones who saw me for who I really was back then.”
“And why do you think you love me now, San?” you ask, deflating against the couch and ignoring the way your heart soars at his quick response.
“Because I never stopped,” he stammers out and then clears his throat “Because I looked for you in Minseo and Kyungmi and I wondered for years why they couldn't make me feel the same way. And I told myself I didn't need to feel the same way and that I deserved to wonder for the rest of my days but seeing you tonight? I can't.”
Straightening your spine, the pained look you sent in his direction is not intentional but it prompts him to lean closer and closer until he's cupping your cheek again.
“I can't keep wondering.” His voice is a sweet whisper, a siren song that draws you in until your forehead is resting against his.
All these years, you were so self-focused on changing to a better version of who he used to know, learning from your mistakes and closing off to the opportunity of letting him prove himself a better man, you forgot that time passed for him too. He’s telling you he changed, too.
Imagination is a safe space. Is where you hide, where desire can take its wings and fly high without hurting you too much. Make belief has rescued you before but this? The way his nose nuzzles softly into yours and your breaths tangle? This is very real. And reality is prone to hurt you.
But the want you feel is undeniable. The way your entire being wants to cave in and give him an opportunity is suffocating, it makes you choke out a sob that he follows with one of his own.
You kiss him, softly at the beginning, but his hands on you tighten and you let yourself get lost in the way they go down your neck and your arms, caressing you softly until they reach your waist and pull you into his lap.
Pulling away, you grab his chin with two fingers and force his teary eyes to snap open, searching for an answer on yours.
“If you hurt me,” you start, breathless “If you're mocking me, if you're using me to get over Kyungmi, if you are pulling me back in to break my heart again, Choi San, I swear to God I will kill you.”
“I won't do that to you ever again, Y/N,” he returns softly “I love you, I'm sorry if I ever hurt you but I love you.”
Others would argue that it is pathetic how quickly you forgive him. But then again, you could never be mad at San.
You were only mad at yourself for how everything turned out.
“I love you too, Sannie.”
Saying something never felt so freeing before.
“Oh, Y/N…” you can see the way relief washes his worries away “Y/N…” he starts to say but then leans in to kiss you again and never finishes his words.
You don't mind it.
Pouring out all the pent up affection you pretended to bury for years, you explore his mouth and carve into your memory the way he feels. The way he sighs into it when your tongue brushes his, the way he pulls you in closer when your fingers reach the nape of his neck and pull on his hair there, hands splayed on your back so he can keep you in place as he leans down and places you against the worn out couch.
He maps you out, hands going down your waist in a familiar feeling that brings back that memory of you two laying down on your bed. Only this time, he's actually touching you with a purpose. This time, you two have made up your minds and your limbs are tangled in a way you can feel all of him pressing up against you.
It starts to get stuffy, the space on the couch not nearly enough to have him the way you want to. Soon, you're both standing up, mouths still moving against each other and hands roaming everywhere until you're undoing the buttons on his shirt.
He pulls away to fully take it off, eyes never leaving yours, dropping the shirt to the ground, next to the couch and then he's on you again, making your back crash into the wall as he works the knots keeping your blouse together.
He walks you through the hall, stopping only to take your top off and then he's walking you to a room that has a familiar scent that doesn't belong to you.
“Wrong room, wrong room,” you say into his lips and he laughs, looking to your surroundings “Mine’s over there.” you point to the other end of the hall, taking his hand and pulling him towards it.
You don't make it far before he's yanking you towards him again. He looks down, taking your body in and you do the same, his firm and defined stomach a sight you never thought you would be able to see.
“You're so beautiful,” he whispers, backing you against the wall again and kissing your cheek “So, so beautiful.”
Turning your head to chase his mouth, he lets out a heavy sigh when his lips trail a path to your neck and murmurs against the skin there “I never told you how beautiful I found you before but you're so perfect, baby.”
“I always thought I wasn't your type, San,” you let out a noise when he grabs your hips and pulls you forward, crashing his into yours “Fuck.”
“And I always thought you were too much for me, too smart,” he kisses his way back up, focusing on your jaw and chin until he's kissing your cheek again “too pretty,” he moves to your ear, pecking right under it and you hold him closer “too good for me.”
It doesn't really matter that this is all new to you, the way he's speaking, the tenor of his voice, the things he's saying… It sparks something familiar in you. You're pulling his hair back to make him look at you, a moan slipping out of his lips at that.
You want to hear it again.
He's smiling at your reaction, hand tightening on his locks.
However, that smile drops when he seems to recognize the gleam in your eyes.
You gather up courage, feeling empowered by the way his hooded eyes darken but wait patiently for you to speak your mind.
“Maybe I'm too good for you now, too,” you lean in, your lips softly tracing his “Maybe you should prove to me that you deserve me, San.”
It's a dare. One that he seems to like a lot because his eyes sparkle with the same fire they used to back in the day.
“Oh, I'll prove it to you, alright.” He whispers, panting when you let go of his hair and he leans into you to kiss your lips briefly before pulling away again.
His hand tilts your head back and you rest it against the cold wall, his fingers touch your bottom lip before going down and down and down until they rest against the seam of your pants, unbuttoning them in one swift movement.
Going back up, his nails softly dig into your skin and you preen, taking the soft sting of his ministrations like you two have done this a million times before.
His mouth is on yours again, his hands are pulling you off the wall and into your room until you two land on your mattress, a moan spilling out of your lips when he sloths his knee in between your legs and pulls them apart with expertise.
You don't have the mind to break down what that means.
Opening your eyes when he kisses down your neck again, you notice your room is barely lit by the street lights outside, curtains pulled open and windows closed but, this way, you can see the way San kisses between your breasts and your belly, catching his eyes when he looks up to measure your reaction.
You sigh, already feeling some sort of build up going on down there and he hasn't even touched you properly yet.
You don't even want to think about how wet you actually are.
He leans back, open palms going down your legs slowly until they reach your feet. It tickles and you can't help but let out a giggle that he joins short after, his gaze never losing the edge because of it, though.
“San…”
He guides your hips up so he can take off your pants and you sigh when his hands return, raising your leg up “I missed your laugh,” he says low, attaching his lips to your calf “I miss being the one making you laugh too.”
You feel like crying again but then he's letting your leg down and grabbing the other one to give it the same treatment, so your tears can wait.
This time, he moves upwards till his mouth nears your clothed center and your breath hitches.
Yeah, you can definitely cry later.
“You want me to prove to you how much I want you, Y/N?” he murmurs, his lips ghosting your mound now “How much I love you?”
“San, p-please…”
“Fuck, look at you.” He sounds like he's too lost in the heat of the moment and you're kind of grateful, because the moan you let out when his fingers hook on your underwear and pull them to the side to expose your pussy to his hungry eyes is loud.
When he kisses you right where you need him, you let out another moan. And when he parts your folds to lick a stripe up to your clit, you curse him under your breath until he's laughing against you softly, the vibrations accumulating heat on your belly.
He doesn't tease you much longer and you look down at him just to catch the moment his self control slips, eating you out like a man starved while his hand stays on your hip to hold you down and keep you underwear from interrupting his feast.
“This is like,” he dives in again for a few seconds and you grab the sheets beneath you “All my fantasies coming to life but better.”
He's so chatty during this and the only thing you can do is stammer a yeah? and pray for it to reach his ears.
“Mhm,” He circles your clit with the tip of his tongue and your legs shake “It tastes even better than what I dreamed, too.”
The heat of his mouth leaves you, lips spreading your wetness through your stomach until he fully reaches your face, your eyes closed and lips already waiting for him.
Tongue caressing yours, your hands trail down his torso and focus on getting his pants off. You're shaking with excitement so it proves to be more difficult than you imagined at first but he helps you in unbuckling his belt.
Once the piece of clothing is on the floor (or the bed, you're not really paying attention to where it lands), you don't waste time in feeling him up through his boxers.
The hiss you get in return makes you smile.
Bringing your lips to his neck, you suckle on this pulse point and gain another pleased noise before grazing your teeth against skin and moving to his collarbone next.
In a way, you get what he means. If he truly was pining over you the way you were pining over him, the thought of exploring his tan skin and making him moan feels like a dream.
So you kiss him again in order to make it all last longer.
The minutes pass between the both of you, softly making out and figuring out what gets both of you going, discarding your underwear in the process.
You realize your moans make San’s cock twitch against your leg and he seems to notice the way your hips buck up everytime his hands handle you more roughly.
After a few minutes of just this, you feel his hand making its way down again and the pads of his fingers circle your clit until you're grasping the sheets again. He gathers your arousal and then enters one finger slowly and when it slides in and out with ease, he enters the next one.
There's really not much prepping he needs to do, already soft and compliant under him, you relax into his comfortable touch before you're aching for something else. And your mouth is preoccupied with his, so you do something else to catch his attention.
Hands caressing his back, you let them drop to his ass with a soft smack that wins you a soft huff on amusement and then a whine when you move his hips towards yours.
“Condom?”
You shake your head “I'm clean and I have an implant.”
“Oh?” he smirks, about to tease you but you squeeze his butt again and he moans “Fuck. I'm clean too.”
“Good,” you whisper against his cheek, laughing as he arranges his position.
And he might've been touching you all this time, kissing you until your mind emptied and your lips are all swollen up, but the look on his eyes when he slowly enters you is what might drive you over the edge.
Grabbing your hands, he pins them on the side of your head as he moves, dropping his head down with a groan as you take him in, nose touching yours and moth whispering sweet things you can't quite pick up.
He feels so good.
This all feels way too good to be real.
In the cloud you're at, you allow yourself to dream a little more before the reality of what your confessions mean dawns on you.
For now, you allow San to make love to you. Sweetly, slowly and with a passion you never were lucky enough to encounter before.
Maybe it's because your previous lovers didn't have your heart the way San does.
He rams his hips into yours hard, closing his eyes and resting his warm cheek against yours, kissing your face inch by inch when you accompany his movements with your own.
When his pace picks up, you hug him close and secure your legs around his hips as you moan.
“Y-yes, fuck.”
“Like that?” he repeats the movement from before, pulling out and then in with such force it rocks the entire bed.
“Just like that, baby, fuck.”
“God, you sound so good,” you smile a little, forehead resting on his shoulder before your head falls down against your pillow again “I love you,” he repeats against your lips, letting your hands go to cup your face with both of his again “I love you so much.”
Teetering over the edge, you feel happy tears stinging in your eyes. Though closed, you can feel San’s stare on you, on your face, on the way you react to his sweet words and relentless pace.
You say it back in a whisper and he repeats it again and again and again until you're both coming and tears are spilling down your cheeks.
He kisses them away.
You wipe his with trembling fingers as you come down, having trouble breathing from everything that just happened.
You don't feel suffocated anymore, you feel like you've been freed. Like this was supposed to happen at some point and you two finally got around to it.
“I love you,” he says once more before slipping out of you with a parting kiss.
Holy shit.
When San gets up from the bed and you point him to the bathroom, down the hallway, you're left with a sticky mess in between your legs and a lot to think about but you settle on four things.
San just made love to you. There's no way that was just sex.
There's also no way you're coming back from this.
Gyuri is probably going to kill you.
And that, obviously, your feelings for San never left. You feel the familiar warmth of them spreading through your post-orgasmic state. They're there, mocking you, asking you who the fuck you thought you were for pushing them away.
He returns, toilet paper in his hands before leaning in and cleaning you up, lips immediately finding home on your skin as he does.
You both giggle at that.
You probably need to shower but you've been crying and there's no way you're leaving this bed tonight. He throws the paper away on your bedroom’s trashcan and then crashes into the bed next to you, still naked, still looking at you with so much love you're wondering what stopped you from seeing it was there before.
Taking his hand, you bring it to his lip and give his knuckles a peck “That was really good.”
“It was.”
“I can't believe we actually just did that…”
He smiles and what he says next shocks you even more than his confession “I want to take you out.”
“San… You just came inside me not even ten minutes ago.”
“And?” you laugh and he shakes his head, leaning into your space again “I spent many years doing everything wrong, let me do it the right way.”
“Making love to me one time and then taking me out on a date is not the right way, sir.”
He nuzzles your cheek with his nose and you let out a pleased sigh “Who said it was just one time, huh?” Attacking your neck with his lips again, you push him away with a laugh.
“Oh, come on!”
He laughs as well “Give me ten minutes and I'll make it two!”
San makes love to you two more times. And by four in the morning, you're snuggled into his arms and sleeping soundly.
When you wake up and find the space next to you empty, you think it was all a dream. Your naked form begs to differ and you quickly put the t-shirt you usually wear to bed on and your panties underneath it to go out and face the feelings of your actions fighting with the blender in the kitchen.
“How do you two live with this stupid thing?”
“We don't,” you answer, startling him “We don't use it. What are you trying to make?”
San’s shirtless, wearing his pants and his hair messy. Looking back at the living room clock, you see it's just five past ten.
Smiling as he approaches you, you forget you must look a mess too when he pecks your lips and barely pulls away “Good morning, beautiful.”
You pretend to cringe at that, pulling away “Oh, God. Morning, dumbass.”
“You like it, you're blushing,” he points out and the pink on your cheek deepens as he's going back to the blender “Does anything work here?”
“The microwave,” you shrug “And the stove. Were you trying to make yourself a…” you look over the ingredients he has pulled out of your fridge “Green juice?”
“I was trying to make both of us a green juice,” he corrects and your heart skips at the immediate domestic attitude he has with you “But now I can tell neither of you drink anything like it, hm? I'm buying you a blender.”
“Please don't.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think that one is broken?”
He hums, huffing out a laugh seconds later and you walk over to him, unsure on how to approach him even though what you did yesterday night and earlier this morning didn't allow your shyness to step in.
Now you're feeling it.
He can tell, because he stops fighting with the steel appliances to grab your waist and pull you close “I wanted to make you breakfast.”
“We can make breakfast together and I can order your green juice,” you compromise and he nods, but he doesn't let you go “And later we can go out on that date you promised me yesterday and we can go over what we're going to tell the two idiots.”
His smile drops.
“Oh, fuck.”
Grimacing, you nod “It was the second thing I thought about after waking up.”
“What was the first?”
“Oh, I was trying to remember if you ever asked me to dance before,” he nods with a smile “Guess what? You didn't.”
He fake gasps at that “I did!”
“No, you didn't!”
“Babe, yes I did,” he insists and you laugh, which prompts him to wrap his hands around you tighter when you try to get away from him “It was when—”
“Oh. My. God. I'm going to be sick again.”
Now when the fuck did Gyuri come back.
And why is Wooyoung with her too, jaw slack as he watches both of you pull away from each other and create a safe distance that doesn't help whatever your best friends just saw.
“It worked?” he asks and you can barely hear him until he hollers like a crazy person “Oh, it worked! I am a genius!”
“Wooyoung, hold me! I'm going to kill them!” Gyuri looks like she's about to launch towards you at any second now, so you close your eyes and accept your fate. But nothing happens “Wait— What worked?”
When you open them again, San is hiding behind you and Gyuri’s back is to both of you as she looks at Wooyoung with, what you assume, murderous intentions.
“Gyuri, let's talk about this,” the black haired guy puts his hands up “You were too drunk to discuss it so I made the choice of— Gyuri, no!”
You burst into laughter when she starts chasing him around the apartment and San giggles as well, only more nervous than delighted by their little cat and mouse game.
He's probably sensing he's next on her hit list.
As if you would let anything happen to him in the first place.
“Stop, stop! I'm sorry, please leave me alone!” you hear Wooyoung’s voice echoing through your hall and in a second he's entering the kitchen, rounding you and San “I'm so happy for you guys, really, this was meant to happ— Stop!” He cries when Gyur catches onto him and yanks his hair to stop him from running.
“Y/N,” she starts, chest heaving and you take a step back, crashing into San’s chest. He holds onto you only to push you a little and protect himself from the fury of your best friend “When I told you fuck him I didn't meant this!”
“I know.”
Wooyoung whines but he can't get away from her grasp so he just accepts it and pouts like a child.
“A-and you!” She points towards the guy resting his chin on your shoulder “How dare you! If this is something casual for you then—”
“I love her.” He defends himself quickly and your heart all but stops at that.
“You do?” Wooyoung coos, amazed at his best friend’s confession.
Gyuri's anger falters at that.
“You… You do?”
“And I love him,” you let out in a shy whisper, smiling a bit “But you already knew that.”
“Of course I already knew that, bitch, I am your other half,” she makes a point to stare at San as she says it, letting Wooyoung go and he massages the part of his scalp that was targeted by his ex “Don't forget that.”
“Y-yes ma'am.”
You laugh again and Woo joins the embrace, eyeing you both expectantly and rolling his eyes when neither of you say anything to him “Well, you are so welcome guys. What are we having for breakfast?”
You and San don't get to go out on that date.
But when you do, he asks you to be his girlfriend the next day.
And when you say yes he almost breaks down in excited tears.
Eventually, even Gyuri comes around and threatens him into treating you right, which means he earned her seal of approval.
You delete the document on your laptop when you find it a month into being his girlfriend and, instead, start drafting your new beginning on it, in first person this time because the story doesn't feel like it belongs to someone else now.
The first line read as it follows:
How did I ever think San and I could be just friends?
If you read all the way down here: THANK YOU SO MUCH. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
hola hola!! te escribi hace tiempo, sobre el fic de wooyoung!! no te preocupes este mensaje no es para meterte presion ni nada, ya saldra, esperemos este año.
es para el de hwa jajjaja no te creas. espero estes bien y feliz año nuevo!!! me encantan tus fics! no tengo tumblr, pero me acabo de dar cuenta que tienes link a ao3 los volvere a leer!!!!
holiiii corazón, sip, me acuerdo !! skdjdkdjdjdjddj amén que sí saldrá este año, dios mediante, ah. muchas gracias por tu paciencia y por esperar 🥹 espero que estés bien también! sip, tengo ao3 y siempre que actualizo acá, actualizo allá al mismo tiempo así que todo el content está ahí. espero que sea legible, nunca me adapté bien al formato de por allá akdhsksjs muchas gracias!
hello its me :D I saw you've been busy and honestly, I was fighting with myself- should I write you? Should I not? Would you think i just wanna know when the next chapter will be here because it's not about that AH I wanted to check on you so badly but ended up overthinking a lot about it c': BUT today i decided to just start typing and send the message before the overthinking begins because sometimes I'm just that smart mhm c; I hope the new year has been treating you well so far and you had a wonderful Christmas (if you celebrated)! How've you been though? I hope everything is okay and that stress you may be experiencing at the moment just fades away with a snap of your finger! if that doesn't work, I'm ready to fight your stress and problems any day at any time 😌 sending hugs to you and lots of energy ✨️
hi darling! please feel free to write to me whenever 🥹 I feel very glad and grateful every time you do. I did have a wonderful Christmas! I had like a week and a half break from work where I was able to rest (I'm back to it right now but it won't stop me from answering asks muahahahahaha), hope you had a great end of the year too! to answer your question: I've been okay, unmotivated and a bit sad because seasonal depression always gets my ass 😮💨 but I've been managing and getting through it slowly. how are you? you're always asking me, not sure if I ever asked back but I'm interested to know 🙂↕️
thank you as usual for supporting and being there even if I'm not currently posting much lol I truly appreciate it 🫂
Hi honey! How have you been? You haven’t posted in a while, I hope you’re okay💗🫂💋
hiii 💋! missed u boo. I'm okay, just blessed with a ton of work so I haven't even been able to write anything for a few months it feels like. I'm sorry for leaving everyone without an update, I had a few coworkers quit in the middle of the busy season and it all piled up 🥹 I hope you're having a great end of the year so far! thank you for keeping up w me, hopefully I get motivated soon and can give you guys something before the end of the year 🫶
PAIRING: guitarist/band leader!hongjoong x main vocalist!fem reader.
GENRE: exes to friends to lovers.
WARNINGS: mentions of loss, grief, alcoholism/drinking, addiction, stealing, reader uses fem pronouns, fem body parts, denial of feelings guys what would a fic of mine be without a little bit of delusion am i right, the tension is unbearable and i'm the one writing them, next chapter will have a bit more action i promise, seonghwa and his reader make a stellar cameo i love them, flirty wooyo, reader is jealous but not exactly because of you guys might think, bike rides (don't drink and drive anything i'm so serious ya'll), chaotic but domestic bliss, also heejin makes an appereance (we love her), apologies for the bad music lingo i'm not well versed in the arts (jokes, however i don't know shit about music tho).
NOTES: hiii guys! loved this chapter when i wrote it, now I'm not so sure lol. i hope you enjoy it! THIS IS PART OF THE LOVE'S AN UNCHARTED PATH series, which you can find the link for above or in my masterlist. there's a few character's mentioned that were introduced in previous stories but the full context is not needed to understand this one. as usual, this is 100% self indulgent, as all fics should be, and i think i've re-read it so many times that if you find a typo or something that just doesn't make sense, you can blame it on english not being my first language i guess lmao. i hope you enjoy it and if you do feel free to send to my askbox/reblog/type in any feedback or thoughts! <3
story masterlist / general masterlist / chapter two - next part.
After Hyunjin leaves and you all take a well deserved water break (and beer break for the guys, including Hongjoong), you all join your friends up the stairs.
Heejin is not there, but Hongjoong friends are and some of Kyung’s friends too and you know all of them so it's easy to mingle and smile sincerely at their congratulations because that was an amazing show.
What happened afterwards it's what's got you a little over the edge, but it's fine. It's cool, it's even forgettable when people are telling you that they felt something with your performance, when they're complimenting your voice or the way you moved on stage or a decision you made in the middle of a song that made the dynamic between the five of you a little more electric, a little more fun and real.
Seonghwa side-hugs you and his… girlfriend? (you never actually asked what they are to each other, really) shoves her shoulder against yours playfully.
“Well that was fucking amazing. Wasn't it, Ghost?”
Oh, and she calls Seonghwa ghost, which is a very cool nickname for a significant other if everyone ignores what ghosting means in modern lingo.
“Really, really cool. You styled them all tonight?” He asks and you nod. “I knew it. There's no way Ryeoun wearing his jacket the right way was his choice.”
Somewhere on your right, you hear the mentioned scoff. “I heard that!”
“Good!” Seonghwa shoots back, letting you go and smiling down at you. “Please style him forever, he can't keep getting away with it.”
Smiling back at him and then at his girl, you nod. “That's the plan anyways, isn't it?” They let out a chuckle that you follow and then a sigh escapes you. “Thank you guys, I was really nervous about tonight.”
“Does it have to do with the dude we saw following you guys backstage?” Wooyoung suddenly asks and you jump a little, turning to him. He smiles at you. “Hi, gorgeous. You were amazing tonight.”
Seonghwa groans, his girl just laughs and then, as you’re thanking him with a roll of your eyes because he’s being flirty with you, the very poor light this area of the bar has gets completely blocked, casting shadows over your entire face and his as well.
When you turn to see what's blocking it, you find a very smiling Ian standing behind Seonghwa’s darling. He has his hands or her shoulders and Seonghwa seems cool with it, which is a likely thing for him to do because he’s the chillest dude in the entire world, but still it seems weird.
“Amazing show, as always,” he compliments and you smile at him because you can’t help it, even if you don’t like him that much.
“Thanks, Ian.”
“Oh, you two know each other already?” He asks, looking down at the girl and then at you. “Damn it, I wanted to introduce you! This is my sister,” he says and you frown, looking at her and then at him. There’s a bit of resemblance but not much.
“Hongjoong never tells me shit,” you sigh and then you force out a laugh. “Yes, I knew her, I didn't know she was your sister though!”
“Yeah, we don’t look alike, I’m prettier,” he says with a face, like he pities her and she makes sure to raise a leg and step on his feet without holding back. A part of you can’t help to feel a little vindicated when he lets out a tiny cry of pain and then the majority of you can’t help but to feel jealous when he recovers fast and pulls on her hair before turning to you. “I’m kidding, we’re adopted,” then he turns to her and says, “ouch, you little shit.”
This hurts in the same way that Hyujin telling you his sister was the one who showed them your music hurt you.
You’re sure your energy shifts, you can feel it in the way the lump on your throat gets bigger and bigger until it feels like you’re choking up in your own unshared emotion. It must show in your face, in the way you close your arms over your chest and hug yourself a little, seeking for any kind of comfort, because even though Seonghwa’s attention is fully on the brother and sister banter going on and Wooyoung’s attention is in the drink he’s nursing, eyes on someone else in the room, you feel the back of your neck burning with a familiar stare.
One that fully knows what’s going on inside your head.
You don’t want him to step in and save you when you’re grown and can fight your own battles with your own emotions, with the longing for something you’ll never get to have.
So you force out another laugh, a more believable one now, and shake your head in a fake endearment like the scene alone it's not destroying you.
“Well, even if you guys are adopted I think she wins,” you joke and it’s not really a joke because you mean it, but it’s enough for Ian to let out an offended gasp and for her to stick her tongue out at him. For someone who practically lives inside a leather jacket and rides a bike, she turns into a child when fighting her brother. Cute.
You do your best to bring the positive feelings to the front, to let those leak through the cracks in your armor instead of the awful, envious ones. You are happy that they have each other, because you think she’s really cool and Ian… Well, he’s okay, you guess.
Not as bad.
Definitely a good brother, good friend.
Ugh, you wished for weeks before being introduced to him that he would suck, but he doesn’t.
And so when the night goes on and you lose the guys to their friends and celebration, you step outside of the bar to breathe before deciding if it’s too rude to irish-goodbye them in a night that seems so important to the band. You’re feeling a bit down, you’ve been side-eying Hongjoong the entire night hoping he’ll speak to you, too, but Ian steals all his attention in the way your brother used to and so the reminder that he’s supposed to be there instead of Ian, that he’s supposed to be there instead of you, has been weighting on your shoulders the entire night.
You can’t help but think of him when things like these happen, mostly because they were supposed to be his to celebrate in the first place but also because you feel like you have no one that close to you to congratulate you on this tiny goal you guys just met.
The one that does it’s too busy keeping rockstar appearances with his friends and Heejin had to work tonight of all nights.
Sighing, you wish you had at least picked up a smoking habit so you could look less miserable out there, with your back against the dirty wall.
When the door opens a few meters from you, you don’t even spare the person a look. You hear their footsteps get closer and closer and you know exactly who it is because your heart recognizes him wherever he goes.
“You good? Come inside,” he ushers you and when you finally turn to him, you realize he doesn’t have a jacket on. “It’s cold.”
“I’m good, just… Tired,” you say, shrugging and giving him a tiny smile. The last thing you want is for him to know what’s actually putting the dark cloud over your head. “Didn’t get to nap earlier, remember?”
Hongjoong hums and you look down to the floor again. You know it’s a little useless lying to him, but you take advantage of the weird distance that’s between the both of you since you came back into his life and try to erase yesterday night and this afternoon from your mind.
Close to him, you can’t actually function like you want to. Your hands were shaking the entire time you did his makeup earlier and you don’t really know what possessed you to stay close to him even after you were done. Hand over his tattoo, worried that the guys might piece together your past and with the door unlocked, too. You didn’t move because you didn’t want it to be over.
Even now, when he’s shivering because of the cold night breeze, you just want to keep him here so that you two can be alone in a space together where no one can interrupt. Like you had him back then.
It sucks that you want to seek comfort in someone who wants you as far away as possible.
“Go back, Joong,” you tell him, taking a step forward in his direction, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing there before letting go. “And stop drinking, hm? Ian keeps bringing you beers that you keep accepting.”
“I’m giving them to Woo when he’s not looking,” he says and you wonder if he’s lying so you stop worrying about that, because you haven’t seen him do that at all. “They’re all wondering where you went and, uh, Yunho and Yeosang videocalled a few minutes ago.”
“Where are they?”
“London,” he says and you frown, letting out a confused chuckle. “A work thing that’s actually a romantic gesture, I guess. Yunho’s girlfriend also went, that’s why they’re not here tonight.”
It’s endearing how he has to explain it because he knows you probably wondered about them at some point in the night. And you did, but you didn’t ask anyone because they’re his friends, not yours.
Still, because you don’t want the moment to end, you ask. “And they brought Yeosang to thirdwheel or…?”
“It’s his romantic gesture,” Hongjoong says and when you raise your brows, surprised, he laughs. “Long story.”
“I bet,” you smile and he does too and it takes a whole five seconds of you two staring at each other before you’re awkwardly looking around and fidgeting in your feet. “Listen, I don’t work tomorrow. They’re going to do something with the lights in the store, I think.” You didn’t actually pay attention to what your boss was saying on the phone, if you are honest. “So, um, the museum is closed and I think the guys can get away from their jobs a little earlier if they wanted to, right?” Hongjoong nods. “Well, we should get together and start writing the song.”
There’s a tiny pause where the awkwardness disappears from his face, the only thing you can find in his expression is softness, endearment even.
“I was about to tell you the same thing.”
And even if it’s been two years, it’s a little bit weird how you two can still coordinate with each other as if he’s able to read your mind.
Like time didn’t pass at all.
“Okay. Good, tell them, I’ll see you tomo—”
“You’re leaving?”
That was not Hongjoong.
How did Christian appear from thin air?
“I’m leaving,” you say, taking a step back from Hongjoong for good measure. You see him tense up and you wonder if Ian knows about you two. After all, they’ve been pretty close for a few months and if they’re actually together, he must know you’ve been involved with each other. You turn to your old, old friend. “Hongjoong is staying for a little bit, right?”
“R-right.”
When you turn back to Ian, you do so with a genuine smile. It burns your soul but you wish them happiness because there’s nothing you would like more than for Hongjoong to be happy.
You’re also feeling a bit nostalgic, so that’s enough hurting for the night. Coming to terms with the fact that this dude might be a good thing for him it’s what you need to—
“Can I take you home?”
What.
Why is Christian looking at you and not at Hongjoong?
You blink three times, fast and from the corner of your eye you see Hongjoong do the same.
“I mean, it’s late. I don’t know if there’s any buses or taxis around, you can always call an uber but my bike is around the corner,” he points with his thumb and then shrugs.
“You were drinking, though,” you say, trying to get out of the very good offer he’s making.
“One beer,” he argues, smiling and Hongjoong clears his throat. “And a half. One beer and a half but it takes more than that for me to feel drunk.”
Great, a heavy drinker.
I don’t know if that’s what Hongjoong needs, or you. But he doesn’t seem to think the same.
“You should go with him,” he says, with a smile on his face you can’t really decipher. “It is late and—”
“You don’t trust uber drivers, yeah, yeah,” you roll your eyes. “I know.”
He chuckles and you think Ian does too, but you’re not focused on him at all.
“Just… Text the group chat when you’re home.”
And before you can argue anything else, Hongjoong is half hugging Ian and then practically jogging towards the bar door.
He must really trust this dude. Okay, you can trust his judgment. You can move your feelings towards Hongjoong and the hurt you feel when you see him and Ian together to the side one more time as a thank you for the kind gesture, sure.
It is awkward as hell when you’re left alone with him on the street and then it takes one uncomfy laugh for him to murmur a let’s go and start moving.
The walk to the motorcycle is slow and you don’t really say anything but you look at him and he looks at you and you both smile a little.
You have to take a deep breath before saying. “Thank you for offering, you really don’t have to do this, you still have time to turn around and—”
“It’s okay, I don’t think I would have peace of mind going back in now.”
“Oh,” nodding, you give him another smile that’s more awkward than anything because why does he worry about you? “That’s nice of you. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. She has Seonghwa now so I don’t worry, but my sister used to do shit like that all the time.”
“Go home late?”
“Yeah,” he shakes his head. “I used to worry a lot, she likes late night walking for some reason? I don’t understand,” he lets out a breathy laugh and you smile. “And it’s not my job to understand but I still want her safe.”
Once again, you are miserable with the fact that he’s a good person.
And also a bit weird. But so are you, so whatever.
“I totally get it. My roommate works at a bar most nights and I tell her to wait until the sun starts rising if she can, we used to do that when we worked together,” you shrug, “I’m just really tired tonight.”
He smiles “Long day, huh?”
“Yeah,” you say quietly and he nods, like he understands. Does he understand? “Do you work at the shop with your sister?”
“Oh,” he turns to you, a little wide eyed like he didn’t expect you to know that at all. “Yeah, it’s our father’s shop. She fixes cars,” you both come to a stop when you reach his Harley. “I fix bikes.”
You hum and grab the helmet he offers you, putting it on. “So you must be tired as fuck too, huh?”
He laughs and then makes a sound of agreement, getting on his bike and patting the back of the seat. You scrunch your nose and shake your head, cringing a little.
“What?”
“Never do that again,” you tell him, half joking and then put a hand on his shoulder to support your weight as you get on the bike as well. “Especially not to Hongjoong, he doesn’t like to be told what to do.”
“Funny,” he says looking over his shoulder. “He said the same about you. Address?”
You give him your address and then hold onto his sides the entire way. The streets are not empty but you should’ve definitely checked the clock before even attempting to leave by yourself.
There’s no conversation, only the late night sunday breeze hitting your exposed skin and your eyes close briefly, enjoying the feeling. It’s only when your eyes are closed after many, many hours that you realize how actually tired you are, how pretending to be so unaffected by many things around you only made you burn out the remaining energy you had.
The semi-empty streets make the usual twenty minute ride to your home feel like five and you pat yourself on the back for being so into your own thoughts that these didn’t feel half as awkward as it was supposed to.
It gives you the strength to keep up appearances with Ian, at least for the night.
“Over here?” You hear him ask, muffled by the sound of his helmet and you point to your apartment building with your index as a response. “Ah, over there.”
He comes to a stop and you quickly get down the bike, rushing to take the helmet off with your impatience makes you look ridiculous trying to get it off fast, because you get stuck in the clasp.”
“Goddamn it, I hate this type of thingy.”
You hear him laugh, see him take his own helmet off and the next thing you feel is his hand over yours. He unclasps the thing easily and you get it off quick, letting out a batted breath because you were starting to feel trapped.
“Thank you,” you say, offering the helmet back to him and he takes it, rests it on his backseat. “And thank you for the ride.” You don’t repeat that he didn’t have to, because he already explained to you why he did it and that’s enough. And then you don’t know what really possesses you to say what you say next, but you do. “I’m glad Hongjoong has someone like you in his life. I’m sure he needed it and I’m happy you found each other.”
Looking down at the helmet and then back up at you with an intrigued expression on his face, he nods. “I really enjoy his company so I’m glad I have him in my life. I enjoy your company, too— I-I mean, you and the rest of the guys,” he recovers fast and you nod with a tiny smile tugging at your lips. He is a little weird. “It’s like being friends with your idol, you know?”
“Oh, come on,” when you go around the bike to get close to your building’s entrance, you take the chance to push him in the shoulder. “We’re not even that big yet.”
“Yet,” he emphasizes, smiling. “Almost nine thousand listeners in Spotify, too. That’s huge.”
Rolling your eyes, you turn to enter the code of the front door quickly and when it opens you hold it with your right hand, while the left waves at him.
“Goodnight!”
“Night,” you hear him say before you close the door and even if you don’t look back as you go up the stairs to the third floor, you can tell he was smiling as he said it.
When you go to sleep that night, with makeup on and in your underwear, you do so without overthinking what could’ve been.
For the first time in forever, you actually think you’re moving on from Hongjoong.
And from the light his love brought to your life.
The next day, as you expected, it’s chaos. You’re grateful you get to wake up later than usual because you knew, no matter what, the guys would wake up even later than you.
Heejin is by your side and she huffs and puffs when you scoot to the edge of the mattress so you can get out of bed.
“I thought you didn’t have to work today,” she says, eyes still closed and sleep clinging to her voice.
“Band stuff,” you shrug even if she can’t see you and you take her hand in yours so you can give it a kiss. “I’ll text you. Keep sleeping, you have a shift in a bit, right?”
Not at the bar, but at a clothing store she got hired at recently.
She mumbles something and lets out a tiny cry, probably at the reminder of her shift, before you let her go and get up to take a shower and get ready for the day.
As you do, yesterday night replays in your head. It’s foggy, like you didn’t actually live it but dream it instead and the possibility of finally getting a deal so you can all meet your goal cruises through you with motivation, like a fire.
When you get to the guys’ apartment and put in the code for the door, you hope that what you see doesn’t kill the spark but you’re kind of expecting it anyway: Ryeoun is on the couch, pants and socks still on. There’s a mess on the floor and as soon as you close the door you hear a muffled scream that sounds like Kyung before the door to his room opens up and he walks out in his underwear and with a towel on his hand that he presses on his semi-undressed body to cover up once he sees you.
“Oh, hi Siren.”
“Good morning,” you say, still by the door, eyebrows raised in silent questions.
“You heard that?” He asks and you nod, smiling a bit. “I was hyping myself up so I could get out of bed,” he explains and it doesn’t make it better so then he looks back to the empty hallway and then to you. “I have a mean hangover, so…”
“Right.”
He points back to his room. “I think it also woke Hyunwook up, so you’re welcomed.”
“Get in the fucking shower!” you hear the mentioned yell from inside the room they share and you shake your head, already entertained with their shenanigans.
“Shut up!” Ryeoun yells suddenly and you jump a little before going towards him. His arm is over his eyes to shield them from the light coming in from the window and you smile when you try to shake him and he doesn’t budge. “Five more minutes.”
“It’s already late,” you tell him and when he hears your voice, his arm falls to his chest. He opens his eyes just a little and smiles up at you, murmurs a hi. “We need to write a song, Ryeoun.”
“You need to write a song, we need to write a melody.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about that too,” Hyunwook says from the hallway entrance and he yawns. At least he has a shirt on… And shorts. “Us three should go downstairs and write the melody and you two should stay up here and write the lyrics. Hyunjin said that it takes a while to hear back but what if it doesn’t?” He walks towards the couch and takes Ryeoun's legs, who whines at the new interruption of his sleep, and sits down before tossing his legs aside, almost knocking Ryeoun off the couch entirely. “What if we hear back in a day or two? We need to divide the labor.”
“And how did it go for us when we did, back in college?”
Hongjoong’s voice draws your attention completely. He sounds tired, like he didn’t get any sleep at all. You’d know.
When you turn to him, there’s dark circles under his eyes and a cup with steam coming out of it. Probably coffee, though the apartment doesn’t smell like it at all. It smells like dude, like them. It’s not always the most pleasant smell but you can tell they’ve been trying to get better at being clean and organized. They’re just hungover today.
Looking at Hongjoong, you try to decipher if he is as well. You’ve never seen him have one, mostly because he’s true to his word and never gets drunk, actually drunk.
But lately… Ugh, you need to shake the feeling off you, tell the part of you that longs to shield him from his father’s memory, from becoming like him, to remind itself that it’s not your job to do so in the first place.
“It doesn’t matter, we graduated.”
“Barely,” he scoffs and then catches you staring. He gives you a tiny smile. “What do you think?”
Returning the smile and then looking at the predicament both Hyunwook and Ryeoun are in, you shrug. “I think they’re not going to get anything done if we’re not there.”
Ryeoun gasps dramatically and Hyunwook clicks his tongue, letting his head drop to the side in annoyance.
“We can get shit done!”
“It’ll probably take us less time to come up with a melody, anyways,” Hyunwook says and then the bathroom door opens and Kyung comes out with a towel around his waist and one on his hand, drying his hair. “Right?”
“Uh,” he looks at the guys on the couch and then at you and Hongjoong, trying to decide which side he’s supposed to be on in this pointless argument he probably heard nothing of. “Sure.”
“That’s three against two, baby!” Hyunwook gets up from the couch, runs to the bathroom next and Ryeoun groans again before getting himself comfortable.
They truly are like kids. Not yours, thank God, but kids nonetheless. You turn to their actual father figure with a raised brow and he just runs a hand over his face, annoyed.
In your heart, you know Hongjoong sees a lot of his younger self in them. He is a year or two older so you don’t know how much he can use the hyung card with them, but there’s this endearment masked as exasperation that you recognize very well. It warms your soul, it makes you smile and you take a deep breath before looking away before him or Ryeoun catches you cheesing over your own assumptions over what Hongjoong is feeling.
You take a few steps into his direction and then pass on him completely before heading for the kitchen.
“There’s something so sinister about getting a clueless Kyung and a sleepy Ryeoun on his side,” you sigh in front of the fridge. You have permission to open it if you want but the thing is you’re not really hungry, you’re not really thirsty either. You’re waiting for him to invite you to his room and it’s making you nervous as hell. “He makes me sick.”
You hear Hongjoong huff out a laugh and when you turn to look at him over your shoulder, he’s crossed armed and staring right back at you.
“He’s mean but I do trust they’ll at least start on the song today,” he shrugs. “I don’t know if they’ll finish it but we’re all going to have something by the end of the day. You’re staying, right?”
“Hm?”
You have to ask him to repeat himself because you’re misreading the way he asked in the first place. There’s this hopeful, airy tone laced with his question that makes your heartbeat grow erratic and you can’t have it, especially not when you’re trying to focus on something else.
Something important, like the song.
But maybe getting to feel this is exactly what Hyunjin is asking for, something heartfelt, something… Real.
What’s more real than your love for him?
“The entire day, are you staying or do you have to do anything else today?”
Ah.
“I’m staying,” you say with a barely there nod and you curve a smile before turning to the fridge again. You open it, pretend you’re looking for something until your eyes land on a water bottle. “Why?”
“Maybe we all could get something to eat later? Ryeoun needs it, I think.”
At the not so subtle mention of his name, you hear another groan and then approaching footsteps towards the kitchen. Ryeoun is rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands when he enters your view.
“You are all so fucking loud, oh my god.”
“Here,” you toss the water bottle to Hongjoong, raising your chin so he thinks that was your plan all along, to get your friend some water when he’s in desperate need of a drop. “Drink this and take a shower. Hongjoong will have some hot coffee ready when you get out.”
At the mention of his name, he looks at you and his mouth drops a little at your set up and betrayal, but you smile at him brightly like nothing even happened.
“Thank you, Siren,” you hear Ryeoun murmur and, when you try to pass the both of them, his hands close around your arms and he pulls you in for a hug. “At least someone cares about me around here.”
“Okay, don’t cry about last night.” Kyung, dressed, walks into the space and pinches your cheek when he’s near you both. “You’re grown, you should know when to stop drinking.”
You look at the three of them, one at a time.
“What happened last night?”
“Someone tried to flirt with Seonghwa’s girlfriend and almost got beat up,” Hongjoong explains and your mouth opens, surprised, scandalized.
“What?”
“I was too drunk to know who she was!” He defends himself, letting you go and you take a step back and next to Hongjoong to look at him, still perplexed. “She’s pretty and I saw a pretty girl and took my chance.”
“And you almost end up with a black eye,” Kyung says.
Ryeoun opens his arms, offended. “You all stood there and let me do it!”
You turn to Hongjoong again, a question in your eyes for the second time today and he curves his lips with the same mischief you recognize from your teen years.
Again, it warms your soul.
“I wanted to see what would happen,” he shrugs, “they have a weird thing with their relationship label and I wanted to see if he is actually in love with her.”
“And?”
“Oh,” he laughs, “he is.”
“Good,” you whisper and then turn to Ryeoun leaning in to kiss his cheek. “Get in the shower as soon as Wook comes out.”
He rolls his eyes and for a split second you think he’s going to stomp his foot in protest, like a kid. “Okay.”
“Bring the old hag to the room,” you tell Hongjoong, turning around and making a bee line for his room before he decides to move the song-making to the living room.
“Stop calling my guitar old hag, Y/N!”
No, you think, that’s how he used to call her. In private, for the both of you only.
The weight of that secret it’s not a heavy one, but you wonder if you’ll ever tell Hongjoong about it.
Or you’ll keep it an inside joke between you and the dead.
A little time passes and your feet are about to burn a hole in the ground. After yesterday, being in this room feels different. Like that safe haven you both used to have back when you were allowed to kiss.
So far, you have tossed your bag on the bed and taken your notebook filled with lyrics out, the leatherette worn out and almost as old as Hongjoong’s guitar is peeling a little and everytime you shake it in your hand like your tambourine it flakes out and falls to the ground.
It took you a second look around the room to find the notebook Hongjoong was looking for yesterday but you didn't even touch it, you can’t bring yourself to. You’re afraid you’re going to fuck up, to get the cold, distant Hongjoong instead of the one he’s been with you since he told you about Hyunjin coming to see the show.
There’s this hope lighting up your chest that wouldn’t survive if he gives you attitude today. You’re tired, you’re anxious about the deal and your boss just texted you saying that you won’t have to go in tomorrow because the workers need an extra day to work on the issue at the store.
So you won’t be busy tomorrow to not think about him. About what could’ve been.
What could’ve been…
Frowning and with an imaginary lightbulb over your head, you fall to your knees with a hmpf and open your notebook. At that very second, Hongjoong opens the door and you catch his eyes following your movements.
Old Hag on his right hand.
“You okay?”
“Sh,” you raise your left hand and then bring your index finger to your temple. “I’m thinking.”
You hear when he closes the door and he also laughs a little, sounding concerned, but by then you have reached your bag, dragged it to the floor and now you’re looking for a pen. Did you bring a pen? You always have a pen.
“Here,” he says, walking over to you and offering a blue pen. “Is the one I use for mine. If I could only fucking find it, I—”
“It’s on the shelf, under the book you stole that one time.”
You feel more than see him pause his movements for a second, before checking on the spot you mentioned.
“Thanks,” he whispers, but you hear it and smile a little, briefly, because the lyrics coming to your head are taking all of your attention.
What we could’ve been still keeps me awake,
Every dream tastes like my own mistake.
What we could’ve been…
What we could’ve been, hm. You tap the blue pen into the page as if it’s going to miraculously bring the next line to it.
“Aaaaand it’s gone,” you fall backwards into the wood floor and shut your eyes tight. You can see the idea float like a bird and leave before you’re able to fully grasp it. “I hate being forced to write.”
“You said you had a bunch of ideas already,” you hear the mattress creak when he sits on it and you stay there, with your eyes closed, trying to figure out a way of continuing what in your head sounds like a perfect chorus for a song. “Why don’t we use some?”
“They’re all shit.”
He laughs again and when you open your eyes to look at him, he’s looking through his own notebook. “You always say they are.”
Now it’s your turn to chuckle at the call out.
“Well, they never make the cut so it must be true.”
His eyes find yours and he’s already shaking his head before he even talks.
“You know that’s not why.”
You smile. Yeah, you know that’s not why.
Staring at each other for longer than what you’ve gotten used to these past two years, you see as his throat bobs when he swallows and then he clears it, eyes looking at his notebook once again.
“What were you writing just now?”
Great question, one that immediately raises your walls because you don’t actually want him to know. Would he be able to tell that it’s about him, about you both, by only reading it?
You don’t want to know.
But yet again, this is your job. Sitting down and sharing ideas it’s fairly new, at least like this. Hongjoong technically didn’t lie when he said that you guys share but it’s never this… Intimate.
It feels like you both have been avoiding this for a while. For all the reasons you are tired of thinking about.
You wish your mind disconnected when it comes to him, at least now. Back when you had him, away from the prying looks of his friends or your friends or the paranoia that everyone is going to find out about the past you both seem to want to keep behind (and understandably so) because your body feels heavy when you get up from the floor and walk towards him, notebook open in the page you used to write the attempt at a verse inspired by everything you feel when you look at him.
He takes it and looks at the words on the paper with raised brows. You just stand there, awkwardly and with your hands behind your back, fighting the urge of taking it out of his hands.
“This is good, Y/N,” he says and when his eyes go up to look at you again, he pauses. He looks down at the bed and then at you again. “I have some verses I’ve written down that could go with it. Would you… I mean, are you going to stand there the entire time?”
“Uh—”
“It’s okay if you want to but like… You don’t have to.” He laughs a little a for a second. You think he’s as nervous as you but the thought gets wiped out completely when he scoots backwards on the bed and his back hits the wall full of posters, leaving space for you to sit in front of him.
You clearly don’t affect him the way he affects you. That’s okay, you remind yourself that you came to terms with it a long time ago even if it doesn’t feel like it anymore for some reason.
Not even bothering to reply, you take a seat on the space he made for you and take Old Hag into your hands and your lap. Softly passing fingers through the nylon, you smile at a memory that took place back then, in your room.
“You still know how to play it, right?”
You don't look at him, but at the strings of the guitar and nod. “I practice at the store with the ones they have on display, sometimes.”
He hums and you try hard not to look up at him, reading your lyrics. You can hear the pages flip and then he pauses, like he did it unconsciously, but you don’t react at all even if your heart is beating fast because of it.
You don’t want him to think there’s something there he can’t find out about, to draw suspicion on your already obvious feelings for him, written on the very same pages he’s analyzing right that moment. Instead, you try to find comfort in the sound the guitar makes when you pass the back of your nails a little firmer this time, the fingers of your other hand pressing against the nylon and the wood on the neck of it.
There’s this magnetism, this thing that just possesses you when you are making music, when it comes from the heart. You felt it at nineteen for the first time and the feeling has become addictive, so when you start singing nonsense along with the very basic melody you’re playing it doesn’t surprise you that Hongjoong puts the notebook aside and leans forward to hear you play.
He’s got that weakness for music, too. An addiction to the feeling it brings him and it’s ironic that, even if you both avoid it, you were cursed with becoming an addict to something.
This one addiction is healthy, though. And it cures hearts, effectively distracts spirits from the heat of a burning world.
“I think we should write two songs,” he starts in a murmur and after a few minutes that feel like hours, you look up from the guitar to him. “A ballad and then something with heavy drums. It’s what we do best,” he shrugs. “What do you think?”
“Okay,” you don’t really have to think about it. After all, you trust him and your judgment and, like a sign from the universe, you hear Ryeoun working his magic with the drums downstairs, the faint sound of piano keys under it. “So we’ll write the ballad and let them do the rest?” And when you say it, you do with a slight humour in your tone, like you’re not so sure they will.
“They’ll get it done,” he rolls his eyes and you smile, knowing the joke landed. “We just need to give them two business days to get over their hangover.”
Ah, yes, they drank their asses off last night. Which brings to mind…
Don’t do it.
Don’t say it.
“Of course,” you say in a whisper and then you fully lean back, almost falling off the bed. When you recover, the words stumble out of you in a clumsy, nervous manner because, deep down, you know you shouldn’t bring it up. “So, Christian— Ian,” you correct yourself quickly. “He’s, uh, he’s nice.”
You don’t look at Hongjoong because you’re too busy putting Old Hag on the bed and grabbing your notebook before shifting on the sheets, your back to him this time. You rather not look at him when you talk about this.
But you have to let it out. You’re okay with this, with them. If you are what is holding him back from being open about it, then you don’t want him to think that anymore. If anything, you want Hongjoong to trust you.
Maybe this writing experience can be the perfect opportunity to become friends once and for all.
Still, hopefulness aside, you can feel the air in the room get thick with sudden tension.
And it sucks, because you want to be a person he can rely on for things other than the band.
“He is,” he agrees and it’s a whisper you can hear because everything got really quiet all of the sudden.
There’s no noise coming from the garage either and you assume they all either fell asleep or are having one hell of a thinking session in silence. There’s no cars passing by, no street vendors yelling at all even though they live close to a market.
Nothing, just enough quiet for you to overthink his reply.
You can’t bear it. The guitar is back in your lap and your hands are positioned firmly in play position, fingers pressing against the cords a little more tightly, enough to make it really hurt.
But the room fills with the soft, calming sound of it once more and you feel the bubble of tension burst a tiny bit, a small hole that lets the air come in so you can breathe better, possibly avoid choking up on your own tongue when you speak again.
“Yeah and he’s handsome, too. That’s the whole package right there.”
Why would you say that?
“Oh,” he says and then he clears his throat. You hear the pages of a notebook turn, fast this time. “You think so?”
“Sure,” you barely look over your shoulder to give a tiny, kind of fake smile and then turn back to the guitar even though your attention is on him and his reaction. “I didn’t like him at all at first.”
He breathes out a laugh, “I noticed.”
“He kept bringing you drinks and… Hovering. But he’s Seonghwa’s brother-in-law and he has a sister that seems to love him a lot. Besides, he cares about you,” you shrug, “so I can’t really hate him like I wanted to.”
“Mmm, I’m not so sure he’s Hwa’s brother-in-law just yet.”
“I thought they were together?”
“They kind of are,” he says and you can imagine him nodding but you still don’t turn back to confirm if he is. “But not really, not yet.”
Okay, he’s trusting you with information now. He’s telling you things and you don’t have to assume them or find out through the guys or the rest of his friends. Cool. You can work with that.
And so you’re not sure why you start giving him unsolicited advice over his non-confirmed relationship with Ian, but you do anyways.
“I think nowadays it can be a little tricky to know when someone is ready to move to the next stage of the relationship, right? There’s a lot of misleading content and advice on the internet, telling you to give each other signals instead of communicating,” you let out a disappointed sigh and then shake your head, plucking the strings in a distracted manner. “Don’t let that happen to you both.”
“Hm?”
Okay that’s enough of that.
“Anyways!” You turn to him for a second and then back to the guitar. “So I was thinking a ballad but not a full on acoustic or piano one, you know? Maybe a progression like…” You play the guitar and it doesn’t really sound like you want it to because you’ve lost a lot of practice over the years, but anything is good to shift the conversation out of the crater you dug and into what actually matters, the music. “Ooo, maybe something haunting? In minor key?” And you play again but the melody sounds weird and extremely cheery for some reason. “We could, like, layer different things to make it sound like—”
Hongjoong follows along. You’re not sure if it’s because he really doesn’t want to talk about it at all or because it’s impossible for him to resist talking about music.
What you don’t know it’s why he moves forwards on the bed until he’s right behind you. What you don’t understand is how to explain to your heart that the arms he puts around you
His lips almost brush your ear when he speaks again and it’s soft, intimate, too much for your well being. “For what you’ve written I don’t think haunting would work, it’s gotta be…” Your fingers drop from the neck of the guitar and his calloused ones take their place instead. You think you stop breathing when his hand covers yours and he leans just a fraction closer, his front resting against your back now.
You think you can feel his heart beat, or is that your own heart? You don’t know, you’re not able to rationalize anything because his chin hovers over your shoulder so he can see the guitar and his hand angles your wrist a little higher. When he drags it across the strings, coaxing out a clean, ringing chord that hums against your ribs, the music that fills in the room sounds really distant.
“Something like that, maybe?”
You wish you knew what he was talking about.
The only thing you can focus on is his breath ghosting the skin of your neck when he turns a little to look at you and when you do too his nose and yours are a whisper away from each other.
Seeing the moment he notices it, how familiar this all is.
How identical this moment is from the one where you two shared your first kiss, in your room, back then.
If you read all the way down here: THANK YOU SO MUCH. NEXT CHAPTER IS A FLASHBACK CHAPTER WHO ELSE CHEERED (It'll be posted around the first week of novemeber I believe). Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, don't be afraid to go to my inbox and leave your thoughts there or down below, i love reading them!
I wanna ask you something…. but since it can be a spoiler… maybe…. Don’t know if you will answer but I’m curious about the events in this special chapter
1st of all… poor Ian we all saw it coming (not the punch exactly but…. And 2nd of all, whatever happened exactly between hongjoong and ian will be shown in the next chapter or in the chapter after the next one? Or won’t be exactly shown at all….?
Anyways, I still have to ask but whatever it is I’m here for it. Loved the last chapters of Hongjoong’s story so much, the slow is burning or whatever they say, can’t wait for more and for them to finally wake up and get together lol also loved the special chapter for i was made for lovin you baby couple!!! I just love this universe you created so much🤧😮💨😪
to be honest ian should've known better but, like his sister said, he's pretty stubborn 😮💨 lmao he did Not deserved to be punched I'll tell you that, but Hongjoong is just a man in love! lol but yes it'll all be explained in a ghost of us chapter for sure! probably the one after the flashback chapter or the one after that (I'll have to wait and see how things turn out 😩)
thank YOU for reading and for taking the time to send the message with the questions and for your lovely words as well 🥹
The tension between hongjoong and siren is killing me aaaaa!!!! In the last chapter notes you said the next will be a flashback…. Will the whole chapter be a flashback and we will learn more about how things first started and ended or just a part of the chapter will be it? There’s still 1 or 2 chapters for it? 👀
Also…. A special chapter for seonghwa’s arc🫂❤️thank you so much because his story is the one ive been the most obsessed it’s been a few months and I already read the original story sooo many times you have no idea. Now I have a new one to take turns with lol and it’s so beautiful the whole chapter and I love what you said about saying I love you for the first time seriously ughhh
Anyways, I have some questions:
1- what costume did you exactly thought of as Padmé? (Btw really interesting they’re dressed as Padme and Anakin and not Han Solo and Leia. Cool lol I LOVE revenge of sith unironically is one of my favorite movies just perfect movie sorry)
2-i didn’t understand the thing is said about yunho not having any idea about Hongjoong and Siren thing about each other? I’m confused now lol he’s just clueless or it’s a important info that?
3- who’s the guy that come with Yunho and his girlfriend that you write about? Is Yeosang and it’s just because the reader don’t know him yet or…. New character or smth?
Just had that in my mind and wanted to know. Anyways, lovely chapter as always🫂❤️
💋
hiiiii 💋 oh my gosh! I love this, I love when you guys ask questions and I saw this ask below too so I'll just explain my reasoning for the costume instead hahaha
I decided to go for Padmé and Anakin bc, well, they're outfits always looked so so cool to me 😭 I considered Leia and Han Solo first but since it's halloween and Anakin's outfit is a bit 'darker', I decided to go for that one. I also just loved the Padmé outfit in general, I love how nonsensical it is that it just ripped mid battle into an asymmetrical crop top lmaoooo.
also, I'm not sure how many chapters of the ghost of us are left if I'm being honest 👀 I'm writing it and going along with whatever happens in the chapter by chapter but I'm not sure, I don't want to extend it too long so I definitely need to plan things out better 😩 I don't want to let go of them tho. the entire chapter minus the end is a flashback! it will definitely show what happened between them hehe
the thing about yunho not knowing it's a gag between me, myself and I lmaoooooo I've been writing him clueless the entirety of the series bc that's the only way I could justify him not knowing about his love for his reader for so long (or him denying it, I should say) but now it's just a gag for me that I giggle at everytime I write it lol
the guy is most definitely hyunjin 🙂↕️ if you go back to chapter one or two of yunho's story, you'll know why hehe
also thank you for reading and thank you for saying that hwa's story is one of your favorites, I wasn't happy with the way I left things off w the couple so I'm glad to know that the continuation/special is well received 🥹🫶 thank you as always! hope I answered all of the questions
happy halloween! u3u aah, your halloween special took me by surprise and i gotta say, i'm really happy that it's a special about reader-chan and seonghwa! when i first read their story, i wasn't really sure if i liked their dynamic as i have a bad past with rushing into a relationship type of thingy and all- and now that there's a small continuation of it, i was really really happy! it's beautifully written, like always! but i wanna be honest, i still don't like the dynamics and all ... and now that i finished reading the special, i came to the conclusion that their story just isn't my cup of tea T^T i do not like reader-chan, i do not like ian lol BUT it does not change the fact that their story as a whole is just like the rest- TOO good to not read it at least ONCE because hELLO? best series ever, STILL! i think choosing them for this special was a brilliant idea and i need to know, are your interludes and specials planned or do those ideas come to you randomly? u3u i'm sooo looking forward to more more morE, especially because of the fight and i can't wait to find out what the fight was about, and how hongjoong will deal with the aftermath! 💕✨
hiiiii love 🥹 I wanna thank you for reading even if their story is not necessarily something you're into. it's okay, I know there's different dynamics for every single one and, like you said, some may resonate more than the others either positively or in a negative way. I wouldn't change a bit of their story but I totally get what you mean! so thank you thank you thank you as usual for taking the time read and to send the message, it means the world to me 🙂↕️🫶 and to answer the question, they honestly come randomly to me. when I was debating which couple to use for the special this idea of it being sort of like a bridge between stories (and to get a closer look at Ian and his perspective on everything) came to mind and it was also bothering me the way I finished the one shot for seonghwa and reader tbh, so this continuation is the closure for that (for selfish reasons as you can see lol). again thank you! and happy Halloween and a good start of the month for you dear 🦇🫶
i was made for lovin’ for you (even in a galaxy far, far away) (PSH x reader)
part of the love's an uncharted path universe ★.
PAIRING: seonghwa x mechanic!reader.
GENRE: established relationship, halloween special! sort of. kind of. idk, it's fluffy and there's romantic and a little kinky smut in here, happy halloween guys.
WARNINGS: SMUT ☽ (MINORS DNI), this doesn't have a shit to do w star wars guys i'm sorry lmao but they are dressed as padmé and anakin so there's that, poor star wars references (i need to rewatch), makeouts, mentions of drinking, fights, they're in love but they're not idiots for the first time in one of my fics WE CHEERED, reader uses fem pronouns and has fem body parts, descrip of fem anatomy, oral sex (f receiving), masturbation (m receiving), messy kisses (yay), grinding/frotagge/sumata (tried to look for an actual term for it, not sure if that's it lol), they say the L word for the first time here folks.
WORD COUNT: 9.6k
NOTES: hiii guys! I HAD TO LOCK IN THIS WEEK AND GIVE YOU GUYS A HALLOWEEN SPECIAL (because nothing is scarier than saying I love you for the first time am I right). not sure if we should count it as part two of i was made for lovin' you but it does follow the moments after part one ended, at least for a bit. i hope you guys enjoy it! THIS IS PART OF THE LOVE'S AN UNCHARTED PATH series, which you can find the link for above or in my masterlist. as usual, this is 100% self indulgent, as all fics should be, and i think i've re-read it so many times that if you find a typo or something that just doesn't make sense, you can blame it on english not being my first language i guess lmao. i hope you enjoy it and if you do feel free to send to my askbox/reblog/type in any feedback or thoughts! <3
story masterlist / general masterlist / main story.
It took about ten minutes of you and Seonghwa making out the morning after your first night together to panic.
Only if you introduce me as your girlfriend and not as your mechanic, though.
What the actual fuck was wrong with you?
He did tell you, like five minutes prior, that was not interested in getting to know anyone else but you. That, and the fact that he only smiled wide before giving you the kiss that started this whole make out session in the first place, let you know that your major fuck up was nothing to worry about.
You still think about the feeling that ran through your veins the second the sleep and whatever spell his lips got you under, when the words came back to you, your impulsiveness biting at your ankles like a puppy, not a rabid dog.
It still hurts when a puppy bites your ankles, though, so you pushed him away a little. It must've showed in your face, the panic you felt, because he immediately grabbed it and let his thumbs caress the skin of your cheeks in an attempt to calm you down, maybe.
“What's wrong?”
And you couldn't help but spill out your worries right away “Was that okay?” you asked and he frowned, confused, so you went on. “W-what I said, I mean. About the girlfriend thing, I d-don't actually… What I'm trying to say is that you don't have to, um, introduce me that way. I m-mean we only just met and so—”
“Darling…”
“I don't know why I said that in the first place. Oh, my god, I…”
He stopped you with a shake of his head.
“Don't apologize.”
Okay, you were able to breathe again after word vomiting your insecurities all over the place.
“I don't actually care about the label we put on each other as long as you're comfortable with it,” swallowing hard, you thought to yourself about how your heart was in his hands already. “If you want me to say you're my girlfriend, I'll say you're my girlfriend, it's okay. And if you don't want to be called my girlfriend right now? That's okay too.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“I just think it's a little too soon,” you breathed out and he nodded, smiling a little and lowering his hands in a soft trace until they claimed their place on your hips, pulling you towards him and his opened legs. It took little effort for him to rearrange the position and for you to be seated on his lap, with his lips kissing the skin of your neck once again. “And I don't think your friends would—”
“I don't care about what they think,” he whispered there, kissing your jaw and your chin and pecking your lips sweetly. “I care about what you think, hm? We have plenty of time to figure that out.”
“Yeah, I guess, I just… I mean, just tell me if that made you uncomfortable or if anything I do or say does,” and we're so confident the night before, touching him like you knew exactly what you were doing, that it didn't surprise you when he frowned at your accusation.
And it clicked for him, the exact reason behind your panic.
“I'm not him,” he said and you nodded fast, opened your mouth to say that you knew that but his next words made your words disappear from the tip of your tongue. “Also, I kind of already told them that you are my girlfriend—"
“Seonghwa!”
“What?” He ignored your panic, only smiled and leaned back a little to fetch his phone and unlock it. He searched for a second and then turned the screen for you to see. “I have a few positive reactions already.”
The message reads: Sure, let's hang out tonight so you can meet my girlfriend.
And then there’s a thumbs up reaction and a heart reaction from a dude saved as Joong.
“You got one positive reaction, Ghost.”
“Yeah, from Hongjoong, he's probably the only one awake besides from Yunho,” he scoffed, turned the screen back at himself and read through the thread of messages again. “I'm not sure what's going on with him. Either way, Hongjoong already knew about you, so…”
“He what?”
Locking his phone and throwing it in the bed beside you two, he only turned to you with a not-so-innocent smile.
“Yeosang, too. I… Listen, that night, when I left my bike with you guys?”
“Two nights ago, yeah, I recall.”
Laughing, you felt his hands tightening up on you and you swallowed hard at the feeling. Intoxicating, delicious feeling.
“Yeah, two nights ago,” he rolled his eyes. “I told them because I couldn't stop staring at my phone like an idiot waiting for you to text me anything. Day one of meeting you, by the way,” he pointed out and it was your turn to roll your eyes. “Day one of meeting you and I already wanted to scream out of the window how much I like you. Because I like you, Y/N, you know that I'm not ashamed to say it right?”
Your cocky, feign annoyed attitude died down a little and you let out a tiny yeah under your breath, because you couldn't quite believe it yet.
“I don't care if it's too soon, I don't really care about what is going to happen once my friend Gyuri wakes up and read that message and, trust me, if I don't care what they think, I don't care about what anyone else might say,” he took in a breath and let it out slowly. “Except you. I care about what you think, about what you want, but, and correct me if I'm wrong… You seem to like me as much as I like you, no?”
Caught red handed.
You were probably smiling like an idiot too, to be honest.
He looked at you funny when you didn't say anything and then he smiled, a proud grin, one that said that you had stroked his ego just right with your reaction.
“Judging by the fact that you look like you want to eat me, I—”
Laughing as his back connected to your mattress and the messy sheets, Seonghwa didn't let go of you one second. Not when you pushed his shoulder without any strength, and certainly not when you leaned down to kiss him with want, with need, with gratefulness at the fact that he was able to read your emotions so well in so little time together.
“I like you, Seonghwa.”
Next thing you know, you felt the sheets and the corner of his phone under your back. Hovering over you, with both hands on either side of your head supporting his weight, Seonghwa gave you one more look of complete understanding before whispering.
“Then that's all that matters to me.”
And then he kissed you until the rain outside stopped and his responsibilities and your responsibilities called.
That was months ago.
You've been seeing him since them and after a week or two labels went to shit. He introduces you by your name, when they ask him what you both are he says that you're his girlfriend and the word it's no longer scary.
Because he's actually loud and proud to be with someone like you.
And you can say the same thing about him.
What you can't be too proud of, however, is this costume you put together last minute. It's a surprise for him and you see the original one you planned to wear, the cheap fabric of it, almost falling off your bed.
Hongjoong and his band have this Halloween gig and you were all invited to the party as a consequence and so you planned a couples costume with Hwa last minute, but you're not too comfy with a dress on and although the yellow, flowy one in your bed looks decent enough, you had to turn to the other, even more recognizable outfit this character wears in the films you've grown to love these past few months.
Those are his favorite movies after all. You love everything he loves.
You love him.
Maybe you'll tell him tonight that you do.
Looking at the reference picture, you try to figure out what went wrong when ordering this one online. You must've clicked on the wrong thing, but now you're low-key glad that you did.
You look pretty, all dressed up like this. You don't really do that often, not when most of your clothes end up greasy and car motor dirty after a while.
He still likes you like that, though. That's why you're a bit nervous when you hear a knock on the door. Seonghwa got ready in the living room because you wanted the end result to be a surprise.
Now you have to take a deep breath before adjusting the beige belt in front of the mirror.
You fall to your knees, pretending to be searching for something when you tell him to “Come in, Ghost!”
The door creaks and you hear him take a deep breath, probably when he understands what your costume is supposed to be.
“Holy fuck, Y/N.”
The nonchalant act lasts like thirty seconds before you're looking up at him through the mirror and…
Holy fuck indeed.
Now, listen, Padmé and Anakin are not the best example of a couple out there. They're questionable, with an unnecessary age gap and they ended up really, really wrong but they're also the hottest Star Wars couple out there.
And so when you look up at Hwa and he's wearing the Anakin Skywalker costume you ordered together with Padmé's yellow meadow dress that's unworn, in your bed, you can't help but to curse under your breath.
He looks stunning, like straight out of the movie.
And you're wearing something that goes along with his costume still, but a bit different than planned.
You're dressed in all white, in the outfit Padmé wore in the Battle of Geonosis, in Attack of the Clones. The version with the perfectly cut and styled top to show her midriff, which wasn't what you originally planned, but alas it's what you got.
And you feel good in it. You feel sexy, you feel desired when he scans your body a second and third time and then gulps down whatever nasty thoughts came bubbling up and almost came out of his mouth because of it.
There's never a day where Seonghwa makes you feel undesirable. Even with grease on your face and bags under your eyes at how tired work has made you these past few weeks, he's right there reminding you how beautiful you are.
Even now, when he slowly but surely shortens the distance between you two and gently cups your face, he's already telling you all you need to hear without actually saying anything out loud.
It feels good when he does, though.
“You're so fucking beautiful I'm afraid we're going to be late for the party.”
You scoff, a puff of air that turns into a laugh. “We can't, Hongjoong would kill—”
He won't let you finish the sentence, he's grabbing your waist and pressing your chest flush against his before you get the chance to, his lips on yours shutting you up perfectly.
You love when he does that, but you've learned how to be a good friend, a better friend, over the past few months, so it takes one stumble back into the mirror and his hand traveling from your waist to your ass to break the kiss.
Pushing on his chest a little, you savor the smile on his lips and the glint on his eye before turning around in the mirror and unclasping the fake hair from the bun you have at the back of your hair.
“I need to re-do my hair, it doesn't look right.”
He wastes no time in stepping close again, his chin resting on your shoulder, his lips peppering kisses there as soon as you tilt your head to the side a little, unconsciously, used to it.
“Why?” He asks with a breath that lands right on your neck as his lips travel there. “It's getting messy in five minutes anyway.”
“Ghost,” you warn, but do nothing to push him away. Defeated by the amazing feeling his affection brings, you let your arms fall to your side with a sigh. “There's a haunted house and it's going to close before we get there.”
Your argument is bullshit. You don't actually care about the haunted house (okay, maybe you care a little just because you've never been in one) but it is true that you don't have enough time to stay a few minutes and enjoy him in the costume like you want to.
Maybe later.
“Also, my brother is waiting for us.”
“He's too distracted with Siren to notice.”
Now that brings a laugh out of you. Siren is Hongjoong's main vocalist. She's pretty, witty and sings like a literal siren, so you can see why both Hongjoong and your brother have a crush on her.
None seem to realize that, though, so it's been a fun year waiting to see how that's going to turn out. You don't want to see a heartbroken Ian, but it's been forever since he had an actual crush on someone so you let it be.
Even if you can see that she doesn't really like him back. She likes Hongjoong, of course, but you can't really outright tell the both of them to get their shit together and date already.
Even if everyone is expecting it.
Everyone except your brother, maybe. Or maybe he already knows and doesn't care.
Well, that's his business. Right now, you have bigger things to worry about, to focus on.
Like on the fact that if you let out the moan that's on the tip of your tongue, you won't be getting to that party at all. Seonghwa loves kissing your neck and you love having him get away with it, but you don't exactly want to show up at the party late and with a hickey.
“Ghost.”
“Hm?”
“Help me with this?” You hand him the clip with the fake do and he drops his forehead against your skin, defeated. It makes you laugh and the smile remains on your face when he pulls away, ready to please you.
Like he always is.
“I don't really care if it looks too fake, I just want it to be right,” you tell him, because when he moves the thing in his hand you can literally hear the bad quality of it.
“Everything you put on looks right,” he encourages, frowning in concentration. “You look perfect and this does look more like you. Oh!” He stops right after putting the hair clip in place and you look at his excited face through the mirror, like he just remembered something. “You know what we should do next year?”
And it's like you can read his mind, because the idea pops up in your head immediately and you both say it at the same time:
“X-wing pilots.”
“Yes!” He practically jumps in excitement and you laugh, fixing the belt of your costume one more time before fully turning at him. He hugs your waist one more time and you let out a soft noise when he turns you around, mouth hovering dangerously close to yours. “Mm, I can picture you in the suit now and—”
“Late,” you remind him and he groans in frustration.
“Okay, okay.”
As you start to walk away, it's hard to pretend you don't notice him not doing the same. The smile that lifts on your lips is a knowing one, the way he walks two steps and pulls you towards him again is only a confirmation of what you already knew.
He's not letting you walk away that easily. Honestly, you were counting on it.
You can't help but want him as well.
“I think we can squeeze in a ten minute make out, don't you think?”
Still, you play hard to get. “Five minutes.”
“Eight.”
“Seven,” you counter with a tiny smile that he kisses. “Last offer.”
He laughs, sighing when your nails trail up the side of his neck.
“Damn, okay.”
—
Seven minutes turn into fifteen and you do end up being a bit late, actually, but not as late as to miss Hongjoong's performance.
It's an important one, you're told by your brother as soon as you find him nervously resting his back against a side wall of this very weird, rich house.
Not rich as in Yunho rich, a different type of rich.
It doesn't seem homely at all but you can tell there's rooms upstairs and that things got moved to accommodate a big crowd. The stage is in the backyard, which is also just ridiculously huge and you can see the band moving things here and there, getting ready to perform.
You don't ask your brother why exactly it's an important performance, but you do your best to support them when they start singing. It's easy for everyone to get lost in the music and they even cover more pop hits this time around since the party seems to be full of people who enjoy that type of music.
You do, too, but you like them more when they're fully in their rocky alternative element.
They're all dressed up, too, in costumes you don't fully recognize but can't wait to hear an explanation for. They do great, perfect even, but the energy seems a bit off.
You tell Seonghwa this and he agrees with a worried nod of his head before you both come to the unspoken agreement of letting it go for tonight. This is supposed to be a date and you're going to enjoy it as such.
You dance, you drink, you kiss in the middle of the stuffy crowd and you laugh when your brother pretends to puke his guts out because of it.
And then you lose track of time and track of Ian because the performance ends and he’s off to try and gain points with his friend and his crush. The thought escapes you completely, because Seonghwa is kissing down your neck again, locked away in a tiny decorated bathroom you two managed to squeeze yourselves in.
He bites down on your skin, making you moan loudly, unexpectedly and you pinch his side in protest, making him laugh. “This is the average college experience you missed out on, darling.”
“Yeah?” You smile, pulling him closer to you and letting your head fall back so he can properly kiss the expanse of your neck and into the valley of your breasts, even if the shirt with the uneven sleeves gets in the way. “Bet it was fun, sneaking into… Small spaces with a lot of people and whatnot.”
He pauses, pulls back and squints his eyes at you with fake offence. “Are you slutshaming me?”
“I would never!” You say right away but your tone is too offended to be taken seriously and he ends up laughing. “Why? Did you do something back then worth of slutshaming? Not that I’m saying anything is worth it, but…”
“You're so mean, Y/N!” But he clearly doesn't mean it either.
It's been months of you two flirting this way, like you're both teenagers hiding from your friends or your parents or your classmates, giddy and giggling like idiots when doing so. It's all harmless, but it does feed the love in your heart, like water filling up a jar.
The jar’s been on the brink of spilling out and time and time again you've concealed it by doing something else, changing the conversation topic, or, in this case, kissing his lips hard and fast and passionate in a way that distracts you from the tug at your heart every time you hold back on telling him how much you love him.
You're never sure when the appropriate time is and it's not like you've never said to someone else before, but no one has meant what Seonghwa means to you.
“Are you okay?”
“Hm?”
When you open your eyes and put some space in between the both of you, he has worry painted all over his expression.
“You were gone for a second, are you okay?”
He can feel that?
You nod at his question, then take in a breath before fully answering. “I was just thinking.”
“About?” His tone is soft and teasing, even if the nudging is clearly out of concern and nothing else.
Is it now? The right time to say it?
I think I love you, Ghost.
No, no. Not like that.
I love you, Seonghwa.
It's easy enough in your mind, why can't you just say it out loud?
Swallowing hard, you open your mouth and think you're about to. You're about to let out, you have to.
But then there's a loud bang outside that you can hear all the way from where you are and it startles both of you. He pulls you in closer instinctively, protectively and you do the same, with your hands grabbing the fabric of his costume like it would save you both from any potential attack.
If there's one to begin with.
“What the hell was that?”
Faintly, you can hear someone screaming stop it and you wonder why the voice sounds so familiar, so… loud even if it's not fully reaching the space you both are sharing.
And then it downs on you and him at the same time.
A microphone, that's how it's reaching you two and if someone is speaking a microphone it must be.
“Shit.”
And because your intuition and timing sucks, you don't realize your brother might be involved in whatever is going on until you reach the backyard again.
Your face is hot and so the cold breeze hits you like a wake up call, sobers you up even if the faint buzz from the drinks disappeared like half an hour ago.
Heart beating like crazy, you move past Seonghwa and take his hand in yours so you can move through the crowd faster. There's people, not many but a few, gathered around in a circle and you can hear a grunt that it's familiar and unmistakable.
And then Seonghwa drops your hand.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?!”
You have never heard him so upset, but there's no time to worry for him or his emotions when your brother's nose is bleeding and he's laying on the floor winded and blinking to stay awake.
Briefly, you catch from the corner of your eye a very angry Hongjoong and you put two and two together, so now you're worried, conflicted and very angry because who the fuck does he think he is?
“Are you good? Can you get up?”
You're sure you don't seem like it, angry or conflicted or worried even because your voice comes out flat but then you remember your brother knows you better than anyone else, since he's already apologizing with his eyes.
He doesn't get to say it, though. A lot of not getting to say things tonight.
“What are you thinking, Christian?!” Now you sound angry and yet, you help him get up to his feet.
“He started it!” He yells back at you and then panics, raising his hands in pledge for peace with you specifically. “He swung at me first, I swear.”
“Well did you have to punch him back?!” You hear Hongjoong's band main vocalist, your brother's crush, ask in fury. She's upset.
When you look back at them, you can tell why: Hongjoong is probably going to have a very bad bruised cheek for a bit. His nose is also bleeding and Seonghwa is helping him tilt his head back, holding the back of his neck for support.
“Are you… Drunk?” You hear Seonghwa ask his friend and then the main vocalist looks like she's two seconds away from sobbing but it doesn't really move you.
Here's the thing, right? You love Seonghwa.
But you don't owe any loyalty to his friends. So when this girl, who has been nothing but kind to you so far, looks at your brother with utter disgust, you see red.
You turn fully, walk towards them with a scowl on your face and imaginary smoke coming out of your ears.
“Y/N…” Seonghwa warns, but you're not listening.
“What the hell was he supposed to do?! Not defend himself?!” She recoils a bit at your tone and Seonghwa sighs, frustrated, besides you. “I don't know what the fuck happened but I need you two to get your shit together and tell him. He's clueless, he likes you so just be honest with him or never, and I mean never,” you look directly at Hongjoong this time and he has tears in his eyes, he also stumbles back and almost falls, “contact him again.”
They owe each other an apology, him and your brother, but not tonight.
You had enough for tonight.
But you're not upset at Seonghwa a bit, so you turn to him. “Let me know when you get home, okay?”
“No, Y/N, wait—”
“What happened?” Yunho comes out of the fading crowd, sweating his makeup off, with his girlfriend right behind him and a dude you've never seen before after her.
Hongjoong's main vocalist scoffs when she sees the dude and then when the rest of her bandmates come running into the scene, you actually hear her sob. “Where were you, I swear to God—”
“Okay!” The dude says, clapping his hands in a very damage control manner. It pisses you off, so you grab your brother's arm and start tugging him towards the exit.
You stop actively listening when the dude grabs the microphone and says something along the lines of every good party has a fight, am I right?
He's so wrong.
He doesn't know where you and Ian come from, he doesn't know what he had to endure before ending up in the place where you two met and eventually got adopted, he doesn't know that if anything, he's not a violent man.
And that you can see guilt eating away at him as you walk the street and try to find a taxi to take him home. He's drunk too, you can tell, maybe a little high.
But he's never behaved like this before.
“H-he, I mean we were… W-we—”
“Explain it to me tomorrow, okay? You want to get that checked out?” You point at his nose and he shakes his head. He's trembling, like a child, like used to when you two were kids. “Okay, then I'll buy you some medicine and then we can go home.”
“N-no, no, I just… I want to go home.”
And as soon as he says that, the headlights of an incoming taxi up the street blind you. You extend your hand, wish for it to be empty and let out a relieved sigh when it stops in front of you both.
So you ask the driver to take you home, your father's house and let your second breath of relief come out of your mouth when you get to your living room and your father is already passed out in front of the tv.
In the bathroom, as your brother washes his face and you stare at him intensely to try and find any other hidden wounds, you feel a little more at ease.
And slip out the controlled, non-impulsive persona you stepped into when you saw your brother with his defenses down.
“I should've just fucking kill Hongjoong.”
“Y/N!” He whispers-shouts the reprimand at you, turns to you fast to see if you're joking, probably, but you're as serious as ever. “He was drunk and sentimental and upset. I figured out he's in love with her, he got upset and I probably didn't word it the right way, you how I can be.”
“Oh, so you're not completely blind to it, good.”
He rolls his eyes, “Of course you knew.”
“Everyone knows. Everyone but Yunho, probably, but besides him… It's not really hard to tell.”
“I know,” your brother closes the faucet after splashing water in his face one last time and then tilts his head at you. There's a question on the tip of your tongue, but he's had enough drama for tonight and you don't think he wants to explain his feelings. Still, he nods. “Out with it.”
“Why did you still pursue her if you knew? Isn't Hongjoong your friend?”
He nods again, a knowing smile lifting his lips upwards, almost in a cocky grin that's too much for someone who just got knocked to the floor by someone half his height.
“Because she's pretty, she sings like a fucking angel and Hongjoong likes to pretend nothing will ever happen between the both of them, so I took my chance. I felt like… I don't know, maybe I could've got her to like me too, eventually?”
“Ugh.”
“You know I love to follow a path of crumbs when I can, Y/N. So yes, I knew and I did it because I wanted to,” he shrugs. “So maybe I deserved to be beat up, I don't know.”
“Don't excuse his actions. Or yours.”
A bit passes and he huffs, turning to the mirror again and staring at himself on it.
“You did.”
Oh, that.
“Well, she started it,” you shrug at the excuse, using his own words against him and he fully laughs now.
You join, the laugh echoing in the bathroom and before you can scold him any further he grabs your shoulders and hugs you tight.
“Thank you for… Getting me out of there.”
“You were shaking, Ian. Like fully shaking, the only other time you did that was when—”
“I know, I hated it. I don't want to fight with anyone, I don't know why I punched him back.”
“Hm,” you let him go, step out of the bathroom and wait until he does the same to turn the light off. You rest your back against the wall next to light, groaning when the clip with the Padmé hairdo presses against your already aching head and your brother makes a worried sound, so you turn to him. “I hope I don't cause you any trouble with Seonghwa because of this, I swear on everything that I'm apologizing tomorrow morning and—”
“We're good,” you interrupt and he gives you a confused look. “Me and Ghost, we're good. We'll be fine, we… I mean, I love him.” And the words come out of your mouth for the first time tired, easy, like you said it a thousand times before. “So we'll be fine.”
“You… You love him,” Ian says more than asks and then smiles widely at your nod. “My little sister is in love… Never thought I'll live to see the day.”
“I've been in love before—”
“But Seonghwa is a good guy!”
A good guy who stays and helps his best friend out after a fight. A good guy who you left with that problem alone, after hearing him almost sob at the fact that Hongjoong was drunk. Or so it seemed like.
Yes, you had your priorities, and those priorities got into bed and you checked one more time on them before leaving for your room in this house that will always be yours but doesn't feel like it anymore.
And since Ian ended up being fine. Like, no broken nose or anything really bad happening to him fine, around two thirty am, just fifteen minutes after you left his room to yours, you start to feel fully calm.
So you finally check your phone.
There's some texts from Seonghwa’s friends asking if you're okay and then his chat in particular has, well, thirty unopened messages. Smiling a bit as you read through them, the guilt of just leaving without an explanation settles in but they don't read angry at all.
So you send him your location and he texts back not even thirty seconds later.
I'll be there in ten.
Okay.
Good.
This is okay. You can handle this first fight you feel coming, it's fine.
God damnit.
When you go downstairs and take the remote from your father's hand to turn the tv off, it startles him awake.
“Y/N?”
Sitting beside him, you smile. There's light coming from the street and into the living room so you can see him perfectly even now.
“Hey, dad.”
You saw him yesterday or, well, technically the day before that now but as your life has shifted away from your family dynamic and more into Seonghwa and his chaotic friend group, you have started to see him less and less.
He doesn't seem bothered. In fact, whenever you tell him about your plans or your life over dinner or a beer he always seems proud. Ian, too.
“What in the world are you doing here?”
“Well, this is still my house, so…”
Laughing and still a little sleepy, your father signals you to hug him and you give in immediately. After whatever the fuck happened last night, you needed this.
It brings tears to your eyes, the fact that he can still comfort you like when you were a child. The growing pains and just the growing up in general burns in your chest painfully but you know it's a necessary part of life.
Right now though, you hold him tight.
“Had to bring Ian’s drunk ass home. He got into a fight,” you explain when you pull away and you sniffle a little, emotional after the hug. “My boyfriend's picking me up in a few minutes.”
“Seonghwa?”
“Yeah, dad, Seonghwa.”
“Alright,” he clears his throat before getting up and you stay seated, looking up at him. His hand falls to your head, clumsily and you make an annoyed sound that he laughs at. “Text me when you get home?”
“Okay. We're still on for dinner on Sunday?”
“Always, kid.”
He does stay with you, sleepy and drifting off while trying to keep up small talk with you, until Seonghwa texts you he's right outside.
Whatever happens after he takes you home, you know that you can always look back and find your family ready to catch you if you fall.
You just hope the words you told Ian were true. Because when you open the door and don't even see him staring at you but at the street, with his helmet and the bike still on, you're for sure thinking the worst.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he says back and his tone is more tired than anything else but it still hurts you a bit. He takes the spare helmet, your helmet and unclasps it, still taking the time to put the helmet on you, for you. It takes five seconds of eye contact for him to fully pull you in, hands around your shoulders, helmet bumping into yours. “Don't ever just fucking leave like that.”
Tears burn in your eyes but you can't cry, not here in the middle of the street, not when this entire tension is pointless, useless, the truly bad end to what was supposed to be a fun night.
“Is Hongjoong okay?” You ask instead of answering him, or even apologizing.
He pulls back, taking a second to decide if insisting is a good idea or not.
He decides it's not.
“He'll be fine, he's just… My place or yours?”
Yeah, talking about it like this, with the helmets on in the middle of an empty street… Not really it.
Getting on the bike and holding onto his waist, you let out a heavy sigh. “Yours, mine's a mess.”
“And if we make any noise at this hour, that neighbor of yours is going to complain again.” He jokes and the tension dissipates just a bit, you laugh into the fabric of his costume.
“And when they kick me out of the apartment because of you…”
Relief floods you for the third time tonight when he laughs back.
You hug his waist tighter the entire ride home. Because yes, that apartment is also your home now. You know your way to the elevator, you know the name of the building's doorman and the security guard, you know his door combination.
There's a pair of slippers by the door that belong to you and you only and two drawers dedicated to your things, a toothbrush and other hygiene products in his bathroom countertop and a box of your favorite tea on his kitchen cabinet, a cup with your initial right next to it, right next to a matching one for him.
That's why it's easy to dismiss the weird energy, the flavour this entire night left on your tongue and reach for him for a kiss when the door closes behind him. He reciprocates, holds you close and walks you backwards to his living room. It's gentle and forgiving and sweet and all you needed to know that, yeah…
You two will be alright.
“Come here,” he says after a minute or two of mindless kissing and you oblige when he takes his hand and tugs you towards the bathroom. “Let's go to sleep and we can—”
You interrupt, your hips knocking against the sink and you feel so, so tired all of the sudden.
“I don't need to know what truly happened if it's too personal for Hongjoong. I just need to know that he'll be okay.”
“He will be,” he repeats and you bite your tongue instead of asking what you truly want to ask.
Seonghwa takes the makeup wipes off the shared counter and, instead of offering you one, he moves close. The wipe is cold and you wince a little, but you acclimatize to it soon enough.
“You looked like you wanted to swing at him next,” he says and you smile, you catch the corners of his lips lifting up a bit too. “I get it. They needed some yelling, both of them.” He says and you know he's referring to the main conflict point between Ian and his best friend.
The main vocalist.
“He shouldn't get drunk. I'm usually there trying to… Prevent it, you know? He… His father was an alcoholic and he usually drinks socially, never alone, never because he wants to escape something or someone or his feelings. I'm not fully sure of what triggered this but,” Seonghwa stops, he breathes one time and then two times to try and regain his composure. He looks exhausted, too. “The band, her and us. That's all he has.”
You hum. “Do you think he might've felt… Threatened when Ian tried to squeeze himself in the picture? With her, I mean?”
“Maybe, but he's not… I feel like there's more to it and it won't get explained to me until he comes back out from whatever hole he dug himself in.”
Damn, it's worse than you thought, then.
“Well, Ian isn't a victim here either,” you roll your eyes and Seonghwa nods, making you smile again.
“Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he just… He needs to find someone who's not in love with anyone else, man, he's just so…”
“Stubborn?” He asks, teasing tone and all. “It's a family trait, I fear.”
“Oh, shut up,” he laughs and it echoes and your heart beats fast when you realize you both could probably go to sleep without apologizing for the way it was handled between the two of you, but you can't in clear conscience do that. “Ghost, I'm sorry. I… I was so angry at her and Hongjoong and at you…”
He raises a questioning eyebrow, taking another wipe out and passing it under your eyes. Your tearing up must've smudged the very complicated eyeliner you did to pull off the fierce look in the first place.
“Briefly,” you clarify and he nods. “I can't make you choose between Christian and Hongjoong but I do hope you know I will put him first. I will always put my family first.”
“I know, I won't ask you to do that, ever.”
You raise your hand, your palm covering the one that's assisting in removing your makeup and you bring it to your lips. You leave a kiss there, on the back of his hand and smile.
“And I know Hongjoong is like your family, so I won't ask you to choose either.”
“They're grown, they have their own shit going on and we are… Well, we're a completely different thing.”
You nod. “Whatever happens there it's our problem…”
“But it won't affect us,” he tosses the wipe on the counter with the other one and then steps closer again, hands going around your waist. “I'm not going to lie—”
“Don't start.”
He laughs. “You look so hot when you’re angry, maybe I should piss you off more.”
“Ghost, oh my…”
You push him away with a laugh and he obliges, taking the dirty wipes and fully tossing them in the trash now. Walking towards the bedroom next, with him following close behind, you both fall into a night routine that feels too familiar, too recurrent and too good.
You love having this with him. Only this time, you just rest your hip on the doorframe and stare at your boyfriend as he moves around the room, taking off layers of his costume.
Feeling the jar spilling, and in your completely exhausted state, you don't believe the words that come out of your mouth and make him still his movements for a few good seconds.
You just say it, it just… Spills. Your love for him spills and…
“Seonghwa, I love you.”
And it's not whispered, it's not premeditated or rehearsed or laced with any doubts of him not loving you back because you know he does. He's loud and clear with his actions and him not saying the words all this time, the same way you didn't say them, means nothing because he does.
You can see it in his eyes when he turns to you, half dressed, with the long strand of his hair falling from the tiny ponytail securing it at the back and framing his face.
He stops and it feels like forever but he smiles, drops the bedsheet he was working on tugging under the mattress to make the bed perfect for the both of you and practically jogs to cross the room to get to you.
Grabbing your face with his hands, his eyes are shiny and his smile is wide before he takes in a breath.
“I love you too. So, so much.”
And you smile wide before giggling at the thought of you being afraid of saying the words out loud. It's been months of you feeling this way for him, but tonight just…
There's no perfect moment to say them, because perfect is not real and what you have with him is.
You don’t know who moves first, only that one moment you’re standing there, still laughing like a dumbass, and the next you’re closing the distance. And it's soft at first, because the moment is cute and romantic and you're both tired but when Seonghwa exhales against your lips and you drink it, something in the air shifts.
It becomes charged, charged with desire and affection and nothing too crazy because, again, it's been a long night but you can't phantom the thought of not touching him and let him touch you right this instant.
Lips parting yours, his tongue swipes against yours again and again, slower each time, making you hum in satisfaction and arch against him. His hands go down, his fingers unclasp the beige belt that goes with your costume and then they move back up, finding their place in your waist, pressing until your hips knock into his.
When you finally break apart, his forehead rests against yours. “Say it again,” he whispers.
“I love you,” you breathe, voice trembling for reasons that have nothing to do with fear. No more fear. Instead, the jar spills even further until it fills the entire room.
His answering smile is small, almost shy, before he kisses you again, deeper this time. There’s nothing hurried about it: it’s all warmth and quiet need, the kind that makes everything feel unreal, like you're floating in a sky full of him and what he makes you feel.
You savor the noise he makes when you hide his hands to your ass and he smiles against your mouth when you moan at the contact, like you weren't the one who just made it happen.
Moving away from the door, you move in practiced steps. His hands take your clothes off, yours caress the skin already exposed and fall down to the pants he didn't get the chance to take off. When you fall into the sheets together, it isn’t about need or apology anymore, it's not even about the negative emotions of the night.
It's about loving and you love him so much.
He pulls back just enough to look at you, his eyes search your face like he’s memorizing it. “You have no idea what you do to me,” he whispers, brushing a stray strand of hair from your cheek, his lips finding his favorite spot on your neck next and making you breath ragged, hard, close your eyes at the mere contact. “I don’t even remember what life felt like before you.”
“You know, some people will argue that that's a bad thing,” and you don't know why you say it, but you do. “I feel like it's worth remembering how I felt before I met you.”
He pulls away from the skin of your sternum to pay attention to what you have to say.
“Yeah?”
“I want to remember because it makes this and you and everything you make me feel even more worth it.”
He smiles but you immediately cringe at your own words, looking away.
Romanticism not being your forte is a fucking problem.
But he seems to enjoy it. He laughs under his breath, his eyes still shining bright when you look at him again, and then his lips return to your skin and you forget.
“I fucking love you,” he says there, lips trailing down and down and down until they ghost your mount and you raise your hips to meet his mouth in response. “I'm going to show you how much I love you now.”
Oh. You hope he keeps repeating it forever, how much he loves you. The showing it to you this way is not really that necessary but if he can keep eating you out this way forever, you won't complain either.
He doesn't bother taking your underwear on at first, he trails a path over it with his mouth, his nose lightly pressing down and then he pretends he's going to taste you but he turns his head to kiss your thigh. Then, he goes for the other one.
You moan as his teeth sink a little on the skin there, fingers getting lost in his dark locks a second later. Tugging, you count that as a warning and he breathes out a laugh that lasts all but three seconds. When loops his fingers under your panties and takes them off with ease, you let your legs part for him to finally lap at your wetness.
It's not rushed, but his movements are equally as hungry as they are calculated, slow, lazy. It's just what you needed, though. The tension leaves your system in sighs, groans, moans and you close your eyes to let yourself get lost in the feeling of his tongue parting you open, sinking in your entrance and then going back up to your clit, just the way you like it.
When the sense of urgency for chasing that high takes over you, your grasp on his hair tightens and he moans right into your core, taking the heat, leaving the lazy lapping behind and eating you out like a man starved.
“Fuck, Hwa, don't stop.”
Hips moving instinctively to meet his tongue, he lets you take what you need for him.
It doesn't take much for you to come undone with a curse and a short scream that resonates around the room, his mouth and chin glistening when he pulls away as you come down your high. Your hips meet the bed again and your grasp on his hair loosens as you try to recover your breath.
You take a second, but you feel his cheek resting against your leg and you can basically feel the smile on his wet lips when he leaves a kiss there.
When you open your eyes again and look down, you can't help but think that he looks beautiful.
And that he deserves a good orgasm after everything he probably went through tonight.
“Come here, Ghost.”
He wastes no time in hovering over you, in letting his chest meet yours and in kissing your mouth messily, sloppy, hungrier than before, letting you taste yourself in his tongue.
“Was it good?” He asks and you push him down, his back meeting the sheets next and you smile at the question.
“So good,” you confirm, kissing his jaw before diving into his neck. Your hand goes under his briefs, your nails softly going up his shaft for a second and making him hiss before you grasp him firmly. He's hard and leaking already. “I love you.” You repeat as your lips meet the skin right under his ear and he moans softly when your hand starts moving.
“I love you,” he says back and your heart flutters like it did the first time he said it, a couple of minutes ago.
You go up his neck again only so you can see him, see the shift in him whenever he steps out of his soft dominant persona and into this pliant man in front of you. He's always doing this, leaving it to you fully when it comes to pleasing him and you enjoy every little sound he makes when you're in that position.
He turns to putty in your hands and it's beautiful and it steals your breath away everytime. He grabs the back of your neck when he notices you staring and your hand moves with more intention now, more drive. His forehead connects with your cheek and his mouth parts open when your thumb presses down on his slit, gathering wetness to jerk him off with more ease.
You enjoy his breathing getting more and more ragged, you revel in the feeling of his hand tightening on the back of your neck, of his forehead pressing more firmly against your skin. It takes a particular stroke for him to fully moan, for the sound to bounce off the walls. You do it again, and you literally see him biting down the pleasure spilling out of his mouth.
“Yeah? You're so sensitive tonight, Hwa.”
He smiles, opening his eyes and pulling you down so that your forehead meets his instead of your cheek.
“A-and you're so mean.”
You laugh at him, at the tiny tint of desperation in his voice. “Don't act like you don't enjoy it.”
Every time this happens, there's that resistance that shows in his eyes, like he wants to turn it on you and make you the one to beg, the one to succumb to his touch instead, but it never happens. It just glistens there and then you do something, like slowing down the pace suddenly like you just did, that sends the idea to the back of his mind.
“P-please,” he begs, when you keep the slow movements for a minute or two and you can tell he's tired, willing to come, don't clean anything up and just fall asleep right after. His hips twitch a little when you give in a bit. “Please make me come, babe, I… Oh, fuck.”
He takes in a sharp inhale when you fully let go of him, your mind settled and made up in the fact that you want to see him in all his glory when he does come. You move on your knees on the bed, signal him to raise his hips so you can take his underwear off and your mouth waters when you see the state of his leaking length.
“Can I try something?” You ask softly, even though you already know the answer is a yes. When he nods and extends his arms to reach for you, you smile widely. “Stay put, Ghost.”
When you climb into his lap, you do something you've never done before: Instead of fully sinking into him, you let his length rest against his stomach and then fix your position so that your core rests against it, your still sensitive clit catching friction immediately and making you curse.
You're wet enough so that when you start moving it's easy, it's sleek, it's delicious and you see his eyes roll to the back of his head when you catch wind of the position, when you rest your hands on his chest and waste no time in keeping up the pace.
“Oh my god.”
“Good?” you ask, because you're not sure this is giving him enough stimulation to come just from it alone but then he nods, quick, desperate and you know it's not the case.
“S-so good, please don't stop, please.”
It feels really good for you too, so you keep going. You keep going and you fight the need to close your eyes because Seonghwa is twitching and squirming under you, his hands on your hips as he helps you grind into him and your moans eventually bleed into each other. As you get closer and closer to reach your peak again, your body folds over and Seonghwa wastes no time in kissing you, hard, needy, with no care for the shared spit coating both your chins.
Your clit catches on his tip perfectly and it tilts you over the edge but you keep going, keep pushing until you feel his movements still and he moans loud into your mouth. Pulling away from his face, you see him tilt his head back until he spills the last of his cum on his stomach and yours.
And even though you're so, so close, you slow down your movements so it doesn't overstimulate him.
He has other plans, though, his hands grasping your hips firmly and making you grind into him at the same fast pace as before. You moan, your eyes closing and you have to hold onto his shoulder to not put your body weight fully on him.
“Keep going, baby, don't stop,” he's breathless, breathing hard and still shining a little at the friction, but he doesn't let go. “Come again for me.”
For him. Not that you would come for any other reason right now, but that's the motivation that you need even if your thighs hurt a little already from the position and the tiredness you felt before returning, you do it for him.
“That's it.”
And when you come it’s not as hard as the first time but your body locks and releases in a delicious way that makes you feel like you're floating. Your forehead rests on his chest a second after and you chuckle into his skin, leaving a kiss there before rolling over to your side of the bed.
He laughs as well but wastes no time in pulling you into his arms and the sweat and the fact that no one has cleaned up yet doesn't bother you at all. This moment is necessary, because when you look into his eyes and see nothing but adoration the realization of what this means for your life downs on you.
Is it bad that you don't picture anyone but him in it now? You haven't for months, but there's truly no one who can connect with you the way that he does. If this were any other person, you would still be in your childhood bedroom, fighting with your pride to ask to see them, to apologize, to fix things.
With Seonghwa everything's easy, as it should be. The challenges mean nothing because, if you're ever going to have a mishap like tonight, it'll be argued with love instead of anger.
That's so valuable and so rare to find, you can't help but reciprocate the adoration for him.
You love him completely, and he loves you just the same.
“We didn't go to the haunted house, Ghost.”
He groans, tired, and pushes you away without any force only to pull you back in again for a kiss.
“I'm sure there are some that'll be up for a few days still. I'll take you,” he promises and you smile. “Make it up for the weird date we had tonight?”
“Okay,” you agree in a whisper, pecking his lips once more before fully pulling away and standing up. “But we're dressing up as low budget ghosts.”
“Are we ruining my bedsheets for it?”
“Yup.”
And as you walk towards the bathroom to get wipes to clean both of you up, you hear something that makes your entire being shake with excitement, because Seonghwa thinks you're not hearing him at all, but the streets are quiet and the apartment is quiet as well and it's impossible not to.
“... The love of my fucking life.”
Yeah.
He's the love of your life too.
If you read all the way down here: THANK YOU SO MUCH. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, don't be afraid to go to my inbox and leave your thoughts there or down below, i love reading them!
i was made for lovin’ for you (even in a galaxy far, far away) (PSH x reader)
part of the love's an uncharted path universe ★.
PAIRING: seonghwa x mechanic!reader.
GENRE: established relationship, halloween special! sort of. kind of. idk, it's fluffy and there's romantic and a little kinky smut in here, happy halloween guys.
WARNINGS: SMUT ☽ (MINORS DNI), this doesn't have shit to do w star wars guys i'm sorry lmao but they are dressed as padmé and anakin so there's that, poor star wars references (i need to rewatch), makeouts, mentions of drinking, fights, they're in love but they're not idiots for the first time in one of my fics WE CHEERED, reader uses fem pronouns and has fem body parts, descrip of fem anatomy, oral sex (f receiving), masturbation (m receiving), messy kisses (yay), grinding/frotagge/sumata (tried to look for an actual term for it, not sure if that's it lol), they say the L word for the first time here folks.
WORD COUNT: 9.6k
NOTES: hiii guys! I HAD TO LOCK IN THIS WEEK AND GIVE YOU GUYS A HALLOWEEN SPECIAL (because nothing is scarier than saying I love you for the first time am I right). not sure if we should count it as part two of i was made for lovin' you but it does follow the moments after part one ended, at least for a bit. i hope you guys enjoy it! THIS IS PART OF THE LOVE'S AN UNCHARTED PATH series, which you can find the link for above or in my masterlist. as usual, this is 100% self indulgent, as all fics should be, and i think i've re-read it so many times that if you find a typo or something that just doesn't make sense, you can blame it on english not being my first language i guess lmao. i hope you enjoy it and if you do feel free to send to my askbox/reblog/type in any feedback or thoughts! <3
story masterlist / general masterlist / main story.
It took about ten minutes of you and Seonghwa making out the morning after your first night together to panic.
Only if you introduce me as your girlfriend and not as your mechanic, though.
What the actual fuck was wrong with you?
He did tell you, like five minutes prior, that was not interested in getting to know anyone else but you. That, and the fact that he only smiled wide before giving you the kiss that started this whole make out session in the first place, let you know that your major fuck up was nothing to worry about.
You still think about the feeling that ran through your veins the second the sleep and whatever spell his lips got you under, when the words came back to you, your impulsiveness biting at your ankles like a puppy, not a rabid dog.
It still hurts when a puppy bites your ankles, though, so you pushed him away a little. It must've showed in your face, the panic you felt, because he immediately grabbed it and let his thumbs caress the skin of your cheeks in an attempt to calm you down, maybe.
“What's wrong?”
And you couldn't help but spill out your worries right away “Was that okay?” you asked and he frowned, confused, so you went on. “W-what I said, I mean. About the girlfriend thing, I d-don't actually… What I'm trying to say is that you don't have to, um, introduce me that way. I m-mean we only just met and so—”
“Darling…”
“I don't know why I said that in the first place. Oh, my god, I…”
He stopped you with a shake of his head.
“Don't apologize.”
Okay, you were able to breathe again after word vomiting your insecurities all over the place.
“I don't actually care about the label we put on each other as long as you're comfortable with it,” swallowing hard, you thought to yourself about how your heart was in his hands already. “If you want me to say you're my girlfriend, I'll say you're my girlfriend, it's okay. And if you don't want to be called my girlfriend right now? That's okay too.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“I just think it's a little too soon,” you breathed out and he nodded, smiling a little and lowering his hands in a soft trace until they claimed their place on your hips, pulling you towards him and his opened legs. It took little effort for him to rearrange the position and for you to be seated on his lap, with his lips kissing the skin of your neck once again. “And I don't think your friends would—”
“I don't care about what they think,” he whispered there, kissing your jaw and your chin and pecking your lips sweetly. “I care about what you think, hm? We have plenty of time to figure that out.”
“Yeah, I guess, I just… I mean, just tell me if that made you uncomfortable or if anything I do or say does,” and we're so confident the night before, touching him like you knew exactly what you were doing, that it didn't surprise you when he frowned at your accusation.
And it clicked for him, the exact reason behind your panic.
“I'm not him,” he said and you nodded fast, opened your mouth to say that you knew that but his next words made your words disappear from the tip of your tongue. “Also, I kind of already told them that you are my girlfriend—"
“Seonghwa!”
“What?” He ignored your panic, only smiled and leaned back a little to fetch his phone and unlock it. He searched for a second and then turned the screen for you to see. “I have a few positive reactions already.”
The message reads: Sure, let's hang out tonight so you can meet my girlfriend.
And then there’s a thumbs up reaction and a heart reaction from a dude saved as Joong.
“You got one positive reaction, Ghost.”
“Yeah, from Hongjoong, he's probably the only one awake besides from Yunho,” he scoffed, turned the screen back at himself and read through the thread of messages again. “I'm not sure what's going on with him. Either way, Hongjoong already knew about you, so…”
“He what?”
Locking his phone and throwing it in the bed beside you two, he only turned to you with a not-so-innocent smile.
“Yeosang, too. I… Listen, that night, when I left my bike with you guys?”
“Two nights ago, yeah, I recall.”
Laughing, you felt his hands tightening up on you and you swallowed hard at the feeling. Intoxicating, delicious feeling.
“Yeah, two nights ago,” he rolled his eyes. “I told them because I couldn't stop staring at my phone like an idiot waiting for you to text me anything. Day one of meeting you, by the way,” he pointed out and it was your turn to roll your eyes. “Day one of meeting you and I already wanted to scream out of the window how much I like you. Because I like you, Y/N, you know that I'm not ashamed to say it right?”
Your cocky, feign annoyed attitude died down a little and you let out a tiny yeah under your breath, because you couldn't quite believe it yet.
“I don't care if it's too soon, I don't really care about what is going to happen once my friend Gyuri wakes up and read that message and, trust me, if I don't care what they think, I don't care about what anyone else might say,” he took in a breath and let it out slowly. “Except you. I care about what you think, about what you want, but, and correct me if I'm wrong… You seem to like me as much as I like you, no?”
Caught red handed.
You were probably smiling like an idiot too, to be honest.
He looked at you funny when you didn't say anything and then he smiled, a proud grin, one that said that you had stroked his ego just right with your reaction.
“Judging by the fact that you look like you want to eat me, I—”
Laughing as his back connected to your mattress and the messy sheets, Seonghwa didn't let go of you one second. Not when you pushed his shoulder without any strength, and certainly not when you leaned down to kiss him with want, with need, with gratefulness at the fact that he was able to read your emotions so well in so little time together.
“I like you, Seonghwa.”
Next thing you know, you felt the sheets and the corner of his phone under your back. Hovering over you, with both hands on either side of your head supporting his weight, Seonghwa gave you one more look of complete understanding before whispering.
“Then that's all that matters to me.”
And then he kissed you until the rain outside stopped and his responsibilities and your responsibilities called.
That was months ago.
You've been seeing him since them and after a week or two labels went to shit. He introduces you by your name, when they ask him what you both are he says that you're his girlfriend and the word it's no longer scary.
Because he's actually loud and proud to be with someone like you.
And you can say the same thing about him.
What you can't be too proud of, however, is this costume you put together last minute. It's a surprise for him and you see the original one you planned to wear, the cheap fabric of it, almost falling off your bed.
Hongjoong and his band have this Halloween gig and you were all invited to the party as a consequence and so you planned a couples costume with Hwa last minute, but you're not too comfy with a dress on and although the yellow, flowy one in your bed looks decent enough, you had to turn to the other, even more recognizable outfit this character wears in the films you've grown to love these past few months.
Those are his favorite movies after all. You love everything he loves.
You love him.
Maybe you'll tell him tonight that you do.
Looking at the reference picture, you try to figure out what went wrong when ordering this one online. You must've clicked on the wrong thing, but now you're low-key glad that you did.
You look pretty, all dressed up like this. You don't really do that often, not when most of your clothes end up greasy and car motor dirty after a while.
He still likes you like that, though. That's why you're a bit nervous when you hear a knock on the door. Seonghwa got ready in the living room because you wanted the end result to be a surprise.
Now you have to take a deep breath before adjusting the beige belt in front of the mirror.
You fall to your knees, pretending to be searching for something when you tell him to “Come in, Ghost!”
The door creaks and you hear him take a deep breath, probably when he understands what your costume is supposed to be.
“Holy fuck, Y/N.”
The nonchalant act lasts like thirty seconds before you're looking up at him through the mirror and…
Holy fuck indeed.
Now, listen, Padmé and Anakin are not the best example of a couple out there. They're questionable, with an unnecessary age gap and they ended up really, really wrong but they're also the hottest Star Wars couple out there.
And so when you look up at Hwa and he's wearing the Anakin Skywalker costume you ordered together with Padmé's yellow meadow dress that's unworn, in your bed, you can't help but to curse under your breath.
He looks stunning, like straight out of the movie.
And you're wearing something that goes along with his costume still, but a bit different than planned.
You're dressed in all white, in the outfit Padmé wore in the Battle of Geonosis, in Attack of the Clones. The version with the perfectly cut and styled top to show her midriff, which wasn't what you originally planned, but alas it's what you got.
And you feel good in it. You feel sexy, you feel desired when he scans your body a second and third time and then gulps down whatever nasty thoughts came bubbling up and almost came out of his mouth because of it.
There's never a day where Seonghwa makes you feel undesirable. Even with grease on your face and bags under your eyes at how tired work has made you these past few weeks, he's right there reminding you how beautiful you are.
Even now, when he slowly but surely shortens the distance between you two and gently cups your face, he's already telling you all you need to hear without actually saying anything out loud.
It feels good when he does, though.
“You're so fucking beautiful I'm afraid we're going to be late for the party.”
You scoff, a puff of air that turns into a laugh. “We can't, Hongjoong would kill—”
He won't let you finish the sentence, he's grabbing your waist and pressing your chest flush against his before you get the chance to, his lips on yours shutting you up perfectly.
You love when he does that, but you've learned how to be a good friend, a better friend, over the past few months, so it takes one stumble back into the mirror and his hand traveling from your waist to your ass to break the kiss.
Pushing on his chest a little, you savor the smile on his lips and the glint on his eye before turning around in the mirror and unclasping the fake hair from the bun you have at the back of your hair.
“I need to re-do my hair, it doesn't look right.”
He wastes no time in stepping close again, his chin resting on your shoulder, his lips peppering kisses there as soon as you tilt your head to the side a little, unconsciously, used to it.
“Why?” He asks with a breath that lands right on your neck as his lips travel there. “It's getting messy in five minutes anyway.”
“Ghost,” you warn, but do nothing to push him away. Defeated by the amazing feeling his affection brings, you let your arms fall to your side with a sigh. “There's a haunted house and it's going to close before we get there.”
Your argument is bullshit. You don't actually care about the haunted house (okay, maybe you care a little just because you've never been in one) but it is true that you don't have enough time to stay a few minutes and enjoy him in the costume like you want to.
Maybe later.
“Also, my brother is waiting for us.”
“He's too distracted with Siren to notice.”
Now that brings a laugh out of you. Siren is Hongjoong's main vocalist. She's pretty, witty and sings like a literal siren, so you can see why both Hongjoong and your brother have a crush on her.
None seem to realize that, though, so it's been a fun year waiting to see how that's going to turn out. You don't want to see a heartbroken Ian, but it's been forever since he had an actual crush on someone so you let it be.
Even if you can see that she doesn't really like him back. She likes Hongjoong, of course, but you can't really outright tell the both of them to get their shit together and date already.
Even if everyone is expecting it.
Everyone except your brother, maybe. Or maybe he already knows and doesn't care.
Well, that's his business. Right now, you have bigger things to worry about, to focus on.
Like on the fact that if you let out the moan that's on the tip of your tongue, you won't be getting to that party at all. Seonghwa loves kissing your neck and you love having him get away with it, but you don't exactly want to show up at the party late and with a hickey.
“Ghost.”
“Hm?”
“Help me with this?” You hand him the clip with the fake do and he drops his forehead against your skin, defeated. It makes you laugh and the smile remains on your face when he pulls away, ready to please you.
Like he always is.
“I don't really care if it looks too fake, I just want it to be right,” you tell him, because when he moves the thing in his hand you can literally hear the bad quality of it.
“Everything you put on looks right,” he encourages, frowning in concentration. “You look perfect and this does look more like you. Oh!” He stops right after putting the hair clip in place and you look at his excited face through the mirror, like he just remembered something. “You know what we should do next year?”
And it's like you can read his mind, because the idea pops up in your head immediately and you both say it at the same time:
“X-wing pilots.”
“Yes!” He practically jumps in excitement and you laugh, fixing the belt of your costume one more time before fully turning at him. He hugs your waist one more time and you let out a soft noise when he turns you around, mouth hovering dangerously close to yours. “Mm, I can picture you in the suit now and—”
“Late,” you remind him and he groans in frustration.
“Okay, okay.”
As you start to walk away, it's hard to pretend you don't notice him not doing the same. The smile that lifts on your lips is a knowing one, the way he walks two steps and pulls you towards him again is only a confirmation of what you already knew.
He's not letting you walk away that easily. Honestly, you were counting on it.
You can't help but want him as well.
“I think we can squeeze in a ten minute make out, don't you think?”
Still, you play hard to get. “Five minutes.”
“Eight.”
“Seven,” you counter with a tiny smile that he kisses. “Last offer.”
He laughs, sighing when your nails trail up the side of his neck.
“Damn, okay.”
—
Seven minutes turn into fifteen and you do end up being a bit late, actually, but not as late as to miss Hongjoong's performance.
It's an important one, you're told by your brother as soon as you find him nervously resting his back against a side wall of this very weird, rich house.
Not rich as in Yunho rich, a different type of rich.
It doesn't seem homely at all but you can tell there's rooms upstairs and that things got moved to accommodate a big crowd. The stage is in the backyard, which is also just ridiculously huge and you can see the band moving things here and there, getting ready to perform.
You don't ask your brother why exactly it's an important performance, but you do your best to support them when they start singing. It's easy for everyone to get lost in the music and they even cover more pop hits this time around since the party seems to be full of people who enjoy that type of music.
You do, too, but you like them more when they're fully in their rocky alternative element.
They're all dressed up, too, in costumes you don't fully recognize but can't wait to hear an explanation for. They do great, perfect even, but the energy seems a bit off.
You tell Seonghwa this and he agrees with a worried nod of his head before you both come to the unspoken agreement of letting it go for tonight. This is supposed to be a date and you're going to enjoy it as such.
You dance, you drink, you kiss in the middle of the stuffy crowd and you laugh when your brother pretends to puke his guts out because of it.
And then you lose track of time and track of Ian because the performance ends and he’s off to try and gain points with his friend and his crush. The thought escapes you completely, because Seonghwa is kissing down your neck again, locked away in a tiny decorated bathroom you two managed to squeeze yourselves in.
He bites down on your skin, making you moan loudly, unexpectedly and you pinch his side in protest, making him laugh. “This is the average college experience you missed out on, darling.”
“Yeah?” You smile, pulling him closer to you and letting your head fall back so he can properly kiss the expanse of your neck and into the valley of your breasts, even if the shirt with the uneven sleeves gets in the way. “Bet it was fun, sneaking into… Small spaces with a lot of people and whatnot.”
He pauses, pulls back and squints his eyes at you with fake offence. “Are you slutshaming me?”
“I would never!” You say right away but your tone is too offended to be taken seriously and he ends up laughing. “Why? Did you do something back then worth of slutshaming? Not that I’m saying anything is worth it, but…”
“You're so mean, Y/N!” But he clearly doesn't mean it either.
It's been months of you two flirting this way, like you're both teenagers hiding from your friends or your parents or your classmates, giddy and giggling like idiots when doing so. It's all harmless, but it does feed the love in your heart, like water filling up a jar.
The jar’s been on the brink of spilling out and time and time again you've concealed it by doing something else, changing the conversation topic, or, in this case, kissing his lips hard and fast and passionate in a way that distracts you from the tug at your heart every time you hold back on telling him how much you love him.
You're never sure when the appropriate time is and it's not like you've never said to someone else before, but no one has meant what Seonghwa means to you.
“Are you okay?”
“Hm?”
When you open your eyes and put some space in between the both of you, he has worry painted all over his expression.
“You were gone for a second, are you okay?”
He can feel that?
You nod at his question, then take in a breath before fully answering. “I was just thinking.”
“About?” His tone is soft and teasing, even if the nudging is clearly out of concern and nothing else.
Is it now? The right time to say it?
I think I love you, Ghost.
No, no. Not like that.
I love you, Seonghwa.
It's easy enough in your mind, why can't you just say it out loud?
Swallowing hard, you open your mouth and think you're about to. You're about to let out, you have to.
But then there's a loud bang outside that you can hear all the way from where you are and it startles both of you. He pulls you in closer instinctively, protectively and you do the same, with your hands grabbing the fabric of his costume like it would save you both from any potential attack.
If there's one to begin with.
“What the hell was that?”
Faintly, you can hear someone screaming stop it and you wonder why the voice sounds so familiar, so… loud even if it's not fully reaching the space you both are sharing.
And then it downs on you and him at the same time.
A microphone, that's how it's reaching you two and if someone is speaking a microphone it must be.
“Shit.”
And because your intuition and timing sucks, you don't realize your brother might be involved in whatever is going on until you reach the backyard again.
Your face is hot and so the cold breeze hits you like a wake up call, sobers you up even if the faint buzz from the drinks disappeared like half an hour ago.
Heart beating like crazy, you move past Seonghwa and take his hand in yours so you can move through the crowd faster. There's people, not many but a few, gathered around in a circle and you can hear a grunt that it's familiar and unmistakable.
And then Seonghwa drops your hand.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?!”
You have never heard him so upset, but there's no time to worry for him or his emotions when your brother's nose is bleeding and he's laying on the floor winded and blinking to stay awake.
Briefly, you catch from the corner of your eye a very angry Hongjoong and you put two and two together, so now you're worried, conflicted and very angry because who the fuck does he think he is?
“Are you good? Can you get up?”
You're sure you don't seem like it, angry or conflicted or worried even because your voice comes out flat but then you remember your brother knows you better than anyone else, since he's already apologizing with his eyes.
He doesn't get to say it, though. A lot of not getting to say things tonight.
“What are you thinking, Christian?!” Now you sound angry and yet, you help him get up to his feet.
“He started it!” He yells back at you and then panics, raising his hands in pledge for peace with you specifically. “He swung at me first, I swear.”
“Well did you have to punch him back?!” You hear Hongjoong's band main vocalist, your brother's crush, ask in fury. She's upset.
When you look back at them, you can tell why: Hongjoong is probably going to have a very bad bruised cheek for a bit. His nose is also bleeding and Seonghwa is helping him tilt his head back, holding the back of his neck for support.
“Are you… Drunk?” You hear Seonghwa ask his friend and then the main vocalist looks like she's two seconds away from sobbing but it doesn't really move you.
Here's the thing, right? You love Seonghwa.
But you don't owe any loyalty to his friends. So when this girl, who has been nothing but kind to you so far, looks at your brother with utter disgust, you see red.
You turn fully, walk towards them with a scowl on your face and imaginary smoke coming out of your ears.
“Y/N…” Seonghwa warns, but you're not listening.
“What the hell was he supposed to do?! Not defend himself?!” She recoils a bit at your tone and Seonghwa sighs, frustrated, besides you. “I don't know what the fuck happened but I need you two to get your shit together and tell him. He's clueless, he likes you so just be honest with him or never, and I mean never,” you look directly at Hongjoong this time and he has tears in his eyes, he also stumbles back and almost falls, “contact him again.”
They owe each other an apology, him and your brother, but not tonight.
You had enough for tonight.
But you're not upset at Seonghwa a bit, so you turn to him. “Let me know when you get home, okay?”
“No, Y/N, wait—”
“What happened?” Yunho comes out of the fading crowd, sweating his makeup off, with his girlfriend right behind him and a dude you've never seen before after her.
Hongjoong's main vocalist scoffs when she sees the dude and then when the rest of her bandmates come running into the scene, you actually hear her sob. “Where were you, I swear to God—”
“Okay!” The dude says, clapping his hands in a very damage control manner. It pisses you off, so you grab your brother's arm and start tugging him towards the exit.
You stop actively listening when the dude grabs the microphone and says something along the lines of every good party has a fight, am I right?
He's so wrong.
He doesn't know where you and Ian come from, he doesn't know what he had to endure before ending up in the place where you two met and eventually got adopted, he doesn't know that if anything, he's not a violent man.
And that you can see guilt eating away at him as you walk the street and try to find a taxi to take him home. He's drunk too, you can tell, maybe a little high.
But he's never behaved like this before.
“H-he, I mean we were… W-we—”
“Explain it to me tomorrow, okay? You want to get that checked out?” You point at his nose and he shakes his head. He's trembling, like a child, like used to when you two were kids. “Okay, then I'll buy you some medicine and then we can go home.”
“N-no, no, I just… I want to go home.”
And as soon as he says that, the headlights of an incoming taxi up the street blind you. You extend your hand, wish for it to be empty and let out a relieved sigh when it stops in front of you both.
So you ask the driver to take you home, your father's house and let your second breath of relief come out of your mouth when you get to your living room and your father is already passed out in front of the tv.
In the bathroom, as your brother washes his face and you stare at him intensely to try and find any other hidden wounds, you feel a little more at ease.
And slip out the controlled, non-impulsive persona you stepped into when you saw your brother with his defenses down.
“I should've just fucking kill Hongjoong.”
“Y/N!” He whispers-shouts the reprimand at you, turns to you fast to see if you're joking, probably, but you're as serious as ever. “He was drunk and sentimental and upset. I figured out he's in love with her, he got upset and I probably didn't word it the right way, you how I can be.”
“Oh, so you're not completely blind to it, good.”
He rolls his eyes, “Of course you knew.”
“Everyone knows. Everyone but Yunho, probably, but besides him… It's not really hard to tell.”
“I know,” your brother closes the faucet after splashing water in his face one last time and then tilts his head at you. There's a question on the tip of your tongue, but he's had enough drama for tonight and you don't think he wants to explain his feelings. Still, he nods. “Out with it.”
“Why did you still pursue her if you knew? Isn't Hongjoong your friend?”
He nods again, a knowing smile lifting his lips upwards, almost in a cocky grin that's too much for someone who just got knocked to the floor by someone half his height.
“Because she's pretty, she sings like a fucking angel and Hongjoong likes to pretend nothing will ever happen between the both of them, so I took my chance. I felt like… I don't know, maybe I could've got her to like me too, eventually?”
“Ugh.”
“You know I love to follow a path of crumbs when I can, Y/N. So yes, I knew and I did it because I wanted to,” he shrugs. “So maybe I deserved to be beat up, I don't know.”
“Don't excuse his actions. Or yours.”
A bit passes and he huffs, turning to the mirror again and staring at himself on it.
“You did.”
Oh, that.
“Well, she started it,” you shrug at the excuse, using his own words against him and he fully laughs now.
You join, the laugh echoing in the bathroom and before you can scold him any further he grabs your shoulders and hugs you tight.
“Thank you for… Getting me out of there.”
“You were shaking, Ian. Like fully shaking, the only other time you did that was when—”
“I know, I hated it. I don't want to fight with anyone, I don't know why I punched him back.”
“Hm,” you let him go, step out of the bathroom and wait until he does the same to turn the light off. You rest your back against the wall next to light, groaning when the clip with the Padmé hairdo presses against your already aching head and your brother makes a worried sound, so you turn to him. “I hope I don't cause you any trouble with Seonghwa because of this, I swear on everything that I'm apologizing tomorrow morning and—”
“We're good,” you interrupt and he gives you a confused look. “Me and Ghost, we're good. We'll be fine, we… I mean, I love him.” And the words come out of your mouth for the first time tired, easy, like you said it a thousand times before. “So we'll be fine.”
“You… You love him,” Ian says more than asks and then smiles widely at your nod. “My little sister is in love… Never thought I'll live to see the day.”
“I've been in love before—”
“But Seonghwa is a good guy!”
A good guy who stays and helps his best friend out after a fight. A good guy who you left with that problem alone, after hearing him almost sob at the fact that Hongjoong was drunk. Or so it seemed like.
Yes, you had your priorities, and those priorities got into bed and you checked one more time on them before leaving for your room in this house that will always be yours but doesn't feel like it anymore.
And since Ian ended up being fine. Like, no broken nose or anything really bad happening to him fine, around two thirty am, just fifteen minutes after you left his room to yours, you start to feel fully calm.
So you finally check your phone.
There's some texts from Seonghwa’s friends asking if you're okay and then his chat in particular has, well, thirty unopened messages. Smiling a bit as you read through them, the guilt of just leaving without an explanation settles in but they don't read angry at all.
So you send him your location and he texts back not even thirty seconds later.
I'll be there in ten.
Okay.
Good.
This is okay. You can handle this first fight you feel coming, it's fine.
God damnit.
When you go downstairs and take the remote from your father's hand to turn the tv off, it startles him awake.
“Y/N?”
Sitting beside him, you smile. There's light coming from the street and into the living room so you can see him perfectly even now.
“Hey, dad.”
You saw him yesterday or, well, technically the day before that now but as your life has shifted away from your family dynamic and more into Seonghwa and his chaotic friend group, you have started to see him less and less.
He doesn't seem bothered. In fact, whenever you tell him about your plans or your life over dinner or a beer he always seems proud. Ian, too.
“What in the world are you doing here?”
“Well, this is still my house, so…”
Laughing and still a little sleepy, your father signals you to hug him and you give in immediately. After whatever the fuck happened last night, you needed this.
It brings tears to your eyes, the fact that he can still comfort you like when you were a child. The growing pains and just the growing up in general burns in your chest painfully but you know it's a necessary part of life.
Right now though, you hold him tight.
“Had to bring Ian’s drunk ass home. He got into a fight,” you explain when you pull away and you sniffle a little, emotional after the hug. “My boyfriend's picking me up in a few minutes.”
“Seonghwa?”
“Yeah, dad, Seonghwa.”
“Alright,” he clears his throat before getting up and you stay seated, looking up at him. His hand falls to your head, clumsily and you make an annoyed sound that he laughs at. “Text me when you get home?”
“Okay. We're still on for dinner on Sunday?”
“Always, kid.”
He does stay with you, sleepy and drifting off while trying to keep up small talk with you, until Seonghwa texts you he's right outside.
Whatever happens after he takes you home, you know that you can always look back and find your family ready to catch you if you fall.
You just hope the words you told Ian were true. Because when you open the door and don't even see him staring at you but at the street, with his helmet and the bike still on, you're for sure thinking the worst.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he says back and his tone is more tired than anything else but it still hurts you a bit. He takes the spare helmet, your helmet and unclasps it, still taking the time to put the helmet on you, for you. It takes five seconds of eye contact for him to fully pull you in, hands around your shoulders, helmet bumping into yours. “Don't ever just fucking leave like that.”
Tears burn in your eyes but you can't cry, not here in the middle of the street, not when this entire tension is pointless, useless, the truly bad end to what was supposed to be a fun night.
“Is Hongjoong okay?” You ask instead of answering him, or even apologizing.
He pulls back, taking a second to decide if insisting is a good idea or not.
He decides it's not.
“He'll be fine, he's just… My place or yours?”
Yeah, talking about it like this, with the helmets on in the middle of an empty street… Not really it.
Getting on the bike and holding onto his waist, you let out a heavy sigh. “Yours, mine's a mess.”
“And if we make any noise at this hour, that neighbor of yours is going to complain again.” He jokes and the tension dissipates just a bit, you laugh into the fabric of his costume.
“And when they kick me out of the apartment because of you…”
Relief floods you for the third time tonight when he laughs back.
You hug his waist tighter the entire ride home. Because yes, that apartment is also your home now. You know your way to the elevator, you know the name of the building's doorman and the security guard, you know his door combination.
There's a pair of slippers by the door that belong to you and you only and two drawers dedicated to your things, a toothbrush and other hygiene products in his bathroom countertop and a box of your favorite tea on his kitchen cabinet, a cup with your initial right next to it, right next to a matching one for him.
That's why it's easy to dismiss the weird energy, the flavour this entire night left on your tongue and reach for him for a kiss when the door closes behind him. He reciprocates, holds you close and walks you backwards to his living room. It's gentle and forgiving and sweet and all you needed to know that, yeah…
You two will be alright.
“Come here,” he says after a minute or two of mindless kissing and you oblige when he takes his hand and tugs you towards the bathroom. “Let's go to sleep and we can—”
You interrupt, your hips knocking against the sink and you feel so, so tired all of the sudden.
“I don't need to know what truly happened if it's too personal for Hongjoong. I just need to know that he'll be okay.”
“He will be,” he repeats and you bite your tongue instead of asking what you truly want to ask.
Seonghwa takes the makeup wipes off the shared counter and, instead of offering you one, he moves close. The wipe is cold and you wince a little, but you acclimatize to it soon enough.
“You looked like you wanted to swing at him next,” he says and you smile, you catch the corners of his lips lifting up a bit too. “I get it. They needed some yelling, both of them.” He says and you know he's referring to the main conflict point between Ian and his best friend.
The main vocalist.
“He shouldn't get drunk. I'm usually there trying to… Prevent it, you know? He… His father was an alcoholic and he usually drinks socially, never alone, never because he wants to escape something or someone or his feelings. I'm not fully sure of what triggered this but,” Seonghwa stops, he breathes one time and then two times to try and regain his composure. He looks exhausted, too. “The band, her and us. That's all he has.”
You hum. “Do you think he might've felt… Threatened when Ian tried to squeeze himself in the picture? With her, I mean?”
“Maybe, but he's not… I feel like there's more to it and it won't get explained to me until he comes back out from whatever hole he dug himself in.”
Damn, it's worse than you thought, then.
“Well, Ian isn't a victim here either,” you roll your eyes and Seonghwa nods, making you smile again.
“Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he just… He needs to find someone who's not in love with anyone else, man, he's just so…”
“Stubborn?” He asks, teasing tone and all. “It's a family trait, I fear.”
“Oh, shut up,” he laughs and it echoes and your heart beats fast when you realize you both could probably go to sleep without apologizing for the way it was handled between the two of you, but you can't in clear conscience do that. “Ghost, I'm sorry. I… I was so angry at her and Hongjoong and at you…”
He raises a questioning eyebrow, taking another wipe out and passing it under your eyes. Your tearing up must've smudged the very complicated eyeliner you did to pull off the fierce look in the first place.
“Briefly,” you clarify and he nods. “I can't make you choose between Christian and Hongjoong but I do hope you know I will put him first. I will always put my family first.”
“I know, I won't ask you to do that, ever.”
You raise your hand, your palm covering the one that's assisting in removing your makeup and you bring it to your lips. You leave a kiss there, on the back of his hand and smile.
“And I know Hongjoong is like your family, so I won't ask you to choose either.”
“They're grown, they have their own shit going on and we are… Well, we're a completely different thing.”
You nod. “Whatever happens there it's our problem…”
“But it won't affect us,” he tosses the wipe on the counter with the other one and then steps closer again, hands going around your waist. “I'm not going to lie—”
“Don't start.”
He laughs. “You look so hot when you’re angry, maybe I should piss you off more.”
“Ghost, oh my…”
You push him away with a laugh and he obliges, taking the dirty wipes and fully tossing them in the trash now. Walking towards the bedroom next, with him following close behind, you both fall into a night routine that feels too familiar, too recurrent and too good.
You love having this with him. Only this time, you just rest your hip on the doorframe and stare at your boyfriend as he moves around the room, taking off layers of his costume.
Feeling the jar spilling, and in your completely exhausted state, you don't believe the words that come out of your mouth and make him still his movements for a few good seconds.
You just say it, it just… Spills. Your love for him spills and…
“Seonghwa, I love you.”
And it's not whispered, it's not premeditated or rehearsed or laced with any doubts of him not loving you back because you know he does. He's loud and clear with his actions and him not saying the words all this time, the same way you didn't say them, means nothing because he does.
You can see it in his eyes when he turns to you, half dressed, with the long strand of his hair falling from the tiny ponytail securing it at the back and framing his face.
He stops and it feels like forever but he smiles, drops the bedsheet he was working on tugging under the mattress to make the bed perfect for the both of you and practically jogs to cross the room to get to you.
Grabbing your face with his hands, his eyes are shiny and his smile is wide before he takes in a breath.
“I love you too. So, so much.”
And you smile wide before giggling at the thought of you being afraid of saying the words out loud. It's been months of you feeling this way for him, but tonight just…
There's no perfect moment to say them, because perfect is not real and what you have with him is.
You don’t know who moves first, only that one moment you’re standing there, still laughing like a dumbass, and the next you’re closing the distance. And it's soft at first, because the moment is cute and romantic and you're both tired but when Seonghwa exhales against your lips and you drink it, something in the air shifts.
It becomes charged, charged with desire and affection and nothing too crazy because, again, it's been a long night but you can't phantom the thought of not touching him and let him touch you right this instant.
Lips parting yours, his tongue swipes against yours again and again, slower each time, making you hum in satisfaction and arch against him. His hands go down, his fingers unclasp the beige belt that goes with your costume and then they move back up, finding their place in your waist, pressing until your hips knock into his.
When you finally break apart, his forehead rests against yours. “Say it again,” he whispers.
“I love you,” you breathe, voice trembling for reasons that have nothing to do with fear. No more fear. Instead, the jar spills even further until it fills the entire room.
His answering smile is small, almost shy, before he kisses you again, deeper this time. There’s nothing hurried about it: it’s all warmth and quiet need, the kind that makes everything feel unreal, like you're floating in a sky full of him and what he makes you feel.
You savor the noise he makes when you hide his hands to your ass and he smiles against your mouth when you moan at the contact, like you weren't the one who just made it happen.
Moving away from the door, you move in practiced steps. His hands take your clothes off, yours caress the skin already exposed and fall down to the pants he didn't get the chance to take off. When you fall into the sheets together, it isn’t about need or apology anymore, it's not even about the negative emotions of the night.
It's about loving and you love him so much.
He pulls back just enough to look at you, his eyes search your face like he’s memorizing it. “You have no idea what you do to me,” he whispers, brushing a stray strand of hair from your cheek, his lips finding his favorite spot on your neck next and making you breath ragged, hard, close your eyes at the mere contact. “I don’t even remember what life felt like before you.”
“You know, some people will argue that that's a bad thing,” and you don't know why you say it, but you do. “I feel like it's worth remembering how I felt before I met you.”
He pulls away from the skin of your sternum to pay attention to what you have to say.
“Yeah?”
“I want to remember because it makes this and you and everything you make me feel even more worth it.”
He smiles but you immediately cringe at your own words, looking away.
Romanticism not being your forte is a fucking problem.
But he seems to enjoy it. He laughs under his breath, his eyes still shining bright when you look at him again, and then his lips return to your skin and you forget.
“I fucking love you,” he says there, lips trailing down and down and down until they ghost your mount and you raise your hips to meet his mouth in response. “I'm going to show you how much I love you now.”
Oh. You hope he keeps repeating it forever, how much he loves you. The showing it to you this way is not really that necessary but if he can keep eating you out this way forever, you won't complain either.
He doesn't bother taking your underwear on at first, he trails a path over it with his mouth, his nose lightly pressing down and then he pretends he's going to taste you but he turns his head to kiss your thigh. Then, he goes for the other one.
You moan as his teeth sink a little on the skin there, fingers getting lost in his dark locks a second later. Tugging, you count that as a warning and he breathes out a laugh that lasts all but three seconds. When loops his fingers under your panties and takes them off with ease, you let your legs part for him to finally lap at your wetness.
It's not rushed, but his movements are equally as hungry as they are calculated, slow, lazy. It's just what you needed, though. The tension leaves your system in sighs, groans, moans and you close your eyes to let yourself get lost in the feeling of his tongue parting you open, sinking in your entrance and then going back up to your clit, just the way you like it.
When the sense of urgency for chasing that high takes over you, your grasp on his hair tightens and he moans right into your core, taking the heat, leaving the lazy lapping behind and eating you out like a man starved.
“Fuck, Hwa, don't stop.”
Hips moving instinctively to meet his tongue, he lets you take what you need for him.
It doesn't take much for you to come undone with a curse and a short scream that resonates around the room, his mouth and chin glistening when he pulls away as you come down your high. Your hips meet the bed again and your grasp on his hair loosens as you try to recover your breath.
You take a second, but you feel his cheek resting against your leg and you can basically feel the smile on his wet lips when he leaves a kiss there.
When you open your eyes again and look down, you can't help but think that he looks beautiful.
And that he deserves a good orgasm after everything he probably went through tonight.
“Come here, Ghost.”
He wastes no time in hovering over you, in letting his chest meet yours and in kissing your mouth messily, sloppy, hungrier than before, letting you taste yourself in his tongue.
“Was it good?” He asks and you push him down, his back meeting the sheets next and you smile at the question.
“So good,” you confirm, kissing his jaw before diving into his neck. Your hand goes under his briefs, your nails softly going up his shaft for a second and making him hiss before you grasp him firmly. He's hard and leaking already. “I love you.” You repeat as your lips meet the skin right under his ear and he moans softly when your hand starts moving.
“I love you,” he says back and your heart flutters like it did the first time he said it, a couple of minutes ago.
You go up his neck again only so you can see him, see the shift in him whenever he steps out of his soft dominant persona and into this pliant man in front of you. He's always doing this, leaving it to you fully when it comes to pleasing him and you enjoy every little sound he makes when you're in that position.
He turns to putty in your hands and it's beautiful and it steals your breath away everytime. He grabs the back of your neck when he notices you staring and your hand moves with more intention now, more drive. His forehead connects with your cheek and his mouth parts open when your thumb presses down on his slit, gathering wetness to jerk him off with more ease.
You enjoy his breathing getting more and more ragged, you revel in the feeling of his hand tightening on the back of your neck, of his forehead pressing more firmly against your skin. It takes a particular stroke for him to fully moan, for the sound to bounce off the walls. You do it again, and you literally see him biting down the pleasure spilling out of his mouth.
“Yeah? You're so sensitive tonight, Hwa.”
He smiles, opening his eyes and pulling you down so that your forehead meets his instead of your cheek.
“A-and you're so mean.”
You laugh at him, at the tiny tint of desperation in his voice. “Don't act like you don't enjoy it.”
Every time this happens, there's that resistance that shows in his eyes, like he wants to turn it on you and make you the one to beg, the one to succumb to his touch instead, but it never happens. It just glistens there and then you do something, like slowing down the pace suddenly like you just did, that sends the idea to the back of his mind.
“P-please,” he begs, when you keep the slow movements for a minute or two and you can tell he's tired, willing to come, don't clean anything up and just fall asleep right after. His hips twitch a little when you give in a bit. “Please make me come, babe, I… Oh, fuck.”
He takes in a sharp inhale when you fully let go of him, your mind settled and made up in the fact that you want to see him in all his glory when he does come. You move on your knees on the bed, signal him to raise his hips so you can take his underwear off and your mouth waters when you see the state of his leaking length.
“Can I try something?” You ask softly, even though you already know the answer is a yes. When he nods and extends his arms to reach for you, you smile widely. “Stay put, Ghost.”
When you climb into his lap, you do something you've never done before: Instead of fully sinking into him, you let his length rest against his stomach and then fix your position so that your core rests against it, your still sensitive clit catching friction immediately and making you curse.
You're wet enough so that when you start moving it's easy, it's sleek, it's delicious and you see his eyes roll to the back of his head when you catch wind of the position, when you rest your hands on his chest and waste no time in keeping up the pace.
“Oh my god.”
“Good?” you ask, because you're not sure this is giving him enough stimulation to come just from it alone but then he nods, quick, desperate and you know it's not the case.
“S-so good, please don't stop, please.”
It feels really good for you too, so you keep going. You keep going and you fight the need to close your eyes because Seonghwa is twitching and squirming under you, his hands on your hips as he helps you grind into him and your moans eventually bleed into each other. As you get closer and closer to reach your peak again, your body folds over and Seonghwa wastes no time in kissing you, hard, needy, with no care for the shared spit coating both your chins.
Your clit catches on his tip perfectly and it tilts you over the edge but you keep going, keep pushing until you feel his movements still and he moans loud into your mouth. Pulling away from his face, you see him tilt his head back until he spills the last of his cum on his stomach and yours.
And even though you're so, so close, you slow down your movements so it doesn't overstimulate him.
He has other plans, though, his hands grasping your hips firmly and making you grind into him at the same fast pace as before. You moan, your eyes closing and you have to hold onto his shoulder to not put your body weight fully on him.
“Keep going, baby, don't stop,” he's breathless, breathing hard and still shining a little at the friction, but he doesn't let go. “Come again for me.”
For him. Not that you would come for any other reason right now, but that's the motivation that you need even if your thighs hurt a little already from the position and the tiredness you felt before returning, you do it for him.
“That's it.”
And when you come it’s not as hard as the first time but your body locks and releases in a delicious way that makes you feel like you're floating. Your forehead rests on his chest a second after and you chuckle into his skin, leaving a kiss there before rolling over to your side of the bed.
He laughs as well but wastes no time in pulling you into his arms and the sweat and the fact that no one has cleaned up yet doesn't bother you at all. This moment is necessary, because when you look into his eyes and see nothing but adoration the realization of what this means for your life downs on you.
Is it bad that you don't picture anyone but him in it now? You haven't for months, but there's truly no one who can connect with you the way that he does. If this were any other person, you would still be in your childhood bedroom, fighting with your pride to ask to see them, to apologize, to fix things.
With Seonghwa everything's easy, as it should be. The challenges mean nothing because, if you're ever going to have a mishap like tonight, it'll be argued with love instead of anger.
That's so valuable and so rare to find, you can't help but reciprocate the adoration for him.
You love him completely, and he loves you just the same.
“We didn't go to the haunted house, Ghost.”
He groans, tired, and pushes you away without any force only to pull you back in again for a kiss.
“I'm sure there are some that'll be up for a few days still. I'll take you,” he promises and you smile. “Make it up for the weird date we had tonight?”
“Okay,” you agree in a whisper, pecking his lips once more before fully pulling away and standing up. “But we're dressing up as low budget ghosts.”
“Are we ruining my bedsheets for it?”
“Yup.”
And as you walk towards the bathroom to get wipes to clean both of you up, you hear something that makes your entire being shake with excitement, because Seonghwa thinks you're not hearing him at all, but the streets are quiet and the apartment is quiet as well and it's impossible not to.
“... The love of my fucking life.”
Yeah.
He's the love of your life too.
If you read all the way down here: THANK YOU SO MUCH. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, don't be afraid to go to my inbox and leave your thoughts there or down below, i love reading them!
PAIRING: guitarist/band leader!hongjoong x main vocalist!fem reader.
GENRE: exes to friends to lovers.
WARNINGS: mentions of loss, grief, alcoholism/drinking, addiction, stealing, reader uses fem pronouns, fem body parts, denial of feelings guys what would a fic of mine be without a little bit of delusion am i right, the tension is unbearable and i'm the one writing them, next chapter will have a bit more action i promise, seonghwa and his reader make a stellar cameo i love them, flirty wooyo, reader is jealous but not exactly because of you guys might think, bike rides (don't drink and drive anything i'm so serious ya'll), chaotic but domestic bliss, also heejin makes an appereance (we love her), apologies for the bad music lingo i'm not well versed in the arts (jokes, however i don't know shit about music tho).
NOTES: hiii guys! loved this chapter when i wrote it, now I'm not so sure lol. i hope you enjoy it! THIS IS PART OF THE LOVE'S AN UNCHARTED PATH series, which you can find the link for above or in my masterlist. there's a few character's mentioned that were introduced in previous stories but the full context is not needed to understand this one. as usual, this is 100% self indulgent, as all fics should be, and i think i've re-read it so many times that if you find a typo or something that just doesn't make sense, you can blame it on english not being my first language i guess lmao. i hope you enjoy it and if you do feel free to send to my askbox/reblog/type in any feedback or thoughts! <3
story masterlist / general masterlist / chapter two - next part.
After Hyunjin leaves and you all take a well deserved water break (and beer break for the guys, including Hongjoong), you all join your friends up the stairs.
Heejin is not there, but Hongjoong friends are and some of Kyung’s friends too and you know all of them so it's easy to mingle and smile sincerely at their congratulations because that was an amazing show.
What happened afterwards it's what's got you a little over the edge, but it's fine. It's cool, it's even forgettable when people are telling you that they felt something with your performance, when they're complimenting your voice or the way you moved on stage or a decision you made in the middle of a song that made the dynamic between the five of you a little more electric, a little more fun and real.
Seonghwa side-hugs you and his… girlfriend? (you never actually asked what they are to each other, really) shoves her shoulder against yours playfully.
“Well that was fucking amazing. Wasn't it, Ghost?”
Oh, and she calls Seonghwa ghost, which is a very cool nickname for a significant other if everyone ignores what ghosting means in modern lingo.
“Really, really cool. You styled them all tonight?” He asks and you nod. “I knew it. There's no way Ryeoun wearing his jacket the right way was his choice.”
Somewhere on your right, you hear the mentioned scoff. “I heard that!”
“Good!” Seonghwa shoots back, letting you go and smiling down at you. “Please style him forever, he can't keep getting away with it.”
Smiling back at him and then at his girl, you nod. “That's the plan anyways, isn't it?” They let out a chuckle that you follow and then a sigh escapes you. “Thank you guys, I was really nervous about tonight.”
“Does it have to do with the dude we saw following you guys backstage?” Wooyoung suddenly asks and you jump a little, turning to him. He smiles at you. “Hi, gorgeous. You were amazing tonight.”
Seonghwa groans, his girl just laughs and then, as you’re thanking him with a roll of your eyes because he’s being flirty with you, the very poor light this area of the bar has gets completely blocked, casting shadows over your entire face and his as well.
When you turn to see what's blocking it, you find a very smiling Ian standing behind Seonghwa’s darling. He has his hands or her shoulders and Seonghwa seems cool with it, which is a likely thing for him to do because he’s the chillest dude in the entire world, but still it seems weird.
“Amazing show, as always,” he compliments and you smile at him because you can’t help it, even if you don’t like him that much.
“Thanks, Ian.”
“Oh, you two know each other already?” He asks, looking down at the girl and then at you. “Damn it, I wanted to introduce you! This is my sister,” he says and you frown, looking at her and then at him. There’s a bit of resemblance but not much.
“Hongjoong never tells me shit,” you sigh and then you force out a laugh. “Yes, I knew her, I didn't know she was your sister though!”
“Yeah, we don’t look alike, I’m prettier,” he says with a face, like he pities her and she makes sure to raise a leg and step on his feet without holding back. A part of you can’t help to feel a little vindicated when he lets out a tiny cry of pain and then the majority of you can’t help but to feel jealous when he recovers fast and pulls on her hair before turning to you. “I’m kidding, we’re adopted,” then he turns to her and says, “ouch, you little shit.”
This hurts in the same way that Hyujin telling you his sister was the one who showed them your music hurt you.
You’re sure your energy shifts, you can feel it in the way the lump on your throat gets bigger and bigger until it feels like you’re choking up in your own unshared emotion. It must show in your face, in the way you close your arms over your chest and hug yourself a little, seeking for any kind of comfort, because even though Seonghwa’s attention is fully on the brother and sister banter going on and Wooyoung’s attention is in the drink he’s nursing, eyes on someone else in the room, you feel the back of your neck burning with a familiar stare.
One that fully knows what’s going on inside your head.
You don’t want him to step in and save you when you’re grown and can fight your own battles with your own emotions, with the longing for something you’ll never get to have.
So you force out another laugh, a more believable one now, and shake your head in a fake endearment like the scene alone it's not destroying you.
“Well, even if you guys are adopted I think she wins,” you joke and it’s not really a joke because you mean it, but it’s enough for Ian to let out an offended gasp and for her to stick her tongue out at him. For someone who practically lives inside a leather jacket and rides a bike, she turns into a child when fighting her brother. Cute.
You do your best to bring the positive feelings to the front, to let those leak through the cracks in your armor instead of the awful, envious ones. You are happy that they have each other, because you think she’s really cool and Ian… Well, he’s okay, you guess.
Not as bad.
Definitely a good brother, good friend.
Ugh, you wished for weeks before being introduced to him that he would suck, but he doesn’t.
And so when the night goes on and you lose the guys to their friends and celebration, you step outside of the bar to breathe before deciding if it’s too rude to irish-goodbye them in a night that seems so important to the band. You’re feeling a bit down, you’ve been side-eying Hongjoong the entire night hoping he’ll speak to you, too, but Ian steals all his attention in the way your brother used to and so the reminder that he’s supposed to be there instead of Ian, that he’s supposed to be there instead of you, has been weighting on your shoulders the entire night.
You can’t help but think of him when things like these happen, mostly because they were supposed to be his to celebrate in the first place but also because you feel like you have no one that close to you to congratulate you on this tiny goal you guys just met.
The one that does it’s too busy keeping rockstar appearances with his friends and Heejin had to work tonight of all nights.
Sighing, you wish you had at least picked up a smoking habit so you could look less miserable out there, with your back against the dirty wall.
When the door opens a few meters from you, you don’t even spare the person a look. You hear their footsteps get closer and closer and you know exactly who it is because your heart recognizes him wherever he goes.
“You good? Come inside,” he ushers you and when you finally turn to him, you realize he doesn’t have a jacket on. “It’s cold.”
“I’m good, just… Tired,” you say, shrugging and giving him a tiny smile. The last thing you want is for him to know what’s actually putting the dark cloud over your head. “Didn’t get to nap earlier, remember?”
Hongjoong hums and you look down to the floor again. You know it’s a little useless lying to him, but you take advantage of the weird distance that’s between the both of you since you came back into his life and try to erase yesterday night and this afternoon from your mind.
Close to him, you can’t actually function like you want to. Your hands were shaking the entire time you did his makeup earlier and you don’t really know what possessed you to stay close to him even after you were done. Hand over his tattoo, worried that the guys might piece together your past and with the door unlocked, too. You didn’t move because you didn’t want it to be over.
Even now, when he’s shivering because of the cold night breeze, you just want to keep him here so that you two can be alone in a space together where no one can interrupt. Like you had him back then.
It sucks that you want to seek comfort in someone who wants you as far away as possible.
“Go back, Joong,” you tell him, taking a step forward in his direction, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing there before letting go. “And stop drinking, hm? Ian keeps bringing you beers that you keep accepting.”
“I’m giving them to Woo when he’s not looking,” he says and you wonder if he’s lying so you stop worrying about that, because you haven’t seen him do that at all. “They’re all wondering where you went and, uh, Yunho and Yeosang videocalled a few minutes ago.”
“Where are they?”
“London,” he says and you frown, letting out a confused chuckle. “A work thing that’s actually a romantic gesture, I guess. Yunho’s girlfriend also went, that’s why they’re not here tonight.”
It’s endearing how he has to explain it because he knows you probably wondered about them at some point in the night. And you did, but you didn’t ask anyone because they’re his friends, not yours.
Still, because you don’t want the moment to end, you ask. “And they brought Yeosang to thirdwheel or…?”
“It’s his romantic gesture,” Hongjoong says and when you raise your brows, surprised, he laughs. “Long story.”
“I bet,” you smile and he does too and it takes a whole five seconds of you two staring at each other before you’re awkwardly looking around and fidgeting in your feet. “Listen, I don’t work tomorrow. They’re going to do something with the lights in the store, I think.” You didn’t actually pay attention to what your boss was saying on the phone, if you are honest. “So, um, the museum is closed and I think the guys can get away from their jobs a little earlier if they wanted to, right?” Hongjoong nods. “Well, we should get together and start writing the song.”
There’s a tiny pause where the awkwardness disappears from his face, the only thing you can find in his expression is softness, endearment even.
“I was about to tell you the same thing.”
And even if it’s been two years, it’s a little bit weird how you two can still coordinate with each other as if he’s able to read your mind.
Like time didn’t pass at all.
“Okay. Good, tell them, I’ll see you tomo—”
“You’re leaving?”
That was not Hongjoong.
How did Christian appear from thin air?
“I’m leaving,” you say, taking a step back from Hongjoong for good measure. You see him tense up and you wonder if Ian knows about you two. After all, they’ve been pretty close for a few months and if they’re actually together, he must know you’ve been involved with each other. You turn to your old, old friend. “Hongjoong is staying for a little bit, right?”
“R-right.”
When you turn back to Ian, you do so with a genuine smile. It burns your soul but you wish them happiness because there’s nothing you would like more than for Hongjoong to be happy.
You’re also feeling a bit nostalgic, so that’s enough hurting for the night. Coming to terms with the fact that this dude might be a good thing for him it’s what you need to—
“Can I take you home?”
What.
Why is Christian looking at you and not at Hongjoong?
You blink three times, fast and from the corner of your eye you see Hongjoong do the same.
“I mean, it’s late. I don’t know if there’s any buses or taxis around, you can always call an uber but my bike is around the corner,” he points with his thumb and then shrugs.
“You were drinking, though,” you say, trying to get out of the very good offer he’s making.
“One beer,” he argues, smiling and Hongjoong clears his throat. “And a half. One beer and a half but it takes more than that for me to feel drunk.”
Great, a heavy drinker.
I don’t know if that’s what Hongjoong needs, or you. But he doesn’t seem to think the same.
“You should go with him,” he says, with a smile on his face you can’t really decipher. “It is late and—”
“You don’t trust uber drivers, yeah, yeah,” you roll your eyes. “I know.”
He chuckles and you think Ian does too, but you’re not focused on him at all.
“Just… Text the group chat when you’re home.”
And before you can argue anything else, Hongjoong is half hugging Ian and then practically jogging towards the bar door.
He must really trust this dude. Okay, you can trust his judgment. You can move your feelings towards Hongjoong and the hurt you feel when you see him and Ian together to the side one more time as a thank you for the kind gesture, sure.
It is awkward as hell when you’re left alone with him on the street and then it takes one uncomfy laugh for him to murmur a let’s go and start moving.
The walk to the motorcycle is slow and you don’t really say anything but you look at him and he looks at you and you both smile a little.
You have to take a deep breath before saying. “Thank you for offering, you really don’t have to do this, you still have time to turn around and—”
“It’s okay, I don’t think I would have peace of mind going back in now.”
“Oh,” nodding, you give him another smile that’s more awkward than anything because why does he worry about you? “That’s nice of you. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. She has Seonghwa now so I don’t worry, but my sister used to do shit like that all the time.”
“Go home late?”
“Yeah,” he shakes his head. “I used to worry a lot, she likes late night walking for some reason? I don’t understand,” he lets out a breathy laugh and you smile. “And it’s not my job to understand but I still want her safe.”
Once again, you are miserable with the fact that he’s a good person.
And also a bit weird. But so are you, so whatever.
“I totally get it. My roommate works at a bar most nights and I tell her to wait until the sun starts rising if she can, we used to do that when we worked together,” you shrug, “I’m just really tired tonight.”
He smiles “Long day, huh?”
“Yeah,” you say quietly and he nods, like he understands. Does he understand? “Do you work at the shop with your sister?”
“Oh,” he turns to you, a little wide eyed like he didn’t expect you to know that at all. “Yeah, it’s our father’s shop. She fixes cars,” you both come to a stop when you reach his Harley. “I fix bikes.”
You hum and grab the helmet he offers you, putting it on. “So you must be tired as fuck too, huh?”
He laughs and then makes a sound of agreement, getting on his bike and patting the back of the seat. You scrunch your nose and shake your head, cringing a little.
“What?”
“Never do that again,” you tell him, half joking and then put a hand on his shoulder to support your weight as you get on the bike as well. “Especially not to Hongjoong, he doesn’t like to be told what to do.”
“Funny,” he says looking over his shoulder. “He said the same about you. Address?”
You give him your address and then hold onto his sides the entire way. The streets are not empty but you should’ve definitely checked the clock before even attempting to leave by yourself.
There’s no conversation, only the late night sunday breeze hitting your exposed skin and your eyes close briefly, enjoying the feeling. It’s only when your eyes are closed after many, many hours that you realize how actually tired you are, how pretending to be so unaffected by many things around you only made you burn out the remaining energy you had.
The semi-empty streets make the usual twenty minute ride to your home feel like five and you pat yourself on the back for being so into your own thoughts that these didn’t feel half as awkward as it was supposed to.
It gives you the strength to keep up appearances with Ian, at least for the night.
“Over here?” You hear him ask, muffled by the sound of his helmet and you point to your apartment building with your index as a response. “Ah, over there.”
He comes to a stop and you quickly get down the bike, rushing to take the helmet off with your impatience makes you look ridiculous trying to get it off fast, because you get stuck in the clasp.”
“Goddamn it, I hate this type of thingy.”
You hear him laugh, see him take his own helmet off and the next thing you feel is his hand over yours. He unclasps the thing easily and you get it off quick, letting out a batted breath because you were starting to feel trapped.
“Thank you,” you say, offering the helmet back to him and he takes it, rests it on his backseat. “And thank you for the ride.” You don’t repeat that he didn’t have to, because he already explained to you why he did it and that’s enough. And then you don’t know what really possesses you to say what you say next, but you do. “I’m glad Hongjoong has someone like you in his life. I’m sure he needed it and I’m happy you found each other.”
Looking down at the helmet and then back up at you with an intrigued expression on his face, he nods. “I really enjoy his company so I’m glad I have him in my life. I enjoy your company, too— I-I mean, you and the rest of the guys,” he recovers fast and you nod with a tiny smile tugging at your lips. He is a little weird. “It’s like being friends with your idol, you know?”
“Oh, come on,” when you go around the bike to get close to your building’s entrance, you take the chance to push him in the shoulder. “We’re not even that big yet.”
“Yet,” he emphasizes, smiling. “Almost nine thousand listeners in Spotify, too. That’s huge.”
Rolling your eyes, you turn to enter the code of the front door quickly and when it opens you hold it with your right hand, while the left waves at him.
“Goodnight!”
“Night,” you hear him say before you close the door and even if you don’t look back as you go up the stairs to the third floor, you can tell he was smiling as he said it.
When you go to sleep that night, with makeup on and in your underwear, you do so without overthinking what could’ve been.
For the first time in forever, you actually think you’re moving on from Hongjoong.
And from the light his love brought to your life.
The next day, as you expected, it’s chaos. You’re grateful you get to wake up later than usual because you knew, no matter what, the guys would wake up even later than you.
Heejin is by your side and she huffs and puffs when you scoot to the edge of the mattress so you can get out of bed.
“I thought you didn’t have to work today,” she says, eyes still closed and sleep clinging to her voice.
“Band stuff,” you shrug even if she can’t see you and you take her hand in yours so you can give it a kiss. “I’ll text you. Keep sleeping, you have a shift in a bit, right?”
Not at the bar, but at a clothing store she got hired at recently.
She mumbles something and lets out a tiny cry, probably at the reminder of her shift, before you let her go and get up to take a shower and get ready for the day.
As you do, yesterday night replays in your head. It’s foggy, like you didn’t actually live it but dream it instead and the possibility of finally getting a deal so you can all meet your goal cruises through you with motivation, like a fire.
When you get to the guys’ apartment and put in the code for the door, you hope that what you see doesn’t kill the spark but you’re kind of expecting it anyway: Ryeoun is on the couch, pants and socks still on. There’s a mess on the floor and as soon as you close the door you hear a muffled scream that sounds like Kyung before the door to his room opens up and he walks out in his underwear and with a towel on his hand that he presses on his semi-undressed body to cover up once he sees you.
“Oh, hi Siren.”
“Good morning,” you say, still by the door, eyebrows raised in silent questions.
“You heard that?” He asks and you nod, smiling a bit. “I was hyping myself up so I could get out of bed,” he explains and it doesn’t make it better so then he looks back to the empty hallway and then to you. “I have a mean hangover, so…”
“Right.”
He points back to his room. “I think it also woke Hyunwook up, so you’re welcomed.”
“Get in the fucking shower!” you hear the mentioned yell from inside the room they share and you shake your head, already entertained with their shenanigans.
“Shut up!” Ryeoun yells suddenly and you jump a little before going towards him. His arm is over his eyes to shield them from the light coming in from the window and you smile when you try to shake him and he doesn’t budge. “Five more minutes.”
“It’s already late,” you tell him and when he hears your voice, his arm falls to his chest. He opens his eyes just a little and smiles up at you, murmurs a hi. “We need to write a song, Ryeoun.”
“You need to write a song, we need to write a melody.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about that too,” Hyunwook says from the hallway entrance and he yawns. At least he has a shirt on… And shorts. “Us three should go downstairs and write the melody and you two should stay up here and write the lyrics. Hyunjin said that it takes a while to hear back but what if it doesn’t?” He walks towards the couch and takes Ryeoun's legs, who whines at the new interruption of his sleep, and sits down before tossing his legs aside, almost knocking Ryeoun off the couch entirely. “What if we hear back in a day or two? We need to divide the labor.”
“And how did it go for us when we did, back in college?”
Hongjoong’s voice draws your attention completely. He sounds tired, like he didn’t get any sleep at all. You’d know.
When you turn to him, there’s dark circles under his eyes and a cup with steam coming out of it. Probably coffee, though the apartment doesn’t smell like it at all. It smells like dude, like them. It’s not always the most pleasant smell but you can tell they’ve been trying to get better at being clean and organized. They’re just hungover today.
Looking at Hongjoong, you try to decipher if he is as well. You’ve never seen him have one, mostly because he’s true to his word and never gets drunk, actually drunk.
But lately… Ugh, you need to shake the feeling off you, tell the part of you that longs to shield him from his father’s memory, from becoming like him, to remind itself that it’s not your job to do so in the first place.
“It doesn’t matter, we graduated.”
“Barely,” he scoffs and then catches you staring. He gives you a tiny smile. “What do you think?”
Returning the smile and then looking at the predicament both Hyunwook and Ryeoun are in, you shrug. “I think they’re not going to get anything done if we’re not there.”
Ryeoun gasps dramatically and Hyunwook clicks his tongue, letting his head drop to the side in annoyance.
“We can get shit done!”
“It’ll probably take us less time to come up with a melody, anyways,” Hyunwook says and then the bathroom door opens and Kyung comes out with a towel around his waist and one on his hand, drying his hair. “Right?”
“Uh,” he looks at the guys on the couch and then at you and Hongjoong, trying to decide which side he’s supposed to be on in this pointless argument he probably heard nothing of. “Sure.”
“That’s three against two, baby!” Hyunwook gets up from the couch, runs to the bathroom next and Ryeoun groans again before getting himself comfortable.
They truly are like kids. Not yours, thank God, but kids nonetheless. You turn to their actual father figure with a raised brow and he just runs a hand over his face, annoyed.
In your heart, you know Hongjoong sees a lot of his younger self in them. He is a year or two older so you don’t know how much he can use the hyung card with them, but there’s this endearment masked as exasperation that you recognize very well. It warms your soul, it makes you smile and you take a deep breath before looking away before him or Ryeoun catches you cheesing over your own assumptions over what Hongjoong is feeling.
You take a few steps into his direction and then pass on him completely before heading for the kitchen.
“There’s something so sinister about getting a clueless Kyung and a sleepy Ryeoun on his side,” you sigh in front of the fridge. You have permission to open it if you want but the thing is you’re not really hungry, you’re not really thirsty either. You’re waiting for him to invite you to his room and it’s making you nervous as hell. “He makes me sick.”
You hear Hongjoong huff out a laugh and when you turn to look at him over your shoulder, he’s crossed armed and staring right back at you.
“He’s mean but I do trust they’ll at least start on the song today,” he shrugs. “I don’t know if they’ll finish it but we’re all going to have something by the end of the day. You’re staying, right?”
“Hm?”
You have to ask him to repeat himself because you’re misreading the way he asked in the first place. There’s this hopeful, airy tone laced with his question that makes your heartbeat grow erratic and you can’t have it, especially not when you’re trying to focus on something else.
Something important, like the song.
But maybe getting to feel this is exactly what Hyunjin is asking for, something heartfelt, something… Real.
What’s more real than your love for him?
“The entire day, are you staying or do you have to do anything else today?”
Ah.
“I’m staying,” you say with a barely there nod and you curve a smile before turning to the fridge again. You open it, pretend you’re looking for something until your eyes land on a water bottle. “Why?”
“Maybe we all could get something to eat later? Ryeoun needs it, I think.”
At the not so subtle mention of his name, you hear another groan and then approaching footsteps towards the kitchen. Ryeoun is rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands when he enters your view.
“You are all so fucking loud, oh my god.”
“Here,” you toss the water bottle to Hongjoong, raising your chin so he thinks that was your plan all along, to get your friend some water when he’s in desperate need of a drop. “Drink this and take a shower. Hongjoong will have some hot coffee ready when you get out.”
At the mention of his name, he looks at you and his mouth drops a little at your set up and betrayal, but you smile at him brightly like nothing even happened.
“Thank you, Siren,” you hear Ryeoun murmur and, when you try to pass the both of them, his hands close around your arms and he pulls you in for a hug. “At least someone cares about me around here.”
“Okay, don’t cry about last night.” Kyung, dressed, walks into the space and pinches your cheek when he’s near you both. “You’re grown, you should know when to stop drinking.”
You look at the three of them, one at a time.
“What happened last night?”
“Someone tried to flirt with Seonghwa’s girlfriend and almost got beat up,” Hongjoong explains and your mouth opens, surprised, scandalized.
“What?”
“I was too drunk to know who she was!” He defends himself, letting you go and you take a step back and next to Hongjoong to look at him, still perplexed. “She’s pretty and I saw a pretty girl and took my chance.”
“And you almost end up with a black eye,” Kyung says.
Ryeoun opens his arms, offended. “You all stood there and let me do it!”
You turn to Hongjoong again, a question in your eyes for the second time today and he curves his lips with the same mischief you recognize from your teen years.
Again, it warms your soul.
“I wanted to see what would happen,” he shrugs, “they have a weird thing with their relationship label and I wanted to see if he is actually in love with her.”
“And?”
“Oh,” he laughs, “he is.”
“Good,” you whisper and then turn to Ryeoun leaning in to kiss his cheek. “Get in the shower as soon as Wook comes out.”
He rolls his eyes and for a split second you think he’s going to stomp his foot in protest, like a kid. “Okay.”
“Bring the old hag to the room,” you tell Hongjoong, turning around and making a bee line for his room before he decides to move the song-making to the living room.
“Stop calling my guitar old hag, Y/N!”
No, you think, that’s how he used to call her. In private, for the both of you only.
The weight of that secret it’s not a heavy one, but you wonder if you’ll ever tell Hongjoong about it.
Or you’ll keep it an inside joke between you and the dead.
A little time passes and your feet are about to burn a hole in the ground. After yesterday, being in this room feels different. Like that safe haven you both used to have back when you were allowed to kiss.
So far, you have tossed your bag on the bed and taken your notebook filled with lyrics out, the leatherette worn out and almost as old as Hongjoong’s guitar is peeling a little and everytime you shake it in your hand like your tambourine it flakes out and falls to the ground.
It took you a second look around the room to find the notebook Hongjoong was looking for yesterday but you didn't even touch it, you can’t bring yourself to. You’re afraid you’re going to fuck up, to get the cold, distant Hongjoong instead of the one he’s been with you since he told you about Hyunjin coming to see the show.
There’s this hope lighting up your chest that wouldn’t survive if he gives you attitude today. You’re tired, you’re anxious about the deal and your boss just texted you saying that you won’t have to go in tomorrow because the workers need an extra day to work on the issue at the store.
So you won’t be busy tomorrow to not think about him. About what could’ve been.
What could’ve been…
Frowning and with an imaginary lightbulb over your head, you fall to your knees with a hmpf and open your notebook. At that very second, Hongjoong opens the door and you catch his eyes following your movements.
Old Hag on his right hand.
“You okay?”
“Sh,” you raise your left hand and then bring your index finger to your temple. “I’m thinking.”
You hear when he closes the door and he also laughs a little, sounding concerned, but by then you have reached your bag, dragged it to the floor and now you’re looking for a pen. Did you bring a pen? You always have a pen.
“Here,” he says, walking over to you and offering a blue pen. “Is the one I use for mine. If I could only fucking find it, I—”
“It’s on the shelf, under the book you stole that one time.”
You feel more than see him pause his movements for a second, before checking on the spot you mentioned.
“Thanks,” he whispers, but you hear it and smile a little, briefly, because the lyrics coming to your head are taking all of your attention.
What we could’ve been still keeps me awake,
Every dream tastes like my own mistake.
What we could’ve been…
What we could’ve been, hm. You tap the blue pen into the page as if it’s going to miraculously bring the next line to it.
“Aaaaand it’s gone,” you fall backwards into the wood floor and shut your eyes tight. You can see the idea float like a bird and leave before you’re able to fully grasp it. “I hate being forced to write.”
“You said you had a bunch of ideas already,” you hear the mattress creak when he sits on it and you stay there, with your eyes closed, trying to figure out a way of continuing what in your head sounds like a perfect chorus for a song. “Why don’t we use some?”
“They’re all shit.”
He laughs again and when you open your eyes to look at him, he’s looking through his own notebook. “You always say they are.”
Now it’s your turn to chuckle at the call out.
“Well, they never make the cut so it must be true.”
His eyes find yours and he’s already shaking his head before he even talks.
“You know that’s not why.”
You smile. Yeah, you know that’s not why.
Staring at each other for longer than what you’ve gotten used to these past two years, you see as his throat bobs when he swallows and then he clears it, eyes looking at his notebook once again.
“What were you writing just now?”
Great question, one that immediately raises your walls because you don’t actually want him to know. Would he be able to tell that it’s about him, about you both, by only reading it?
You don’t want to know.
But yet again, this is your job. Sitting down and sharing ideas it’s fairly new, at least like this. Hongjoong technically didn’t lie when he said that you guys share but it’s never this… Intimate.
It feels like you both have been avoiding this for a while. For all the reasons you are tired of thinking about.
You wish your mind disconnected when it comes to him, at least now. Back when you had him, away from the prying looks of his friends or your friends or the paranoia that everyone is going to find out about the past you both seem to want to keep behind (and understandably so) because your body feels heavy when you get up from the floor and walk towards him, notebook open in the page you used to write the attempt at a verse inspired by everything you feel when you look at him.
He takes it and looks at the words on the paper with raised brows. You just stand there, awkwardly and with your hands behind your back, fighting the urge of taking it out of his hands.
“This is good, Y/N,” he says and when his eyes go up to look at you again, he pauses. He looks down at the bed and then at you again. “I have some verses I’ve written down that could go with it. Would you… I mean, are you going to stand there the entire time?”
“Uh—”
“It’s okay if you want to but like… You don’t have to.” He laughs a little a for a second. You think he’s as nervous as you but the thought gets wiped out completely when he scoots backwards on the bed and his back hits the wall full of posters, leaving space for you to sit in front of him.
You clearly don’t affect him the way he affects you. That’s okay, you remind yourself that you came to terms with it a long time ago even if it doesn’t feel like it anymore for some reason.
Not even bothering to reply, you take a seat on the space he made for you and take Old Hag into your hands and your lap. Softly passing fingers through the nylon, you smile at a memory that took place back then, in your room.
“You still know how to play it, right?”
You don't look at him, but at the strings of the guitar and nod. “I practice at the store with the ones they have on display, sometimes.”
He hums and you try hard not to look up at him, reading your lyrics. You can hear the pages flip and then he pauses, like he did it unconsciously, but you don’t react at all even if your heart is beating fast because of it.
You don’t want him to think there’s something there he can’t find out about, to draw suspicion on your already obvious feelings for him, written on the very same pages he’s analyzing right that moment. Instead, you try to find comfort in the sound the guitar makes when you pass the back of your nails a little firmer this time, the fingers of your other hand pressing against the nylon and the wood on the neck of it.
There’s this magnetism, this thing that just possesses you when you are making music, when it comes from the heart. You felt it at nineteen for the first time and the feeling has become addictive, so when you start singing nonsense along with the very basic melody you’re playing it doesn’t surprise you that Hongjoong puts the notebook aside and leans forward to hear you play.
He’s got that weakness for music, too. An addiction to the feeling it brings him and it’s ironic that, even if you both avoid it, you were cursed with becoming an addict to something.
This one addiction is healthy, though. And it cures hearts, effectively distracts spirits from the heat of a burning world.
“I think we should write two songs,” he starts in a murmur and after a few minutes that feel like hours, you look up from the guitar to him. “A ballad and then something with heavy drums. It’s what we do best,” he shrugs. “What do you think?”
“Okay,” you don’t really have to think about it. After all, you trust him and your judgment and, like a sign from the universe, you hear Ryeoun working his magic with the drums downstairs, the faint sound of piano keys under it. “So we’ll write the ballad and let them do the rest?” And when you say it, you do with a slight humour in your tone, like you’re not so sure they will.
“They’ll get it done,” he rolls his eyes and you smile, knowing the joke landed. “We just need to give them two business days to get over their hangover.”
Ah, yes, they drank their asses off last night. Which brings to mind…
Don’t do it.
Don’t say it.
“Of course,” you say in a whisper and then you fully lean back, almost falling off the bed. When you recover, the words stumble out of you in a clumsy, nervous manner because, deep down, you know you shouldn’t bring it up. “So, Christian— Ian,” you correct yourself quickly. “He’s, uh, he’s nice.”
You don’t look at Hongjoong because you’re too busy putting Old Hag on the bed and grabbing your notebook before shifting on the sheets, your back to him this time. You rather not look at him when you talk about this.
But you have to let it out. You’re okay with this, with them. If you are what is holding him back from being open about it, then you don’t want him to think that anymore. If anything, you want Hongjoong to trust you.
Maybe this writing experience can be the perfect opportunity to become friends once and for all.
Still, hopefulness aside, you can feel the air in the room get thick with sudden tension.
And it sucks, because you want to be a person he can rely on for things other than the band.
“He is,” he agrees and it’s a whisper you can hear because everything got really quiet all of the sudden.
There’s no noise coming from the garage either and you assume they all either fell asleep or are having one hell of a thinking session in silence. There’s no cars passing by, no street vendors yelling at all even though they live close to a market.
Nothing, just enough quiet for you to overthink his reply.
You can’t bear it. The guitar is back in your lap and your hands are positioned firmly in play position, fingers pressing against the cords a little more tightly, enough to make it really hurt.
But the room fills with the soft, calming sound of it once more and you feel the bubble of tension burst a tiny bit, a small hole that lets the air come in so you can breathe better, possibly avoid choking up on your own tongue when you speak again.
“Yeah and he’s handsome, too. That’s the whole package right there.”
Why would you say that?
“Oh,” he says and then he clears his throat. You hear the pages of a notebook turn, fast this time. “You think so?”
“Sure,” you barely look over your shoulder to give a tiny, kind of fake smile and then turn back to the guitar even though your attention is on him and his reaction. “I didn’t like him at all at first.”
He breathes out a laugh, “I noticed.”
“He kept bringing you drinks and… Hovering. But he’s Seonghwa’s brother-in-law and he has a sister that seems to love him a lot. Besides, he cares about you,” you shrug, “so I can’t really hate him like I wanted to.”
“Mmm, I’m not so sure he’s Hwa’s brother-in-law just yet.”
“I thought they were together?”
“They kind of are,” he says and you can imagine him nodding but you still don’t turn back to confirm if he is. “But not really, not yet.”
Okay, he’s trusting you with information now. He’s telling you things and you don’t have to assume them or find out through the guys or the rest of his friends. Cool. You can work with that.
And so you’re not sure why you start giving him unsolicited advice over his non-confirmed relationship with Ian, but you do anyways.
“I think nowadays it can be a little tricky to know when someone is ready to move to the next stage of the relationship, right? There’s a lot of misleading content and advice on the internet, telling you to give each other signals instead of communicating,” you let out a disappointed sigh and then shake your head, plucking the strings in a distracted manner. “Don’t let that happen to you both.”
“Hm?”
Okay that’s enough of that.
“Anyways!” You turn to him for a second and then back to the guitar. “So I was thinking a ballad but not a full on acoustic or piano one, you know? Maybe a progression like…” You play the guitar and it doesn’t really sound like you want it to because you’ve lost a lot of practice over the years, but anything is good to shift the conversation out of the crater you dug and into what actually matters, the music. “Ooo, maybe something haunting? In minor key?” And you play again but the melody sounds weird and extremely cheery for some reason. “We could, like, layer different things to make it sound like—”
Hongjoong follows along. You’re not sure if it’s because he really doesn’t want to talk about it at all or because it’s impossible for him to resist talking about music.
What you don’t know it’s why he moves forwards on the bed until he’s right behind you. What you don’t understand is how to explain to your heart that the arms he puts around you
His lips almost brush your ear when he speaks again and it’s soft, intimate, too much for your well being. “For what you’ve written I don’t think haunting would work, it’s gotta be…” Your fingers drop from the neck of the guitar and his calloused ones take their place instead. You think you stop breathing when his hand covers yours and he leans just a fraction closer, his front resting against your back now.
You think you can feel his heart beat, or is that your own heart? You don’t know, you’re not able to rationalize anything because his chin hovers over your shoulder so he can see the guitar and his hand angles your wrist a little higher. When he drags it across the strings, coaxing out a clean, ringing chord that hums against your ribs, the music that fills in the room sounds really distant.
“Something like that, maybe?”
You wish you knew what he was talking about.
The only thing you can focus on is his breath ghosting the skin of your neck when he turns a little to look at you and when you do too his nose and yours are a whisper away from each other.
Seeing the moment he notices it, how familiar this all is.
How identical this moment is from the one where you two shared your first kiss, in your room, back then.
If you read all the way down here: THANK YOU SO MUCH. NEXT CHAPTER IS A FLASHBACK CHAPTER WHO ELSE CHEERED (It'll be posted around the first week of novemeber I believe). Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, don't be afraid to go to my inbox and leave your thoughts there or down below, i love reading them!
hello, it's me, a bit late but better later than never c: the new chapter was chef's kiss but I swear to goD- reader-chan, you can't be serious 😭 ian and hongjoong?! no no no! though do tell me, does ian have a thing for reader? because i see the signs but i still hope i may be blind or stupid instead 🤨 i bet hongjoong knows and because of their past and what reader said while they were writing the song together he sees himself as not deserving and all and wants to convince himself reader will be better off with ian 😭 but then again reader thinks hongjoong is aFTER IAN?! AH i fear i might be going feral soon, respectfully ... i'm not sure if i'm ready for the next chapter, especially because you said it will be a flashback?! WILL I BE ABLE TO SURVIVE THIS?! PLEASE TELL ME, SHOULD I BE SCARED?! SHOULD I SOOTHE MY HEART IN ADVANCE BECAUSE IT WILL BE THROWN AROUND?! my goD, my feelings are all over the place i fear ... i can't wait to get my heart broken though, let's be real 😔 but what i need most is for them to finally make up, talk about their FEELINGS instead of avoiding everything like dumbasses and finally KISS before i put myself into a hospital because i need to be held back otherwise- those two have me on the edge of my seat the most so far (and i gotta admit, i'm sooo curious about what you planned for jongho because either i'm not seeing the signs or there are none to be seen-) oh AND before i forget, i saw your post about losing motivation because this glorious piece of work isn't getting the recognition you'd hoped for (or smth along the lines if i remember correctly-) i know this feeling too well, i used to write so much more when i was a bit younger and because it didn't get recognised the way i had hoped for, i started to hate writing a bit ... now that i found my love for writing again though, i learned that large numbers do not mean more than a few geniue ones, i hope you know what i mean- please know that i enjoy every word you write, every single plot and the details you come up with, i look forward to every single chapter the most as it is still my favourite series (and that will not change) please do not be upset, but be proud of the hearts you are reaching with your writing! c: 💕✨
HELLOOO???@+#(#? I cried a bit reading this ngl and I just want you to know that you got me smiling and giddy in the middle of an otherwise really meh day for me so I'm truly thankful for you and your words and your constant support 🥹 to answer the last bit first, I am! I'm trying to stay positive and before I started posting my fics, I used to see a couple of authors I follow here and in other websites talk about how the lack of engagement was discouraging and I never got it because I thought "well, if I had at least one person reading my stuff I would be the happiest gal on earth" and don't get me wrong, I am! if I'm still posting at all, it's because I got people like you and a few others that genuinely look forward to the whole story and not just the smutty parts of it (nothing wrong w writing and reading just smut, but still) and as long as I have you guys, I'm going to keep posting 🙂↕️ thank you again for the encouragement and the lovely lovely words, don't doubt I keep them close to my heart 🫶
NOW, regarding the chapter muahahhahahahaha 😈 the ian question will get answered in the fic so I don't want to give anything away but I am going to say that fic!Ian is very much a queer man so do w that info what you wish heheh. there will be a lot of feelings next chapter yes 🙂↕️ but we shall survive it, which is one of the main themes of this fic now that I think about it lol we shall survive but I also feel your frustration, nevermind me being the one writing these two fools raaaah I hate when my own characters don't communicate 😩
LASTLY, regarding the jongho fic, there's no signals at all for now but I'm sure they'll come up in the last few chapters of the ghost of us! I have yet to fully write a layout of the fic for that one but it's going to be a hell of a self insert and I apologize in advance hahahahah
again thank you for your words 🥹🫶 ilysm, I'm so happy you're enjoying everything so far!
PAIRING: guitarist/band leader!hongjoong x main vocalist!fem reader.
GENRE: exes to friends to lovers.
WARNINGS: mentions of loss, grief, alcoholism/drinking, addiction, stealing, reader uses fem pronouns, fem body parts, denial of feelings guys what would a fic of mine be without a little bit of delusion am i right, the tension is unbearable and i'm the one writing them, next chapter will have a bit more action i promise, seonghwa and his reader make a stellar cameo i love them, flirty wooyo, reader is jealous but not exactly because of you guys might think, bike rides (don't drink and drive anything i'm so serious ya'll), chaotic but domestic bliss, also heejin makes an appereance (we love her), apologies for the bad music lingo i'm not well versed in the arts (jokes, however i don't know shit about music tho).
NOTES: hiii guys! loved this chapter when i wrote it, now I'm not so sure lol. i hope you enjoy it! THIS IS PART OF THE LOVE'S AN UNCHARTED PATH series, which you can find the link for above or in my masterlist. there's a few character's mentioned that were introduced in previous stories but the full context is not needed to understand this one. as usual, this is 100% self indulgent, as all fics should be, and i think i've re-read it so many times that if you find a typo or something that just doesn't make sense, you can blame it on english not being my first language i guess lmao. i hope you enjoy it and if you do feel free to send to my askbox/reblog/type in any feedback or thoughts! <3
story masterlist / general masterlist / chapter two - next part.
After Hyunjin leaves and you all take a well deserved water break (and beer break for the guys, including Hongjoong), you all join your friends up the stairs.
Heejin is not there, but Hongjoong friends are and some of Kyung’s friends too and you know all of them so it's easy to mingle and smile sincerely at their congratulations because that was an amazing show.
What happened afterwards it's what's got you a little over the edge, but it's fine. It's cool, it's even forgettable when people are telling you that they felt something with your performance, when they're complimenting your voice or the way you moved on stage or a decision you made in the middle of a song that made the dynamic between the five of you a little more electric, a little more fun and real.
Seonghwa side-hugs you and his… girlfriend? (you never actually asked what they are to each other, really) shoves her shoulder against yours playfully.
“Well that was fucking amazing. Wasn't it, Ghost?”
Oh, and she calls Seonghwa ghost, which is a very cool nickname for a significant other if everyone ignores what ghosting means in modern lingo.
“Really, really cool. You styled them all tonight?” He asks and you nod. “I knew it. There's no way Ryeoun wearing his jacket the right way was his choice.”
Somewhere on your right, you hear the mentioned scoff. “I heard that!”
“Good!” Seonghwa shoots back, letting you go and smiling down at you. “Please style him forever, he can't keep getting away with it.”
Smiling back at him and then at his girl, you nod. “That's the plan anyways, isn't it?” They let out a chuckle that you follow and then a sigh escapes you. “Thank you guys, I was really nervous about tonight.”
“Does it have to do with the dude we saw following you guys backstage?” Wooyoung suddenly asks and you jump a little, turning to him. He smiles at you. “Hi, gorgeous. You were amazing tonight.”
Seonghwa groans, his girl just laughs and then, as you’re thanking him with a roll of your eyes because he’s being flirty with you, the very poor light this area of the bar has gets completely blocked, casting shadows over your entire face and his as well.
When you turn to see what's blocking it, you find a very smiling Ian standing behind Seonghwa’s darling. He has his hands or her shoulders and Seonghwa seems cool with it, which is a likely thing for him to do because he’s the chillest dude in the entire world, but still it seems weird.
“Amazing show, as always,” he compliments and you smile at him because you can’t help it, even if you don’t like him that much.
“Thanks, Ian.”
“Oh, you two know each other already?” He asks, looking down at the girl and then at you. “Damn it, I wanted to introduce you! This is my sister,” he says and you frown, looking at her and then at him. There’s a bit of resemblance but not much.
“Hongjoong never tells me shit,” you sigh and then you force out a laugh. “Yes, I knew her, I didn't know she was your sister though!”
“Yeah, we don’t look alike, I’m prettier,” he says with a face, like he pities her and she makes sure to raise a leg and step on his feet without holding back. A part of you can’t help to feel a little vindicated when he lets out a tiny cry of pain and then the majority of you can’t help but to feel jealous when he recovers fast and pulls on her hair before turning to you. “I’m kidding, we’re adopted,” then he turns to her and says, “ouch, you little shit.”
This hurts in the same way that Hyujin telling you his sister was the one who showed them your music hurt you.
You’re sure your energy shifts, you can feel it in the way the lump on your throat gets bigger and bigger until it feels like you’re choking up in your own unshared emotion. It must show in your face, in the way you close your arms over your chest and hug yourself a little, seeking for any kind of comfort, because even though Seonghwa’s attention is fully on the brother and sister banter going on and Wooyoung’s attention is in the drink he’s nursing, eyes on someone else in the room, you feel the back of your neck burning with a familiar stare.
One that fully knows what’s going on inside your head.
You don’t want him to step in and save you when you’re grown and can fight your own battles with your own emotions, with the longing for something you’ll never get to have.
So you force out another laugh, a more believable one now, and shake your head in a fake endearment like the scene alone it's not destroying you.
“Well, even if you guys are adopted I think she wins,” you joke and it’s not really a joke because you mean it, but it’s enough for Ian to let out an offended gasp and for her to stick her tongue out at him. For someone who practically lives inside a leather jacket and rides a bike, she turns into a child when fighting her brother. Cute.
You do your best to bring the positive feelings to the front, to let those leak through the cracks in your armor instead of the awful, envious ones. You are happy that they have each other, because you think she’s really cool and Ian… Well, he’s okay, you guess.
Not as bad.
Definitely a good brother, good friend.
Ugh, you wished for weeks before being introduced to him that he would suck, but he doesn’t.
And so when the night goes on and you lose the guys to their friends and celebration, you step outside of the bar to breathe before deciding if it’s too rude to irish-goodbye them in a night that seems so important to the band. You’re feeling a bit down, you’ve been side-eying Hongjoong the entire night hoping he’ll speak to you, too, but Ian steals all his attention in the way your brother used to and so the reminder that he’s supposed to be there instead of Ian, that he’s supposed to be there instead of you, has been weighting on your shoulders the entire night.
You can’t help but think of him when things like these happen, mostly because they were supposed to be his to celebrate in the first place but also because you feel like you have no one that close to you to congratulate you on this tiny goal you guys just met.
The one that does it’s too busy keeping rockstar appearances with his friends and Heejin had to work tonight of all nights.
Sighing, you wish you had at least picked up a smoking habit so you could look less miserable out there, with your back against the dirty wall.
When the door opens a few meters from you, you don’t even spare the person a look. You hear their footsteps get closer and closer and you know exactly who it is because your heart recognizes him wherever he goes.
“You good? Come inside,” he ushers you and when you finally turn to him, you realize he doesn’t have a jacket on. “It’s cold.”
“I’m good, just… Tired,” you say, shrugging and giving him a tiny smile. The last thing you want is for him to know what’s actually putting the dark cloud over your head. “Didn’t get to nap earlier, remember?”
Hongjoong hums and you look down to the floor again. You know it’s a little useless lying to him, but you take advantage of the weird distance that’s between the both of you since you came back into his life and try to erase yesterday night and this afternoon from your mind.
Close to him, you can’t actually function like you want to. Your hands were shaking the entire time you did his makeup earlier and you don’t really know what possessed you to stay close to him even after you were done. Hand over his tattoo, worried that the guys might piece together your past and with the door unlocked, too. You didn’t move because you didn’t want it to be over.
Even now, when he’s shivering because of the cold night breeze, you just want to keep him here so that you two can be alone in a space together where no one can interrupt. Like you had him back then.
It sucks that you want to seek comfort in someone who wants you as far away as possible.
“Go back, Joong,” you tell him, taking a step forward in his direction, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing there before letting go. “And stop drinking, hm? Ian keeps bringing you beers that you keep accepting.”
“I’m giving them to Woo when he’s not looking,” he says and you wonder if he’s lying so you stop worrying about that, because you haven’t seen him do that at all. “They’re all wondering where you went and, uh, Yunho and Yeosang videocalled a few minutes ago.”
“Where are they?”
“London,” he says and you frown, letting out a confused chuckle. “A work thing that’s actually a romantic gesture, I guess. Yunho’s girlfriend also went, that’s why they’re not here tonight.”
It’s endearing how he has to explain it because he knows you probably wondered about them at some point in the night. And you did, but you didn’t ask anyone because they’re his friends, not yours.
Still, because you don’t want the moment to end, you ask. “And they brought Yeosang to thirdwheel or…?”
“It’s his romantic gesture,” Hongjoong says and when you raise your brows, surprised, he laughs. “Long story.”
“I bet,” you smile and he does too and it takes a whole five seconds of you two staring at each other before you’re awkwardly looking around and fidgeting in your feet. “Listen, I don’t work tomorrow. They’re going to do something with the lights in the store, I think.” You didn’t actually pay attention to what your boss was saying on the phone, if you are honest. “So, um, the museum is closed and I think the guys can get away from their jobs a little earlier if they wanted to, right?” Hongjoong nods. “Well, we should get together and start writing the song.”
There’s a tiny pause where the awkwardness disappears from his face, the only thing you can find in his expression is softness, endearment even.
“I was about to tell you the same thing.”
And even if it’s been two years, it’s a little bit weird how you two can still coordinate with each other as if he’s able to read your mind.
Like time didn’t pass at all.
“Okay. Good, tell them, I’ll see you tomo—”
“You’re leaving?”
That was not Hongjoong.
How did Christian appear from thin air?
“I’m leaving,” you say, taking a step back from Hongjoong for good measure. You see him tense up and you wonder if Ian knows about you two. After all, they’ve been pretty close for a few months and if they’re actually together, he must know you’ve been involved with each other. You turn to your old, old friend. “Hongjoong is staying for a little bit, right?”
“R-right.”
When you turn back to Ian, you do so with a genuine smile. It burns your soul but you wish them happiness because there’s nothing you would like more than for Hongjoong to be happy.
You’re also feeling a bit nostalgic, so that’s enough hurting for the night. Coming to terms with the fact that this dude might be a good thing for him it’s what you need to—
“Can I take you home?”
What.
Why is Christian looking at you and not at Hongjoong?
You blink three times, fast and from the corner of your eye you see Hongjoong do the same.
“I mean, it’s late. I don’t know if there’s any buses or taxis around, you can always call an uber but my bike is around the corner,” he points with his thumb and then shrugs.
“You were drinking, though,” you say, trying to get out of the very good offer he’s making.
“One beer,” he argues, smiling and Hongjoong clears his throat. “And a half. One beer and a half but it takes more than that for me to feel drunk.”
Great, a heavy drinker.
I don’t know if that’s what Hongjoong needs, or you. But he doesn’t seem to think the same.
“You should go with him,” he says, with a smile on his face you can’t really decipher. “It is late and—”
“You don’t trust uber drivers, yeah, yeah,” you roll your eyes. “I know.”
He chuckles and you think Ian does too, but you’re not focused on him at all.
“Just… Text the group chat when you’re home.”
And before you can argue anything else, Hongjoong is half hugging Ian and then practically jogging towards the bar door.
He must really trust this dude. Okay, you can trust his judgment. You can move your feelings towards Hongjoong and the hurt you feel when you see him and Ian together to the side one more time as a thank you for the kind gesture, sure.
It is awkward as hell when you’re left alone with him on the street and then it takes one uncomfy laugh for him to murmur a let’s go and start moving.
The walk to the motorcycle is slow and you don’t really say anything but you look at him and he looks at you and you both smile a little.
You have to take a deep breath before saying. “Thank you for offering, you really don’t have to do this, you still have time to turn around and—”
“It’s okay, I don’t think I would have peace of mind going back in now.”
“Oh,” nodding, you give him another smile that’s more awkward than anything because why does he worry about you? “That’s nice of you. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. She has Seonghwa now so I don’t worry, but my sister used to do shit like that all the time.”
“Go home late?”
“Yeah,” he shakes his head. “I used to worry a lot, she likes late night walking for some reason? I don’t understand,” he lets out a breathy laugh and you smile. “And it’s not my job to understand but I still want her safe.”
Once again, you are miserable with the fact that he’s a good person.
And also a bit weird. But so are you, so whatever.
“I totally get it. My roommate works at a bar most nights and I tell her to wait until the sun starts rising if she can, we used to do that when we worked together,” you shrug, “I’m just really tired tonight.”
He smiles “Long day, huh?”
“Yeah,” you say quietly and he nods, like he understands. Does he understand? “Do you work at the shop with your sister?”
“Oh,” he turns to you, a little wide eyed like he didn’t expect you to know that at all. “Yeah, it’s our father’s shop. She fixes cars,” you both come to a stop when you reach his Harley. “I fix bikes.”
You hum and grab the helmet he offers you, putting it on. “So you must be tired as fuck too, huh?”
He laughs and then makes a sound of agreement, getting on his bike and patting the back of the seat. You scrunch your nose and shake your head, cringing a little.
“What?”
“Never do that again,” you tell him, half joking and then put a hand on his shoulder to support your weight as you get on the bike as well. “Especially not to Hongjoong, he doesn’t like to be told what to do.”
“Funny,” he says looking over his shoulder. “He said the same about you. Address?”
You give him your address and then hold onto his sides the entire way. The streets are not empty but you should’ve definitely checked the clock before even attempting to leave by yourself.
There’s no conversation, only the late night sunday breeze hitting your exposed skin and your eyes close briefly, enjoying the feeling. It’s only when your eyes are closed after many, many hours that you realize how actually tired you are, how pretending to be so unaffected by many things around you only made you burn out the remaining energy you had.
The semi-empty streets make the usual twenty minute ride to your home feel like five and you pat yourself on the back for being so into your own thoughts that these didn’t feel half as awkward as it was supposed to.
It gives you the strength to keep up appearances with Ian, at least for the night.
“Over here?” You hear him ask, muffled by the sound of his helmet and you point to your apartment building with your index as a response. “Ah, over there.”
He comes to a stop and you quickly get down the bike, rushing to take the helmet off with your impatience makes you look ridiculous trying to get it off fast, because you get stuck in the clasp.”
“Goddamn it, I hate this type of thingy.”
You hear him laugh, see him take his own helmet off and the next thing you feel is his hand over yours. He unclasps the thing easily and you get it off quick, letting out a batted breath because you were starting to feel trapped.
“Thank you,” you say, offering the helmet back to him and he takes it, rests it on his backseat. “And thank you for the ride.” You don’t repeat that he didn’t have to, because he already explained to you why he did it and that’s enough. And then you don’t know what really possesses you to say what you say next, but you do. “I’m glad Hongjoong has someone like you in his life. I’m sure he needed it and I’m happy you found each other.”
Looking down at the helmet and then back up at you with an intrigued expression on his face, he nods. “I really enjoy his company so I’m glad I have him in my life. I enjoy your company, too— I-I mean, you and the rest of the guys,” he recovers fast and you nod with a tiny smile tugging at your lips. He is a little weird. “It’s like being friends with your idol, you know?”
“Oh, come on,” when you go around the bike to get close to your building’s entrance, you take the chance to push him in the shoulder. “We’re not even that big yet.”
“Yet,” he emphasizes, smiling. “Almost nine thousand listeners in Spotify, too. That’s huge.”
Rolling your eyes, you turn to enter the code of the front door quickly and when it opens you hold it with your right hand, while the left waves at him.
“Goodnight!”
“Night,” you hear him say before you close the door and even if you don’t look back as you go up the stairs to the third floor, you can tell he was smiling as he said it.
When you go to sleep that night, with makeup on and in your underwear, you do so without overthinking what could’ve been.
For the first time in forever, you actually think you’re moving on from Hongjoong.
And from the light his love brought to your life.
The next day, as you expected, it’s chaos. You’re grateful you get to wake up later than usual because you knew, no matter what, the guys would wake up even later than you.
Heejin is by your side and she huffs and puffs when you scoot to the edge of the mattress so you can get out of bed.
“I thought you didn’t have to work today,” she says, eyes still closed and sleep clinging to her voice.
“Band stuff,” you shrug even if she can’t see you and you take her hand in yours so you can give it a kiss. “I’ll text you. Keep sleeping, you have a shift in a bit, right?”
Not at the bar, but at a clothing store she got hired at recently.
She mumbles something and lets out a tiny cry, probably at the reminder of her shift, before you let her go and get up to take a shower and get ready for the day.
As you do, yesterday night replays in your head. It’s foggy, like you didn’t actually live it but dream it instead and the possibility of finally getting a deal so you can all meet your goal cruises through you with motivation, like a fire.
When you get to the guys’ apartment and put in the code for the door, you hope that what you see doesn’t kill the spark but you’re kind of expecting it anyway: Ryeoun is on the couch, pants and socks still on. There’s a mess on the floor and as soon as you close the door you hear a muffled scream that sounds like Kyung before the door to his room opens up and he walks out in his underwear and with a towel on his hand that he presses on his semi-undressed body to cover up once he sees you.
“Oh, hi Siren.”
“Good morning,” you say, still by the door, eyebrows raised in silent questions.
“You heard that?” He asks and you nod, smiling a bit. “I was hyping myself up so I could get out of bed,” he explains and it doesn’t make it better so then he looks back to the empty hallway and then to you. “I have a mean hangover, so…”
“Right.”
He points back to his room. “I think it also woke Hyunwook up, so you’re welcomed.”
“Get in the fucking shower!” you hear the mentioned yell from inside the room they share and you shake your head, already entertained with their shenanigans.
“Shut up!” Ryeoun yells suddenly and you jump a little before going towards him. His arm is over his eyes to shield them from the light coming in from the window and you smile when you try to shake him and he doesn’t budge. “Five more minutes.”
“It’s already late,” you tell him and when he hears your voice, his arm falls to his chest. He opens his eyes just a little and smiles up at you, murmurs a hi. “We need to write a song, Ryeoun.”
“You need to write a song, we need to write a melody.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about that too,” Hyunwook says from the hallway entrance and he yawns. At least he has a shirt on… And shorts. “Us three should go downstairs and write the melody and you two should stay up here and write the lyrics. Hyunjin said that it takes a while to hear back but what if it doesn’t?” He walks towards the couch and takes Ryeoun's legs, who whines at the new interruption of his sleep, and sits down before tossing his legs aside, almost knocking Ryeoun off the couch entirely. “What if we hear back in a day or two? We need to divide the labor.”
“And how did it go for us when we did, back in college?”
Hongjoong’s voice draws your attention completely. He sounds tired, like he didn’t get any sleep at all. You’d know.
When you turn to him, there’s dark circles under his eyes and a cup with steam coming out of it. Probably coffee, though the apartment doesn’t smell like it at all. It smells like dude, like them. It’s not always the most pleasant smell but you can tell they’ve been trying to get better at being clean and organized. They’re just hungover today.
Looking at Hongjoong, you try to decipher if he is as well. You’ve never seen him have one, mostly because he’s true to his word and never gets drunk, actually drunk.
But lately… Ugh, you need to shake the feeling off you, tell the part of you that longs to shield him from his father’s memory, from becoming like him, to remind itself that it’s not your job to do so in the first place.
“It doesn’t matter, we graduated.”
“Barely,” he scoffs and then catches you staring. He gives you a tiny smile. “What do you think?”
Returning the smile and then looking at the predicament both Hyunwook and Ryeoun are in, you shrug. “I think they’re not going to get anything done if we’re not there.”
Ryeoun gasps dramatically and Hyunwook clicks his tongue, letting his head drop to the side in annoyance.
“We can get shit done!”
“It’ll probably take us less time to come up with a melody, anyways,” Hyunwook says and then the bathroom door opens and Kyung comes out with a towel around his waist and one on his hand, drying his hair. “Right?”
“Uh,” he looks at the guys on the couch and then at you and Hongjoong, trying to decide which side he’s supposed to be on in this pointless argument he probably heard nothing of. “Sure.”
“That’s three against two, baby!” Hyunwook gets up from the couch, runs to the bathroom next and Ryeoun groans again before getting himself comfortable.
They truly are like kids. Not yours, thank God, but kids nonetheless. You turn to their actual father figure with a raised brow and he just runs a hand over his face, annoyed.
In your heart, you know Hongjoong sees a lot of his younger self in them. He is a year or two older so you don’t know how much he can use the hyung card with them, but there’s this endearment masked as exasperation that you recognize very well. It warms your soul, it makes you smile and you take a deep breath before looking away before him or Ryeoun catches you cheesing over your own assumptions over what Hongjoong is feeling.
You take a few steps into his direction and then pass on him completely before heading for the kitchen.
“There’s something so sinister about getting a clueless Kyung and a sleepy Ryeoun on his side,” you sigh in front of the fridge. You have permission to open it if you want but the thing is you’re not really hungry, you’re not really thirsty either. You’re waiting for him to invite you to his room and it’s making you nervous as hell. “He makes me sick.”
You hear Hongjoong huff out a laugh and when you turn to look at him over your shoulder, he’s crossed armed and staring right back at you.
“He’s mean but I do trust they’ll at least start on the song today,” he shrugs. “I don’t know if they’ll finish it but we’re all going to have something by the end of the day. You’re staying, right?”
“Hm?”
You have to ask him to repeat himself because you’re misreading the way he asked in the first place. There’s this hopeful, airy tone laced with his question that makes your heartbeat grow erratic and you can’t have it, especially not when you’re trying to focus on something else.
Something important, like the song.
But maybe getting to feel this is exactly what Hyunjin is asking for, something heartfelt, something… Real.
What’s more real than your love for him?
“The entire day, are you staying or do you have to do anything else today?”
Ah.
“I’m staying,” you say with a barely there nod and you curve a smile before turning to the fridge again. You open it, pretend you’re looking for something until your eyes land on a water bottle. “Why?”
“Maybe we all could get something to eat later? Ryeoun needs it, I think.”
At the not so subtle mention of his name, you hear another groan and then approaching footsteps towards the kitchen. Ryeoun is rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands when he enters your view.
“You are all so fucking loud, oh my god.”
“Here,” you toss the water bottle to Hongjoong, raising your chin so he thinks that was your plan all along, to get your friend some water when he’s in desperate need of a drop. “Drink this and take a shower. Hongjoong will have some hot coffee ready when you get out.”
At the mention of his name, he looks at you and his mouth drops a little at your set up and betrayal, but you smile at him brightly like nothing even happened.
“Thank you, Siren,” you hear Ryeoun murmur and, when you try to pass the both of them, his hands close around your arms and he pulls you in for a hug. “At least someone cares about me around here.”
“Okay, don’t cry about last night.” Kyung, dressed, walks into the space and pinches your cheek when he’s near you both. “You’re grown, you should know when to stop drinking.”
You look at the three of them, one at a time.
“What happened last night?”
“Someone tried to flirt with Seonghwa’s girlfriend and almost got beat up,” Hongjoong explains and your mouth opens, surprised, scandalized.
“What?”
“I was too drunk to know who she was!” He defends himself, letting you go and you take a step back and next to Hongjoong to look at him, still perplexed. “She’s pretty and I saw a pretty girl and took my chance.”
“And you almost end up with a black eye,” Kyung says.
Ryeoun opens his arms, offended. “You all stood there and let me do it!”
You turn to Hongjoong again, a question in your eyes for the second time today and he curves his lips with the same mischief you recognize from your teen years.
Again, it warms your soul.
“I wanted to see what would happen,” he shrugs, “they have a weird thing with their relationship label and I wanted to see if he is actually in love with her.”
“And?”
“Oh,” he laughs, “he is.”
“Good,” you whisper and then turn to Ryeoun leaning in to kiss his cheek. “Get in the shower as soon as Wook comes out.”
He rolls his eyes and for a split second you think he’s going to stomp his foot in protest, like a kid. “Okay.”
“Bring the old hag to the room,” you tell Hongjoong, turning around and making a bee line for his room before he decides to move the song-making to the living room.
“Stop calling my guitar old hag, Y/N!”
No, you think, that’s how he used to call her. In private, for the both of you only.
The weight of that secret it’s not a heavy one, but you wonder if you’ll ever tell Hongjoong about it.
Or you’ll keep it an inside joke between you and the dead.
A little time passes and your feet are about to burn a hole in the ground. After yesterday, being in this room feels different. Like that safe haven you both used to have back when you were allowed to kiss.
So far, you have tossed your bag on the bed and taken your notebook filled with lyrics out, the leatherette worn out and almost as old as Hongjoong’s guitar is peeling a little and everytime you shake it in your hand like your tambourine it flakes out and falls to the ground.
It took you a second look around the room to find the notebook Hongjoong was looking for yesterday but you didn't even touch it, you can’t bring yourself to. You’re afraid you’re going to fuck up, to get the cold, distant Hongjoong instead of the one he’s been with you since he told you about Hyunjin coming to see the show.
There’s this hope lighting up your chest that wouldn’t survive if he gives you attitude today. You’re tired, you’re anxious about the deal and your boss just texted you saying that you won’t have to go in tomorrow because the workers need an extra day to work on the issue at the store.
So you won’t be busy tomorrow to not think about him. About what could’ve been.
What could’ve been…
Frowning and with an imaginary lightbulb over your head, you fall to your knees with a hmpf and open your notebook. At that very second, Hongjoong opens the door and you catch his eyes following your movements.
Old Hag on his right hand.
“You okay?”
“Sh,” you raise your left hand and then bring your index finger to your temple. “I’m thinking.”
You hear when he closes the door and he also laughs a little, sounding concerned, but by then you have reached your bag, dragged it to the floor and now you’re looking for a pen. Did you bring a pen? You always have a pen.
“Here,” he says, walking over to you and offering a blue pen. “Is the one I use for mine. If I could only fucking find it, I—”
“It’s on the shelf, under the book you stole that one time.”
You feel more than see him pause his movements for a second, before checking on the spot you mentioned.
“Thanks,” he whispers, but you hear it and smile a little, briefly, because the lyrics coming to your head are taking all of your attention.
What we could’ve been still keeps me awake,
Every dream tastes like my own mistake.
What we could’ve been…
What we could’ve been, hm. You tap the blue pen into the page as if it’s going to miraculously bring the next line to it.
“Aaaaand it’s gone,” you fall backwards into the wood floor and shut your eyes tight. You can see the idea float like a bird and leave before you’re able to fully grasp it. “I hate being forced to write.”
“You said you had a bunch of ideas already,” you hear the mattress creak when he sits on it and you stay there, with your eyes closed, trying to figure out a way of continuing what in your head sounds like a perfect chorus for a song. “Why don’t we use some?”
“They’re all shit.”
He laughs again and when you open your eyes to look at him, he’s looking through his own notebook. “You always say they are.”
Now it’s your turn to chuckle at the call out.
“Well, they never make the cut so it must be true.”
His eyes find yours and he’s already shaking his head before he even talks.
“You know that’s not why.”
You smile. Yeah, you know that’s not why.
Staring at each other for longer than what you’ve gotten used to these past two years, you see as his throat bobs when he swallows and then he clears it, eyes looking at his notebook once again.
“What were you writing just now?”
Great question, one that immediately raises your walls because you don’t actually want him to know. Would he be able to tell that it’s about him, about you both, by only reading it?
You don’t want to know.
But yet again, this is your job. Sitting down and sharing ideas it’s fairly new, at least like this. Hongjoong technically didn’t lie when he said that you guys share but it’s never this… Intimate.
It feels like you both have been avoiding this for a while. For all the reasons you are tired of thinking about.
You wish your mind disconnected when it comes to him, at least now. Back when you had him, away from the prying looks of his friends or your friends or the paranoia that everyone is going to find out about the past you both seem to want to keep behind (and understandably so) because your body feels heavy when you get up from the floor and walk towards him, notebook open in the page you used to write the attempt at a verse inspired by everything you feel when you look at him.
He takes it and looks at the words on the paper with raised brows. You just stand there, awkwardly and with your hands behind your back, fighting the urge of taking it out of his hands.
“This is good, Y/N,” he says and when his eyes go up to look at you again, he pauses. He looks down at the bed and then at you again. “I have some verses I’ve written down that could go with it. Would you… I mean, are you going to stand there the entire time?”
“Uh—”
“It’s okay if you want to but like… You don’t have to.” He laughs a little a for a second. You think he’s as nervous as you but the thought gets wiped out completely when he scoots backwards on the bed and his back hits the wall full of posters, leaving space for you to sit in front of him.
You clearly don’t affect him the way he affects you. That’s okay, you remind yourself that you came to terms with it a long time ago even if it doesn’t feel like it anymore for some reason.
Not even bothering to reply, you take a seat on the space he made for you and take Old Hag into your hands and your lap. Softly passing fingers through the nylon, you smile at a memory that took place back then, in your room.
“You still know how to play it, right?”
You don't look at him, but at the strings of the guitar and nod. “I practice at the store with the ones they have on display, sometimes.”
He hums and you try hard not to look up at him, reading your lyrics. You can hear the pages flip and then he pauses, like he did it unconsciously, but you don’t react at all even if your heart is beating fast because of it.
You don’t want him to think there’s something there he can’t find out about, to draw suspicion on your already obvious feelings for him, written on the very same pages he’s analyzing right that moment. Instead, you try to find comfort in the sound the guitar makes when you pass the back of your nails a little firmer this time, the fingers of your other hand pressing against the nylon and the wood on the neck of it.
There’s this magnetism, this thing that just possesses you when you are making music, when it comes from the heart. You felt it at nineteen for the first time and the feeling has become addictive, so when you start singing nonsense along with the very basic melody you’re playing it doesn’t surprise you that Hongjoong puts the notebook aside and leans forward to hear you play.
He’s got that weakness for music, too. An addiction to the feeling it brings him and it’s ironic that, even if you both avoid it, you were cursed with becoming an addict to something.
This one addiction is healthy, though. And it cures hearts, effectively distracts spirits from the heat of a burning world.
“I think we should write two songs,” he starts in a murmur and after a few minutes that feel like hours, you look up from the guitar to him. “A ballad and then something with heavy drums. It’s what we do best,” he shrugs. “What do you think?”
“Okay,” you don’t really have to think about it. After all, you trust him and your judgment and, like a sign from the universe, you hear Ryeoun working his magic with the drums downstairs, the faint sound of piano keys under it. “So we’ll write the ballad and let them do the rest?” And when you say it, you do with a slight humour in your tone, like you’re not so sure they will.
“They’ll get it done,” he rolls his eyes and you smile, knowing the joke landed. “We just need to give them two business days to get over their hangover.”
Ah, yes, they drank their asses off last night. Which brings to mind…
Don’t do it.
Don’t say it.
“Of course,” you say in a whisper and then you fully lean back, almost falling off the bed. When you recover, the words stumble out of you in a clumsy, nervous manner because, deep down, you know you shouldn’t bring it up. “So, Christian— Ian,” you correct yourself quickly. “He’s, uh, he’s nice.”
You don’t look at Hongjoong because you’re too busy putting Old Hag on the bed and grabbing your notebook before shifting on the sheets, your back to him this time. You rather not look at him when you talk about this.
But you have to let it out. You’re okay with this, with them. If you are what is holding him back from being open about it, then you don’t want him to think that anymore. If anything, you want Hongjoong to trust you.
Maybe this writing experience can be the perfect opportunity to become friends once and for all.
Still, hopefulness aside, you can feel the air in the room get thick with sudden tension.
And it sucks, because you want to be a person he can rely on for things other than the band.
“He is,” he agrees and it’s a whisper you can hear because everything got really quiet all of the sudden.
There’s no noise coming from the garage either and you assume they all either fell asleep or are having one hell of a thinking session in silence. There’s no cars passing by, no street vendors yelling at all even though they live close to a market.
Nothing, just enough quiet for you to overthink his reply.
You can’t bear it. The guitar is back in your lap and your hands are positioned firmly in play position, fingers pressing against the cords a little more tightly, enough to make it really hurt.
But the room fills with the soft, calming sound of it once more and you feel the bubble of tension burst a tiny bit, a small hole that lets the air come in so you can breathe better, possibly avoid choking up on your own tongue when you speak again.
“Yeah and he’s handsome, too. That’s the whole package right there.”
Why would you say that?
“Oh,” he says and then he clears his throat. You hear the pages of a notebook turn, fast this time. “You think so?”
“Sure,” you barely look over your shoulder to give a tiny, kind of fake smile and then turn back to the guitar even though your attention is on him and his reaction. “I didn’t like him at all at first.”
He breathes out a laugh, “I noticed.”
“He kept bringing you drinks and… Hovering. But he’s Seonghwa’s brother-in-law and he has a sister that seems to love him a lot. Besides, he cares about you,” you shrug, “so I can’t really hate him like I wanted to.”
“Mmm, I’m not so sure he’s Hwa’s brother-in-law just yet.”
“I thought they were together?”
“They kind of are,” he says and you can imagine him nodding but you still don’t turn back to confirm if he is. “But not really, not yet.”
Okay, he’s trusting you with information now. He’s telling you things and you don’t have to assume them or find out through the guys or the rest of his friends. Cool. You can work with that.
And so you’re not sure why you start giving him unsolicited advice over his non-confirmed relationship with Ian, but you do anyways.
“I think nowadays it can be a little tricky to know when someone is ready to move to the next stage of the relationship, right? There’s a lot of misleading content and advice on the internet, telling you to give each other signals instead of communicating,” you let out a disappointed sigh and then shake your head, plucking the strings in a distracted manner. “Don’t let that happen to you both.”
“Hm?”
Okay that’s enough of that.
“Anyways!” You turn to him for a second and then back to the guitar. “So I was thinking a ballad but not a full on acoustic or piano one, you know? Maybe a progression like…” You play the guitar and it doesn’t really sound like you want it to because you’ve lost a lot of practice over the years, but anything is good to shift the conversation out of the crater you dug and into what actually matters, the music. “Ooo, maybe something haunting? In minor key?” And you play again but the melody sounds weird and extremely cheery for some reason. “We could, like, layer different things to make it sound like—”
Hongjoong follows along. You’re not sure if it’s because he really doesn’t want to talk about it at all or because it’s impossible for him to resist talking about music.
What you don’t know it’s why he moves forwards on the bed until he’s right behind you. What you don’t understand is how to explain to your heart that the arms he puts around you
His lips almost brush your ear when he speaks again and it’s soft, intimate, too much for your well being. “For what you’ve written I don’t think haunting would work, it’s gotta be…” Your fingers drop from the neck of the guitar and his calloused ones take their place instead. You think you stop breathing when his hand covers yours and he leans just a fraction closer, his front resting against your back now.
You think you can feel his heart beat, or is that your own heart? You don’t know, you’re not able to rationalize anything because his chin hovers over your shoulder so he can see the guitar and his hand angles your wrist a little higher. When he drags it across the strings, coaxing out a clean, ringing chord that hums against your ribs, the music that fills in the room sounds really distant.
“Something like that, maybe?”
You wish you knew what he was talking about.
The only thing you can focus on is his breath ghosting the skin of your neck when he turns a little to look at you and when you do too his nose and yours are a whisper away from each other.
Seeing the moment he notices it, how familiar this all is.
How identical this moment is from the one where you two shared your first kiss, in your room, back then.
If you read all the way down here: THANK YOU SO MUCH. NEXT CHAPTER IS A FLASHBACK CHAPTER WHO ELSE CHEERED (It'll be posted around the first week of novemeber I believe). Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, don't be afraid to go to my inbox and leave your thoughts there or down below, i love reading them!
I hope you don’t feel so :/ anymore. I’m patiently waiting for more of this series and the others in general lol I hope you know your stories have a special place in my heart, and a lot are my “comfort readings". all the love for you!!! <3 💋🫂 (im sleepy but i wanted to send you this)
hiiiii my love. I'm not going to lie, life's been a bit tough with me lately so I've been feeling a bit more :/ than usual and haven't been writing as much. I do have the next part written and finished but I haven't been able to finish part four at all :( I will never post chap 3 next week and if I lock in this weekend I might be able to post something for Halloween! (no promises though). I truly appreciate this message 🥹 I'm sending you lots of hugs and love and everything good in your direction, you make me (and my stories) have some sort of purpose here! thank you thank you thank you 🫶
I promise I will read part 2 just haven't had time yet so sorry life is very busy for me during the last quarter of the year 😞 but I'm sure it'll be amazing and I can't wait for what you have coming next in the series 💕💕💕 Hope you're doing well and taking care of yourself 💕🤗💕
hi my darling that's okay! read when you got the time to 🫶 it's busy times all around I fear so no worries my love, sending you lots of love and thank you so much for your wishes 🥹💜
