tags: james x f!reader, longfic, sfw, college au, angst if you squint, pining, ft. cortis hyung line and members of katseye
synopsis: you and james were joint at the hip. all your friends saw it, the way you looked at each other, the lack of boundaries, the genuine connection. throughout heartbreaks, bad dates and long days, you found each other at the end of it all. you both had a track record of shortlived flings, however, when you get in a proper relationship for the first time ever and leave james behind, he wonders why he cares this much, and gets antsy waiting for you to snap out of it.
snoopy's notes: here's part 2 you guys are so nice 😭 i was pooping it posting this ngl
(wc: 2.9k)
[part 1] part 2
you rarely saw james after that night. at first, when you'd woke up the next morning with a splitting headache, and immediately recalled the events of the previous night, you really, seriously, did not like james.
you figured he felt the same because he didn't text you once asking if you got home okay, or even text you at all. for the entirety of the next week.
whatever, you didn't care. you had sensed this has been coming.
you went on with your life, he went on with his. he rarely showed to group hangouts and when he was there you spent your whole energy avoiding him. your friends were quite mortified at this shift in energy and knew the party that day was to blame, but nobody knew what exactly happened and james the ever mysterious being was never going to spill anything. manon had at times tried bringing it up to you, only to be dismissed with a "It's nothing, i've been busy."
but it was not nothing, you knew that. you knew it when you felt your stomach twist when you saw through the window of a café, james sitting with a blue haired girl, laughing over shared coffees.
when you started seeing it, it was everywhere. as you walked between buildings on campus, your eyes would land on them on a park bench, them in front of a lecture hall, him with his arms draped around her casually as he talked to, you assumed, her friends, her fingers reaching out to brush a stray hair from his forehead.
you were going insane. always on edge, always on defense. louis, obviously, sensed it. he'd get a dismissive answer everytime. you blamed the end of term exams and he'd nod and let it go.
and one day, out of nowhere, it stopped. james was floating throw hallways and cafes and buildings, alone. he didn't show any change in his demeanor, and you were dying to know what happened. but you and him were too far removed for a conversation like that. you noticed that even after that, he didn't float back to you. he kept his measured distance, his one word responses, his unfixed gaze. the feeling left you disappointed and empty.
the weather was getting colder, enough to see your breath in the morning air and the need to bury yourself inside your coat every time you stepped outside.
it was after work, the sun had already set as it did too early in the later months. louis was in step beside you, walking you home. you exchanged bits of each other's days, one of you made a joke and the other laughed just for the sake of laughing. everything fell kind of flat. you blamed your exhaustion, you wondered what louis blamed. you'd ask him questions about his day, about him, and get a sentence long answer, like he answered for the sake of answering. and then you'd wait for him to ask you something and it never happend. you'd begin talking at your own accord, whether he asked or not, about something funny megan said, or that time martin did something weird. about the book you were reading or a song you'd tell him to listen to. he'd always forget, then apologize saying he had been busy. he'd forget which one of your friends was which despite the mountain of anecdotes you had shared including them, nod with a simple "hmm.." when you ranted about your book.
your footsteps slowed as you reach the front of your building, rummaging for the keys in your bag. louis had been awfully quiet, and now he watched you intently. you feel his gaze and look up at him raising an eyebrow.
he opens his mouth to say something then closes it.
then he opens it again, hesitantly, then confidently, as if he had something to prove, he says,
"i love you."
your mind blanks and the first thing you think of is james in the glow of the neon lights asking you if you were in love. your mind fixated on the glaze in his eyes, his sharp features softened by the night. you freeze.
"y/n?" he calls.
"yeah?" you answer, still stuck.
"i love you." he says again, more definitely, like a challenge.
you cannot move your mouth to say those three words back. louis' face contorts in anger. to subvert his outburst, you quickly jump in,
"i don't think i'm ready."
he scoffs incredulously, "seriously?
"i'm sorry."
"sorry?" he echoes, "that doesn't cut it. i've been trying my hardest this entire time and you can't even say you love me?"
"you're saying that like i haven't been trying."
"yeah, cause you haven't!" his eyes flash, "you're always somewhere else, always distracted, always something!"
you don't have a response for that so you stay quiet.
"you want something else, and i can't give it to you." he says quietly, defeated.
you feel an ache in your chest and your fingers reach out to hold him, but he backs away.
"i can't lie to you," you begin hesitantly, "i'm sorry we're on different pages."
you had parted ways in a manner that felt final. you felt surprisingly normal. lying in bed you kept asking yourself how could you have ever loved him when you didn't even know him, and he made no effort to know you, except the basic everyday stuff. however you couldn't find things to pick at either. he had been kind to you, took you seriously as a relationship, held your hand in front of other people and looked happy doing it, held you when you need him to, took you on dates and bought you flowers and followed every other rule applied to boyfriends, but that was it. there was all of that and nothing else. everything felt hollow in an unmistakable yet ignorable way. you hadn't questioned it in concrete words until now, but now that you did everything fell into place.
"i think he plays the part of being your boyfriend instead of actually being your boyfriend."
perhaps the thing you were mad about the most was that he was right.
james was aware of your breakup as soon as everyone else was. the others probably got an explanation but he didn't bother himself with that. it felt pretty stupid honestly, how that one night and a few words had been governing his and your life. he had noticed you were less cold towards him now though, things were in no way back to normal but there was an air of something else to it. he wondered if the breakup hit you hard, it was your first relationship after all. these days you kept to yourself. sometimes you even smiled at him, a tight polite smile, exchanged a few words here and there. james' heart twisted in his chest everytime, now that he'd finally put words to the feeling instead of shying away like a coward.
loving someone meant wanting the best for them and not the best for you. he wasn't going to impose himself on you anymore, he would learn to let go, learn to be just your friend if that's all he got. but he wasn't sure that he could be just your friend yet. so he stayed away.
he didn't know that somewhere, sometime, in the in-betweens, you had also put a name on the feeling and awaited his every reaction. you didn't inch away from the truth anymore, neither of you did. it was just the matter of finding the whole truth together.
juhoon was out somewhere tonight, leaving james the apartment all to himself. he celebrated this occasion by being sprawled on the couch and watching crappy television, barely paying attention. his phone vibrated from the side table and he moved towards it slowly. he stared at your name highlighting the cold screen on his hands. he paused before swiping up.
there was silence like static,
"hello?" he was half convinced he was rang by mistake.
there was rustling on the other end, then your voice came through the static,
"It's snowing."
james' eyes land on his window, and he squints at the street lights that highlight the dancing flakes.
"huh." he acknowledges, "it is."
"are you outside?" he asks.
"yes. i was doing the groceries and i step outside and it was snowing."
james wonders at the aim of this call, but finds himself drawn to your voice on the other end, unable to help a stupid smile.
"i see. are you cold?" he asks to add to the conversation.
"why have you been avoiding me?" your voice cuts through.
james falters, taken aback. he replies slowly,
"could ask you the same question." he says quietly.
"yeah, but you're not asking me, are you? you're not the one calling me at 8pm on a friday evening."
james sits up straighter,
"you were the one who walked out on me."
"you were the one who pissed me off." your voice carries, stable yet clearly angry.
"exactly! how was i supposed to know if you even wanted to see me?"
"we broke up." you interjected suddenly, "louis and me."
james pursed his lips, "i heard." there was silence, then he added, "are you sad?"
"no." you replied immediately. james took this in. "go on," you provoke, "say 'i told you so'. i know you're dying to."
he shook his head, "im not as petty anymore."
"since when? 2 weeks ago?"
"yes."
you scoff on the other end.
"and what about," you pause, "i don't know her name. the girl. from your class."
james raised an amused eyebrow, "we weren't serious."
he is greeted by silence,
"we aren't together." he clarifies, "she deserves better."
he hears an exhale from your end, "are you sad?"
"no."
silence settles between you too, charged and heavy.
"i'm sorry for not sticking up for you when louis was being weird."
james opens his mouth and closes it, unsure of what to say.
"your turn." you say, " you never apologized."
james sighs, not knowing how to word everything he wants to say,
"i'm sorry." he said it with a weight that communicated he meant it.
by this point your hand holding the phone was going numb from the cold. you stood under the shade of the giant departmental store behind you.
"it hurt, you know."
james braces himself, listening to your part intently.
"to find that you saw me as someone who couldn't be taken seriously...in that way."
"y/n, i'm sorry. i didn't mean it that way."
"what way did you mean it?" you question.
"i.." he begins and sighs, trying to find the right words unlike last time, "i didn't know that you wanted...that. i only realised too late that i wanted the same. with you. what i meant was," he paused turning the words over in his head, "i wanted to be the one that you wanted that with. i wanted to be the one you stayed for. i wanted to stay for you. with you. i wish i had realised sooner, i wish i had done things differently. from the start."
your heart was beating in your throat, cold hands suddenly clammy, everything too warm. here you had it, your suspicions confirmed.
"i do." your voice came out barely above a whisper.
"what?" james' breathless voice responded.
"i do want that with you. you're the only one i want it with."
james voice came out in a gruff, "stay where you are."
"what?"
the line disconnected. you stared at your phone.
you didn't move. you existed in sort of liminal space. the families filing out the store with loaded trolleys and stuffed shopping bags had no idea what this evening in front of this inconspicuous department store meant for you. you stood mesmerized by the snow which was sticking to all the surfaces it touched. cars pulled in and out of the parking lot. out of one of them stumbled out james. his feet were basically winged the way they carried him to you. his eyes search the dispersed people standing around and finally land on you just as yours land on him. and for a second you just exist in this distance between, not pulled in or apart, just there.
the people clear away, the store quiets down in what felt like hours but was only a few minutes of people piling out and suddenly it's quiet. the kind of quiet that muffles everything else, the kind of quiet that only happens when it's snowing.
james is moving towards you and you to him. he shakes the crystals in his hair. he looks like the most perfect mess. leather jacket thrown over his tshirt, shoes on with his joggers, hair sticking up in places. anyone else would’ve looked like an idiot, but never james. he was infuriatingly and effortlessly beautiful, always. you're both near enough for an embrace but just as he's about to wrap his arms around you, you push him away with a light jab to his chest.
"asshole."
james blinks, caught off guard.
he still hadn't recovered or made sense of it, when you grab the collar of his jacket pull him down, his lips crashing onto yours.
james doesn't even begin to question this, but just pours himself into you, hand sliding around your waist, holding you in place as you melt backwards. your arms are around his neck, your cold lips warming at his touch. james can't pull away, capturing your lips in desperation. pouring in every minute he spent apart from you, every second he spent regretting, wishing, yearning, hating. every time he saw you with someone who wasn't him, everytime he was so overwhelmed with his love for you that it scared him. he was done being scared now.
you pull away breathless, and james fights to not pull you back in. you watch your breaths mingle in the cold air.
"tell me." your voice beckons, low and warm.
james knows what you mean. his eyes like night skies peer into yours,
"i think i've been in love with you for a long time but was too stupid to figure it out." he breathes out.
you close your eyes and nod. then it's your turn to speak,
"and i only realised i loved you when i realised i was looking for you everywhere and in everyone."
you open your eyes and he's looking at you with the softest expression.
"wanna start from the top?" he asks with a smirk on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes.
a smile breaks on your lips, "from the start." you agree.
he pulls you in again.
extra !
you and james didn't make it a big deal out of your relationship. you just existed as you would and waited for the others to catch on. some were sharper than others, like manon and juhoon. in fairness it'd be hard to hide something from your roommates, and you weren't even trying to hide it. they discerned it pretty quickly. manon didn't go to the same college as you so she didn't have a chance to talk about it with the rest of your friends and juhoon couldn't care less. he was pretty pleased with the finding but wasn't bothered to relay the information.
the christmas party was hosted at yours and manon's this year, before you all went back home to your families.
this is where the nature of your relationship was brought to light.
nobody had questioned it when you and james had made up all of a sudden, nobody could really fully comprehend the workings of your relationship with james, but everyone was more than glad to dust off the burdened air.
james was stuck to you the whole evening, which wasn't anything out of the ordinary. he'd slide his arm around you on the couch, brush a stray hair away from your face, hell, even pick you up and carry you around for a laugh, and nobody noticed anything amiss. it was a little ridiculous.
you and james were setting up the table while your friends sat at the couch which was in the same space as the dining table. you pull the little mince pies out of the oven, on which you had spent extra effort by cutting little stars on them, and bring them up to the table. you hold the tray in front of james with a little accomplished smile on your lips.
"i love them." he smiles and leans in for a quick kiss.
"AH!" the scream startles you both.
martin points at you two like he just saw mommy kiss santa claus.
the others around gape at you two as well.
you and james stare at each other and continue setting up the table.
"what the hell?" megan begins.
martin looks incredulously around the room and grabs juhoon who smiles a knowing smile.
megan and yoonchae turn to manon who shrugs with an infuriating smile.
"you're telling me–" megan starts,
"james and y/n." yoonchae gapes.
"they figured their shit out." juhoon offers helpfully.
"since when??" megan asks dumbfounded.
martin was pacing around the house still losing it.
"dinner's ready!" you call out.
martin marches upto james,
"explain."
"explain what?" james asks nonchalantly.
martin points a finger between the two of you,
"how did this happen?"
james smirks. he grabs your wrist and pulls you in. his hand lands firmly on your waist and he captures your lips in a gentle kiss. the room shrieks. your eyes widen in surprise. james turns to look at martin, still holding you in place,
"like this." he replies smugly.
you laugh out loud and push him away, "that was so corny."
he engulfs you in a hug despite your screams and presses kisses all over your face.
Flat tire ⊹ ࣪ ˖. in which; while on a roadtrip with cortis, you pop a tire in the middle of a highway but no one knows how to change one… except you?
❛ cortis ❜ 𝑥 ƒִ֗!reader. 𓈒𓈒 based on this request.
⚠︎ : (martin x reader atp), fluff, just all of them bickering and arguing, cursing, martin and reader shipping, cringe humor.
𓏸 3k ╱ 𝓶. list y/n’s roadtrip playlist. ˖ ݁♬⋆.˚𝄞
The thing about road trips is that they sound incredibly romantic in theory.
Wind in your hair. Windows down. Good music, good (questionable) friends, open road stretching out before you like a promise.
You’d seen the aesthetic on Pinterest approximately four hundred times. You had manifested this trip. You’d made a playlist. You’d bought snacks in those little individual bags because it felt more road-trippy than just throwing a family-sized bag of chips in the back.
The reality, as of hour three, was James arguing with the GPS, Keonho eating your individually portioned snacks, Seonghyeon asleep against the window with his mouth open and drooling, Juhoon sending memes in the group chat while sitting three inches away from you, and Martin -who was pressed against your side because the back seat of this rental was not built for five people and a duffel bag- reading something on his phone with his elbow digging into your ribs.
“Martin.”
“Yeah”
“Your elbow motherfucker.”
“What about it.”
“It’s in my ribcage.”
He looked up, glanced down at his elbow, looked back at his phone. “You have space on your left.”
You looked to your left. Keonho had colonized your left side and was currently opening your strawberry gummies with his teeth.
“Yo Tin, i can guarantee that is NOT how you bag fine shit. Try the gallantry method instead.” He commented in between bites.
“I genuinely cannot stand any of you,” you announced to no one, scoffing.
“Same honestly,” said Juhoon, and sent you a meme about being trapped.
⛐.
James had insisted on being the one to drive because he was, as he’d reminded all of you approximately sixteen times, the only one of legal driving age, which he said with the gravity of someone announcing they’d won a Nobel Prize.
You had your license. You simply chose not to mention this because you also chose not to drive five idiots across three states.
He was doing fine, actually. James was a surprisingly good driver -calm, steady, kept both hands on the wheel. You’d give him that.
What you would not give him though, was the aux cord, which he’d seized at the start of the trip and defended with his life.
“James, this is the fourth time you’ve played this song,” Seonghyeon complained, apparently not as asleep as you thought.
“It’s a good song.”
“It was a good song the first two times.”
“Then it became a great song.”
“James-”
“I’m driving. The driver controls the music. It’s the law.”
It is absolutely not the law, you thought, but you were also leaning your head against the window and the vibration was kind of soothing so you let it go.
That was, in retrospect, the most peace you would get for the rest of the day.
⛐.
It started with Keonho.
It always started with Keonho.
“Yo Jamesss,” he called, in the voice he used when he was about to ask for something unreasonable.
“What.”
“Can you do something for me.”
“Depends.”
The younger one held up his phone, pressing record to film a video.
“Can you say happy birthday-” Keonho was already composing his face into something very innocent and sincere, which was your first warning sign- “to my little brother? His name is Dixson Mayaz. He turns seven today.”
You heard the name. You parsed the name. Something in your brain went oh this bitch approximately half a second before James, without thinking, turned up the radio slightly less and said cheerfully:
“I didn’t know you had a little bro. Happy birthday, Dixson Mayaz-“.
Silence.
“Dicks in your ass? Damn bro…” Martin scoffed, not looking up.
James’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“…Keonho.”
“Yeah?”
“You must be thinking you’re the funniest motherfucker alive right now.”
Keonho had turned his face into the window and his shoulders were shaking so hard he looked like a phone on vibrate. Juhoon had his hand over his mouth and Seonghyeon had gone completely still in the way people go still when they’re trying to decide if something is cringe or funny.
You pressed your lips together very hard.
Martin, to his eternal credit, lasted four full seconds before he lost it -this silent, wheezing laugh that he was very badly trying to muffle into his sleeve.
“that was ass, im not gonna lie-”
“I hate all of you,” James said, with great dignity. “I want all of you to know that.”
Martin had shifted slightly so his elbow was no longer actively bruising you, which you chose to interpret as personal growth on his part.
⛐.
“I’ve been thinking,” Juhoon declared at some point.
“Oh for fucks sake man, you’re always thinking,” said Seonghyeon.
“About what?” you asked, against your better judgment.
“About how I attract love and happiness or whatever they say.” He said this very seriously, staring out the window. “I just got my exam results back, my life is great, you guys are here.”
A beat.
“Who says that?” Martin asked.
“People. Manifestation people.”
“Do you manifest?”
“I’m considering it. I feel like I have the energy for it.”
“Juhoon,” you said carefully, “you spent twenty minutes this morning arguing with a vending machine. You have the energy of a crackhead my dude. Maybe try yoga?”
“That was the vending machine’s fault.”
“You called it a scammer.”
“It was a scammer. It took my money and gave me nothing. That’s a scam. That’s the definition of a scam.” He turned to look at you. “I’m just saying, despite that, I have good energy. I attract good things.”
“You’re unemployed,” Keonho said pleasantly.
“I’m in between opportunities.”
You shook your head, looking around, “Wait do you guys hear that? I can hear a big fat LIAR.”
“There’s this funny app called linkedin,” Keonho continued, with the same pleasant tone, “you might find it interestin-”
“I know what LinkedIn is, fuck you-”
“You can make a profile, list your skills-”
“That slot’s gonna stay empty, let me tell you that.” Martin snorted before Juhoon smacked him with his bottle.
“ You can also connect with professionals in your field.” Keonho continued, unbothered.
“What field is he even in,” Seonghyeon muttered, and this time it was your turn to muffle a laugh.
“I’m in a- good field bro,” Juhoon said, very grandly. “don’t even worry about me.”
“blah blah blah - unemployed, unqualified.” you rolled your eyes.
“You know what, let me know in the comments down below-” Juhoon gestured vaguely at the car- “whether you’ve ever had a vision so big it required a sabbatical.”
“Crickets, man, crickets. None of us are that stupid.” Martin deadpanned.
Here’s the thing about Martin that you’d spent approximately eight months trying not to think about too hard:
He was annoying. He was genuinely, consistently, specifically annoying to you in a way that felt almost personal, like he’d identified your exact frequency and decided to broadcast directly into it. He borrowed your things without asking. He argued with you about movies you hadn’t even said you liked. He had opinions about everything and expressed them directly into your ear because for some reason the universe kept seating you next to each other.
He also had a laugh that did something unfortunate to your chest cavity, but that was neither here nor there.
Currently, he was eating the last of his chips and reading something on his phone, and you kept noticing, in your peripheral vision, that he’d glance over at you every so often. Not for any reason. Just -glancing.
You were not going to acknowledge this. You were above it.
“What are you reading,” you asked.
He turned his phone so you could see the screen. It was a very long article about the history of … highways ?
You stared at it.
“We’re on a highway,” he said, as if this explained everything.
“That’s-“ You searched for the word, frowning. “That’s such a you thing to do.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means only you would drive down a highway and decide to read an essay about highways.”
“Context is great, maybe if you gave it a little chance-.”
“You find everything enriching. You’re so annoying about it.”
“You find me enriching,” he said, and then went back to his article with a completely straight face.
Your brain briefly buffered.
Did he ever think before speaking, or did he just continuously spat bullshit out.
“Y/N and Martin sitting in a tree,” Juhoon murmured, very quietly, directly into the back of your headrest.
You turned around.
Juhoon gave you the most serene smile you’d ever seen on a human face.
“I will fuck you up” you muttered.
“K-I-S-S-”“
“JUHOON-”
“-I-N-G,” he finished peacefully, and then held up his phone as if scrolling through it. Unbothered. Completely at ease. A man without fear or survival instinct.
Martin had, notably, not responded at all. You snuck a glance at him. He was still reading his highway article, but there was something very careful about the way he was holding his phone, something deliberate about how he wasn’t reacting, that made your brain do something complicated that you immediately filed away in the folder labeled not dealing with this right now.
⛐.
The tire blew on a stretch of highway that was, as far as you could tell, specifically designed by the universe to be as inconvenient as possible.
No exits for miles. Median to the left. A gentle slope to the right with a guardrail. Perfectly, specifically terrible.
James handled it well, actually -he kept the car steady, didn’t panic, eased onto the shoulder with both hands on the wheel like someone who’d practiced this exact scenario. You’d give him that. You would give him full credit for not killing anyone.
Then he put it in park, and everyone just… sat there.
“So,” Seonghyeon said.
“So,” said James.
“Let’s adress the whale in the room…That was a tire.”
“That was, yes, a tire.” James put his forehead on the wheel, exhaling.
“It popped,” Keonho confirmed, helpfully.
“Oh my fuck. Keonho thanks man, we didn’t fucking notice.” Juhoon scoffed.
“We should fix it,” Martin offered
“We should yeah.”
But no one moved.
You looked around the car. Five people. A blown tire. A rental. You waited, genuinely curious, to see how long it would take before someone admitted they had no idea what to do.
James got out of the car first, walked around to the rear right tire, looked at it, and then stood with his hands on his hips in the universal posture of I am assessing a problem I don’t know how to solve.
Everyone else got out. You all stood in a loose semicircle around the flat tire.
“Okay,” James said.
“Okay,” Seonghyeon agreed.
“So we need to-” James gestured.
“Change it,” Martin supplied.
“Change it. Yes. The tire.”
“There’s a spare in the trunk probably,” Keonho said.
“Probably,” James agreed.
“Should someone get it?” you fought a laugh.
“Yes.”
Nobody moved to get it.
You looked at all of them. Five people, standing in the highway shoulder sun, staring at a flat tire like it had personally wronged them and they were waiting for an apology.
Seonghyeon had his arms crossed. Keonho was squinting at it. Juhoon had his phone out, and you were 90% sure he was Googling “what to do if tire pops” except it was taking too long which meant he probably had no signal.
Lord, you thought. Lord above.
“Do any of you know how to change a tire?” you asked.
Silence.
“I know the general concept,” James stated, defensively.
“The concept, huh?”
“Of the process. Like, the steps. In theory.” he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “I’ve never done it.”
You looked at Seonghyeon. He slowly shook his head. Keonho shrugged in a way that meant no. Juhoon held up his phone as if to indicate he was looking into it. Martin met your eyes and then had the audacity to look slightly sheepish, which- honestly -on him was devastating, you needed him to stop doing that immediately.
“Y/N,” James said slowly, reading something on your face. “Please say you know how to-”
“I know how to change a tire,” you exhaled.
“You-” Keonho started.
“My dad made me learn before I was allowed to take his car out. Figured it would come up eventually.” You paused. “Didn’t think it would be because I’m surrounded by dumb number 1 to number 5, who apparently never learned basic car maintenance, but -heh- here we are.”
“I could have figured it out,” James defended. “I’m just saying I’m not completely helpless-“
“yeah yeah, ladies step aside,” you said, very kindly.
The spare was in the trunk, under the floor panel, which you found in approximately forty-five seconds while Juhoon was still reading a WikiHow article about it. There was a jack and a lug wrench in there too, which was a relief because you genuinely weren’t sure this group would have been able to source those independently.
“Okay,” you said, setting things out. “Someone can make themselves useful and put the hazard triangle out.”
“On it,” said Seonghyeon, with the energy of someone very grateful to have been given a task.
“What do we do?” Keonho asked, crouching next to you with genuine curiosity.
“Listen, look, and learn.” you sighed.
You loosened the lug nuts before jacking the car up -an important step, you narrated to no one in particular, because if the car’s off the ground the tire just spins -and Keonho was actually paying attention, head tilted, following your hands. James was also watching with the expression of a man silently taking notes and pretending he wasn’t.
Juhoon, meanwhile, was still on WikiHow.
“It says here to loosen the nuts in a star pattern,” he announced.
“That’s what she’s doing,” Martin said.
“I know, I’m just trying to help.” Juhoon scoffed, raising both hands in mock surrender.
“Well maybe you can try zipping up that mouth” you mumbled, hands greasy and the sun hitting your back.
Keonho meanwhile- was pulling out his camera, he must’ve thought the moment absolutely called for a vlog, because he was narrating to invisible viewers in second.
“We’ve got y/n here, the woman of the hour. How does it feel being manlier than all of us y/n?”
“Fuck you.” you slapped away his camera. “Time to take those testosterone shots my guy.”
You laughed despite yourself, crouched in the highway shoulder with your hands on a lug wrench. Martin caught your eye and the corner of his mouth did something that you had been cataloguing and definitely not thinking about for the better part of eight months.
Stop it, you told yourself. Stop looking at his mouth specifically.
“Kim, you’re doing amazing sweetie,” Keonho told you encouragingly, seconds away from laughing.
“Thanks fuckface.”
“I’m learning so much.” Juhoon added, mocking.
“That’s what I’m here for.” you said sarcastically.
Juhoon did not stop, he kept adding comments on top of comments, watching the way you looked at Martin with interest.
That was the thing about Juhoon -he identified a bit and he committed to it. By the time you had the flat off and were fitting the spare, he’d made approximately four comments about you and Martin, each one more plausibly deniable than the last.
A little “oh, Martin, could you help Y/N with that” when you didn’t need help.
A soft “look at you two, working together” when Martin handed you the wrench you’d asked Keonho to hand you.
A very quiet, very smug “You attract love and happiness” directed at no one, immediately after you’d accidentally laughed at something Martin said.
You tightened a lug nut. Then another.
Okay, you thought. Okay. We’re going to address this. ( beat him up)
You stood up, dusted off your knees, and looked at Martin.
“Hey,” you said. “Can you get out of the car for a second? I need to talk to Juhoon.”
Martin looked at you. Looked at Juhoon. Something passed over his face -oh no- and he started to stand up.
Juhoon, without missing a beat, reached over and grabbed Martin’s shoulder, pulling him back down.
“If you have anything to say to me,” Juhoon said, with absolute serenity, “you can say it in front of the missus.”
Martin made a sound.
“The missus,” you repeated.
“The missus,” Juhoon confirmed, patting Martin’s shoulder warmly. “We’re a unit. What you say to me, you say to him. We don’t have secrets.”
“Juhoon, I will-“
“You’ll what?” He was smiling. He was smiling like a man who knew exactly how untouchable he was. “Tell me to shut up? You can tell Martin to tell me to shut up. We communicate.”
Martin’s head was bowed. His shoulders were doing the thing -the silent wheezing laugh thing.
“Martin,” you said.
“I’m not involved,” he said, to the ground.
“We’ve got a wild 6ft something Martin right here- being used as human shield. How pathetic.” Keonho angled his camera to zoom in on Martin’s face, ever the commentator.
“I’m the missus apparently. I’m staying out of it.” Martin defended.
“Y/N.” Juhoon folded his hands. Composed. Peaceful. A man who had achieved something. “I attract love and happiness. I’m just reflecting what I see.”
“I will leave you on this highway, boy.”
“No you won’t. You love me.”
“I’m going to change my mind about that.”
“The tire’s fixed,” Seonghyeon called from the other side of the car, peering at your work. “Looks good! She did great!”
“She really did,” James agreed, with genuine, slightly humbled respect.
“Thank you!” you called back, still glaring at Juhoon, who was grinning at you like a man who had won something and knew it.
“Oh yeah Y/n you’re officially part of the boys. You’re not like other girls.” Keonho mocked.
“Oh my fuck- if you don’t get that camera thing out of my face-“ you stomped your foot.
Martin finally looked up. His eyes were bright. He had the audacity, the absolute nerve, to look endeared.
“You’re good at that,” he said. “The tire thing.”
“As if you’d know…” you rolled your eyes.
You stared at him for one long moment. He looked back at you with those stupidly sincere eyes and the stupidly soft expression that he only got sometimes, when he wasn’t arguing with you about something, when he was just- looking at you like that.
Your chest did the thing.
You all got back in the car. Same order. Same cramped configuration. Martin pressed against your side, Keonho on your left, Juhoon and Seonghyeon in the far back.
James pulled back onto the highway with great ceremony.
“Alright,” he said. “Crisis averted. Thanks to Y/N.”
“Thank you, Y/N bro,” Seonghyeon and Keonho said, genuinely.
Martin said nothing. But about thirty seconds later, so quietly you almost missed it: “Yeah. Thanks, Y/N.”
Keonho immediately opened another one of your snack portions.
“Keonho you big back- i swear-“
“I’m celebrating dude.”
“With my food??”
“It’s an honor - tribute”
“Give me those-“ you started
“A toast,” he said, holding the gummies just out of reach, “to Y/N, who saved us all, and also to Dixson Mayaz-“
tags: james x f!reader, longfic, sfw, college au, angst if you squint, pining, ft. cortis hyung line and members of katseye
synopsis: you and james were joint at the hip. all your friends saw it, the way you looked at each other, the lack of boundaries, the genuine connection. throughout heartbreaks, bad dates and long days, you found each other at the end of it all. you both had a track record of shortlived flings, however, when you get in a proper relationship for the first time ever and leave james behind, he wonders why he cares this much, and gets antsy waiting for you to snap out of it.
snoopy's notes: hellooo hii!! this is my first time posting a fic ever! #scared but everyone on coerblr is so nice so it helps me feel better. this is my first time writing a narrative story ever also so it's probably lowkey kinda bad but im not going to let 8k words sit in my notes app! turned 17 yesterday we're embracing new horizons ayy!! the premise of the story is based on the arctic monkeys song 'snap out of it', this idea has been in my head for years but i just had no one to write it about then enter my glorious, beautiful, intelligent, charismatic, talented, one in a million james ❤️
also, there's a character named louis in this and at the time i was writing it i really just pulled the name out of my ass and never went back on it, just so you know! it's not referencing to louis from lngshot! it's really just some random guy
(wc: 5k)
part 1 [part 2]
the midsummer sun was almost cruel with its piercing rays. the air was still and the sky placid blue. under the shade on a lounge chair, james was somewhat able to curb the heat, with that and the coolness of the ocean water slowly drying off his skin. his current preoccupation was to artfully ignore the gaze of the brunette girl who sat two seats over. not because he wasn't interested, he liked playing the long game. eventually he'd walk past once, twice, thrice if he was feeling extra, before striking a conversation and the rest would be history. short lived history if you will. he took the last swig of his drink and decided this is when he'll start his mission. before getting up though, he checks his phone one last time. he stares at the text messages from the group chat, a picture of you with ice cream on your nose and martin laughing at you for it. he can't help the small smile that plays on his lips reading his reply, ‘i would've licked it off if i was there’, to which the group chat had erupted in strings of ews and yucks.
whatever you and james had going on was no secret. it was a loud white lie, the we're just very close and we've known each other forever. where james would flirt with you shamelessly but hold you when no one was watching. where physical boundaries were non-existent, to the point your friends were used to the sight of the two of you ending up on top of each other at some point during the hangout. it was thrilling, normal. you talked to other guys, he talked to other girls, somehow still always meeting half way with each other any way. after a bad date you'd text him come over? and he'd reply with ‘omw’. after a stressful day at work he'd shoot you ‘wanna hang?’ and you'd say ‘always’. the familiarity was coaxing, the freedom non oppressing. you liked how james was unpredictably predictable, to everyone else he was spontaneous, a little crazy, but you could study the pattern that was him. you knew he would always be there, in whatever way you needed him, and you would be for him– maybe that's what your whole situation was based on, just the mutual trust and lack of boundaries, in any sense of the word. from your lack of boundaries when it came to friendship to the rigid walls that captured the word "relationship" and all the rules that came with it.
james' summer in europe was mostly uneventful. he lazed around at the beach, mapped the city by himself when his parents were too busy enjoying the luxuries of the 5 star hotel they were staying in, he went on dates here and there, mostly for company–( it got lonely by himself in a foreign city), he shopped at street markets, bought souvenirs for everyone (after he realised he bought you things and forgot about the rest). he convinced himself that the lack of messages from your end was normal. the only updates he got about you were second hand information from the rest of the group, he just figured you were busy with your summer job and enjoying life while the warmth was still present in the days.
he still tried to convince himself the same when he was back home and had minimal contact with you. the rest of the summer passed by in a blur, august evenings diluting in a watercolor hue and no trace of you.
it was fresh september, the last week of doss days before college began. the group planned a meaningless hangout, like they usually do, which feature walking around various places and trying not to spend money. almost everyone showed up, except you.
martin and james naturally ended up a few steps behind the rest of the group.
james strolled with hands in his pockets and questioned casually, "where’s y/n?"
martin shook his head in mock disappointment, "she chose hoes before bros."
james steps staggered, before he pushed onwards, "what do you mean?"
"you know the guy she's seeing?" martin said so matter of factly that all james' face could manage was a blank.
martin pursed his lips, as realization dawned on him and he wished he was not the one having this conversation.
"..she didn't tell you?"
"hasn't." james corrected quickly, resuming back to his usual demeanor.
martin was quick to jump on his remark, "oh yeah man– she's been- like so busy. i’m sure she'll get around to it."
he watched james carefully, and was surprised to see the lack of expression on his face.
"i mean it's whatever," james replied coolly, "what does it have to do with me?" he punctuated with a smirk before running up to the rest of the group and making some stupid joke causing all of them to laugh. martin stood feeling dazed.
the college campus was lively and loud. friends reuniting in their familiar spaces, everyone catching up and expressing excitement for the new year. your footsteps followed the familiar terrain to the back of the building that is your spot. you turn the corner of the red brick building and find your friends grouped near the wall. you smile at the sight. heads turn when they hear the crunch of gravel under your foot. The group erupts in greetings and hugs and megan and yoonchae berating you for disappearing. you apologize trying to escape their wrath, assuring them they will get the details soon over coffee.
james watched from the outskirts of the group as he usually does, waiting for your eyes to find him. your eyes land on him and you disentangle from the group and move towards him.
"hi." you smile. open, familiar.
he smiles back, opening his arms for a hug which you gladly fold into.
"hey." he says into your hair.
you pull back, a renewed sense of warmth in you at the sight of him.
"so, how was europe?" you ask.
he thinks for a moment, "beautiful." is what he comes up with, "that's it i think."
you laugh, "what a waste, your parents should've taken me instead."
"oh definitely." he says without hesitation, "you know i wouldn't have minded some company, you know, peers, and not my parents trying to convince me to join them for the live music night at the hotel where all they sing is really sad and really bad covers of love songs."
"oof." you grimace, then a small smirk replaces it, "oh, so you were lonely?"
he shrugs, "i found ways to keep busy."
you didn't reply, for some odd reason his words settled in your mouth with an odd taste. you force a smile in response.
the group was slowly migrating towards their respective buildings and lecture halls, dropping off in pairs until it was just you and james walking across the campus to your classes. you walked in silence, which you were trying to discern was comfortable or not. you never questioned it before. as you studied the patterns of cobblestone on the ground, you debated how to tell james about the guy you were seeing. it felt exponentially harder to do so compared to when you told your other friends, which made sense because he wasn't exactly your friend, not in the traditional sense any way. but you also hadn't seen him in a while, and didn't he just hint at seeing girls on his vacation? you never overcomplicated things with each other before so why now?
you decide on a casual approach, conversational like you were only exchanging the new events in your life seeing a friend after a long time. that's what this basically was, right?
"did i tell you i’m seeing someone?" you mention coolly.
james is equally stoic, "you didn't."
james wasn't worried. surely this was the usual gig for you guys. and why would he even be worried? he knew in a weeks time you guys would be back to your usual antics.
"yeah. i met him at work. he's really sweet. he asked me out after work one day, and yeah. i’ve been seeing him since." you nod when you finish your explanation which you felt like you owed him.
when he didn't give an outright response, you felt your mouth move involuntarily,
"i really like him."
you deliberately pressed your lips together to stop yourself from saying anything more. you found yourself trying to analyze his expression, there was a small smile playing on his lips, which made you raise an eyebrow.
"what?"
"hm? nothing." he replies still with the same smile painted on his lips.
he didn't buy it.
you felt irritation bubble in your stomach, he was the only one who could elicit such emotions from you so easily. before you could say anything more, he checked his watch and started drifting the opposite way.
"see you at lunch." he winked and made for the door.
you stared at the empty space that was him two seconds ago before realising that, you were also late and also standing right in front of your building without even realising. you blink a few times to clear your head before climbing the steps to the door.
that day he showed up at your work. you hear the door chime and you move to the counter automatically barely registering your surroundings.
"hey, what can i get for you today?" you say in your high pitched but dead, perfect customer service voice.
"mm, depends. yre you on the menu?"
Your eyes shoot up from the ordering screen to be met with the playful glint in james' eyes. you sigh and shake your head.
"oh. you."
"that's no way to greet a friend." he tsks.
"the usual?" you ask.
"i said depends," he leaned both his elbows on the counter, "you didn't tell me if you were other menu."
your eyes flick over once to the far corner at the other end. james catches it instantly, staring at the guy frothing the milk at the machine.
"cut that out." you say softly.
james nods his head once towards the corner, "that him?"
you turn your head to look at louis, even though you didn't need to and knew who james was talking about.
"yes."
you avoid his eyes, busying yourself by tapping on the screen, making james' usual order by muscle memory.
james considers this, "interesting."
the same irritation from the morning resurfaces.
"is that why you're here? to assess the guy i’m seeing?" you ask annoyed.
he takes a step back and puts his hands up in surrender, "i didnt even say anything! i’m here to get my coffee because your shop is conveniently on the way from school."
you scoff, yeah right.
"and to ask if you're down hang after you’re finished work."
you physically stiffen.
"could've texted me." you say with arms crossed.
"this is more heart touching, plus the coffee."
you shake your head, unable to resist the small smile on your lips.
"sorry, i can’t tonight."
he shrugs, "well, i tried." then he adds after a moment, "you going out with him?"
alarms blare in your heads for some reason even though it is a very normal question to ask. you take a breath before answering.
"yeah."
he nods once, then twice, "where are you going?"
"i don't know yet. he says it's a surprise." you smile and look at louis from the corner of your eyes. "i’m kind of nervous."
"yeah, you hate surprises." james states as a fact.
"that's not true," you say defensively, "i like them when they're done well."
"i hope he's done it well then."
you nod silently, and for a moment it's just quiet. youre both looking at each other divided by the counter.
"james." louis calls from the other end, a to-go coffee in hand.
james raises an eyebrow in confusion.
"i put your order in, you were taking too long to decide."
he laughs, actually laughs before sliding to get his coffee. he doesn't thank louis or even look at him, which is a little petty he'll admit, but oh well.
he raises the cup towards you as he walks past towards the door, "cheers."
you wave goodbye.
you kick the door shut behind yourself and take a deep breath, bouquet clutched against your racing heart trying to calm it down. you kick your heels off, and walk into your apartment, the smell of roses wafting up your nose.
manon is sprawled on the couch half watching something on the tv, half on her phone. she looks up when she finds you standing there with the roses in your hands. she smiles a knowing smile then mutes the tv and puts her phone down.
"so?" she provokes.
you stare at the flowers again, still half dazed from the events of the day. too much for one day. way too much.
"he asked me."
manon stares at you.
"to be his girlfriend." you finish and it comes out like a breath you've been holding.
her eyes widen and she laughs,
"and??"
"and i’m scared manon!" you finally put the flowers down.
"why?" she asked genuinely baffled.
"because!" you’re pacing back and forth in front of the tv and her eyes follow you in confusion, "because i’ve never done this before? because im scared ill mess it up?" because i don't even know if im ready.
she pauses then asks, "do you like him?"
"yes." you did.
"then you take the chance! who cares what ends up happening?"
you think about this.
"and didn't you say you wanted to be in a proper relationship?"
you did want that.
"i said yes. to him."
she jumps up and hugs you, "atta girl. about time you start doing things for yourself."
you were too exhausted to ask what she meant.
in a weeks time it was established that you and louis were in a relationship, a proper one with the boyfriend-girlfriend label attached.
life did feel different. the only time you didn't see him was in school, you saw each other in work and after. he'd do things that people do in relationships that you had never experienced, like introducing you to people by telling them you were his girlfriend, or holding your hand when you were on sidewalks and kissing you goodbye at the bus stop. it felt good, this unfamiliar feeling. you could get lost in the high of it.
it was lunch, and still warm and sunny for the end of september. you sat at the campus park with your friends soaking the last of summer.
you heard yoonchae make a gagging sound and you open your eyes and squint at what she's looking at. that one campus couple that are way too into pda. you frown.
"ew."
"you can't say anything, you're one of them now." says yoonchae kicking you lightly with her foot.
"um no," you furiously shake your head, offended, "i’d never be caught dead doing all that in public. also megan’s literally had a boyfriend of two years, i didn’t abandon you."
"when is it my turn?" martin asks despairingly at the sky.
"never." yoonchae replies without missing a beat.
"you have no game either." martin retorts.
"incorrect."
martin echoes, "incorrect." in a mocking nerd voice, making everyone laugh.
"wait, y/n you never told us how louis asked you out." megan asks.
your eyes flicker to james for just a second, then back to the whole group. james is sitting, facing outwards from the group, but he turned his head to look at you.
"well. he asked me out one day after work and when i asked him what we were doing he said" you gesture air quotes, "it's a surprise."
"so after work we went on a drive to this lookout where you can see all the city lights at night and then he disappeared back to the car and came back with roses and asked me to be his girlfriend. the end."
"that's so sweet!" megan said clapping her hands together, and the group joined with oohs and aws.
you pick on a blade of grass, "yeah, it was really nice."
"oh my god she's blushing." juhoon points out and you flip him off.
"when do we get to meet him?" james voice cuts across the group, he has a tight smile on his lips. you blink.
"you guys already have." you reply.
"seeing him from a distance at your work doesn't count. we want to meet him properly." yoonchae points and you see all of them nod their heads and you immediately try to bring them back down to earth.
"not now." you said firmly.
"why not?" asked yoonchae.
"because. you'll scare him away."
"we wouldn't do such a thing." juhoon said with a hand to his chest.
your eyes pierce into james' and he laughs,
"what?"
you look away, "i know he will."
"why do you say that?" martin asks suspiciously.
you look at james again, "he already did."
martin dramatically puts his hands on his head, then points at james, "youve met him already?"
the whole group is shocked and all stare at james with varying levels of surprise.
james immediately springs up, "wait, hold on. i only saw him. i never spoke to him, so there's no way i could've done anything to scare him."
"what did he do?" yoonchae questions immediately.
james moves his body to face you properly. he looks entertained by this conversation. "yeah, what did i do?"
you avoid his pressing gaze, "you snatched your coffee out of his hand, didn't look at him and didn't say thankyou." you say in a lighthearted manner counting each thing on your finger.
the group laughed.
"you didn't say thankyou?" megan said in a disappointed tone.
"that's so not you." martin lightly bumped his fist on james shoulder.
james smiles, unaffected, "did he tell you this?"
"no!" you begin defensively, then, "..yes."
james laughs, "seriously, that's it? that scared him?"
laughter erupted once more.
"it wasn't like that." you attempt in defense of your boyfriend, "it just came up in conversation and i was there too, i saw you guys, it's not like he was making things up."
everyone was quiet. james regarded you quietly which made you nervous.
"and what did you think?" he asked.
"about what?"
"about me and whatever i was acting like?"
you purse your lips, "i thought it was rude you didn't say 'thankyou'."
he nods, "i might’ve forgotten in the moment," he looks at you with a solemn expression, way too serious. he advances and captures your hands in his, the touch warm from the sun, "will he ever find it in his heart to forgive me?" he says dramatically, "will you?"
you push your hands away from hold, with a suppressed smile on your lips.
"i hate you."
juhoon dapped james up and everybody smiled amusedly at the whole interaction. that moment seemed to break the conversation as it led to other things, to your relief, away from you and the subject of your relationship. james studied you quietly, he found himself doing it more often recently. for the first time he couldn't seem to be able to figure you out. he wasn't yet sure if the thought excited or scared him.
james wasn't blind. as the weeks turned into a month, he grew uneasy. he never saw you anymore, just him and you. when he saw you in college amongst all your friends he questioned why he cared so much. he would see you smile at your phone every now and then, watched you bring louis up in casual conversation, noticed the new necklace you had been wearing. he couldn't figure out why he cared so much. he saw people and so did you all the time before, but this felt different. it's just that he missed your company, that's it. nothing weird, even if seeing you made his body react in a way he wasn't used to, apprehensive and drawn in at the same time. sometime he made a decision to do something about the latter. it happened slowly, but he started pulling away too, subtlety avoiding you. he didn't like the way his brain functioned around you and how much of his energy was spent reading you, he figured there was something genuinely wrong with him at the moment and it was best to retreat for the time being as he walked the journey towards being normal again. so in an attempt of proving to himself he was totally normal, when the girl with blue hair who sat a few rows down from him in one of his lectures, asked for his number randomly one day, he didn't let himself think too much before giving it.
he adjusted his glasses and concentrated on the notes opened in front of him, the chatter of the campus café blocked by the earphones in his ears. he heard a tapping on the window beside him, turning his head only slightly to make sure he was imagining it, but you stand there waving enthusiastically. he removes one earphone slowly in confusion and you hurry past the window and into the cafe in a split second. your eyes search the tables by the window and find his. you smile at him as you approach and his heart does something very annoying in his chest.
"hey you." you smile warmly as you pull the chair opposite him.
"hey." he replies but it comes out a little breathless.
you shrug your coat off, "feels like i haven't seen you in forever."
he looks down, "yeah, i know."
you nod slowly, you weren't used to things being awkward between you and it made you nervous. silence settled between you, as you thought of what to say.
"you seem busy with all this," you gestured to the table, "but i was thinking of checking out the flea market that's on tonight after school." you add, "if you wanna come."
he pauses for a moment, "i have a date tonight," he says like it cost him something, "sorry."
you blink in surprise, "oh! don't worry about it," you rush to say, "that's great. is she in our college?" you ask in the most casual tone you can summon.
everything in james was telling him to cancel on his date and go to the flea market with you.
"yeah, she's in one of my classes."
you nod fervently, "that's good, you have things in common then."
he looks at you for a moment, which makes you nervous, "yeah, i guess."
your hands curl around the handle of your bag, "well, ill see you at megan's party next week, right?"
he nods, "oh yeah."
"okay, good" you put your coat back on, "dont work too hard." you smile, he forces a smile back and then you're off.
james' head hits the table as the doors closes behind you with a thud.
the colourful lights spilled out of the house that boomed with music, housing sweaty drunk people way over its capacity. megan was known for her parties and her endless array of friends. all she needed was an excuse and she was throwing a party on behalf of a friend of a friend's birthday. you take a deep breath at your surroundings and question if this was the best place for your friends to meet louis, properly. he seemed relaxed though. his hand curled around your waist as if he could sense your unease.
you yell over the noise into his ears,
"don't mind them, they're a bit weird." as you lead him to the living room where martin set up his dj set and most of your friends stood crowded around. louis laughed and shook his head.
"she made it!" said manon spotting you and reaching for a hug.
louis stood awkwardly by you as you greeted your friends, all of them waiting for you to address the elephant in the room.
"this is louis," you introduce him as if he needed an introduction. "this is martin the dj," martin daps him up, "this is my roommate manon," she smiles slowly at him, assessing him which makes him nervous, "oh and here's juhoon too," you said spotting him as he made his way over with drinks in his hands then fist bumped louis with a casual "wassup man?"
louis nodded taking it all in,
"megan and yoonchae are m.i.a." said manon.
"as per usual." you laugh.
louis cuts in,
"what about james?"
everyone freezes, all eyes trained on the two of you. you blink at louis,
"james?"
"yeah."
"he's around, i saw him before." juhoon answered for you.
louis takes a sip of the drink juhoon had handed him and nods, "cool, i wanted to meet him too."
another awkward silence falls over the group. you clear your throat,
"well, come help me look for a proper drink." you tug at his arm, and he follows without objection. upon your leaving, the group shares an exasperated knowing look.
"that wasn't too bad?" you ask.
louis shakes his head, "no, not at all. they seem nice."
"they are."
"i think some of my friends are here too."
you feel anxiety bubble up, "oh really?"
you end up at the counter with the drinks. louis does a show of mixing up something dramatically for you, which makes you laugh. he swirls the red plastic cup like a wine glass and hands it to you. you take a sip and wince.
"awful."
he laughs, fingers reaching out to brush the hair out of your face.
from a few feet away, james watches. to his dismay his eyes seemed to spot you in a room full of people, ears following the pitch of the soft laugh that sounded like dominoes cascading. he watches him whisper something in your ear, and your shy laughter and twinkling eyes. you leaning into his touch with familiarity. like it was no big deal. he turns around and walks the other way.
you and louis float around the place, ending back up at the living room where martin laid on banger after banger.
you pull louis by both his hands, "dance with me."
he pulls back and shakes his head.
"please!"
"i'll watch."
you drop his hands with an unserious pout,
"fine, you better be watching."
you mingle yourself into the sweaty and hyper mix of bodies, jumping up and down. you internally applaud martin for his music taste as you throw your arms here and there. you feel a tap on your shoulder and you whip around,
"james!" you exclaim with laughter.
he smiles in response, dancing in an absurd way that always made you laugh. you start mirroring him, the two of you engaged in some outlandish ritual of your own, which you both found hilarious.
you break from the crowd out of breath, james follows behind you . you find louis watching you with a keen gaze, still at the same spot you left him at.
"this is james." you say, a little louder than usual over the music.
louis smiles an easy smile and extends a hand towards james introducing himself.
his other hand slides around your waist and james' eyes flicker towards it for a split second, before he takes louis hand in a firm shake, a pressed smile on his lips.
"i've heard a lot about you." louis begins and your head snaps in his direction in bafflement.
james looks amused, "really?"
"he's lying." you say to james.
louis laughs, pulling you more into him. you notice the smell of drink off him wash over you.
"she says 'one of my friends' or 'i have a friend who', but i know she's talking about you." he still has that easy smile on his lips, but you find yourself growing uneasy.
you were supposed to ask how could he know which friend you were talking about, but what leaves your lips is,
"we've just known each other the longest."
louis head turns to face you, "really? how long?"
you pause to think, but james replies instantly,
"since 7th grade."
you blink,
"oh, yeah. he was the new kid at school," you reminiscence, "i went out of my way to become his friend, because im just so great." you add the last part jokingly.
"you are." james and louis say at the same time.
your eyes widen, a stretched silence engulfed you as james and louis regarded each other in a moment that made you wish you would combust on the spot.
you project a nervous laugh, which breaks the intense moment.
"ladies, one at a time." you joke awkwardly, unsure if you made the moment lighter or worse.
to your relief, louis broke away from the situation. his eyes drifted from james to find a set of familiar faces. his hand found yours.
"there are the guys i was talking about."
your eyes follow his gaze to find a group of boys sat on the living room couch, laughing and gesticulating, empty cans abandoned around.
louis nods curtly at james, "see you around."
james nods as well, with no response.
your eyes drift over the room in search of your friends, from where you are at the couch, leaning against louis as he talks animatedly to his friends. he had introduced you, and then after some attempts at conversation you found it hard to jump into their discussions. you didn't let yourself be disappointed because louis had been so great with all your friends tonight (except whatever happened with james), so you kind of owed it to him.
you lean closer to him, "im gonna get some fresh air."
he breaks from the conversation and focuses his attention at you, "sure. you okay?"
you nod, "yeah, it's stuffy in here."
"okay." he plants a kiss on your cheek, which makes you smile. sweet.
you move towards the front door, knowing the backyard had a pool so everyone would be hanging out there.
the brisk autumn air is refreshing when you step out onto the porch. you inhale deeply and close your eyes. you open your eyes as you exhale and they land on james, who was leaning on the porch railing, bottle in hand, looking at you. you move to the same railing.
"what are you doing out here?" you ask.
"getting some air and quiet." he replied. "you?"
"same, it's really hot in there." you add, "have you seen the others? i looked around just now and couldn't find them."
james finishes taking a sip, "they're in some room smoking pot."
you fake gasp, "without us?"
"well, you've been busy." he says matter of factly.
"i would've appreciated the invite. and you? why aren't you with them?"
he shrugs slowly, "..meh."
you laugh, "meh?"
"didn't feel like it." he clears up.
"that's fair enough."
a soft kind of quiet falls over you. there was the sound of faint music and laughter carrying out of the house, the only light was the distant streetlight and the fluorescent lights spilling out of the windows which softened james' features.
you break the quiet with a question you had been dying to ask,
"so, what do you think of louis?"
he squints at you with a suspicious glint in his eyes,
"why do you care what i think?"
"i care what all my friends think. i just haven't got a chance to ask them yet." you say matter of factly.
"hm." he hums, staring ahead as he thinks. you find yourself waiting in anticipation.
he finally speaks, slowly, "i think he plays the part of being your boyfriend instead of actually being your boyfriend."
you stare at him, processing his words.
"what do you mean?"
he shrugs, "like, back there," his head motioned towards the house, "he introduced you to his friends but didn't engage you in the conversation. or when he asked you out with what, roses? does he know those aren't your favourite flowers?"
your eyebrows pull together in confusion, "the kind of flowers he gets me means nothing. that's insignificant."
he brings the bottle up to his lips, but pauses. he shrugs,
"i guess, until you find out he doesn't know you at all."
you stare at him bewildered,
"and who made you the expert on this?"
he leans back, annoyance painted on his features, mirroring yours,
"you asked?"
"yeah, but-" you sigh in frustration, "you're being weird."
"no i’m not."
"yes, you are!" you pause, "even back there! you were being weird and standoffish."
he cuts across you, anger evident, "and he wasn't?"
"he was. but it was from a place of– i don't know, jealousy? protectiveness? stupid boyfriend-girlfriend stuff? it wasn't justified but it was explainable. what's your reason?" you say louder than you intended.
he looks at you baffled, before pulling back to his usual demeanor, looking away. you groan internally at his unwillingness to be open about any of his emotions.
"i spoke to him with the same air he spoke to me. that's all."
"you're so frustrating." your words fly out.
"and you're overbearing." he retorts.
both of you stand there, charged and breathing heavily, but neither of you moves away. james turns away, facing forwards again, leaning on the railing.
you don't speak for a while.
"are you in love?" james asks out of nowhere.
"what?" you ask, confused.
"might explain why you're acting this way."
you roll your eyes, "oh, please."
he places his elbow on the railing, and rests his head on his fist, turned to look at you. the way he looks at you makes your heart race.
"so, are you?" he asks again.
you jerk your shoulders up and down, "i don't know, and what if i am?" you say defensively.
he stares at you for a moment, something you can't name washes over his face.
he's moving again, not looking at you anymore, staring straight ahead.
"it doesn't sound like you." he says simply.
you're taken aback, "what does that mean?"
he licks his lips before answering, "it sounds like settling down, or giving up," he looks at you sideways, "doesn't sound much like you."
you immediately frown, offended.
"i want to settle down. is that so hard to imagine?"
he shakes his head, "it just seems a bit sudden."
you scoff, "i've wanted this for a long time."
james pauses, "you have?"
"yes." you fire, "and you're making me feel like i don't deserve it."
"that's not what i meant and you know it." he says immediately.
"do i? do i know it?" you advance, anger evident in your tone, "i think we don't see eye to eye on things we want anymore."
there's an inch of space between you, james stares down at the fire in your eyes, his eyes flicker down to your lips for a split second and it feels like there's a deafening silence surrounding you.
"i guess we don't." is all he says.
you turn at your heel and walk back into the house, not looking back. james stares at your back disappearing behind the door.
that night, you didn't let louis question you on why you wanted to leave the party so suddenly. you said you had a headache and were tired and he didn't ask more. you walked out the car to your dorm and didn't kiss him goodnight.
SUMMARY a feminist podcast roasts a boyband live on air, and Keonho makes the mistake of getting intrigued by the one girl who refuses to be impressed.
PAIRING idol Keonho x podcaster Yn / female reader
FEATURING CORTIS, ILLIT Wonhee, NewJeans Hyein, H2H Ian, mentions of other idols
GENRE social media au with written parts, romance, crack, fluff (tba)
WARNINGS not proofread. umm lots of jokes? swearing, complete roasting of the male kind (= hopecore), kys/kym, underage drinking, tba
WORD COUNT 3.1k
masterlist | previous next
The first thing you notice is that Ahn Keonho is early.
You spot him through the café window before he notices you. He’s tucked away in the corner, half-hidden behind a potted plant and a menu stand, as if either of those things could disguise the fact that he’s a reasonably recognizable idol.
The black hoodie and baseball help a little.
Not enough, though.
There’s something unmistakably Keonho about the way he sits.
One leg bouncing beneath the table. His fingers wrapped around a coffee cup that’s clearly still untouched. The way he keeps glancing toward the door before immediately looking away again.
Your steps slow.
The sight catches you off guard.
For once, he’s actually here. Sitting and waiting for you.
And then, he’s nervous.
You don’t know why that surprises you.
Maybe because you’ve only ever seen him in environments built for him.
Stages. Interviews. Livestreams. Even your podcast.
Especially your podcast.
Most guests left Ban Male Podcasts looking mildly traumatized after an hour with you, Wonhee, Hyein, and Ian.
Keonho had somehow laughed through the entire thing.
Sixty-seven uninterrupted minutes of being interrogated by four girls who openly referred to men as a design flaw.
And yet here he is.
Tapping his thumb against a cardboard coffee sleeve like he’s preparing for an entrance exam. Like he’s worried this might go badly.
It makes you feel a little less ridiculous about spending thirty minutes deciding what to wear.
Before you can dwell on that thought, you push open the café door. A bell chimes overhead. Warm air immediately washes over you.
Coffee. Vanilla. Fresh pastries.
The scent wraps around the room, mixing with quiet music and the low murmur of conversations.
The place feels comfortable and lived-in. The kind of café where people spend entire afternoons performing.
Keonho looks up.
The change in his expression is immediate.
His eyes find yours.
His face brightens.
Not politely. Not automatically.
Genuinely. Like he’s relieved you’re here.
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
For a second, neither of you moves. Then he stands so quickly his chair scrapes against the floor.
“Relax.”
“I’m relaxed.”
“You look like you’re about to negotiate a hostage release.”
His mouth twitches.
“Maybe I was.”
A laugh slips out before you can stop it.
Almost instantly, the tension leaves his shoulders.
Interesting.
“So making me laugh was the plan?”
“It was one of the plans.”
You give him a skeptical look.
“How many did you make?”
“A concerning amount.”
“That’s embarrassing.”
“I know.”
“And yet you did it anyway.”
“I was committed.”
The answer comes so easily that you nearly miss it. The sincerity tucked beneath the joke.
Your stomach gives an unhelpful little flip.
You ignore it immediately.
Instead, you shrug off your coat and drape it over your chair.
“You know,” you say, settling into your seat, “you’re lucky I showed up.”
“I know.”
“I almost cancelled.”
“I know.”
You give him a skeptical look.
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re you.”
Keonho leans back in his chair, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
“You’ve spent months publicly declaring men a public health concern.”
“Because they are.”
“You host a podcast called Ban Male Podcasts.”
“Correct.”
“And yet here you are.”
The smugness is unbearable.
You stare harder.
He grins. The idiot actually grins.
“I can still leave.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Oh?”
“You already sat down.”
The confidence should annoy you.
Instead, warmth sparks somewhere beneath your ribs. Which is significantly worse.
You hate that you’re smiling.
You hate even more that he notices.
The waitress arrives before you can dwell on it.
Keonho gestures toward you immediately.
“Ladies first.”
“Oh, now we’re doing chivalry?”
“I thought you’d appreciate the irony.”
“You thought wrong.”
“You appreciate it a little.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
The waitress visibly struggles not to laugh.
While you’re deciding, Keonho waits patiently.
No interruptions. No suggestions. No rushing.
He simply listens.
It’s such a small thing that most people don’t realize how rare it is.
Especially boys.
They’re usually waiting for their turn to talk. Waiting for an opportunity to tell a better story. A funnier one. Something about themselves.
Keonho doesn’t.
When you finish ordering, he orders something embarrassingly sweet.
You immediately judge him.
“That has enough sugar to kill a Victorian child.”
He gasps.
“You don’t understand flavor.”
“You ordered dessert disguised as coffee.”
“You ordered a cappuccino.”
“Because I’m an adult.”
“You’re seventeen.”
You point at him.
“So are you.”
His smile grows.
Oddly, without either of you noticing, the nervousness begins to fade.
The drinks arrive a few minutes later.
Your cappuccino. His… whatever dessert.
The waitress places them down and disappears again.
Briefly, the two of you sit there in comfortable silence, watching steam curl from your cups.
It’s strange. You’d expected awkwardness.
Expected to spend the afternoon searching for things to say.
Expected long pauses and forced conversation, and at least one moment where you seriously reconsidered every decision that led you here.
Instead, talking to Keonho feels strangely easy.
“So,” he says eventually.
You immediately narrow your eyes.
“Why do I feel like you’re about to annoy me?”
“Because I am.”
“I knew it.”
His laugh slips out.
The sound is warm enough to make you glance away for a second.
“You told me you like reading.”
Of all the topics you expected him to bring up, that wasn’t one of them.
“You remember that?”
“Of course.”
The answer is immediate.
No hesitation. No uncertainty.
Like the question itself is ridiculous.
“You literally mention books every other episode.”
“That’s not true.”
“It absolutely is.”
“It is not.”
“You once spent fifteen minutes comparing a politician to a badly written antagonist.”
“He deserved it.”
“You compared his character development to wet cardboard.”
“He also deserved that.”
Keonho laughs.
You shouldn’t feel as pleased as you do about being the reason.
“You remember all of this?”
“Some of it.”
The liar Ahn Keonho is.
You can tell he’s remembering more than he’s admitting.
The realization is oddly unsettling.
Not because it’s weird, but because it’s nice.
You don’t know what to do with nice.
“So, what do you actually read?” he asks.
The question sounds casual, but he’s looking at you expectantly. Waiting. The same way someone waits for the next chapter of a story.
You find yourself thinking about the answer more carefully than you normally would.
“Mostly fiction.”
“Okay.”
“Mysteries.”
His smile appears immediately.
“There it is.”
You point at him.
“What?”
“I knew it.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I was right.”
“About?”
“You like solving things.”
You scoff.
“Everyone likes solving things.”
“Not as much as you do.”
You pause.
His expression remains frustratingly sincere.
“You always have to know why something happened.”
He continues before you can interrupt.
“Every episode.”
“Keonho.”
“No, listen.”
The grin disappears. Just enough.
“You never stop at ‘that’s stupid.’”
You open your mouth. Then close it. Because annoyingly, he’s right.
“You want to know why it’s stupid.”
Your eyes narrow.
“I don’t know if I like being analyzed.”
“Good thing I’m not done.”
You throw a napkin at him. He catches it effortlessly.
Not only a liar. Also a traitor.
“You like understanding people.”
“That’s not—”
“It is.”
“It isn’t.”
“It definitely is.”
You groan. The idiot looks delighted.
“I hate that you’re making sense.”
“I know.”
“You sound very pleased about that.”
“I am.”
You shake your head.
“What about you?” you ask.
“What about me?”
“What do you read?”
His answer arrives instantly.
“Fantasy.”
You nod.
“Of course.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“What does that mean?”
“You have fantasy-reader energy.”
“That isn’t a thing.”
“It absolutely is.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
A few people glance over. Neither of you notices.
“What exactly is fantasy-reader energy anyway?” he asks.
You pretend to consider it seriously.
“Hm.”
His eyes narrow. “You made it up.”
“I may have.”
“I knew it.”
“But I still think I’m right.”
“Based on what evidence?”
You point dramatically
“You look like the type of person who gets emotionally attached to fictional characters.”
The silence is immediate.
Your eyes widen.
“Oh, my God.”
“No.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I don’t.”
“You absolutely do.”
“I don’t.”
“You hesitated.”
“I didn’t.”
“You just did.”
Keonho drops his head into one hand. The reaction alone tells you everything.
“No way.”
“It happened once.”
Your jaw drops.
“Once?”
A pause.
“Maybe twice.”
You nearly choke on your coffee.
“No way.”
“It wasn’t even my fault.”
“It absolutely was.”
“The author manipulated me emotionally.”
“The author wrote a book.”
“The author committed crimes.”
You laugh so hard your stomach hurts.
Across the table, Keonho looks deeply offended.
“This is why I don’t share things.”
“This is the best thing you’ve ever shared with me.”
“I regret everything.”
“You should.”
“I trusted you.”
“That was your first mistake.”
The look he gives you is dramatic enough to deserve an award.
You laugh again.
And then, unexpectedly, he starts telling you about the book.
The character. The ending. The scene that ruined him.
You find yourself leaning forward, listening. Actually listening. The same way he’s been listening to you until now.
“You get it, right?” he asks.
The question comes quieter this time.
For a second, he almost looks uncertain. And somehow that surprises you more than anything else.
Because Keonho is usually so easy. So confident. So comfortable.
Now he looks like he’s waiting for your answer. Like it matters.
You glance down at your cup. Then back at him.
“Yeah.”
His eyes lift.
“Yeah?”
You nod.
“Yeah.”
The smile that appears on his face is small, but real. And for some reason, that feels important.
“Books are weird.”
“They are.”
“You spend hundreds of pages getting attached to people who don’t exist.”
“And then they ruin your life.”
“Exactly.”
“Glad we’re in agreement.”
He laughs.
This time, you don’t look away.
The conversation shifts after that. Not dramatically, but something changes.
The teasing is still there. The jokes. The constant arguing.
Yet beneath it, there’s something else now. A growing sense that you’re seeing pieces of each other that don’t exist online.
Not idol Keonho. Not podcast host you.
Just two people talking about things they care about.
At some point, you realize neither of you has touched your drinks in several minutes.
Too busy talking. Too busy listening. Too busy forgetting that this was supposed to be awkward.
Outside, the afternoon sun has begun to soften.
Golden light spills through the café windows, stretching across the table between you.
The hours ahead suddenly feel much shorter than they should, and that realization is a little alarming.
Because for the first time since arriving, you aren’t wondering how long you’ll stay.
You’re wondering how fast the time is going to pass.
“What else?” he asks.
The question comes naturally.
Not because he’s running out of things to say. Not because he’s trying to keep the conversation alive.
If anything, the opposite.
The conversation has developed its own momentum by now. Topics branch into other topics. Stories turn into arguments, arguments into jokes, jokes into entirely new conversations.
Still, Keonho asks.
Like there’s more he wants to know.
About you.
You look down at your coffee. Think for a second.
“I like photography.”
A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.
“You told me that already.”
You kick his shoe beneath the table. He laughs.
The sound has become familiar over the past few hours. Comfortably familiar.
“Sorry. What do you like to photograph?” he asks.
You trace your finger around the rim of your cup.
“Whatever catches my attention.”
“Such as?”
You think about it.
“People.”
His face immediately lights up with amusement.
“The serial killer answer.”
“The what?”
“‘I photograph people.’”
“That is not a serial killer answer.”
“It absolutely sounds like one.”
“You are unbelievable.”
“And annoying. So I’ve been told.”
You kick him again. This time, he sees it coming.
The idiot-liar-traitor moves his foot before you can make contact.
“Violence.”
“You deserve it.”
“For asking questions?”
“For misunderstanding my art.”
“Ah.”
His expression turns solemn.
“My deepest apologies.”
“Apologies accepted.”
“Thank you.”
The smile never leaves his face. Neither does yours.
After a moment, the teasing fades.
“What kind of photos do you like to take?”
You glance toward the window.
Outside, people move through the afternoon crowd without noticing each other.
A woman balancing shopping bags. A teenager riding a bike. An older man reading a newspaper on a bench outside the bakery next door.
Small moments. Ordinary moments. The kind most people overlook.
“Candid photos.”
“The ones people don’t know you’re taking?”
You nod.
His gaze follows yours toward the window. Then returns to you.
“Why?”
The question is quiet. Curious. Interested.
You think about it longer this time. Long enough that the answer feels different when it finally comes.
“I don’t know.”
Your voice softens slightly.
“I think people are most interesting when they aren’t trying to be.”
The words settle between you.
For once, Keonho doesn’t respond immediately.
The café hums around you. Coffee machines hiss. Dishes clink. Someone laughs near the counter.
Yet the silence at your table doesn’t feel awkward. It feels thoughtful.
Like he’s actually considering what you said.
When you glance up, he’s already looking at you.
Not in the casual way people usually do during conversations.
He’s paying attention. Really paying attention.
The afternoon sunlight catches against the wire rims of his glasses.
For a second, neither of you speaks.
Something shifts. Subtle. Difficult to name.
The feeling disappears the moment he smiles. Small. Almost private.
“That sounds exactly like something you’d say.”
You give him a skeptical look.
“What?”
“You notice things.”
“I notice lots of things.”
“I know.”
The answer comes without hesitation.
You open your mouth. Then close it.
Because suddenly you’re curious.
“What does that even mean?”
For the first time all afternoon, Keonho looks caught off guard. Only slightly. But enough.
“You ask questions nobody else asks.”
He continues before you can interrupt.
“You pay attention to details.”
His fingers tap lightly against his cup. “On the podcast.”
You groan.
“Not the podcast again.”
“I’m serious.”
“That’s concerning.”
“You remember random things people say.”
His expression softens. “Even when they’re joking.”
You stare at him.
The sincerity in his voice makes it surprisingly difficult to come up with a sarcastic response.
Which is unfortunate. Because sarcasm is usually your strongest weapon.
“So you’ve been analyzing me this entire time.”
“Maybe.”
“You are the creepy one.”
You throw a sugar packet at him.
He catches that, too.
Honestly, heartbreakingly unfair.
“Enough about me.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
The answer arrives instantly. Like he doesn’t even need to think about it.
He stares right back. Completely serious.
“You’ve spent too much time making me answer questions.”
“That was for journalism.”
“It was psychological warfare.”
“That’s dramatic.”
“You had an entire segment called ‘Male Idols Manipulators.’”
“It was popular.”
“It was terrifying.”
A laugh escapes you.
“You survived.”
“Barely.”
The grin that follows makes him look younger somehow. Just a seventeen-year-old boy sitting across from you.
And somehow that version feels far more dangerous. Because it’s easier to like.
You immediately banish that thought.
“What about you, though?” you ask.
“What about me?”
“You’ve been interrogating me for an hour.”
“It hasn’t been an hour.”
“It feels like an hour.”
Keonho glances at his phone. He raises an eyebrow.
“Oh.”
Your stomach drops.
“What?”
“It’s been three.”
“That's impossible.”
“It isn't.”
“It is.”
He turns his screen toward you.
Three hours and fourteen minutes.
Your jaw actually drops.
The number doesn’t make sense.
You would’ve guessed ninety minutes. Maybe two hours. But not three.
Not enough time for the sunlight outside to completely change. Not enough time for two coffees each. Not enough time to forget you were nervous.
Yet somehow, three whole hours.
You look up.
Keonho looks equally surprised.
And for some reason, that makes you feel better. Because it means it wasn’t just you.
Neither of you was watching the clock. Neither of you was waiting for an excuse to leave.
The realization lands softly.
A comfortable silence settles between you.
Outside, the sky has shifted into shades of gold and amber.
The crowd has changed.
Different faces. Different people. An entire afternoon gone.
And neither of you noticed.
Keonho breaks the silence first.
“I’m glad you came.”
The words are simple.
No joke attached. No teasing.
Just honest.
Briefly, you’re caught completely off guard.
You glance down at your empty cup. Then at your hands. Anywhere except him.
Because something unexpectedly fragile settles in your chest.
You clear your throat. “Yeah.”
The word comes out quieter than intended.
You risk looking up.
He’s still watching you. Waiting.
You shake your head slightly, a reluctant smile pulling at your lips.
“Me too.”
The smile he gives you in return is different from the others.
Smaller. Softer. Like it isn’t meant for anyone else.
And suddenly the café feels warmer than before.
You hate that. A lot.
The two of you eventually stand, neither mentioning how long you’ve stayed. Neither mentioning the fact that the date had somehow stretched across an entire afternoon.
Outside, the air is cooler. The city still washed in golden evening light.
Briefly, you stand awkwardly on the sidewalk.
Not wanting to leave. Not entirely sure what comes next.
A problem neither of you seems willing to acknowledge.
Then Keonho shoves his hands into his hoodie pocket.
“Can I ask one last question?”
You groan. “You’re insufferable.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It depends.”
“On?”
“How annoying it is.”
His laugh escapes immediately. The familiar sound makes something in your chest loosen.
“What’s your favorite picture you’ve ever taken?”
The question catches you off guard. It’s unexpected.
You think about it. Really think.
Then you smile.
“A bad one.”
His eyebrows lift.
“A bad one?”
“It’s blurry.”
“That’s not helping.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
You glance down the street, remembering.
“I took it while traveling.”
He waits for you to continue.
“The lighting was terrible.”
A small smile pulls at your lips. “The framing was awful.”
“Sounds promising.”
“But everyone in it was laughing.”
Something soft settles across his expression. “And that’s your favorite?”
You nod, honestly. “Yeah.”
Briefly, neither of you says anything.
Then Keonho smiles. Warm. Understanding. Like he gets exactly what you mean.
And somehow that’s worse than if he didn’t.
Because suddenly you have the strange feeling that if you had taken a picture today, somewhere between the books, the arguments, the laughter, the three hours that felt like thirty minutes, it would’ve turned out blurry, too.
SUMMARY a feminist podcast roasts a boyband live on air, and Keonho makes the mistake of getting intrigued by the one girl who refuses to be impressed.
PAIRING idol Keonho x podcaster Yn / female reader
FEATURING CORTIS, ILLIT Wonhee, NewJeans Hyein, H2H Ian, mentions of other idols
GENRE social media au with written parts, romance, crack, fluff (tba)
WARNINGS wony fc. PROBABLY NOT FUNNY 😭 umm lots of jokes? swearing, complete roasting of the male kind (= hopecore), kys/kym, tba
WORD COUNT 4.9k
masterlist | previous next
You’re sitting in Studio B on a Thursday afternoon, watching five ridiculously famous men file into your recording studio while your producer silently mouths, "Please don’t start a scandal."
No promises.
The studio smells like burnt coffee and overheated wires. Ian insists it’s “the scent of female journalism,” which would sound more convincing if she hadn’t almost dropped an entire iced americano into the sound mixer ten minutes ago.
“You guys better behave,” Hyein says while adjusting her headphones. “We are literally letting men into our safe space today.”
Wonhee snorts from across the table. “Historic moment for feminism.”
Behind you, the neon sign for the show glows hot pink against the dark studio wall: BAN MALE PODCASTS.
Subtle branding.
The red recording light hasn’t turned on yet, but the cameras already have.
Unfortunately.
Because the guests are here.
Cortis enters the studio as if they’ve walked into an awards show instead of a podcast openly hostile to their existence.
Martin comes first. Leader smile, practiced bow, expensive vintage designer jacket. James follows, already laughing at something Seonghyeon whispered to him. Juhoon notices the neon sign and reads it out loud slowly.
“…That feels hostile.”
“It is,” Hyein says pleasantly.
James looks past the cameras toward the framed collage wall labeled MEN WE DO NOT TRUST.
“Why is Ryan Gosling there?”
Ian answers without hesitation. “Too symmetrical. Suspicious.”
“And why is there a photo of us?” he asks almost worried.
“That’s because you’re men.”
Seonghyeon laughs. Martin, meanwhile, remains painfully media-trained through all of it.
The last one to walk in is Keonho.
He is smiling politely, but he remains quiet compared to the others. Hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, dark hair pushed back from his forehead. While the rest of the guests reacts to the room out loud, he mostly watches.
The set. The staff. The microphones. Like he’s waiting to see which part of this turns into a trap.
Smart man.
“Welcome to the lion’s den,” Ian announces dramatically as everyone settles onto the couches.
“Should we be scared?” James asks.
“Yes,” you answer.
That gets the first real laugh out of them.
“Alright,” the producer says from behind the glass. “Everyone ready?”
“No,” Martin says honestly.
The red recording light clicks on anyway.
Hyein leans into her microphone instantly. “Welcome back to Ban Male Podcasts, the only podcast brave enough to say what everyone else is thinking.”
Ian adds, “Men are temporary. Google Docs evidence folders are forever.”
“Today,” Wonhee says, holding in a grin far too happy for the situation, “we have very special guests.”
You clasp your hands dramatically. “Against our better judgment.”
Martin laughs politely. “Thank you for inviting us.”
“No problem,” you say. “This is actually an intervention.”
James wheezes.
The atmosphere settles surprisingly quickly after that. The CORTIS members are easier than expected. Funny, relaxed, and willing to play along with the constant accusations of male incompetence.
You glance across at them. “For legal reasons, how are we feeling today?”
Keonho points at the sign behind you. “Unsafe.”
“Correct,” you say.
That gets another laugh out of them. Martin relaxes a little after that.
“We actually listen to clips from your podcast sometimes,” he admits.
You narrow your eyes. “As self-harm?”
“No! It’s funny.”
“Interesting,” Ian says, writing fake notes. “Victim develops attachment to predator.”
“Can we still leave?” Seonghyeon asks.
“No,” Hyein replies. “Doors locked at the start.”
“So,” Ian starts, flipping through her notes, “CORTIS debuted not even one year ago. Yet, your first EP set records for first-day sales. You won the “Rookie of the Year” titles at major ceremonies. Millions of fans. The list actually goes on, but I’ll stop here. My question is this.”
She pauses. “Why?”
Juhoon snorts with laughter before anyone can even answer.
“You guys are evil,” Seonghyeon says.
Martin gives a diplomatic smile. “People connect with our music.”
“Name three songs,” you deadpan.
James points at you across the table. “See, this is targeted harassment.”
“It’s journalism.”
"Let's keep going," Ian says, flipping to the actual interview notes.
“So,” Hyein folds her hands together professionally. “We heard you recently dropped an album.”
Martin nods politely. “Yes. It’s called GREENGREEN.”
You blink once.
“…You didn’t like the other colors?”
James is gone instantly. Actually gone. He folds over so violently that he nearly headbutts the coffee table while Juhoon claps silently beside him like a seal.
Martin closes his eyes for exactly one second.
“It’s symbolic,” he says carefully.
“Of what?” Ian asks. “Freshly cut grass?”
“Nature?”
“Environmental awareness?” Wonhee adds.
“Money?” Hyein guesses.
“Global warming?” you offer.
“Was GREEN unavailable just once?” Ian asks again. “Did you actually need the extra green?”
Seonghyeon grabs his mic dramatically. “This is why men don’t trust podcasts.”
“That’s on us, honestly.”
Martin straightens in his seat like he’s entering battle.
“The album represents growth, youth, authenticity—”
“Photosynthesis,” you nod seriously.
“It’s not about photosynthesis.”
James is wiping tears from his face now. “Please let him finish before she starts calling us chlorophyll.”
“Too late,” Ian says. “You’re all chlorophyll-coded now.”
Keonho speaks from the end of the couch.
“…What does that even mean?”
“No one knows,” Juhoon admits.
“It means,” you explain, “your entire concept sounds like boys standing in fields pretending they discovered emotions yesterday.”
Even Martin laughs this time, head dropping briefly into his hands.
“That’s actually not completely wrong,” Seonghyeon says.
“Backstabber,” Martin mutters.
“Oh, wait,” Ian looks down at her notes. “No, because this album description is actually insane.”
Juhoon already looks tired. “What now?”
She clears her throat dramatically.
“‘GREENGREEN focuses on CORTIS’s authentic selves and boyish nature while creating an unsafe, intentionally antagonistic sound.’”
A pause. Then Hyein slowly lowers her headphones.
“…Unsafe?”
James immediately points at Martin. “That wording was his fault.”
Martin looks horrified. “It was taken out of context!”
“No,” Seonghyeon says. “You literally said the words ‘we wanted it to feel hostile.’”
You stare across the table. “You marketed an album like a chemical hazard.”
“It’s metaphorical,” Martin insists.
“Why does your EP sound FDA-unapproved?”
Juhoon is fully crying laughing now while Ian flips through the printed notes again.
“No, wait, it gets worse.” She squints. “‘Boyish nature.’”
Wonhee clutches her chest dramatically. “Oh, my god. They have boyish nature.”
“Contain it immediately,” Hyein says.
James leans toward his mic. “You guys are acting like we’re woodland creatures.”
“You are,” you reply. “K-pop men are just emotionally moisturized raccoons with stylists.”
Even the staff behind the cameras loses composure at that one.
Keonho drops his head briefly, shoulders shaking with quiet laughter, while Martin looks genuinely betrayed by the entire environment.
“You invited us here,” he reminds everyone weakly.
“Mistakes happen.”
Ian keeps reading.
“Wait, all members participated in writing?”
That shifts the atmosphere slightly. The joking doesn’t disappear, but it softens around the edges.
Martin nods. “Yeah. We wanted the album to feel personal.”
“That’s cool, I guess.”
“You’re credited on every track, right?” Wonhee asks.
Martin shrugs modestly. “Mostly lyrics and structure stuff.”
“And the others helped write REDRED, ACAI, YOUNGCREATORCREW, and Wassup,” Hyein reads.
You look over the tracklist again. “Okay, I need to know who named YOUNGCREATORCREW because that sounds like a startup founded by seventeen-year-old boys with crypto opinions.”
“That was a group effort,” Juhoon says proudly.
“That somehow makes it worse.”
James points at you. “You don’t understand artistic vision.”
“No, I understand exactly enough to be concerned.”
Keonho reaches over and taps the album booklet.
“What’s wrong with REDRED then?”
You stare at the title for a second.
“…It sounds like a warning notification.”
Ian nods solemnly. “Actually valid. REDRED sounds like the name of an emergency protocol.”
“Or a man with a SoundCloud account,” Hyein adds.
James gasps. “That’s evil.”
“You literally described the album as antagonistic.”
“Not toward women!”
“That remains to be seen.”
Martin laughs despite himself, shaking his head. “You really twist everything negatively.”
“No,” you say. “We reinterpret male behavior through a lens of public safety.”
Keonho looks over at you again.
“You keep saying ‘men’ like you’re studying us in a lab.”
“I am.”
“And your conclusion?”
You lean back thoughtfully.
“Still under review. Early results are concerning.”
“That’s fair,” Juhoon admits.
“Traitor,” James mutters.
Wonhee flips to another page. “Wait, this interview says the album’s supposed to show your ‘authentic selves.’”
She looks up slowly. “…So which one of you is responsible for the unsafe antagonistic energy?”
Without hesitation, every member points at a different person.
James points at Keonho.
Keonho points at Seonghyeon.
Seonghyeon points at Martin.
Martin points at James.
Juhoon points at himself proudly.
“See?” Hyein says. “Now that is teamwork.”
“You know what’s interesting?” Ian says, narrowing her eyes at the group. “Male artists always describe albums like they survived something making them.
“That’s because we did,” James says dramatically.
“You recorded six songs.”
“Exactly.”
Keonho finally speaks again, quieter this time.
“It was stressful, actually.”
The room settles just enough to hear him continue.
“We were still travelling while finishing it. Everyone was tired all the time.”
There’s something more grounded about the way he says it. Less polished.
Martin nods. “We argued a lot during production.”
“Oh?” Ian perks up instantly. “Content.”
“Not serious arguments,” Martin says quickly.
“Boring.”
“Mostly over direction,” Keonho explains. “Like how aggressive the sound should be.”
You glance toward him. “And what side were you on?”
A small pause. Then, “The aggressive side.”
Your eyebrows lift slightly.
“Of course,” you mutter.
His mouth curves faintly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You give emotionally repressed indie film protagonist vibes. Aggressive music was inevitable.”
James slams a hand against the couch, far too serious.
“That’s exactly his vibe.”
“No, it isn’t,” Keonho says.
“It literally is,” Juhoon says. “Bro stands by the windows dramatically.”
“I have never done that.”
Seonghyeon points at him accusingly. “You stared into the rain for forty minutes in Tokyo.”
“It was raining.”
“See?” you say. “Cinema.”
The first thirty minutes pass more easily than expected.
CORTIS are annoyingly good guests. James talks the most, constantly interrupting everyone to make jokes. Juhoon has absolutely no filter, opposite to what you thought. Martin keeps trying to steer answers back into professionalism whenever things derail. Keonho mostly listens. When he does speak, everyone else pauses automatically.
“So,” Wonhee says eventually, flipping again through her notes, “you guys have one of the biggest fandoms right now. What’s the weirdest fan interaction you’ve had?”
Martin says, “Absolutely nothing inappropriate.”
“Liar,” James says.
“You can’t say that on camera.”
“We’re literally on a podcast called Ban Male Podcasts.”
Juhoon leans toward his mic. “One fan proposed to Keonho during a fansign.”
Ian gasps dramatically. “What did you say?”
Keonho shrugs. “I told her she deserved better.”
You snort before you can stop yourself.
His eyes flick toward you for half a second at the sound. Tiny thing, easy to ignore.
“So you’re self-aware,” you say.
“A little.”
“That’s rare.”
“Among men?” he asks mildly.
“Yes.”
James points across the table. “Why does she sound personally offended by our existence?”
“Because I am.”
“Did a boy band hurt you?”
“No,” you say. “I just think male idols survive entirely on coordinated outfits and eye contact.”
“That’s not true,” Martin argues.
“Right, sorry. Coordinated outfits, eye contact, and yearning.”
Seonghyeon starts coughing because he’s laughing too hard. Keonho’s mouth twitches slightly.
Ian flips to another cue card. “Okay, important question. Who in Cortis would survive longest in a feminist commune?”
“Not Seonghyeon,” Juhoon says instantly.
“Why me?”
“You’d get cancelled in twelve minutes.”
“That’s generous.”
Hyein points at Martin. “Leader types never survive because they start making spreadsheets.”
Martin looks offended. “Organization is important.”
“You’d try assigning chores.”
“That’s called being helpful.”
“That’s called patriarchy.”
You glance toward Keonho while everyone argues over whether dishwashing schedules are inherently oppressive.
He’s already looking at you, attentively, like he’s trying to figure out whether you’re always this sharp or if it’s specifically for the show.
You hold his gaze for exactly two seconds before looking back at your notes, trying not to pay mind to it.
About forty minutes in, Ian introduces a segment called “Cortis or Mediocre Man from Tinder?”
Martin immediately puts his head in his hands.
“No.”
“Yes,” Wonhee says enthusiastically. “We found anonymous online posts, and you have to guess whether one of your members said it.”
James is already laughing before the first question.
You read from the card dramatically. “‘I think women naturally like me because I’m emotionally available.’”
“Tinder,” Seonghyeon says with no second thought.
“Wrong,” Ian says. “That was Juhoon in an interview.”
Juhoon looks betrayed. “That was one time.”
“Crazy statement,” you tell him.
“It was taken out of context!”
“There is no context that saves you.”
Even Keonho laughs at that one properly. Low and brief.
The game continues.
“‘I need a girl who can match my energy.’”
“James,” Martin says instantly.
“Correct!”
James points accusingly. “How dare you know me that well?”
“Let’s continue.”
“‘Communication is attractive.’”
“Keonho,” Juhoon says.
You glance up automatically. Keonho leans back against the couch, expression unreadable. “Why’d you say my name like that?”
“Because you talk like you’ve read one psychology book.”
The room erupts.
“You do,” James says.
“You absolutely do,” Seonghyeon agrees.
Keonho looks unimpressed. “It was one article.”
“That’s worse,” you mumble.
He hears you anyway.
“What?” he asks.
“You have article-reader energy.”
“And you have podcast-host-who-thinks-she’s-funnier-than-she-is energy.”
There’s a collective “oh” from everyone in the room.
You stare at him. He stares back calmly. Not challenging, but rather amused.
“Oh,” Ian says softly beside you. “This is getting interesting.”
You ignore her completely.
“You know what?” you say into the mic. “Cut his audio.”
“Human rights violation,” James says.
“Accepted.”
Keonho just shakes his head, smiling under his breath. And somehow that’s worse than anything else would’ve been.
By the hour mark, the conversation drifts away from structured questions, and the atmosphere changes.
Less interview, more people talking.
Martin discusses trainee years and sleeping in practice rooms. Hyein asks about stage anxiety. Wonhee admits she used to secretly watch CORTIS’ performances and gets publicly shamed for it.
“Ex-fan behavior,” Ian says.
“Current fan behavior,” James corrects.
Wonhee gasps. “Do not expose me.”
You’re half-listening while adjusting the sleeve of your sweater when Keonho asks, “How did your podcast start?”
It catches you off guard a little. Not because it’s personal, but because it’s the first question he’s asked all afternoon.
Ian answers first. “Yn got into an argument with a finance bro at a party.”
“Valid,” Seonghyeon says.
“He said women aren’t funny,” Hyein explains.
“So we made a podcast out of spite,” you finish.
Keonho nods slowly. “That makes sense.”
“You say that like you expected it.”
“I kind of did.”
“Why?”
He thinks about it for a second before answering.
“You answer really fast.”
You blink slightly. “What does that mean?”
“Like you already expect people to disagree with you.”
The room quiets just enough for you to notice it.
Your eyes lift to his automatically. There’s no smugness in his expression. No teasing.
If anything, he looks mildly surprised that he said it out loud at all.
Ian looks between the two of you like she’s watching tennis.
You recover first.
“Well,” you say lightly, “that’s the most psychologically aware thing anyone’s ever said on this podcast. Congratulations.”
The tension breaks instantly.
James groans. “Great. Now he’s never shutting up.”
“I knew the therapy podcasts got to him,” Juhoon mutters.
But something shifts after that. Small, barely noticeable.
Keonho talks more. Not constantly, but directly to you now instead of the group. Throwaway comments. Dry observations slipped under louder conversations. You answer before realizing you are.
At some point, Hyein notices. Of course she does.
She leans toward her mic with the expression of someone about to ruin lives.
“So,” she says casually, “which member do we think would survive getting rejected by Yn?”
You nearly choke on your drink. “Why am I involved?”
“Research purposes,” Ian shrugs.
James points at Martin. “He’d start writing apology emails.”
“I would not.”
“Keonho would pretend he’s fine,” Juhoon says.
Seonghyeon nods solemnly. “Then write lyrics about it.”
“None of you know me at all.”
You’re laughing despite yourself now, head ducked slightly as the arguing gets louder. And then, you look up.
Keonho’s already looking at you again. Like he’s waiting to hear what you’ll say.
Your stomach does something deeply irritating and definitely out of character.
“You’re all assuming I’d reject him,” you say finally.
Then the room erupts. Ian physically falls against the couch, screaming.
Martin points across the table. “Wait.”
“No, no, no,” you say. “That’s not what I meant.”
“That’s exactly what you meant,” Wonhee yells, joining the teasing.
Keonho laughs quietly beside the chaos, lowering his head for a second like he’s trying not to.
You point at everyone accusingly. “You’re twisting my words.”
“You opened the door,” Hyein says.
“You kicked the door off its hinges,” James corrects.
Your producer behind the glass is losing their mind silently.
And through all of it, Keonho doesn’t jump in. He doesn’t make it weird. He just looks over at you once, amused in a way that feels strangely private despite the cameras and microphones and ten people in the room.
By the time the outro music starts playing through the studio speakers, everyone’s exhausted in that buzzy, overtalked kind of way.
James has fully abandoned posture and is lying sideways across the couch. Seonghyeon is trying to steal the leftover snacks from your side of the table. Hyein is still arguing with Martin about whether men should be allowed to wear leather jackets recreationally.
“You people made this sound illegal,” Martin says.
“It should be regulated,” Hyein replies.
The producer finally signals cut from behind the glass. The red recording light clicks off.
Immediately, the atmosphere changes.
Headphones come off. Microphones mute. Staff members drift onto the set carrying chargers and water bottles while someone in the corner starts replaying clips from the recording.
Wonhee stretches dramatically beside you. “That was way less painful than expected.”
“For them or for us?” you ask.
“Both.”
Hyein glances toward your guests. “James definitely cried internally at least twice.
“I heard that,” James says from the couch.
“Good.”
Ian waits exactly three seconds before pulling out her phone.
“Okay,” she says, already typing. “Emergency poll. Did Keonho flirt with Yn, or was that just male eye contact deception tactics?”
“Those are the same thing,” Hyein says from across the studio.
“They literally are not,” you argue.
Wonhee looks up from editing photos. “No, because male idols survive on three things only.”
She starts counting on her fingers.
“Eye contact. Vocal fry. Layers.”
“Layers?” Martin repeats.
“Yes,” Ian says. “If a man wears more than two jackets at once, teenage girls start hallucinating personality traits.”
James clutches his chest. “This is slander.”
“It’s fashion analysis.”
Seonghyeon points at Martin while walking past with a backpack slung over one shoulder. “He’s the biggest offender actually. Bro dresses like he survived a tragic winter romance.”
Martin looks down at himself. Black hoodie. Designer jacket. Rings.
“…This is just clothing.”
“No,” you say. “This is exactly what I mean. Men put on one silver necklace, and everyone like ‘he looks emotionally complex.’”
James laughs so hard he nearly drops his phone.
Juhoon snaps his fingers. “Yes. Thank you.”
Martin points accusingly at you. “You act like women don’t do the exact same thing.”
“Women actually develop personalities,” Ian replies.
He groans loudly. “You people are impossible.”
Hyein leans toward one of the still unmuted mics dramatically. “Breaking news: local men discovered to be tall with moisturizer and nothing else.
“You’re evil,” Martin mutters.
“And yet,” Wonhee says sweetly, “millions of women still buy photocards of you blinking.”
“That’s support!”
“That’s market manipulation.”
Meanwhile, Keonho’s still standing beside your chair, calm through all of it. Which honestly makes him more suspicious.
You point at him. “See, he’s doing it again.”
He blinks once. “Doing what?”
“The quiet thing.”
“…Talking?”
“No. The observing thing. Men always do this when they want women to project depth onto them.”
Seonghyeon starts cackling before Keonho can even answer.
“You sound like you’re describing a cryptid.”
“She kind of is,” James says. “She talks about men like they’re an invasive species.”
“Because they are.”
Martin shakes his head, smiling. “You know, before today, I thought the podcast exaggerated.”
“We undersell it,” Ian says proudly.
A staff member walks by carrying cables and mutters, “Honestly, this has been therapeutic.”
“Thank you,” Hyein says. “We provide a public service.”
James drops back onto the couch dramatically. “I came here to promote an album and left with gender-based psychological damage.”
“Growth mindset,” you tell him.
Juhoon points toward the wall collage again. “Wait. Why is Timothée Chalamet not on the Men We Do Not Trust board?”
Ian gasps. “Oh, my god.”
Wonhee immediately grabs a marker. “That’s an oversight, actually.”
Martin looks horrified. “You people update this regularly?”
“Of course,” Hyein says. “Danger evolves.”
“You run this like national security.”
“You think we started a podcast called Ban Male Podcasts without infrastructure?”
James is fully folded over, laughing again, while Seonghyeon wanders over to inspect the board.
“There are categories,” he realizes.
“Obviously,” you say.
He reads aloud.
“‘Men who own guitars for evil reasons.’”
“Self-explanatory.”
“‘Men who say they’re brutally honest.’”
“Immediate prison.”
“‘Men with podcast microphones in their bedrooms.’” He pauses. “…Okay that one’s fair.”
James points at all of them. “You guys realize we’re still here, right?”
“We’re being brave in front of adversity.”
Martin laughs quietly into his hand while the rest of the room descends into chaos again.
Keonho looks over at you and asks, “What category am I in?”
The room goes silent. Ian makes a noise so high-pitched that only dogs probably hear it.
You stare at him. “You’re assuming you’ve earned a category.”
“Oh, that’s cold,” Juhoon says.
Keonho doesn’t even look offended. If anything, he looks more amused than before.
“Okay,” he says lightly. “What’s the evaluation process?”
“You don’t want to know,” you reply.
“Seems intense.”
“It involves peer review and psychological warfare.”
James wipes tears from his eyes. “Why does this almost sound like the United Nations of hating men?”
“Because, unlike the UN,” Ian says, “we actually accomplish things.”
Martin physically turns away, laughing.
You hate how easily this has become comfortable.
An hour ago, you expected stiff interview answers and idol media training.
Instead, James is stealing studio snacks, Seonghyeon is taking selfies with the anti-men wall, and Keonho keeps looking at you like every sarcastic thing you say is secretly interesting.
Which is deeply annoying.
Worse, he notices things. Like how you always tap your pen against your cup when thinking. Or how you answer jokes faster when you’re nervous. Or how every time he says something unexpectedly sincere, you immediately cover it with another insult.
“You know,” he says, low enough that only you really hear it over the noise, “for someone who distrusts men this much, you’re pretty nice to us.”
You scoff automatically. “Don’t misinterpret basic human decency.”
“See?” he says. “Deflection.”
“See?” you shoot back. “Article-reader psychology.”
That earns a small laugh again.
You immediately look away before your brain starts acting like a Victorian woman seeing an ankle.
You start stacking cue cards into a messy pile, only half paying attention to the conversations around you.
Until you hear your own voice echoing faintly through the studio speakers.
One of the editors is replaying a clip.
“K-pop men are just emotionally moisturized raccoons with stylists.”
A second later, Keonho’s voice follows, “And yet you still agreed to interview us.”
You grimace instantly. “Oh, absolutely cut that part.”
“Too late,” the editor calls back. “It’s funny.”
“Defamation is funny now?”
“Very.”
Across the room, Juhoon points toward the playback speakers. “See? That’s the moment.”
You look up. “What moment?”
“The moment Keonho decided this podcast was a challenge.”
Keonho doesn’t even look away from the water bottle he’s opening. “You guys make up narratives too fast.”
James sits up. “No, because you were quiet with everyone else before that.”
“I was listening.”
“You were observing,” Seonghyeon corrects dramatically.
“Same thing.”
Ian slowly swivels toward you with the worst expression imaginable. Interested.
You immediately point at her. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t even say anything.”
“You’re thinking loudly.”
Martin laughs into his drink while the others continue arguing over absolutely nothing.
You expect Keonho to jump into it eventually. To deny it harder, or joke back, or turn it into flirting like most guys would after being cornered by their friends.
He doesn’t. Instead, he glances toward the playback monitor where your frozen face is paused mid-sentence.
Then he says, mostly to the room, “She’s pretty much the same off-camera.”
Hyein’s eyebrows shoot up instantly. “Explain.”
“I mean…” He shrugs once. “You all exaggerate things for the show a little. She doesn’t seem to.”
You blink at him.
“That’s your observation?” Ian asks.
“Well…” He shrugs once. “She says the exact same things when the mics are off.”
“That’s because she’s committed to the bit,” Wonhee says.
“No,” Keonho replies easily. “I think she just means it.”
Something about the way he says it catches you off guard.
Not mocking. Not impressed either. Just straightforward. Like he noticed something and decided to say it out loud. And somehow that lands differently.
You recover quickly anyway. “Wow. Incredible analysis. Did the article-reader energy strike again?”
James loses it instantly. “There it is,” he wheezes.
Keonho finally laughs, shaking his head once.
“You really never let anything go, huh?” He says.
“I’m not a quitter.”
The staff starts cleaning around you now, cables dragging across the floor, lights dimming one by one. The episode’s over. Everyone’s starting to split into smaller conversations.
Martin and Hyein are discussing touring schedules.
Ian is trying to convince Seonghyeon that every man secretly wants to start a podcast.
Wonhee is taking blurry behind-the-scenes photos for social media.
You’re stuffing your notebook into your bag when someone drops into the empty seat beside you.
Keonho. Of course.
Not close enough to be weird about it. Just there.
“You really don’t listen to idol music?” he asks.
You zip your bag shut. “Occasionally.”
“That sounds like a lie.”
“It’s not. I just don’t build emotional attachments to strangers with good lighting.”
“That’s probably healthy.”
“You say that like your career doesn’t depend on the opposite.”
He considers that for a second.
“…True.”
There’s noise all around you, people talking, chairs scraping, Ian laughing loud enough to qualify as a public disturbance, but the conversation settles strangely easily anyway.
No performance to it, no obvious tension. Which is almost worse.
“You know,” he says after a moment, “I thought this podcast was going to hate us more.”
“We did at first.”
“At first?”
You look at him flatly. “Don’t get excited.”
A faint smile tugs at his mouth. Again, small. Brief. Like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.
Before you can respond, Ian appears behind you and slings an arm over your shoulder.
“There you are,” she says suspiciously. “Why does this look like a post-credit scene?”
“It’s not,” you say.
Keonho stands before Ian can interrogate either of you further.
“We should head out anyway,” he says.
The rest of the boys are already gathering their things near the door. Martin is thanking the staff while James complains about being “emotionally attacked for entertainment.”
“You’ll recover,” you call out.
“No, I won’t.”
“Thoughts and prayers.”
James points at you dramatically as he leaves. “She was the scariest one. Don’t let the others fool you.”
“Correct,” Hyein says proudly.
Keonho lingers for half a second longer near the doorway. Not enough to make it noticeable to anyone else, just enough to glance back at you once.
“You should listen to at least one CORTIS song before deciding we’re industry propaganda.”
You fold your arms. “Recommendation?”
“Depends,” he says. “Do you want the emotionally manipulative answer or the honest one?”
You narrow your eyes. “That sounded suspiciously calculated.”
“See?” He looks genuinely amused now. “You assume everything’s strategy.”
“When you’re an idol? Usually, yeah.”
“Maybe,” he says.
For a second, the teasing drops out of his voice entirely.
“Or maybe some people are just curious.”
Before you can figure out what to say to that, James yells from the hallway.
“Keonho, stop trying to sound mysterious and get in the van!”
The moment breaks instantly.
You burst out laughing before you can stop yourself.
Keonho closes his eyes briefly like he’s reconsidering every life decision that led him here. Then he looks back at you one last time, deadpan.
“See what I deal with?”
“You chose this life.”
“Unfortunately.”
And then he’s gone with the rest of them, studio door swinging shut behind him.
Ian reappears at your side immediately after.
Silent for once. Dangerous.
“…Don’t,” you warn.
“I literally didn’t say anything.”
“You’re about to.”
She watches the closed door thoughtfully for another second.
Then, “You’re listening to their music tonight, aren’t you?”
You scoff.
“Absolutely not.”
A pause.
“…Maybe one song.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE i must admit, i had quite a hard time writing this… but i hope it’s funny enough 😔😔 if not, please forgive me 🙏 i’ll make up for it … i literally read it over and over 100 times but i cant think of anything better 💔
this one has to see the light of the day bro. the beat sounds like a memory it makes me want to cry it's so beautiful. watching martin make this ethereal tune from scratch was crazy like the vibe changed so drastically when he started working on the beat switch, genuinely reached flow state. ugh this is so fascinating to me because im musically inept how do they just Do That.
- cortis 6th member / keonho being down bad for you series
→ previously
✦ anddddd SCENE🙏🙏🙏 next chapter will be written guys so stay tuned for that 🫰 also i had to put all the insta dms in one cause of the stupid 30 picture limit so MB anyways thank you guys sm for all the love yall show this series and me 🫶 i love yall broskis THIS ONES FOR YALL.
synopsis. forced into a corner by your editor, you’re writing a cynical column on how to "get the guy" with hufflepuff captain james as your target. you approach him like a professional study, but library shifts and rainy afternoons slowly turn your research into something real. now the deadline is looming, and you have to decide if he's a subject or something you're not ready to give away.
pairing. seeker!james x column writer!reader
genre(s). fluff, ANGST, stupid james + stupid reader, yearning and yearninggg
a/n : this is super super rushed idk what to feel about it but this is just a thank you in honor of 1k followers! i love you all :D
the thing about lee sora is that she never raises her voice.
you’ve noticed this about her over the two years you’ve written for the castle chronicles — she doesn’t need to. she has this way of speaking that’s perfectly level, almost pleasant, that makes you feel like you’re being disagreed with by someone who finds the whole thing mildly amusing. it’s the most slytherin thing about her, which is saying something.
“no,” you say, for the second time.
“y/n.”
“i said no, sora. i’m not doing a piece on how to get a boy. i write opinion columns. i write cultural commentary. i wrote that piece on the quidditch point system that professor longbottom said was—”
“the complaint letters,” sora says, “are on my desk.”
you stop.
she folds her hands. “three of them. all from hufflepuff fifth years. all very neatly written, which i respect, even if the content was—”
“the content of my article was accurate—”
“it was accurate,” she agrees. “it was also, according to letter number two, unnecessarily pointed and according to letter three, mean-spirited, which i thought was a little dramatic but—”
“it was satire.”
“y/n.” sora tilts her head slightly. “i need you to write this piece.”
the office is small — it always has been, tucked at the end of a corridor on the third floor like an afterthought, shelves stacked with back issues and ink-stained notebooks and the particular smell of parchment and ambition. you’ve spent half your hogwarts career in this room. you love it. you are currently furious at it.
“it’s shallow,” you say.
“it’s fun.”
“it’s not what i do.”
“it’s what i’m asking you to do,” sora says, still pleasant, still level. “one piece. a proper feature — long form, first person, real observations. you get close to someone, you write about it. how to get the guy.” she pauses. “it’ll be the december issue centrepiece.”
“and if i say no?”
she looks at you. just looks at you. the complaint letters are visible on the corner of her desk from where you’re sitting.
you say, “fine,” in a tone that makes very clear it is not fine, and sora smiles like she knew you’d get there eventually.
“wonderful,” she says. “i was thinking james.”
you’re halfway out of your chair. “sorry?”
“james. hufflepuff captain. seventh year.” she says it like she’s reading off a grocery list. “he’s well-liked, he’s interesting, people have opinions about him. the readers will love it.”
“i know who he is.”
“good. that saves us some time.”
you stand there for a moment, hand on the back of the chair, running through every argument you have left and finding all of them useless against the particular expression on sora’s face — pleasant, immovable, slightly amused. like a door that looks like it should open and simply doesn’t.
“six weeks,” she says. “the article runs the first of december. get close, take notes, write something good. you’re good at this, y/n. that’s why i’m asking you.”
“you’re not asking me.”
“no,” she agrees pleasantly. “i’m not.”
you leave. the door clicks shut behind you with a quiet, decisive sound that feels very on brand for lee sora, and you stand in the corridor for a moment, staring at nothing, before you turn and walk back toward gryffindor tower with the particular energy of someone who has just agreed to something they are absolutely going to regret.
you tell your friends that night.
yoonchae finds out first, purely because she’s there when you walk into the common room and she takes one look at your face and says “what happened” with the focus of someone who has known you long enough to read your expression like a weather forecast.
you sit down on the couch. you explain.
by the end of it, yoonchae is pressing her lips together very hard in the way she does when she’s trying not to laugh and failing. “james,” she says.
“don’t.”
“the james.”
“yoonchae, i swear—”
“okay, okay.” she holds her hands up. but her eyes are doing the thing. you look away.
kazuha hears about it the next morning, over breakfast. she listens to the whole thing without interrupting, which you appreciate, and then she sets her fork down and says, “i don’t think this is a good idea,” which you also appreciate, mostly because it’s exactly what you think and it’s useful to hear it said out loud by someone else.
“i know,” you say.
“does sora understand what she’s asking you to—”
“sora understands exactly what she’s asking me to do. that’s the problem.”
kazuha nods slowly. “what are you going to do?”
“write the article,” you say, because what else is there. “get it over with.”
she looks at you for a moment longer than necessary, in that quiet ravenclaw way she has, like she’s filing something away for later. then she picks her fork back up and says, “okay. do you want help with the approach?”
you do. you say yes.
keonho is harder.
he comes to find you after dinner — you’d owled him, which felt necessary given that james is hufflepuff and keonho is hufflepuff and the world is, apparently, very small. he drops into the seat across from you in the library with his bag over one shoulder and his expression already doing something complicated.
“so,” he says.
“i didn’t choose this,” you say immediately.
“i know you didn’t.” he’s quiet for a second. “i know james. not well. but a bit.”
“i know.”
“he’s not—” keonho stops. starts again. “he seems like a lot on the surface. the captain thing, the confidence, all of that. but he’s not a bad person, y/n.”
“i’m not trying to do anything bad to him. i’m writing an article.”
“i know,” he says again. and then, lighter, almost like he means it as a joke: “just don’t actually fall for him.”
you roll your eyes. “please.”
he smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach. “i mean it.”
“keonho. it’s an assignment.”
he looks at you. you look back. he lets it go, because he knows you, and he knows that you’ve already made up your mind, and he knows there’s nothing left to say right now that you’re going to hear.
“okay,” he says. “buy me a butterbeer at hogsmeade and i’ll help you figure out how to approach him.”
“deal,” you say, and you mean it, and you almost don’t notice the way he glances down at the table for just a second before he looks back up and changes the subject.
you spend three days observing james before you do anything else.
this is, you tell yourself, basic journalistic practice. you wouldn’t write about anything without research. you wouldn’t walk into an interview without knowing your subject. this is just due diligence. it has nothing to do with nerves.
what you learn, in those three days:
he’s never late. to class, to practice, to anything — there’s a precision to him that surprises you, given how easy and unhurried he seems everywhere else. like the confidence isn’t carelessness. like he’s thought about things more than he lets on.
he’s funny. genuinely, quietly funny, in a way that’s easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. he says things deadpan, at low volume, and half the people around him don’t catch it and the other half lose it completely. his friend martin catches it every time. seonghyeon, you notice, usually gets there about three seconds late and then laughs too loud to compensate.
people gravitate toward him. you watch this happen in real time, in the great hall, in the corridor outside charms — people drifting toward him like he’s warm, like standing near him is just slightly more comfortable than standing anywhere else. he doesn’t perform it. he doesn’t seem to notice it.
that, you think, is the most interesting thing about him. not the confidence. not the quidditch. it’s that he’s so used to being the center of things that he’s stopped seeing it. the fish doesn’t notice the water.
you open your notebook. you write:
the first thing you need to understand about a boy like this is that he’s used to being the most interesting person in any room.
you underline it.
don’t let him be.
you engineer the first meeting on a thursday.
the cover is real, at least — the chronicle does a feature on each quidditch team at the start of the season, and hufflepuff’s is overdue. you owl the request to james the night before, professional and brief, and he sends back two lines confirming he can do friday after practice, signed with just his first name, no punctuation.
you meet him by the pitch.
he’s still in his quidditch gear when he finds you — broom over one shoulder, hair still wind-wrecked, looking almost aggressively like someone who knows exactly what they look like and has decided not to do anything about it. he sees you and nods, and you flip open your notebook and remind yourself that you are a journalist. you are a professional. you are completely unaffected by wind-wrecked hair.
“hong y/n,” he says. “the chronicles girl.”
“the chronicles girl,” you repeat.
something flickers at the corner of his mouth. “that bother you?”
“does it bother you that i’m going to call you the quidditch boy for the rest of this conversation?”
he looks at you for a second. “no,” he says, and now he’s almost smiling. “not particularly.”
you ask him your questions. he answers them — easy, practiced, the kind of answers a captain gives when he’s given a hundred interviews, all surface and team spirit and we’re feeling good about the season. you write them down. you do not find them interesting. you do not tell him this.
what you do find interesting, and do not write down, is the way he looks back at the pitch when he thinks you’re not watching. just for a second. like he’s checking something, or like he’s just not quite ready to leave it yet.
you wrap up. you close your notebook. he says “that it?” and you say yes and he nods, easy and unbothered, and turns to go.
he doesn’t ask you anything. not your name — he already knew it — and not anything else. you’re in and out of his afternoon like a footnote.
you walk back to the castle.
you write, later that night, at your desk in the gryffindor tower while yoonchae reads on the bed behind you:
tip one — don’t be impressed. everyone else already is. the moment you are, you become everyone else.
you stare at it for a while.yoonchae says, without looking up from her book, “how’d it go?”
“fine,” you say.
“just fine?”
“just fine.”
she turns a page. “okay.” you look back at your notebook. you think about the way he glanced at the pitch.
the second time you seek him out, you don’t have a reason.
this is, you are aware, a problem. you stand outside the great hall on a tuesday morning telling yourself you do have a reason — research, observation, journalistic necessity — and then you walk in and spot him at the hufflepuff table and think, okay, but what specifically am i going to say.
you don’t have to figure it out. keonho saves you.
he waves you over from across the hall — he’s sitting two seats down from james, which you had not planned but which the universe has apparently decided to arrange for you — and you cross the hall and slide in next to him with your bag and your toast and your completely casual expression.
“morning,” keonho says.
“morning,” you say.
james looks up from whatever he’s reading. he clocks you, and something in his expression does the faint, almost imperceptible thing it did by the pitch — not quite recognition, more like oh, you again. not unfriendly. just noticing.
“chronicle girl,” he says.
“quidditch boy,” you say.
keonho looks between you. “do i want to know?”
“no,” you both say, at the same time, and then you look at each other, and james almost smiles, and you look back at your toast.
it’s nothing. it’s a minute and a half of shared breakfast table and two words of actual conversation and then he’s back to his reading and you’re talking to keonho about something else entirely. but you are aware of him in the way you’re always aware of things you’re studying — that low, constant hum of attention, like keeping something in your peripheral vision without turning your head.
you don’t take notes until you get back to the tower.
he notices things. not obviously — he won’t make a show of it — but he’s paying more attention than he looks like he is. file that away.
it happens gradually, the way most things do when you’re not looking directly at them.
a week passes, and then most of another, and somewhere in the middle of it you stop engineering reasons and start just — showing up. to the great hall in the morning when you know keonho will be there. to the library on thursday evenings, which is when you do your best writing and which, it turns out, is also when james and juhoon apparently work through quidditch strategy in the corner booth by the window. you find this out by accident and then continue to find it out by accident, repeatedly, every thursday for the rest of the month.
you don’t talk every time. sometimes it’s just a nod. sometimes he says something on his way out, low and dry, that makes you bite down on a smile before you’ve decided to.
you’re in the corridor outside transfiguration, leaning against the wall waiting for yoonchae, when james comes around the corner with seonghyeon. seonghyeon sees you and says “y/n, hey,” because seonghyeon is like that — easy and warm, greets everyone like he’s genuinely glad to see them, which you suspect he usually is. you say hey back.
james stops next to him. he looks at you, then at the wall you’re leaning against, then back at you.
“you know that’s the wrong corridor,” he says.
“for what?”
“transfiguration.”
“i know where transfiguration is.”
“you’re facing the wrong direction.”
“i’m waiting for someone.”
“in the wrong corridor.”
you look at him. “are you actually trying to give me directions right now?”
“i’m trying to understand why you’re standing in a corridor that leads to nothing, looking very serious about it.”
“i always look serious. it’s called having a resting thinking face.”
“is that what that is,” he says, and it’s so flat and so perfectly timed that you actually laugh — just once, short, before you catch it — and something crosses his expression that you don’t quite get a name for before it’s gone.
seonghyeon is looking between you both with an expression you don’t examine too closely.
yoonchae appears at the end of the corridor. you push off the wall. “wrong corridor,” you say to james, on your way past. “noted.”
“you’re welcome,” he calls after you, and you don’t turn around, but you hear it — the almost-laugh in his voice — and you think about it, just briefly, before you file it away under research and move on.
there’s a quidditch practice on a friday evening that you tell yourself you’re attending because keonho mentioned it and you need the material and it’s a reasonable thing for a journalist to do, and all of that is true, which makes it very easy to ignore the other reason.
the pitch is cold. you sit in the lower stands with your scarf up around your jaw and your notebook open and you watch.
james runs a good practice. that’s the thing — you’d expected the confidence to curdle into arrogance when it was just his team, no audience, no performance. but it doesn’t. he’s demanding, yes, and he doesn’t pretend something was good when it wasn’t, but there’s nothing mean in it. he runs the same drills as his players. he stays on his broom longer than anyone.
at one point one of the chasers — a fifth year, nervous energy visible from the stands — misses a pass badly and braces like she’s expecting something and james just says, again, and waits, and when she gets it the second time he nods and moves on. no fanfare. just: you did it, next thing.
you write that down. you’re not sure yet which part of the article it belongs to.
practice ends. the team files off the pitch and you’re starting to gather your things when you hear boots on the stand and then james drops into the seat next to yours, still in his gear, broom across his knees, and says nothing for a second.
you say, “good practice.”
“you were watching the whole time?”
“i’m writing about you. observationally speaking.”
“the feature ran last week.”
“i’m thorough.”
he looks at you sideways. there’s a scratch along his jaw you hadn’t noticed before, recent, probably a branch or the wind. “most people don’t actually watch practice,” he says. “they say they will and then they leave after twenty minutes.”
“i stayed the whole time.”
“i know.” a beat. “why?”
you look at him. the honest answer is sitting right there and you step around it neatly. “you’re more interesting to watch than i expected,” you say, which is true, and which reveals nothing, and which makes something in his expression shift in a way that might be curiosity.
he doesn’t say anything for a moment. the pitch is emptying below you. the sun has mostly gone, the sky doing that deep cold purple it does in october, and it’s just the two of you in the stands and the distant sound of the castle.
“hong y/n,” he says eventually, like he’s trying out the weight of it.
“james,” you say back.
he stands. picks up his broom. looks down at you for a second with an expression you can’t fully read, which is new, and slightly annoying. “same time next week,” he says. “if you’re being thorough.”
he walks down the stands and you watch him go and then you look down at your notebook.
you realize you stopped writing about twenty minutes ago.
the thing is, you’re good at keeping things in their correct boxes.
you’ve always been like this — compartments, clear labels, nothing bleeding into anything else. it’s what makes you a good writer. you can look at something, understand it, put it into words, and then set it down. you don’t carry things around longer than they’re useful.
james goes in the box marked subject. it’s a perfectly good box. it has a lid.
you are not thinking about the way he said same time next week.
he finds you in the library on thursday, which is not unusual anymore, except this time juhoon isn’t with him and he sits down across from you without asking, which he hasn’t done before. you look up from your essay. he’s already pulling out what looks like a playbook — actual parchment covered in small, messy diagrams — and spreading it across his half of the table.
you look at the playbook. you look at him.
“i’m not stopping you from sitting there,” you say.
“i know.”
“i’m just noting that you didn’t ask.”
“would you have said no?”
you consider this honestly. “no,” you admit.
“there you go,” he says, and smooths out a corner of the parchment, and that’s it. that’s the whole conversation. you go back to your essay and he goes back to his diagrams and the library is quiet around you and it’s — fine. it’s normal. it doesn’t feel like anything in particular.
you stay until the library closes. so does he.
the saturdays start almost by accident.
the first one: you’re in the courtyard with your notebook, working on something that isn’t the article, and he comes through on his way somewhere and stops and says “you’re always writing,” not like a question.
“you’re always moving,” you say back.
he looks at you for a second. then he sits down on the bench across from yours, drops his bag, and says “i’ve got twenty minutes before i have to be anywhere,” in a tone that somehow makes it your problem.
“i didn’t ask you to sit down.”
“you didn’t tell me not to.”
that, you will come to understand, is just how james operates. he doesn’t ask for space in your life. he just quietly takes up residence in it, and by the time you notice, it already feels normal for him to be there.
those twenty minutes turn into forty. you don’t write much. he doesn’t go wherever he was going. you talk about — nothing, mostly. the kind of nothing that fills time easily, that doesn’t require anything from either of you. he tells you that martin got them all detention last tuesday, something involving a staircase and a fifth year’s lost toad that spiraled. you tell him about the complaint letters without meaning to and he laughs — actually laughs, short and genuine — and says “hufflepuff fifth years are ruthless,” and you say “you’re hufflepuff,” and he says “exactly, i know what they’re capable of,” and you smile before you decide to.
he notices. he doesn’t say anything about it, but he notices.
when he finally leaves he says “see you around, hong,” and you say “see you,” and you sit there for a moment after he’s gone, looking at the very small amount of writing you got done, before you pick your notebook back up.
you don’t write anything about the conversation. not for the article.
you will wonder about that later.
october deepens and so does this — whatever this is. the shape of it becoming familiar in the way that routines do, not because you planned it but because it simply kept happening and at some point stopping would have required more effort than continuing.
thursdays in the library. the occasional saturday. breakfast sometimes, when keonho’s there and the table is crowded and you end up next to each other by the logic of available seats. he starts nodding at you in the corridors, which sounds insignificant and is, except that james doesn’t nod at people he doesn’t know, and now apparently he knows you.
you’re collecting good material. real observations, specific details, the kind of thing that makes a piece feel lived-in rather than reported. you write in your notebook and you write in your draft and you keep them separate because some things are for the article and some things are just — yours. for no reason. just because you noticed them and writing things down is how you process the world.
the draft is good. you can feel it, the way you can always feel when the writing is working. you send sora two paragraphs as a check-in and she replies within the hour: keep going.
you keep going.
the first time it costs you something small, you don’t notice until later.
it’s a thursday, library, the usual. you’re there when he arrives and he sits across from you and you work in the kind of easy quiet you’ve both apparently agreed on without discussing it. at some point he says, without looking up, “can i ask you something?”
“you’re going to regardless,” you say.
“true.” he sets down his quill. “why the chronicle? you could write for actual publications. you’re good enough.”
you look up. “how do you know i’m good enough?”
“i read the quidditch piece,” he says simply.
“that was a standard season feature.”
“it was the best one we’ve gotten in three years. the seeker analysis alone—” he stops. something crosses his face, almost like he hadn’t meant to say that much. he picks his quill back up. “why the chronicle,” he repeats, redirecting.
you look at him for a moment. “because it’s mine,” you say. “everything i write there is mine. i decide what matters, i decide how to say it. no one tells me what the angle is.”
he’s quiet. “sora doesn’t tell you what the angle is?”
the question lands somewhere it shouldn’t. you keep your expression exactly where it is. “within reason,” you say smoothly. “she has opinions. i push back.”
he nods slowly. he’s looking at you in that way he has sometimes — not searching exactly, more like he’s already found something and is deciding what to do with it.
“that makes sense,” he says. “for you.”
“what does that mean?”
“it means it makes sense,” he says. “for you.” and he goes back to his playbook, and you go back to your essay, and you sit with the particular discomfort of someone who has just been seen slightly more clearly than they intended.
you don’t write that part down either.
the first thing you notice is that he remembers things.
not in a deliberate, i-was-paying-attention way. in a worse way — the offhand way, where it's clear he retained something without meaning to, without filing it, just because it stuck. you mention once, briefly, that you write better in the morning and can't draft anything after eight in the evening, and three days later he says something in passing about a chronicle deadline and adds "you've probably already drafted it, it's barely noon" without looking up from what he's doing.
you look at him. he doesn't seem to notice he said it.
you look back at your parchment. you write a sentence. you think, that's nothing, and you believe it, because it is nothing. people remember things. it's not a category.
the second thing is harder to explain.
it's not something he does. it's something that changes in the way he is around you — a kind of ease that you recognize because you feel it too, except when you feel it you have a reason for it and when he feels it you're not sure he does.
he stops performing, is the closest you can get to it. the golden boy thing — the confidence, the slight remove of someone who knows they're well-liked — it doesn't disappear exactly, but it thins. like a coat he forgets to put back on when it's just the two of you.
you notice this on a saturday in the courtyard when he's talking about the upcoming match against slytherin and he goes quiet mid-sentence and says, "i don't know if we're ready," and then looks almost surprised at himself, like the words came out before he approved them.
you don't make a big thing of it. "you've been running them hard," you say. "they'll be ready."
he looks at you. "you've been to two practices."
"i'm observant."
something settles in his expression. "yeah," he says. "you are." and he says it like it's just a fact, like he's simply confirming something he's already decided is true, and goes back to talking about the match, and you go back to listening, and it's fine.
it is fine.
the match is on a sunday.
you go because you always cover the quidditch matches for the chronicle and not for any other reason, and you sit in the gryffindor stands with yoonchae and you watch.
hufflepuff wins. james catches the snitch forty minutes in — you see the exact moment he spots it, the way his whole body shifts before he moves, that half-second of pure stillness and then he's gone, a streak of gold and black against the grey october sky, and the stands erupt and it's — fine. it's good. you're glad for the sake of the coverage.
afterwards there's the usual chaos on the pitch, teammates, celebrations, professor after professor coming down to shake hands. you're scribbling notes in the stands, not going down, that's not necessary, you have what you need—
yoonchae says, "he's looking for someone."
you don't look up. "what?"
"james. he keeps looking up at the stands." a pause. "oh. it's you."
you look up.
he's standing in the middle of the pitch chaos, broom in hand, and he's not looking at you anymore — he's turned back to his teammates, laughing at something martin's said — but yoonchae is right, in that way she sometimes is, where you can't prove it but you feel the truth of it anyway.
"he knows people in the stands," you say.
"seonghyeon is right there next to me," yoonchae says pleasantly. "he didn't look at seonghyeon."
you close your notebook. "i'm going to write up the match report."
"sure," she says.
you go.
it's martin who makes it impossible to ignore.
you're in the great hall, a week after the match, and you're sitting with keonho and kazuha and half-listening to the table behind you, which happens to be the hufflepuff table, which happens to be where james and his friends are sitting.
you're not listening on purpose. you're just — in proximity. journalistic habit.
martin is saying something about a girl in sixth year, some ongoing situation that you gather has been going on since september, and james says something back that you don't catch, and then martin says, loudly, with the energy of someone who has been waiting to say it: "you literally haven't looked at anyone in two months, what's going on with you."
silence from james.
"i'm just saying," martin continues, in the tone of someone who is enjoying himself. "usually by now you'd at least—"
"martin."
"i'm making an observation—"
"make it quieter."
keonho, next to you, has gone very still in the way he does when he's trying not to react to something. you become very interested in your food.
kazuha, across from you, is looking at you with an expression she has the decency to make very small.
"what," you say quietly.
"nothing," she says, equally quietly.
you eat your food. you do not think about what martin said. you are a professional. you have a job to do and a column to write and compartments with lids on them that are functioning perfectly fine.
later, when you're back in the tower, you open your notebook to the article draft.
you stare at it for a while.
you close it again.
the moment that gets you — the one you'll think about later, when you're trying to trace back exactly where the lid came off — happens on a thursday in november.
it's raining. the library is quieter than usual, the windows grey and streaked, the kind of evening that makes the castle feel smaller and warmer than it is. you're there before him. he comes in ten minutes late, which he never is, and drops into the seat across from yours and he looks — tired. not physically. the other kind.
you don't ask. that's not — you don't do that.
but you push your extra pot of ink across the table toward him because his is running low and you noticed last week and brought two tonight without really deciding to, and he looks at it and then looks at you, and something in his face does something you don't have words for yet.
"thanks," he says. quiet.
"you were almost out last week," you say. practical. informational.
"i know." a pause. "you noticed."
"i notice things. it's a whole—"
"personality trait," he finishes. "yeah." he almost smiles. it doesn't quite make it but it's close. he picks up his quill and doesn't say anything else and neither do you, and the rain comes down outside, and you sit there across from each other in the warm quiet of the library and something between you is different than it was an hour ago, you can feel it, you just can't name it yet.
you don't want to name it yet.
you're not oblivious.
that's the thing people might assume, later, if they were being uncharitable — that you didn't see it because you didn't want to. but that's not true. you see it. you've been trained, practically since birth, to notice the small things, the tells, the details that people don't know they're giving away. it's what makes you good at what you do.
so you notice.
you notice that he saves you a seat now. not obviously — not this seat is for you — just that when you arrive somewhere he's already at, there is somehow always space next to him. naturally. coincidentally. every time.
you notice that when you say something in a group and it doesn't land — when the conversation moves on before anyone responds — james will come back to it. five minutes later, ten, like he was turning it over while everything else was happening. what you said earlier, he'll start, and then finish the thought you'd abandoned, and you'll feel the strange, unsettling sensation of being heard by someone who wasn't even looking at you when you spoke.
you notice the way he angles toward you. physically — it's subtle, the kind of thing you'd miss if you weren't paying the kind of attention you're paid to pay. in the courtyard, in the library, at the breakfast table. a degree or two, no more. like a plant that doesn't know it's doing it.
you notice all of it. you catalogue it. you put it in the article, where it belongs.
and then one thursday, sitting across from him in the library with rain on the windows and his quill scratching steadily and his face soft in a way it isn't when other people are watching, you notice something else.
you notice that you've stopped wanting to write it down.
this is the part where you are very firm with yourself.
you are hong y/n. you are a writer. you were given an assignment — one you didn't ask for, one you tried to get out of, one that is nonetheless yours now and has a deadline and a word count and lee sora's name attached to it, which means it will absolutely be happening. you have five weeks of material. you have good material, real material, the kind that only comes from proximity and patience and actually doing the work.
you are not catching feelings for your subject. that would be embarrassing. that would be, frankly, the most cliché thing that has ever happened to anyone.
you are simply — warm. it's november. the castle is cold. he's easy to be around, and you've been spending a lot of time with him, and that's a normal human response to proximity, not a symptom of anything.
you repeat this to yourself on the walk back from the library, in the rain, which has moved from the windows to the actual outdoors where you are currently standing in it because you forgot your umbrella charm and james offered to walk with you under his and you said no, i'm fine, very quickly, and left.
you are fine.
you are standing in the rain.
yoonchae is asleep when you get back. kazuha answers your owl within twenty minutes, which is both impressive and a sign that she was already awake reading something, because she always is.
her reply is four words.
how bad is it.
you stare at the parchment for a long time. then you write back:
it's nothing. i'm handling it.
she writes: okay. i'm here if nothing gets worse.
you fold the letter. you sit at your desk. you open your article draft and you read through everything you've written in the past month, all the tips and the observations and the careful, precise language you've used to describe him, and somewhere around the third page you realize your hand has stopped moving.
you close the draft.
you open your personal notebook instead — the one that's not for sora, not for the chronicle, not for anyone — and you write, in small letters at the bottom of a page:
i'm handling it.
you underline it once. then you close that too, and you go to bed, and you are absolutely fine.
the draft, as it stands at the end of week five, looks like this:
how to get the guy — working draft, hong y/n
for: castle chronicles december issue
status: in progress
the first thing you need to understand about a boy like this is that he's used to being the most interesting person in any room.
[x don't try to be more interesting. you won't be, and he'll know you're trying. x]
don't let him be. not because you need to compete — you don't — but because the moment you're impressed, you become everyone else. and everyone else, he already knows how to handle.
tip one: don't perform.
he'll see through it. not because he's perceptive in any dramatic way — it's subtler than that. he's simply been around enough people being something for him that he knows the texture of it. the girl who laughs too readily, who agrees too easily, who makes herself smaller or larger depending on what she thinks he wants. he's polite about it. he's polite about everything.
[x he's actually quite good at making people feel comfortable. that's the danger, i think — he's so easy to be around that you stop noticing when you've started being honest. x]
just be yourself. i know that sounds like nothing advice. i mean it technically — just be the actual version of yourself, the one that exists when no one's watching. he'll notice the difference. he notices most things.
tip two: show up.
not in a desperate way. not in a god he's going to think i planned this way. just — be present. consistently. let yourself become a fixture in his landscape before you become a question in it. there's a version of familiarity that reads as comfort, and comfort, for someone who spends most of his time being looked at, is rarer than you'd think.
he moves through the world like it's easy. most of the time it is. [x what he doesn't say is that easy gets lonely in its own way. x] what he responds to, underneath all of it, is someone who just stays.
tip three: pay attention to the right things.
everyone pays attention to him. the quidditch, the captaincy, the easy confidence that fills a room. that's not attention, that's just — looking. [x real attention is noticing that he checks on his youngest teammate after every hard practice. that he reads the sports section and then the opinion column and then goes back to the sports section. that he brought his own copy of the chronicle to the library three thursdays in a row before he admitted he read it regularly. that he said it like it was a casual thing. it wasn't a casual thing. x]
notice the things he doesn't perform. those are the real ones.
tip four: don't make it easy.
this one he won't tell you himself, but i'm telling you. he's had easy his whole life — easy wins, easy company, easy mornings. he doesn't need you to be another easy thing. push back. disagree. let a silence sit. he finds it interesting when you do.
[x he finds you interesting when you do. i've watched it happen. i've watched him go still in the way he does when something has his actual attention, not the surface version, and it is. x ]
[section incomplete]
tip five: let him in slowly.
this is the one that matters most, i think, and the hardest one to explain. there's a version of openness that's performance — here is my personality, here are my charming flaws, look how human i am. he doesn't want that. [x or maybe he does, at first, and then he starts wanting something else, and by the time you realize he's switched what he's looking for it's too late to go back and start again. x]
just — let things happen in the order they happen. don't rush it. don't let yourself think too hard about the fact that somewhere in the past five weeks the line between research and reality has become extremely difficult to locate.
i think i
[section incomplete]
notes to self:
— the ending isn't there yet
— [x stop crossing things out, sora's going to think you've lost it. x]
— you have not lost it
— finish the piece
— it was just an assignment
— it was just an assignment.
you close the draft.
you sit at your desk in the quiet of the gryffindor tower, quill in hand, and you look out the window at the november dark, and you think very carefully about nothing in particular.
then you open a fresh piece of parchment and write, at the top:
week six.
week six starts on a monday, and james does something he's never done before.
he waits for you.
not in the library, not in the courtyard — outside the castle chronicles office, on the third floor, at half past eight in the morning, leaning against the wall with his bag over one shoulder like he has absolutely no reason to be on this corridor and hasn't noticed that yet. you turn the corner and stop.
"what are you doing here?"
"keonho said you had an early meeting with sora."
"keonho was right."
"i know." he pushes off the wall. falls into step beside you, which means he's walking with you, which means he waited on a corridor that leads nowhere specifically to walk with you to the great hall. "how'd it go?"
"fine," you say. "routine check-in."
"she giving you a hard time about the december piece?"
"sora gives everyone a hard time about everything. it's her primary personality trait."
"harsh."
"accurate."
he makes a sound that's almost a laugh. you walk down the stairs side by side and you are very carefully not thinking about the fact that he waited for you, specifically, on a corridor that requires a deliberate detour from anywhere he would normally be at half past eight on a monday.
you are not thinking about it.
you are thinking about it a little bit.
the thing about james, you've come to understand, is that he has two speeds.
there's the one everyone sees — easy, confident, slightly untouchable. the one that fills corridors and wins quidditch matches and makes people want to be near him without quite knowing why. that version of him is real. you're not saying it isn't.
and then there's the one that shows up when it's just you.
it's not dramatically different. that's almost the point — it's the same person, same dry humor, same unhurried way of moving through the world. but the remove is gone. the slight performance of it. like he's set something down because carrying it got tiring, and you happen to be the person he sets it down around.
you don't know when that started. you suspect it was gradual, the way everything between you has been gradual — incremental and unremarkable until suddenly it isn't.
on tuesday he finds you in the library and sits down and says, without preamble, "can i tell you something," and you say yes, and he says: "i don't think we're going to win the cup this year."
you look up. "you won the match against slytherin."
"i know. but ravenclaw's team this year is—" he stops. "i haven't told my team that. i haven't told anyone that."
"okay," you say carefully.
"i'm not — i'm not spiraling. i just." he turns his quill over in his hand, once. "it's seventh year. last shot. and i'm looking at the roster and i know what we are and i know what ravenclaw is and the math isn't—" he stops again.
you're quiet for a moment. "do you want me to say something reassuring or do you want me to just hear it?"
he looks at you. something shifts in his face. "the second one," he says, a little quietly.
"okay," you say. and you go back to your essay, and he goes back to his playbook, and you sit with it for him — the worry, the weight of it — and you don't try to fix it, and twenty minutes later he exhales slowly and says "thanks" to his parchment, and you say "mhm" to yours, and that's it.
that's all it is.
but on the walk back to the tower that night you think about the way he said i haven't told anyone that, and the particular way he looked at you after you gave him the choice, and you feel the lid on the box flex, very slightly, and you press it back down with both hands.
wednesday is when it becomes a problem.
you're in the courtyard, bundled against the november cold, and you're with yoonchae and keonho and it's the three of you on a bench being collectively miserable about the weather when james and seonghyeon come through. seonghyeon immediately inserts himself next to yoonchae, because that's just what seonghyeon does, and james stops in front of the bench and looks at the available space — the small available space, next to you — and sits down.
he's warm. that's the first thing. it's freezing and he's just — warm, the way people are when they run hot, and your arm is pressed against his from shoulder to elbow because the bench is not large and there's nowhere else to be and it's fine. it's nothing.
keonho is looking at the middle distance with an expression of great diplomacy.
"you're always cold," james says, to you, not a question.
"it's november."
"you've got three layers on."
"i run cold."
he looks at you sideways. then, without making anything of it, he shifts his weight slightly so he's — closer, barely, just enough — and says "better?" so quietly that only you can hear it and you feel your brain go completely offline for approximately three seconds.
"i was fine before," you say.
"sure," he says.
you look straight ahead. yoonchae, on your other side, has found something very interesting to look at on the opposite end of the courtyard. keonho has not moved. you cannot see his face and you are grateful for that.
james doesn't move either.
you sit there in the cold, his arm warm against yours, and the conversation continues around you — seonghyeon saying something, yoonchae laughing, keonho asking about the weekend — and you participate in it and you are normal about it and you are absolutely not aware of every single point of contact between your arm and his for the entire twenty minutes you sit there.
when he gets up to leave he says "later, hong," and you say "later," and you watch him cross the courtyard with seonghyeon and disappear around the corner.
keonho says, very quietly, to no one in particular: "oh no."
"don't," you say.
"i didn't say anything."
"keonho."
he looks at you. his expression is not unkind. it is, however, extremely knowing, which is almost worse. "y/n," he says, gently.
"i'm handling it," you say.
he nods slowly. "okay," he says. and he doesn't push, because he's keonho and he knows when you've hit a wall, but he reaches over and squeezes your hand once, brief and quiet, and you look away because if you look at him right now you'll say something true.
thursday comes and you go to the library and he's already there, which hasn't happened before — usually you arrive first. he's got two cups of something from the kitchens sitting on the table and he pushes one toward you when you sit down without looking up from his parchment, and you look at the cup and then at him.
"how did you know i was coming?" you ask.
"you always come thursdays."
"you're usually not here when i arrive."
"i was early today." a pause. "it's tea. the kind you had at breakfast last week. i asked the house elves."
you stare at him.
he is very focused on his parchment.
he asked the house elves. he was early, specifically, and he asked the house elves, specifically, about tea you had at breakfast a week ago that he apparently noticed and remembered and then acted on, and he's sitting there like that's a completely normal and unremarkable thing to have done.
"james," you say.
"it's just tea," he says, to his parchment.
it is not just tea. you both know it is not just tea. but you wrap your hands around the cup and it's warm and it tastes exactly right and you say "thank you" and he says "mhm" and you open your notebook and you stare at the page and you think, very clearly, with great precision:
i am in trouble.
and then you think, equally clearly: the article runs in eight days.
and you pick up your quill, and you write, and you do not look up for the rest of the evening, and when he says goodnight and leaves you sit there alone in the library for a while after, cup of tea cooling in your hands, and you think about the deadline and the draft and the ending you still haven't written.
you think about what the ending is going to cost.
the problem with being a writer is that you think in words.
everything that happens to you gets processed through language, filed away in sentences, given shape and edges and a place to live. it's how you've always worked — something happens, you find the words for it, and once it has words it has a box, and once it has a box you can put it down.
the problem with james is that every time you find the words, they're the wrong ones.
he's easy to be around — true, but not enough. he's interesting — accurate, insufficient. i notice him — you notice everyone, that's not it. you sit at your desk at eleven at night and you go through the vocabulary you have and none of it fits right and that, more than anything, is how you know you're in trouble. you've never been short on words before.
you try to be logical about it.
you make a list — not in the article draft, not in your notebook, on a loose scrap of parchment that you will later throw into the common room fire — of reasons why this is manageable.
one: it's proximity. you've spent six weeks in deliberate, sustained closeness with someone specifically because you needed to understand them. of course something happened. that's just how humans work.
two: he's objectively — fine. you're not a person who's immune to that. that would be weird.
three: it'll pass. it's not — it's not anything real. it's just a response to a situation and once the situation ends it'll correct itself.
you look at the list. you think about the tea. you think about the way he said i haven't told anyone that on tuesday like it was information he'd been carrying alone and had simply decided, without fanfare, that you were the place to put it down.
you fold the list up. you throw it in the fire.
logical isn't working.
the feeling, when you stop trying to name it and just let it exist for a moment, is something like this:
it's the thursday library quiet, the scratch of his quill, the way the lamp on his side of the table makes the shadows go warm. it's the specific way he looks when he laughs — not the easy social laugh, the real one, which is shorter and slightly more surprised, like it got out before he decided to let it. it's the fact that he always hands things back to you that you've set down without noticing — your quill when you put it behind your ear and forget about it, your scarf when it falls off the bench, small objects migrating back to you through his hands like he's just always watching where your things are.
it's the way he says hong — not your full name, not y/n, just the one syllable, like he's decided that's the version that belongs to him. you've heard other people use your name your whole life and it has never once done what it does when he says it.
it's the fact that you know things about him now that aren't in any article. that he's a light sleeper. that he rewrites his playbook diagrams at least three times before he's happy with them. that he gets quieter, not louder, when he's stressed, which is the opposite of what you'd expect from someone who takes up as much space as he does. that he's been carrying the weight of this last quidditch season like something he owes someone, though you're not sure who.
none of that is in the draft. you never put it in the draft. and you're starting to understand that the reason you didn't — told yourself it was too personal, too specific, too much — was actually much simpler than that.
it was yours. you wanted to keep it.
you tell kazuha on a friday night, sitting cross-legged on her bed in ravenclaw tower with the curtains drawn and the fire going, because if you don't tell someone you think you might actually combust.
you don't say i have feelings for him. you can't quite make yourself say that yet. what you say is: "i think i've made this complicated."
kazuha looks at you over her book. she sets it down. "how complicated?"
"complicated."
she's quiet for a moment. "how long?"
"i don't know. a while." you pull at a loose thread on her duvet. "i kept telling myself it was just — proximity. the assignment. that i was just doing the job."
"and now?"
"and now i know what tea he gets me from the kitchens." you look up. "he asked the house elves, kazuha. he remembered what i had at breakfast a week ago and he asked the house elves."
kazuha's expression does something careful and complicated. "y/n."
"i know."
"the article—"
"i know."
"it runs in—"
"i know." you press your hands over your face. "i know exactly when it runs. i know exactly what's in it. i know exactly what's going to happen when he reads it and i can't—" you stop. "i tried to pull it. i went to sora two weeks ago and she said it was too late. it's already — it's built into the issue. it's happening."
kazuha is quiet for a long moment. when she speaks, her voice is careful. "does any part of it — could it hurt him? reading it?"
you think about the draft. the crossed out lines. the incomplete sections. the notes to yourself that you forgot to delete. "i don't know," you say, which is not true. "yes," you say, which is.
kazuha reaches over and puts her hand over yours. she doesn't say it'll be fine because kazuha doesn't say things she doesn't know to be true. she just sits with you in it, which is what you needed anyway.
"what do i do," you say. it doesn't come out like a question.
"i don't know," she says honestly. "but i think you should finish the article and i think you should be honest in it. really honest." a pause. "you're always honest in your writing. don't stop now just because it's scary."
you sit there for a while. the fire goes. outside, ravenclaw tower is quiet, the kind of quiet that only exists late at night in the castle, deep and particular and old.
"i really didn't want this assignment," you say finally.
"i know," kazuha says.
"i told sora no."
"i know."
"this is her fault."
"it really isn't," kazuha says, gently, and you almost laugh, and it almost reaches your eyes, and she squeezes your hand once before she lets go and picks her book back up.
you sit there a little longer. you think about james. you think about the article. you think about the eight days between now and the first of december and how strange it is, to be running out of time on something you never wanted to start.
yoonchae finds out on saturday.
not because you tell her — you were going to, you'd been meaning to — but because you're sitting in the common room when james comes looking for seonghyeon and seonghyeon isn't there, and james looks at you on the couch and says "where is he," and you say "no idea," and he says "of course," under his breath, and then instead of leaving he drops into the armchair across from you like he's been here a hundred times, which he has, and says "what are you reading."
you tell him. he asks what it's about. you explain it badly, the way you always do when you're actually invested in something, all out of order and from the wrong end, and he listens to the whole thing without interrupting and then asks a question about the middle that tells you he was actually following, and you answer it, and he asks another, and fifteen minutes disappear before either of you notices.
seonghyeon never shows up.
james leaves an hour later, and the common room is quiet again, and yoonchae appears from the staircase where she has apparently been sitting for god knows how long and looks at you with an expression of profound, sympathetic devastation.
"oh, y/n," she says.
"don't," you say.
"babe."
"yoonchae, i'm serious, don't—"
"you're so—"
"don't."
she comes and sits next to you on the couch. she doesn't say the word. she just puts her head on your shoulder and you sit there together and you stare at the fire and you think about eight days and the draft and the ending you still haven't written and the way he asked questions about your book like he had all the time in the world.
"what am i going to do," you say.
"i don't know," yoonchae says into your shoulder. "but whatever happens — we're here. okay? all of us."
you lean your head against hers. outside, november is doing its worst against the tower windows, cold and relentless, and inside it's warm, and you close your eyes, and for just a little while you let yourself not think about the article.
just for a little while.
the last thing that happens before week six ends — before you have to sit down and finish the draft and send it to sora and let the whole thing become real and irreversible — is this:
sunday evening, the astronomy tower, which is your place, your thinking place, the one you retreat to when the common room is too loud and your head is too full. you've been coming here since fifth year. almost no one knows about it.
you hear footsteps on the stairs and your first thought is annoyance and your second thought, before you've even turned around, is somehow already oh.
james comes through the door. he sees you and stops.
"sorry," he says. "i didn't know anyone—"
"how did you know about this spot?"
a pause. "you mentioned it once. in october. you said you came here when you needed to think." he looks at you. "i wasn't following you. i just needed to—"
"think," you finish.
"yeah."
you look at each other. the tower is open to the sky, cold and clear, and the castle stretches below, all lit windows and moving staircases and the distant flicker of the quidditch pitch torches. it's a good spot. you've always thought so.
you move over on the stone ledge. just slightly.
he comes and sits next to you.
you don't talk for a while. the silence is the comfortable kind — the kind you've built, slowly, over six weeks of libraries and courtyards and thursday evenings, the kind that doesn't need anything from either of you. you look out at the castle and he does too and the wind is cold and it doesn't matter.
"you okay?" he says eventually.
"yeah," you say. "you?"
"yeah." a pause. "no. kind of." he exhales. "i keep thinking about the end of the year. like — what it's going to feel like. leaving."
"seventh year."
"seventh year," he agrees. he's quiet for a moment. "does it feel real to you? that it's almost over?"
you think about the article. you think about december first. you think about the fact that in eight days something is going to happen that you can't undo, and after that nothing is going to look the way it looks right now.
"no," you say honestly. "it doesn't feel real."
he nods slowly. he's looking out at the lights below, his jaw set in that particular way it gets when he's thinking about something he hasn't resolved. and then, very quietly, almost to himself: "i'm glad this year happened the way it did though. some of it."
you don't ask what he means. you're afraid of the answer. you're more afraid that you already know it.
you sit there until the cold gets too much, and then you both get up, and you walk back down the stairs side by side, and at the bottom where the corridors split he says "night, hong," and you say "goodnight, james," and you walk back to gryffindor tower and you go straight to your desk and you open the draft.
you read it from the beginning. all of it — the tips, the crossed out lines, the incomplete sections, the notes to yourself.
and then you pick up your quill, and your hand is very steady, and you write the ending.
you send it to sora on monday morning.
you don't read it again before you do. you made that decision the night before — write it, send it, don't look at it again, because if you look at it again you'll take something out and if you take something out it won't be honest anymore and kazuha told you to be honest and kazuha is almost always right.
sora's reply comes two hours later.
this is the best thing you've ever written.
and then, a minute after:
i mean that. truly.
and then, a minute after that, which is the most un-sora thing she's ever sent you:
are you okay.
you stare at the three owls lined up on your desk. outside, the november sky is doing something grey and noncommittal, the kind of day that can't decide what it wants to be. you think about james in the astronomy tower. i'm glad this year happened the way it did. some of it.
you write back to sora: just run it.
she does.
the week between sending the draft and the first of december is the strangest week of your seventh year.
on the surface, nothing changes. you go to class. you eat breakfast. you write. you go to the library on thursday and james is already there with two cups of tea and you sit across from him and you work in the quiet that belongs to both of you now, and you are normal about it — you are so normal about it, so careful and steady, that by the time you walk back to the tower you're exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with the essay you finished.
underneath the surface, everything is ending.
you know things he doesn't know yet. you carry that around all week like something breakable — the knowledge of what's coming, the shape of the impact, the fact that you sent sora the piece and it's being typeset right now in the little chronicles office on the third floor and there is nothing left to do but wait.
you think about telling him. you think about it seriously, more than once — just walking up to him and saying there's something you need to know before december first and watching his face and dealing with whatever comes after. you play it out in your head, different versions, different words.
in every version, he looks at you differently after.
you don't tell him.
you know that's the wrong choice. you make it anyway, because you're a coward about this specific thing in a way you've never been a coward about anything else, and because some part of you — the part you're least proud of — wants one more week of the library and the tea and the astronomy tower quiet. one more week of the way he says hong like it's the version of your name that belongs to him.
you take the week. you'll regret it. you take it anyway.
on wednesday, four days before the issue drops, james finds you after dinner.
not in the library, not in the courtyard — in the corridor outside the great hall, in the post-dinner crowd, and he just appears beside you the way he does now, like it's where he was always going to end up.
"walk?" he says.
you say yes.
you go the long way around the castle, no particular destination, the way you've both gotten into the habit of when neither of you wants to be anywhere specific. the corridors are quieter up on the fourth floor, away from the common rooms and the staircases. your footsteps echo.
he talks about the upcoming match. about martin doing something catastrophic at practice that he's sworn the whole team to secrecy about. about juhoon finding what might be an undiscovered room on the seventh floor that turns out to be full of broken furniture and nothing else, which is somehow funnier the way he tells it, flat and unhurried.
you laugh. genuinely, fully, in the way you don't have to think about with him anymore.
and then he goes quiet for a moment, and you walk in the comfortable silence, and he says: "i like talking to you."
simple. direct. no performance in it.
you look straight ahead. your chest does something complicated. "you talk to lots of people," you say, which is true and also completely beside the point and you both know it.
"not like this," he says.
you don't have an answer for that. you walk another few steps and the silence is different now, warmer, weighted in a way that makes the back of your neck feel warm despite the cold corridor.
"james," you say, and it comes out quieter than you meant it to.
"i know," he says. which could mean anything. which feels, somehow, like it means everything.
you reach the end of the corridor where it splits — his way and yours. you stop. he stops. and he looks at you in the torchlight with that expression you've been collecting for six weeks, the one he doesn't wear for anyone else, and you think about the article and the deadline and the four days between now and the first of december, and you think about kazuha saying be honest, and you open your mouth—
"goodnight, hong," he says softly.
and he goes.
you stand at the fork in the corridor for a long time after he's gone, looking at nothing, and then you go back to gryffindor tower and you sit on your bed and you press your hands over your face and you stay like that for a while.
yoonchae doesn't say anything. she just comes and sits beside you and that's enough.
december first arrives the way terrible things do — quietly, on an ordinary morning, while you're still half asleep.
you're awake before the rest of the dormitory. the sky outside is that particular december blue, early and cold and clear, and you lie there for a moment looking at it and thinking about the fact that today is the day.
you get up. you get dressed. you go downstairs.
the chronicles copies are always left in stacks by the great hall entrance — that's been the distribution method since second year, charm-duplicated, one per student, neat little towers of parchment that people grab on the way in to breakfast. you walk past them without taking one. you know what it says.
you sit at the gryffindor table. yoonchae arrives seven minutes later and sits next to you without a word and puts a cup of tea in front of you and you wrap both hands around it.
keonho arrives from the hufflepuff table. he crosses the hall, sits across from you, and looks at you with an expression that is entirely gentle and entirely serious. "it's out," he says.
"i know."
"are you okay?"
"not really."
he nods. he doesn't move.
kazuha appears on your other side, which means she came down from ravenclaw tower specifically to be here this morning, which means she owled yoonchae last night to coordinate, which means your friends are doing the thing they do where they quietly arrange themselves around you before you know you need it. you look at the three of them and feel something enormous and unnameable move through your chest.
"whatever happens," kazuha says, "we're here."
you nod. you drink your tea. you watch the great hall fill up around you, the familiar morning noise of it, students grabbing copies of the chronicle on their way in, the rustle of pages, someone at the ravenclaw table already laughing at something in it.
you watch the hufflepuff table.
james isn't there yet.
he reads it at breakfast.
you know because martin is the one who brings it to him — you watch it happen across the hall, martin sliding the open chronicle across the table with an expression you can't read from this distance, saying something. james looks at it.
you look away.
you can't watch. you stare at your plate and you breathe and you feel yoonchae's hand find yours under the table and you hold onto it.
a minute passes. another.
keonho says quietly, "he's still reading."
you don't look up.
another minute. the great hall noise continues around you, ordinary and oblivious, and you sit very still in the middle of it.
then keonho says nothing, which is somehow worse than anything he could say, and you look up.
james has put the chronicle down.
he's not doing anything dramatic. he's not standing up, not saying anything to martin, not looking across the hall. he's just sitting there, very still, in the particular way he gets when something has his actual attention — and he's looking at the parchment in front of him, and his expression is the one you've never seen before, the one that has no name in your catalogue, and even from across the great hall you can see the exact moment he understands.
he looks up.
across the hall. directly at you.
you don't look away. you can't. you sit there and you let him look and you think i'm sorry as clearly as you can, like maybe if you think it hard enough it'll cross the distance between you, and his expression does something you will spend a long time trying to describe and never quite manage.
then he looks back down.
he picks up the chronicle. he folds it. he puts it in his bag.
he gets up and leaves.
he doesn't come to the library on thursday.
you go anyway, out of habit or hope or something you don't have a name for, and you sit at the table that has been yours and his for six weeks and you open your notebook and you stare at a blank page for forty minutes and you write nothing.
the tea on his side of the table stays cold.
seonghyeon finds you in the common room on friday evening.
he sits down across from you with the expression of someone who has been asked to do something he's not sure about, which is so unlike seonghyeon's usual ease that it makes your chest tighten before he's said a word.
"i'm not here to — i'm not taking sides," he says carefully. "i just wanted to say that he's not — he's okay. he's fine."
"he's not fine," you say.
seonghyeon looks at you. "no," he admits. "but he's not — it's not like he's falling apart. he's just." he stops. "he let himself—" another stop. "james doesn't really do that. let people in. and he did, and then—"
"i know," you say. your voice is very even. "i know what i did."
seonghyeon nods slowly. he doesn't say anything else for a moment. then: "the article was—" he seems to be choosing words carefully. "you could tell. reading it. that it wasn't just an assignment."
you look at him.
"i think he knows that too," seonghyeon says. "i think that's almost the harder part. for him."
you sit with that for a long time after he leaves.
you write him a letter on saturday.
not for the chronicle. not for anyone else. you sit at your desk in the early morning quiet when the dormitory is still asleep and you write it the way you write when no one's watching — honest, unguarded, all the way down.
you tell him you didn't choose the assignment. you tell him you tried to get out of it, that you went to sora and she said it was too late, that you should have tried harder and you didn't and you know that. you tell him that somewhere in october the line between research and reality disappeared and you panicked and kept going anyway, which was wrong, and you know that too.
and then you tell him the true thing — the one that's been sitting in your chest since the astronomy tower, since the corridor, since the thursday library and the tea from the kitchens. you tell him that the last part of the article, the part that doesn't sound like tips anymore, the part where the writing changes and the distance collapses — that part has nothing to do with the assignment. that part is just real. that part is the most honest thing you've ever written and you'd written it long before you typed it up and sent it to sora.
you tell him you're sorry.
you fold it up. you write his name on the front. and on saturday morning you walk to the hufflepuff common room entrance — the one by the kitchens, that keonho showed you in third year — and you slide it under the door, and you stand there for a second with your hand flat against the stone, and then you walk away.
you don't hear from him.
not saturday. not sunday. the weekend passes in that particular slow, heavy way that bad weekends have, and your friends are there — yoonchae bringing food you don't ask for, kazuha sitting quietly with you, keonho checking in with that careful gentleness that costs him something too, you know, given that james is his housemate and this is all complicated in ways that extend beyond you — and you're grateful, genuinely, in a way you'll tell them properly later.
but the hours pass and there's no reply, and by sunday night you've decided that's your answer, and you sit at your desk and you look at the blank notebook in front of you and you think about the fact that you've managed, in six weeks, to take the most important thing you've built this year and dismantle it from the inside out.
you open the notebook. you pick up your quill.
you write, at the top of the page: things i know to be true.
you sit there for a long time.
you write: i didn't want this to happen.
you write: i let it happen anyway.
you write: i would do the last six weeks again.
you stop. you look at that last line. you don't cross it out.
he finds you on monday.
astronomy tower, just after curfew, which means he got past the prefects somehow, which means he came here specifically, which means he read the letter.
you hear the footsteps on the stairs and you know before the door opens. you've known the sound of him for two months now — the particular weight and rhythm of it, unhurried even when it shouldn't be. you look out at the castle lights below and you wait.
he comes through the door. he sees you. he doesn't say anything for a moment.
"you left a letter," he says finally.
"yes."
"under the door."
"yes."
he comes to stand beside you. not close, not far — a careful distance, the kind that's aware of itself. you look out at the lights. he does too.
"you should have told me," he says. not angry. just true.
"yes," you say. "i should have."
"the whole time—"
"not the whole time." you turn to look at him. it's important, suddenly, that he knows this part. "the first week, maybe. the first two. after that it stopped feeling like an assignment and i didn't know what to do with that, and i made the wrong choice, and i know that." a pause. "i'm not asking you to be okay with it. i just needed you to know."
he's quiet. he's looking at you with that expression again — the unreadable one, the one that doesn't fit any of the categories — and the wind comes across the tower and you're cold, you're always cold, and he doesn't move to close the distance between you and you don't ask him to.
"the article," he says.
"yes."
"the end of it." he stops. seems to be deciding something. "that wasn't — that wasn't part of the assignment."
it's not a question.
"no," you say. "it wasn't."
he looks out at the castle. something in his jaw works, once. "i know," he says, very quietly. "i could tell. that's—" he stops again. "that's the part that made it worse, actually. because i read the whole thing and i was—" he exhales. "and then i got to the end and it was different. and i know your writing well enough by now to know when you're doing something and when you're just being honest."
your chest aches. "james."
"i'm not—" he turns to look at you. "i'm not over it. i want to be clear about that. you had six weeks of—" he stops. finds the words. "i let you in. i don't do that easily. and you were taking notes."
"i know."
"but." he looks at you for a long moment. "you also stayed. when i didn't give you anything worth writing about — the tuesday in the library, the pitch after practice, all of it. you stayed." a pause. "i'm not stupid, y/n."
it's the first time he's used your name. not hong. your name.
you feel it everywhere.
"i know you're not," you say.
"so i know some of it was real." he looks back at the lights. "i just need—" he stops. "i need some time. to figure out what to do with all of it."
"okay," you say. and you mean it — fully, without conditions. "take whatever you need."
he nods slowly. he doesn't leave though. he stays where he is, the careful distance still between you, and you stay where you are, and you look out at hogwarts together — all lit windows and ancient stone and the far-off flicker of the quidditch pitch — and you breathe.
"the tea," he says eventually, out of nowhere.
"what?"
"in the article. you wrote about the tea. he brought it without asking, already knew what kind, said it like it was nothing. you kept that in."
"yes," you say quietly.
"why."
you look at him. "because it was the moment i knew i was in trouble," you say. "and i wanted to be honest about it. the way it actually happened."
something crosses his face. not the unreadable expression this time — something softer, something that almost looks like the boy in the library who forgot to perform for a little while.
he doesn't say anything. neither do you.
the castle glitters below you in the december cold, and the year is almost over, and nothing is fixed yet — that's the truth of it, you're not pretending otherwise — but he's here, and you're here, and he said some of it was real in a voice that meant more than that, and for right now, in this particular moment, that's enough.
it's not immediate.
that needs to be said. he doesn't take your hand on the way down the stairs. he doesn't appear at breakfast the next morning like nothing happened. the library on thursday is just you, alone, and the empty seat across from yours, and the single cup of tea you make for yourself, and the essay you actually manage to finish because there's nothing else to do.
it takes time. real time, the slow kind.
but things happen, in the days after.
small things, first.
he nods at you in the corridor on wednesday — not the old nod, the new one, the one that's shorter and slightly more uncertain, which is somehow more than the old one ever was because it costs him something and he does it anyway.
keonho tells you, very casually, that james asked how you were. keonho said she's okay. james said good. keonho delivers this information and then looks at his hands, and you look at yours, and neither of you makes anything of it.
seonghyeon stops looking guilty when he sees you, which means something has shifted.
and then one morning — a thursday, of course a thursday, it was always going to be a thursday — you come into the library and he's there.
your side of the table. your seat. two cups.
he looks up when you come in. he doesn't smile yet — you're not there yet, you both know it — but he looks at you, and he looks at the seat across his, and he looks back at you.
you sit down.
you wrap your hands around the cup. it's the right tea. of course it is.
"i'm not—" he starts. stops.
"i know," you say.
"i just." he looks at the table. "i missed this. the thursday thing."
something opens in your chest, careful and quiet. "me too," you say.
he nods. he opens his playbook. you open your notebook. and the library settles around you, warm and familiar, the scratch of quills and the distant sound of the castle, and it's not the same as it was — it won't be the same for a while — but it's something.
it's a start.
the rest happens slowly, the way it always has with you two. nothing announced, nothing performed. just the incremental return of things — the banter first, careful at the edges, then less careful. the saturday courtyard. the walk back from dinner that neither of you plans. the morning he falls into step beside you on the way to class and doesn't mention it and neither do you.
one evening in the astronomy tower — your spot, which is his spot now too, which happened without discussion and which you've stopped questioning — he sits close enough that your arms touch, and this time neither of you moves away.
"i read it again," he says. "the article."
you go still.
"the end," he says. "the part that wasn't tips anymore." he's looking out at the castle. "you wrote—" he stops. seems to decide something. "you wrote that somewhere in october you stopped being able to tell where the assignment ended. and that by the time you noticed, it was too late to go back." a pause. "you meant that."
"yes," you say.
"it wasn't—" he turns to look at you. "none of that last part was for sora."
"no," you say. "none of it."
he looks at you for a long moment. the december wind comes across the tower and you're cold — you're always cold — and this time he closes the careful distance between you, unhurried, like he's decided and there's no reason to perform the deciding. his shoulder against yours. solid and warm.
"okay," he says quietly.
"okay?" you say.
"yeah." a pause. "okay."
it's not everything yet. but with james it was never going to be everything all at once — you know that now, you've learned the way he works, the slow and deliberate way he gives things. and that's fine. that's more than fine.
you lean into him, just slightly. he doesn't move away.
below, hogwarts glitters in the dark, and the year is almost over — your last year, the one that's been running out since september — and there are things still to figure out and words still to say and you'll say them, in time, in the order they happen.
for now: december. the astronomy tower. the warmth of him beside you in the cold.
for now, that's everything.
how to get the guy: a field guide by hong y/n | castle chronicles, december issue
there's a type of person who makes everything look easy.
you've seen him — maybe you know him. the one who walks into a room and doesn't have to announce himself. the one who's funny without trying, confident without cruelty, well-liked without seeming to care about being liked. the one who catches the snitch and lands like it was never in question.
i spent six weeks trying to figure him out.
here's what i learned.
tip one: don't be impressed.
everyone else already is. and he knows it — not arrogantly, just factually, the way you know the sky is grey in november. the moment you join that crowd you become part of the landscape, and part of the landscape is invisible. be the thing that doesn't quite fit the pattern. let him wonder why.
tip two: show up. just keep showing up.
not desperately. not strategically. just — be there, consistently, until your presence becomes something he reaches for without thinking about it. there is a kind of person, underneath all the easy confidence, who is very used to being looked at and very rarely actually seen. proximity isn't nothing. let yourself become familiar. familiar, for someone like him, becomes necessary before he knows it's happened.
tip three: pay attention to the right things.
not the quidditch. not the confidence. not the thing he shows the room. pay attention to the thing he shows when he thinks no one's watching — the way he checks on the nervous fifth year after a hard practice. the way he rewrites the same diagram three times until it's right. the way he goes quieter, not louder, when something is actually wrong.
the performance is real but it isn't everything. find the everything.
tip four: don't make it easy.
push back. disagree. let a silence sit longer than is comfortable. he has spent his entire life having things come easily and he is, underneath it all, a little bored by easy. be the thing that requires something from him. be interesting in the way that has nothing to do with trying to be interesting.
he'll notice. i promise you he'll notice.
tip five: let it be real.
this is the one i got wrong.
i came into this with a notebook and an assignment and the professional certainty that i could observe something without becoming part of it. i was wrong about that. i was wrong about it somewhere around week three and i kept going anyway, and i'm not sure i can fully defend that choice.
what i can tell you is this: somewhere in october, in a library, over bad ink and thursday evenings and a cup of tea i didn't ask for, the line between the assignment and the actual thing disappeared. and by the time i found it again it was too late to do anything but be honest.
so here is the honest version:
he remembers things you say in passing. he makes space for you without announcing it. he tells you things he hasn't told anyone else and he does it quietly, like it's not a big deal, which makes it a bigger deal than anything he could have said loudly. he shows up to the corridor you're standing in even when it leads nowhere. and when you're cold — which you always are — he closes the distance without making you ask.
i don't have a tip for that part. i don't think it's the kind of thing you can engineer.
i think it's just what happens when you stop taking notes and start paying attention with something other than a pen.
i think — if i'm being fully honest, which i promised myself i would be, which is the only way i know how to write — i think i stopped doing this for the article a long time before the article was done.
i think that's the only tip that matters.
let it be real. even when it's terrifying. even when you have a deadline and a word count and a very composed slytherin editor waiting for your draft.
i think the most distinguishing thing about this album is how different it is from cotl, and not just by sound. while cotl was more, well, colourful and hopeful, greengreen is still hopeful but in a world that tests you. there was a sense of recklessness and freedom that's only present when you're young and new in cotl. greengreen discusses their lives as of now, the gigantic shift of being under so many eyes and the constant workload. i feel like lullaby and blue lips echo each other so well in that sense, life before vs after fame, before achieving your dreams vs after ("i need something else and a new why"). from "i want the whole world to know my name" to the dejected tone in wassup "everytime they see me they know it's us" and in the same song they talk about their tiring schedules and walking through crowds at airports having people follow them, and of course the tnt mv that visualized the horrifying feeling perfectly. it's a scary shift ngl 😭 not because of the change but because it gives us a glimpse into their lives which isnt as sunshine and rainbows as they are presented specially with the regular vlogs that make you think that this is what their life is like at all times. i really love how their music is true to them because you can literally witness the growth and change in perceptions. i think they're trying to really emphasise their multifaceted identity and also trying to grapple with their own future (blue lips as @pearlywhitefics described so well the point about aging). similar to cotl this album also features a spectrum of sounds- from songs like acai and ycc (go and fashion) which are just pure crack in music form (i.e addictive) to the more softer, emotion based songs like blue lips and wassup (lullaby and joyride).
idk the shift feels so significant, theyre still a bunch of kids messing around in the studio, while also having to deal with things that normal people their age don't have to, especially considering how most of them having been in the loop of things since they were like what 11? 12? insane. but anyways you can see greengreen is growing on me......
the hopefulness of greengreen speaks to me even more because it's like sunlight breaking from the clouds, im just a sappy sucker for friendship, the constant mentions of finding comfort in eachother and in pursuing their love for music- "been through the lows now we get high", "i can't go back now to an empty house", "they called me a freak, i was obsessed, with making tracks, then came my friends" , "sixteen still just clueless kids....at the studio pc waking their dna"
so greengreenpilled rn that im actively scrolling past the ffs i want to hear what the people have to say. this is so fun i feel like we're all friends, hey guys 👋 talk to me about it 😛
annaxmalina
discoholicmusic
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yousharknotpass
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