pairing: cho chang x cormac mclaggen
setting: modern, non-magical, celebrity au
story intro based on this concept for rare pair summer slam 2k19
“Right, so, Cho, remember— you’re shy, you’re lonely, you have a ton of, like, emotional baggage from a past relationship that ended badly, and so there’s—there should be, like, some yearning when you look at Chad, okay? Like—you’re wistful. You watch him come and go from the gym across the street every morning, and you kind of want to hit that but, like, abstractly? Don’t make it too sexy. We’re not there yet. But that’s the energy I want you to bring, okay, just—just wistful, quiet, serene, maybe bite your lip and do something, I don’t know, fidgety with your yoga mat—yeah, like that, that’s great. Stellar. And Chad—he’s so close but he’s so far, like, this is some real Romeo & Juliet shit, just without all the family drama and the death and the—oh, oh, fuck, I didn’t mean—forget I said that. Ha. Rewind! Back it up! But, uh, for real, that look—that look you just gave me, that was perfect. Channel that. Harness it. Alright! Let’s roll, on three—two—one—”
The first thing Cho notices about Cormac McLaggen is his smile.
He smiles constantly—when he sees her walking through the gleaming double doors of the hotel lobby, the night they meet, and when he orders several rounds of very brightly colored drinks for her, also the night they meet, and when he notices the bandage under her tank top from her ill-advised new tattoo, also the night they meet—and it’s as infectious as it is exhausting as it is relentless. He’s the kind of charismatic that she’s always believed was forced, fake, fabricated for the cameras and the press and the fans and the casting directors who were hunting for characters, not people.
That’s what his smile is.
Or—that’s what his smile should be, because it’s so polished, so shiny, so broad and captivating and playful and pleased, and because it fits his face perfectly. Too perfectly.
His smile is authentic in ways that she doubts he’s aware of, in ways that she doubts he’s even capable of understanding, and it unnerves her a little bit, having all that energy, all that intensity, all that smug, self-fulfilling excitement directed right at her, totally unfiltered.
“Like, I miss football, you know, football was dope, but this—” Cormac sweeps his arm out, gesturing to the hazy hints of pink and purple and yellow that are streaking the palm tree studded skyline. “This is like football cranked up to eleven.”
Cho curls her hands around her coffee cup, blowing into the top to cool it down. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
He looks at her askance. “You’ve never played football, have you?”
“You compared a sunrise, which is an observable event, to football, which is an activity you participate in,” she says, yawning widely and trying not to jostle the rollers in her hair. “I don’t have to know anything about football to know that doesn’t make any sense.”
He snorts out a laugh, fiddling with his dog tags—with Chad’s dog tags—and winking at a cluster of catering assistants who are setting up a spread of breakfast pastries and bagels and miniature cereal boxes. Their call time was six, but at half-past Cormac’s already dressed in a pair of loose-fitting gray sweatpants and a suspiciously tight white v-neck.
“I was comparing, like, the feelings they give me, not the actual—not what they are,” he says, taking a big, dramatic breath of lukewarm morning air. “That sunrise—that shit’s spectacular, and in twenty minutes I get to go pretend to be an ex-Navy SEAL who, like, teaches kids to surf and knows how to make a kick-ass omelet and ends up with the smokeshow yoga instructor, and that’s—I mean, what the fuck, that’s the closest I’m ever gonna get to having my life together, you know?”
Cho blinks in surprise. “Huh.”
“It’s just,” she starts, wrinkling her nose, “you have a point, about the whole—pretending to be people who have their lives together thing.”
“Yeah?” Cormac tilts his head to one side, kind of like a puppy. “You think?”
“Yeah, for sure,” Cho says, nodding earnestly, and then ducking her chin to hide her smile. “Except—I mean, I can definitely make an omelet. They’re pretty basic.”
He turns, slightly, to stare at her, his lips parted and his expression startled and his eyes clear and green and sparkling—but then he smiles, too, again, he smiles again, and her heart does something completely, alarmingly inappropriate, something complicated and confusing that sets her pulse racing and her palms sweating, and—
God, it’s only the first day.
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
areudirty
vaporwave
titsay
kaledo-art
tangentwithtanner
pixelskylines
