is that true? | han taesan
Pairing : bestfriend! taesan x reader (ft. sunghoon)
Synopsis : Taesan wouldn’t say he’s the jealous type. He prides himself on handling every situation thrown his way with complete calm. He can handle just about anything. Except this. ‘This’ being you fawning over some random guy named Sunghoon. Tall, suspiciously pale, with an even more suspicious canine smile. Taesan is not jealous. He is simply concerned. There is a difference. There is definitely a difference. He swears he’s usually more put together than this. So why does his cool exterior crack a little more every time you so much as glance at this annoyingly gorgeous specimen?!
Genre : fluff, comedy, romance (ooh-la-la)
Warnings : nickname for taesan used occasionally (sannie).
You’ve been awfully distracted lately, and Taesan doesn’t like that. Not one bit, actually. You don’t laugh as hard when he does something silly, you’re always looking elsewhere when he’s trying to tell you something, you don’t even punch him on autopilot anymore when he pulls a prank on you!
And worst of all, you’ve been batting your lashes at this tall, broody looking guy called Sunghoon.
Looking Sunghoon over from across the classroom, Taesan gives an exaggerated roll of his eyes.
He’s not even that attractive.
Taesan scoffs, sitting up just a tad straighter and widening his shoulders subconsciously.
He’s totally better looking than him.
He watches as Sunghoon nears him, walks right past, and goes to ask you a question. He frowns.
You politely smile, giggle a bit and tuck your hair behind your ear.
You. Tucking your hair. Behind your ear.
It’s like witnessing the birth of an alien.
Taesan grimaces, unable to even blink as he watches the scene before him. You join his side a few minutes after, smile still lingering from your short conversation with the vampire-looking guy.
“Ew,” he says for no apparent reason. “Stop acting all cute, it’s weird.”
“You think I’m cute?” You spin to face him. Your movement being so unexpected that it startles him off his seat a little.
Clearing his throat, he slowly recuperates his calm composure.
“I never said that,” he says plainly, with little projection.
You purse your lips at him, a dangerous tease lingers on the crease of corner your eyes.
For the past few days, you’ve been sneakily inserting Sunghoon’s name into almost every conversation, as if Taesan wouldn’t notice.
At first, he thought it’d be a passing joke. Maybe you were purposefully trying to annoy him by talking his ear off, the way you sometimes did when you were bored and he was the easiest target to torture. He’d plainly nod and sigh every time you brought him up.
But a good couple of days have passed now, and something deep inside Taesan’s gut has quietly curdled into an ugly, green feeling.
“What? Don’t tell me you have a crush on him or something…”
You’re both having lunch out on the field today. The weather has started to grow warm and the sun makes it perfect to linger near the bleachers.
You go very still. Eyes wide, cheeks gaining heat like an old stove at his sudden accusation.
You were just telling him how you were one hundred percent sure Sunghoon looked at you during chemistry today. (Totally not in a delusional way, of course…)
Swallowing harshly, you look down at the sandwich in your hands, gripping its edges for dear life.
“Pfft! Whaaaat, no way! Why would you even—”
“You’re dunking your sandwich in your tea.”
You slowly look down to find that you have, in fact, dunked your savoury sandwich into your flask filled with scalding sweet tea. You startle awake, rapidly pulling your arm back. The sandwich comes out soggy and dripping in hot, steaming liquid.
You stare at it like you’ve lost a loved one.
“And your face is red,” Taesan adds, in a thoroughly unimpressed tone.
“Okay! Okay, I got it.” You huff, getting up to bin your sad excuse of a sandwich.
Taesan, ever the annoying little brat that he is, waits patiently for you to come back so he can torment you further.
Plopping yourself back on the bench, you readjust your sitting position. Your fingers brush his accidentally. You don’t even notice, but his heart is already beating at twice the speed from the simple contact.
He clears his throat, acting like it doesn’t bother him.
Anyway, back to business.
You turn to look him dead in the eyes and cock your head to the side like a yakuza straight out of Tokyo. Sneering, you narrow your eyes at him.
“So what, if I like him. What are you going to do about it, Sannie?” You put on the most intimidating face you can muster, purposefully lowering your voice for that extra dramatised effect.
In a rather theatric manner, you begin to jut your jaw out like he owes you lunch money, and you’re sure he’s probably shivering from pure fright right now.
Taesan stares at you for a good minute…
Then, he shoves a sugared donut down your throat.
You never thought death by sugared donut was a realistic option until today.
Lurching forward, you cough harshly, trying to recover from the attempted murder just plotted against you. Once your coughing dies down, you smack him hard across the back of the head.
He nearly falls off the bench from the force.
“Ow!” he hisses, hand flying to massage the spot.
“You nearly killed me,” you say in a bored tone, reaching for your flask to pour out another cup of hot tea.
“At least then we would have been safe from your horrible taste in men,” he mumbles under his breath.
“Han Taesan,” you say slowly. “Did you say something?” You turn to face him with your most venomously sweet smile.
He shudders, shaking his head vigorously and plastering a very careful grin.
After a quiet moment, he speaks.
“Why do you even like him?”
“Wouldn’t that be insulting yourself?”
You give a low hum. “He kinda looks like you.”
Taesan twists his lips, giving you a complex look caught somewhere between satisfaction and genuine terror.
“So you’re saying I’m hot?”
“I’m saying he’s hot,” you correct, taking a prim sip of your tea with your pinky raised.
“But you said he looks like me.”
“Resembles.” You correct. “He resembles you,” you nod slowly.
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No.” You tilt your head to think on it. “Actually, I don’t know. Is it?”
He shrugs, looking just as confused as you are.
You press on. “He’s just different, okay?”
“Different how? What’s he got that I don’t?”
You suck in a breath at his question. Watching him closely, you manage to see something sitting quietly behind his eyes. This time, you slow down before answering.
“Gosh, why are you so persistent today?”
He pulls his gaze away from yours, trying to look like he’s watching the football game going on across the field. But you catch it anyway, the tiniest evidence of a sulk pulling at the corner of his lips.
“I’m not persistent. I’m just curious.”
You look at him for a second, without saying anything.
A still minute passes. The muffled shouts from the boys on the field blur into the background as you focus solely on him.
The air between you hangs softly.
It barely gets to settle before the most egregiously loud stomach grumble decides to shatter it entirely.
Ever so slowly, he turns to you with eyes as wide as saucers.
You blink at him, the picture of innocence.
He stares at you in disbelief.
He breaks. Laughter spills out of him as he tries to muffle it behind his sleeve, shoulders shaking with the effort.
You quietly watch as his eyes crinkle into little stars in a matter of seconds.
“Are you hungry?” He tries to keep himself together, biting his lips to keep the remainder of the laugh at bay, but he’s doing an awful job at it.
“I expected this to happen,” he starts, already rummaging through his bag. He pulls out a clear bowl of homemade goods and holds it out.
“No,” you take the bowl from him, fingers grazing lightly against his and lingering there a little too long for it to be unintentional. “You just don’t like what your grandma made you today.”
He shrugs, leaning back onto the comfort of the bench.
“Same difference. It all ends up in your stomach anyway.”
He cheeses at your distress. You signal a knife to your throat.
The bell rings and you try to squeeze as much food as humanly possible into your cheeks before standing up.
By the time you and Taesan are back in class, you’re nearly finished with the bowl, cheeks still stuffed. Taesan, who’s now sitting beside you, prods one of them gently.
“You look like a chipmunk.” He says lightly.
You say something back but it comes out so utterly obscured by the food in your mouth that it sounds more like a cry for help.
The classroom buzzes in low ooh’s and ahh’s. You glance up to gage the commotion.
Porcelain skin. Black framed glasses. A nose you could probably go skiing on.
Sunghoon walks in with little interest in his surroundings, drops into the empty seat on your other side, flips open his notebook, and immediately fishes out his phone to doom scroll as the teacher hasn’t arrived yet.
Sunghoon blinks, though he has absolutely no idea about the silent battle he just stumbled into.
Taesan cracks his neck to the side.
Your classmates start whispering, and your skin prickles with the sensation of being watched by so many people.
“Since when does he sit here?” Taesan asks hollowly, loud enough for anyone within a 3 mile radius to hear, pointedly refusing to acknowledge Sunghoon directly.
The pale boy beside you pauses his scrolling and looks up in genuine confusion. His dark eyes land on a pair of stubborn brown ones staring him down like he personally persecuted him in a past life.
He has no idea why, but he answers him anyway.
“We don’t have a seating plan for this class.”
You let out a forced laugh, awkwardly patting Taesan’s shoulder with unnecessary strength, to get him to stop his antics.
“Yup! That’s right, no seating plan, haha! Isn’t that great?!”
Sunghoon’s eyes shift to you. Your breath catches.
“I guess?” he says, mild bewilderment still written across his face.
You nearly melt in your seat.
“You know what else is great?” Taesan’s voice chimes in and you can already tell that whatever he’s about to say is practically designed to come off as a backhanded insult.
“How good it sounds when you’re not talk—”
You slap your hand over his mouth.
With your other hand you grab the back of his neck, pulling your face close to his.
His eyes grow wide as you drop your voice to barely above a whisper.
“Behave, Sannie. Behave.”
In the next second, you’re back to facing Sunghoon like nothing happened.
Taesan is left with his heart nearly tumbling out of his chest at your bold conduct. A faint dust of pink paints the tip of his ears.
Sunghoon, who went back to scrolling the moment you looked away, remains completely unaware.
“See? He doesn’t even pay you half the attention I do.”
Soft. Airy. Right beside your ear.
You whip around. A fast-growing flush scatters across your face as you press your fist against your chest.
“You scared me!” Puffing out your cheeks, you exhale slowly, trying to hide the flustered look behind a scowl that isn’t quite convincing.
Taesan, who seems just as caught off guard by your reaction, goes very still.
His eyes move slowly across your face, like he’s trying to calculate your expression. Once it clicks, he files it straight away.
Then, he smirks. He reaches over and flicks your forehead with barely any force at all.
You bring your hands to cup your cheeks.
The teacher walks in and you sink into your seat with a quiet sigh.
“You don’t actually expect me to believe you like him, right?” he says, as you’re walking home together.
You don’t bother to look at him when you respond.
“Your jealousy knows no bounds, Han Taesan.”
“Your pranks know no bounds either.”
Your steps slow to a stop.
It takes a few more strides for him to realise you’re no longer beside him. The absence of you is immediate and obvious. His hand twitches. His side feels cold.
“How did I know?” he finishes for you.
“Something was off about the whole thing. It was too sudden, and every time I asked you for a reason as to why you liked him you just said he was hot.” He gives you a flat look.
“And besides.” He takes a step closer.
“You can’t out-do the doer.” Another step.
“Admit it.” He’s close now, smirking easily. “The person you actually like isn’t Sunghoon, is it?”
Even saying his name out loud sat bitter on his tongue.
The two of you are near enough that your noses are centimetres apart, eyes searching each other’s as you both smirk.
You take the smallest step forward. Unyielding.
“I’ll admit it,” you say simply.
“Only if you admit that you like me first.”
He blinks at you, confidence visibly cracking at the edges as the realisation of how well you know him settles in.
He takes a step back. Tries to hide the colour rushing to his face behind the cuff of his sleeve.
You step forward. Not letting him escape.
“Oho! Not so brave now, are we?”
“M-me? Have a crush on you? What—”
“Sannie. It’s been kind of obvious for a while.”
Something in him twitches. The panic softens into something quieter, something almost fragile. But he’s still mildly mortified when he asks.
“I thought I was doing great, though?”
“What, acting all nonchalant and mysterious while being very obviously jealous at the smallest interaction between me and Hoon?”
He stares at you in pure offence.
You scrunch your nose at him, fond and teasing all at once. “I find it kind of cute, actually.”
“Wait, don’t call me cu—”
You snort, leaning in closer with a soft, doting look on your face. A single gust of wind would be all it took for your lips to meet his.
“I was waiting for you to just say it outright, dummy.” You smile at him. He gulps.
He isn’t usually like this, all flustered and caught off guard. He’s only ever that way when it comes to you. The familiar push and pull that’s been ruling over him ever since he met you.
“So you really don’t like Sunghoon?” Comes his voice. Serious, a little lower than usual, just to make sure. And the sincerity in his plea for confirmation makes you pause before you toss your head back with a boisterous laugh.
“No! Of course not,” you chuckle, pressing your hand over your mouth at his reaction.
“Although he is Earth shatteringly handsome.”
He makes it a mission to ignore any other unnecessary comments you manage to muster.
“And you like me back?” He’s looking right into your eyes, head tipped downwards in focus.
“I like you back, obviously.” You spread your arms theatrically wide. “This much.”
He breathes out slowly, releasing something he didn’t even know he was holding.
“So these past few days I was nervous for nothing,” he says more-so to himself.
Then his eyes slide to you, and whatever softness was there sharpens into something dangerously playful.
“Oh, you’re so going to pay for that.”
“W-wait, what? It was a harmless prank, with a good cause!”
You step back. He steps forward. His strides are longer than yours.
Your back meets the bark of a tree. You freeze.
He’s close. Too close. The look in his eyes is unreadable in the best and worst way and you can smell his signature cologne from the collar of his shirt.
You swallow harshly, lips trembling.
His arms come up on either side of you, caging you in as he lowers his face toward yours. Slowly. Far too slowly.
You close your eyes, feeling his warmth close the remaining distance between you. His lips are barely hovering over yours and you fully expect to fall into a kiss that would jumble your entire brain chemistry—
For a second, you don’t move. Then your eyes open at the lack of contact.
You’re going to kill him.
You stare at the stupid, satisfied smirk tugging at his lips.
He’s already backing off, hands lazily tucked into his trouser pockets, trying to act all cool and au naturel.
“Told you you’d pay for it.” A low laugh slips out before he can stop it.
You practically launch yourself off the tree and go for him.
You miss. Of course you miss.
He bolts, laughter still trailing behind him.
“Hey! Come back here right now!”
You chase after him, embarrassingly fatigued after about ten seconds. He is far more athletic than you. You resent everything about that.
“I’ll catch you,” you huff.
Your run slows to a jog. Your jog slows to a walk.
“And when I do—” you wheeze, unable to finish the threat hanging at the end of your tongue. You crouch, hands braced on your knees. “Ugh. Whatever!”
A moment passes before you hear footsteps slow beside you.
You squint up against the sun, looking like an old granny, trying to make out the figure standing over you.
Stepping forward to block the sun rays from your eyes, Taesan’s face comes into view.
You frown at him, throwing a weak punch his way. He catches it in his large hands without trying.
Chuckling quietly, he reaches for your other hand, helping you to stand to your full height.
When you’ve mostly recovered, he looks at you. Observing the flush on your cheeks, the sweat gripping at your temple, the way your eyes are still trained on him with all that familiar warmth even though you’re busy trying to shoot lasers through his face.
He huffs softly. A small, fond smile.
You open your mouth to protest.
But you find his lips on yours instead.
No warning. No build up. Just him. You instinctively start to lean closer. You can feel one of his hands reach for your waist, the other moving to hold you steady— a sly measure to keep you from pulling away. Selfish. Cheeky.
You don’t even remember what you were going to say. The only thing on your mind being the feeling of his lips on yours. You can feel the shape of his smile against them.
You don’t want to pull away.
You really, truly do not want to….
His hand moves to cup your face and you think, very genuinely, that you might risk your life just to stay here in this moment. Just a little longer—
—But if you don’t get air in the next two seconds you are going to pass out and cease to exist.
Not to be dramatic or anything.
With the greatest reluctance you’ve felt in a while, you break away, gasping cartoonishly, pressing a hand to his chest.
“Oh man!” A cough. “I forgot I literally just ran before this.” You slap his arm half playfully and half seriously. Your nostrils flare as you inhale deeply, still trying to catch your breath.
“Are you actually trying to kill me or what? This is the second attempt today!” You point at him accusingly.
Taesan stares at you. He opens his mouth. Closes it. He looks at you for an extended moment.
Eventually, he tips his head back and looks up at the sky, wondering how he fell for such an idiot.
He barely gets out of the way of a flying kick.
The evening sky fills with your relentless shouted threats and his unceasing annoyingly gorgeous laughter. Perfect chaos. That’s what the two of you are.
And you wouldn’t change it for the world.
Tags: @sogiski @kireiinahana @ishuayou @beomtomie @ilikerainbowhehe @dyyyyyla @leehanascent @klo-olk17 @mouldyvoldysworld @amarecerasus @flustaered17 @yiiscorner @giantmounttttttain
