๑ about me ๑
katie ⏐ she/her ⏐ '99 ⏐libra ⏐isfp-a |
๑ this is mostly a fic recs blog ๑
!! most of the work i reblog /reccomend will be nsfw so minors please dni with those posts !!
i rec for: svt • nct • ateez • tbz • skz • bts
⇢ pairing. chwe vernon x reader
⇢ summary. vernon loves music, and you love vernon.
⇢ genre. fluff, bffs2lovers, college!au
⇢ word count. approx. 2k
⇢ author’s note! happy (early) valentine’s day! i unfortunately wrote this last week which means it came so close to deletion at least 10 times, and so im posting it now to prevent that. thank you to alta @haologram for helping me brainstorm the playlist, i truly believe u are a gift to this world.
playlist. love language, kehlani / jasmine, dpr live / want u around, omar apollo & ruel / like i want you, giveon / thinkin bout you, frank ocean / best part, daniel caesar & h.e.r.
It’s closing in on two in the morning when you finally leave the library. Your phone’s been on do not disturb since you got there at seven, which feels like forever ago — as you exit, casting a sympathetic glance at the remaining two students still glued to their textbooks, you scroll quickly through your notifications. Two emails, a follow request, and a passive-aggressive threat from Duolingo.
You pull your coat tighter around you as you finally emerge through the last set of double doors — it’s freezing, and you’re just about to stow your hands deep into your pockets when your phone buzzes.
[2:03am] vernon 👽🖤 yo
[2:03am] vernon 👽🖤 ur prob asleep but i made u smth
[2:04am] vernon 👽🖤 https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4grGIbqG5VSvNpDLuwdG7X
Instinctively, you smile. You and Vernon have a bunch of playlists. A collaborative one, for when you’re together, driving or hanging out or whatever. Then he has one for you with all the songs he thinks you’ll like, and then you have one for him for the same reason.
[2:05am] you another one?
[2:06am] vernon 👽🖤 yooo why are u still up dude
[2:06am] you hypocrite 🫵
[2:06am] you but i’m walking home from the library rn
vernon 👽🖤 is calling . . .
“Dude,” he says, by way of greeting, and he doesn’t sound impressed.
“Dude,” you mimic exactly, biting back a smile at the sound of his voice.
“It’s two in the morning,” he sighs, and you can hear sheets rustling in the background. “Why are you walking home alone?”
“It’s not far, Vernon.”
“It’s dark and it’s been snowing. You should have called me,” he reprimands without any heat. “I would’ve picked you up.”
“Well, it is two in the morning.” You cross the road, stepping over a patch of snow. “I assumed you’d be asleep, not curating another playlist.”
“Oh. Yeah, that — that was — have you opened it?” Vernon’s words trip over each other, and your lips turn up ever so slightly. God, he’s so sweet.
“What, are you nervous?” you tease, unable to resist. “I have, like, fifteen of your playlists saved already.”
“You haven’t opened it,” he infers, and exhales a little. “Okay, um, maybe you should… wait. Until the morning or something.”
“Yeah, right,” you snort. “I’m listening to it now! It’s going to keep me company on my way home. Talk to you later!”
And you hang up before he can protest, already scrolling to find the link he sent you.
The first thing you notice is the name — Love Language. Which makes your heart twist a little, until you realise it’s the name of the first song, and anyway, you and Vernon have made this joke a hundred times. His love language is making playlists, he does it for his friends all the time. You included — you especially. Like the time he’d eaten the last slice of a cake you’d bought, apparently because he thought it was free-for-all. You’d given him the silent treatment for a day and a half before he’d texted you a playlist link:
I AM (IVE)
really (mimi bay)
Sorry (Justin Bieber)
About (SoKuen)
EATING (Sukihana)
The Cake (John Powell)
I Will (Remastered 2009) (The Beatles)
Buy (Cousines like Shit)
You (Basil Valdez)
MORE (j-hope)
Please Please Please (Sabrina Carpenter)
Forgive Me (Chloe x Halle)
It made you laugh, because Vernon always makes you laugh. A few months and a few playlists later, you were harbouring the biggest crush known to mankind.
That was three years ago. You and Vernon are seniors now, set to graduate next summer, and what was meant to be a harmless crush on a friend has turned into being completely, totally in love with your best friend. It wasn’t that serious until it suddenly was. It was butterflies in your stomach when you saw him, at first. Now it’s like a sigh of relief. It's more coming home. Which is a lot more dangerous, and a lot more painful.
You handle it, most days, but sometimes he’ll do something or say something that completely throws your perfectly regulated emotions into overdrive. He’ll laugh at a stupid joke you make, or he’ll grab your hand to make a point or he’ll tell you that you’re pretty, and your heart swells until it presses painfully against your ribs, hot and slippery and aching. Those days, you mostly go home just to lie on the floor, listen to the only playlist of yours that Vernon hasn’t seen.
The second thing you notice about the playlist Vernon made you is the cover. It’s you, you know it immediately, and you know exactly which day it was taken. You just didn’t know it was taken. But your best friend must’ve snapped a photo when you weren’t looking, because the cover is you, looking up at the cherry blossom tree that the two of you stumbled on during a late-night walk. It was maybe a little under a year ago, it was the night you realised you loved him, and it was the night you almost kissed.
You don’t know if he remembers it the same way you do. To you, that’s your biggest what if? moment. To him, it’s probably just another fun memory with his friend. His best friend, if you’re lucky.
It takes you a second, but you finally click play on the playlist — but the picture stares back at you, practically taunting you with the memory.
The two of you had been walking for twenty minutes, sharing airpods, until you’d seen the tree and gathered a pile of pink petals to dump over Vernon’s head; he’d realised what you were doing just a moment too late. Asshole, he’d said smilingly, brushing the petals off with two hands. Everything that happened next was cliché. He’d missed a spot, one pale petal still clinging to his hair; you reached your hand up to get it, and lingered a little too long, a little too close. You don’t think you’ve ever held eye contact for so long — it felt like forever and then some.
Until his eyes flicked downward. Only for a split second: if you’d blinked, you would’ve missed it, but you saw it, and it was enough to have you taking a step back. Not like this, you’d thought to yourself. You wouldn’t do anything like that. You wouldn’t throw years of friendship and an extended period of pining away so easily — you wouldn’t risk it over an impulse that Vernon was experiencing. If you couldn’t have all of him, you refused to even take one night. You’d rather not know than live with the memory.
You’re halfway through the second song when you finally snap out of the memory, and you can actually take a moment to glance at the rest of the playlist. To your surprise, it’s short — it’s only six songs — and more interestingly, you know all these songs. And Vernon knows you know them; some of them you recommended to him, some of them he’s sent to you already, and you’re still wondering what he’s thinking as the third song ends.
Despite you claiming to be his best friend, you don’t always understand Vernon. Sometimes it’s little things, like how he fist bumps the cat on the street corner of his apartment. Sometimes it’s bigger, like the girl he dated last year. You didn’t understand that — or maybe you didn’t want to, because yes, you were well on your way to being in love with him, but he also didn’t tell you. You found out from Seungkwan (who was kind of triumphant about it, because he was always vying for the position of Vernon’s best friend, and he finally knew something you didn’t).
Mina was lovely. As if Vernon would date someone not lovely — he brought her to movie night after a month or so of them seeing each other, and she met your group of friends, and everyone loved her. Even you. And honestly, after excusing yourself to the bathroom to blink away your watery eyes, you convinced yourself that it was for the better: that this would be how you officially got over your best friend. So when Soonyoung asked you to go on a blind date with one of his friends the next week, you said yes. You and Wonwoo saw each other for about a month before you broke it off, and about a month after that, Vernon showed up at movie night without his girlfriend, and casually mentioned that they’d broken up.
Even the news of that didn’t do much to soothe you, because you’d quickly come to a conclusion while dating Wonwoo: that it would not be easy to get over your best friend. You knew you loved him now. You’d come to that realisation under the cherry blossom tree, a few months after both of your breakups, a year after you realised that you liked him like that in the first place. It’s been well over two years since you first fell for him, and you’ve been stuck there ever since — falling deeper and deeper because you refuse to pull yourself out.
Sometimes, on your most hopeful nights, you think that maybe Vernon could feel something too. Some nights he looks at you with a certain shine in his eyes, or when he hugs you he makes it last a little longer than usual. Some nights he opens his mouth to say something and the words get stuck in his throat, and he waves it off like nothing happened. Symptoms that are all too familiar.
Those nights are even worse, the ones where you go home and read too much into his every move, try in vain to stifle the hope that insists on clawing its way to your chest. Those nights are getting more and more frequent, and you don’t know how much longer you can handle it. Those nights, something in you is convinced he feels something, that maybe he could like you — on the very worst, you think he might even love you. But by the next morning, you’re dead certain that all you’ll ever be is a friend to him.
But now — today — you’re eight minutes away from home and nearly five songs in when it starts snowing, and at the same time, the cogs in your mind slowly start turning. You love these songs, Vernon knows you love these songs. You’re pretty sure they’re some of his favourites too; he’s always listening to them. And you’re so preoccupied with the realisation that’s sinking in, that same traitorous hope you’ve always shoved down stirring again in your chest, you barely even notice the snowflakes settling around you.
Because maybe you don’t always understand Vernon, but most of the time you do, even if it takes a little while — even if he has to spell things out for you, like his stupid cake playlist. Because that’s what he’s doing, you realise with a sudden jolt, looking at your favourite songs. Your favourite love songs. He’s spelling it out for you. That this is his love language; that he wants you; that he thinks about you; and as the last song finishes, just as you turn onto your street — if you love me, won’t you say something?
When you finally look up, you think you’re hallucinating. Because Vernon’s standing in front of your apartment building, holding an umbrella, and it startles you so much you actually stop in your tracks a few metres from him, blinking idiotically.
Vernon gives you a shy smile, charming and awkward. Your heart does the thing it always does when he looks at you like that; stutters, skips a beat, clenches tightly.
“You stopped replying to my texts,” he says, and the street’s empty enough that you can hear him, even from where you’re standing. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
You don’t say anything because what can you even say? Where do you even start? You don’t have words — but you tap quickly at your phone with a sudden idea, and you hear the ping of Vernon’s phone from where you’re standing. You move closer anyway, smiling at the familiar furrow of his brow as he glances between you and the phone he digs out of his pocket. And you see the exact moment he registers what you’ve sent him, the smile that spreads across his face.
[2:39am] you https://open.spotify.com/track/5oO3drDxtziYU2H1X23ZIp [love on the brain - rihanna]
You and Vernon first met at a party. Seungkwan had promised both of you, separately, that it wasn’t a party, more of a small gathering between his friends, but of course, Seungkwan’s definition of small doesn’t match yours. And so you were kind of hiding in a corner, nodding your head and mouthing subconsciously to Rihanna’s Love on the Brain; you’d turned your head a few inches, and Chwe Vernon was standing a few metres away, doing the exact same thing. You guys had accidentally made eye contact and split into matching embarrassed smiles, until he’d sat next to you. He’d offered you possibly the most awkward fist bump ever, pairing it with an even more awkward, “So, uh, got love on the brain?” You’d laughed, and that was it — the beginning of you and Vernon.
Now, he pockets his phone again, but holds the umbrella out over both of your heads, which only makes you giggle. “You brought an umbrella?”
“It’s snowing,” he shrugs, but his smile is wide, “It’s just like… colder rain.”
“Stupid.” What’s more stupid is the smile you can’t peel off your face. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Why didn’t you?” he counters, and you tilt your head with a sheepish smile. So many reasons, but one look at him and you forget them all.
“So,” he murmurs, slipping his free hand around your waist, “got love on the brain, hm?”
“Something like that,” you agree, and after three years of wanting and waiting, you finally kiss him.
a/n i linked the playlist vernon made at the top (yes i dug up one of my very old spotify accounts to do this). i have very mixed feelings about this one. it's kind of cheesy but so is most of my work, and anyway it's valentine's day!! so who cares!!! also once again this got a banner bc once again this picture inspired the whole thing. also wtf is up with tumblr ruining image quality!!!
