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it feels like color

seungkwan x reader tooth-rotting fluff! with a little dip into smut n some angst

10,715 words

a/n: i know it’s already over for him, but it’s still the 16th here in the u.s. so this still counts as a lil something for seungkwan’s birthday :) again, sorry it’s been so long since i posted. hopefully now i can get into a good groove posting things. for the record, this fic is kind of all over the place but...it’s sweet. and i like it. and the little anecdotes are not in chronological order. annnd it gets just a bit hot n heavy so it’s a bit over PG-13. enjoy!

~ in which you and seungkwan start as best friends but end as lovers and everything in between is so painful, so beautiful, and so worthwhile

“Sit still,” you hissed, and the writhing mass of boy in front of you ceased his movement to settle back into the couch, but not before pursing his lips in a pout at your tone. You pointedly ignored that look on his face as you brushed a second layer of this pretty OPI ruby red on his pinkie nail, which the sticker on the bottom of the bottle called ‘Ring the Buzzer Again.’

“How dare you talk to me like that,” he whined, “I don’t have to let you do this to me.” But he was wrong there, because you’d done that weird thing in bed that he liked last night and this was your reward. When you had woken him up this morning by plopping into his lap, he’d thought it was for a round two—but then he peeled his eyes open and saw the crate of nail polishes that you usually kept stowed away beneath the bathroom sink.

At first, Seungkwan thought you’d ask him to paint your nails for you, which he’d done several times before and he thought he’d gotten pretty good at (you were lucky if he got even half of the polish on your actual nails instead of stuck to the skin all around them). You’d had other plans.

“Oh, ‘Kwannie,” you cooed once the pinkie nail was completed. You blew softly onto the nail to encourage the paint to dry, making your boyfriend shiver, then held his hand up to the light to get a better look. “This color is so pretty on you, don’t you think?” The glare he shot you would have been lethal if you bothered to look up at him, but you were already distracted selecting another polish from your collection.

If he was being honest—yes, the color looked pretty damn good on him.

Instead of choosing one color and immediately getting to work on the next nail, you decided it would be more efficient to pick all nine others instead of stopping to do so in between each. Seungkwan watched from the corner of his eye, just somewhat interested in the colors you chose. You lined them all up on the window sill behind the couch; a luminous pink, a few different grays, a yellow, some more reds, an iridescent blue and a lime green.

With the early afternoon sun streaming in through the glass and casting the perfect lighting onto your work space, you picked up a glittering indigo and twisted off the top. “This is called ‘Indiglow’,” you informed Seungkwan, as if he actually cared, “I’ve been using this color for like six years.”

If he thought hard enough, Seungkwan could indeed remember seeing this color on you dozens of times. Just a couple weeks ago it had been your polish of choice on a date night at the movies, and before then you’d worn it to…a wedding? Maybe? To be fair, after too many years of knowing each other and dating for the last four of them, a lot of things blurred together. Not to mention: it was nail polish.

Forgive him for not keeping tabs on your manicures.

“Oh, wait,” Seungkwan yanked his hand away just as you were about to apply the first coat, “I remember this color!” The memory came back to him so abruptly and so vividly that his body physically recoiled in shock. It was of one of the more painful nights of his life, so the reaction was warranted.

“You wore this on prom night,” he said it like it was a bad word, and to him, it might as well have been. You, on the other hand, cared so little about that night five whole years ago that you could barely even remember the dress you’d worn and who you went with, let alone your nail color.

“Okay, so?” You grabbed your boyfriend’s hand and before he could stop you again, laid brush to nail. Seungkwan, with all of his over-dramatic tendencies, felt like he might throw up at the sight of the purple shade slathered onto him.

It wasn’t until your senior year of high school that Seungkwan decided he might as well confess his undying love for you. Keeping it hidden since he realized it in freshman year had seriously taken it’s toll on his sanity, and he was just so tired of not kissing you and holding your hand and all that other shit. With Hansol’s blessing, because the approval of your mutual best friend for as long as you could remember was totally necessary, Seungkwan concocted an elaborate scheme to ask you to senior prom.

And then, the morning of the day that Seungkwan meant to ask you—as he was busy decorating the music room for the occasion, no less—your long-time crush Moonbin caught you on your walk to school and asked you instead. When you rushed over to Seungkwan waiting at your locker with a dozen red roses tucked in the crook of your elbow, absolutely beaming with joy and young love, he was sure he’d never know a heartbreak like this ever again.

The worst part was having to pretend to be happy for you. “He said he’s liked me since last summer,” you gushed, “since that party at Changkyun’s. Can you believe it?” Of course, he could believe it. What self-respecting person who you showed interest in could resist falling for you? Especially with that pretty floral sundress you’d worn that night and the way you shot all of those sly, secret smiles at Moonbin the whole time.

Seungkwan had only been able to stomach so much of it before he had to amass a half dozen beers to drown himself in.

“I told you he kept looking at you in chemistry,” Seungkwan hoped his voice sounded as even and unaffected as he wished he felt. Somehow, the red painted on your cheeks burned even brighter at the reminder of the attention Moonbin had paid you in your science class. You hadn’t believed Seungkwan at the time, thought he was just messing around with you, but—well, he must have been telling the truth, then.

“He said he wanted to sit with me in chem, actually,” you suddenly remembered, “you can sit with Eunbi, right? Or Kyulkung?”

Rather than sitting with Eunbi or Kyulkung, Seungkwan skipped the class altogether. He knew that you’d demand to know where he’d been and why he wasn’t there, but he needed some time to process this disappointment before he had to see the two of you together…he also had to take down the streamers and pop all the balloons in the music room. The pitying glances from his fellow choir members only added insult to injury.

He had to go to great lengths to keep Hansol from telling you about Seungkwan’s feelings himself. It took a combination of death threats, begging on his knees, and bribes of having his mom cook a meal for him to talk him out of it. “But you two are gonna be perfect together!” Hansol had insisted, and apparently he really thought that if you knew how Seungkwan felt, you’d dump Moonbin and go to prom with him, instead.

Seungkwan knew better. At least like this, his dignity was spared.

The three of you got ready together on prom night, as best friends are meant to do. As expected, you looked nothing short of perfect in your dress—this pretty embroidered golden thing that made you just glow. Your makeup was light, barely there, mostly because you’d never been good at putting it on, and your nails were this sparkling purple color.

“It doesn’t really match,” Seungkwan had snapped without meaning to. He didn’t want his bitterness to ruin your night, and he most definitely didn’t want to take any of it out on you. Hansol had foregone finding a date to go solo with him, so he couldn’t be too bothered.

“Well it’s my favorite polish, so bite me,” you said as you tucked a curl into your updo, but you sounded airy and dismissive. At least you didn’t realize that this was all eating him up inside, didn’t realize that he hadn’t made the comment as a light-hearted tease.

Having to ride with you in Moonbin’s car to the venue was emasculating, to say the least. And the way Moonbin’s tie matched your dress and he got you flowers the same color as your nails and his shoes were shined but when Seungkwan hadn’t even thought to do that—he could have sworn Moonbin was just rubbing it all in his face. That wasn’t true, at all, it was a pretty crazy thought, actually. But that’s what it felt like.

And watching Moonbin hold your hand as you walked inside, watching him show you off to his friends, watching the two of you take to the center of the dance floor and wrap yourself around each other to sway to a slow song—that all felt like a dagger through the heart. Watching your eyes twinkle up at him, watching the smile that spread across your face in response to something Moonbin whispered in your ear—that felt like you had reached into his chest to suckerpunch his heart yourself. Watching Moonbin give you a kiss good night when he dropped you off at home later that night—that felt like Seungkwan wished he didn’t have a heart at all.

“I hate that color,” Seungkwan concluded after he finished recounting the story to you. You’d been silent throughout the whole thing, not even offering up a coo of sympathy at the worst moments of your boyfriend’s heartbreak.

The quiet persisted as you blew on the nail to dry, yet again, and then inspected the polish and compared it to the other. Just as Seungkwan was about to demand you say something, you spoke up, very quietly,

“Hansol was right.”

“Right about what?” You went for pink next, a creamy fuschia, in what Seungkwan could see was an Essie bottle. You shook it earnestly before turning the label towards him so that he could see the name of the shade, ‘Bachelorette Bash.’

“If you had confessed to me I would have dumped Moonbin and gone to prom with you,” you explained. Unfortunately, that knowledge now was a little too late. Seungkwan had been forced to watch you date Moonbin all summer, until the two of you split up a month into your first year of college. Moonbin had gone to a school closer to home, while you had gone to a college hours away with Seungkwan and Hansol. It never would have worked out.

“Gee, thanks for telling me that now,” Seungkwan grumped, “I had to be one of those single losers at prom. I’m one of the nerds in those high school romcoms.” You giggled at that, a little chirp that brightened up the room again.

“Yes, you are,” you agreed, “but you’re my nerd.” He would have gagged at the cheesy line if it didn’t make his heart swell a little bit. After all this time together, you still had that sort of effect on him. To stifle his embarrassing reaction, Seungkwan focused his gaze on the polish you were adorning his left middle finger with.

“Oh, I like this one,” he said, “what was it called? Bachelorette Bash?” You only hummed an affirmative at him. “I don’t really associate this sort of color with bachelorette parties, though. More of a…vomity green comes to mind.”

The scowl up at him did not go unnoticed, and Seungkwan lifted his unoccupied hand so that he could flick the look off your face. “Don’t remind me of that night,” you fussed, “I want to forget.”

Much to your chagrin, you and Seungkwan were invited to Eunbi’s wedding. You’d hardly spoken to her since you graduated high school, but you’d been close enough back then that she still wanted you there. She even went as far as inviting you to her bachelorette party, and despite your acute lack of enthusiasm, Seungkwan convinced you to go.

“It’ll be fun reconnecting with people! Make sure they all know that I finally got the girl,” he’d said. But there weren’t actually many other girls from high school invited, the only people you recognized were Yuna and Yewon—both of whom shared that they were also engaged, to people they’d been dating for significantly shorter periods of time than you’d been with Seungkwan.

This did not sit right with you. Neither did the three shots of tequila and several cocktails you consumed to help get you through the miserable affair.

“SSSeung-g…kwan,” you wailed into your phone from one of the bathroom stalls at the club, “Kwannieee, c-come…get me. Come get me, pleeease. Please, honey, a-angel, sssweet…sweet baby boy.”

“Y/N, how much have you had to drink?” He sounded unimpressed, and for a second you worried that he’d just leave you there…forever…that you had to live in this bathroom stall now. You’d never see him or any of your friends or your family again, and now you’d definitely never get married.

“What are you even saying?” You burst into simultaneous laughter and sobs—you hadn’t realized you’d been saying that out loud. Luckily, your ears picked up on the distinct sound of your boyfriend’s keys jangling as he locked the door to your apartment behind him, and the sound of snow crunching beneath his shoes as he trudged out to his car.

“Stay where you are, Y/N,” he instructed, “I’m on my way.”

“Wait! Seungkwannieee, don’…d-don’ get off the phone,” you whined, “I dunno where…I dunno where anyone is.” The sound of the engine turning over, the radio coming to life with whatever Top 40 garbage that he loved, and a sigh from your beloved assured you he hadn’t hung up.

“I’ll stay on the phone, babe,” he promised, putting you on speaker and securing his phone to the dashboard as best he could. You sat in silence for awhile after that, listening closely to Rihanna singing out of the speakers of the car and through the speaker of your phone.

“Worworworworworwor, dunununuh worworworworworwor,” you sang along absent-mindedly in slurs.

“Why did you drink so much?” Seungkwan suddenly asked. He was going to wait until the morning, when you had a clear head, but the curiosity was eating him alive. You were never much of a drinker, especially not when you virtually alone without anybody you trusted to watch over you.

“Oh, well…well, um…you ‘member Y-Yuna? Annnd…Yewon?” He mhm’d at you, but your drunk brain couldn’t process simple sounds like that—the two of you sat there waiting for the other for a full thirty seconds before Seungkwan had to explicitly say,

“Yes, babe, I remember Yuna and Yewon.”

“Okay, welllll…they’re…’ngaged,” the frown set heavy and low on your face was audible in your voice, but Seungkwan was completely oblivious as to why that would bother you so much. You’d gone to a few family weddings together, and as far as Seungkwan knew, you loved them.

“What’s wrong with that?” He asked, ignorant of the fire he’d sparked in you.

“Because III wanna get married, Kwannie!” For years to come, Seungkwan would insist that your outburst almost made him run right off the road in surprise. The two of you had never discussed marriage before. You’d been together for almost three years, but he’d always thought there was an unspoken agreement that you weren’t in any rush.

“You? Want to? What?” He sputtered back, slamming on his breaks at the next red light. According to his GPS, he was only five minutes away from the club you were at. He hoped he could diffuse this situation over the phone instead of having to deal with it face-to-intoxicated-face.

Seungkwan was an idiot. You knew this very well, had known it for so long, but it had never been more apparent than it was in this moment. How could any guy in a long-term, serious relationship not realize that his girlfriend thought about marriage? Especially after three years together? Three years in your twenties were practically a lifetime.

“Jusss’…just forget it, Seungkwan,” you said, “I don’…I don’ care anymore.” Before he could say another word, you ended the call—or at least you tried to. Your finger didn’t quite press the little red button, just opened up the keypad. You set the phone down on the grimy tile floor beside you, curled up against the yellow toilet that definitely wasn’t supposed to be that color, and promptly fell asleep as Seungkwan kept yelling for your attention on the call.

The next thing you knew, you were waking up in bed the next morning with a headache threatening to crack your skull right open, and all the contents of your stomach swirling around dangerously in your gut. “Oh, god,” you moaned, “I think I’m dying. I’m about to die.”

“You’re not dying, drama queen,” the familiar voice of your boyfriend sounded from the other side of the bed, and you slowly turned over to see him perched on top of the covers, fully dressed and ready for the day. He gestured towards the glass of water and aspirin on the bedside table, that you grabbed and swallowed down as quickly as your body would allow, then he reached down to hold up the bucket he’d brought for you.

“In case you can’t make it to the toilet,” he said.

Like the good boyfriend he was, Seungkwan cleaned out the many rounds of puke that you emptied out into the bucket, and tended to you as you lay out-of-commission in bed all day. You couldn’t remember a single moment after you left Seungkwan hanging on the phone and fell asleep, but you did remember bringing up your friends’ engagements and marriage to him, and hoped he would somehow forget that, himself.

You were not so lucky.

“About what you said last night,” Seungkwan finally brought it up after he had forced you to eat a sandwich and some carrot sticks for lunch, “do you really…want to get married? Now?”

“No, not right now,” you replied, and that was the truth. There was just some petty part of you that didn’t want the other girls to get married before you did. You’d just have really appreciated it if they waited a few more years for you to do it all first.

“But…eventually,” you continued, “sooner rather than later. Don’t wait until I’m 30 to propose to me, Boo Seungkwan.” He got the warning loud and clear, and laughed as he pressed a kiss into your hair.

“I don’t think I can wait that long,” he said, “so, yeah. Sooner rather than later. I can do that.”

“You still haven’t proposed,” you said, as if Seungkwan wasn’t keenly aware of that fact, as you presented the neatly polished nail to him. He admired it for but a moment before moving his hand back into yours so that you could move on to the next color.

He didn’t say anything, and you decided to let it go for now. That had been barely even a year ago, after all. There was still plenty of time left in “sooner rather than later.”

You also had no idea about the ring that Seungkwan had safely hidden at Hansol’s place, that he’d picked out and bought less than a week after Eunbi’s wedding. He was still biding his time, planning the perfect engagement, but it was coming. Sooner rather than later.

“Oooh, I really like this color,” you said as you grabbed the blue you’d picked out, swirling with different shades lighter and darker, resembling the ocean, “it’s called ‘Do You Sea What I Sea’ but it’s S-E-A, you know, like…the sea.”

“Yes, thank you, I get it,” Seungkwan rolled his eyes at your thorough explanation, and as the color rolled onto his nail, he pondered upon the fact that it really was a rich, complex blue like the sea. It had been awhile since he’d last seen the ocean in person—last summer, in fact, with you.

Your swimsuit—if it could even be called that—had attracted the attention of every single person on this beach, and Seungkwan was not pleased. Honestly, the disapproving glares from cranky middle-aged mothers and wives bothered him more than the nasty leers from old men. He could handle those creeps with his fists, if he was so inclined (not that he’d ever gotten into a fist fight before, but at least he could try). The older women, though, with their misguided sense of moral superiority and elitism—what could he do about them? He couldn’t punch the internalized misogyny out of them.

It was a pastel pink little thing, with lacy white straps pulling the two tiny pieces of the bottoms and the top together. Privately, he could have really enjoyed it, but you were forcing him to behold this spectacle out in public at this overcrowded beach where popping a boner would be really inconvenient. You weren’t a voyeur, so he’d just have to cover it up and will it away instead of trying to convince you to take care of it and—this whole situation was just really not ideal.

To make matters worse, Hansol had literally wiped drool off his bottom lip when you first pulled off your cover-up and jogged out into the water, and Seungkwan really didn’t want to have to find a new best friend this late in the game but that was absolutely not okay with him. Not only did he just not want him checking you out, but really, Hansol should have had more respect for one of his best friends of fifteen years than to openly gape at you like that.

“Control yourself, ‘Sol,” Seungkwan snapped as he smacked him over the back of the head, and then hurried into the water so that at least he could get everything below his waist out of sight. You splashed over to him with the biggest smile on your face, unwitting of all the attention you’d garnered, and that was fine by him. He just wanted you to have a good time.

“Thanks for bringing me here,” you said for the tenth time since you’d hopped out of the car, as you wrapped your arms around his neck and brought your face level with his. It had been a long trip, requiring an overnight stay at a nearby motel, but worth it for how happy it made you. Behind him, Seungkwan heard Hansol coming over, challenging you to some sort of race like the two of you were prone to do.

“Of course, babe,” Seungkwan sighed, pressing a soft kiss to your lips before letting you run off with your other friend. He tried to preoccupy himself with—well, he didn’t even know what. What did people even do at the beach? He couldn’t say he’d ever been a big fan of or spent much time at them. All Seungkwan could do was wade around in the shallow depths and watch you repeatedly ducking under the water and returning to the surface for air, and to laugh at Hansol who apparently was a really bad swimmer.

To his horror, you looked even more indecent and dreamy with your skin slick from the ocean water, making you glisten in the glaring sunlight in the most alluring way. This was like every one of Seungkwan’s wet dreams come true, except this was reality and he couldn’t just drag you over to his towel and have his way with you right here. He couldn’t even do anything with you back at the motel, because you were sharing a fucking room with Hansol.

This was torture, and Hansol sucked.

Just past noon, the sun was high enough in the sky that you sought out sanctuary back at the towel, beneath the obnoxiously large umbrella Seungkwan had bought for this occasion. Hansol followed suit, and the two of you huddled up beneath the shade together to share some of the lunch you’d brought. You didn’t even wait for Seungkwan, who was ever so carefully limping across the sand trying to hide the trouble in his swim trunks.

“What took you so long, Kwannie? Aren’t you hungry?” The fact that you were blissfully unaware of it all only exacerbated Seungkwan’s irritation. He plopped down onto the towel and grabbed the lunchbox out of your hands to cover his lap with, and didn’t speak a single word to you. Hansol, who had apparently dedicated this trip to being The Worst, knew exactly what was going on and the little shit poked his tongue out at him when you turned your back to dig around in the cooler for something.

“Okay boys, here you go,” you said, and they each dropped the expressions on their face—Hansol’s of teasing and Seungkwan’s of barely repressed rage and loathing—to give you their undivided attention. It was at this exact moment that Seungkwan is certain he shifted into an alternate reality in which cheesy porno plot lines happened in real life.

With a bright red popsicle hanging out of your mouth, you held one out to each of your fellow beach-goers. A drop of melted juice was dribbling down your chin, and you shook each icy treat in your hands for them to quickly grab so that you could wipe it up. They took the popsicles in a daze, and Hansol made a point of getting up to turn his back on you before his physical reaction to your lewd display got out of hand.

Hands finally free, you grabbed the popsicle stick and let it slurp out of your mouth, and then wiped at the quickly dried red line stained into your skin. “Oh no,” you groaned when you saw the drop had gone all the way down your chin and neck before it disappeared into your cleavage, “I’ll be right back, I’m going to the bathroom to wipe this up.”

He knew you might kill him for this later, but Seungkwan couldn’t help himself—thinking with his dick only, he shoved his own popsicle into Hansol’s hands and rushed after you towards the restrooms. A couple of girls filed out after you had gone inside, and when the coast was about as clear as Seungkwan could imagine it’d be, he ducked inside himself. You were just swinging the door to the handicapped stall shut behind you, and he made the quick decision to shove his fingers between the door and the wall to stop it from closing.

Seungkwan would have felt guilty about the way you jumped away and squealed in fear if he wasn’t screaming “Ow! Fuck!” and cradling his throbbing right hand to his chest. That hadn’t been his smartest idea.

“Hey, hey! It’s okay, it’s just me!” He managed to say through his clenched teeth, face twisted into a grimace, and you didn’t feel bad for him at all. Fucker deserved it for being such a creep.

“What do you think you’re doing, you perv?!”

“I’m not a ‘perv’,” Seungkwan said matter-of-factly, rolling his eyes back deep into their sockets, “I’m your boyfriend.”

“Those two things are not mutually exclusive,” you scoffed as you made your way over to the sink, gathering a handful of paper towels from the dispenser to wet so you could wipe off the mess you’d made on yourself, “I can’t believe you’re in here trying to soil my pure, wholesome day of fun.”

“Pure and wholesome?” Seungkwan was in disbelief—so you really were that oblivious to the effect you had on not only him, but the rest of the world. You really had no idea how erotic the sight of you with that popsicle in your mouth had been, or how skimpy your little bikini was, or that you were the hottest person on this whole fucking planet to him.

You didn’t bother responding to the last thing Seungkwan said, busy lathering soap onto the sheets of tissue paper before you got to wiping the sticky popsicle remains off of your skin. Frankly, you were amazed that he hadn’t said anything more, let alone hadn’t launched into a full rant. It wasn’t often that Boo Seungkwan had so little to say.

Then you saw him come up behind you in the mirror, and place his soft, warm hands on your bare waist, and felt the reason he’d sneaked into the ladies room against your ass. “Ugh,” you sighed, “really? You want to get into this here? You know I’m not into that public sex stuff.”

“Yes, baby, I know,” Seungkwan whined against your skin as he nuzzled his nose into the back of your neck, “but you’re so…God, I can’t believe you dunno how sexy you are.” If the idea of hooking up with Seungkwan in this bathroom hadn’t already made you warm, now your insides were boiling. He only made it worse when he timidly ground himself into your backside and bit down on your shoulder, sucking a mark into the skin.

Before you could talk yourself out of it, you made the decision to spin around and drop to your knees in front of him, bracing yourself by grabbing his thighs and anchoring your nails into their skin. He hissed, but made no move to brush your touch away. “Fine, I’ll do this because I love you and I don’t want Hansol to make fun of you for having a boner,” you tried playing it off like he hadn’t gotten you all hot and bothered, yourself.

“Too late for that,” Seungkwan laughed, but the laugh dissolved into a gasp for air halfway through as you yanked his swim trunks down and wrapped your hand around his length.

“Then I’ll have to beat him up when we’re done in here.” And that was the last thing you said before you took the head of Seungkwan’s cock into your mouth, suckling on it lovingly and earning that patented whimper from him that you just adored. He stumbled back and let his back hit the wall to keep him upright, and you were right there with him, shifting forward on your knees so as not to let him dislodge himself from your throat.

“God, I love you so much,” he made sure you knew as he brushed your hair back out of your face so he could look down into your eyes. You winked and sucked hard on him to respond in kind. He could only hope that all of the crusty old ladies outside heard his moan echo across the beach.

“Remember that time in the bathroom at Hamdeok Beach,” Seungkwan teased as you blew on his blue nail, and he loved watching the dusty pink blush spread across your cheeks, “you’re so naughty.”

“God, shut up,” you rustled, “why are you being so mean today? Reminding me of all this embarrassing stuff.” You turned to grab another color, and somebody who didn’t know you as well probably would have let it go, but Seungkwan could tell that you were genuinely put off.

“Why are you embarrassed? It was hot,” he assured you. For a moment you were still, thinking it over in your head, deciding if that was good enough. Seungkwan would get on his knees and kiss your feet for forgiveness if you so pleased, but thankfully, you nodded once and he knew you’d determined what he said was acceptable.

The color you were uncapping now was a bright lime green, one he’d seen on you many, many times. “Oh, that’s my favorite on you,” he chirped, “what’s it called?” You rose an eyebrow at him before holding the bottle up so he could see the sticker on the bottom once again. “Mojito Madness,” he read out loud.

“This is your favorite polish that I wear, really? Do you even like green?” He’d never really thought about it before—colors were colors. They were all great, or whatever. Green was neither here nor there for him. But if he thought about it, he’d seen you wear this polish for most important events, like your anniversaries and graduations and birthdays. He probably liked it so much since he associated it with those memories.

“I mean, green’s alright,” he concluded, “you’re what really makes it. Weren’t you wearing that on our move-in day?” And now that he brought it up—yeah, you had worn it that day. It had been a mere subconscious decision to scrub off the peeling black polish you’d had on and give your nails a refreshing green manicure on the last night in your old apartment, giving your hands a fresh start of their own like the one you’d been about to have.

“I guess I was,” you shrugged, and shelved the subject to aim all your attention at spreading the polish neatly across his thumbnail. Thinking about that day a year and a half ago, Seungkwan turned his head to admire the home that the two of you had made together, from the broken vase of his mother’s that you’d painstakingly glued back together to the polaroid pictures of the two of you hung up over the fake fireplace you’d insisted on installing to the stain in the hallway from that time you’d run through the door right as Seungkwan was carrying a bowl full of spaghetti into the living room.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was perfectly the two of you.

“Is that the last one?” Seungkwan wheezed as the two of you lowered the big box full of your books onto the floor in the guestroom. You tore the box open before you answered him, just to make sure the movers had transported your most treasured belongings safely.

“No,” you laughed, “that was just the third.” In an ideal world the movers would have moved the stuff into your new home after they packed it up and into the truck and delivered it here, but there had been some sort of mix-up when you’d hired them and on the way to the new apartment you’d been informed that he unpacking would cost another hundred and fifty dollars. Seeing as you and Seungkwan were dirt poor, that was out of the question.

“Oh,” Seungkwan said lamely, “well. In that case, I’m done.” Then he flopped back onto the floor and spread himself out on the carpet. It was actually rather comfortable, which was a welcome surprise. With how much cheaper this place was than some of the other apartment complexes in town, Seungkwan had worried about the condition your unit would be in—the place seemed pretty nice so far, though. With the exception of the lady next door who’d been standing on her mat watching the two of you walk to and from your moving truck for the entire hour since you’d arrived, that is.

His eyes were closed, but he could hear you crawling over to him clear as day, and then felt your hand on his chest before you lowered your head there and snuggled in with him. “Nap time?” He asked, taking your hand in his and lifting it to his lips for a kiss against your knuckles, catching a peek at your lime green fingernails. You blanched at the affection, still not used to how thick he laid it on sometimes.

“Nap time,” you concurred, closing your eyes and letting the drowsiness drag you down into peaceful slumber. Your neighbor got tired of waiting for you two to come out, eventually, and was actually nice enough to go shut the door to the moving van when she realized the two of you were settled in for the time being. You woke up still tangled up in your boyfriend on the floor the next morning, and thought that your first night in your new home together absolutely could not have been any better.

“We should pay Ms. Chung a visit,” you said suddenly, as if you could read his mind. You might as well have been able to—you two always seemed to be thinking the exact same thing, which was just as good.

“Make her cookies,” Seungkwan suggested, “she loves your cookies.”

“She thinks my cookies are alright,” you recapped the green polish and plucked another red one off of the sill next, “you just want a batch for yourself.” Seungkwan opened his mouth to object to that statement, but the cutting look you shot his way kept him silent. You both knew you were right.

He grabbed the next bottle of polish to look over himself before you opened it, and as you expected, openly gawked at its name. “After Sex? What about this color is supposed to have those kind of after sex vibes? When I have to wipe you up and the sheets are sticking to me because I’m all sweaty and my back hurts from hunching over you—I’m not reminded of a sexy maroon.”

“It’s burgandy,” you corrected him, “and I think it’s supposed to invoke thoughts of those moments in movies where they’re both laying there, heaving and spent, and the guy is smoking a cigarette and the girls eyeliner is smudged on her cheeks and…you know.” Seungkwan did not know. After sex with you had never been anything like that. It had been exactly like he’d said, almost clinical but comfortable. Routine. And that was after sex at it’s best.

At its worst, after sex with you was like that first time your freshmen year of college, over a year before the two of you started dating. Awkward, painful, generally unpleasant. Seungkwan hadn’t thought about that in a long time.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Seungkwan knew it, you knew it, Hansol waiting in agony back at his dorm knew it, everybody knew it. He was supposed to tell you how he felt, and that was it. Hopefully you’d return his feelings, he could ask you to go out on a date with him, and then he’d go back to his building and spend the night there alone. Alone, but happy.

Instead he found himself very much not alone, naked and steaming beside you in your bed, and absolutely miserable. It had to have been at least fifteen minutes since he finished and neither of you had spoken a word.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

It was a struggle to recall how it even had gotten to that point. He made sure to come around when he knew your roommate would be gone for a long skills lab, rapped his knuckles on your door in the five-knock pattern that you’d know was him. Your door had swung open and there you were, in all your glory—bawling your eyes out.

Getting the story out of you wasn’t easy. It was more shocking that it took so long to get you to tell him what was wrong than what the problem actually was—the two of you had known each other for so long, hadn’t kept a secret from each other since probably middle school, besides the fact that he was in love with you, of course. There was almost nothing that was confidential when it came to the two of you (and Hansol.)

But he had to practically rip the words out of your throat with his own two hands: “That guy Jooheon doesn’t want to have sex with me because I’m a virgin.” Seungkwan knew that you were a virgin, of course. There had been too many forced, boring games of Never Have I Ever… at parties for that to be a secret. It had never seemed like that bothered you until now.

“That’s stupid,” Seungkwan said, “it shouldn’t matter but don’t most guys want a girl who’s a virgin, anyways? So they can say they’ve been the only one or some shit.” It was a gross thought, that most men would want to stake a claim on you like that. You’d never thought about it that way before, and it made you think that maybe you’d rather stay a virgin forever than let some guy who just wanted to hang your virginity up in his trophy case have it.

Or—

“Let’s have sex.” For the first time in all fifteen years you’d known him, you rendered Seungkwan speechless that night with those three simple words. Let’s have sex. You might as well have been speaking gibberish as far as Seungkwan was concerned. There was no way that you’d just said what he thought you did.

“I mean it. Let’s have sex.” But you doubled down on the idea and Seungkwan definitely hadn’t misheard you that time. The conviction in your voice alerted your friend to the fact that you’d made up your mind—he could argue, he could object, but in the end, you’d get what you wanted out of him just like you always did. You’d had your boys wrapped around your fingers for most of your lives, after all.

And it wasn’t like Seungkwan hadn’t dreamed of this exact moment a thousand times before, anyways.

“Are you sure?” He had to check. You were clearly in an emotionally vulnerable state right now after being rejected by your crush, and he didn’t want to take advantage of that. If you and Seungkwan were going to have sex, he needed to know that you were of sound mind.

“Yes, ‘Kwan, I’m sure,” you promised him, “I’ve been thinking of doing this for a long time. Really.” You knew that Seungkwan was a virgin, too—he’d bemoaned that fact to you many times before. Hansol had lost it in your junior year of high school and every day that passed afterwards that Seungkwan didn’t was another day Hansol could hold it over his head. Losing your virginity together, as friends, seemed so logical to you at this point.

It was only immediately afterwards, when Seungkwan slipped out of your heat and clumsily pulled off his used condom beneath the sheets, that the reality of the situation came crashing down on you. Liberal sexuality be damned—having sex with your best friend would always change things. You should have listened to all of those teen magazine articles and stereotypical friends-to-lovers fanfictions you liked when you had the chance.

Seungkwan realized that you were crying before you did. “Y/N? Y/N, did I hurt you? Are you okay? Please, please don’t cry,” he begged you, but the tears wouldn’t stop. You’d fucked up. Whether Seungkwan knew it yet or not, you realized that you had just lost your best friend.

And you hadn’t even gotten to orgasm.

“I’m sorry, Seungkwan,” you warbled through a fresh wave of tears, “I’m so sorry. This was a mistake. We shouldn’t have done this.” He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this. It hadn’t been this physical ache tearing his chest in two, exposing a deep black hole where he had just a moment ago known his heart to be.

You didn’t have to ask him—Seungkwan knew he should leave. He scooped up his clothes that he’d anxiously, neatly folded and set on top of your dresser barely a half hour ago and redressed himself as quickly as he could. It was difficult, but he went against his base instinct to comfort your form curled up in bed, faced away from him, shaking.

As he bent over to get his feet into his sneakers, a flash of yellow dropping to the ground caught his attention in his peripheral vision. The offending tiny round object stared up at him from beside his shoes, mocking him and this monstrous lapse in judgement he’d just had. He kicked it beneath your dresser in anger and hoped he’d never see it again.

“I’m sorry,” he heard you again, the words muffled with your face pressed into your pillow. He couldn’t decide if he hated you right now or if he’d never been more in love with you.

But he was walking over to you and leaning down to press a kiss to your temple, whispering against your skin that it was okay, that you didn’t have to be sorry, that you were still his best friend. Whether or not any of that was true, he just wanted to make you feel better, so that impulse in him answered the question of whether he loved or hated you well enough.

The month of radio silence from you after that was without a doubt the longest the two of you had ever gone without talking. Hansol was your go-between, keeping you both updated on the other’s life, never outwardly passing any judgement on what you knew that he knew happened. It was obvious, though, at least to you, that he was on Seungkwan’s side. As he should have been, really. You were the one who instigated the whole thing.

It was on the day that your roommate blew up on you for lazing around in bed every day and your side of the dorm being an absolute pigsty that you started talking to Seungkwan again. You were on your knees shoving your handheld vacuum blindly beneath your dresser when something got stuck in the hose and made a monstrous sound. Immediately you flipped the switch to turn it off and shoved your fingers in to dig out whatever this god forsaken thing was and—the little yellow circle made your heart flutter in a way it never had before. You had thought you’d never see this again.

You called Seungkwan immediately. You told him that you were sorry, you told him that he would always be your best friend, you told him that you didn’t regret anything. You didn’t tell him that you were in love with him, no, not yet. That could wait just a little longer. You were just happy to have him back and with the precious yellow ring squeezed onto your pinkie finger, happy that you knew now more than ever he was in love with you, too.

“Hey,” Seungkwan randomly called for your attention as the deep red polish dried on his nail, and you proceeded to paint the next three in various new shades of gray you’d just bought last week, “I love you.”

“Yes, I know,” you said.

“No, I mean, I really, really love you,” Seungkwan stressed, raising a finger from his left hand to poke your forehead and make you look up at him. You would have been worried about whatever intentions were behind this expression of love if he wasn’t smiling so wide that his cheeks must have hurt.

You set down the last gray polish, yet to be closed, so that you could laugh and not fear spilling it all over yourself. Through your wheezes of laughter you said, “I would hope so. We’ve been dating for nearly four years.”

“Yeah but it’s more than that.” Seungkwan needed you to understand, but he couldn’t find the right way to put it into words. Maybe that was the real reason he hadn’t gotten around to proposing yet—because he was fucking stupid and couldn’t appropriately express what you meant to him. He wasn’t about to get down on one knee and only ask if you’d marry him. You were worth no less than a ten-page speech in no more than 8-point font, single-spaced, with no margins or indentations to make it seem longer than it was.

There were a few colors you had to choose from for the last nail: a nude, a bright orange, or a yellow. Seungkwan knew you, and he knew you’d pick—

“Yellow, it is,” you said with a grin, tossing the other two into the crate and prepping the pillow propped up in your lap that had become your makeshift work space for the final time. Seungkwan was surprised to look at the clock and see that barely fifteen minutes had passed since you started.

He’d always known yellow to be your favorite color. The apartment was drowned in it, from the pillows to the sunflowers you always kept in that broken vase to the backsplash in the kitchen to the accent wall you’d painted a pastel yellow behind you. If something could be had in yellow, than it would be had in yellow. Seungkwan never complained about it, either. If you loved yellow, than he loved yellow. It would always remind him of you and your story together.

You had known Hansol and Seungkwan since you had received your first library card and learned to count to 1,000—which was to say, you’d known them since the first grade, back when they were the only boys in class who didn’t think you had cooties and the girls didn’t like you that year because your mom had cut your hair too short. The funny thing was that they weren’t all that different now from how they’d been back then—Seungkwan the more outgoing, cheeky one and Hansol more of an introvert, more delicate and emotive, even if he was a walking, talking meme.

Together, with Seungkwan in the lead, they were a mischievous pair. They liked playing jokes on the other students and had managed to sneak out to the playground during naptime almost a dozen times. It was on one such expedition, creeping through the halls and peeking around corners, that they ran into you on your way back from the bathroom.

“Ugh, dumb boys,” you sneered, using one finger to push up your bright yellow circle-framed glasses by the middle before adopting a stance with your arms crossed over your chest, hip cocked, foot tapping impatiently. You were definitely what they would call a goody-two-shoes and teacher’s pet, in fact, they had been calling you that for the entire year so far. Catching them in the act and awarding them a week of study hall in place of recess would normally have brought you so much joy.

But, as previously mentioned—this hadn’t been a great school year for you. It was your first year with these dumb glasses, and the mean boys in the advanced reading class that you went to called you four-eyes; your best friend that you’d had all the way since the beginning of kindergarten had made fun of your Pokémon backpack and wasn’t talking to you anymore; and worst of all, your mom had decided to cut your hair herself instead of taking you to the salon at the end of the summer and now your hair was just barely below your ears and taking so long to grow back. Those jerks Kyungah and Seolhee kept saying that you looked like a boy and you were ugly.

Elementary school kids were so cruel, as you remembered them.

“Are you gonna tell on us?” The smaller one, who you knew as Hansol, asked you as he tapped his fingers together nervously. Any other day it would have been a no-brainer, of course, you were going to tell on them. But your eyes were all red and watery from crying in the bathroom because Kyungah and Seolhee found the note your mom put in your lunch (signed off sweetly with love you, pikachu! as she’d taken to calling you) and showed it off to all the other girls, teasing you ruthlessly before they tore it in half and threw it away.

That had been the last straw. There was no more Mrs. Nice Girl. You were going to get back at them, find some way to get to their house and rip the heads off of their dolls or break all of their crayons or…or…or…

Or you could just make some friends. You’d feel a lot less lonely and you’d have somebody to stick up for you, somebody to have your back. Somebody to tell Kyungah and Seolhee to go lick their butts next time they tried to go through your stuff and make fun of you.

“No, ’m not gonna tell on you,” you said, “take me with you.” It was exhilarating, really, for your six-year-old self to tiptoe past other teachers’ doors and zip your lips shut when Hansol sent the signal that someone was coming down the main hall. The whole time, your fingers were interlaced with that of the chubbier one—Seungkwan. When the three of you had to hide in a closet as your vice-principal passed by, he squeezed your hand and promised that you’d be okay.

Six-year-old You decided that you really, really liked him.

You liked them both. When you had reached the trail past the portables to the playground, you all sprinted hand-in-hand into the crowd of fourth graders currently out for recess and blended in easily. Seungkwan immediately led you all to the highest slide—one that first-graders weren’t allowed on. There was always someone standing watch during your own recess to make sure none of you went on it, but now it was free for all.

You watched a few big kids flying down it and were excited to watch your two new friends do it, too, but—Seungkwan was behind you, hands on your shoulders, directing you over to the ladder that would take you to the top of the slide. “Wait, no! No! I don’t wanna do it!” You screeched, but Hansol was on your other side slapping a hand over your mouth to hush you. At the foot of the ladder, Seungkwan spun you around to face you again and frowned.

“You don’t gotta,” he said, “but it’s a, uh…what do they call it?” He looked to Hansol for help, but the smaller boy just threw his hands up in a shrug, clearly having no idea what he was talking about. “Uhhh…oh! A right! A right of, uh, of pathage!” He nodded firmly. You had never been more confused in your entire short life.

“So it’s your right to do it. You have to if you want to walk the pathage with Hansol ‘n me,” Seungkwan explained, and you gulped hard. So if you wanted to be friends with them, you had to go down the slide.

Climbing the ladder, you tried to comfort yourself by thinking that this wasn’t actually the scariest thing you could be doing. You could have been going to a dentist’s appointment, or fighting a bear in the woods, or having to go up to the whiteboard to do a math problem in front of the rest of the class. Compared to all that, this was nothing.

Of course, from the top of the slide, you were certain that you were at least eighty stories from the ground, and if you fell then you would be plummeting to your death. This will be fun, you thought, I can do it!

Seungkwan and Hansol were flanking either side of the bottom of the slide, and a line was forming at the ladder behind you, waiting for the weird tiny kid to just go down the slide already. With an iron grip on the handles, you lowered yourself onto your butt and let your legs dangle down the incline of this deathtrap. You inspected the two boys waiting for you for a moment longer. Hansol’s eyes were blown wide, somehow looking even more scared for you to slide down than you were.

But Seungkwan was smiling, and you could just barely see bright yellow braces lined along his teeth peeking out from behind his lips. Bright yellow like your glasses, and like the laces on your shoes. Nobody else in your class really liked to wear the color yellow, but it was your favorite. You decided then and there that anyone who was cool enough to wear bright yellow braces was cool enough to be your new best friend.

“You can do it, Y/N! Be brave!” He called up to you, and without another moment’s hesitation you let go of the handles and slipped down the steep slide. For the first time, you were thankful for your short hair, since none of it whipped around into your eyes as the rush of air brushed against your face. On this cold November afternoon, with your life seemingly hanging in the balance as you dropped to the ground, you were the very happiest you’d been since this awful first grade year had begun.

It was over so quickly, and as your toes touched the ground, Seungkwan was grabbing your hand again to pull you onto your feet. “That was so cool!” Hansol cried, “I’m not even cool enough to do that.”

“Wait—” you stopped short of the cries of elation you wanted to make, “what? You guys haven’t done this!?” Hansol burst out into laughter—it was nice to see him look so happy, not meek and quiet beneath his bigger and louder friend. You spun around on Seungkwan to point an accusing finger into his chest and demand an explanation, but the look on Seungkwan’s face caught you off guard. If the dreamy look in his eye and dropped jaw were anything to go by, he was really impressed with that stunt you’d pulled off.

“Why are you looking at—” He cut you off by grabbing your round cheeks in his plump little hands and smooshing his lips against yours.

You’d forgotten, until you were about thirteen-years-old, that Boo Seungkwan was your first kiss. But after he reminded you, in the eighth grade when you were embarrassed because you’d kissed this seventh grader named Lee Chan behind the gym, it was a vague memory that would never fail to bring a smile to your face.

Of course, at the time, you were thoroughly grossed out.

“Ew! Get off me, weirdo!” You pushed Seungkwan a couple of steps away, and you were blushing so hard but kind of felt like throwing up at the same time. It wasn’t Seungkwan that was gross, but the idea of kissing anyone at all. You were so not ready for that sort of thing.

Seungkwan, for what it was worth, was beaming. Being your first kiss would be his proudest achievement for a long, long, long time.

“Okay, you’re our best friend now,” Seungkwan proclaimed as you wiped your lips off with the back of your hand, “and you’re my girlfriend!” A fresh wave of nausea passed over you at those words—his girlfriend? Heck no! You rolled your eyes in the way you often saw your older siblings do, and turned back to Hansol, ignoring your other new best friend.

“Let’s go swing, Hansolie,” you said, and stomped over to the far superior playground equipment, leaving Seungkwan behind, having to jog to catch up with you. The three of you lost track of time, and wound up swinging all the way through the fourth graders’ recess…and the fifth graders’…until your teacher led your own class out, and marched over to you with steam coming out of her ears.

“I’ve come to expect this from you, Mr. Boo, and even you, Mr. Chwe. But Y/N, this is not like you at all! I’m disappointed,” she began her lecture. It continued as she left her class with another teacher and dragged all of you to the library for study hall, ending with firm instructions to sit quietly and think about what you did wrong until she returned.

As soon as the door shut behind her, you turned around in your seat to face the two boys. “I like your braces, by the way,” you told Seungkwan, entirely unfazed by your current predicament. Hansol looked very uneasy, unable to so much as look at you, but Seungkwan happily accepted your compliment and replied, “I like your glasses.”

“Thanks!” You pointed down at your shoes, “Yellow is my favorite color. See my shoelaces?” Seungkwan’s eyes lit up at the sight, and he heaved his own leg up on top of the table so you could see his shoes, too.

“No way!” The same exact shoelaces were wound up on the top of his sneakers, tied in a neat bow. You had no idea how you hadn’t noticed them earlier at the playground, let alone at any other point during the year.

“We’re, uh…soulmaids? Is that what they’re called?” Seungkwan said with a wink that was more of a slow, deliberate blink of both his eyes. Even he seemed confused with his inability to perform the gesture, face scrunching up in bewilderment and making you laugh.

“I guess we are,” you agreed half-heartedly, still not thrilled at the idea of having Seungkwan as a boyfriend, but it was better than nothing. He was pretty nice, after all, and funny and smart and cool.

To your surprise, Seungkwan was now deftly untying his shoelaces and yanking them out of one of his shoes. “Can you get me some scissors and glue?” He asked, pointing at the craft table in the corner, and you quickly retrieved the supplies for him, eager to see what he was up to. The boy tried and failed to wink again, before he cut off a piece of his shoelaces just a couple inches long. With his stubby little fingers, he struggled to make a small enough knot to put it back together, but he just barely managed. Then he added a drop of glue to ensure that it would stay stuck together, before presenting the gift to you in the center of his palm.

“It’s a ring. ‘Cause you’re my girlfriend,” he said as you gingerly picked up the small treasure, and felt like you might cry in happiness, “but mostly because we’re best friends. That’s more important.” You put the ring on your right middle finger and admired the way it looked on you. It was now your most prized possession.

“Thanks,” you whispered, “I’m, um. Really happy we’re friends now.”

“Best friends,” Seungkwan repeated, “friends forever.” It was said like a promise, one that he kept for the next several decades, one that you were sure he’d keep for the rest of your lives. The three of you sat in a comfortable silence for the rest of study hall, just happy to be together.

You still had the ring, kept safe and sound in a jewelry box in a bathroom drawer. It had been lost for awhile there, with Seungkwan unbeknownst to you, and had rekindled and started your relationship anew on that day you found it beneath your dresser all those years ago. It was frayed, torn, barely hanging on—but it had withheld the test of time and you would cherish and preserve it as long as you could.

“All done,” you sighed, admiring the work of art that was your paint job on all ten of his fingers. Seungkwan turned his hands around to get a good look, himself, and even he had to admit that compared to his own skills, you were undoubtedly the master. You threw the pillow in your lap off to the side and unfolded yourself off of the couch to your full height, stretching your arms above your head, allowing a sliver of skin at your waist to peek out from beneath your shirt. Seungkwan’s gaze zeroed in on the sight.

“So,” he started, “how about round two now? I think I deserve it,” and he wiggled his nails at you pointedly. You pondered, for a second, if you could bear to have sex with a man who had a rainbow manicure, and came to the conclusion that—yeah, you totally could. It seemed very like Seungkwan.

“Not yet,” though. Seungkwan’s eyebrows furrowed in frustration, desperate to get you beneath him in bed, writhing and whining and—

“We have to do your toes, too.” Screw getting laid. Seungkwan was on his feet racing past you into the hallway, trying to keep steady in his sprint to the bedroom as he heard you close behind him. If he could just make it a few more steps, slam the door shut and get it safely locked then he’d be home free.

But your arms wound around his waist just a foot short of safety, and no matter his struggles, you easily dragged him back into your embrace. He couldn’t help but relax in your hold, and smiled at the way you nuzzled into his spine, breathing in the scent of his detergent and his body wash and his cologne that he spritzed on earlier just because he knew it was your favorite.

“I love you, too,” you promised him, “forever.”

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