#i am not any less australian than chan | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sevlgi · 2 years

Text

c’est la vie

requested: yes (many different requests put together)

group: blackpink

pairing: rosé x fem!reader

genre: a shit ton of angst, fluff ending

contents: band!au, (kind of) celebrities!au, rivals to lovers, guitarist!rosé, guitarist!y/n, they’re honestly so in love, featuring jennie, jisoo, lisa, twice’s mina, skz’s han + chan, bts’s jeongguk, nct’s johnny + jaehyun. READ THIS FOR BAND CONTEXT

warnings: mentions of smoking

synopsis: It’s been 8 years since your legendary rivalry with L0VES1CK’s Park Chaeyoung began, and yet, she doesn’t seem to hate you any less. But maybe, with the right turn of events, both of you will learn that the line between love and hate is far thinner than you think.

a/n: IF THIS FLOPS I AM GOING TO FUCKING DEACTIVATE /HJ

listen to: all my friends are turning blue by loren, you stupid bitch by girl in red, love me or leave me by day6, slump by stray kids

word count: 12.2k

Park Chaeyoung hates that she can smell the smoke that clings to her clothing, even as she sings her heart out on stage with her hands moving restlessly on her beloved guitar.

This is her favorite place. The water that Lisa sprays into the crowd splashes onto her as well and glistens in her hair like beads sculpted of diamond, and she can hear Mina going hard on the drums behind her, Chan matching her energy on his electric guitar. Jaehyun backs Chaeyoung up when she misses the occasional lyric, holding her mic out to the crowd with a huge grin on her face.

And yet, the salty sting of sweat and the sweet hairspray that lingers on her doesn’t manage to disguise the cigarette box sitting in her pocket and the lighter one inch away from crashing onto the ground and setting the whole stage on fire.

But the song’s over, and she’s waving to the crowd as she walks off the stage backwards. “Come on,” Lisa laughs, tugging her down by her shirt. “We still have two shows left, and I’ll bet most of these guys will be at those too.”

“Can you blame me for wanting to stay up there a little longer?” Chaeyoung smiles. “What’re we doing tonight?”

Jaehyun and Chan exchange glances, Mina having already sped onto the tour bus to claim her shower privileges. “We could stay here,” Chan ventures. “We’ve gone out every night for the past couple of weeks.”

Chaeyoung wrinkles her nose. “I don’t want to stay and listen to Bloodbath’s rehearsal.”

Rolling her eyes, Lisa shoves the Australian girl lightly and sighs, “I don’t get what you have against them. They’re good, and I’m sure they’re cool.”

“Have you been to one of their shows?” Chae scoffs. When met with silence, she raises her eyebrows and scans over her slightly guilty-looking bandmates. “Oh, god. You did.”

“In our defense, it was Mina’s idea,” Jaehyun pipes up. Typical of him to try and throw the missing member under the bus; Chaeyoung makes a mental note to rat him out later, in exchange for using Mina’s superior shower later.

“Whatever. I guess we can stay in,” the guitarist sighs, yanking the door to her and Lisa’s tour bus open, probably a little harder than strictly necessary. She catches a glance of herself in the bathroom mirror, piercings caught in her hot-pink hair and glitter beading in the sweat that drips down her arm.

She flinches when she hears the loud, out-of-tune strum of a guitar, somehow penetrating the thick metal of the tour bus even from the stage a few miles away.

Chaeyoung shoves her headphones in and turns the volume all the way up, uncaring of how her own voice grates on her ears. If she can’t go out, she’ll find her own distraction; when her hand drifts toward her back pocket, she realizes just how easy it is to drown out the idea that you ever existed.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry!” You wince and adjust your in-ear as the sound of your guitar echoes through the stadium, at ten times the volume it should be at. Jennie fails to disguise the absolute horror on her face as she’s deafened by the echoes inside her ears; you’d think that she would be used to it by now, but somehow, she still flinches every time.

Jisung yelps, ever the dramatic one. His own guitar hangs around his neck, abandoned for the mic that he fiddles with. You shout over the noise, “Jisoo, could you turn it down, though? Level 2, please.”

Your manager flashes a thumbs up before retreating down the stairs, massaging her own ears when you aren’t looking. “Did you say level 2?”

“Yeah!” Hesitantly, you strum what you think will be a softer chord, only for the same shriek to tear through your ears again. “I’m sorry,” you plead again, holding your hands up in a prayer when you earn another dirty look from Jennie.

In contrast, you can’t hear Jeongguk’s drums even when he uses his full (and considerable) strength, and even Jisung’s highest note doesn’t make it past the first row of the stadium. Flinging his hands up in the air, Jeongguk sighs, “This is not going to work. We have a show tomorrow.”

“I know,” you exhale sharply, making sure to keep a hand on your guitar so that you aren’t deafened again.

“Bad news. Sound system is completely and utterly broken,” Jisoo says, cupping her hands so that her voice echoes up the stairwell. “None of your stuff is compatible with the speakers, and we don’t have the time to tune the backups.”

“So... what do we do?” Jisung frowns, hand stilling on his guitar.

Jisoo grimaces, “You’re probably going to have to go completely without the sound system and rely on acoustics.”

You make a face. “I have an electric guitar. And Jisung can’t be heard over Jeongguk without his mic, no offense to either of you.”

“Wasn’t L0VES1CK playing today?” Jennie questions, giving up on her own mic. “Could we ask to borrow their stuff?”

“Do they have everything we need?” Jeongguk asks doubtfully.

Jisoo sighs, and picks the lanyard with the keys up. “Worth a try. Can you guys try with just acoustics? Y/N, take Jennie’s ballad guitar. And Jeongguk, try to leave Jisung a little room.”

All of you give her a chorus of agreement, before you turn to your band members. “Okay,” you sigh, accepting the acoustic guitar Jennie hands you. “Let’s give it a shot.”

“It takes a stupid amount of effort to wake you up,” Chan sighs as he drags Chaeyoung forward by the elbow. Usually, the guitarist would protest a little more, but for once, she’s glad for her bandmates complete inability to go to sleep.

“So... why exactly are you waking me up at midnight? After exactly 15 minutes of sleep?” the girl groans, head lolling back. Chaeyoung hasn’t slept in 36 hours, solely sustained by energy gels, cigarettes, and Chan’s battery-acid coffee, and has absolutely no idea where her bandmate is dragging her to.

“... Johnny will explain it to you. You’ll probably take it better from him anyway,” Chan answers slowly.

She recognizes the creaking noise that she hears when Chan pushes open a door, though, and squints suspiciously. “Why are we back in the stadium? And why are you carrying our guitar?”

Now that her eyes are open, Chae can see the sweat beading on Chan’s temple as he carries both guitar cases on his left arm, dragging Chaeyoung along with his right, and she lunges to take her most prized possession from him. He dodges, and cajoles her, “Just let Johnny explain. Okay?”

She finds Mina, Jaehyun, and Lisa gathered below the stage with their manager Johnny and a stranger, a pretty albeit tired-looking woman smiling apologetically when she spots Chaeyoung. And on the stage sits four people who she’s avoided for a long time-- specifically, you right in the center, with your back turned to her as you explain something to your own bandmates. “What’s this about?”

“Chaeyoung! Hi, my name is Jisoo,” the woman introduces herself, holding her hands out in greeting. “I’m Bloodbath’s manager. We- well, the band- have a huge favor to ask of you guys.”

“Their instruments don’t work with the sound system,” Johnny intercepts. “And they want to know if they can borrow yours. One drum set, a bass, an electric guitar, and... four mics. Is that right?”

Jisoo nods vigorously, and pleads, “Just for today and tomorrow, then we’ll be out of your hair. We heard that the system here is bad, but not this bad. We’ll return everything in perfect condition, promise.”

Chaeyoung glances at the others. Mina shrugs and says, in that soft-spoken way of hers that won’t let anyone disappoint her, “We all said yes. It’s up to you.”

She’s almost about to say yes, when she feels a specific pair of eyes lingering on her. “No.”

The crushed look on Jisoo’s face almost makes her feel bad, as does the unsurprised twist of Jaehyun’s lips and the apologetic glance that Johnny casts. However, she hears from the stage, “What is your problem?”

“Excuse me?” Chaeyoung answers, switching her incredulous gaze to you, standing at the edge of the stage with your hands on your hips.

You gesture wildly at your bandmates, and exclaim, “You can’t just lend us these? We said we’d pay, and it’s not like we’re going to smash them! I swear, you Sydney College people are so pretentious, can you not be a little bit generous?”

“She knows your music school?” Lisa says dubiously.

The two of you say at the same time, with almost identical levels of anger, “We went to the same university.”

“And she,” Chaeyoung continues with a point in your general direction, “sabotaged my graduation performance.”

“I did not!” you yell. Someone places a hand on your shoulder, a heavily tattooed guy with a gentle expression that doesn’t match his intimidating appearance. You sigh. “I swear, I didn’t. And even if I did, that was five years ago. Just... pretend I’m not here, and lend us the stuff. Please.”

Chaeyoung opens her mouth to argue with you again, but realizes just how immature she seems. The only other boy on stage, a short kid with round cheeks and fluffy blue hair, looks so exhausted, and so does the girl pinching her eyebrows with the mic still in her hands. “Okay,” she finally says, and hears a quiet cheer from the tattooed guy. “But I want to stay for the rehearsal.”

You say, “What?!” at the same time as the guy says, “Yes! Yes, absolutely.”

The two of you exchange glances, Chaeyoung waiting with her arms crossed, until you roll your eyes and nod. “Thanks,” you mumble.

Mina pats Chae on the shoulder. “Hey. Don’t you need to sleep? You don’t even like their music, why are you staying for the rehearsal?”

“Minari. I love that guitar more than anything,” the Australian girl answers, with every ounce of seriousness in her body. “I’m not letting anything happen to it.”

“Suit yourself.” Contrary to Jaehyun’s dismissive tone, his eyes linger on Chaeyoung as he leaves, Chan following suit with a soft touch to her arm. Johnny stays to negotiate with Jisoo, the two of them trailing backstage, which leaves Chaeyoung to board the stage with her precious guitar in hand.

You don’t say anything as you take the case from her, with enough gentleness that she can’t say anything about it. “Is it tuned?” you ask without raising your head.

“Yes. Not a scratch,” Chaeyoung warns, watching you sling the faded canvas strap over your neck.

When you don’t respond, your members take it as their cue to introduce themselves. Tattoo guy raises his hand with a smile, already seated at Mina’s drum set. “I’m Jeongguk.”

“Jisung,” the guy holding Chan’s guitar says, tying his hair into a ridiculous bright blue ponytail. He looks a bit ridiculous in a giant sweatshirt and oversized guitar, platform sneakers disguising his height, but Chaeyoung passes on a comment.

The other girl smiles, eyes crinkling like a cat’s. “My name’s Jennie. Thanks for the equipment, by the way.”

“Sure.” Chaeyoung steps down and take a first-row seat. To your credit, you aren’t intimidated at all by her-- you take your position at the left of your diamond formation, strumming a few soft chords out of the guitar.

“Mic, one two,” Jennie says, and holds up a thumbs-up for Jisoo, who’s popped out to check on the equipment.

Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation, but Chaeyoung jumps when you shred the first note, a screeching G flat kicking off the start of the song as Jeongguk starts. And oh, god, she’s never heard a song like this from her own equipment.

And Jennie’s shouting out a line that perfectly emphasizes the grit to her tone, the notes floating weightlessly over Chaeyoung’s head as Jisung plays a gorgeous series of bass notes that Chae wishes she thought of first.

You only sing when the chorus needs a little extra kick to it, but the pink-haired girl swears that she only hears your voice. It hasn’t changed much since all the times you rivaled each other in the school showcases, but your demeanor has-- you’re no longer shy, gripping onto your scratched blue guitar for dear life. Instead, you’ve come alive with the heavy strums of Chaeyoung’s guitar, your smile glittering brilliantly under the hot stage lights and your head bobbing with the beat in tune with Jeongguk’s.

The guitar barely seems like hers anymore-- the shiny black of it, so lovingly polished, matches with your leather boots, the shape of it perfectly fitted to your hands splayed over the strings.

She hates how raptly she pays attention, only waking up when the song ends and Jisung whoops loudly, hands held up in the air with a wide smile that shows all his teeth. “Let’s go!” Jeongguk yells too, hoisting his drumsticks up in victory.

The Australian girl hopes that the darkness of the audience is enough to cloak her as she gets up silently, taking the moment where you and Jennie’s backs are turned to talk with the two guys.

Your voice rings in her ears, and your smile aches in her heart.

“Jisung, can you go, like, the slightest bit higher on that note?” Jeongguk asks over lunch, staring intently at the phone cupped in Jennie’s hands.

“Yeah. You could probably do it if you tried, though,” Jisung sighs, chin cupped in his hands. You know that he doesn’t mean anything by it-- he knows that the drummer is making a perfectly good point. “Why don’t you take over my part in Mamma Mia tonight? Just the one song.”

Jeongguk shakes his head immediately, stuffing his mouth with a piece of bread like he tends to do when he doesn’t want to answer. Jennie sends Jisung a not-so-subtle frown, and the youngest protests, “I’m just saying! Jeongguk can sing circles around me, around all of us. No offense.”

“None taken. But you should drop the subject,” Jennie says, and you nod in agreement. “We only have one drummer.”

“Y/N can play the drums.”

“A little bit,” you sigh in exasperation with a shake of your head. “C’mon, we have a show in half an hour hours. Let’s stop.”

Jisung finally shuts up, stabbing a piece of chicken with his fork. You roll your eyes and rewind the practice video. “Do you guys think that harmony was bad?” you ask when it comes to a specific part in the bridge.

“No, it’s fine,” Jennie shrugs. Jisoo pops her head in and beckons with her hand, the cheers of the crowd already gathered in the stadium making it through the crack of the door. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Drinks after?” Jisung suggests, and you nod.

The stage lights hit like the sun intensified by ten times, but you wave even as your eyes adjust slowly to it. “Hey guys!” Jeongguk shouts, waving both his hands.

You open your mouth and raise your mic to echo his greeting when you realize who’s lingering right about the front. It’s Chaeyoung-- you can tell even over her black mask and beanie. Her eyes flick up from her guitar, hanging around your neck, to your face, a dispassionate expression on her face.

The show goes well enough, you suppose; the crowd is hyped enough to ask for an encore, and Jisung manages to persuade Jeongguk to join the part-switch. Your fingers tap on your thigh, unoccupied as you fumble with Jennie’s lyrics, the other girl laughing as she taps out the most basic of beats. Jeongguk gives up on the guitar and focuses on Jisung’s high note (which, you have to admit, does suit his voice better).

But your eyes are always drawn back to the girl watching you from the audience. You point the mic into the audience but stare at her, and only manage to tear your eyes to interact with your members.

She’s gone by the time you say your goodbyes, bounding down the stairs with the biggest grin you’ve had in a while. “Why don’t we do this more often?” Jisung laughs, still bubbling over with energy.

“We’d die,” you deadpan, but you can’t tear the smile off your own face, either. You examine the guitar in your hands. “How much do you think one of these costs?”

“2.6 grand,” a voice answers. You look up to find Chaeyoung herself, hands stuffed in the pockets of her hoodie, mask removed to reveal a makeup-free face that looks more like the one you remember from school. “I’ll hook you up with one if you like.”

“I don’t think I make that much revenue,” you laugh, embarrassed. “You probably do, though.”

Chaeyoung joins your little quartet as you make your way to the equipment room. “What makes you say that?”

“We’ve been to your shows,” Jennie answers, glancing over. She’s untying the elaborate plait in her hair, struggling until Jisung rolls his eyes and reaches over to help. “Cost an arm and a leg, even though we were sitting pretty far away.”

“Your tickets aren’t exactly cheap either,” Chae points out with a small smile on her face. “Thank god Jisoo let me in.”

“What’d you think?” Jeongguk asks.

She considers the question, then answers, “You should sing more. I like your voice, even if it isn’t super rock-suited.”

“See!” Jisung exclaims, and Jeongguk ruffles his exquisitely styled hair. “What’re you doing backstage with us, though?” the bassist asks, glancing over at the pink-haired girl still strolling by your side.

Chaeyoung sighs. “I... have a favor to ask.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Oh. Do tell.”

“Shit.”

You sink into the couch, head in your hands; you aren’t sure if it’s bad that Chaeyoung doesn’t even smile at your torture. (She’s supposed to be your rival, after all.) “I forgot to change my email in the database,” you groan, the heels of your hands digging into your forehead.

“Well, that’s your fault,” she says, lips twisted, and you glare at her.

“Didn’t you come here to ask for my help?”

Chae sighs out through her nose, conceding the point. “We’re supposed to perform.”

“And, what? You’re here to ask me to perform with you?” you ask incredulously. “I thought you hated me.”

“I do. And that’s why I’m here to ask you not to perform.”

Your jaw falls slack in pure shock; as much as Chaeyoung hates you for your short-lived rivalry in music school, you never held a grudge against her for all the usurped opportunities. In school, you thought she was nice, in fact, and just assumed that she was intimidated by you or not social. But after your debut, and all the times she refused to even clap or smile at your performances, you realized that it was all wishful thinking.

“Shut the fuck up,” you say on instinct. “No. I won’t just not perform at my own goddamn reunion. Park Chaeyoung, I am going to show you the fuck up at that show, and I am going to show everyone that I am better than you.”

Chaeyoung shrugs, and rolls her eyes as she gathers herself to her feet. “Suit yourself. And by the way,” she calls over her shoulder, “your voice crack in Sweet Chaos was pretty bad.”

You slam the door after her.

Jeongguk frowns at you disapprovingly as you do your best at replicating Jennie’s puppy-dog eyes. “Why me?” he whines, his new lip ring shifting as he matches your pout.

“Because you’re a really good singer!” you smile, batting your eyelashes. “And you’re hot! All the girls are going to be swooning over you. I want the social advantage of bringing the hottest possible duet partner.”

“They’d swoon over Jisung too. Probably more so over Jen,” he points out.

You wave your hand in the air. “Jisung’s too young for them to swoon over.”

“He’s in his twenties.”

“And three years younger than everyone there,” you continue, as if Jeongguk never talked at all. “And Jennie’s too hot.”

“Thanks,” he says sarcastically. “Your point?”

“My point is that I want you to come with me. C’mon, don’t you want to not drum for once? You love all those ballads, come and play them with me in front of a bunch of people who are going to fall head over heels for you,” you plead.

Jeongguk huffs out a breath. “What if we rapped?”

You blink. “What?”

“What if we rap?” he repeats. “We’ve never rapped in any of our songs. We could do, like, Trivium or something if you really want a shock factor.”

“Both Jen and Jisung are better than us at rapping,” you point out.

Jeongguk waves it away, and says, “Then you ask one of them to do it with you. But rapping would be a huge shock, if you really wanted to wow Chaeyoung and our fans.”

You scowl. “Who said I wanted to wow Chaeyoung? There’s, like, thousands of people attending the damn thing.”

The eyebrow that serves as your only response aggravates you enough to smack him over the head. “Shut up.”

“I’m just saying,” Jeongguk hums, flashing you the sweet smile that contrasts so much with his all-black attire and the tattoos you can’t even count anymore. “You could also just bring all of us and make it our concert.”

“No, all of you are coming no matter what. I’m a celebrity,” you drawl sarcastically, slinging an arm over the drummer’s shoulder. “But you aren’t getting a drum set if we all perform together. You’re singing.”

Jeongguk rolls his eyes and shoves you off playfully, getting up from the couch to pour out some more honey tea for your throat. “Yeah, yeah. When is it?”

“That’s... the thing. It’s next week,” you smile weakly.

He whips his head to you, eyes wide. “What?!”

Mina shakes her head when Chaeyoung holds up a pair of excessively ripped tights, pouting her lips in disapproval. “Are you trying to scandalize your entire class?”

“We were music students,” Chae deadpans, but picks a different jacket.

“That’s better. What are we performing again?”

The Australian girl purses her lips and says first, “I’ll tell you, but you can’t judge me. I have my reasons.”

Mina raises an eyebrow. “Okay...?”

“We’re playing Love Me or Leave Me. By Bloodbath.”

“Oh. Oh, no,” the drummer says immediately, sitting up and staring at Chaeyoung with an incredulous expression on her face. “I thought you hated Bloodbath! Besides, that’s not our concept and you know it, I don’t even know if we can pull that song off.”

Chae holds her hands up in surrender, pleading, “Hear me out! The notes aren’t too bad, and Lisa says she’s already learned the entire bass part for fun. And Chan’s been dying to do a rock song, and I’m sure you can do it. We’re gonna go viral.”

“Is that your only motivation for singing a song by our rival?” Mina scrutinizes Chaeyoung, her uncanny ability to read her bandmates’ thoughts shining through her usually mellow eyes. “No. You want to show everyone that you’re better than Y/N, don’t you?”

“So what if I do?” The pink-haired girl crosses her arms tight and avoids the other girl’s eyes; truth be told, she hasn’t even told Chan what’s she’s planning to do, knowing fully well that he’s going to psychoanalyze her even harder than Mina is. Jaehyun doesn’t really give a shit, nor does Lisa; it’s these two and their mothering tendencies that worry her.

But Mina blows out an exasperated breath, and concedes, “It’s your reunion. I’ll start practicing on the trip home.”

“Thank you!” Chaeyoung grins, exhilarated.

She’s determined to prove that it’s a good idea-- to her members, to her fans, and more specifically, you. Chaeyoung is determined to prove that she’s always going to win.

To be completely honest, you can barely believe how quickly the week flies by, a whirlwind of no sleep and staying up late to rehearse your parts with Jennie and Jisung.

“Hoseok sunbaenim must never breathe,” Jisung complains, bending over after spitballing half the verse in one breath.

“Hey, I got Yoongi’s parts. Yoongi,” Jennie repeats for emphasis, drumming her fingers on her mic as she tries to return her heartbeat to normal. She glares at Jeongguk in the corner, who declined to perform after all, despite assigning you the most difficult Trivium song he could find.

“You suit his style,” Jeongguk shrugs by way of explanation, an infuriating grin on his face as he twirls his drumsticks. “Jisung’s young, too, so he has the energy for Hoseok’s verses.”

Jisung scowls. “I’m 21.”

“Whatever.”

“Guys, guys. Do we have outfits picked?” you ask, partially to break them up and partially because you only just remembered the detail.

“Aren’t we just reusing our black suits from last year’s AMAs performance?” Jennie asks, frowning.

“Oh. Yeah.”

Lifting his head from where he squats on the floor, Jisung calls out, “Don’t be nervous. We’re gonna be great. I bet half of your classmates have already been to one of our shows, anyway.”

You roll your eyes but don’t try to argue, rehearsing the mic flip movement that you’ve tried too hard to mess up. “Okay. We’re still going to the open mic after, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jeongguk confirms, holding his thumbs up. “Let’s do this.”

“Chaeyoung!” Jihyo exclaims at the entrance, bounding over with her characteristic huge grin and a warm hug. “You came!”

“Of course I did, I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Chae smiles, patting Jihyo’s back. She only has good memories with the other girl from school-- the two of them collaborated on so many performances that all made #1 that it’s hard to not remember her well. “You coordinated?”

“I sure did,” Jihyo nods proudly. She glimmers all over with her subtly glittery jumpsuit and not-so-subtle eye makeup, gems shining at her ears and in the dip of her collarbone. “I can’t believe how many celebrities have come. Including you. Cha Eunwoo is here!”

Jaehyun, behind Chaeyoung, lets out a small “whoa”. “Anyway, I won’t keep you. Come on in, I look forward to your performance! Your equipment is all backstage, if you want to check it.”

The five of them head in as one tightly knit cluster, all of their jaws dropping at the beautiful venue, glistening with sheer streamers flung all over and violet LED lights illuminating the stage that serves as the centerpiece of it all. Indeed, Chaeyoung recognizes many faces, not just from school, but from the silver screen or from various music award shows. There’s one face that she doesn’t spot, though, and she just assumes that you’re running late. Like you always have.

Chae turns to find Jaehyun already enthusiastically talking to Yugyeom. Lisa has disappeared into a throng of the Loona members, Mina sneaking back out to talk to Jihyo, and Chan-- Chan’s with a squirrel-cheeked boy, talking enthusiastically about some Trivium song.

The pink-haired girl’s eyes narrow. If she isn’t mistaken, that’s Jisung from Bloodbath-- which means that you have to be around here somewhere.

“Looking for me?”

Chaeyoung hates how quickly she turns around, but she almost gives herself whiplash as she shifts her gaze to you, looking excessively smug in your dark makeup and impeccable outfit. “No,” she hisses.

“Sure, sure,” you smile, taking the seat beside her without being invited. “Fun being back here, huh? Minghao flew all the way in from China. Remember that stage we did against you guys?”

“That was 5 years ago,” Chaeyoung rolls her eyes. “You haven’t won against me outside of school.”

“Sure,” you shrug, then lean in with a knowing look in your eyes. “You’re still pretty bothered by things that happened five years ago, though.”

Before she gets to respond with something that probably wouldn’t help her case by much anyway, Jihyo clears her throat on stage, waving for everyone’s attention as the spotlight shines on her. To Chaeyoung’s dismay, the table that the two of you share is filled up by all of your members, minus Mina. “-- and welcome to our reunion!” Jihyo cheers, the first half of her statement having been drowned out by Chae’s own thoughts. “And because we are former music students, and most of us are now accomplished musicians in our own right, we’ve asked a lot of you to prepare a stage with any of your guests. So, first... A.C.E?”

You cheer and clap when Chan and his members step up (why did you never cheer like that for Chaeyoung?) and lean back to enjoy the performance. Your eyes never stray to Chae even once, which she only knows because she still can’t tear her eyes away from you.

A surprisingly small amount of people actually sign up for a stage (though Chaeyoung bets that more will step up for casual reunion stages later), and before she knows it, Chan is tugging her backstage to start prepping. “You okay? You look a little out of it.”

“I’m fine,” she smiles tightly. She thinks of making you stare at her, wide-eyed and jealous, or even just with awe shining in your eyes. She thinks of your hands on her guitar, so much better suited than hers ever were, of your voice singing all the lines that she’s about to usurp, of your condescending grins all those times you won against her.

But all those thoughts disappear as soon as Chaeyoung steps up and takes her spot right in the center, her eyes trained right on you and the smirk that tells her, “I’m watching.”

And she starts to play.

“It's all up to you. I have no choice but to watch.”

You almost spit out the soda that you just gulped down when Chaeyoung’s voice first floats into the audience; or more specifically, her voice singing your part in your song.

Those chords sound again, those oh-so-familiar chords from months and months of composing and practicing, strummed by Chaeyoung on her acoustic guitar as she continues your verse. “Whether to finish it or not, it's all up to you now.”

“Wow,” Jisung whispers beside you when Jaehyun continues with his verse, crooning into the mic with a pretty dimpled smile. You only nod to agree with your bandmate.

It’s your song, that’s for sure-- it’s Love Me Or Leave me, just a bit more upbeat, with less emphasis on the drums than Jeongguk would use. (You don’t know how Mina managed to get a drum set in.) But it feels different to see someone else singing it, someone who’s claimed to hate your band and your music for years-- someone who’s claimed ot hate you.

Maybe you’re imagining it, but after every few passes over the crowd, Chaeyoung’s eyes settle on you. Her hair settles over her eyes, gleaming a bubblegum color in the yellow light as her voice soars, hitting every high note effortlessly. “I've endured it for quite a while, the coldness in your eyes and words.”

You finish each lyric in your head, and you can see Jennie mouthing along with an amazed expression on her face. Jisung claps his hands silently, Jeongguk unconsciously drums on his own thighs; you’re rapt with attention, and maybe just a little bit of an unexplainable feeling twisting in your stomach.

“That was L0VES1CK, performing Love Me or Leave Me by Bloodbath! And, what a coincidence-- Y/N, lead guitarist in Bloodbath, has a performance scheduled as well,” Jihyo smiles, beckoning you. “We’ll check in with Bloodbath after two more performances.”

You get up, numb, Chaeyoung’s voice still lingering in your head, her eyes still on you. And on a moment’s impulse, you tug Jeongguk to his feet as well, ignoring his surprised stare. “Change of plans,” you mumble.

Chaeyoung’s nails break skin about halfway through your first verse. She’s not imagining it-- you’re staring right at her as you belt, “Your bullet bullet bullet, I’ll take it anytime if this is what you want~”

It makes it worse to see Lisa cheer when Jennie starts her part, to see Chan raise his hands to encourage Jisung’s killer riff. Even Jaehyun and Mina cup their hands around their mouths and whoop from time to time-- Chae has to admit that it’s your best song to perform to date, engaging enough to make every former classmate in the room stand up and yell the lyrics.

“That’s even better, it's too familiar now. If this makes you feel better, just shoot me.”

You scrunch your face up playfully as you interact with Jennie, picking a stunning series of notes in tune with her chorus. Jeongguk goes so hard that Chae isn’t even sure that the drumsticks will survive the night.

Does she look like that? Does she look like you? Does L0VES1CK look like Bloodbath, their junior of two years when they perform? Because as she watches, Chaeyoung doesn’t even remember the exhilaration she felt when she herself was standing up on that stage.

She manages to stay seated for the entire song, but as soon as you strike the ending chord and crouch down, laughing despite all your breath having escaped you, Chae gets up and slips through the door. No one notices it, anyway, and she plops down on the side of the curb and flicks her lighter on again.

Ribbons of dark gray smoke float through the void of dark sky outside, a ring of red lipstick remaining on the cigarette. Chaeyoung coughs, then grinds it to ashes under the heel of her boot; she doesn’t want to leave too much of a smell.

“Since when do you smoke?”

“Since L0VES1CK debuted,” she answers drily, knowing fully well who’s coming to sit next to her. You hold your hand out, and Chae bats you away. “I’m not enabling you.”

You roll your eyes and bring your knees up to your chest. “You guys did good, you know. I haven’t heard such a good cover of our song yet.”

She casts a surprised glance at you after the compliment. You aren’t meeting her gaze, but you always did have a problem with complimenting anyone other than yourself. “You think so?”

“I mean, yeah. You are still our sunbaes,” you answer with a small smile. “Those two years really show.”

“In our exhaustion, maybe. You guys are so energetic. Makes me feel old.”

“We’re the same age,” you scoff. You lean back, palms pressing into the rough concrete; if you squint enough, the swirls of smoke almost look like clouds. “You know, you’re going to ruin your voice if you keep at it.”

Chaeyoung raises an eyebrow. “What, smoking? Since when have you cared? I’m pretty sure it’s better for you if my voice is ruined and I can never sing again.”

Even she winces at the bitterness in her voice. “I mean, our bands aren’t so much rivals anymore. Did you see how excited Jisung was when you guys sang our song?” Shaking your head fondly, you sigh, “I wish I’d picked one of yours.”

“Oh, yeah? What would you have done?”

You consider the question, then answer softly, “I’ve always had a soft spot for Rooftop. Jennie loves Moonshot, too. You know, I wasn’t originally planning on Shoot Me.”

“That explains the lack of backtrack. What’d you replace?”

“Ddaeng. By Trivium, I don’t know if you know them?” you ask, glancing over.

Chae rolls her eyes and laughs, “Who doesn’t know Trivium? Best day of my life was when Namjoon presented an award for us. I didn’t know you could rap.”

“I can’t really,” you say dismissively. “It was just for fun. But I thought Shoot Me was going to be a good response to Love Me or Leave Me. We are a rock band, anyway.”

She doesn’t respond to that, and you let out a breath. “You know, I never thought you hated me in school. I do now, of course.”

“You do?”

“How can I not? I mean, you literally said, and I quote, ‘Bloodbath is a bunch of wannabes, especially the lead guitar. Her voice is really nothing special.’“

Chaeyoung winces. “Yeah. That was immature.”

“That was an understatement,” you snort. “But I never hated you. I wanted you to like me, you know. I thought you were so cool when I transferred in, and I thought you’d like me more if I proved to you that I was just as good as you.”

“You’re better,” she says quietly.

“What?”

The pink-haired girl presses her lips together in a thin line before repeating, “You’re better. You always have been.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to our names on the leaderboard. We tied so much,” you smile nostalgically. “It was so exhausting, though.”

Yet again, you surprise Chaeyoung. As far as she can remember, she’s never seen you cry-- she’s only seen your triumphant, sometimes sardonic grin when you win, your stone-cold promises that you’re not going to fall. Without her prompting, you continue, chin cupped in your hand, “I just wanted to be as good as you were. You... you’re so talented. I think I knew that as soon as I heard you sing for the first time. All I had was that wish to be up on the stage like you, even if my hands were too dumb to handle my guitar like you did, even if my voice was too ordinary to make you notice me. All I had was effort, but no matter how much of it I had, it didn’t equal your talent.”

“What’s talent without effort?” You turn to look her in the eyes, surprised at the new tenderness in her eyes. Chae sighs. “As soon as I saw you, I found a kind of... hunger in you. It scared me, because people with the kind of drive you have surpass talent so easily.”

“So you hate me... because you were scared of me?”

“I don’t think I ever hated you,” Chaeyoung admits. I think I always wanted you to like me too is what she doesn’t say, but you accept her closing statement and stand, brushing your hands on your jeans before offering to pull her up.

It’s not that easy, to overcome all the resentment she’s built up over the years against you, so brilliant and so strong even if it wasn’t what you really felt. But for once, that hot hatred is gone from her chest, no longer pumping through her blood into the hand that holds yours.

Chaeyoung can count on one hand the hours of sleep that she’s gotten by the end of the week. Between rehearsing endlessly for the reunion and then for the last two shows of the tour and texting you in all her free time, the guitarist is basically living off of her will alone.

And, of course, there’s the constant insecurity weighing on her mind that maybe she’s not cut out for this life anymore. After 5 years of L0VES1CK, maybe Chae finally needs a break, needs some time to nurse that “talent” that you tried to convince her has always shined in her eyes.

Nonetheless, she’s beaming from ear to ear as she steps off the stage, tearing her in-ear out so that she can wrap her arms around the necks of Lisa and Mina. “That’s the end!” she cheers, and Chan raises a fist with a tired smile.

“30 shows. I am so tired,” he groans, rubbing the back of his neck. “What are you guys doing once you get home?”

“I have a date,” Mina says, blushing immediately when her bandmates turn to look at her in shock. “It’s nothing! Just Jihyo,” she insists, but the giddiness to her voice betrays her.

Chan sighs, cupping his face jokingly. “You and Chaeyoung? I was planning on going home and writing a new song.”

“It’s not a date,” Chae protests on impulse, earning an eyeroll from everyone else.

“I have one,” Lisa says, cackling when Chan turns a betrayed gaze to her. “I’m going to Jennie’s show. How about you, Chae?”

“I’m... not going to do anything related to singing,” she answers honestly. She’s a bit self-conscious as she says, “I’m just a bit burnt out, you know? My voice... the show hasn’t been kind.”

“Oh, of course,” Mina nods, squeezing her shoulder. “Maybe a break would be good for all of us. Let’s postpone the next practice for a month?”

Chaeyoung opens her mouth to agree, but notices that one of their five is missing. “Guys. Where’s Jaehyun?”

As if he’s been called, Johnny appears out of nowhere, with an uncharacteristically grim set to his jaw. “Guys, come on in. We need to talk.” The four walk in like ghosts, doom already pressing down on their mood even as they know nothing of what’s to come.

Jaehyun avoids their eyes as he says quietly, “I’m leaving the band.”

Despite knowing that it’s not the right time, Chae’s eyes open wide, and she practically shouts, “What?”

“I just... I wanted to tell you guys for so long. But we scheduled the tour, and I thought I could do it, but... I don’t think this is the right path for me anymore,” he whispers softly.

It feels like someone’s just sucker-punched Chaeyoung in the gut; as much as she loves all her members, Jaehyun is the one she started with. He’s the one born barely three days later than her, the one who busked with her despite going to different colleges, the one who came up with the idea to start a band at all. Never did she think that he’d beat her to the chase, and never did she think about continuing the band without him.

Tears are already slipping down Mina’s face, but she’s holding her tongue. Chan’s face is hidden in his hands, and Lisa has buried her face in his shoulder just so that she doesn’t have to look at everyone else.

Chae whispers, “Jaehyun... please think about this. We can’t continue without you. We always said we were five, right? Please. We can take a break, we can, uh, stop taking tours for a moment, we can switch genres. Anything.”

It takes a moment for her to realize that her voice has risen, and Mina is crying harder. But she needs to be angry, someone needs to be angry. Chaeyoung can’t bear the sight of everyone only crying, of no one doing anything to keep themselves together. She’s reaching out and she’s shaking Jaehyun, and no amount of rage can keep her voice from sounding robotic.

“I’ll think about it,” he promises, and Chae almost cries out of relief. “But. I can’t promise how long it’ll be.”

“We’ll wait. Okay?” Chan says, even though his own voice is thick with tears. Jaehyun nods and wipes his face aggressively in his sleeve, and Chaeyoung steps back to let Mina have her turn at hugging the pianist.

One step back turns into ten, and then she’s out of the room, sinking to the floor just opposite of the door. God, Chae is crying so hard that she can’t breathe, and her hands are shaking as they reach towards her back pocket. Her fingers are stuck between the cigarette box and her car keys, between paper and metal, between warm and cold.

Her fingers wrap around the keys, and then she’s running again.

“Oh my god! Are you Y/N Y/L/N?”

You smile, cringing inside as the fan holds a phone right in your face, her eyes shining brilliantly. “Yeah. Yes, I am.”

“You’re so gorgeous!” she screams, jumping up and down. If there wasn’t a countertop between the two of you, you think that she’d try to hug you or something similar. “Is Jeongguk here? Can I get a picture with him? Can I get a picture with you? Do you work here all the time?”

“Uh, no. I’m just working here today as a favor,” you lie, “and sorry. I’d rather not take pictures today. Jeongguk isn’t here either.”

Her enthusiasm dies immediately. “What’s wrong with a simple picture?” she asks, growing angry.

You refrain from saying that she’s been recording this whole time, only smiling tightly. Before you can even settle on what to do, though, you here a deep voice rumbling behind you. “I’m sorry, but if you aren’t going to order, I’ll have to ask you to leave. I don’t tolerate harassment of my employees, temporary or not.”

She scowls and tosses out a “fucking bitch!” as she leaves, and you sigh in relief before turning to Felix, whose face has morphed back into a sunny smile again, and Changbin, still scowling. You can always rely on Felix’s (overtly) deep voice to save you, and you’re sure that Changbin’s gym-trained muscle doesn’t hurt either. “Thanks, guys.”

“Anytime. Seriously, though, when you said you were in a band, I didn’t think you were that famous,” Changbin complains, turning back to the sink he fiddles with. “Jisung was bad enough in our underground days, and now we’re here.”

Felix laughs, high-pitched and happy, as he returns to his mop. Before long, the door jingles again, and you duck under the counter without another thought, leaving Changbin to stare incredulously down at you. “Uh. Is Y/N here?”

At the familiar voice, you bolt up again, turning around immediately to find a red-eyed Chaeyoung waiting for you. Your eyebrows knit together in concern. “Chae? What happened?”

She huffs out a breath, running her hands through her hair. She looks post-show, glittery tear tracks running down her face and studded boots still on, and you recall that she did have a concert not even an hour ago. “When do you get off?” Chae asks.

You raise an eyebrow at Changbin, who rushes to open the door for you. “Right now,” you say boldly, and take her by the elbow. “Are you okay?”

“I’m... I don’t think so,” she admits. It’s been a while since you’ve seen her-- the two of you were tentatively scheduled to go for coffee on neutral ground this weekend, but you’re more focused on being there for her while she needs it. “We’re disbanding. L0VES1CK, I mean.”

“What!? Why?”

Chaeyoung shrugs, having been successfully manhandled into the backseat of her team van again. “Jaehyun. He... he founded the band with me, and he wants to leave the band. I persuaded him to take a few months to think about it, but I feel like we’re over. Which is stupid, because I wanted to take a break too, but not like this.” She draws in a breath, and whispers, “Not like this.”

You place a hand on hers, a sad sigh leaving you lips. “Chae. It’s okay. You can feel bad about it even if you wanted to take a break too. Look... I don’t know Jaehyun very well, but I get the feeling that he really cares about you guys. I don’t think you’re over just like this.”

She stares at you through black-rimmed eyes, and you continue, “You’ve been working nonstop for five years. Maybe... take this as a blessing in disguise, right? Rest for the few months he needs, and keep checking in. You guys are still friends, he’ll either come back or tell you why. And you’ll feel better when either one of those happens.”

“What if he doesn’t come back?”

You shrug slightly. “Then he doesn’t. But you’ll still be friends, and you’ll figure out how to keep the band going if that’s what you still want. Do you still want to be in L0VES1CK?”

Chaeyoung nods. “Yeah. I really, really do. I’ve never known anything other than us, but...”

“But?”

“We’re not doing that well,” she says quietly. “Even as friends. We all feel kinda distant, especially me. And it’s my fault, because I insisted on being enemies with you for so long.”

Raising your eyebrows, you point at yourself. “What does being enemies with me have to do with it?”

“I mean, Lisa and Jennie are dating. Chan and Jisung used to rap together, and everyone else is on good terms. I was trying to pull them away because you made me insecure,” she confesses. “I did it all.”

“You did not do it all,” you respond, a bit forcefully. “Look, maybe your relationship is strained. But that doesn’t mean it’s unfixable, and it doesn’t mean it’s because of you. You guys love each other, a hiccup doesn’t just end that. You... okay. Here, I’ll drive you home, and then we’re going to watch some movies and forget about this for now. And then you’re going to talk rationally with them tomorrow about what to do,” you explain, unbuckling your seatbelt so you can move to the front.

Chae exhales shakily and squeezes your hand one last time before letting you drive. You turn the radio on, something cheesy and from the 2000s, and sing just a little bit, and Chaeyoung wonders how she could’ve ever hated you.

Somehow, Chaeyoung sleeps until noon, lulled to a kind of comfort that she hasn’t felt in all her years of tour bus beds and hotel rooms. The curtains are still drawn when she shuffles to the window; the reality only hits when she’s blinded by a bright white beam of light and a view that she doesn’t recognize.

In the sunshine, your room is much more apparently foreign; the bed is pushed up in a corner instead of in the middle, the walls covered in pictures of you and your members and posters from various tours. Chae barely suppresses a smile as she opens the door, poking her head out.

Unfortunately, the door opens right into the kitchen, where you stand, examining a packet of noodles suspiciously. “You’re awake,” you say dumbly. “Uh. How’re you feeling?”

“Fine, I guess.” Chaeyoung closes the door behind her quietly. There’s still a palpable awkwardness between the two of you now that she isn’t choking on her own tears and you aren’t being forced to console her; the guitarist supposes that all the years of enmity can’t be solved with a quick confession of long-standing crushes. “Are you making breakfast?”

You shake your head. “Lunch.”

She frown and runs a hand through her hair; belatedly, Chae realizes that the product from the last night’s concert is still stuck there, even if she did manage to remove her makeup before falling asleep. “Was I asleep that long? Sorry.”

“No, you’re good. I hope you’re okay with ramen, though, I forgot to go grocery shopping,” you smile, embarrassed.

Chaeyoung shrugs, “It’s fine. I can’t really cook either. Uh, could I use your shower?”

You nod and point down the hallway; Chaeyoung realizes that you must’ve slept in the couch, since the tiny apartment has exactly one bathroom and a room she occupied. Noting her imminent apology, you grin, “You can borrow more clothes of mine if you want. It’s kind of hot to see you in them.”

She grimaces, even though she doesn’t really mind. “I’ll put on yesterday’s, thanks. I should be getting home, anyway.”

“Alright. You can camp out here if you want to avoid them, though,” you say through a mouthful of chips, suddenly back to being thoughtful.

Chae glances back at you with a frown creasing the space between her immaculately done eyebrows. “How much did I tell you?”

“Enough.” You shrug, then say plainly, “I don’t hate you enough to broadcast your inner circle shit, though. I can promise you that.”

Instead of responding, the pink-haired girl fidgets with the jacket in her arms and asks, “You don’t mind if I stay here for another day? Just one.”

A small smile makes its way onto your face, lingering there for what Chaeyoung considers to not be enough time before you turn to work with your stove. “I don’t. I do have to supervise an open mic tonight, though, so you’ll kind of have to go if you’re intending on staying with me.”

“That’s fine. I hope there aren’t any cameras in the bathroom, or I’ll sue you.”

Your cackle echoes after her, later drowned out by the roar of your furnace. Chaeyoung lets herself crack a small smile before closing the door in on herself yet again.

As it turns out, your definition of letting Chaeyoung stay with you is ordering her around and sending her on errands until you’re ready to leave for open mic night. However, the guitarist can’t say that she hates it, even if she complains and tosses plastic bags at your head every chance she gets; maybe you know that she’d only feel worse if she were to lounge around at your expense.

She drives you to pick your car up at Changbin’s cafe as agreed, then follows you to the bar at which open mic night is being hosted. By the time she steps out of the car, you’re already conversing with a tall guy with a kind smile at the entrance.

Chae’s intercepted by a pretty guy barely taller than her, with a suspicious look on his face. “Sorry, but open mic night hasn’t started yet.”

“Minho, let up. She’s with me,” you call, and Chaeyoung tries to disguise the pleasant buzz she feels at the phrase. “Chaeyoung, this is Seokjin, he owns the bar. He’s friends with Jeongguk.”

Chaeyoung shakes hands with Seokjin and then with Minho, who’s now adopted a more pleasant smile. Again, you’ve started talking about all your plans for the event, your tone business-like and your expressions just as animated as when you’re performing; you disappear to take care of something eventually, leaving Chaeyoung at the bar with Minho, who makes nice enough conversation that she doesn’t really mind.

And eventually, people start to straggle in, the guitars slung over their backs or the crumpled papers in their hands making their purpose quite obvious. Jisung and Jeongguk join Chaeyoung at the bar, and she finds that she actually quite likes them, with the weight of your rivalry off her back.

She’s never really gotten the chance to just be there, not the center of attention or not struggling to keep her friend group together. Conversation is light and easy when she doesn’t know the people well, and with the various performances that start lining up, Chaeyoung finds a relaxation that’s begun to become foreign to her.

“Hey, guys. How is everything?”

Jisung smiles and offers you a fresh beer. “Great. You’re really good at this organization thing, Y/N.”

“Do you do this often?” Chae asks, sipping at her own specialty cocktail. “Like, on your breaks?”

You shake your head, “We don’t really take breaks, but we don’t work as much as you guys do either. I’ve just started to do this stuff after Jisung introduced me to it and Jeongguk took me to this bar. I think it’s nice, to watch young people sing like we used to.”

“We’re in our twenties, Y/N, we’re not in the senior home,” Jeongguk snickers. He glances over at Chaeyoung. “Are you going to perform today?”

She shakes her head, a familiar tightness settling over her chest again. Thankfully, you intercept, “If she did, she’d never leave the stage. We’d only want to hear her sing. Hey, Chae, would you mind coming outside with me to pick up some cookies from the bakery? It’s just a few blocks.”

The guitarist takes the opportunity gratefully, stepping out with a cursory wave to Jeongguk and Jisung. “You okay?” you ask, once you’re in the cold night air again. “You looked a little overwhelmed.”

“I’m surprised you noticed. But I’m fine.”

You laugh slightly, “How could I not? For, like, the eight years that we’ve known each other, you’ve only ever looked overwhelmed or angry around me.”

Chaeyoung winces, and you sigh with a wave of your hand. “Sorry, I don’t mean to make you feel bad.”

“No, no. It’s the truth. Us saying that we just wanted to be liked doesn’t make it go away,” she sighs softly.

Suddenly, you break from the cobblestoned path in the plaza, leaping towards a lamppost just a few feet away. Chaeyoung realizes that you’re reaching into your pocket and pulling out a flyer, advertising your next album showcase. “Already?” she asks.

“Mhm. Jisung churns out songs like it’s nothing, and we just try to have fun with them,” you shrug, twirling around the lamppost with your head tipped back. It doesn’t snow in winter, so maybe Chae is just imagining the bokeh that float around your head. “You okay? You’re out of it again.”

“Hm? Yeah. I was just... just thinking. What did you mean when you said that you wanted me to like you?” she questions on impulse.

You blink, surprised, and come to a stop. “I mean, you were the cool star student, of course I wanted you to like me. I wanted you think I was talented.”

The disappointment that courses through Chaeyoung’s body is honestly kind of stupid. She doesn’t know what she expected, and she smiles; she can’t deny that she did feel the same way. “Just that?”

“Well. No. I had, like, the tiniest of a crush on you throughout school,” you shrug. The shiftiness to your gaze betrays that you aren’t as nonchalant as you’re trying to seem. “Went away after I thought you hated me. Sorry.”

“Right. But you... you wanted to date me? In school?”

You smile, amused. “Yeah. That’s what a crush usually means.”

Chaeyoung swallows, hard. It doesn’t make sense-- why is this so hard? Why is everything so hard when it comes to you? “How about now? Would you- would you still go on a date with me now?”

Of course, you don’t make it any easier, coming to a stop and leaning against the lamppost with your hands in your pockets. “Ask me and see.”

She steps forward, then back, then forward again. It’s a stupid little dance, but one that you anticipate, judging by the way that you tilt your chin up and stare at her. So, before Chaeyoung can chicken out again, she steps up on the base of the lamppost too, presses you flush against it, and captures your lips with her own.

You smile and cock your head slightly to fit a little closer together, as if you always knew how to do just this. As if you had always been waiting to do just this.

Chaeyoung wakes up at seven in the morning to the frantic buzzing of her phone. In her daze, she notices that she’s in your bed, and she’s alone; the door to the bedroom is cracked open so that she can see you sleeping soundly on the couch, the curtains drawn so that you’re still in total darkness.

After a thought, Chae picks up on the call. It’s Lisa, though everyone including Johnny has tried to call her already. “Hello?” she whispers.

“Chae! You’re okay!” the girl says, a bit too loud for a phone call.

“Yeah. I am. Sorry for making you all worry, I’m at Y/N’s place. Um... we should talk.”

Lisa agrees, “We should. We’re all still at the practice room, so we’ll wait for you.”

Chaeyoung hangs up at that, getting out of bed as quietly as she can and arranging your comforter so that it’s neater than she found it. A small pang of guilt touches her heart when she realizes that she’s going to leave without an explanation, but Chae knows that you and your budding relationship are both better off if she settles things first.

She drives with a clear head now, even managing to hum to Jihyo’s song on the radio. (She makes a mental note to text her friend and compliment her, maybe even ask for a collaboration.)

Miraculously, the record shop that they usually practice in is already open, a few hours early; Chaeyoung realizes that her members must have stayed there overnight, hoping that she’d return to her old favorite stop.

Indeed, the store smells lightly of coffee, the lights in the back studio on and soft chatter trailing down the hallway. Lisa spots her first, and rushes to hug her tightly. “You’re okay,” she says, despite having already confirmed it.

“I’m sorry,” Chae whispers again.

Eventually, she pries the bassist away from her long enough to join the other members in the studio. Mina, Chan, and finally Jaehyun all offer her hugs, quietly telling her how worried they were. Chaeyoung’s heart aches that she concerns them so much now, and she tells them that.

Chan waves it away with a forgiving smile, despite being the youngest out of all of them. “It’s okay. We’re your bandmates, and it’s our duty to worry about you.”

“Yeah, but... how long are we going to be bandmates?” The others all stiffen at that, and Chae clarifies, “I’m worried for us. I don’t... I don’t think any of us want to do this without one of us, even if we aren’t that close anymore.”

Lisa folds her arms, and shrugs, “I think a break could be good for all of us. But I don’t want to give up.”

“I don’t either,” Jaehyun finally says, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m sorry you all thought so. I love L0VES1CK, it’s just been 5 years of nonstop working and performing.”

“I agree,” Chaeyoung nods, and all eyes turn to her.

“You do?” Mina frowns. “You were the one who was always adamant on continuing.”

The pink-haired girl shrugs, a bit embarrassed. She sighs, “It was... partially because of Y/N. It was horrible of me to drag you all into it, but I thought that if we always kept going, I’d be able to beat her someday. It wasn’t a competition at all, was it?”

They all shake their heads, and Chae continues, “If I’m being honest, I’m tired too. But we’re going to be friends even while we’re taking a break, right? However long it takes.”

“However long it takes,” Lisa agrees, and holds her hand out with the beaming smile that’s been missing for a while. “One, two, three!”

Everyone flings their hands up into the air with huge grins on their faces, laughter echoing in the room that minimizes the effect of the dark circles under their eyes. Just on time, Chaeyoung’s phone rings again, and she greets cheerily, “Who is it?”

“Well, don’t you sound chipper. It’s Y/N. Judging by your voice, everything is all good again, so I’m happy,” you hum over the line. “I’m just calling because my members and I are going to get breakfast, in case you want to come. Jisoo’s going to be there too.”

The guitarist raises her eyebrows at everyone else. “How about all of us?”

“-- and then Chaeyoung tells me, while crying, that Y/N took her second choice song,” Jaehyun finishes, laughing hard when you turn an incredulous look to Chae. “Seriously! Her second choice!”

“What if I wanted to switch?” Chaeyoung defends lamely, only earning a louder round of laughter from the eight others seated around the table. The food is practically finished, only Jeongguk still picking at a sundae, and it makes the guitarist uncannily happy to see everyone seated together and grinning at the stories.

“I think Y/N told me about this!” Jisung exclaims, sitting forward conspiratorially with his elbows on the table. You hide your face in your hands already, and Jennie grins brilliantly. “She said you were hot when you were angry, but she knew she would’ve been penalized for picking your first choice, so she picked your second to see if you could punch her. And, I quote, “I would’ve paid her to step on me.’”

You smack him, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter, but the rest of the table isn’t nearly so considerate. Lisa and Jisoo are cackling, Mina’s eyes bugging out of her head as she tries to hide her laughter, and Chae is staring at you with her jaw dropped. You manage to say shakily, “I was being honest, okay? And I never thought he’d get the chance to tell you!”

Jisung grins and holds up peace signs, and you throw a french fry at him. “Jaehyun, please tell me you have an embarrassing story,” you plead.

Chan raises his hand, but thinks better of it when he checks his watch. “Actually, I think Mina has to get going.”

The drummer raises her eyebrows, then bolts up. She smiles apologetically, “I forgot I had a flight. I’m going back to Japan to visit my family while we’re on break.”

You collectively wave, then Jennie raises her eyebrows as she turns back to the table. “You guys are on a break?”

Chaeyoung nods, not bitter for what just might be the first time in the past five years. “Yeah. It’s about time, I think. Besides, knowing Chan, he’s going to ask us to record a demo every other week.”

Said producer rolls his eyes but can’t deny it, and you sigh with your chin in your hands. “Jisung doesn’t even ask us to record demos. He just does it all himself.”

Jeongguk raises an accusing fork. “You should’ve heard the time he tried to record a drum solo himself. He did the snare part on the bass drum with his foot.”

It’s the youngest’s turn to cover his face at that, shoved back and forth by Chan and Jennie on either side of him. “What’re you planning for your break?” you question Chaeyoung.

She shrugs and smiles, “Go out with you, of course.”

“On a date?” Jisoo suggests, raising her eyebrows. Leveled with two glares, she holds her hands up in surrender. “We’re all tired of seeing you pine, so just do it.”

Chae hesitates to answer the question herself, and she glances over to you. However, her gaze isn’t met; instead, you squeeze her hand under the table and say, “Then it’s a date. If it’s okay with you.”

“Are you kidding?” she asks incredulously; your face falls. Grinning, Chaeyoung presses a kiss to your hair and sighs, “I didn’t try to catch your attention for eight years just to say no.”

Lisa yells out loud, waving her hands in the air like Chaeyoung just said something utterly ground-breaking, and everyone plays along with it except the two of you. But you exchange a smile, one that you think was really, truly, worth all the effort and rivalry. “We’re probably going to continue with our tour again, though,” Jeongguk says, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Hey, we should do a joint tour sometime.”

Chan raises his eyebrows, evidently intrigued. “Joint tour?”

“Yeah, we just do two or three songs at a time and a few together. It’ll make for a longer show, and fans can see us both at the same time,” the drummer answers with a shrug. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

“It’s a great idea,” Jisoo replies, evidently surprised.

Chaeyoung nods. Even though the idea of going on tour again seems far, far away, especially with the break that they’re all supposed to be taken, she doesn’t hate the idea of it so much when she considers the idea that you’re going to be there with her every step of the way. “Sounds nice,” she smiles. “After your actual tour, of course. When does that start, again?”

“Probably in a month or so,” you shrug, then flash another secretive smile. “Plenty of time before then.”

The pink-haired girl lets herself blush now. “Yeah. More than enough.”

Chaeyoung fiddles with the lighter in her hand as she watches the staff load your suitcases onto the bus. She remembers the contents of all of them-- after all, she was the one that helped you pack. (Well, really, she just distracted you with glee-dizzy kisses while you stumbled over the suitcases.)

“Hey,” you greet her from behind, kissing the top of her head. The pink has faded away in the past month to a peachy blonde, dark roots streaking down almost artistically. “What’re you doing just sitting here?”

“You have to pay me to make me move things for you,” Chae grins, despite knowing that it wasn’t what you meant. She finds you staring at the lighter in her hand, at the white spot in the center where her thumb rests, and pockets it. “I wasn’t smoking. The lighter is a force of habit.”

“Okay. I believe you.” You peck her cheek again before stumbling off and shoving your duffel bag into the side of the bus again, bowing quickly and thanking someone before joining Chaeyoung again, hand clasped in hers as you grin at her. “Apparently, all of our shows got sold out.”

“That’s awesome!” she says, just the slightest bit surprised. “Did you settle on an opening act for NYC yet?”

You nod and lean in closer, whispering, “You won’t believe who it is.”

“Who?” Chae asks, pressing your noses together with a small laugh.

“Trivium.”

She outright gasps and almost bumps your faces together, drawing back just in time. “Seriously?”

You nod, giddily, and clap your hands together. “Just the one show. But, you know, we are missing an opening act for all the other shows.”

“I thought you didn’t need an opener for all of them.”

“Mm. We don’t. But I bet our fans would die to see us together,” you suggest, glancing over at her with a small smile creeping onto your face. “We can sneak in a little rendition of Love Me or Leave me, get the old rivalry going again?”

Realization dawns on Chaeyoung’s face, and she points at herself. “Me? Y/N, is this your not-so-subtle way of asking me to join your tour?”

“Yeah. But only if you want to,” you add. “And you don’t even have to sing if you don’t want to, you can just be my groupie.”

She shoves you. “Hey, I’m the sunbae here. Show some respect.”

You giggle and catch her hands in the middle of yet another halfhearted attempt to push you away, then capture her in a kiss; her hair falls in a pretty, pink-tinted golden curtain over the two of you. “Is that a yes?” you whisper.

“Yeah, Chaeyoung. Is that a yes?”

Chae glares jokingly at Jennie, who stands in front of the two of you with her hands on her hips and a knowing smirk on her face. “It’s a yes,” the guitarist decides, and you cheer. “I’ll go on tour with you. But just so you know, we’re still doing a proper joint tour eventually, Johnny and Jisoo are already planning it.”

“Oh, for real?” Jisung pops out of a different bus with a big, excited grin on his face. Chaeyoung still hasn’t quite gotten used to his enthusiasm, even if she can appreciate it a little more on her worse days. “Cool!”

“Mhm. We have about an hour before leaving, if you need to get anything,” you tell your girlfriend, squeezing her hand to catch her attention. “There’s space in my luggage carrier, if you just want some clothes and stuff.”

The pink-haired girl rolls her eyes as she stands, and tells you, “I’ve been touring way longer than you, I know what I need. I’ll get my lucky guitar and be back, okay?”

“Okay. Come back soon!” you yell at her retreating figure, cupping your hands around your mouth so that you can be heard across the parking lot.

“Man, where do I get a relationship like that?” Jisung sighs behind you.

You turn and grin at him, flourishing your hands in the air. You’ve truly never been happier, and you think it shows on both your and Chaeyoung’s faces. “Ç 'est la vie, my friend.”

He scowls at you and hits you over the head with a setbook. “Stop flexing on me. What’s it mean?”

Wiping the smallest bit of lipstick off your face, you only smile. “That’s life.”

800 notes · View notes

skzsauce01 · 4 years

Text

Ruin My Life

Synopsis: Six times you and Minho “ruin” each other’s lives, and the one time you almost actually did ruin his.

Warning: none

Word Count: 3.9k

Pairing: fem!reader x Lee Minho; friends to lovers

one

Minho always looks like trouble, but he especially looks the part when he dresses as a greaser for Halloween. The entire hallway looks his way when he enters the building even though the low 7:30 AM sunlight blinds their eyes when he opens the door. He has a lollipop in his mouth in place of a cigarette, and when he gives a curt “Good morning” nod in your direction, the girl beside you pretends to swoon.

“Hello, Danny,” she mutters to herself, mimicking an Australian twang. She’s conveniently dressed like Sandy in a poodle skirt and cardigan. “I’d let you ruin my life.”

When you tell Minho about what you heard after school, he laughs so hard he almost falls off the wall he’s sitting on. “Seriously?”

You take a bag of pretzels from the shared pile of treats between you two and rip it open. “Yes! I can give you her name if you’re interested,” you say, half-hoping that he doesn’t actually want it. “What a weird thing to say though.”

He shakes his head and holds his hand out for a pretzel. “No thanks to the name. I think Chan’s supposed to be Danny, so I’m not her summer fling that don’t mean a thing.” He waits for you to drop three in his open palm and, with complete mockery, says, “But I’d let you ruin my life.”

You shoot him a disgusted look, and he laughs.

“Aren’t you glad I made you watch Grease?” you transition. “So who are you? A T-bird? Someone from The Outsiders? Just a generic greaser?”

“Generic greaser, I guess. What are you?”

You point at the pointy, black hat perched on your head and say in disbelief, “I’m a witch!”

The corner of his mouth quirks up, and you know you have just walked into a trap. “No, I meant your Halloween costume.”

“Get bent, you jerk,” you roll your eyes.

However, the pretzel you throw at him doesn’t stop him from chortling at his own joke.

two

You agree to feed Minho’s three cats the following weekend while he and his family have a last-minute emergency out of town. You show up to his doorstep on a late Thursday afternoon to say your regards, but everyone in the Lee household is in pandemonium. You slink past his mother to Minho’s room where Soonie and Dori are lying on his bed. Minho himself is packing a duffel bag.

You knock on his already open door to alert him of your presence. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he replies, looking up. “Sorry about this. I would have asked someone who lived closer, but my mom doesn’t trust anyone else with the house key.”

“It’s okay. I like playing with Dori.” You’re still standing at the threshold, feeling too shy to enter now that you’re both older, and you crane your neck to see farther inside. “Where’s Doongie?”

“Under the desk. You can come in.”

“Right.”

You settle into his desk chair and pick up Doongie to pet. There’s nothing else to do, and you scan his walls for something to look at. Your eyes land on his calendar where there are reminders for the biology exam next week and the dance competition at the end of the month. You want to ask if everything’s alright, but it feels insensitive to pry.

“My mom made you dinner,” he says. “To thank you. It’s on the dining table.”

You smile as you remember all the times you stayed over for dinner at Minho’s when you were younger. His mom made the best japchae. “Tell her thanks for me.”

“Will do.”

“Minho!” you hear his mom shout. “We’re leaving!”

Minho heaves his bag over his shoulder and gives you a small smile. “Thanks for doing this. My offer of letting you ruin my life still stands, by the way.”

You snort at the comment, which makes Doongie jump off your lap, which makes you and Minho burst into laughter. “Yeah, well, what are best friends for? I’ll see you Monday?”

“Yeah. Key’s on the coffee table, by the way. And you know where the cat food is right?”

“I got it. I’ll be the best cat sitter ever.” You stand up and give him a hug. “Everything’s going to be okay, Minho.”

He holds you a little longer, and you can feel his heartbeat against your cheek. It’s surprisingly erratic, and yours begins to match in tempo.

“Thanks,” he repeats, finally pulling away.

You stand awkwardly at the foot of his bed and give him another smile as he starts to leave.

His foot has just stepped into the hallway when his mom yells again, “Lee Minho!”

“Coming!” he shouts back. He turns back to you, like he wants to say one more thing. “Don’t forget to eat or else she’ll think I didn’t tell you and get mad. And send me pictures of the cats!”

He disappears before you can even nod, and you hear the front door swing shut. You sit back down and idly spin in his chair, enjoying its cushiness. You’re not hungry yet, so you reach for Dori, who eagerly snuggles into your arms, and snap a picture to send to Minho.

Dori loves me more. Consider your life ruined.

three

The day before the biology exam you’re back at Minho’s house. Two open textbooks and an array of different colored pens decorate the dining table surface while two lazy cats lie on the floor beneath. You flip through your notes for the lesson from two days ago. In the meantime, Minho is frantically shuffling through your flashcards.

He abruptly groans after turning a card around and slumps back into his chair. “I’m so screwed. My test average is already bad, so this is just gonna make it worse. I barely remember what we covered today.”

Minho’s version of bad is everyone’s above average, but it’s unlike him to complain about his scores because he knows it. “Is everything alright?” you ask. “You don’t have to answer, but you seem off.”

“You remember that emergency last week?”

Your eyebrows shoot up, and you try to arrange your facial expression into something less obvious. “Yeah?”

“Well, it’s not about that.” He looks over to see you caught between relief and annoyance. He grins for a few seconds and then turns slightly more serious. “Dance team stuff. Someone got injured, so we have to fix the routine.”

You nod sagely. “That sucks.”

“Yeah, but my bio grade doesn’t have to.” With a newfound sense of energy, he straightens up and dives back into reading flashcards. “Thanks for letting me borrow your notes. I’d let you ruin my life.”

He says it with the same joking manner as last time, but you don’t answer in the same way. “I don’t think you need any help with that,” you say as you hold up his quiz from a few days ago. There’s a big, red 79% circled at the top and ugly slashes through the numbers of incorrectly answered questions.

He shrinks and makes a face at the low score. “In my defense, I was busy with dance, and it’s at least passing.”

“Well, your 90% test average is suffering.” You shut the textbooks and motion for him to put down the cards. “Tell me about lysosomes.”

“92, but alright. Lysosomes—”

When the tests are passed back another week later, you and Minho gather around your locker after school to compare scores.

He counts down, and you steadily lean in closer in anticipation. “Okay. 3… 2… 1!”

“95!” “95%!”

There’s a brief second where the two of you process each other’s grades before both of you burst into cheers about not only having matching scores but also good matching scores.

“Yogurt place or cafe?” you ask. It’s been a longstanding tradition between you and Minho to get celebratory desserts for receiving scores over 90. “I have a coupon for the new froyo place.”

Minho shakes his head dejectedly, and your heart sinks. You rarely have an excuse to hang out with him outside of school nowadays.

“I’ve got practice in” — he checks his phone — “in fifteen minutes. Raincheck or I’ll bring you coffee tomorrow morning?”

You brighten up at the prospect of Minho-delivered coffee. “Coffee. Definitely coffee.”

He nods and waves goodbye to you. “See you then.”

“Don’t be late tomorrow!”

four

Because you knew that you were getting coffee delivered to you, you didn’t have any before heading to school and are currently fighting the urge to fall asleep standing up. The bright sunlight that comes in whenever anyone walks into the building greatly helps.

“Morning,” Minho greets, a cardboard cup carrier in his hand.

You spot your drink and eagerly snatch out of its place. “I’d let you ruin my life,” you sigh, too happy to snap at Minho’s smirk at the use of the phrase. You notice the red and gold label wrapped around the cup. “You went to the expensive cafe too? Goodness, how much does this cost?”

“10,000 won.”

“There’s no way it was that expensive!” you argue.

“Delivery fee.” He sips on his own coffee while he waits for you to hand him his money.

You pull out your wallet and give him half of what he wants. “There’s no way it was more than 5,000.”

He smiles and pockets the money. “4,000 actually.” Before you can demand your change, he looks at an invisible watch around his wrist and says, “Can’t be late. See you.”

He takes off before you can protest, and you moodily drink your coffee instead. At least it’s good and full of caffeine.

Lia, the one who dressed as Sandy for Halloween and the person who just witnessed highway robbery, steps closer and asks, “Was that your boyfriend?”

At the word ‘boyfriend,’ you heat up. You snort and shake your head. “Boyfriends don’t overcharge their girlfriends for a drink. He’s my friend.”

“He seems sweet,” she says.

You’re about to correct her when your phone buzzes in your pocket. You fish it out and smile when you see the notification on your lockscreen.

Lee Minho paid you ₩1,000 - delivery fee has been revoked

“He’s sweet, I guess.”

Lee Minho requests ₩1,000 - jk

“Never mind.”

five

You can’t believe you let Minho talk you into attending one of his dance competitions. It’s not that you’re not supportive of him and his extracurriculars, but none of your friends are free this weekend, so you have to sit in the audience by yourself. You’re not exactly lonely, but you certainly feel out of place. It’s also not fun once you remember that you have a stack of homework waiting on your desk.

When they announce your school’s team to the stage, you join the applause and shout your friend’s name as loud as you can. Minho somehow manages to pick you out of the crowd and nods at you in acknowledgement. Even though you know he can’t clearly see it, you mouth, “Good luck,” to him.

When the spectacular performance is over, you clap and shout his name again. It’s the last performance, and you anxiously wait while the judges deliberate the winner. You text some votes of confidence to Minho in the meantime. Soon all the teams gather in the room. The feedback from the head judge’s microphone quickly silences the whispers.

They’re not third.

Or second.

Or first.

They’re fifth.

You look over at Minho, who is patting his team members on a job well done. He’s smiling goodnaturedly, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. You grab the bouquet of flowers you bought for him and head down to the ground floor like many others are doing.

Heart thumping, you tap him on the shoulder and hold the bouquet out to him. “Hey. Congrats on making top five,” you joke in an attempt to cheer him up.

“Thanks, I guess. It went better than we expected, but you know, first is ideal,” he shrugs. He points at the flowers in your hands, melancholy nearly gone. “Did you buy those from the supermarket?”

“Would it be better if I said I stole them from the neighbor’s garden?”

“Did you really?”

“No.”

“Lame.” He takes them anyway. “I didn’t think you would actually come.”

You again think back to the stack of homework you have and the amount of studying and procrastinating you had planned to do at home. “Me neither.”

“Thanks for coming though.” He pauses for a bit, and you already know what the next line he says will be. “I’d let you ruin my life.”

“You’re already ruining mine.”

Like you’re both in kindergarten again, he shoves you in retaliation — lightly though because he doesn’t actually want to hurt you — and knowing you can’t push him as easily, you stick your tongue at him. He is soon called away for a group photo, and he volunteers you to take it. You do so, and after, with the help of a team member, you and Minho get a picture together with the fifth place trophy. You both smile at the camera, but you’re gently elbowing each other in the ribs all the while.

A minute later, he shows you his phone screen, and you see his post of the recent picture.

being number five and ruining lives, reads the caption.

You like the post anyway and end up setting that photo as your lockscreen.

six

“I hate this,” Minho mumbles to you, his breath making clouds in the winter air. “Why do they do this to us?”

You walk alongside him, trudging at the same snail’s pace as he is. “I know,” you reply. “C’mon, let’s just get it over with so we can leave.”

You drag him by the arm to the front of the giant Christmas tree. He puts an arm around your shoulder and you an arm around his waist. The two of you plaster wide grins on each of your faces while your respective mothers snap photos of their children in matching outfits. The fathers have learned to disappear once they have arrived at the outdoor mall, and you wish you and Minho decided to slip away before the current situation.

“I hate this tradition,” you say through your teeth. You wince when someone’s flash goes off, the light blinding in the night.

“Me too. This vest looks so stupid.”

“The bow around my neck agrees.”

It happens every year, but you and Minho never grow tired of complaining. Your mothers, best friends themselves, insist on documenting the friendship of their children, so you and Minho are subjected to ridiculous Christmas Eve photos in front of the same tree every year. For whatever reason, neither of you have ever rebelled and refused. Darn people-pleasing personalities.

When your parents are satisfied with the results, you and Minho rush to partially get rid of your outfits. Minho unbuttons his vest, cursing at his cold fingers, and you fumble with the knotted ribbon around your frilly shirt collar. Of course you decide to cut your nails the day before.

“Y/N?” someone says. “Is that you?”

You look up from your ribbon and see it's one of your classmates. “Oh, hey, Lia,” you greet. You point at her bags. “Last minute shopping?”

She sheepishly nods. “I like your dress, by the way.” You don’t miss the way her eyes flicker back and forth from you to Minho. “Do you guys know you’re matching?”

“It’s a stupid tradition,” Minho interjects. His vest is draped over one arm and the other is busy loosening his tie. He looks at the limp bow around your neck. “Do you need help?”

“Yes.”

Lia shoots you a knowing smile and starts turning away. “I gotta go, but it was nice seeing you guys. I’ll see you after break. Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas,” you say back, more concerned with getting the cursed ribbon off than goodbyes. Minho echoes the sentiment.

You tilt your chin up and let Minho take a stab at the knot. Whenever his cold hands accidentally brush against your neck, you flinch and your pulse jumps. You hear him swearing under his breath over how tight the knot is, and you meekly apologize and feel yourself grow warm. Everyone’s staring at the spectacle, but you want the stupid thing so badly you don’t care.

“Why did tie it so tightly?” he mutters, finally managing to pull it apart. “I think my hands are cramping.”

“I’d let you ruin my life,” you mockingly say before dropping the act. “But thanks for real.”

“Only for you.” He smirks. “You have to get the dads though.”

You groan. He really does want to ruin your life. You and Minho’s dads are notoriously hard to convince to leave the mall once they’ve found a nice spot to eat and chat. “Anything else,” you plead.

He shakes his head. “No. I did it last year too.”

You take his hand and drag him with you, despite his protests. His fingers are still chilly, but his palms are surprisingly warm. He mutters about your own cold hands at the same time, but you’re too preoccupied with scanning the mall for your fathers to say something witty back. You accompanied him last year, and he would do the same to you this year.

As expected, Minho gives you dirty looks while you spend fifteen minutes begging and waiting for the dads to hurry up. You innocently smile back all the while.

seven

You spent a good portion of your winter break at Minho’s house, playing with his cats, eating his mom’s delicious japchae, and lamenting about school starting up again. School is in session now, and you wait for your first period teacher to open the door as you scroll through your phone outside in the hallway. Minho stops by to return the scarf you left at his house, and to your delight, there’s free coffee that comes with it. He puts the emphasis on ‘free.’

“I’d let you ruin my life,” you say, taking it from him. It’s from the expensive cafe again. “Wow, what’s the special occasion?”

“Just ‘cause,” he replies. “See you after school.”

“See you.”

What a weird way to begin the day. You wonder if Minho’s done anything to the drink; no way he would give you something for free. However, when you cautiously taste it, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. You swirl it to further check, but there’s still nothing.

Even though he said it was free, you still send him the money anyway.

A few minutes later, Lia shows up and says good morning. The two of you idly discuss winter break, and you both find out that neither of you did anything interesting.

“Are you going to go?” Lia asks. She points at the giant poster advertising winter formal tickets.

You shrug and sip on your Minho-delivered coffee. It still tastes normal, and you’re not sure what to make of it. “I don’t know. I don’t have anyone to go with.”

“Aren’t you dating that guy I saw you matching outfits with at Christmas? I don’t know if I already told you, but those were cute outfits.”

“Nope. He’s still my friend.”

“Is that disappointment I hear?” she teases. At your stuttering attempts to retort, she laughs. “I’m kidding. But he is cute.”

“Do you still want him to ruin your life?”

“You heard that?” she groans. “Oh my goodness, that’s embarrassing.”

When you tell Minho what happened after school, he doesn’t laugh. It’s not particularly funny anyway, but he usually smiles a little. Today he’s stony. “So is that your answer?”

“My answer to what?” you bewilderedly ask. You think back to morning and even when you were last back at his house only to come up blank with what he can be referring to. “What did you ask?”

Realization hits him. “You didn’t read the coffee label, did you?”

The cup has long been tossed into the trash by now. “Was I supposed to be? What did you ask?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he quickly brushes off. He hops down off the wall. “I gotta go to practice.”

“Wait!” you call after him but he runs off.

A few minutes later, you find yourself digging through the trash can you threw your empty cup in earlier. Luckily, it’s mostly filled with paper cuttings and other coffee cups. However, the latex gloves you borrowed from your biology teacher don’t lessen your disgust, especially when leftover liquid drips out. Your teacher watches on in amusement as you scrutinize every one.

“This must be a very important piece of trash,” she remarks.

“It is. Oh! It’s this one!”

The label is stained with coffee, and you can just barely make out Minho’s handwriting in black ink. Why did he have to write it so small? No wonder why you didn’t notice it earlier. You hold up the cup higher to the light, and your eyes grow wide as you read the message.

want to ruin my life forever and be more than friends? will you go to winter formal with me?

You nearly drop it in your surprise. Oh goodness. You really, really messed up.

Your heart threatens to beat out of your ribcage, and every part of you is buzzing with adrenaline. Minho likes you in that special way, and you…

You…

You kind of feel the same?

Yes?

Wait, no?

No!

You definitely feel the same.

You hurriedly thank your teacher for her help and rush out of the classroom with Minho’s cup in your hand. You have to fix this now. You burst into the dance practice area, out of breath, and everyone looks at you in confusion.

“Yes! The answer is yes, Minho!” you shout and triumphantly hold out the cup.

The dance captain looks back and forth between your panting frame and Minho’s frozen figure. “Let’s take a five minute break?” he says, more of a suggestion than an order.

You walk over to Minho while everyone else disperses. He meets you halfway. His mouth is open, like he wants to say something, but no words come out.

You smile at him and thrust the cup into his hands. “Hi. The answer is yes to both questions.”

“But you said you told Lia we were just friends,” he breathlessly says, like he can’t believe this is happening.

“Well, we were just friends ten hours ago. I didn’t realize I wanted to be more than your best friend until I read your note.”

A hesitant smile creeps up onto his face. “I didn’t think you would actually take me up on my offer of ruining my life. I thought I screwed it all up by even asking.”

“No! I really like you,” you blurt out. “Like really, really. And I think I have for a long time now. It just… took awhile for me to find out.”

“I like you too, life ruiner.”

You try to playfully push him, but he wraps you in a hug before you can even touch him. You squirm in his grasp and giggle when he holds you even tighter.

“Life ruiner, life ruiner,” he chants in your ear. “And you’re all mine now.”

~ ad.gray

#stray kids #skz #lee know #lee minho #stray kids fanfiction #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #stray kids fluff #skz fanfic #skz imagines #skz scenarios #skz fluff #lee know fluff #lee minho fluff #friends to lovers #20201024

580 notes · View notes

monscastle · 3 years

Text

"you're still eating out of y/n's hands you know."

he choked, the only thought in his mind being 'no wonder this tastes familiar.'

pairing ; lee felix x gn! reader

for ; @writearctic 's chronicles!!

genre ; angst & fluff

warnings ; mild cursing, smoking

words ; 1.6k

author's note ; not today! just enjoy and feel free to give feedback!! sorry for any mistakes!!

"hey, let's go eat." chan smiled while pressing up against the other australian.

felix hummed, not really listening as he gripped the remote in his hands and flickered the buttons with his thumbs. "where?"

"uh, that one restaurant that's like, thirty minutes away from here-"

felix glanced a glare at chan before turning back to the screen of the tv. "any reason?"

"they have a special." chan then proceeded to put he flyer in front of felix's line of sight, making the younger grunt.

felix paused his game, sighing and glaring at his friend. "alright, fine. but you're paying."

chan grinned, "fine by me. get dressed and look decent, don't pull a jisung."

"...i'm right here."

______

"hello! table for three?" the host asked as soon as they walked inside.

chan nodded, following the host with his two friends. as soon as they sat down they were handed menu's.

"would you like to order drinks right now or when you order your food?"

felix scanned the options, not seeing the special that chan had mentioned. he was gonna question the older until said man asked the host about it.

"uh, i saw that y'all have a special on a flyer…"

"oh! yes we do! we got the word out this morning, that's why it's still not on the menu. the special lasts until next friday. would you like to order that?"

"do you guys want it?" chan turned to them.

"what's the special?" jisung rose a brow.

the host smiled, "fettuccine alfredo pasta."

felix hummed, thinking about it. "yeah i'd like that."

"me too."

chan nodded, turning to the host who took out a notepad and pen. although she wasn't a waiter, she could take down orders and hand them over to the cooks.

"great. any drinks?" she asked while tapping her notepad with the tip of the pen.

jisung nodded, "peach tea for me."

"i'll take lemonade."

"sprite if you have that."

she nodded and scribbled it down before repeating their order to make sure she didn't make any mistakes. once everything was confirmed and settled, she excused herself to order their assigned waiter to fetch their drinks.

jisung followed her trail until she opened the kitchen doors, noticing something- more like someone, for a split second.

"well, while we wait, let's catch up." chan sighed while staring at his friends.

"on what?" jisung asked while turning to him.

the older thought for a second before shrugging, "i don't know, what have you guys been up to lately?"

felix propped his elbow on the table, resting his chin on his palm. "nothing, i'm enjoying my break to the fullest."

"by being locked up and playing video games?" chan rose a brow, obviously disappointed.

"at least he's doing something, i've been sleeping most of the time."

"he only gets up when he needs to pee or eat." felix chuckled.

chan frowned, "that explains a lot…"

"anyway, what about you? changbin-hyung told me someone had the hots for you and vice versa."

the older sputtered, "th-that's not true. and maybe it's just a new friend."

jisung and felix rose a brow, sharing a glance before sighing. they had the habit of being synchronized without wanting to, which many found scary and or amusing.

"you're bad at lying, you know that?" jisung chuckled, glancing at the kitchen doors that opened as a waiter came out with a tray with drinks. he smirked at his confirmation, it's been a while since he's been this entertained.

chan blushed, avoiding eye contact. "i know…"

felix laughed, jisung was known for reading others. changbin was known for it too, and it was always funny when someone got exposed or confronted.

the waiter walked up to them, placing down their drinks. "your food is ready and i'll bring it right now, i'm sorry the sudden delay in your drinks, we had a minor...issue."

"no it's fine! thank you!" chan smiled as he took his drink and sipped from it.

jisung stared at the kitchen doors, once they were opened he tried to find the familiar face, and he smirked to himself when he saw it. he wasn't going to say anything yet, he liked waiting it out.

"so, who is it?" felix jabbed at chan, wanting answers.

"i- you don't know him, he's not in your major." chan nibbled at the straw.

"and? i still wanna know."

"it's probably someone older than him, maybe by a year? let me guess, he's also studying music production? and you met him in the cafeteria." jisung smiled when chan choked.

felix stared at his roomate in awe, "holy fuck."

chan gasped, staring at jisung with wide eyes. "you scare me. you're hanging out with minho aren't you?"

"sure."

"what do you mean sure-"

felix grinned, "so he's right?"

"...yeah… i'm amazed you even guessed the gender…" chan pouted, gnawing at the straw again.

"thank you, i try." jisung sipped from his drink as the waiter returned with their food. once the waiter left he spoke again, "what's his name?"

"why are you asking?"

"cus it's about time you had a love life." felix rolled his eyes, "you barely get sleep, and now you have the hots for someone? you need to go out and live a little. "

chan scoffed, the tips of his ears still red. "yeah, look who's talking. you're probably staying inside the dorms and not going out cus you're still upset about the y/n situation."

jisung gaped, amazed chan could strike like that. "not wrong-"

felix growled, "y/n has nothing to do with how i'm spending my break. we broke up, that's it. nothing more nothing less to it. no hard feelings." he frowned and stuffed his mouth with some pasta, the taste making him pause and ponder.

jisung stared at the young australian, "you're still eating out of y/n's hands you know."

and he choked, the only thought in his mind being 'no wonder this tastes familiar.'

chan gave felix's back a few pats, " jisung stop joking around."

said male frowned, "i'm not. y/n's in the kitchen, pretty sure y/n is the one who cooked the food."

felix heaved, "it...does taste familiar…

"and to think you were over y/n.."

"i am!"

"are not, but we'll talk about this later. chan, you never told me the guys name-"

"yah! i'm not telling."

________

"you're not going back with us?" jisung asked as they exited the restaurant.

the fact y/n was one of the chefs was forgotten once they went back to chan's possible love life topic. felix didn't really think anything of it until they got up to leave.

"no i wanna check out that store. i'll go back on the bus." felix waved them off.

chan frowned, "sure, ok… call if you need anything."

"will do."

jisung rolled his eyes, following chan to the older's car for the ride home. felix walked inside the store that was across the restaurant they had eaten at, he looked around, heart racing.

he saw a small penguin plushie, smiling at it's fluffiness once he grabbed it. he made sure he had money before going to the register, paying and walking out. just as he did, he glanced at the restaurant and saw you.

you stood there, lighting up a cigarette. when you glanced at him, you froze, both of you did.

felix gripped the bag in his hand. it's been a month since the two of you broke up, quite a small amount of time considering everything.

the reason the two of you ended things was no mystery to eithers friend group. you had suddenly gotten distant, claiming to focus on exams, which wasn't a lie. felix grew upset with the absence of you, and whenever he tried to reach out, you sounded uninterested.

and it wasn't that you weren't, you were just going through things. felix took it the wrong way, and the tip of the iceberg was when he saw you all touchy with someone else at a party you had said you wouldn't attend.

instead of facing you, he played fire with fire.

"hi…" your voice was soft, and you stared across from you, not wanting to face him.

"hi." felix now stood next to you, staring across the street as well.

there was a silence, and felix then glanced at the puff of smoke you let out. he was questioning himself, maybe he should go and wait for the last bus. maybe he should have gone back home with his friends. maybe-

"i'm sorry."

felix snapped his head towards you, staring at you like a lost puppy. you were still facing across the street, cigarette in hand.

"i'm sorry i didn't face you like i should have. i'm sorry i didn't talk things through with you… i really have no justifications for anything i did. maybe i was just confused, we were both just trying to pass our classes..you were just trying to make our relationship work… and i...i… "

"you gave up." felix finished your sentence, now staring at the bag in his hands.

you finally turned to look at him, "no... i got bored of trying. i got bored of us. of you."

each word made felix stagger, and you took a second to grab his hand, holding it gently. he blushed, staring down at your hand on his.

"but i didn't want to let go of you."

he swallowed, "then why did you…"

"that's…a good question." you let go of his hand, and he was quick to take it again.

"i'm sorry too. i think...we lacked communication."

you smiled a bit, taking the cigarette in your mouth again. "obviously...”

felix squeezed you hand, “do you think...we could try again?”

“you don’t hate me?”

he shook his head, “we were both at fault, do you hate me?”

“no....”

“so...wanna start from zero?”

you sighed, the puff of smoke intoxicating his nostrils. you didn’t pick up on smoking until after the two of you broke up, “yeah...i’d like that.”

“me too...and...jisung said you cooked our food, that true?”

“felix, i have no idea who comes into the restaurant. i just do my job.” you laughed softly, shaking your head, “but i’m the only cook today, so yeah, i guess i did. you enjoy it?”

he nodded, “i always enjoyed your food, still do.”

you tugged at his hand, “want a ride home?”

“yeah...”

#kpop x y/n #kpop reactions #kpop imagines #kpop x reader #kpop x male reader #kpop scenarios #kpop x gender neutral reader #kpop reader insert #kpop x you #stray kids #stray kids imagines #stray kids x you

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fabulaee · 3 years

Text

COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE

// A 🐺 fic based on my Stay journey’s aesthetics which was a coffee shop au bc they remind me of those times when I used to go to the café to draw and would see fellow regulars but unlike y/n and Chan, I never interact with them. We all just share a table 😂😂😂

Monday. Wednesday. Friday

That was the set schedule for your coffee run. MWF from 9 am to 10, then coming back with your study supplies from 1 to 4 in the afternoon. It was routine; the small college café a safe haven from the slight messy floor of your dorm and the formal vibe of the library. Here you were focused and at peace of mind. The aroma of the coffee beans and soft sounds of the coffeeshop’s playlist serving as background noise.

There wasn’t much students at this time of the day compared to the much later prime of the evenings. The café then filled with college youths grabbing a drink after a long day’s worth of lectures and test reminders or staying to cram a night’s worth of information. There was something about cafés that seemed inviting and less suffocating yet at the same time a place where you can find the nursing students with their big thick books opened with streaks of neon yellow running across them.

“Vanilla Bean Cold Brew for y/n!”

Standing up, you went to grab your drink leaving behind the pastel rainbow set of highlighters and gel pens on top of your notes. You quickly thanked the barista as he handed you a straw before plopping back down on your seat continuing where you last went off. Something about the history of impressionistic art. You sighed as you lifted your eyes across the room, it was currently 2:30 pm on a Wednesday afternoon. A good time to take a break before your mind starts to commit brain fart.

Chris Bang. Affectionally called Bang Chan by his friends. Music major with golden hands, a good candidate for the honor roll, member of the varsity swim team, and resident social butterfly. An all rounder any college is proud to have.

You heard about him once or twice from your common friend, Yang Hongseok. They met at the gym apparently and became quick friends through the Japanese exchange student, Adachi Yuto, and their shared love for fitness.

You see him sit at the same spot everyday since the middle of sophomore year. His laptop with the cute decal of Deadpool open and his AirPods snugly tucked in his ears. He's always has his blonde head bopping to a song he's playing on either his phone or his laptop. Always seemed so engrossed in this little world he made for himself across the room, ignorant to the bustling crowd of students that come and go.

He looks up catching you off guard. His lips curled slightly upwards, chuckling to himself as he watches your cheeks turn pink in embarrassment. Great, he must think I'm a weirdo!

With a quick exchange of nods you both went back to doing your own thing. Just a regular day at the coffee shop.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

It's the Friday following Monday's slightly embarrassing incident. You looked up to find the same Chris Bang, laptop in hand, smiling at you like a friendly yet lost puppy. Warm brown orbs looking back at yours.

“My laptop's about to die and this is the only table with an outlet.” He explains himself, a tiny awkward giggle making up as the period.

“O-oh, of course!” You stuttered, hastily making room for him despite the large space as you swiped for the stray pastel highlighters and napkins closer. “No one's sitting here so go ahead.”

He whispered a small thanks before setting down his laptop to grab his bag from his usual spot while you went back to your notes. It was silent for awhile, only the sounds of pen against paper and the soft tick tack of the keys. At some point you hit a mind block, eyes glazing in boredom as you stared at the blank space of your notebook. You felt your table mate leave his stationary position too. he stretched in his seat before turning his attention to you.

Sensing his sudden gaze on you, you flashed him a small smile. You were never one to start a conversation, often keeping to yourself and minding your own business. A bit of a complete opposite towards the friendly Australian who somehow knows at least three students from each program.

He smiles back at you showing off his cute dimples and an outstretched hand. “Hey, I'm Chan. I never caught your name.”

Again with the cute giggle. It seems to be like a signature to him but it's cute still the same. You grasped his hand giving it a soft shake. “Y/n,” you answered curtly.

The following days you find yourself hanging around Chan more. Afternoon study sessions were no longer a date between you and the textbook or the small watercolor set you laid out on the table. Chan was there to fill the space making the long table that was a party of one to a party of two and maybe some on certain busy hours but mostly it was the both of you in your own tiny world.

You got to know him, his likes and dislikes. His major and passion for music, sometimes slipping in a few complaints about certain homework here and there; What else he likes to do. Apparently mr. Chris Bang was gifted in so many areas you often wondered what good he must've done in his previous life to be this gifted. Not only was he a jack of all trades, he's also the master of all.

You even had a small debate between Deadpool and Spider-Man. God, he's such a nerd it's adorable!

In return he knew these things about you. How you're taking up art as your major hoping to make it out as an illustrator one day—

“it would be so cool if you drew a variant cover for Deadpool!”

“Ha! We'll see about that, Chris Reynolds.”

He knows how you like to collect stickers and are quite passionate about making sure your notes are beautiful. He knows how you loved your drinks iced despite it being the middle of winter.

“Isn’t the weather too cold for that?” He’d ask with a quirk of his brow, amused brown eyes glancing at the iced hazelnut latte you have in your hands.

“Nope!” you replied, taking a sip as you did so. “It’s always the perfect weather for an iced coffee, Bang.”

He only chuckled at that.

It hit you like a freight train. You didn’t mean to fall for him. It wasn’t supposed to happen. You and Chan? No way, it was just supposed to be just friends. The kind where you hang out and have fun, no feelings attached. He was just supposed to be that regular from the café, right?

That was the plan, right?

But you can’t deny the small flutters from your heart much like those newly emerged butterflies. How you can feel that giddy feeling of excitement when you spot his mop of chocolate curly locks outside the café’s window. How you mirror his smile when you get together to talk about anything and everything under the sun. Bang Chan in all his cute dimpled glory, soft curls and hearty giggles was just too much to adore.

Yet it wasn’t that what pulled you in to the Music major. You felt love blossom when you both stayed up late, when the café was quiet after a busy day. The only people around being a couple medical students, some late night goers, and the employees. You felt the tiny flower buds start to bloom when he stayed with you then; keeping you company under the dimly warm fluorescent lights, laptop tucked away and a hand playing with yours.

You felt it bloom when you cuddled on the booth’s sofa one rainy November day. He scoots over next to you when he saw you shiver from the corner of his eyes. He’s naturally warm —you’d often tease him how he made the room hot. Why? well it’s because he’s from Australia! which earned the loud chorus of laughter from his friends and Chan’s ears turning into the color of the fire hydrant.

“Babygirl, you’re shivering.” He mutters as he wrapped an arm around you, pulling you gently towards him. You accepted the subtle invitation, sides sticking together as you both went through forgotten notes and half finished coffees.

You felt it when you caught yourself staring at him a little longer than intended. Eyes drifting from Jisung’s expressive face to glance at the older one. You watched him look at the former with such adoration in his eyes; how he looked like a proud dad. You watched him nod along and laugh to Jisung’s animated story about how he and Hyunjin would fight back in the day, a fact that still seemed to shock you seeing how they are the best of friends.

Your eyes would linger on him while he worked on his music; focused and determined, hiding the exhaustion and sleepless nights prominent on the dark circles under his eyes. He was handsome even if he looked like shit. Hell, he was handsome even when he sported the infamous broccoli colored hair. You’d find yourself in a trance, like it was a dream. The world didn’t matter as much anymore when it was only you and Chan in the small dimly table, surrounded by the aroma of coffee beans at the small quaint cafe at the corner of the street.

You loved him. You loved him in the most beautiful of ways; you loved him in the most perfect highs and in all those crevices full of flaws.

You loved him in those bright moments, when the lights were shining on him during a 3RACHA gig. How they made him more beautiful, how they made him stand out from the 2 younger members. You loved watching him do what he loves; how he immersed himself in a world that was different from yours. How his version of colors and dried paint were beats and melodies, rhythm and tempos.

You loved him in the lowest moments; when the tide was high enough to cover you. You loved how you fit perfectly in his arms, how he became a shoulder to lean on when you felt the world was against you and you to him. When he would open up to you about his worst fears and his grandiose ambitions; when he spilled his heart out at the underlaying insecurity that’s been biting him due to his perfectionist attitude. You became his confidante; the one he can trust his heart to.

You loved him in the times he was vulnerable. You loved him when he would bask in glory and shining lights. You loved him like those cheesy lines in love songs. You loved him like how the tides would look at the moon in awe and yearning; gravitating with every push and pull.

You loved him in ways words can never describe. How the seeds he planted in your heart bloomed to the most beautiful bouquet of flowers.

You love him simply because he’s Chan.

You promised yourself you’d be just friends. It was safer that way but then again, what is love when she’s not one without twists and turns?

What is love when she comes to you, sneaky and sly like a weed disguised as a flower, whispering into your ear that it’s him.

It’s him, it’s him, it’s him.

It was always him, it just took you some time to figure that out.

When you first met Chan, he was simply a friend of a friend. Someone you knew because your brothers are his friends. He was the guy you’d hear about in passing, the popular cool guy with a heart bigger than a massive sized teddy bear and a smile that could cure the most depressing of days. Someone who, in probability, would just be an acquaintance to you.

He was that guy you regularly saw at the coffee shop you visited every week. He was just some guy from the music department who would flash you a friendly smile because you were a familiar face.

Funny how fate made him more than what you originally expected him to be.

#Feels like love #🐺97 #amg no idk what happened in thw middle of writing #but I’ll tag if I ever write the letter version which will probably have more #bc it was a bit hard to write in 2nd person #I haven’t written since 2019 😭😭😭 yall will habw to #forgive me #my skills be rusty af #also this wisnt proofread so if there’s any mistakes that’s the work of my sleep deprived braincell #BUHU PLS BE GENTLE WITH ME THIS IS MY FIRST TIME AND IM SHY AF 😭😭😭#but u know what Im not shy of???#MY INTENSE LOVE FOR CHRISTOPHER BANG #amg ok shall hide now ú///ú

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getcooler · 5 years

Text

WOW

Seo Changbin (Skz) x Fem!Reader

Word count: 4,4k

Genre: this is so fluffy and soft I almost made myself cry tnx

In honour of his birthday, you have decided to make him feel the exact same way he’s been making you feel for years.

Staring at yet another half-finished, or rather never-to-be-finished, lyric in his notebook, Changbin sighed to himself before mumbling a quiet curse. He had promised Chan a new song by Monday and yet it seemed he had a long way to until he could write even one proper line.

As he prepared to text Chan a somewhat heartfelt apology, he heard a knock on his door. He blinked in surprise. It was Saturday evening, barely 5 pm, and he wasn’t expecting any guests until the next day at least.

He grumbled, still pissed about the visit of his old friend; writer’s block. Despite his sour mood, he still made his way to the front door and opened it. His mouth fell open in clear surprise, “(Y/n)?”

“Hey,” you smiled at him, looking as beautiful as ever in a simple dress and a bouquet of roses in your hand. The sight of you alone could have made his heart go into cardiac arrest.

Seeing you in a dress at his doorstep? Possibly deadly.

Are you handing him the beautiful red roses? He was beyond sure he had died mid-way writing the song and gone to heaven.

You giggled when the tips of his ears turned a bright red as you handed him the flowers. It wasn’t often that you got to see him so flustered. Mostly because usually, it was him making you blush and stutter. Today it was finally your turn.

“These- These are for me?” he asked, unsure.

You nodded and kissed his cheek before saying, “Go and find something nice to wear. I’m taking you on a date today.”

“Date?” he raised an eyebrow, his cheeks and the tips of his ears still a shade redder than usual.

“Yes, a date,” you laughed before pushing him towards his bedroom, closing the front door with a flick of your ankle. “Now go change into something nicer than your sweatpants and hoodie. I want to show you off today.”

Changbin wasn’t sure what so say so he opted to stay quiet and obey your command. He handed you back the roses so you could put them in a vase and rushed into his bedroom to find his last clean dress shirt and a nice pair of pants to wear. All the while doing so, he mumbled to himself, “What is this? Why is she doing this? I should be the one taking her out on a date.”

Within 15 minutes, he was ready to go out. Except for one little detail.

“Baby, have you seen my wallet?” he called out to you from his bedroom while pretty much flipping the inside of his drawers upside down.

“Which one?” you were glad he was in his room and couldn’t see the clear smirk on your face.

Changbin thought for a second before calling out once again, “The old black one that Chan bought me for Christmas. I think.”

“I don’t see it here,” came your response. You could barely contain your laughter at the thought of Jisung having hidden Changbin’s wallet the day before. He had done so on your request and you’d be lying if you said the act hadn’t brought you immense joy.

“How am I supposed to pay for dinner if I can’t find my wallet?” Changbin cursed under his breath as he walked out of his room. “I guess we should postpone the date. I seem to have lost my wallet.”

“Nonsense,” you protested, jumping up from the couch and grabbing your purse to lift out your wallet. “I’ll pay.”

Once again your boyfriend blinked in surprise. The more time you spent at his house, the more he started to doubt whether it was real or just a very odd dream that he should probably mention to his therapist.

“Are you sure?” he asked, trying not to sound too on edge.

“Stop dwelling on the money thing and let’s go,” you laughed, taking his hand and practically dragging him out the front door. You barely gave him enough time to lock the door before leading him to a black limousine.

Changbin snorted, “You can’t be serious. You’re pranking me, aren’t you?”

“Okay,” you had had just about enough of his disbelieving nature, “how about for the rest of the night, you stop acting like this is some alternate universe and I’m playing a practical joke on you. From this moment on, you’re gonna let me wow you with my charms and for once not worry about every single thing that happens.”

“You’re asking me to shut up?”

“I’m asking you to not doubt everything that happens today, okay?” you clarified. You gently took his face in your hands and whispered, “Let me spoil you this once, yeah?”

For a moment he thought about it. It took him no less than a minute to come to a decision; one that he disregarded the moment you pressed a tender kiss to his cheek and his nose and his forehead…

“Fine,” his resolve crumbled underneath your lips. “I guess it would be nice to be spoiled for one evening.”

Seeing you squeal and bounce up and down in excitement, he quickly added, “Don’t expect this to become a regular thing though!”

“We’ll see,” you teased before taking his arm and dragging him over to the limousine.

“Where are we going anyway?”

You chuckled secretively, resting your head upon his shoulder once he got in his seat. You whispered in his ear, “Let me take you to a restaurant. Francesca’s.”

Changbin thought for a moment before realizing, “Francesca’s? Isn’t that a bit expensive?”

“So?” you smiled as you gently rubbed your thumb across his cheek, “My baby deserves the best, does he not?”

He was about to protest when you reminded him, “Let me spoil you just this once.” And just like that, his resolve disappeared once again.

“Let me open that door for you,” your voice sounded so soft and tender when the two of you finally reached the door of the restaurant. All you had to do was open the door and say, “My prince,” while looking him in the eyes, and the tips of his ears flushed red once again. He couldn’t fight the smile that pulled on the corners of his lips as you took his hand and led him to the hostess.

“Hello! Welcome to Francesca’s,” a cheerful male voice greeted you. You grinned, “Hello. I believe we have reserved a table for tonight. Under the name of (Y/l/n).”

The young man took a moment to check his book before nodding and leading the way, “Right this way.”

When you sat down, Changbin asked, “You reserved us a table?”

“Of course,” you giggled. “I would never make you stand in line for an hour for food, no matter how good.”

“And who’s going to pay for all the food?” he wondered, still a little stuck in the ‘perfect boyfriend’ headspace.

“I will,” you told him in full confidence as the waiter brought over your menu. “Because I’m a nice gal who just has a lot of money.”

Changbin frowned, “Did you get a promotion and forget to tell me?”

“Stop asking so many questions and just enjoy the night,” you replied, leaving no room for negotiation. Changbin was forced to sigh as his eyes roamed the menu.

After a short while he spoke, “Well, since you’re paying,” he smirked, “I think I’ll have some of the expensive stuff.”

“Eat up,” you told him with a smile so loving it could only be offered from one lover to another, “we have a long evening planned.”

Dinner went by without any problems (if we don’t account for the fact that Changbin at one point spilt water all over his shirt after a particular compliment from you made his heart skip a beat) and soon enough you grabbed his hand and led him towards the park.

Glancing at the time, you cursed silently before pulling on his arm and beginning to run.

“Why are we running?” he whined through light-hearted laughter, gripping your hand firmly as he attempted to keep up with your relentless pace.

Through difficult breaths, you told him, “We’re going to be late to the movie.”

“Well, whose fault is that?” he teased with a sly grin, that fell the moment you opened your mouth.

“Yours.”

The tips of his ears tinted red at your words.

Within a couple of minutes, the two of you had reached the park, his hand still firmly holding yours. Changbin’s eyes widened at the sight of a large white sheet hanging between two trees, a projector on the ground and his bandmates and family sitting and chatting on the grass.

He was so deep in wonder that he squeaked (yes; squeaked!) in surprise when Bang Chan came up to the two of you with a folded paper and two soft blankets, “Reservations for (Y/l/n), I presume?”

“Yes,” you giggled, accepting the blankets and motioning for your boyfriend to take the paper from Chan. “How did you know?”

“You're the only guests to arrive this late,” the Australian boy laughed gleefully before nodding and rushing back over to a bright pink blanket. He sat down between Jeongin and Felix, cuddling into the latter.

Seeing Changbin’s still shock-driven flustered state, you spoke softly, “Would you like to choose us a spot to sit before the movie starts?”

“What?” he barely got out, staring at you with wide eyes as you chuckled and pressed a soft kiss to his nose.

You repeated yourself, “Choose us a spot to sit, darling boy. The movie’s about to start.”

Only somewhat snapping out of it, Changbin grabbed a blanket from you before laying it down in behind Woojin’s green blanket. He motioned for you to sit down next to him and smiled at you as you wrapped the two of you in the second blanket.

As the movie started, Changbin shuffled in his seat, turning to look at you. He couldn’t help but admire you as you cuddled closer to him.

“Watch the movie, dummy,” you whispered in his ear and giggled when he flushed red in embarrassment.

He turned to look at the screen before scoffing in amusement, “Shrek 2?”

You shrugged, “We watched the first part on our first date, didn’t we?”

“So, tonight we’re watching the sequel?”

“Obviously,” you mumbled, pulling his head into the crook of your neck softly and pressing a kiss to his hair. Your fingers found their purpose in playing with his hair but soon Changbin reached up his own fingers and intertwined them with yours. He brought your joint hands to his lips and now it was your turn to feel flustered.

Changbin felt comfortable in your arms, constantly snuggling closer and letting his heart skip a beat or two whenever you pressed a kiss to his ear, nose, cheek, neck, hair or even lips. He wasn’t afraid to admit that he was lost in your affection and there was no way he’d ever want to find his way back to reality ever again.

As the movie reached its end, Changbin felt your lips brush against his ear and heard you whisper, “I’ll be your Fiona if you’ll be my Shrek.”

He snorted at the horribly cheesy and just overall horrible line and yet… Yet it seemed too familiar. Why did it seem so familiar?

It took him a while to snap back to reality after the movie ended. The two of you spent some more time sitting on the blankets, enjoying being in each other’s arms. You didn’t move even when Chan pressed a brotherly kiss on your head and whispered a faint “good luck”.

The park was almost empty. It was just you and Changbin, snuggling on the ground, and Felix and Seungmin, arguing over which way would be best to take down the white sheet.

“Do you want to get ice cream?” you suddenly asked, accidentally forcing Changbin out of his daydreams.

“Sure,” he whispered, resting his chin on your chest to look up at you and smile, “But you have to share with me.”

“Deal,” you giggled and kissed his nose for what seemed to be the millionth time that evening.

It took the two of you a short while before either of you willingly got up. Well, that’s a lie. It took you a rather long time to find the motivation to get back on your feet. Between the discussion about going to eat ice cream and actually getting up to go get ice cream, Seungmin and Felix had had an entire debate about the white sheet, made up, and then finally taken down the sheet and gone home.

“Let’s go before the ice cream cafe closes,” Changbin decided while waving goodbye to Seungmin.

“Probably a good idea,” you whispered before pushing yourself to your feet. “Let’s go.”

He squinted at your sudden display of motivation before reaching up his hands and saying in the cutest voice you had ever heard him use, “Help Binnie up?”

“Aww,” you couldn’t help but voice your adoration while taking his hands and pulling him back on his feet. It took some effort and a failed first attempt that left the two of you in a fit of giggles. The second attempt was a bit more successful; you pulled Changbin to his feet with such force that when he finally found his balance, his lips were just about pressed against yours.

Adoration was clear in your eyes as you whispered, “You look ridiculously pretty up close. Like an actual sculpture. How in the world-?”

Changbin scrunched his nose up in embarrassment as you continued, “I’m- I’m sorry. I’m nervous so I’m just rambling on.”

“It’s okay,” he sighed in content, pulling you closer to himself before pressing his lips to yours, “I feel the same way every time I see you.”

Your cheeks felt hot all of a sudden but still, you mumbled out, “Your attitude makes me empty out your heart. Today I’ll fall in love with you.”

He furrowed his eyebrows, “You’re not in love with me already?”

“I was just teasing,” you laughed.

“I love you so,” you enunciated it with a kiss to his cheek, “so, so much.”

“You’d better,” he joked before pulling away from you and grabbing your hand. He gently led you to the nearest ice cream cafe. “They’re still open for another 20 minutes and I have just enough cash to pay for your favourite flavour and toppings. Let’s go in. Ladies first.”

You scoffed, “I can’t believe you’re defeating the whole purpose of me trying to spoil you. Let me pay.”

“Why should I?” he laughed as he held the door open for you. “Am I not the man of this relationship?”

“Man of this relationship,” you scoffed, putting your hands on your hips. “There’s a reason why I made Jisung hide your wallet for the night, you know!”

“JISUNG HAS IT?” Changbin shrieked in shock, eyes wide in what you could only translate to something akin to aggressive amusement.

“That’s beside the point,” you laughed, patting his cheek as he stared at you in disbelief. “The point is, I wanted to spoil you tonight so you’d better hide your money.”

Realizing how much this meant to you, Changbin sighed and nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bill before handing it to you, “Keep it until we get home. I promise that’s all the money I have on me.”

“Thank you,” you grinned before kissing his cheek and leading him over to the counter. “Now choose what flavour you want, baby.”

“Stop calling me that,” he whined like a kid. “You know that nickname makes me all-” he writhed and bounced in his spot, trying to communicate his emotions.

“That’s exactly why I keep calling you that, baby,” you told him decisively before pointing to the ice cream. “Take your pick.”

“Fine,” he sighed before leaning over your shoulder to see clearer. “To share?”

“Obviously.”

After ordering your ice cream, the two of you made your way down the street. After some comfortable silence, Changbin asked, “What next? Do you have anything planned?”

“I figured we could just walk around and enjoy the night,” you shrugged, taking his hand in yours.

“Where to?”

You shrugged once again, this time as a way to cover up that you had a clear plan in mind. It was too early for him to find out the real purpose of the date just yet.

So the two of you walked, hand in hand, the sweet taste of ice cream mixing with the taste of the other’s lips whenever you kissed under a street light. As his eyes reflected the moonlight, you couldn’t help whispering, “Excuse me, oppa, do you perhaps have a girlfriend?”

“Oppa?” he snorted. “That’s a new one. I thought you wouldn’t succumb to the Korean culture just yet.”

“Just this once, baby,” you chuckled in embarrassment, having half-hoped he wouldn’t hear you.

“What’s with you today?” he wondered out loud, staring at you in adoration. “You’re incredibly sweet today. It’s so cute that it’s almost creepy.”

You pressed a kiss to his cheek before pulling on his arm and taking a sharp left turn. Changbin blinked in surprise but didn’t react otherwise. Maybe because he was rather used to you pulling him around during walks.

His surprise turned into shock soon enough though. Eyes wide and his mouth agape, he stood there before asking, “What’s this? What’s going on?”

“Do you still have that paper Chan gave us when we went to see the movie?” you asked, barely paying attention to his daze.

Changbin didn’t hear you the first time, staring in awe at the fairy lights wrapped around the old tree in front of the dorms. You had reached your final destination and even he could see that. He admired the pink and blue and yellow lights wrapped around the branches as you called his name again, “Binnie.”

“Yeah?” he finally reacted, mouth still agape but his eyes a bit clearer now.

You giggled, somewhat embarrassed and flustered yourself, fingers playing with the fabric of your dress, “Do you have that folded paper Chan gave us?”

“At the movie?” he asked before humming in confirmation and reaching into his pocket. He took out the paper (despite your nervousness you couldn’t help but wonder how the hell he had fit it into the pocket of his jeans in the first place) and turned to hand it to you, but you crossed your arms and shook your head.

Confusion overtook his expression as he looked at you, tilting his head to the side, “What’s wrong?”

“Could you please read what’s written in there?” you asked quietly, almost shyly. Almost as if you were afraid of his reaction, he noted.

“Are you breaking up with me?” he tried to tease but you shook your head, somewhat shaking in front of him as the two of you stood underneath the fairy lights. “Good. Because that would’ve been one real weird break-up.”

“Just read the paper,” you mumbled, cheeks flushed and your lungs just about refusing any air.

Changbin was many things and if you wanted to, you could write a whole list: impatient, kind, confident, borderline arrogant, talented, sarcastic, clingy. Uncaring and oblivious weren’t on that list.

He bit his lip, took a quick look at the paper in his hand before shaking his head and walking over to you, pulling you into the safety of his strong arms.

“I’m not opening it until you stop shaking and looking like you’re on the verge of the worst panic attack of your life,” he whispered into your hair before pressing a kiss to your temple. “I’m here. I’m not leaving. Just breathe for me, okay?”

It took a while, but his comforting words and soft voice paired with the feeling of his arms wrapped around you soon calmed you down. You sighed in content as he pressed his lips to yours gently and nuzzled his nose against yours.

“Feeling better?” he asked carefully, looking you in the eyes to make sure you weren’t lying. He knew you often lied to comfort him. This time he wouldn’t allow it. There must have been a good reason for you to get so nervous, so shaky.

“Yes,” you said in full confidence. If anything, his affection had proved to you that you were doing the right thing that night. You smiled and spoke, “Read the paper, Binnie.”

“Alright,” he smiled at you but wouldn’t let you go. He wrapped one arm around your shoulders and used the other to unfold the paper with your help. He was about to read it out loud but as he began reading, his voice faded into silence, “Dear Binnie, I love you with all of my heart and I want to prove it for the rest of my life…”

He silently read the letter you had so carefully thought out and written for him. His eyes filled with tears and he felt a lump form in his throat as he continued reading the letter that told him seven things you loved about him most;

His beautiful eyes and how they shone when he spoke about something he loved or when you brought him freshly baked pie,

His smile when he saw you blush at a comment or when you complimented his music or when someone told him something he really needed to hear,

His voice, how it could either sound growly and heavy with thought when he was wrapping, or soft and gentle when he told you about his dreams as a bedtime story, or clear and breathtaking when he sang,

His stage presence that could leave millions of people breathless,

His warm hugs and the feeling of safety that only being in his arms could make you experience,

His love for his friends and family, something so pure and beautiful it could make a grown man cry,

His bravery to stand with his members and dare to push JYP’s limits just to debut, just to fulfil his dream,

and last of all; His words of love that you would have loved to hear until the day you died until you were both old and grey and incapable of truly moving.

“Will you marry me?” he read the last line of the letter before turning to look at you. He hadn’t noticed you stepping away from him but there you stood, in front of him with an open velvet box in your hand and a nervous smile on your face. He choked back a sob, feeling his eyes burn with hot tears and the lump in his throat preventing him from speaking.

He wouldn’t let that stop him though. He was Seo Changbin and he’d be damned if he ever left you without an answer to a question.

Without a single word, only an adoring look in his eyes and a tear of happiness running down his cheek, he nodded enthusiastically, almost desperately, before reaching out his arm to pull you into his side once again.

You squealed in happiness as he pressed his lips against yours with such passion it left you breathless. Loud cheers sounded from the building behind you and forced Changbin to pull away to look at the source. He saw his eight members hollering and cheering, half of them half out the windows as they congratulated you.

“Were they in on this?” he asked while choking on tears, earning a nod from you.

“PUT A RING ON IT ALREADY!” you heard Chan’s voice boom from the window, his own tear-filled eyes gleaming in the colourful light. “I want to see if it fits!”

Changbin laughed quietly before turning back to you, tucked safely under his arm with the velvet box still in your hand. He reached out his left hand and you gladly took it in your own before slipping the ring on his finger.

“Fits like a ring, one might say,” you laughed cheerfully and Changbin’s heart skipped another beat. He was sure he would need the entirety of the next day just to recover from the possible damage of those missed heartbeats, but he didn’t mind.

He lifted his hand to inspect the ring before chuckling, “It looks kind of familiar.”

At that, you lifted your left hand next to his and watched his expression go from amusement to pure shock, “You got me a matching ring?”

“It seemed only fitting,” you smiled, “Since you never bought yourself a matching ring, I figured I’d take the chance.”

“I love you so damn much,” he choked out through a fresh wave of tears as he pulled you into the tightest hug he had ever offered you. “So, so much.”

[bonus scene: the ride home]

“I can’t believe Chan kicked us out of the dorm after the proposal,” Changbin laughed in the passenger seat. Sure, it was his car but you’d be damned if you let him drive in the excited and still shaken state he was in.

“To be fair, he probably thought we’d get downright nasty tonight,” you pointed out while trying to turn up the volume of the radio.

Changbin scoffed before nodding, “He does have a dirty mind.”

He thought for a moment before deciding, “Actually, I think he just kicked us out cuz he didn’t want us to see how emotional he got over our engagement. Why was he so emotional anyway?”

“I think he’s having a middle-age crisis. The first one of his kids is about to get married,” you offered through chuckles, causing your boyfriend – actually no – causing your fiancé to chuckle.

“I want an autumn wedding,” Changbin suddenly told you.

“Slow down a bit,” you told him, taking his left hand in your right one. “You’re still shaking from the proposal and we haven’t even told our parents yet.”

As he was about to protest, his eyebrows shot up, “Is that-?”

“3Racha in my late-night drive playlist?” you finished for him. “You’d best believe it.”

“Seriously though?” he laughed. “Isn’t that “WOW”?”

“Maybe.”

As he sat and tried to comprehend the situation, he heard a familiar line.

“You can be Fiona today, I’ll be Shrek,” his voice echoed from the speakers and suddenly everything clicked in his mind.

“YOU’VE BEEN QUOTING THIS SONG THE WHOLE TIME???”

#seo changbin #changbin scenarios #changbin fluff #stray kids scenarios #stray kids fluff #happy birthday to our binnie binne changbinnie #admin vy #admin cola will probably upload something that rivals this fluff soon enough #in the meanwhile please enjoy

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etherealgoddessblog · 4 years

Text

Chan of Stray Kids: Love at First Sight

I rush to the town swimming pool, afraid of the wrath of my waiting friends. I peer around and I realise that I was the only one there. Just then, my phone rings - it is my friend, “Dude, we are bailing out. Let’s meet up next week, same time.”

Are you kidding me? Here I was, at a pool with a bunch of crying kids. I absolutely hate sunlight and getting chlorine in my hair so I rarely came over here. I could have gone back home but I decided to stay. I didn’t come here for free. Might as well make the most of it. I change into my red Polka Dot bikini in the dressing room. I may be alone but I definitely look like a snack. Too bad there are only kids in the pool today. My friends promised that there’d be some tasty-looking guys here. I tie my hair into a cute top knot and set out to swim.

Those kids do not even glance in my direction. Even the parents don’t pay any attention to me. I realise that I am not the centre of the entire universe as I splash in the swimming pool. The kids are good fun to be with. We play slow motion ballet and underwater tea party together. I love how creative kids can be! As if my friends and I would even enter the water. We would just drown in sunscreen while we tried to sunbathe.

After half an hour of swimming, the kids stop playing and start leaving. As I step out of the pool, some really hot guys come out of the changing room. They had freshly showered and were walking in a large group towards me.

“Noona, come on out!”, yells this one kid I had been playing with. I emerge from the pool, water dripping all over my body. My curves glisten in the sunlight and my wet clothes stick to me tightly. I grab my pink towel and quickly wrap myself in it. All this while I was pining for some boys to drool over me in my bikini and now I was suddenly feeling self-conscious. What am I even playing at? The boys don’t seem to notice me. I am not even the center of this swimming pool. They seem more bothered about their beach ball than about me. Well, boo sucks to them because I love how I look today.

The kids had changed and they set out for their home. I just lay down on a beach chair to dry myself off. From here, I could get a bird’s eye view of these dashing guys playing volley ball. It doesn’t look that hard. Or maybe they are so good at it that they make it look easy.

Suddenly one special guy catches my attention. His skin is as white as milk. His back muscles flex back and forth as he swims in the direction of the ball. His arms have the perfect amount of muscle - he is not too bulky or too lean. Turn, boy. Let me see your face! He faces me and our eyes meet. We stare at each other for a while until one of his friends yells, “ Chan Hyung! Leader Hyung! Pass!” We both come out of trance and he continues playing. This boy looks like an angel… with abs. I want to run my fingers through the soft curls of his black hair. So he is called Chan. And he is their leader? Oh I just love dominating guys who know what they want and how to get it. So Mr. Chan is the leader among 9 guys. All of them look so good but this man is my prince.

Wait… They are playing in teams: 5 vs 4. This is my chance. If I don’t seize my opportunity, I will live a lonely life. So I gather my guts and walk towards them, “Guys, can I join you? I play well, I promise.” What a fake promise. But I got to join Chan’s team as the fifth member. I played so badly. I knocked out my own members as I tried to catch the ball. I almost drowned because of the tides these guys were causing while running around in the pool. I got into Chan’s bad books when I distracted him by pouring splashing large bouts of water at him. He is not as angelic as he seems. Apparently he takes this game very seriously for some reason and I am more dangerous than the other team. He can’t win because of me. Angry Chan is sexy Chan. But we somehow tied with the other team.

Suddenly, the ball comes in Changbin’s direction. I rush towards him so that I can catch the ball but two white arms snake around my waist and paralyse me. His grip is firm. Changbin safely catches the ball and finally scores a point. We win! I turn around to see Chan’s dimpled smile. He is ecstatic from the victory. “Yayyyyy!!!”, I scream as I wrap my arms around his neck. He in turn holds my waist. I look up at him, into his eyes and smile. Then I blush because I realise that our bodies are crushed together and my boobs are resting on his bare chest. I think he also noticed that we are wearing very less clothing. We let go of each other and smile.

I want to get to know this guy more. I can’t leave him and go away just yet. So I announce, “Guys, I’ll treat all of you to ice-cream. As the worst player, I could do atleast this much. Let’s meet after changing.”

I change into the clothes I had brought with me - a baby pink oversized hoodie and white shorts. The shorts can be seen only if i raise my arms. I let my wet black hair loose; it reaches all the way to my waist. I put on my white shoes and jump out of the dressing room. The boys were already waiting for me. Chan’s eyes sparkle when he sees me. He is wearing a baby blue hoodie. I want it so bad. Maybe I could borrow it if I were his girlfriend.

“Your hair is so long, Noona”, observes Jeongin. I flip my hair in approval. Oops! I spray some water accidentally at Hyunjin and Seungmin. Felix continues, “You and Chan Hyung make quite a pair.” I blush so much that I can’t even face Chan. He shakes his hand in disagreement. That’s when Felix comments, “I meant, you guys look like ice-cream!”

We had to walk a few blocks to buy them some ice-cream. I had to find a pretty place because they honestly shouldn’t think of me as a cheapskate. Chan and I order the same flavour: Raspberry. I spend a fortune on these 9 boys. The things I have to do for love!

I have to sit opposite Chan because Jisung and Changbin called dibs on either side of him. We lick our icecreams appreciatively. All of us talk about random things and exchange numbers. I feel happy having made so many friends in one day. Then, Changbin grabs the Sriracha bottle and shows it to Jisung. He winks back. They are probably spicy food lovers.

“I can’t handle this firesauce. But I do love a hip-hop group called 3Racha,” I explain. “I don’t know what they look like because they arent exactly an official group of JYP. They just release mixtapes but good lord! Theirs is the best rap I have ever heard! They only have private shows so common people like me can’t really meet them.” I continue fangirling, “There are three members - G.One, SpearB and my favourite, CB97. He is the one who produces most of their songs. I am in love with his voice and his music. I want to meet him so bad and tell him how much his music means to me!” I let out a long sigh. All nine of them are quiet all of a sudden.

Chan breaks the awkward silence with a question, “Which is your favourite song by 3Racha?” I reply, “Wow by Spear B is a gag song but it always brings a smile on my face. It actually makes me feel confident about the way I look.” Chan asks, “Wow was produced by Spear B. Then why do you like CB97?” “CB97 sounds like an absolute gentleman in Wow. My favourite song is Start Line in which he raps in English about how he entered the world of music,” I reply.

Chan grins but I can’t understand what his smile means. “Do you know 3Racha too?” It was my turn to ask. Changbin butts in before he can answer, “I am Spear B. We are all part of an upcoming boygroup called Stray Kids. So we used nicknames insteas for 3Racha. We were still trainees, you know.” He points at Jisung, “He is G.One.” Jisung assures me that it’s him with a rap from the secret tracks of 3Racha’s first mixtape. I am frozen. I muster up the courage to enquire, “So who is CB97?” Chan shyly raises his hand, “I’m your gentleman, Miss.” That Australian accent is unmistakably CB97’s.

I bury my face in my hands out of embarassment. He pulls away my hands and gazes into my eyes. “Well, you did open that door for me,” I slowly remarked, recalling the time when we entered the cafe. “But you’re not better than Tony,” I stuck my tongue out at him.

Now that we had all finished our ice-cream, we set out to leave the cafe. Chan opens the door for me again, with a smirk on his face. He blocks my way with his arm and says, “Now that you confessed your love for me, I would like to ask you out on a date. I want to get to know my future girlfriend a little bit more.” He ruffles my hair and comments, “I liked you ever since I first saw you at the pool playing with those kids. I heard fireworks when you came out of the pool. Then I felt that you were a keeper with your long hair and pink hoodie. So I do feel honoured that my ideal type is also my biggest fan.” “You are so cheesy, saying so many things about me like that. You might as well make a song about me!” I peck his cheek lightly and run away.

#stray kids #bang chris #bang chan #3racha #imagine

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stanskzseungmin · 5 years

Text

Operation Miroh | Stray Kids Mafia! AU ~ Chapter 2

Warnings: None

It was dark when you woke up. The only light source was from the many screens illuminating the room.

The pain you felt from the night before had faded. In fact, you felt no pain at all, not even a crick in the neck or a sore back from laying down in your uncomfortable cot. You lifted your arm into your view rotating it and looking at it front and back, up and down. You were no longer bandaged. Your arm looked as supple and smooth as the day you were born. No scars. No blemishes. No evidence of any injuries from the incident.

Your gaze fell on the figure that was leaning against your cot.

Hwang Hyunjin, the gang’s main medic and engineer.

You smiled at the sight. He kept his promise. You stared at his side profile. His figure was illuminated by the many screens. He looked angelic. His honey brown hair was styled nicely albeit the messy strands from running his fingers through his hair. He wears a brilliant white outfit. It is skin tight with black accents. A masterful design by Hwang Hyunjin himself. Specifically engineered to improve aerodynamics. At the center of his back on either side of his spine resting snuggly under his shoulder blades are two carefully engineered mechanical wings that allows Hyunjin to glide and cover more distance quickly. Hyunjin can retract and extend them at will. It is connected directly into his nervous system via very fine needles. Because of this, Hyunjin still had full control of his wings as such as his arms or legs.

You remember the day he first put them on vividly. The sounds of his pained screams echoing through your base, his face contorted by pain, the tears forcing through his clenched eyes as the needles pierce his skin directly penetrating his nerves.

He was in so much pain. The pain mirrored the first every time he removes them and puts them back on, so he leaves them on as a permanent extension of his body. (Seungmin does the repairs directly on his body whenever needed.)

You can’t really see his face clearly, but you can already envision it from seeing it many times. His eyes were glued to his many screens. His eyes would squint and his nose would occasionally crinkle from concentration. A pair of glasses rested neatly on the bridge of his nose- glasses meticulously crafted with specialized lens to prevent and limit eye strain from staring at his many screens for hours at a time.

Hyunjin has 11 screens, one main larger screen in the center with 5 smaller ones on either side. The 10 other screens each depicted the heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, etc of each of the Stray Kids members. One for each starting from the eldest to the youngest, then you at the bottom right screen.

Hyunjin’s left hand was tightly gripping the side of your cot. You rested your hand over his intertwining your fingers with his. He squeezed your much smaller fingers with his larger ones in acknowledgement without turning to look at you. He let out a soft huff. You understood what he wanted from you. You detach your hand from his as he walks towards the collection of screens. You let sleep take over your form.

Some time later, you stirred in your sleep. Hyunjin was still stood stiff in front of his screens.

You felt arms securely wrapped around you and a leg draping over yours. You turned carefully to face the figure.

Lee Felix, the gang’s hitman. It’s mind blowing how effective he is. He is extremely masterful in close quarter fighting and his ability to use a gun is unmatched (with the exception of Changbin.)

He was sound asleep. His blond hair was messy and freckles littered his face like stars in the night sky. Felix was still fully geared. Looks like he just returned from a mission as evident by the dark circles under his eyes. No rest for the wicked. Memories of last night flooded your mind. Felix’s pained screams as he was caught aflamed and him crashing through the window. Hyunjin did a spectacular job tending to his wounds. Felix was apparently well enough to embark on another mission practically hours after being set ablaze.

You carefully got out of his grasp letting the Aussie sleep. You walked towards Hyunjin patting his shoulder signifying you were leaving. You didn’t dare speak to him. You knew better than to interrupt. He has 10 lives on his hands 25/8.

You quietly closed the door behind you as you entered the long hallway littered by closed doors. You began heading down the hallway to report back to your leader.

Along the way, you see Changbin heading your direction.

Seo Changbin, the gang’s weapons dealer. He was donning a black skin tight short sleeved shirt that perfectly showcases his muscles and toned chest. He wore black fingerless leather gloves and loose black pants with black combat boots to finish it off. He had several straps and harnesses attached to his body holding all his gun holsters. Gun magazines decorated his torso. An AK was slung over a shoulder held up with a sling and a sniper rifle secured to his back. He smiled at you fondly relief washing over his stern face. You smiled back remembering the scare you gave him last night. He ruffles your hair gently, his fingers ghosted down the side of your face, your cheek, your jaw before caressing your chin gently wiping his thumb over the soft skin. He walked past you continuing down his path.

You smiled widely as you continued down the hallway giving each door you pass a singular knock. Each room’s occupants briskly opened the door and sticking their heads out, each relieved to see you alive and well.

The first, Han Jisung, the group’s main hustler for money and info. The squirrel like little shit however, didn’t open the door in response to your knock. Instead, he responded with a loud kick on the other side that shook the door slightly.

The second, Yang Jeongin, the group’s youngest and unbelievable sniper. He has never missed a shot. He doubles as a secondary weapons dealer, often accompanying Changbin and even going by himself if Changbin is preoccupied. His head stuck out his door; his red hair was messy with bed head. His eyes were little slits tired from sleep. His eyes open slightly seeing you alive and well. He smiled brightly. You gently pecked his cheek; a slight blush dusted his cheeks. He retreated back into his room returning to sleep.

The third, Kim Seungmin, the group’s demolitionist. Explosives were his specialty. He does have the knowledge of an engineer and mechanic to lighten Hyunjin’s load. (Although Hyunjin will kill Seungmin if he touches or interferes with any of Hyunjin’s engineering experiments).

Like Jeongin, he only stuck his head out. However, unlike Jeongin, he had a scowl on his face from being rudely interrupted. The scowl didn’t leave his face upon seeing you though. His clenched teeth eased into firmly pressed straight lips. His nose scrunches up slightly prior to giving you a split second peck to your cheek and proceeding to slams the door in your face.

You laughed lightly to yourself shaking your head lightly. You turn to continue but you see Lee Know stumbling out of his room, a gas mask present on his face and a fog of smoke coming out of his open door. Lee Minho, or Lee Know, is the group’s decoy and toxin expert. Smokes and poison gas are his thing. He hand makes every single concoction.

Minho glances at you noticing your presence. He quickly waved at you and smiled. You couldn’t see his face other than his eyes, but from how his eyes crinkled, you knew he smiled at you. Minho then walked through the smoke into his room and left his door open. You peered into his room, but the smoke was so thick and dense you can not even see through it, just a solid color of ashy gray.

You turned the corner still facing the smoke. Minho flooding his room with smoke was not a rare occurrence. You laughed at the thought.

Without realizing, your back collided with a very firm chest. You whipped around to see Woojin.

Kim Woojin, the gang’s main bargainer. Like Jisung, Woojin’s job is to get money and info. Unlike Jisung who practically blackmails the other party, Woojin can sweet talk and let the money speak for him. (Even though Jisung uses violence to get what he wants, the little shit can’t fight to save his life unlike Woojin who can take down 5 guys single handedly.)

Woojin was dressed in a black long sleeved turtleneck and a white faux leather jacket over it. He has several accessories, mainly chains, decorating his body. His lower body was less visually loud. He has simple tight black jeans and black high tops.

He smiles at you, giving you one of his signature bear hugs and kissing the top of your head. He pulled away from you and stood to the side with an arm outstretched allowing you to pass.

You made your way to Chan’s room. Technically it’s his office, but he holes up there 25/8 it’s practically his room.

Bang Chan, the gang’s leader and hacker. His IQ is through the roof making genius Woojin appearing to have a pea sized brain.

Bang Chan’s office (room) was dark. The lights were almost always off. The only light was coming from his large monitor. He was slouched over his laptop, the sounds of his fingers dancing over his keyboard can be heard throughout the room.

He notices your presence and spins around on his chair. He showcases his famous dimple smile.

“How are you feeling, mate?” Chan asked, voice thick with an Australian accent.

You smiled and nodded slightly to him.

Chan knew you should rest, but he also knows that his knee will get capped again if he’s forcing you to sit around. You hate sitting around doing nothing when you could go out and be useful.

“So,” he started. “When do you want to start?”

Mission Briefing

Location: Civilized Countryside

Weather: Clear Time of Day: Late Day/Evening

Objective: Gather info

Date: 20XX

Partner: ???

Authors note: Since this is the first round of voting, I am providing you with the condensed mission briefing. I will not be stating this explicitly in later chapters. Every mission briefing will follow this same format. It will be your job to gather that info yourself. The full briefing will be posted before every chapter so you can check if you gathered all the correct info.

Here I have given you a mission briefing and you, the readers, will vote for which member you want to bring with you.

Remember your decisions will have consequences.

So refer back to their character profiles and stats when casting your vote.

Happy voting!

(Please refer to the Voting Rules before casting your vote.)

Crosses fingers that I get more than 3 votes and it’s not a tie.

Voting ends Tuesday, September 17 12PM PST or Friday, September 13 12PM PST if I get a good amount of votes.

I absolutely hate asking for reblogs, but please reblog if you enjoy the fanfiction, I really don’t want it to flop especially on the first voting stage T^T

Author Note 2 (I’m sorry)

So I will most likely write member scenarios prior to voting stages beginning so I have some back long, but that means for the members that don’t make it scenarios will be tossed. So... how do y’allsters feel if I do like a little contest thing during the votes? Like first few people who can accurately pinpoint the best possible member with a brief explanation why can have a choice to read one of these extra scenarios? (Note: Best possible member does not necessarily mean the member that wins the votes.) PLEASE give me feedback on this.

~Masterlist~

37 notes · View notes

worldull · 5 years

Text

Stray Kids in Moscow (August,4 - 2019)

At the first time in my life, I felt that it was not a concert with idol idols. It was a feeling that you catch when you stay with old friends and even more - with soulmates. Chan has been my role model from the start. He is such a child, but at the same time, he is very responsible, very caring. A person who works hard, who strives forward and does not leave his goal. Yes, I’m sure that he had difficult periods when he wanted to run away from himself when he did not want to do anything and feel nothing. But the pain always makes us stronger. I am glad that he can reveal his feelings in songs and show us all his inner stars, all inner shining. He guides his team and I feel that I’m the part of this ship. Want to say some words about every Stray Kids' member and about my impression after the high-touch. The VIP ticket was about 168 $, and it was worth it. Even if the VIP would be about 300 $, I would take it. Just to spend more time with them. Just to have more talks, more walks, and more informal chats about music, hobbies, Korean things, Australian puns, maybe some games, some chicken and Coke. Cause they are friends. I hope that they see friends in STAYs’ too.

Chan is VERY handsome and crazy. Well, above I already painted what I think of him. At high-touch I catch some shock cause he looks just into my side of soul lightning if I can say that. I felt that thing. My friends said that it was courtesy. Don’t deny. But in Russia, we do not always feel any notice, we don’t feel that sm listen to us truly, that someone give us the understanding that we are important. Only close friends or family do this. In good times ahah And Chan just said “Thank you” to me and to others. And after only one ‘thank you’ my heart felt up with lots of warmness and sunlight. Thank you for that. BTW I REALLY want to say “Chan-ko-chan - ko-chan means cabbage in Russian” to him. But we are not so close for jokes like this I GUESS ahah Woojin looks like a hot man with self-understanding. Actually, I suppose that every girl wants such pretty and good-flirting boy by her side. MAY I SAY SO? He seems to be very kind to others. When I stood in front of him I felt completely babygirls feelings. My friends screamed that he looks like Greece God. On the stage, he was like the bitchy bitch at the beginning and like the cutest man ever at the end. Marvelous ahah

Minho is my bias. Seems very calm but straightforward and just full of sarcasm. Love his spontaneity. Adore his skills and persistence. It was scary to shake his hand on high-touch. Sure that he has the same feelings. Nervous moment. Like you invade another's personal space. Think of him like a person who opens his emotions only in dancing and singing. Can understand it. I did k-pop coverdance and had that feeling of opening soul windows to others, when I was dancing. Magic thing.

Changbin is so damn cool. Through thorns goes to the stars. He literally reveals his soul when he begins to sing. It is felt from the side. The feeling that he has a goal about which he does not particularly extend. And he strives towards it with small steps. It was somehow awkward on the high-touch too. I wanted to make him laugh or something so that there was less stress. But it was simply ‘thank you - thank you’ and nothing more. The feeling that I lost my chance to do something better for him.

Hyunjin is so pure! And he dances merging with the music. The body does some amazing kind of magic. Something incredible at all. It seemed to me that he was also quite calm and just insanely cute. Together with this grace, he knows his abilities, his facial expressions, his body language, his state of the character. Owns everything. So it seems to me. Due to the fact that high-touch passed very quickly, my memories are completely blurred. Very sad because of this. And I’m sad because we didn’t say anything to each other but thanks; Hope we will meet again someday.

Jisung is like sparkles. Like the wind and like fire. So admirable. So sunny and so damn open-hearted. Like your best friend from childhood. Sure that he is not that simple, but he exactly does not try to be someone else on the stage. My memories are so bad, dear God...But if I am trying to remember, then there was a feeling that he was expecting something else from STAY. Maybe some crazy stuff or something weird stuff or something like "let's go eat tokpokki together". THAT IS THE PLAN FOR MY FUTURE BY THE WAY

Felix is industrious Australian maaaan. Damn Swag with freckles. When he was on stage I saw the guy who put a lot of effort in order to stand there and do what he likes and what he wants. His Korean is so good. And dance skills and of course the voice. On high-touch I caught myself on the thought that I don’t want to let off his hand. That’s the thing! <3

Seungmin - dandy BOY. He seemed to me like a very open and responsive friend. Very sincere and natural. If I had the opportunity not to hesitate in realizing at high-touch, I would start jumping as he hopped on songs of Day 6. Not for laughing at him but for laughing with him ~

Jeongin is such a kid! A little ball of fur! I want to note that he became much more confident in himself. Absolutely charming and adorable guy. He really enjoys being on stage among a large number of people. At least so it seemed to me. At high-touch... I’m scared that I don’t remember our touch of views. It’s so sad and so SAD. Really sad. Wanted to say to him that he is on his way and STAYs will help him with all his starts and new beginnings.

So Stray Kids is my fav korean band. I also love Big Bang, B2ST, 4minute, and TVXQ, but SKZ is more than just artists for me. They are like a real family who can understand me and who can support me even we don’t know each other at all. And there are lots of fans, lots of STAYs, lots of people who think just like me, but it’s not so bad, yeah? It’s not so bad to dream far. To dream about being friends with someone who you admire with. Maybe someday we will sit down close to each other and have a small talk about past concerts, about lost memories, about nothing and about everything.

Sorry for that kind of dreams. But I’m a dreamer and who are not? ~

#StrayKids #Stray Kids #StrayKidsMoscow #StrayKidsInMoscow #Stray Kids han #Stray Kids Chan #Stray Kids changbin #Stray Kids Felix #Stray Kids Lee Know #Stray Kids I.N.#Stray Kids Seungmin #Stray Kids Woojin #stray kids hyunjin #스트레이 키즈 #STAY #LostMemories #LostDreams

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softstraykidsimagines · 6 years

Text

Foreigner

Summary: How do you tell someone how much you like them? How can you tell that they like you back? And what if they don't like you because of something you can't control? You don't dare to ask these things with Felix, too scared to hear the answer. Little do you know the rest of Stray Kids are here to save the day.

Requested: yes

Pairing: Felix x Reader

Genre: angst, fluff

Word Count: 3.3k

A/N: Fun fact, this was going to be bulletpoint, and less angsty, but my mood went South when I started this so I was like “meh I’ll just change it and let off steam”. But worry not, there is still fluff at the end! :)

I haven’t written a Felix imagine in a while, it was fun writing about this cute bean again...

Also, I am hyped asf for I am YOU omg! The songs sound so amazing and THE CHOREOGRAPHY FOR I AM YOU! MY GOD! I’m gonna have so much fun learning it :D

One final thing, this’ll be my last post for the next week-and-a-half or two weeks? I’m going away tomorrow to see family and it’s gonna be a hectic trip so I won’t have time to post :/ But I’ll be up and running again when Toussaint comes to an end :)

Now, without further interruption, ENJOY!!

MASTERLIST

“GET BACK HERE FELIX OR I SWEAR BY MY LOVE OF KPOP I’LL SKIN YOU”, you shrieked loudly as you chased after the boy, who had taken your food. “YOU DO NOT TAKE MY LUNCH AND EXPECT TO LIVE A HAPPY LIFE!”

Felix cackled loudly as he leapt over a couch of the backstage room, only just avoiding your swinging arm. “Come on, y/n! You can’t even let your good friend have a bite of your meal? You’re way more cruel than I thought”.

Your heart made a squeezing feeling in your chest at the word ‘friend’, but you didn’t show it on your face, which was still twisted in an angry scowl, but now held a slight smile. “Give me back my foOD, AUSSIE BOY!”

Suddenly, Woojin appeared out of nowhere, grabbing you by your waist and hoisting you over his shoulder as you screamed in surprise. “Now now, that’s no way to speak to each other, kids”. Felix snorted at the mock motherly tone the eldest was making.

You groaned. “I’m not the one who took Felix’s food. You should be carrying him around”. You didn’t bother keeping the indignant tone out of your voice. You were good friends with the group Stray Kids, thanks to your close friendship with Felix. You winced inwardly again, knowing you’d most likely only ever be Felix’s friend.

Changbin walked in and leaned against the door frame, sniggering. “You can’t blame us, y/n”. He pouted. “We get starved, we need some form of nourishment to stay alive”.

You rolled your eyes. “Whatever. Can I please have my food back?” You spoke in a strained but polite tone, directed at your Australian friend. He grinned at you and gave you the little packet of food, which you immediately started munching on, despite still hanging over Woojin’s broad shoulder. Everyone laughed at your actions, and you felt warmth flood through you. These boys were like a second family to you. You could always tell them anything you wanted, without being afraid of judgement. You were forever grateful for their kindness towards you.

But of course, one boys out of the nine had become more than a best friend to you. Felix, with his dumb jokes, cute accent when he struggled with his Korean, and determination to always work hard, had captured your heart and made you fall hard for him without even realizing it. You couldn’t even feel resentment for the fact that he was totally oblivious about your feelings for him. You were head over heels for the boy, but there was a problem that you didn’t see an answer to.

Unlike Felix, unlike every one of the boys in the room at present, you were not Korean. One could argue that Chris and Felix weren’t Korean themselves, but the boys had Korean ancestors and names, while you were just...you. No korean blood whatsoever.

As Woojin put you down, you felt your spirits drop as well. You excused yourself from the room, telling the boys that you should let them prepare for when they went on stage to perform. Felix waved and called as you left: “I’ll look for you in the crowd! Try to stay to the right of the stage so I can find you easier!” You smiled and nodded, regretting every time you’d chickened out of confessing to the adorable boy.

+++++++++

As you waited for the performance to start, the room started crowding up little by little. Soon the entire front of the stage was packed with fans, all cheering for Stray Kids. You swelled with pride for your friends, seeing the impact they had. After a few minutes, the room lights dimmed and music began to play.

You smiled through the whole performance, your eyes glued onto Felix as he danced or rapped his part. At some point, he came to your side of the stage, obviously trying to keep his word and find you in the ocean of people.

As he got closer, his eyes scanning the crowd, a girl next to you screamed loudly. “I LOVE YOU FELIX! CAN I BE YOUR GIRLFRIEND?!”

You scowled, you hands over your ears, at the girl. She shouldn’t say that to him. You found it rude and unnecessary. However Felix, not wanting to disappoint the fan, waved and smiled back politely, leading to the girl screaming again, making you cringe even more away from her.

Then, Felix’s eyes landed on yours and his smile widened into a genuine one. he waved his hand a little more vigorously, before running back to center-stage to finish the song. The rest of the performance went by smoothly.

+++++++++

You stood outside of the Stray Kids changing room, waiting patiently for the boys to finish changing back into more comfortable clothes to go back home.

Jisung was the first to walk out, and he smiled happily at you. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

You beamed back at him. “I always do!”

His smiled suddenly became cheeky. “I know. As long as Felix is on stage, you’ll always like our performance. In fact, the rest of us could completely disappear from the stage and you probably wouldn’t even notice!”

Your face became extremely hot as you eyes widened to the size of tennis balls. “What’s that supposed to mean?!” You couldn’t stop the panic from escaping in your voice. “I love watching every one of you. You wouldn’t be Stray Kids if you weren’t nine”.

Jisung laughed. “You’re not wrong there”. He became more serious again. “You don’t think all of us have noticed by now how you look at him? You give him a look like he could never do any wrong in the world, even if he does“. You knew he was talking about Felix stealing your food earlier. He continued. “If you don’t say anything soon, the rest of us will, because we’re pretty sick of how oblivious you’re both being”.

Your heart leapt uncomfortably. “You wouldn’t”. Now the fear in your voice was quite plain. “You can’t. He doesn’t like me back anyway”,

Jisung tipped his head to the side. “What makes you think that?”

Before you could even take a shaky breath to answer, the door opened and eight other boys filed out, Chan in the lead and others babbling loudly behind him. You quickly realized that they were all complaining about how hungry they were.

“But Chan HyuuunnnnggGGGGGG”, whined Seungmin. “The store is on the way home, we wouldn’t even have to take a detour”.

Chan sniffed, obviously not impressed with the members’ behavior. “Absolutely not. We can all wait until we get back to the dorms. Then we’ll make something, okay?”

“But that’ll take ages”, chipped in Minho as the others groaned loudly. “Can’t we at least buy some snacks?”

Chan’s face turned a peculiar shade of purple, as if he was holding in a yell. With sympathy washing over you, you stepped forward. “Umm... I actually have some snacks that could tie you all over until we make dinner”. The boys gave you a shocked look. “I-- I bought them earlier, thinking you’d all be starving at the end of the day. I could even help make dinner tonight, if it speeds everything up”.

You held out the snacks and the boys all took them, thanking you over and over, then stuffing their faces with the delicious treats. Chan took one as well, looking as if he could kiss you. “Thank you so much y/n”, he said with fatigue obvious in his voice. “You’ve saved us from biting each other’s heads off”. You nodded with a smile, glad you could help. When everyone had finished their snacks, you all left the building to clamber into the minibus and head back to the dorms.

+++++++++

After you all piled into the crammed dorm, you immediately offered to make a delicious hot dinner while everyone got ready for the night. With grateful sighs, they all trailed off to change once again into pajamas while you put a large frying pan over the gas with a clang.

You spent a few minutes alone in the small kitchen, mixing a few ingredients, trying your best to not spill or burn anything. Soon you heard comfortable voices coming from the living room, telling you that the boys had all settled down and were talking happily, sounding tired but content.

All of a sudden, you heard Chan voice ring over everyone else’s. “Felix, why don’t you go help y/n in the kitchen. I feel guilty about making them cook by them self, even if they offered to”.

Next came Felix’s indignant voice. “Then why don’t you go help? I don’t wanna get up!”

His question was followed by a few giggles and teasing. Jisung asked something that you couldn’t make out, and the boys burst into a fit of laughter as Felix shushed them in a panic. “Don’t let them hear you!”, he squeaked. “They’ll hate me if they find out”.

You smile disappeared and you started to become uneasy. What had Jisung said? What would make you hate Felix? You swallowed, your throat dry, feeling dread spread through you. Then you heard footsteps approaching and you quickly turned back to the stir fry, which had started to smoke slightly.

As you tried to mix everything around so as not to ruin it, Felix appeared next you, startling you. You hadn’t expected him to actually come and help after what he’d said.

“Careful”, he told you, pushing your elbow closer to you. “You don’t want to burn yourself”.

Your cheeks heated up again as you stared back at him. “Umm, thanks”. You started to pay attention to the frying pan and cursed loudly, making Felix snort. “It’s burning!! Shit, don’t be ruined please!” You tossed the contents of the pan around, praying that the food was still edible.

When you’d managed to make everything look normal again, Felix cut in: “Have you made the ramen noodles?” You cursed again, turning to start making them, but he stopped you. “Hold on, chef. You’re creating enough chaos as it is. I’ll take care of it”. You wanted to retort with a cheeky remark, but you quickly remembered what you’d heard from the living room, and stayed quiet.

As you finished up the stir fry, you focused a bit more on Felix. He was unusually quiet right now. You reminded yourself that he must be incredibly tired after the long day, but you couldn’t stop the voice in the back of your head whispering that he was usually energetic unless he was just about ready to collapse from exhaustion.

When the noodles were ready, you quietly finished preparing the dish and you both took the bowls out to the eight other hungry boys. The rest of the evening was spent eating in a happy silence, and when everyone started yawning, you announced that you were heading home to let them sleep. You exited the dorm to the chorus of goodbyes from the boys. You tried listening out for Felix’s voice, but with a sinking heart, you couldn’t pick it up. So you closed the door with a heavy feeling weighing you down, and you headed home.

+++++++++

A few weeks passed, and the memory of the conversation in the living room faded from your mind. You hung out with Stray Kids when you could, and started feeling more like your normal comical self again. However one day, that memory resurfaced with a new unpleasant one.

You were about to knock on the practice room door, to give Felix and Chan, who had been practicing together for the past couple of hours, when you heard them talking in slightly hushed voices. You knew by the tone in their voices that they were talking about something serious. Without thinking, you pressed your ear to the door.

“You gotta tell them, Jix”, came Chan’s stern voice. “You gotta end this. You’re playing with their heart”.

You felt like your stomach had dropped to your feet. Despite the growing dread inside of you, you kept listening.

“I can’t”, Felix retorted, his voice laced with guilt. “I can’t tell y/n”. You flinched in shock after hearing him say your name. “It’s better if I just leave everything as it is.....” You covered your mouth to muffle a small worried sound, tears pooling slightly in your eyes.

Was he just faking your friendship for some personal gain? You kept trying to think rationally, to reassure yourself that Felix wasn’t like that. He was a kind, sensitive kid who loved joking around with everyone and would start crying if any one of his friends started crying. You knew the Felix who would quote memes, tire himself out just to help as many other people as he could, or would smile like a child when he was with his loved ones. You thought you the Felix who’d try to steal your food, who would text you random thoughts at 2 in the morning, who would smother you in a huge hug whenever he saw you. Was that just acting? What was behind the scenes? You’re mind snapped back to the practice room, where you heard Chan snap impatiently.

“This is serious, Felix! You’re being cruel to them. You may as well lie to their face when you talk to them”. Felix must have replied, but you never heard what he’d had to say. You were already dashing away from the practice room, the hallway blurring around you as you made your way to the elevator.

“Hey, y/n. What’s the hurry?”, called Jisung, who had been walking in the opposite direction. “Wait... are you okay?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Sungie”, you tried to say evenly, but your voice wobbled.

Before you could get much further, Jisung grabbed you and spun you around gently. “You’re crying a river right now. Come on”. He gently pushed you into an empty conference room, closing the door behind him with a snap. “What happened? If there’s any way I can help, tell me”.

You started crying harder now, alone with your friend. What if he was faking his friendliness with you as well? You finally said shakily: “Are-- are you my friend, Jisung?”

The boy looked lost, confused, and hurt. “Of course I’m your friend, y/n. What’s this all about?”

You didn’t answer. “And is-- is Felix my friend?” Your voice broke. You sounded pitiful to yourself. How you break down like this?

Jisung was staring at you with wide eyes. “Why are you asking me this?”

You let out another loud sob. “You’ll think it’s stupid...”

The boy in front of you held your arms firmly. “Y/n. You can tell me. Please?”

You hesitated one more second before blurting: “B--because I’m not Korean!” You suddenly felt how much the thought had been weighing down your mind all this time, and a new stream of tears began. “I heard Chan telling Felix that he had to stop lying to me, that he was being cruel and playing with my heart”. Now you couldn’t stop sobbing between words as you continued. “I-- I also heard him complaining ab--bout helping me cook b--back in the dorms a--a few weeks ago. You said s--something that he didn’t want me to h--hear. Now I think that all this t--time he’s b--been faking being my f--friend”. You stared at ground in shame, waiting for Jisung to respond and wiping away, in vain, a few tears marking your cheeks.

“Y/n...” Jisung sounded at a loss. “I... can’t believe him... that dumb bastard!” You wrenched yourself from his grip, not wanting to hear anymore.

“I don’t want to hear about him, I want to forget him”, you said, your body shaking violently. You backed away towards the door. “I need to go home. I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe”. And with that, you flung the door open and fled into the hallway without looking back.

You sprinted through the streets, not bothering to hide the tear marks on your cheeks, wishing you could run further than to your home, further than to the other side of the planet. You just wanted to disappear...

+++++++++

You sat curled up on the couch, listening to the TV blaring, but feeling like it was a simple background noise as you stared into space, still contemplating what had happened only an hour ago.

You’d made a fool of yourself in front of Jisung, and you felt a grim certainty that he was going to tell Felix about it. You dreaded going back tomorrow, but you had to act as if nothing had happened, so as not to alert the other boys of anything. You couldn’t let this affect your friendship with them.

You drifted into an uncomfortable sleep, shifting between vague nightmares. You scowled as the TV seemed to grow louder. I knew I shouldn't have put it on the action-movies channel, you thought numbly. You opened an eye slightly, and as you returned to a hazy consciousness, you realized with a start that it wasn’t the TV making the loud noises.

Someone was banging loudly on your door.

With a groan, you heaved yourself off the couch and trudged over to your front door, trying to straighten your hair and rubbing any tear marks off your face. As you got closer, you recognized the voice in the hall outside.

“Y/n please open up!” It was Felix. You started to turn away when he spoke again, his voice muffled by the heavy door. “Jisung told me everything. I’ve been an idiot but please, please... just let me explain everything”. You heard the desperation in his voice, making up your mind. You unlocked the door and swung it open, your heart in your throat.

You must have looked horrible, because when Felix laid his eyes on you, he blanched significantly. “I did this to you”, he whispered. And with a shock, you saw his eyes becoming misty with tears. “I didn’t know that I was hurting you so much, I was being stupid and I was too scared to tell you everything, I--” He sniffled. “I should’ve confessed to you earlier”. He looked at the ground and wiped his eyes.

You couldn’t help but feel your heart tear at the sight of Felix upset. You couldn’t help how you felt. You just wanted him to smile. “How can you like me”, you asked, also tearing up again.

He looked back up at you, eyes wide. Before you could continue, he shook his head. “Jisung also told me that you thought I couldn’t like you because you aren’t Korean. Y/n”. He took a step closer, and you stayed where you were, unable to move away. “Where you were born, where you grew up, your nationality, what language you speak, none of those matter to me. You’re you. And that’s perfection to me”.

You let out a weak bark of laughter. This was real. Felix had really said that to you. You couldn’t stop a smile forming on your face. “I’m so stupid”, you said.

“No, I’m the dumb one”, he replied, also laughing slightly. “I should’ve said something instead of scaring you”. He hesitated a moment, then leapt forward and enveloped you in a bone-crushing hug. “In this case, will you go out with me?”

You hugged him back tightly, smiling against his shoulder. “As if you have to ask”. You both stayed like that a while, happy. Then you pulled apart, and you suddenly realized that Felix had a bright red mark on his left cheek. “What on Earth is this?”, you asked incredulously, reaching out, concern in your eyes.

Felix suddenly blushed, so that his hole face was the same colour as the mark. “Umm.... Changbin slapped me when Jisung told me --in front of everyone else-- what you’d said. He said that if stupidity was painful, this is how it would feel”.

You couldn’t help it. You burst out laughing, and soon Felix did too. Once you’d both stopped, leaning against the door frame, he tilted his head to you. “Do you think you could kiss it better? It still hurts”. He pouted slightly, and you rolled your eyes. “Pleeeaaasssseee?”

“Okay, fine”, you giggled, shaking your head. He turned his head to the side and you leaned forward. Just before your lips made contact with his cheek, he turned his head back to face you, and kissed you.

wOW it’s really late rn, but i had to finish this heh

162 notes · View notes

strawberryjmilk · 6 years

Text

under the studio lights | bang chan

anon requested: Hi, hi !! Could I request a Stray Kids scenario or bullet points thingy, of Chan where he's friend with a fellow artist, that lives overseas, and realizes he has feelings for her upon her visiting him in South Korea? Hopefully it's not too specific or confusing, haha. Thank you!

word count: 2437 [i do not own Mystic Messenger - it’s an otome game by cheritz that’s mentioned as a movie.]

actor!reader

He didn't miss you. He didn't - he did not, at all. Not one little bit. Zero feelings of missing you to match how often you crossed his mind - which was never. You weren't in his every day conversations and he never thought of just paying how ever much he needed to so he could see you again.

Bang Chan... was a really bad liar.

That's the first thing you learned about him. You also learned he was touchy - always had an arm around you or the boys; sometimes his hand was clenched in yours. You also learned Chan was naturally pouty and whiny and he talked in third person when he was hungry. Chan was a warm person - physically, mentally, and emotionally. He would shine a pale marigold, inviting anyone in so he could stun them with his smile and capture them in his arms.

Sadly, you also learned how his face looked when it was pixelated. You knew every crackle and sigh he produced over the phone. You knew his furrowed eyebrows meant more than agitation - it meant he was feeling particularly nostalgic and it made him miss you more. You learned more about being away from Chan than you did with him.

You met when you were touring in Korea with your co-stars. Truthfully, it was the first stop, seeing as the movie was based in Korea. You spent days and nights learning Korean, spending your weekends touring the cities until they were carved in your memories. You were the main character in Mystic Messenger - without having to cut your hair to hide your eyes, of course.

Chan had bumped into you when your nose was buried in a language book. Your popsicle fell, and an automatic whine emitted from your throat. The noise made Chan blush, your cute, puffed out cheeks darkening that flush. He apologized and bought you a new popsicle - Chan also seemed to be curious about the music he could hear falling from your headphones.

And that's how you bonded. From classical to hip hop, you talked to Chan about music. You sat in a park, right in front of the convenience store. Chan offered to help you with your Korean - when he spoke English you melted on the spot. He didn't have the thickest Australian accent anymore, but your heart thumped continuously anyways.

It was a cloudy day when things changed. You were freaking out over your script - you had to kiss one of the actors. Even worse, you had to keep kissing them. It wasn't that you were afraid to - you just didn't want to kiss a kind-of stranger. You'd only been filming with them for a few weeks and now you were expected to make lip to lip contact?

"I don't see the big deal," Chan shrugged. You were in his studio, his eyes trained on you as you paced. Grimacing, you scrunched your nose at the curly haired boy. Chan rolled his eyes before slouching back in his chair. "Seriously, Y/N. It's just a kiss."

"Maybe," you sighed. You rubbed your eyes before plopping down in the chair beside Chan, looking down at your fingers. "But I'm not entirely comfortable with kissing someone I barely know. The production team doesn't want to wait any longer, though - they think it'd be best if it's awkward like an actual first kiss."

"Someone you barely know?" Chan raised an eyebrow. You nodded before sighing again. You looked down at the script you held - you liked to memorize lines while Chan worked on his music. "Y/N, you barely know me, but here you are."

"That's different!" You argued. Chan just gave you a look - you licked your lips in thought. "You're different. I don't spend as much time with them as I do with you."

"Then maybe you should start," Chan teased. You grimaced again. It's not that you didn't get along with your co-stars, honestly. It was just that you barely had anything in common and you felt a little like an outsider. "Would it be any different if you kissed me?"

"I don't know," you whined. You slumped further in your seat with a pout, convinced Chan was just teasing you. You crossed your arms over your tummy, ignoring the crinkle from your script.

"Let's try it, then," Chan shrugged. He didn't want you to notice the blush that was spreading across his cheeks and nose. Hopefully, you'd just think it was the glow of the studio. "C'mon, Y/N. You've known me for a less amount of time than you have them. If you can kiss me, you can kiss them. Right?"

"Don't joke around," you spoke after a minute of silence. Chan rolled his eyes, scooting closer so your knees touched his. "I'm serious, Chan! I have to go around kissing random people, that's weird for me!"

"Come closer," Chan sighed. You gazed at him for a moment, eyes narrowing as you tried to figure out his schemes. Chan rolled his eyes again before grabbing the arms of your chair and scooting you even closer. You sat up abruptly, only noticing how close the two of you became when you felt his breath brush against your cheeks. "Is it still weird?"

"A little," you admitted. You gulped down a breath as Chan scooted even closer, his nose touching yours. Your lips parted automatically, almost as if you were preparing yourself for what was to come. "Are you going to kiss me?"

"If you want me to," Chan whispered. You could feel his lips brush against yours as he spoke. Tingles erupted in your stomach, only to be blanketed by the butterflies that occupied them. All it took was a blink before Chan's lips met yours.

It wasn't much - a small peck at most. But, everything changed after that.

"When can you come visit?" Chan whined as he watched you eat. You were on a lunch break, then after you had to meet with press. You looked at Chan fondly before rolling your eyes.

"As soon as I can, Chan," you spoke. You took a sip of the water you were drinking, waving at a co-star as he passed. A sigh came from your phone screen. You watched as the pixelated Chan - who was miles and miles from you - pouted.

"I miss my best friend," he hated saying that. He hated calling you his best friend. It wasn't long after your departure from Korea did Chan realize he wanted more from you. He wanted to hug you, and cuddle you late at night in the studio. He wanted to cook breakfast with you, and take you out for 3 am ice cream. Chan wanted to kiss you - oh, god did he want to kiss you again. "It's mandatory that I see you at least five times a year."

"I was there for a few months to film, Chan," you grinned. Somehow, you always found your eyes drifting to his lips. Whether it was to watch him bite them, or to just see the small dimples he had when he smiled. Chan's lips captivated you easily - Chan held your attention entirely. "I have to go soon, my breaks almost over."

"I'll talk to you tonight, then," Chan said. He smiled, but it was small and sad. You knew he didn't like being far away from you. It was as hard for you to leave him as it was for him to watch you go. "I have to rant about Jeongin."

"What'd he do?" You laughed. You liked to hear about Chan's members. When you first met, you didn't realize Chan was actually famous. His members seemed to keep their distance when you were around - you had a feeling it was because Chan told them to.

"He's just too cute!"

You were back in South Korea. You were finally, finally able to visit Chan. Your suitcases were forgotten in your hotel as you knocked quietly yet relentlessly on their front door. A sleepy Woojin opened up, dopey smile showcasing on his face when he saw you. Without a word, the boy allowed you in and you haphazardly made your way to Chan's room, stumbling over the piles of shoes at the door.

Without knocking, you opened Chan's door slowly and quietly. Changbin looked up from his phone, sending a small grin your way. You walked to the lump of blankets where you could see wild, curly hair sticking out. Sitting down on Chan's bed, you patted his hair gently, grinning when he let out a small groan.

"Leave me alone, Felix," he mumbled. Chan turned to where you could see his face. You began to trace his face lightly as you heard the door shut, signifying Changbin left the two of you alone. Chan's nose scrunched up as you trailed your fingertip down the bridge, poking the end of it. "Felix, stop."

"Stop nagging Felix when he isn't here," you spoke quietly. You didn't want to disturb the peaceful atmosphere - the sun was peeking through the blinds and you could hear the quiet chatter of the boys who were awake. Chans eyes slowly opened, widening slightly when he saw you. "I'm here now, sleepy boy."

Chan sat up and through his arms around your waist before pulling you to lay down with him. A laugh tumbled from his chest as you echoed it. You could feel Chan slightly nuzzle your hair - you only did the same to his chest. Chan sighed happily, "I missed you."

"I know you did," you patted his back as he turned the two of you on your side. You were laying on your left side, right hand ruffling through his messy hair. "I'm here now."

You were at karaoke with Chan - alone. The fact that it was only the two of you made your heart stutter - it didn't help that Chan made sure his members wouldn't interfere. It kind of feels like a date, you shook your thoughts away.

Chan chose the snacks and payed for the room as you chose drinks. Chan only rolled his eyes when you insisted to pay - "you're visiting, Y/N, but you can pay next time if you want." You liked the sound of next time.

Choosing a song took a while. You wanted to hear Chan sing by himself - if you were lucky, he'd rap, too. But, the boy wanted to sing a duet with you. He melted you with his puppy eyes and you were a goner - you grumbled as you stood up to sing a duet with him.

"I forgot how much I liked hearing you sing in person," you spoke up. You were sitting on the couch, eating chips and watching Chan pick another song. He turned and sent you a grin before facing the screen again, fidgeting with the controller.

"I forgot how much I liked you being here in person," Chan shook his head. He let out a laugh before glancing back at you again. "Things are different when you're gone."

"Bad different?" you asked as you quirked up an eyebrow. Chan just shrugged before choosing a song. Instead of singing, though, he sat beside you. Grabbing a chip from your bag, Chan avoided your gaze.

You took the time to study Chan in the dimmed lights, the only way to see being provided by the karaoke screen. He was taking a sip of the water he'd bought, completely oblivious to your stares - at least, you hoped he was. You bit your lip, being reminded of how it felt to have his lips against yours. It was maybe 2 seconds long, but Chan's kiss plagued your mind and tattooed itself to your memories.

Chan turned his head to meet your gaze after he set his bottle down. He tilted his head, and that's all it took. You surged forward, knocking your hands against his thighs. It didn't matter though, you'd already hit your target. Your lips were hastily making themselves home on Chan's, barely acknowledging that he was kissing you back.

"I'm sorry," you spoke. You pulled back quickly - you didn't even know if he wanted to kiss you again. The thought made your heart twitch sadly, but you would accept it all the same. "I shouldn't have kissed you without your permission. I'm sorry, I'm really sorry."

"Do it again," Chan breathed. His eyes briefly met yours before settling on your lips again. Chan leaned forward, grasping your thighs lightly with his hands. He sighed out, his lips brushing yours and you were reminded of your first kiss with him. "Kiss me again, Y/N."

So, you did. You didn't know who leaned in first - you didn't realize how much it hurt when your teeth clashed with Chan's. It was messy - your hands were tousling with his hair as Chan's hands fit themselves around your thighs and hips. Short breaks were taken to breathe before you dived back in.

"Was it weird?" Chan asked. He was out of breath, but he was still grinning and he had a small glimmer in his eyes. He licked his lips, pulling back only a little to look at you. "Was kissing your co-star as weird as you thought?"

"Everything felt weird after kissing you," you admitted. Chan scrunched his eyebrows - it made you laugh. You wrapped your arms around his neck, tangling your fingers in his hair again. "Nothing felt right when I left. I wanted to come back, but I didn't want to miss an amazing movie opportunity. And, I knew that in the slightest chance you returned my feelings, you'd be upset that I quit the movie. I left South Korea but my mind was always on you."

"Good," Chan grinned. He bumped his nose against yours, kissing you again. Taking a deep breath, he pulled back again. "You're not leaving really soon, right? Because I just got you back and I want you to stay."

"As long as you want me here, that's where I'll be," you said. Chan kissed you again, causing light giggles to emit from your throat. Chan grinned even more, nuzzling his nose into your neck.

Even when you went to his dorm later, your hands remained latched and Chan's eyes stayed on you. Through the teasing, you could still see the glimmer in Chan's eyes, and that helped you ignore it all. A squeeze on your hand, or a hand in your hair - Chan was always there.

this wasnt exactly what you requested, but i hope you still liked it! im trying to get everyones requests done while working on a few series, please be patient with me! you can find more imagines here! thank you for reading, ill see you soon!♡♡

#bang chan scenarios #bang chan imagines #bang chan au #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #stray kids au #kpop au #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #My Imagines

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kitty35 · 6 years

Text

My Character

Bang Chan x Reader

Type - Almost fluff? Not sad, but not romantic. It’s kinda’ just life??

Summary - I sat watching the rain with my sketch book open, ready to be filled with designs and patterns that created something beautiful. Little did I know a guy who walked in liked the vide I gave off and wanted to turn me into a character for his newest story.

Follow up - Take It Slow

~~~

I had my sketchbook out in front of me while working on a new idea for my next project. After deciding I wanted to get away form the rush of life-where everything went fast and no one stopped-I had decided to visit my favorite little coffee shop. It was quiet and small with warm lighting and kind people. I chose to sit in the far corner at a booth that was pushed up against the widow. It had been raining since morning and didn’t look to be letting up any time soon. The rain brought colder weather, and I was glad I grabbed my over sized bomber jacket. It had a fabric hood that kept my hair dry when I first came in. A simple graphic t-shirt was underneath it and a pair of vintage, high-waisted, skinny jeans adorned my legs. My hair laid against my shoulders as I pushed it out of my eyes.

My focus was ever shifting from the people out side to my drawing to the people inside. One to the next to the last before starting the cycle over again only to repeat and repeat, not even realizing myself what I was doing.

“Here you go, one hot chocolate with marshmallows!” A girl who went to my college said, handing me a cute eggshell colored cup with my drink. “I made sure to put extra marshmallows in and toasted them for you.” She winked at me with a smile as I chuckled and smiled back.

“Thank you!” My voice was soft as I took the plate that the cup was on form her hands.

“If you want anything else, just gave me a wave.” She then left me to my drawing and drink. Turning back to my sketchbook, I began to half heartedly draw as I let my thoughts flow through my brain to my hand which I then transferred to the blank paper.

I’m not sure how long I had been there, my drink half full and now cold, my sketchbook two pages less empty then before I entered the restaurant. The thing that brought me out of my trance was a guy tapping my shoulder. Turning to look at him, he began to speak after knowing he had my attention.

“Can I sit there?” He asked, pointing to the seat across from me. His voice held an Australian accent that melted my heart. I nodded and smiled, thinking that he seemed like a nice boy. He took a seat and pulled out a notebook.

“Can I ask you something?” Our eyes meet.

“Sure.” I smiled, leaning in towards him as my arms crossed on the table.

“Can I make you into a character in my book?”

“Pardon?” My head tilted to the side as he chuckled.

“I saw you drawing and found you very aesthetically pleasing so I wanted to model you for one of my characters.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“Okay, can I ask you a few questions?”

“Of course.” He smiled at my already smiling face and began to pull out other papers from his bag. Deciding I could draw another time, I put my sketchbook away.

“Did you order anything to drink or eat?” I asked him as he set up. Briefly glancing up, he looked slightly taken aback by my question.

“No, I was going to but I didn’t know how long you’d stay here and I didn’t want to miss my chance to talk to you.” Nodding, I turned and called out to the girl who worked here. In a few seconds, she was at the table.

“Ooo~ Got a cute date I see?” She asked in a playful tone as I giggled. “What can I get you?”

“Oh, I’ll just have a black coffee please.” The boy ordered and she nodded before turning to me.

“I’m not getting anything, but I am paying for him.” I smiled and she nodded again and walked away.

“So…Can I know the name of the cute girl who is paying for my drink?” He asked, still looking for a few more papers.

“Depends, can I know the name of the cute boy who is interviewing me?”

“I’m Chan, or Chris. Which ever one you like.” His smile light up the room, making me reflect his expression.

“I’m (Y/n).”

“It’s nice to meet you (Y/n).” He said, looking up at me before his eyes went back down. “Ah~ Here it is!” The quiet happiness in his voice when he found the paper was cute and made me want to chuckle at his child like nature. “These are some pretty personal questions. Are you sure you’re okay with answering them to a stranger?” Scanning the paper, his eyes shifted up to look at me and gage my response fully.

“Of course I’m fine with it. If I wasn’t then I wouldn’t have said yes in the first place.”

“Okay, let’s get started. What are you scared of?”

“Manikins.” Was the first word to fall off my tongue.

“What?” He laughed out.

“No, no, no, hear me out. Those things are creepy! They are made to look human and they do! It’s a thing in the human brain, I forget what it’s called, but basically it signals if something is alive or not. This is why we find more mechanical robots cute and funny while almost realistic ones are weird. This kinda’ crosses over to manikins for me. They’re just weird.” Pausing, I realized what I just said. “You probably didn’t care about any of that.” I chuckled, sheepishly rubbing the back of my neck and looking down.

“No! That was perfect!” Noticing he was writing some of this stuff down, I stopped being so embarrassed about my explanation.

“Okay…” He said slowly as he finished scribbling down words only to look back up at me.

“What would you make a scene about in public?”

“I’m not sure…Probably if someone was abusing another thing or person.” For everything I said he wrote it down, shortening it so he could finish looking down and ask the next question.

“What would you give your life for?”

“Maybe my family…Yeah, family.”

“Here’s your coffee.” My friend said, placing the drink down as Chan smiled at her. She then left.

“Okay, and what are some major flaws you have?”

“I’d say I can be to nice and in my own world. I’m also oblivious to flirting. I work to hard or not at all. Things of that nature.”

“What are you reluctant to tell people?”

“What I’m actually feeling.”

“Are you in a relationship?”

“Currently, no.”

“Do you like guys or girls?”

“I like guys.” I laughed.

“You never know now, I had to ask.” He smiled back.

“Well, what about you? Do you like guys or girls?”

“I like girls.” He chuckled. “Okay, back to the questions. What is something you do that other people don’t?” I actually had to think for a second. Leaning back, I looked out at the window to see the people passing.

“I watch people. Let me explain this one too. I had a hard time growing up after I moved. It felt as if I should be able to be a kid, yet I was stuck in this depressing place. I lived like that for a few years.” Hearing his pencil scratching against the paper, I knew he was writing what I was saying. “I then began to go out side and just watch. I watched as people walked, as they ran or rushed to get to whatever or where ever they wanted to be. It wasn’t long after that where I really decided to pick up drawing. I drew everything I saw and for once, while in my own world, I felt happy. I’m not sure why I still do it. Maybe it’s because I know what it’s like to step back and see how rushed life is, how everyone wants the next thing before they even have the first. They want the relationship with out knowing the person. They want the raise with out even having the job. It’s just…I don’t even know what I’m saying at this point.” I laughed at my self, shaking my head at my stupid thoughts.

“No, keep going.” Chan said. Looking up at him, I saw his eyes sparkling with wonder and aw as he looked at me. So I did. We both talked about life and how we thought things should be different till the place closed.

“Hey, you two need to leave in a few minutes.” A random person told us. We looked around and realized no one was there anymore.

“Of course, we’ll leave as soon as we get everything packed.” I smiled as Chan packed up everything. The rain had stopped just a few minutes ago and the sky was dark. The air smelled of the water that had just fallen from the sky and it relaxed both of us.

“Do you mind if I ask for your number? I want to know you better.” Chan asked as we began to walk to my apartment.

“Yeah, you seem nice enough.” A smile spread across both of our faces as I put my number in his phone.

“It’s nice being able to talk to some one who thinks the same way as I do.” I quietly said once further down the path home.

“Yeah, normally people tell me to keep it in my writings or just to not talk about it.”

“Yeah.” I stopped in front of my building. “This is my stop.” I smiled and he raised an eyebrow.

“Same here.”

“Really? What floor?”

“3.”

“Oh, yeah, I live on 12.” I said as we walked in and went to the elevators.

“You must have an amazing view up there.”

“Yeah, it’s really calming to watch the cars go by at night.”

“I might need to join you some time.” He joked around as the elevator opened to his floor.

“You really should.” I smiled at him. He turned to me, holding the elevator while saying one last thing.

“You’ll make a great character.” We laughed.

“Thanks. I’ll see you around.” Smiling, he nodded then let the door close. Once the small room started to move up, I placed a hand over my heart. I knew he would turn out to be more than just an author who liked my style.

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nohcrms · 6 years

Text

what’s your name/alias?

buffy ! like buffy summers. i used to go by something else, but it started to become very common and things got confusing for me, haha.

what’s your timezone?

my timezone is PST, but that’s pretty much meaningless since i basically live on an australian clock due to working long night shifts.

which character are you applying with?

genevieve ‘neve’ channing !! she’s an experienced er nurse and leader of the bergan mercy hospital camp. she has a siberian husky named robocop and a penchant for being too hard on herself.

how did you stumble upon Heartland?

i’ve known rachel for a long time and it goes without saying that i’d follow her to the ends of the rp earth. also the promo graphics are sexy af.

what’s your favorite zombie apocalypse movie/show/book/etc?

ah, well, i’ve always been sort of a zombie nerd. night of the comet is like ... one of my favorite movies of all time. like a few other folks, i love the dawn of the dead remake--and sarah polley’s character is like ... top notch. i was super into twd comics and then hated the show, but was eventually won over due to peer pressure. recently i started watching ftwd and that’s good as well. in terms of more classic media? i love dead alive, any romero movie pre-land of the dead ( which i might be the only person alive who is fond of that movie even though it’s bad, okay? ), fulci’s zombie 2, the stand, a boy and his dog ... i’ve got a guilty pleasure for the resident evil movies/games. and what gamer doesn’t love tlou? there’s also a post-apocalyptic book series called dies the fire, which is set in like oregon/idaho. i liked the first book quite well, but lost interest in the second or third when the novelty of having something set in oregon wore off. the return of the living deads are cool. and there’s like a bunch of twilight zone episodes dealing with the apocalypse that are pretty sweet. i’m sure there’s easily dozens more, but this list is so long already and i’ve already accidentally combined zombie apocalypse and regular apocalypse. whoops.

how well would you do in a zombie apocalypse?

yikes !! call me out as the asshole who thinks they’d do pretty well ( relative to the situation of course ). in the event i didn’t die immediately in the hospital ( because where else do you have the greatest concentration of early infected, right? ), i think i’d fare a decent shot tbqh. i’m an er nurse, i used to be an archaeologist before that. i work out, am a decent enough shot, and live close enough to some wilderness that i could probably make a go of it.

what would be your preferred weapon?

i like a gun, but they’re noisy and they draw out the dead unless you have a silencer. i’m keen on range weapons like bow/arrow or sniper rifles, but they require more skill than i think i have? i’ve probably go for a lighter weight melee weapon like a kukri/machete and like a smith & wesson 9mm like the M&P 9 shield or something. basically, a handgun with more common ammo that’s lightweight and easily concealed ( how many times do you get asked to give over your weapons on twd/ftwd only to really regret it later ?? ).

if you lived in the Heartland universe, which camp would you pick to live in?

i’m so predictable. i would absolutely pick the hospital; it’s like my home away from home. short of that, i’d go with the costco--your girl loves a free sample.

which position would you pick?

despite my choice for neve, i would not be fond of leadership unless i didn’t think there was anyone else worth following? i’d be a medic, but i’d be down to run some guard duty shifts or help out wherever was needed.

what’s your local grocery store chain called? (this is purely for the admin’s benefit bc i’m weirdly obsessed with grocery stores lmao)

we have so many !! we have winco, which is like the inexpensive, warehouse-y place i get most of my groceries. then safeway, which is really overpriced despite somehow always attracting the sketchiest folks in town. fred meyer, which i’m fond of for things i can’t get at winco. we also have a costco, a trader joe’s, and a couple health food stores that are locally run. also !! i love food 4 less, which is the best place to get inexpensive authentic mexican food ingredients.

#heartland.talk #⚕️ . ˚ ◝ –––––– ❛ godly as a child’s shriek ` spiderlike I spin mirrors ❜ / ooc.

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hashtagartistlife · 7 years

Text

Clocking in at 6000+ words, this is about double the size of the other chapters. What can I say, I love writing Ichigo’s pov. Once again, thanks to my partner in crime @mizulily for the beta and the wonderful heartbreaking ending sequence suggestions.

Title: Cyclical

Summary: In a peculiar twist of fate, Rukia dies, but Ichigo endures. A century later, she’s the reincarnated headstrong human teenager and he’s the long-suffering shinigami who sort-of-accidentally may have transferred his powers to her. Some things are different. Some things are the same. And some things, it seems, will never ever change. Chapter 5: Ichigo and Good Luck are kind of not on speaking terms. Ichigo and Good Luck are kind of maybe embroiled in a bitter feud that spans decades. Ok, Ichigo hasn’t talked to Good Luck in about a hundred years. Why should things change now, amirite?

Ratings: M

Warnings: none

Archive: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Current Post

Read on ao3 | ffnet

Chapter 5: Compliance

She's not her.

She's not her—

— isn't she?

Missed calls (10 total): Shiba Yuzu (2), Kurosaki Karin (1), Abarai Renji (1), Arisawa Tatsuki (6)

Ichigo winces at the display blinking up at him and unlocks his phone with a resigned swipe. He’s perched on a treetop, out of sight of normal and spiritually gifted mortals alike; unless human beings have evolved in the past hundred years to have night vision, he’s pretty damn sure nobody will be interrupting him any time soon. He's less sure about the prospect of discovery by a member of the afterlife, but he figures that if nobody has come for his ass by now, a couple more hours either way isn't going to make a difference.

He stares at the phone in his hands, contemplating who to call first. None of the options are entirely appealing. Still, there was nothing to be gained by hiding out in a tree and just looking at his phone all night.

He groans and hits dial on the first number in his missed calls list. Yuzu isn't exactly what he would call the best option out of the bunch, but he'd rather her than, say, his Vice Captain. He’ll get to her later. Much later.

“Shiba Residence, Ai speaking. How may I help?”

Ichigo stifles a curse at the unfamiliar voice coming down the line. Shit. He'd forgotten about this. Yuzu wasn’t just his baby sister that he could call up at his whim anymore. Hurriedly, he drops his voice two tones and adopts a foreign accent before speaking.

“Uh, yes, uh, is Lady Shiba available to speak—?”

There's a gasp on the other end of the line. “Kuro— Kurosaki-dono? Is that you? Lady Shiba has been trying to get in touch with you all day—”

“Who— who is this Kurosaki you are speaking of, I am not him—”

“Hold on one moment, Kurosaki-dono, I'll put Lady Shiba on the line right away— LADY SHIBA! IT'S KUROSAKI-DONO ON THE LINE FOR YOU! LADY SHIBA—”

Ichigo takes the phone away from his ear and swears. This was exactly what he'd been trying to avoid.

“LADY SHIBA—”

“Ai, did you just say Kurosaki? Gimme that for a sec— hey, firework brain, you are so screwed—”

“Kurosaki? Why’s that little shit calling at this hour of the night—”

“Ganju-niichan, Kuukaku-neesan, be nice! Onii-chan? Onii-chan, is that you?”

“Yuzu.” Ichigo latches onto his sister's voice with all the fervency of a starved man at Hikifune’s table. “Please, for the love of god, for the love of me, please get yourself a private phone. Blackmail Urahara. Take it out of the Eighth’s budget. I don't care. Just, please let me contact you normally without the whole household knowing.”

The esteemed Lady and Second Head of the newly resurrected Shiba Clan frowns at the phone. “Onii-chan, that's not the important thing here—”

“It's important to me!”

“Onii-chan,” Yuzu says severely, “What have you done?”

“N-Nothing!” he protests. She doesn't buy it.

“Then why did Tatsuki-nee call me three times today demanding to know where you were?”

“... ok, so something might’ve happened,” he admits. Yuzu sighs. “Look, Tatsuki didn't tell you anything about what's going on? You don't know what's happening?”

“Only that you're supposed to be in Australia now, and that clearly something has gone wrong,” she says tiredly. “Look, onii-chan, I'm glad to hear you're alright, but you better call Tatsuki-nee. She was going out of her mind.”

Ichigo starts mentally making plans for his funeral. “Alright, alright. I'll call her right after this so, uh, don't you go calling her to tell her I called, ok? I'll do it myself!”

“I got it, onii-chan. Say, you're not in trouble, are you? You're safe, right?”

He chooses not to answer that. “Thanks, Yuzu. I'll talk to you later. Bye!” he says, and hangs up. He leans back against the trunk of the tree and rubs the back of his neck, before dialing the next number.

“You,” Karin says when she picks up, “are in so much shit.”

“Tell me something I didn’t know,” Ichigo retorts. “So, uh, what’s happening over there?”

“That’s my question, moron, you’re the one who’s been mia for 12 hours—”

“Don’t call your older brother a moron,” he snaps. He hears derisive laughter on the other side.

“We’ve been through this before. You are still physically only nineteen, while I lived a full human life and came to the Seireitei aged 76, thank you very much. And even now, my physical age is 23. What part of that screams ‘you’re older than me’?”

“The part where I was born before you! And I don’t have time for this. What’s been happening? What have you heard?”

Karin snickers. “Nuh-uh. You’re not getting out of calling Tatsuki-nee. I’m not telling you anything.”

“You are a terrible excuse for a sister, I hope Byakuya drowns you in paperwork—”

“Bye, younger brother!” she sing-songs, and hangs up. Ichigo treats the hang-up tone to a hearty round of cursing before trying the next number. He has to call twice before Renji picks up.

“Ichigo, where have you been—”

“Cleaved in half, trying not to die, thanks,Renji, how's things over there—”

“Trying not to—?! Ichigo, what the fuck? What the hell’s going on in Australia?!”

For the first time since he started dialling numbers, Ichigo hesitates; the words stick in his throat, and he takes care to search for the right ones. In his quest to think of anything but the girl he has spent the better part of the last 12 hours with, he’d inadvertently called the one person he should have avoided the most if he’d wanted respite from the topic of Lucia/Rukia. The fact that the girl they’d found together on their last trip to Australia had been named Lucia is not lost on him.

That’s her, Renji had said, I’d know her anywhere.

There was a time when Ichigo thought the same. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

But Renji’s full of shit, he reminds himself angrily. Surely there is more than one Lucia in the entirety of Australia, and so what if this Lucia was the same one they'd found twelve years ago? Neither of them are Rukia. Is a person still that person when they've lost all traces of their memories, all traces of what made them them? Can this girl, even if she is truly Rukia reincarnated, be called Rukia if she hadn't grown up in the Rukongai, hadn't known Renji and their gang of friends, hadn't met Kaien and Byakuya and known the cold snap of Shirayuki in the back of her mind? What makes a person who they are? What makes Rukia her?

“Hey, asshole!” Renji snaps, and Ichigo shoves his philosophical dilemmas away for another time. “You call me up in the middle of the night after disappearing for 12 hours, ask me what the hell is going on, tell me you've been trying not to die and now you're not gonna answer any of my questions—”

“Sorry, sorry! It's been a long day. I ran into some trouble with Australian border security and a hollow, and I've lost contact with the Australian shinigami. I just need a way to get back in contact with them.”

Renji snorts. “That sounds suspiciously tame compared to the amount of angry calls Ise-Soutaichou has been getting.”

“Look, throw me a bone, would you?” Ichigo says, irritated. “I’ll… go be diplomatic or something with the Australian shinigami, I don't know. Point is, I can’t fix whatever mess it is I left behind if I can’t actually get in contact with them.”

Renji considers this. “You can't find one on patrol or something?”

“Not a damn soul. Plenty of plus that need konso, but shinigami are pretty thin on the ground.”

There's a long low whistle, full of static. “Man. I knew we were lending you out because Australia had a shortage of viable shinigami, but it's that bad?”

“I don't know, Renji, maybe I can find out if you'd actually give me some useful information!”

Renji chuckles in an infuriating way. “Alright, alright. I'll go tell Ise-Soutaichou you've checked in. Stay tight and someone’ll probably call back with instructions.”

“Thanks. Sooner rather than later would be appreciated because I kind of got injured and tried healing it myself.”

Ichigo grits his teeth against the roar of laughter. “You tried kaido on yourself? Ichigo, you know that shit knocks you out cold—”

“I don't want to hear that from someone who can't even heal a papercut!” he responds hotly. So what if he tended to pass out after performing any sort of healing kido? It was better than dying from your injuries. Which was what was gonna happen to Renji if he ever got injured on the battlefield.

Then something occurs to him, and he forces himself to adopt a nonchalant tone to broach the subject. “Oh, by the way, is there any way to get your powers back from someone if you've accidentally given a bit of them to someone else?”

The hearty laughing on the line cuts off abruptly.

“... why do you ask?” Renji says, suddenly serious. Ichigo licks his lips.

“.... No reason. Just— just curious.”

“Ichigo, what have you done—”

“Absolutely nothing. Look, never mind, it was just idle curiosity—”

“Like bullshit it is,” Renji snorts. “Fine, then, if you don't want to tell me. Your fucking skin on the line. As far as I know, short of killing them or shattering their hakusui and saketsu, there's no way to get your powers back.”

Ichigo was afraid of that. “Got it. Hey, while you're at it, do you mind telling Tatsuki that I called and—”

“Oh, no. You're not worming out of that one. I don't want to get into a fight with your fukutaichou on a good day but on days like this? The entire Shiba clan couldn't pay me enough to go near her. You're on your own.”

“What kind of a friend are you?!” Ichigo yells, and Renji just sniggers.

“A smart one. Later,” he says, and hangs up. Ichigo only just represses the urge to throw his phone at the ground. Instead, he takes a deep breath and dials a number not on his missed calls list.

It's not like I'm procrastinating calling Tatsuki, he tells himself, I actually need to make this call.

But in true Urahara fashion, the only thing that greets him after three unsuccessful calls are three annoying ‘leave a message!’ responses, a different one each time. Groaning, Ichigo shoves his phone back into his pocket and contemplates the situation at hand.

Lucia. The girl with her face who may or may not have been Rukia, the girl who saw ghosts.

… The girl he may have accidentally just doomed to death by reaper, if he was any precedent. Is creating a substitute shinigami a class-A crime in Australia, too? Ichigo feels like screaming. Instead, he casts his mind back to his own abrupt transformation; what had happened then? He'd been given powers, he'd wasted that Hollow that had messed with his family, and then he'd fallen unconscious and proceeded to think everything was a bad dream until Rukia'd shown up in his class—

Ah. In short, he would have gone on his merry way thinking everything was a dream if Rukia hadn’t shown up. He could work with this. He'd already erased Lucia’s memories; even if the wiper hadn't worked for some reason, it wouldn't matter. Experienced shinigami could shed their gigai without a gikongan, but without him to push her soul out of her body, there was nothing Lucia’d be able to do on her own. He could simply leave things be, and she'd never be able to become shinigami again. What the Australian reapers didn't know wouldn't hurt them, either. Ichigo could essentially ignore the entire incident, and nothing would happen.

He tries not to analyse why this conclusion bothers him more than it should, and files the whole situation away into a mental drawer marked ‘resolved’ just as his phone starts ringing. He checks the caller ID, and swallows hard.

It’s his Vice Captain. Ichigo briefly contemplates applying for asylum in Australia, before remembering the amount of border security involved. Groaning, he picks up the phone.

“Hi, Tatsuki, look, I can explain…”

Three hours, one verbal chew-out, and several healers later, and Ichigo feels almost back to normal. Tatsuki’s tirade had been interrupted thirty minutes in by a much more reasonable member of the Australian version of Gotei-13, and Ichigo finds, to his great relief, that they've apparently reviewed the security tapes and have cleared him for any criminal charges leveled against him. Of course, they're charging Commander Ise for damages (he'd winced at that), and they were putting him on probational duty for the next month, but all things considered, Ichigo reckons he's been let off incredibly easy.

Which, of course, immediately makes him suspicious. He and good luck are most definitely not on speaking terms about 95% of the time.

“Well, I say probational,” the woman— she'd introduced herself as Mononeeta— sighs in a tone of voice that Ichigo is all too familiar with. Overwork. “The truth is, even with a halved radius of work, you'll be in charge of an incredibly large area of land. As I'm sure you must have noticed already, we're not exactly the most well-manned reaper taskforce in the world. And you're, well, frankly speaking, we did ask for someone with as much spiritual pressure as possible, but you are beyond even our wildest estimations. We're discussing giving you a much larger radius than we'd planned for when your probation is lifted.”

“Not a problem,” he replies, poking at his now much more expertly applied bandages. “I could use the space and distraction, to be honest. I'll be glad to help any way I can.”

Please, please, please keep me busy. Busy enough that I don't have time to think about the substitute shinigami I created today.

“I’m glad to hear it.” Mononeeta visibly relaxes. “You'll get a day off to recover from your injuries and to orient yourself with our system— oh, please don't look at me like that, Benjamin was a special case, I promise we're more competent in other areas— and after that you'll be straight on duty. It shouldn't be very different from what you did in Japan. Eliminate hollows, perform purification for plus.”

“So Benjamin was his name—?” Ichigo mutters, remembering the reaper that had tried to detain him at border security. “He alright—?”

“More than alright.” Mononeeta snorts. “He tried to make a case for battery at the meeting, but we all saw the tapes. Well, OK, so it was technically an ‘unprovoked attack’, but we figure in light of the fact that he'd be dead had he gone, he should be thanking you instead.”

Here, she hesitates a little. “In fact, it seems you came very close to dying yourself. I know the alert was for a level two, Menos Grande, but if it gave you this much trouble….?”

“Oh— oh! No, this was— uh, the hollow was fine, I was just— a little distracted—”

Mononeeta looks skeptical. Ichigo improvises wildly.

“The— the sun on the beach, you see— glare—”

“Well, it's true the sun in Australia is particularly strong.” She seems unconvinced, but has evidently decided to move on; Ichigo swallows a sigh of relief. “Anyway, please focus on recuperating, Mr. Kurosaki. We'd like to have you on duty a.s.a.p.”

“Duly noted.”

Mononeeta nods and moves away; at the last second, Ichigo calls after her:

“Uh, hey? Sorry— what was your name—”

“Mononeeta.”

“Mononeeta. Right. Idle curiosity, but, uh, if you're so understaffed, have you considered any other options of recruiting? Say, like, creating substitute shinigami?”

The moment the question leaves his lips, Ichigo knows he misspoke. Mononeeta’s tired eyes become fierce, and she storms right back up to him to grip his shoulder with a tense hand.

“Substitute reapers—? Do you know something about how to create them—?”

“Not— not at all— I was just wondering—”

“Are you absolutely sure? You haven't heard anything to do with substitute reapers—”

“No!”

“— if you know anything about substitute reapers, if you hear anything at all, you must tell us about it, Mr. Kurosaki. It's of the utmost importance—”

“I— I was only just asking—”

As quickly as she had fired up, Mononeeta deflates.

“Of course. My apologies. But it really is important for us, you understand. Matter of national security. So please be sure to tell us if anything of the sort happens.”

“Of— of course.”

Ichigo forces himself to smile, and after a short moment, Mononeeta is placated. She leaves him with a nod and a wave. Ichigo waves back till he’s sure her reiatsu has faded away a safe distance, before he drops his hand like a stone.

It's a matter of national security—

Fuck.

After the fiasco with Mononeeta, Ichigo had been very careful not to even think about the newly minted substitute soul reaper walking around in the Australian suburbs somewhere. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done when he'd had nothing to occupy his mind for the entire day but settling into his new quarters and familiarising himself with a map of his assigned area. On multiple occasions, he'd caught himself wondering what Rukia— Lucia, goddammit, her name was Lucia— was doing at that moment in time. Probably attending school, judging by how old she'd looked; but then again, she was so tiny that even when she'd been a 150-year-old death goddess she'd often passed for younger than him—

Aaaaand there he was, doing that again. Rukia wasn’t Lucia. He had to stop thinking like this. It would only end badly.

Well, that had been yesterday; today, he'd finally been given something to do. Namely, patrols. He'd thrown himself into his duties with enthusiasm, rising at the crack of dawn to tackle the day, but as the hours went by he'd become increasingly bored. It wasn't just shinigami that were thin on the ground in Australia; it simply wasn't a rich land spiritually. That meant no Hollows, and not nearly enough ghosts to keep him busy, even with the ridiculous amount of land he needed to cover. In Japan, the air was thick with reishi wherever he went, but here, he could finally understand why Vice-Captain and above were required to dial down their power output to 20% while in the gensei. That amount of concentrated reishi in such a spiritually barren land would be a goddamn beacon for hollows.

Ishida would hate Australia, he thinks vaguely, just before his soul pager goes off with a vengeance.

He hardly needs the warning. The murky black reiatsu of the Hollow is a signal flare, and even with his patchy reiatsu tracking he can feel it from across the city. Excited, Ichigo unshoulders Zangetsu and slips into shunpo.

It only takes him a few seconds to reach the source of the commotion; a school, of all things. That was bad, but not catastrophic; he was fairly certain he’d be able to lead the Hollow away. He unleashes his reiatsu, trying to tempt the hollow away from the kids, but it's surprisingly resistant. The Hollow spares him a glance before refocusing its attention on the schoolchildren, and Ichigo curses.

“C’mon, you stupid hollow, come get me, there's nothing for you there—”

Wrong. As if the world itself is hell-bent on contradicting him, a student darts out from the throng, arms waving as she ushers the other kids behind her. Ichigo’s heart misses a beat when he recognises her panicked voice.

“Come on, move! Do you want to die? Is that it?”

“Why the fuck is she here?” he snarls, jumping into action. He swings Zangetsu at the Hollow’s head but it ducks out of the way, and now there's nothing blocking the girl from having a clear line of sight to him.

“You—!”

“Busy!” he yells, cleaving Zangetsu in a vicious arc; the Hollow attempts to block it with an elongated nail, but loses the entire hand in the process. It howls in pain and the rest of the students finally seem to get the memo. They still couldn't see what was going on, but Hollow cries triggered flight responses in about 99% of the human population. The crowd starts scattering, and Ichigo gears up; he needed to finish this quickly, for everyone’s safety.

“Get out of my way!” he roars, and Lucia takes the hint; she performs a neat dive-and-roll out of his path, and Ichigo refines his aim.

“Getsuga—”

Behind him, he doesn't see Lucia snap her head up, her eyes widening with something like recognition.

“— Tenshou.”

Black and red light up the sky.

Overkill? Maybe. But hell if he hadn't needed that; Ichigo feels the reiatsu pumping through his veins and something seems to lift off his chest. He hasn't been able to just destroy things in a while, and picking through crowds and buildings while fighting got old very quickly. Maybe Kenpachi was onto something, and it was therapeutic to duke it out with someone to the death every so often.

His next thought is that he needs to see a shrink, a.s.a.p.

Before he can make a getaway and book that appointment, though, someone grabs him by the collar of his shihakushou; he tips his head back and closes his eyes in defeat. He already knows who it is.

“You—” There’s zero confusion or hesitation in Lucia Greenwood’s demeanor, which would mean that the memory eraser didn't take. Ichigo’s not even surprised. With his luck, he should just assume nothing works for him the way it’s supposed to, ever. “Are you— are you okay? Have you been healed? You didn't get hurt just then, did you?”

“No,” he replies, long-suffering.

“Good,” she says, and then she stomps on his foot.

“Ow— woman, what the fuck—?!”

“Memory erasers,” she parrots, sickeningly sweet, “are fifty different kinds of illegal in the human world. Oh, and you know what else is illegal? Attacking someone in their own house and leaving them passed out, you jerkwad!”

“When human laws cover fighting protocols with giant hell monsters, I'll consider abiding by them.”

“Ghosts don't have a concept of decency, then? Is this any way to treat someone who stopped you from bleeding out on the street?”

“As I seem to recall it, the reason I was bleeding out on the street was because I was trying to save your ungrateful ass from being skewered first.”

Ah. He had her there. She removes her hands from his shihakushou slowly.

“And I thanked you for that,” she says, but she's clearly still feeling guilty. Ichigo doesn't like that expression on her face. It reminds him of an expression that Rukia had worn far too often for his liking.

“Yeah, well, no big deal. I've already forgotten it. We done here?”

“Not a chance.” It seems like her guilt over the first hollow only stretches so far. Her eyes narrow and she grabs onto the sleeve of his uniform again, as if she's worried he's going to bolt given half the chance. (She's not wrong.) “But let’s— let's go somewhere else to discuss this.”

She gestures vaguely behind her, and sure enough, Ichigo sees some of her peers giving her odd looks. The thought hadn't even occurred to him, how bizarre Lucia might look talking to thin air, even though it had been a regular concern for him once, too.

(It had been far too long since he'd been human.)

He considers just ditching her and running, but if memory erasers weren't going to cut it, he had to fix this situation somehow. He sighs and nods, gesturing for her to lead the way. She grabs his wrist and drags him behind her to a destination only she knows.

He doesn't let himself think the nostalgic thought that it was almost like the old times.

She takes him to a park. For some reason, this throws him. He'd been expecting a building rooftop of some sort. The play equipment is abandoned at this hour, and she climbs to the highest platform, the one where the slide starts. She sits, cross-legged, and he squats on the platform just below the one she’s on, feeling intensely out of place amidst the bright plastic.

“Tiff doesn’t remember anything, by the way,” she says frostily. Ichigo sighs. So at least one thing had gone the way it was supposed to.

“Good. Neither should you, by the way,” he retorts, and the dirty look she throws him is Kuchiki-worthy.

“Too bad. So now that you can't get rid of me, are you going to explain things properly? What happens to me now? Am I dead? Am I not dead? Do I get to join your little hell monster fighting club?”

“No, yes, no. Look, nothing happens to you now. The powers were a temporary thing. You don’t…. You don’t have them anymore. You just go on with your life like you used to.” A lie, but she didn’t need to know that.

Lucia raises an eyebrow. “I don’t have the powers anymore?”

“Nope. They’re gone, kiddo. No more monster fighting for you.”

“Huh.” She uncrosses her legs and scoots over. She’s right up in his face and Ichigo would back away if he wasn’t instinctively aware that that would be a sign of weakness that she’d exploit to hell and back. “Then why can I still do this?”

She snaps her fingers, and a tiny, glowing ball of reiatsu manifests between them, before exploding in a shower of sparks.

Ichigo opens his mouth, thinks of nothing to say, and shuts it.

“So, I have a proposition,” Lucia says, looking inordinately smug. “Let me help you.”

“No,” he snaps on autopilot. This was bad— this was very bad. How the hell was he going to shut her up now? No, no, even before that— how the hell had she managed to work out, in the span of a day, to manipulate the new reiatsu inside her to that degree of precision? That was the beginnings of kido that he’d just seen; enough to earn her instant admission into Shin’ou Academy. It wasn’t something a human girl with zero previous interactions with shinigami could do.

Rukia’s always been good at kido— he remembers, before squashing the thought down. This was not the time.

“No?”

“No,” he repeats, placing a hand on the hilt of his sword. He tries to make his expression as menacing as possible. There was nothing for it— he’d just have to scare her into keeping quiet. “Do you know what the protocol is for human girls who retain power that they shouldn’t be retaining?”

She doesn’t look remotely menaced, which doesn’t do much for Ichigo’s confidence. “Do tell.”

Ichigo lets black bleed into his sclera. His smile curves up a little more than it probably humanly should.

“We kill them.”

She tips her head to the side, scrutinising him with calm eyes. “You know, I don’t think you will.”

Ichigo splutters. “You don’t know my life! I could kill you a hundred different ways in the next thirty seconds—”

“I don’t doubt that you could,” Lucia clarifies, smirking. “I just don’t think you will.”

“You’re awfully confident for someone who’s about to have a sword at their neck—”

“So, do it.” She shrugs. “You wouldn't have gone to all that trouble to save me just to kill me now.”

In response, Ichigo draws his sword and lunges at her.

He sees her eyes widen fractionally in the instant before his arm goes around her waist, and allows himself a grim moment of satisfaction. Then Zangetsu is clashing with a scaled tentacle in the space where she'd been just a millisecond ago, and Ichigo forces himself to concentrate on the fight.

The pager at his hip goes off belatedly. “Fuckers! One hundred years and they still can't make soul pagers that work!”

“Run!” he adds to the stupefied girl, hanging half-on-half-off the play equipment.

“But what about you—”

“This is my job, not yours! Scram—”

Another tentacle comes for her, and Ichigo blocks it with his other sword; Lucia seems to realise the severity of the situation, and takes off. But instead of turning its attention back to Ichigo, the Hollow makes to follow her. Ichigo doesn't understand; he's not hiding his reiatsu anymore, and even currently capped as it is at 20%, it should be more than enough to make the Hollow pay attention. Sure, Lucia can see ghosts, which means she's got some reiatsu, but by comparison he should be a far more rewarding target for the Hollow—

Except. Realisation hits Ichigo like a freight train and he hastily casts out for Lucia’s reiatsu. He can’t feel any of her own, but there’s plenty of his, burning like a furnace just under her skin. In the desolate spiritscape of Australia, she might as well have thrown up a flashing neon sign that said EAT ME.

Idiot. Idiot. Lucia was walking Hollow bait, and it was all his fault.

“Fuck!” Ichigo doesn’t actually swear all that often, but ever since arriving in Australia, he feels it’s been abundantly justified. Lucia throws a look back his way, and it costs her; the Hollow trips her up and she falls on her face.

“Fuck!” Ichigo’s had it up to here with the cosmic unfairness that is his life. He doesn’t have time for some bullshit lower-level Hollow. He skewers it from behind, feeling viciously gratified at the sensation of steel through bone, and offers Lucia a hand up as it dissolves into thin air.

She takes it shakily. “See? Knew you couldn’t kill me,” she jokes, but there’s not much mirth in it.

Ichigo scowls. The only other way to take his powers back from Lucia apart from killing her was destroying her saketsu and hakusui; but he knows from experience how painful and traumatic that could be. There was no guarantee that she’d survive the procedure, either. Lucia was stuck with her— his— powers, either till she died or he could figure out a way to safely get them back. And with Urahara out of the picture, who the hell knew when that might be?

It didn't look promising. Ichigo curses a little more under his breath, before turning to the girl who is dusting her knees off like nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

“You alright?”

“More or less.” She’s a little paler around the eyes, and there’s red grazes on her knees, but otherwise, she looks unharmed. “You?”

“Fine.” They scrutinize each other a little while longer, both a little unsure of what to make of the other.

“You still wanna…. help with this monster fighting gig?” Ichigo asks eventually; even though he phrases it as a question, it’s pretty much the only recourse left for them. If Lucia couldn’t be rid of his powers, and they were going to keep attracting Hollows to her, the only thing he could do is either tail her around and protect her himself for the rest of her life—

— or he could teach her to fight.

She fires up at that. “Yes.”

“Why?”

She seems stumped by the question; she blinks, and her hand gestures vaguely. “Well, uh, you know—”

“This isn’t a fun day job. This isn’t some sort of live-action videogame where you earn points for every monster you kill. You could die— you could kill. You already have, once, and you were horrified at the idea. Why do you want to keep going?”

“It’s exactly because of that that I want to help,” she snaps back. “How do I— how do I go back to everyday life after knowing— all that? After knowing that the nice ghost on the corner of the street and the seven-year-old ghost that comes to our garden sometimes and the elderly grandmother ghost that likes to sit under the shade of my local park might get turned into one of those— those things that you keep fighting? That they’ll meet their end impaled on a swordpoint? You said there was a way to send them on before— all that. Before they get turned into monsters. I’m not— I’m not the kind of person who can just ignore all that just because it’s not happening right in front of me. If there’s a way, then— I want to help.”

Whether it’s in front of you or far away, it doesn’t change the fact that they are being attacked! A shinigami has to treat all spirits equally. You cannot conveniently save those you can see, those you can reach!

He closes his eyes and lets out a slow breath through his mouth. Different, different, but so achingly the same— the same face, the same voice, the same demeanour. The same determined expression, fervent with her convictions. Mental flower petals fall to the floor; she’s Rukia, she’s not Rukia, she’s Rukia, she’s not—

He was going to regret this. He was going to regret this so hard.

But what other choice did he have?

“O.K,” he acquiesces through gritted teeth. “I’ll teach you to fight. To do this shinigami gig properly. But in return, one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You don’t ever use your powers when I’m not around, or when I haven’t explicitly given you permission. You don’t tell anyone that all this is happening, either. Got it?” That would take care of the need for secrecy for now. It was a temporary stop-gap, but it was better than nothing.

Lucia looks as though she might complain, but Ichigo hits her with his best glare and she wisely decides to pick her battles. “Done.”

“Fine. We’ll start tomorrow, then. Uh, you’ve got school, right? After school, then. 5pm? You pick a place. I’ll be able to find you.”

“Got it. Is there anything in particular I should be bringing to these sessions or…?”

“No. I’ll prepare everything. Just make sure you don’t have anyone tailing you, or anything.”

“Right.”

“Yeah. Well, if you haven’t got any other pressing questions, I’m going to take off—”

She stops him with a hand around his wrist. “Wait— wait. How do I know you’re not just abandoning me and that you actually are going to turn up tomorrow—?”

Ichigo doesn’t know what instinct it is that draws him to rummage around in his shihakushou at that question; he doesn’t understand why his hand closes around that particular artifact, wooden edges worn smooth after years in his possession. He understands even less why he hands it to her; a girl he hardly knows and has only just met. Practically, the item has very little value; Lucia frowns a little as she takes it from him. But it is, perhaps, one of the most important material items he owns, just after his swords.

“What’s this…?” Lucia asks, fingers tracing the patterns carved into the wood quizzically.

“It’s a substitute shinigami badge,” he replies, and she visibly starts. He can see the questions teeming in her gaze, suddenly relentless on him, but despite her palpable curiosity, she does not ask a single thing. “It’s— it doesn’t look like much, but I like it. I’ll want it back off you tomorrow, so you keep it as collateral for now. Happy?”

“.... it will be acceptable,” she says primly. He nods.

“You should get back to class, then,” he says, suddenly remembering that she’d more or less run out on the school day. Lucia shoots him a look as if to say ‘Really?’ but he won’t budge on this. Schoolwork was important. “Won’t you get in trouble?”

“I suspect Tiff will be covering for me.” She slips the substitute badge into her bag and smooths the creases in her skirt. “But your concern is duly noted.”

He groans. “Just get going, you.”

“... I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” she says, and despite everything, she looks a little uncertain; Ichigo waves her off.

“Yeah. I’ll find you.”

“You better.”

“Do you ever let anyone else get the last word?”

“Not if I can help it.” She grins, and sprints off; Ichigo watches her go, doing his best to keep her figure from blurring into another from his memories. He doesn’t like seeing her back. The flower petals keep falling, she’s Rukia, she’s not Rukia, she’s Rukia, she’s not—

As he tears his eyes away from her retreating figure, the last petal falls to the ground like a revelation he’s not quite prepared to confront; Ichigo shakes his head, and starts making his way back to his quarters.

He only hopes—can only hope, really—that he knows just what he’s gotten himself into.

#Ichiruki #Bleach #Kurosaki Ichigo #Kuchiki Rukia #writer life #Cyclical #EEEEEYYYY UPDATEEEEE #god this was so long im drained #bleach fic

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