t-ara/iu; the best days of our lives {jiyeon/iu}
the best days of our lives.
jiyeon/iu; 2,186 words.
if you love someone, let them know.
a/n: finallyyyy. this took months for me to work out but i love these two so much!♥ dedicates it subtly to firequakes and compatable because they're the best :)♥
Jieun’s always believed that honesty is the best policy.
Telling lies has never done anything for her but get her in trouble, like the time she snuck kimchi and then lied when her mom asked her about it. In the end she was the one kneeling in the living room with her arms held high, aching all over. But what she feels for Jiyeon isn’t something she can even tell the truth about, because in truth, she doesn’t even know what she wants to say, or how to say it.
She’s not particularly close to Jiyeon, other than when they eat at the same table during lunch because they have the same friends, or when they’ll sometimes chat during class about homework. Jieun usually has singing and choir after school while Jiyeon’s in almost every sport team she can be on. Once in a while, Jieun catches her in the gym while she walks by. Every time she does she ends up staring, jaw slack, as Jiyeon throws her opponent onto the mat. It looks so easy with her - one hand on their shoulder and one hand behind their knee and then - bam - Jiyeon is victorious.
Every single time, she ends up turning away with her cheeks flushed and her heart fluttering and she gets in trouble for singing too fast in choir, because her brain is thinking of Jiyeon’s victorious smile and the sweat trickling down her neck and soaking into her t-shirt. They have to redo the song at least three times before she finally gets it right.
Eventually, she gets up the nerve to ask someone about these feelings.
“Mom?” Jieun slides up to her at the kitchen counter, wearing a t-shirt that falls down over her thighs and all but hides her shorts from view. Her mom’s making kimchi, and the spicy scent clears her nose. “I think there’s something wrong with me.” She holds her shoulders as she leans on her elbows on the counter.
Her mom stops cooking and turns around to look at her, eyebrows pinched and her kind mouth pursed in concern, hands covered in red sause.
“But it’s nothing bad! It’s just, weird. It only happens around this one person and it makes me go all fluffy inside.” Like a marshmallow, she thinks, and bites her lip so she doesn’t laugh at the thought.
Her mom just laughs, shoulders sagging in relief, and turns back to her work.
“You like your friend, don’t you?” She asks, and Jieun watches her shoulders jerk as she pulls kimchi apart.
Jieun considers it for all of a second before she nods, “of course I do.”
“Well, you probably like him as more than just a friend then, dear.”
Jieun blinks at her, and then everything sort of just clicks into place like the last piece of the puzzle has been laid out in front of her.
“Oh!” She all but smacks herself in the forehead, steals some kimchi, and runs upstairs before her mom can make her help.
“Thanks mom!” She calls down the stairs and it’s not until she’s spent at least five minutes looking at the picture of her and Jiyeon on her phone that she realizes her biggest dilemma - her mom said him.
-
Two weeks later, Jieun’s staying late in the choir room, practicing her solo for the upcoming concert. The room is a deserted mess of sheet music and clusters of chairs and music stands, and there’s a drawing on the chalkboard of a dragon burning a village that no one wants to erase. But even though the music room isn’t perfect, she loves it in a way so much different from her bedroom at home - it’s so much more her home when she fills it with her voice and the piano than any other place on earth.
She’s just closed her eyes as she lets her voice flow out and through her from her abdomen, her fingers pressing the keys, and she’s almost forgotten about all of her worries when someone starts clapping. She hits a flat and her voice fails in a squeak. The bottom drops out of her stomach and she whips herself around on the bench, banging her knee on the underside of the piano.
Her heart stops when she sees Jiyeon in the doorway, looking out of place in her wrestling jacket and yet at the same time, she looks like she belonged there in the middle of the mess of music stands and chairs. Jieun stands up and pulls at the bottom of her shirt nervously, as though she it could hide her from the world.
“That was great!” Jiyeon’s teeth sparkle when she smiles, and just like that, Jieun’s heart swells five sizes too big.
“You think so?” She stammers out, pulling at a stiff muscle in her shoulder. Jiyeon crosses the gap between them and actually grabs her hand, pulling it and shaking it energetically. Jieun’s thinks of how sweaty her hands are and how Jiyeon now knows but all she can do is stare with her cheeks flushed.
“Of course, your voice is seriously awesome,” Jiyeon says. “Should I get your autograph now, or later?”
Jieun laughs, the laugh that makes her sort of die a little when it comes out of her mouth, all snorts and giggles, but Jiyeon doesn’t seem to mind because she laughs too - and, God, her laugh is beautiful.
-
Within a week, Jieun feels like she’s known Jiyeon all of her life. She knows that she’s even better at taekwondo than she is at wrestling, which she thought was pretty impossible, and that she can break a huge stack of boards with just her fist and stand up smiling. She learns that she loves food and eats more than her dad. Jieun absently concocts a bunch of theories on how she’s really super girl and has a super fast metabolism to keep her super-human strength.
She also discovers that Jiyeon has a beautiful voice, when one day, after school, she goes to meet Jiyeon after wrestling practice is over. She finds her singing to herself in the locker room. Jieun swallows when she realizes that Jiyeon is half naked, and her legs look like they could go for miles under her t-shirt. Her hair is wet and sparkling but the most shocking is her singing. Her voice is low and husky and it warms Jieun right up, starting somewhere in her stomach and slipping like hot chocolate through the rest of her body, and she never wants that feeling to go away, like being hugged, without any arms around her. That’s the only way she can describe Jiyeon’s voice.
Then she stumbles over her shoes and exposes herself and Jiyeon turns around with the brightest grin as she pulls on a pair of shorts. “Hey, want to get ice cream?”
All Jieun wants to do is say how much she loves her, but she bites the inside of her cheek. “Only if they have rainbow,” she smiles back, heart aching.
-
“What do you think frogs would say if they could talk?” Jiyeon asks as they walk down the street on their way home from school, so close together that sometimes their hands brush together.
Jieun isn’t paying attention, because she’s thinking of how on earth she can ever tell her best friend in the whole wide world how special she makes her feel, because hiding her feelings is eating her alive and she doesn’t know if she can keep it up forever. Her palms are always sweaty and her skin always tingles after Jiyeon has touched her, and sometimes she makes the mistake of leaning a bit too far when she’s whispering a secret and brushes her lips against Jiyeon’s skin, and she’s terrified that Jiyeon will find out and that she’ll lose her, for good.
“Hey,” Jiyeon pokes her in the side, and Jieun jumps, swivelling around to meet her gaze. “What are you thinking about?” They walk past the house with the annoying yapping dog when Jieun puts a hand on her arm and stops her in her tracks.
“What do you do if you love someone?” Jieun asks, desperately, because Jiyeon knows the answer to everything she doesn’t know and maybe, just maybe, she’ll know about this too, just like she knows what street vendor is the best and what ice cream parlor has the rainbow ice cream in the waffle cones.
“Love, or like?” Jiyeon asks, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“Love,” Jieun says, mouth dry. “Definitely love.”
“Oh,” Jiyeon keeps walking, sticking her hands in her pockets. “I think I’d let them know.”
There’s a slight lift to her voice that Jieun can’t really identify, but she stumbles after her in a sort of daze. Jiyeon is so much braver than she is. She’s the one that would pick her up when she fell down, or help her carry all the music stands back to the choir room after a performance when the other choir members were too busy, and she feels so safe around her, all the time. She can’t imagine feeling like this with anyone else in the entire world.
“Jiyeon, I-”
Her tongue becomes too thick and she stumbles over her words when she bites her tongue. She wraps her arms around herself and wonders if it would be okay, to tell Jiyeon. She wonders if she’ll ever find a boy who’s worthy of her. The boy would have to be able to eat more than her, and be able to beat her in a fight and not feel bad about it, and they’d have to be a good friend too, because these are things she knows are important to Jiyeon, and they’re things that Jieun won’t ever be.
But Jiyeon has turned around and waiting for her to continue now, but she’s already started to tell her - can she possibly even say it, when her heart is beating so fast that she thinks she might die and there’s a giant iron fist clenching her guts from the inside. “Um,” she tugs on her shirt sleeves.
She also knows that she can’t lie, because nothing good in her life comes from lies.
“I love you,” Jieun croaks out, her voice barely above a whisper, right as a bus comes rushing by and the stupid, annoying dog yaps itself to near death.
Jiyeon raises an eyebrow and leans in, trying to catch it. Jieun can smell her vanilla lotion, but more than that, she can see the way she looks at her suddenly, like she just put two and two together. Her eyelids are heavy and her eyelashes are curled and dark, and she’s staring right into her eyes with a gaze so intense that she’s sure it’s staring right into her soul and exposing all of her secrets.
And then the most amazing thing happens, when, instead of pulling back, Jiyeon just keeps leaning forward until their lips connect and then everything is warm. There is no ground beneath her feet and she’s sure she would be falling if Jiyeon’s hands weren’t gripping her hips and if her lips weren’t soft and whole against hers. Warm and gentle, and she feels so warm and complete that she doesn’t know if she’s dreaming or awake. But then Jiyeon pulls back, just enough so that their noses and foreheads are touching and Jieun can see nothing but the wholesome chocolate of her eyes.
“I love you, too.” Jiyeon says, and Jieun is stuck by how much the words change everything. There’s a sparkle in Jiyeon’s eyes when Jieun bounces on the balls of her feet to try and kiss her and knocks her in the mouth instead. She ends up reeling back a few paces, out of her arms.
But it’s only for a second, and then she’s enveloped by the smell of vanilla and Jiyeon’s hair smells like orange cream and is up her nose. Then she does the worst thing ever - she bursts into tears and isn’t even quite sure why, but they don’t stop coming. Tears and snot mix down her face and she’s just so happy that her chest wont stop swelling, and she swears, if she doesn’t keep a tight hold on her she’s going to fly off like a balloon.
Jiyeon must know that she’s suddenly turned into a balloon, because she holds her face so tenderly in her hands so that she doesn’t pop and wipes all of the tears and all of the snot carefully off her face with the back of her sleeve - and how gross it would be, except then she takes her by the hand and links their fingers together and pulls her down the sidewalk.
Jieun presses her fingers against her lips and feels how warm they are and wonders, as Jiyeon squeezes her hand, if this is the best day of her life.
-
It isn’t, but it’s the definite beginning of all of them.
♡
jiyeon/iu; 2,186 words.
if you love someone, let them know.
a/n: finallyyyy. this took months for me to work out but i love these two so much!♥ dedicates it subtly to firequakes and compatable because they're the best :)♥
Jieun’s always believed that honesty is the best policy.
Telling lies has never done anything for her but get her in trouble, like the time she snuck kimchi and then lied when her mom asked her about it. In the end she was the one kneeling in the living room with her arms held high, aching all over. But what she feels for Jiyeon isn’t something she can even tell the truth about, because in truth, she doesn’t even know what she wants to say, or how to say it.
She’s not particularly close to Jiyeon, other than when they eat at the same table during lunch because they have the same friends, or when they’ll sometimes chat during class about homework. Jieun usually has singing and choir after school while Jiyeon’s in almost every sport team she can be on. Once in a while, Jieun catches her in the gym while she walks by. Every time she does she ends up staring, jaw slack, as Jiyeon throws her opponent onto the mat. It looks so easy with her - one hand on their shoulder and one hand behind their knee and then - bam - Jiyeon is victorious.
Every single time, she ends up turning away with her cheeks flushed and her heart fluttering and she gets in trouble for singing too fast in choir, because her brain is thinking of Jiyeon’s victorious smile and the sweat trickling down her neck and soaking into her t-shirt. They have to redo the song at least three times before she finally gets it right.
Eventually, she gets up the nerve to ask someone about these feelings.
“Mom?” Jieun slides up to her at the kitchen counter, wearing a t-shirt that falls down over her thighs and all but hides her shorts from view. Her mom’s making kimchi, and the spicy scent clears her nose. “I think there’s something wrong with me.” She holds her shoulders as she leans on her elbows on the counter.
Her mom stops cooking and turns around to look at her, eyebrows pinched and her kind mouth pursed in concern, hands covered in red sause.
“But it’s nothing bad! It’s just, weird. It only happens around this one person and it makes me go all fluffy inside.” Like a marshmallow, she thinks, and bites her lip so she doesn’t laugh at the thought.
Her mom just laughs, shoulders sagging in relief, and turns back to her work.
“You like your friend, don’t you?” She asks, and Jieun watches her shoulders jerk as she pulls kimchi apart.
Jieun considers it for all of a second before she nods, “of course I do.”
“Well, you probably like him as more than just a friend then, dear.”
Jieun blinks at her, and then everything sort of just clicks into place like the last piece of the puzzle has been laid out in front of her.
“Oh!” She all but smacks herself in the forehead, steals some kimchi, and runs upstairs before her mom can make her help.
“Thanks mom!” She calls down the stairs and it’s not until she’s spent at least five minutes looking at the picture of her and Jiyeon on her phone that she realizes her biggest dilemma - her mom said him.
-
Two weeks later, Jieun’s staying late in the choir room, practicing her solo for the upcoming concert. The room is a deserted mess of sheet music and clusters of chairs and music stands, and there’s a drawing on the chalkboard of a dragon burning a village that no one wants to erase. But even though the music room isn’t perfect, she loves it in a way so much different from her bedroom at home - it’s so much more her home when she fills it with her voice and the piano than any other place on earth.
She’s just closed her eyes as she lets her voice flow out and through her from her abdomen, her fingers pressing the keys, and she’s almost forgotten about all of her worries when someone starts clapping. She hits a flat and her voice fails in a squeak. The bottom drops out of her stomach and she whips herself around on the bench, banging her knee on the underside of the piano.
Her heart stops when she sees Jiyeon in the doorway, looking out of place in her wrestling jacket and yet at the same time, she looks like she belonged there in the middle of the mess of music stands and chairs. Jieun stands up and pulls at the bottom of her shirt nervously, as though she it could hide her from the world.
“That was great!” Jiyeon’s teeth sparkle when she smiles, and just like that, Jieun’s heart swells five sizes too big.
“You think so?” She stammers out, pulling at a stiff muscle in her shoulder. Jiyeon crosses the gap between them and actually grabs her hand, pulling it and shaking it energetically. Jieun’s thinks of how sweaty her hands are and how Jiyeon now knows but all she can do is stare with her cheeks flushed.
“Of course, your voice is seriously awesome,” Jiyeon says. “Should I get your autograph now, or later?”
Jieun laughs, the laugh that makes her sort of die a little when it comes out of her mouth, all snorts and giggles, but Jiyeon doesn’t seem to mind because she laughs too - and, God, her laugh is beautiful.
-
Within a week, Jieun feels like she’s known Jiyeon all of her life. She knows that she’s even better at taekwondo than she is at wrestling, which she thought was pretty impossible, and that she can break a huge stack of boards with just her fist and stand up smiling. She learns that she loves food and eats more than her dad. Jieun absently concocts a bunch of theories on how she’s really super girl and has a super fast metabolism to keep her super-human strength.
She also discovers that Jiyeon has a beautiful voice, when one day, after school, she goes to meet Jiyeon after wrestling practice is over. She finds her singing to herself in the locker room. Jieun swallows when she realizes that Jiyeon is half naked, and her legs look like they could go for miles under her t-shirt. Her hair is wet and sparkling but the most shocking is her singing. Her voice is low and husky and it warms Jieun right up, starting somewhere in her stomach and slipping like hot chocolate through the rest of her body, and she never wants that feeling to go away, like being hugged, without any arms around her. That’s the only way she can describe Jiyeon’s voice.
Then she stumbles over her shoes and exposes herself and Jiyeon turns around with the brightest grin as she pulls on a pair of shorts. “Hey, want to get ice cream?”
All Jieun wants to do is say how much she loves her, but she bites the inside of her cheek. “Only if they have rainbow,” she smiles back, heart aching.
-
“What do you think frogs would say if they could talk?” Jiyeon asks as they walk down the street on their way home from school, so close together that sometimes their hands brush together.
Jieun isn’t paying attention, because she’s thinking of how on earth she can ever tell her best friend in the whole wide world how special she makes her feel, because hiding her feelings is eating her alive and she doesn’t know if she can keep it up forever. Her palms are always sweaty and her skin always tingles after Jiyeon has touched her, and sometimes she makes the mistake of leaning a bit too far when she’s whispering a secret and brushes her lips against Jiyeon’s skin, and she’s terrified that Jiyeon will find out and that she’ll lose her, for good.
“Hey,” Jiyeon pokes her in the side, and Jieun jumps, swivelling around to meet her gaze. “What are you thinking about?” They walk past the house with the annoying yapping dog when Jieun puts a hand on her arm and stops her in her tracks.
“What do you do if you love someone?” Jieun asks, desperately, because Jiyeon knows the answer to everything she doesn’t know and maybe, just maybe, she’ll know about this too, just like she knows what street vendor is the best and what ice cream parlor has the rainbow ice cream in the waffle cones.
“Love, or like?” Jiyeon asks, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“Love,” Jieun says, mouth dry. “Definitely love.”
“Oh,” Jiyeon keeps walking, sticking her hands in her pockets. “I think I’d let them know.”
There’s a slight lift to her voice that Jieun can’t really identify, but she stumbles after her in a sort of daze. Jiyeon is so much braver than she is. She’s the one that would pick her up when she fell down, or help her carry all the music stands back to the choir room after a performance when the other choir members were too busy, and she feels so safe around her, all the time. She can’t imagine feeling like this with anyone else in the entire world.
“Jiyeon, I-”
Her tongue becomes too thick and she stumbles over her words when she bites her tongue. She wraps her arms around herself and wonders if it would be okay, to tell Jiyeon. She wonders if she’ll ever find a boy who’s worthy of her. The boy would have to be able to eat more than her, and be able to beat her in a fight and not feel bad about it, and they’d have to be a good friend too, because these are things she knows are important to Jiyeon, and they’re things that Jieun won’t ever be.
But Jiyeon has turned around and waiting for her to continue now, but she’s already started to tell her - can she possibly even say it, when her heart is beating so fast that she thinks she might die and there’s a giant iron fist clenching her guts from the inside. “Um,” she tugs on her shirt sleeves.
She also knows that she can’t lie, because nothing good in her life comes from lies.
“I love you,” Jieun croaks out, her voice barely above a whisper, right as a bus comes rushing by and the stupid, annoying dog yaps itself to near death.
Jiyeon raises an eyebrow and leans in, trying to catch it. Jieun can smell her vanilla lotion, but more than that, she can see the way she looks at her suddenly, like she just put two and two together. Her eyelids are heavy and her eyelashes are curled and dark, and she’s staring right into her eyes with a gaze so intense that she’s sure it’s staring right into her soul and exposing all of her secrets.
And then the most amazing thing happens, when, instead of pulling back, Jiyeon just keeps leaning forward until their lips connect and then everything is warm. There is no ground beneath her feet and she’s sure she would be falling if Jiyeon’s hands weren’t gripping her hips and if her lips weren’t soft and whole against hers. Warm and gentle, and she feels so warm and complete that she doesn’t know if she’s dreaming or awake. But then Jiyeon pulls back, just enough so that their noses and foreheads are touching and Jieun can see nothing but the wholesome chocolate of her eyes.
“I love you, too.” Jiyeon says, and Jieun is stuck by how much the words change everything. There’s a sparkle in Jiyeon’s eyes when Jieun bounces on the balls of her feet to try and kiss her and knocks her in the mouth instead. She ends up reeling back a few paces, out of her arms.
But it’s only for a second, and then she’s enveloped by the smell of vanilla and Jiyeon’s hair smells like orange cream and is up her nose. Then she does the worst thing ever - she bursts into tears and isn’t even quite sure why, but they don’t stop coming. Tears and snot mix down her face and she’s just so happy that her chest wont stop swelling, and she swears, if she doesn’t keep a tight hold on her she’s going to fly off like a balloon.
Jiyeon must know that she’s suddenly turned into a balloon, because she holds her face so tenderly in her hands so that she doesn’t pop and wipes all of the tears and all of the snot carefully off her face with the back of her sleeve - and how gross it would be, except then she takes her by the hand and links their fingers together and pulls her down the sidewalk.
Jieun presses her fingers against her lips and feels how warm they are and wonders, as Jiyeon squeezes her hand, if this is the best day of her life.
-
It isn’t, but it’s the definite beginning of all of them.
♡