learning to fall
(cnblue/snsd) learning to fall
seohyun-centric, yonghwa/seohyun ; g ; 1832 words
seohyun falls in love between the intervals
note my entry for the kpop ficmix, based on ladadadi's wonderful drabble that can be found over here. this is slightly different from the original post, because that one was rushed and after rereading it i found some mistakes along with some stuff that made me cringe. so hopefully it's a little more coherent now and just less awkward too read heh. i had a lot of fun writing it though and i'm a not completely unsatisfied with how this turned out, so ha ha ha. ♥.
title taken from boys like girls' learning to fall which is also the unoffical title track to the unwritten background story/sequel in my head. who knows, it might be written one day.
seohyun falls in love between the intervals. it’s the little things that make it happen, his crooked smile and the way his hand fits hers, the small moments spend together off screen, sharing secret glances and giggling at inside jokes - she falls for the way they disappear in a world of their own where he’s hers and she’s his.
then the producer yells cut and reality comes crashing down, cameras zooming back into view to capture all those sacred moments they treasure so much, scriptwriters trying to control every single thing they do and the makeup artists running into the room to fix them up.
first love never sounded so unromantic before.
--
first meetings are always awkward. it’s something everyone goes through at one point in their life, that awkward moment of calculating glances and awkward smiles, the pressure of leaving a good impression causing clammy hands and trembling fingers.
she resists the urge to fiddle with her fingers, one of those nervous habits she should’ve stopped by now, instead focusing on the task at hand. they might pretend jungshin is her husband, but seohyun realizes soon enough that the question “who would you pick to be your husband, if you had a say in it?” means something more than just a popularity contest.
this is all about picking the right one, the one who is going to be her husband for the next couple of months.
it doesn’t take her long to figure out who it is - she knows it’s him because the other members try to avoid looking at him, and when they do look at him, they can’t look away quickly enough. she also knows it’s him because he’s the one asking the questions, his smile slightly strained as if to hide how nervous he is - something she recognizes because she’s hiding a similar kind of nervous behind her own shy smile.
thoughts of being wrong flash through her mind briefly, but then she’s already placing the blanket over his shoulders and he turns around, his beaming smile confirming she made the right choice.
“to be honest, i’m your husband,” he says, shooting a grateful smile her way.
her heart flutters in reply and that’s where it begins.
--
“i’ve never been in love.” seohyun looks down at the table, cheeks flushing bright red as she answers his question.
“really?” yonghwa is looking at her skeptically and he shakes his head. suddenly his smile gets wider, his eyes twinkling brightly and he asks “so that means i’ll be your first love?”
seohyun looks up, their eyes meeting for moment, and then she feels herself flushing even more. she coughs awkwardly, eyes locked on her plate, heart beating fast and says “yeah, maybe.”
--
it all sort of happens at once.
one moment she’s still ranting at her members about stupid tv shows and their lack of subtlety, how do people believe this is real?, and the next moment she’s hiding in her room, pillow cradled to her chest, fingers still tingling even though he let go of her hand hours ago, while ignoring the oh’s and aw’s and tell us what happened from the other side of the door.
and seohyun wants to share this with the members, or at least parts of it, but what is there to tell.
it was quite unromantic, the way he grabbed her hand, all sweaty and sticky and horrible timing, their hands placed just wrong - there really was no reason for her to be all wobbly on her feet, her cheeks turning red at record speed with butterflies fluttering wildly in her stomach.
( no reason at all, except that it’s yonghwa and yonghwa has this way of making her feel all jittery and nervous and yonghwa does this thing where she can’t forget about their recording and yonghwa happens to fill her brain with thoughts about him and her and them and it just leaves her feeling weird and confused and at a loss for words. )
seohyun simply doesn’t know what to tell the members, so she hides in her room, putting some distance between her and explanations she isn’t ready to hear (just yet) and it’s just easier to be alone and replay the moment in her head over and over, overanalyzing yonghwa’s smiles and comments and motives and him, trying to read between the lines until she’s sure everything is making sense again.
--
things start making sense along the way.
seohyun still doesn’t know why her heart keeps fluttering like that, or why the butterflies never disappear, or why her hands keep trembling when yonghwa watches her like that.
she still has no clue how to figure out what yonghwa’s smiles might mean, still doesn’t know if he holds her hand because he wants to or because he was told to, still doesn’t know what it means when he holds her hand even after the cameras have turned off or why he keeps calling her in the middle of the night.
it’s easy to connect the dots though, to realize the butterflies intensify when he holds her hand, or how she falls asleep so much easier after talking to yonghwa, or how she’s happier on the days of their meetings.
seohyun just doesn’t know how to handle everything. and how is she supposed to know - she has never been in love before.
--
“i really, really like you, seo joohyun.”
the words are whispered against her ear in between recordings, and for once seohyun feels slightly sad that the cameras aren’t turned on to capture this moment. his smile is bright, his arm warm against hers and her heart beats hopefully in response.
she hums in reply, not trusting the words coming out of her mouth just yet, giving him a soft push with her shoulder.
“seo joohyun,” yonghwa says and chuckles softly. “what would i do without you?”
what would i do without you, she wants to say, but instead she mutters “shut up” and grins back at him as she pushes him again.
--
it seems like a real love story, some days. a chance meeting turns into an awkward first date with shy smiles and stilled conversation and then it sort of flows from there, a second date turning into a third and so on, until the numbers become a blur and the dates become a routine.
seohyun’s manners make him laugh, yonghwa’s straightforwardness makes her blush, and their story is nothing short of perfect.
if you forget the whole pretending to be in love thing, that is.
--
“i don’t really know what i’m feeling anymore,” she tells yonghwa one day. they’ve retreated back to an empty room, the camera crew preparing for the next scene and leaving them with thirty minutes to spare.
yonghwa gives her a confused smile. “what do you mean?”
“sometimes i feel like i get lost in the moment and forget that this is just a show where we pretend to be married.”
“you mean you feel like we really are a married couple? going out on cheesy dates to rediscover our spark?”
seohyun shakes her head, hair falling past her face. “no, i don’t think we’ve been together long enough for that.”
it’s silent for a while, then yonghwa grabs her hand. “i don’t know, hyun,” she smiles weakly at that, “it was just a show at first, but -” he trails off, shaking his head. “we are pretending to be a married couple. and some of this, the things we do and say are real. but - if all of this is about pretending - i just - i think that whatever we’re feeling can’t be real either.”
and this is where my heart should break, seohyun thinks and she waits, but other than the mild embarrassment of being rejected she doesn't feel anything. yonghwa is still holding her hand and she squeezes it gently. “right,” she says, frowning slightly as she tries to think of something to say.
“what?” yonghwa asks.
seohyun shakes her head, forcing herself to smile while she repeats yonghwa's words in her head. “just - i never thought of it like that. the way you put it makes sense though. something, this, can’t be real if it’s based on a lie, right?”
yonghwa smiles, intertwining their fingers while looking at her fondly. “did i just beat you on the intelligence scale?”
she snorts. “as if. it’s probably my intelligence finally rubbing off on you.”
“hyun, are you proud of me?”
seohyun shakes her head, giving him a fond look and her heart thuds strangely as she says, “yes, yo~ong.”
--
unrequited love is more about embarrassment than anything else, but seohyun thinks it’s the worst kind of heartbreak there is.
it doesn’t hit her until she’s at home, hiding under the covers and muffling her cries with her pillow. the next morning she wakes up and her heart throbs painfully in her chest, but she covers her tearstained cheeks with a layer of makeup, pretending nothing was wrong to begin with.
the next recording is slightly awkward and weird, but yonghwa is still smiling at her fondly and even though her heart aches whenever she remembers their conversation, seohyun thinks it might be alright.
she just needs some time.
--
seohyun startles when yonghwa suddenly pulls her in a hug. the cameras are turned off, the crew busy fixing some details before they continue, not paying any attention to the two of them.
"thank you," he whispers in her hair.
she can feel the hint of butterflies erupting in her stomach, but instead of the whirlwind it used to be, it feels like a warm, comforting blanket now. she shakes her head and laughs, muttering “you’re welcome” in his chest as she wraps her arms around him.
when he pulls back and cups her face in his hands, seohyun’s heart flutters a little but she simply ignores it. she knows that maybe, if she’d let herself, she could be in love with yonghwa, love him for his bad jokes, for his lack of manners, for his slight dumbness or for his complete and utter devotion towards anything or anyone he cares about.
she also knows that they probably never will be together like that, but she’s okay with that and it doesn’t change the fact that she still loves yonghwa all the same.
seohyun notices yonghwa hasn’t stopped staring at her and even though she doesn’t want to break their little moment, she tilts her head and asks “oppa?”
her eyes widen slightly as yonghwa leans in, pressing a kiss against her forehead and her hands tighten around his waist. she can’t stop the fond smile appearing on her face as they lock eyes again, realizing that yonghwa might not be hers in the future, but he was hers once, and she’ll always remember him as her first love.
"come on, hyun," yonghwa says after a moment, taking her hand again. "let's go home."
seohyun-centric, yonghwa/seohyun ; g ; 1832 words
seohyun falls in love between the intervals
note my entry for the kpop ficmix, based on ladadadi's wonderful drabble that can be found over here. this is slightly different from the original post, because that one was rushed and after rereading it i found some mistakes along with some stuff that made me cringe. so hopefully it's a little more coherent now and just less awkward too read heh. i had a lot of fun writing it though and i'm a not completely unsatisfied with how this turned out, so ha ha ha. ♥.
title taken from boys like girls' learning to fall which is also the unoffical title track to the unwritten background story/sequel in my head. who knows, it might be written one day.
seohyun falls in love between the intervals. it’s the little things that make it happen, his crooked smile and the way his hand fits hers, the small moments spend together off screen, sharing secret glances and giggling at inside jokes - she falls for the way they disappear in a world of their own where he’s hers and she’s his.
then the producer yells cut and reality comes crashing down, cameras zooming back into view to capture all those sacred moments they treasure so much, scriptwriters trying to control every single thing they do and the makeup artists running into the room to fix them up.
first love never sounded so unromantic before.
--
first meetings are always awkward. it’s something everyone goes through at one point in their life, that awkward moment of calculating glances and awkward smiles, the pressure of leaving a good impression causing clammy hands and trembling fingers.
she resists the urge to fiddle with her fingers, one of those nervous habits she should’ve stopped by now, instead focusing on the task at hand. they might pretend jungshin is her husband, but seohyun realizes soon enough that the question “who would you pick to be your husband, if you had a say in it?” means something more than just a popularity contest.
this is all about picking the right one, the one who is going to be her husband for the next couple of months.
it doesn’t take her long to figure out who it is - she knows it’s him because the other members try to avoid looking at him, and when they do look at him, they can’t look away quickly enough. she also knows it’s him because he’s the one asking the questions, his smile slightly strained as if to hide how nervous he is - something she recognizes because she’s hiding a similar kind of nervous behind her own shy smile.
thoughts of being wrong flash through her mind briefly, but then she’s already placing the blanket over his shoulders and he turns around, his beaming smile confirming she made the right choice.
“to be honest, i’m your husband,” he says, shooting a grateful smile her way.
her heart flutters in reply and that’s where it begins.
--
“i’ve never been in love.” seohyun looks down at the table, cheeks flushing bright red as she answers his question.
“really?” yonghwa is looking at her skeptically and he shakes his head. suddenly his smile gets wider, his eyes twinkling brightly and he asks “so that means i’ll be your first love?”
seohyun looks up, their eyes meeting for moment, and then she feels herself flushing even more. she coughs awkwardly, eyes locked on her plate, heart beating fast and says “yeah, maybe.”
--
it all sort of happens at once.
one moment she’s still ranting at her members about stupid tv shows and their lack of subtlety, how do people believe this is real?, and the next moment she’s hiding in her room, pillow cradled to her chest, fingers still tingling even though he let go of her hand hours ago, while ignoring the oh’s and aw’s and tell us what happened from the other side of the door.
and seohyun wants to share this with the members, or at least parts of it, but what is there to tell.
it was quite unromantic, the way he grabbed her hand, all sweaty and sticky and horrible timing, their hands placed just wrong - there really was no reason for her to be all wobbly on her feet, her cheeks turning red at record speed with butterflies fluttering wildly in her stomach.
( no reason at all, except that it’s yonghwa and yonghwa has this way of making her feel all jittery and nervous and yonghwa does this thing where she can’t forget about their recording and yonghwa happens to fill her brain with thoughts about him and her and them and it just leaves her feeling weird and confused and at a loss for words. )
seohyun simply doesn’t know what to tell the members, so she hides in her room, putting some distance between her and explanations she isn’t ready to hear (just yet) and it’s just easier to be alone and replay the moment in her head over and over, overanalyzing yonghwa’s smiles and comments and motives and him, trying to read between the lines until she’s sure everything is making sense again.
--
things start making sense along the way.
seohyun still doesn’t know why her heart keeps fluttering like that, or why the butterflies never disappear, or why her hands keep trembling when yonghwa watches her like that.
she still has no clue how to figure out what yonghwa’s smiles might mean, still doesn’t know if he holds her hand because he wants to or because he was told to, still doesn’t know what it means when he holds her hand even after the cameras have turned off or why he keeps calling her in the middle of the night.
it’s easy to connect the dots though, to realize the butterflies intensify when he holds her hand, or how she falls asleep so much easier after talking to yonghwa, or how she’s happier on the days of their meetings.
seohyun just doesn’t know how to handle everything. and how is she supposed to know - she has never been in love before.
--
“i really, really like you, seo joohyun.”
the words are whispered against her ear in between recordings, and for once seohyun feels slightly sad that the cameras aren’t turned on to capture this moment. his smile is bright, his arm warm against hers and her heart beats hopefully in response.
she hums in reply, not trusting the words coming out of her mouth just yet, giving him a soft push with her shoulder.
“seo joohyun,” yonghwa says and chuckles softly. “what would i do without you?”
what would i do without you, she wants to say, but instead she mutters “shut up” and grins back at him as she pushes him again.
--
it seems like a real love story, some days. a chance meeting turns into an awkward first date with shy smiles and stilled conversation and then it sort of flows from there, a second date turning into a third and so on, until the numbers become a blur and the dates become a routine.
seohyun’s manners make him laugh, yonghwa’s straightforwardness makes her blush, and their story is nothing short of perfect.
if you forget the whole pretending to be in love thing, that is.
--
“i don’t really know what i’m feeling anymore,” she tells yonghwa one day. they’ve retreated back to an empty room, the camera crew preparing for the next scene and leaving them with thirty minutes to spare.
yonghwa gives her a confused smile. “what do you mean?”
“sometimes i feel like i get lost in the moment and forget that this is just a show where we pretend to be married.”
“you mean you feel like we really are a married couple? going out on cheesy dates to rediscover our spark?”
seohyun shakes her head, hair falling past her face. “no, i don’t think we’ve been together long enough for that.”
it’s silent for a while, then yonghwa grabs her hand. “i don’t know, hyun,” she smiles weakly at that, “it was just a show at first, but -” he trails off, shaking his head. “we are pretending to be a married couple. and some of this, the things we do and say are real. but - if all of this is about pretending - i just - i think that whatever we’re feeling can’t be real either.”
and this is where my heart should break, seohyun thinks and she waits, but other than the mild embarrassment of being rejected she doesn't feel anything. yonghwa is still holding her hand and she squeezes it gently. “right,” she says, frowning slightly as she tries to think of something to say.
“what?” yonghwa asks.
seohyun shakes her head, forcing herself to smile while she repeats yonghwa's words in her head. “just - i never thought of it like that. the way you put it makes sense though. something, this, can’t be real if it’s based on a lie, right?”
yonghwa smiles, intertwining their fingers while looking at her fondly. “did i just beat you on the intelligence scale?”
she snorts. “as if. it’s probably my intelligence finally rubbing off on you.”
“hyun, are you proud of me?”
seohyun shakes her head, giving him a fond look and her heart thuds strangely as she says, “yes, yo~ong.”
--
unrequited love is more about embarrassment than anything else, but seohyun thinks it’s the worst kind of heartbreak there is.
it doesn’t hit her until she’s at home, hiding under the covers and muffling her cries with her pillow. the next morning she wakes up and her heart throbs painfully in her chest, but she covers her tearstained cheeks with a layer of makeup, pretending nothing was wrong to begin with.
the next recording is slightly awkward and weird, but yonghwa is still smiling at her fondly and even though her heart aches whenever she remembers their conversation, seohyun thinks it might be alright.
she just needs some time.
--
seohyun startles when yonghwa suddenly pulls her in a hug. the cameras are turned off, the crew busy fixing some details before they continue, not paying any attention to the two of them.
"thank you," he whispers in her hair.
she can feel the hint of butterflies erupting in her stomach, but instead of the whirlwind it used to be, it feels like a warm, comforting blanket now. she shakes her head and laughs, muttering “you’re welcome” in his chest as she wraps her arms around him.
when he pulls back and cups her face in his hands, seohyun’s heart flutters a little but she simply ignores it. she knows that maybe, if she’d let herself, she could be in love with yonghwa, love him for his bad jokes, for his lack of manners, for his slight dumbness or for his complete and utter devotion towards anything or anyone he cares about.
she also knows that they probably never will be together like that, but she’s okay with that and it doesn’t change the fact that she still loves yonghwa all the same.
seohyun notices yonghwa hasn’t stopped staring at her and even though she doesn’t want to break their little moment, she tilts her head and asks “oppa?”
her eyes widen slightly as yonghwa leans in, pressing a kiss against her forehead and her hands tighten around his waist. she can’t stop the fond smile appearing on her face as they lock eyes again, realizing that yonghwa might not be hers in the future, but he was hers once, and she’ll always remember him as her first love.
"come on, hyun," yonghwa says after a moment, taking her hand again. "let's go home."