Drabble heap II: the MBLAQ het extravaganza (and then some)
You should read this first (my apologies):
Um, hi. This was my first time ever writing het (and actually focusing on it), so I'm sorry if it's too awkward, I'm still tiptoeing around the concept. Also, I'm sorry I make you nauseous with my ridiculous Seungho bias, but it's very hard to hold it back :(
Oh, and it's also my first time ever attempting to write B2ST (think of this as a crazy, experimental post, if you will) without any MBLAQ member to give me any support, and I don't know a whole lot about them, so there might be mistakes :|
Just. Be careful when reading, ok? :/
Drown
(MBLAQ, T-ara) Joon/Soyeon, one-sided Seungho/Joon. G.
Injung doesn't know why she tortures herself like this.
She shifts on her feet impatiently, tightening her hold on the umbrella. Her heart is shattered, stepped over again and again and again, and yet there she stands, stupidly offering it once again, knowing it’ll be crushed just like before.
But she can’t help herself, can she?
“Changsun ah,” Injung whispers, and the name gets lost under the loud noise of the heavy rain pouring over them. It washes her legs, her socks and feet and she’s freezing, which leaves her wondering how he must feel, sitting on the floor like that, uniform soaked by the unceasing drops.
She knows he didn’t realize yet she was there by his side. He never does, not once.
“Changsun ah,” she calls out firmly this time, bringing the umbrella closer to her. His body remains still but the expressionless eyes move up, only showing the faintest hint of surprise to see her there. The brown hair strands now look black, glued to his face as the water runs through them.
Injung bites her lip, looking back at him. He’s as broken and pitiful and ridiculous as her, both of them are pathetic, and a part of her wishes she could feel some sort of vengeful joy out of seeing him like that, finally stuck at the same abyss he’s thrown her into a long time ago.
She almost wants to smirk and say she’s pleased, but she couldn’t ever be happy when he’s as miserable as that.
“He thinks I’m disgusting, doesn’t he?” he finally speaks up, spitting out the water that insists in flowing into his lips. She told him confessing was a bad idea, and not out of jealousy. Obviously he didn’t listen, he never would. “The way he looked at me,” he trails off and smiles the saddest, most hollow smile she’s ever seen on his lips, and it doesn’t fit. Something as lifeless as that would never fit Changsun. “Fuck, he didn’t even have to say anything. He hates me.”
“Changsun ah, you should go home,” she chooses to ignore talking about Seungho. She shouldn’t, but right now she despises everything about him for putting Changsun in that state. They’re classmates and friends, close dear friends, and Seungho’s been there for her so many times. Whether she needed help with an upcoming test or a shoulder to cry on after her grandmother’s death, Seungho was there. He’s hugged her through so many of her sobs over Changsun - she shouldn’t hate him, but, at that moment, she does, and that dreadful thought consumes her every soul with guilt. So she wants to ignore that nagging feeling.
“Do you know, noona?” Changsun gasps out, chest heaving as he moves his face up to eye her. “Do you know what it’s like to be ignored like this by the one person you love with all your fucking heart?”
Injung blinks, swallowing the words that try to make their way out of her lips.
She might have an idea.
“You’ll catch a cold,” she says instead and decides to walk to him when he coughs, crouching beside him and shielding him from the rain under her umbrella. Patting his cold, wet head, she lets her hand run down the side of his face, chest tightening when he leans his head onto her hand, closing his eyes.
“I want him so much,” he mumbles, humming at the caress her fingers do on his skin. “Why can’t I have him, noona? Why can’t he just,” his breath hitches and he bites back a sob, “like me?”
“Changsun ah,” she mutters, moving closer until the tip of her forehead is against his and it hurts, why why why, why is she listening to him pine over Seungho when he should be saying love words to her and only her instead.
She hates Seungho.
“I need him,” he says against her cheek, hands roaming up the arms that hold his neck. He opens his eyes to realize the umbrella had slipped off from her hold, now swaying gently on the floor next to them, forgotten.
Their faces move on their own and they’re breathing in heavy, moist puffs against each other’s lips. They look into each other’s eyes, the sight blurry and confusing, and it makes them feel dizzy.
She shouldn’t, she knows she shouldn’t because it’s not her the one he wants, but it’s been so long, and she’s never been this close. It’s surprisingly easy to simply give in.
He’s kissing her, desperately and unabashedly, tongue swirling against hers as he wishes he could do to Seungho’s, mind picturing Seungho’s plush, inviting lips as he caresses hers with his own. It’s not bad, she’s a friend, she understands. He doesn’t have to feel guilty, he just has to take it all out because not being able to kiss Seungho hurts so much.
As they cling onto each other, drowning their sorrow in one another’s arms, she hovers over him and protects him from the rain, serves as his support, his faithful, loyal support. She gets lost in the kiss and shuts her mind off, shoving those thoughts away because she knows.
She knows that comfort is all she will ever be to him.
For Every Rule
(MBLAQ, 2NE1) Seungho/Dara. G.
Truth to be told, Seungho shouldn’t even be there.
They only meet up occasionally, when they happen to be scheduled for the same shows, or in the backstage of festivals or holiday concerts. They bow at each other respectfully - Seungho is always a little stiff because, on top of being an important sunbae, she’s also the older sister of his friend and fellow bandmate.
Dara smiles warmly and jokes, asks him to keep an eye on Thunder for her and take good care of him. Thunder grunts in irritation and laces an arm around her shoulders while Seungho laughs with an obedient bow, and he tells her it’s probably time for her to get back to her dressing room. Everyone knows he strictly times MBLAQ’s conversations with his sister, and Seungho recognizes his duty as a good brother so he just waves at Dara as she tells him they should meet up sometime, Thunder’s arm blocking her face.
He never thought she’d want to stick to her word, and thus is surprised when she texts him. Let’s have some coffee tomorrow, it says, followed by some cheerful emoticons. Seungho’s taken aback, wondering if he should accept the invitation.
“Sanghyun ah gave you my phone number?” he asks skeptically after they walk to a table for two inside the small café. He accepts her offer because she’s a sunbae and the older sister of his friend, so it’d be impolite to turn her down, and Seungho’s all about good manners.
She smiles mischievously, teeth sparkling under the dim, orange-ish lights of the establishment. “Chaerin ah asked him for me.”
Seungho nods understandingly, smiling along. They make small chat about their careers and what jobs they have been engaged in, then talked about Thunder, Dara sharing embarrassing childhood stories while Seungho accused some recent happenings in return.
“He still says he would never let any of you talk to me when he’s not around?” she raises her brows curious after Seungho absent-mindedly mentioned Thunder’s obsessive protection towards her amidst the conversation.
“He claims he’d rather burst into flames before that happens,” he sneered, taking a sip of his tea. “I probably shouldn’t even be here right now.”
“And yet, you are,” she glances at him before grinning, watching as the corner of his lips tugged up on their own in response.
“And yet, I am,” he nods, looking down at his cellphone on the table.
“It’s funny, though,” she breaks the somewhat unsettling silence that lingers between the two of them, pushing a few hair strands behind her ear. “Last month he actually gave me a list of guys he trusts enough to go on a date with me. Printed, all of the names in capitals. I’m guessing he wanted to make it official.”
Seungho giggles and shakes his head because oh, Sanghyun ah. She nods solemnly, leaning onto the table to rest her face on a hand.
“It’s funny that he still says none of you can talk to me because the first name on the list is yours,” she informs, observing his reaction with interest. She amusedly mirrors his raise of brows, easily slipping into one of her heart-warming smiles as he gapes.
“He never told me anything,” he swears, and she believes him. Thunder can be very odd when he puts some effort into it.
“And I should tell you that his idea of an ideal boyfriend for me is a lot different from my own,” she pulls a thoughtful face when he smiles a little sourly at the remark, a brief hint of what could be disappointment running through his face even though he tries to shake it off. That moment, right then as he gives an awkward smile looking out the window across the café, white teeth biting onto the lower full lip, is when she’s completely sure of what she wants.
Her smile this time is a little less innocent, a little more demanding, and she leans over the table to lower her voice secretively, eyes bright with excitement.
“But I guess every rule has its exception.”
Only Human
(MBLAQ, After School) Seungho/Nana. G.
Jina is fascinated by the eyes that glitter behind the dark mask.
The first time she sees his eyes, they’re behind a dark mask, glancing emptily at the moving figures in the ball room. Jina stops breathing, the arm she uses to hold up her porcelain white mask drops, and she finds herself lost in that gaze that isn’t directed at her. Her sister pinches her arm and instructs her to put back her mask back on in a hiss. She complies, but her eyes are still locked with the hollow ones across the room, bound undisturbed the twirling bodies swaying between the two of them for all she acknowledges is his presence alone, drawing her in with so much darkness and sadness flowing from a mere gaze.
She needs to see what face the black mask hides, she must know what features go around those sad eyes and see for herself if they’re as inebriating as the glittering dark of his eyes as she takes them to be.
“Is the gentleman unimpressed by the beauty of the masks my father’s guests carry?” she asks from behind him, unsure of how she managed to address to a male she’d never seen before, even more of how her voice could be heard so decided and firm when she usually talked through shy whispers.
Jina’s breath once again leaves her lips as he turns around, gaze aimed at her, and the eyes look even emptier under the moonlight glow that strikes them through the window behind her.
She can’t see because the mask cover all of his face (all of it but the eyes, shining through the mat surface), but she can tell that he’s smiling, although he remains silent. “Is that why you picked yourself such a brim one?” she tries again, tone defying and completely unlike her own.
“The beauty of masks seems very brittle in comparison to the truths they hide underneath their bright colors,” he says, his voice deep and alluring, and she gasps through her parted lips, wanting to hear it again, wanting to hear it forever.
“But they are more meaningful when they paint the colors of their carriers’ hearts, are they not?” she finds herself whispering back, unable to look away from the cold intensity of those glittering eyes, now looking at her with amusement.
“As expected, Miss Jina has an answer right at the tip of her tongue for all who perceive the world differently from how she does,” he’s smiling again, eyelids slanting up softly and she notices how pale his skin is in contrast to the blackness of his mask and eyes.
“You know my name, stranger?” her mind’s still twirling, leaving her dizzy because her name had never sounded any more beautiful than that voice made it.
“Doesn’t everyone in this room?” his eyes turn again to smile.
Behind them, the guests in the room join their voices to cheerfully count down to the midnight, all hands flying to the knots behind their napes so the masks would fall undone when the clock’s hands meet in its peak. She gazes at him expectantly, drawing a million sketches of what his face looked like, all seeming clumsy and unworthy of that pair of eyes.
“Tell me, Miss Jina,” he hunches forward a little, bringing their covered faces closer and making her gulp anxiously at the proximity, the echoes of sevens and sixes and fives in her ears, “if it’s true that masks are the windows to our souls, much like our eyes, should we find out at the tick of midnight that you really are an angel covered in white that shall bring life to this room, and I am the demon haunted by darkness that came to steal all the lives away?”
It’s four, and it’s three, and his fingers grab the tip of the mask softly, eyes never leaving hers. He steps closer, watching her look back at him with childlike passion and then a hint of fear that makes her chest heave and his eyes smile once again.
And they count two, and they count one, and masks fly up to the roof as cheers are heard across the manor. She brings down her mask and nervously watches his slide down his face, both of them dropping to the floor, tinkering as the black and the white are removed and all that is left is the two of them, his sad eyes looking into her admiring ones, her hand daringly reaching up to touch the milky skin of his cheek.
Unknown and beautiful, beyond her imagination’s endeavors, with the red of his lips and black of his eyes contrasting against the pale skin in a dazzling palette. Like a new mask of new thrilling colors that had been so shamefully darkened by the previous one.
“For all I know, as much as we can both be an angel and a demon wearing masks of our own,” Jina mutters, leaning closer in a way no woman should stand next to a man, “so far we don’t go much further than our eyes meet,” and she’s dizzy when his breath tickles her lips.
Her eyelids flutter closed.
“We’re only human.”
She Takes The Blame
(MBLAQ, Brown Eyed Girls) Mir/Narsha. G.
It’s her fault.
Hyojin thinks it’s her fault.
Dating a kid - they had laughed at her, tried to open her eyes to the obvious truth. She shook her head at them, laughed even. They were different from most, Hyojin knew. Cheolyong was different from most.
Her fault for being so oblivious.
He made her feel alive, sparking something in her that she didn’t remember feeling in such a long while. With him everything was easy as yes or no, he hated buts and ifs. It was as simple as a smile, and he was always smiling at her, embracing her in that naïve way that made her heart flutter, body fitting perfectly against hers.
Her fault for having chosen to be oblivious.
Cheolyong was the sunshine after a rainy day, bringing all the colors in the rainbow as he warmed up the coldness in her. He reminded her of what it was like to just close her eyes and enjoy the wind against her hair, and he would hold her from behind with his face buried in her neck, and asked her not to ever let him go, noona, please don’t ever let go.
And now she was left with nothing but her own blame.
It started getting difficult. Cheolyong wanted more than he could have, and he tried saying it was ok, tried pretending he understood it. But he didn’t. She knew he didn’t, because he was just a kid, he shouldn’t have to understand anything. Sure there were still the sunshine and the colors and warmth, but she began feeling like the world he painted for her was not a place where she belonged. She was bringing nothing but her emptiness into it, blurring the smiles and the repetitions of yes, always yes, with her buts and ifs and nos. Cheolyong didn’t deserve that.
The bitter guilt that was not the one she felt for putting an end to it.
He asked her why she was using that tone. His face was serious, more serious than she’d ever seen it, and that broke Hyojin’s heart. He winced when she said they should be friends, glaring at her with so much hurt in his eyes she almost couldn’t take it. Just say you’ve had enough, he said with a humorless chuckle. Just say you want out. She remained silent, words caught in her throat because no, she didn’t want out, she would never want out. But she refrained from saying it, only lowering her head when he turned around to leave. It was already hard enough if she didn’t stretch it any longer, she didn’t have it in her to make it any more painful.
It was the guilt of having started a beginning.
Heads Will Roll
(MBLAQ, 2NE1) Thunder/CL. PG-13.
Sanghyun knows she’s trouble.
From the moment Sanghyun puts his eyes on her, he knows she’s trouble.
He’s behind the counter, doing his job and pouring drinks for the club’s clients, trying to make out the words they shout over the loud, heavy electronic beats. He catches her by the corner of his eye, a wave of long blonde hair that attracts attention amidst the sea of blacks and purples and blues in the club. She looks frightened, looking in all her directions as if looking for someone.
It isn’t an inch out of ordinary to see people crane their necks in an attempt to spot familiar faces - it is odd when they look relieved not to find what they were looking for.
She nears the counter and orders the heaviest drink on the menu. Sanghyun doesn’t arch an eyebrow, doesn’t show surprise - he knows she’s trouble.
“Your face is pretty,” she suddenly shouts after he hands her the drink, unfazed by the guy trying to push her off the counter with his elbow.
He blinks at her, stopping on his tracks, and looks right into her eyes to see her give a very bright grin, eyes nearly disappearing under such heavy lashes and eyeliner. He smiles back and would thank her, but the guy was now yelling at her to leave the counter if she’d already been served. Sanghyun turns to him instead, eyelids narrowing coldly.
“She stays wherever she wants to stay,” he shouts in a dry voice, shoving the bottle of bear he’d ordered into his chest. “She’s my guest.”
The guy says anything that none of them actually care about before getting lost, quickly slipping away from their memory as the glance into each other once again.
She glances back occasionally, probably trying to spot those friends of hers she was curiously happy not to find. Sanghyun decides to ignore that for the time being.
“I’m Sanghyun,” he informs as he pours the contents from the mixer - the strong smell making his eyes water a little - into a cup to serve another girl. She’s looking at him with another one of those smiles, and Sanghyun realizes he enjoys it. “What about you?”
She holds out her hand above the counter, waiting for him to shake it. “You can call me CL.”
“CL?” he chuckles, glancing at the outstretched hand. “That’s secretive,” he grins, puts down the gin bottle he’s holding and grabs her hand, lifting it to his lips and kissing it awkwardly. He has absolutely no idea of why he did that as it certainly isn’t his style to act as though he knows how to behave around a girl (because he doesn’t), but something about the timing, and her eyes and the long hours in the craze behind that counter have an unusual effect on his head, the effect that makes him do this kind of silly thing.
“You’re so not good at this,” CL laughs but brings the hand to her chest tenderly.
They have bits of conversations over the loud music, although he’s not sure she can actually hear his answers. She turns her head back one again, whipping it back forward with a stern expression. He notices she’s lowering her face between her shoulders, suddenly seeming very livid and grim.
When he glances at the door across the club, he notices a strange group of men who are decidedly not regulars, scanning the place just like she’d done moments ago. He cocks an eyebrow.
“Friends of yours?” he asks, nodding at their direction.
“Yeah, they’re from my classroom in school. Probably want to know why I skipped class today,” she says sardonically and smirks when she realizes he’s laughing.
“I just want to know if you’re a thief,” Sanghyun gazes at her, waiting for a reply. For all he knows (which is nothing, really), she could pass him some cheap lie just to get what she wants and he’d be screwed up, probably even losing his job. However, he sticks to his decision firmly, and that’s not something he often does, facing her with utmost seriousness.
“I wouldn’t do anything to harm you,” CL says with matching solemnity and Sanghyun detects the honesty in her voice, not missing the way she dodges the point of his question, though. Glancing at the approaching men, he lowers his eyes and sighs.
“Here,” he tosses a key at her, tilting his head to somewhere behind him. “The locker is the door back there, you can come around the counter through that door to your right. I’ll let you know when they leave.”
CL’s grinning at him, a hundred whispers of thank you thank you thank you pouring from her mouth as she follows his instructions, locking herself up in the room within mere moments. Sanghyun is left with his clients, biting at his lip nervously, wondering if he was making a mistake. Not because he didn’t trust her - precisely because he was putting a whole lot of trust into her for a total stranger.
The men don’t leave until some point before three in the morning, when a bouncer comes back in to announce they’re closing up. It’s Tuesday, so they pack up business a lot earlier than in the weekends. They glance around the empty club, eyes lingering on Sanghyun with a fair amount of suspicion, but then again, they do the same to the waiters and the DJ.
“Gentlemen,” Sanghyun nods at them conversationally under the analyzing stare. They grunt a response before exchanging looks among themselves and agreeing to leave. Sanghyun lets out a sigh, letting his shoulders drop tiredly as he talks back to a few of the waiters on their way out, waving them goodbye.
Once he’s sure it’s positively safe, he knocks at the door behind the counter, wondering for a moment if CL hadn’t jumped off the small window it had on the top of wall and left him locked on the outside. That possibility is quickly discarded when CL opens the door, smiling at him.
“Thanks,” she says first thing, and sounds like she means it. “I’m sorry for putting you through this.”
“I guess you won’t explain, since you don’t even want to say your real name,” he shrugs, closing the door behind him after he’s in. She smiles a little apologetically, but then lets her eyes drop to the floor. “Hey,” he says after a beat, frowning a little. “Is that my jacket?”
She starts and glances at the jacket around her, quickly taking it off. “Yeah, I thought it was cool so I tried it on. You have good taste in clothes.”
He notices for the first time that she’d looked through his locker.
“I didn’t take anything, I swear. I just got bored in here all by myself,” she giggles, stepping closer to him with the jacket in her arms. She looks up at him, golden bangs falling onto the sides of her face, and brings the collar to her face, sniffing the cologne that had drenched into the fabric. “Plus, you smell really good.”
Sanghyun tries muttering something, but her gaze is bearing him of all capacity of thought.
“You can have the jacket if you want it,” is the first thing that comes to his mind, and he says it in such a stupid way he would have slapped his face if he wasn’t so busy being frozen on spot, head slowly lowering as their bodies touch, her hands letting go of the jacket to grasp his uniform shirt.
“Thanks,” CL says for the third time that night, leaning onto him on the tips of her toes, a smile playing on her lips as she remembers something. “You never thanked me.”
“For what?” he whispers, fingers caressing the small of her back to pull her closer.
“For saying your face is pretty,” she smiles and their lips finally meet, shyly at the first kiss, and then unleashing all the heat they stored in when they talked over the counter hours ago, her arms curling around his neck as his bind around her waist, both of them needing the other one closer, flushed right against them.
They stumble over until Sanghyun’s back met the locker rather painfully, but it never stops him from lettings his hands roam over her waist, under her shirt, and she mewls into the kiss, so fucking beautiful.
“I guess you just found a way to thank me well enough, pretty face,” CL grins as she unbuttons his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders.
“Sanghyun,” he mutters because that is very important, “call me Sanghyun.”
She nods as he lifts her shirt and holds her back against him, whispering and gasping and moaning the name, and he was right about that being important.
When he wakes up a few hours later with a headache from such little sleep but also with a gladly persisting pleasant sensation, he finds himself alone in the locker room, back incredibly sore from his awkward sleeping position. He glances around and smiles when he realizes his jacket is nowhere to be found. Instead, right next to him he finds a skull ring he remembers seeing on CL’s hand on the previous night.
His grin only gets wider, and he ruffles his hair, letting out a groan of frustration and happiness, because he knows - just knows - that was not the last of CL he’d be seeing. After all, he knew she was trouble from the moment he put his eyes on her, and trouble doesn’t go away so easily.
The Ugly Girl
(MBLAQ) G.O./Joon. R.
A reality in which Joon’s supposedly unattractive.
G.O. laughs for about three straight minutes under Joon’s indignant stare. As far as the younger one is concerned, there is nothing slightly amusing about this situation. This is a drama, not a cheap comedy.
“Hyung,” he turns to Seungho with a whiny voice, and the current high pitch becomes even more evident, making G.O. fold over his lap in laughter. “Make him stop!”
Seungho blinks at them for a second, but then Joon seems to be at the verge of long, heavy girl tears, so he pats G.O.’s shoulder and gives him a stern look that only partly works, because G.O. is biting his lip to keep the rest of the laughter in.
The funny part is not that Joon woke up as a girl (weirdly enough, it even makes some sort of sense, but none of them wants to think too much into that). It’s funny because Joon is merely half as attractive as a girl as he is as a guy, and Joon is hysterical at the thought of not being drop dead gorgeous because he’s never done this.
(“Oh, my God,” he says a couple of hours later, glaring in horror at Mir. “I can’t believe I’ll have to live as someone only barely hotter than you.” And he wails again, not even properly giving Mir any time to feel offended.)
It instantly loses its hilariousness because Joon’s horribly insecure without a painstakingly sexy body, complaining all the time about how ugly he is now and asking them to keep loving him even though he’s no longer their only hope to beat other male groups in matters of appearance, dramatically apologizing to Thunder for leaving him all by himself in that endeavor from now on. Joon’s always been all about ridiculous hyperboles, but his female self takes it to a whole other level.
What makes everything a bit better is that he’s comforted by the fact he has huge breasts for an Asian woman, so he constantly tries to bring attention to that particular part of his body. Being a guy, he knows guys won’t look at a girl’s face if she has a nice rack, so he invests in that theory and is quite successful. Not once does Mir fail to engage in long conversations with his boobs, and a voice coming from an irrelevant spot above them answers his questions.
They repeatedly tell him he looks just fine (Mir wonders why he would even care about having a pretty face when he has breasts like those), but it’s all gone to waste. Joon laments the deformation of his stunning face and carefully sculpted body, gifts from God to all humanity that some sort of evil force had decided to take away from his possession.
“Hyung,” Thunder calls one day at lunch, turning to Joon. “Can you do the laundry tomorrow? Since you’re on your break and will stay in the apartment tomorrow.”
He stops talking because Joon sobs loudly into his hands. Just as he frowns confusedly at his bandmate, shaking his head when the others start giving him accusing glares, Joon looks up at him with absolutely hurt eyes.
“You never asked me to do the chores when I was good-looking,” he gasps out as a tear rolled down his cheek. “THE UGLINESS THIS UTERUS GAVE ME IS CHANGING EVERYTHING.”
And he storms out the kitchen with loud sobs, making Seungho groan tiredly because girl Joon never talks to anyone that isn’t Seungho hyung once he’s upset, because Seungho’s the only gentleman in the group who does not ever stare at his breasts, even though he supposedly wants people to look at them. He drags himself to Joon’s bedroom, not without smacking the back of Thunder’s head first.
(“For God’s sakes, Changsun,” they hear Seungho groan from the room in a particularly distasteful intonation, “I’m already here with you - you have me, don’t you? You don’t have to call me oppa.” They can feel the shudder in Seungho’s voice as he recites the word.
“But oppa,” Joon insists, whines, and Seungho lets out another suffered groan.)
“I’ll never be able to find love again,” Joon mewls sadly into a pillow, thrown across G.O.’s bed. “I’m fated to eternal loneliness and misery with my ugliness, just like Cheolyong and Seungho hyung.”
“I thought Seungho was your knight on a white horse,” G.O. snickers, watching the younger boy’s head jerk slightly.
“He is, but that doesn’t make him nearly as hot as I am,” he mutters, probably feeling a little guilty. Then he grimaces. “Better yet, as I was,” and he buries his face back into the pillow.
“Look,” G.O. says with a heavy sigh, gripping Joon’s shoulders and pulling him up to face him. “You’re not ugly, and you’re far from just average. You look great, I don’t know why you’d think you’re so repellent as a woman.”
“You’re just saying that,” Joon attempts a pout, but his lips are tugging up reflexively. G.O. smiles at him and shakes his head. “You think I’m a hideous monster who can only be less unattractive than Cheolyong.”
“While you really are a whole lot better than Cheolyong, I’d say he’s hardly the only person you surpass in terms of looks,” he says honestly and cups Joon’s cheek, watching the watery eyes look back into his. “You can never not be beautiful, Changsun.”
Joon is kissing him before he can pull off any reaction, and their bodies flush together, hips rolling up into each other’s. Joon parts his lips to let out a soft moan when G.O.’s mouth kisses his neck, and they lie down, G.O. above him, quickly maneuvering them out of their clothes. Joon’s fingers run down his hair and massage his nape as he kisses down his neck and breasts and stomach, only to let go of him to violently grip the sheets moments later, one leg curling over G.O.’s shoulder as he hums out his pleasure.
They move together as G.O. thrusts into him, their lips seeking each other’s in a rush. Joon moans into his mouth lustfully, body arching right up into his and nails leaving marks down G.O.’s back while the older one fastens his pace, jerking his hips against Joon’s more and more deeply. Joon’s mind goes blank as he rakes on G.O.’s shoulders, a quiet scream lost in his throat, only to be filled with the other man’s orgasm merely seconds into his afterglow.
It’s lucky, Joon thinks, that on the next day he goes back into being the impeccably beautiful male he’d always been, if not even hotter, he would later add as he makes love to the mirror (moaning more loudly than on the previous night), because that will certainly cancel all possibilities of pregnancy, which he had worried about just before drifting off to sleep. He thanks G.O. for making him see that it was impossible for him not to be flawless Lee Joon, since that was obviously what got his body back, and G.O. just stares at Joon’s male naked body next to his, right where there should be nude breasts, and then glowers, sourly figuring this is what one gets if they give into Joon under any circumstances.
(“This only proves that you must be horrible in bed,” Joon says to Mir later that day, ignoring the younger one’s piercing glare. “Even when I was slightly less pitiful looking than you, I could have more sex than you had in about an entire year.”
Mir tells himself it’d be bad publicity if he was arrested for strangling a bandmate.)
Becoming Friends
(MBLAQ, Secret, Jay Park) Gen. Seungho, Jay. Slight Seungho/Sunhwa. G.
Seungho is invited to We Got Married, much to his bemusement.
Seungho blinks and thinks there must be some mistake. He sort of wants to go to the previous room in the sequence of five rooms he had gone through to carry on with the show in his journey to find his fictional bride so they would have their fictional wedding and lead the popular Korean show named We Got Married, a show he still couldn’t believe he was invited into as half of their “next top star couple” - for one thing, he was the last option in his whole group to solo appearances on variety shows, let alone such a well-known one (he’d asked, multiple times, if they had not misspelled the name Lee Joon when contacting his agency).
He was even all dressed up in a white tuxedo, supposedly to carry out the ceremony after he met his pretend spouse. In the previous room he had met Han Sunhwa in a lovely white dress, and when he smiled (not giggled) brightly at her because he sort of had a semi-publically admitted crush on her, she widened his eyes at him, stopping him from approaching.
“Oppa, I’d love to get married to you,” she had said because she might or might not correspond to the silly crush, “but on what show do you think you’re on?”
Her question had confused him beyond wording, and, as she told him he should proceed to the next and final room - the one in which the ceremony would be held, if the church-like decoration was any indication - to know who his real partner would be.
And now he gapes, closing the door behind him, at no one other than Jay Park, standing before and altar with an expectant grin that melted into a bewildered frown that appropriately matched Seungho’s. The both look at each other and then at the filming crew who’s cracking up by now, inquiring what the heck was going on in there with half nervous, half disbelieving voices.
At that moment, a comedian shows up in a fancy master of ceremony outfit and positions himself behind the altar, telling them to approach, not without referring to them as “grooms”. They comply, eyes anxiously following the man’s moves as they want for the explanation for that blatant mistake - it had to be a mistake, oh god, it had to. The man holds his arms up as a priest would in the beginning of a matrimonial celebration.
“Welcome to the first season of We’ve Become Friends, the show branching from the We Got Married series in which we’ll form inseparable friendships between two compatible idols who are yet not close with each other,” he begins and the rest of his words are muffles by the insane cackling coming from the filming crew and the horribly enthusiastic squeals coming from the girls and women on the set - Seungho should have been suspicious of their knowing, ogling smiles when he first showed up to get his make-up done that day.
Seungho and Jay share a long, desperate groan and sort of laugh because it is so ridiculous it’s incredible that it’s even being filmed. They hear the host list up some of the similarities in their public personas and crack a few jokes about how they should be long time best friends by now. When a random noona shrieks about how cute they are, they understand the reason it’s being filmed after all.
Fans are a scary, scary thing.
Just as the crack ceremony proceeds, Seungho looks down and frowns at Jay’s impeccably black tuxedo, then raises a brow at the pink flowers sticking out of his own jacket’s pocket, right before the rings are given to them. Dear lord, they’d have rings - “friendship rings,” the host had told them with a mocking smile.
“Wait a second,” he feels the need to say out loud, looking at the MC and Jay. “Am I supposed to be the bride here?” he asks, laughing when everyone giggles, Jay almost dropping to his knees in defeat.
Here, Kitty Kitty
(B2ST) Gen. Yoseob/Junhyung if you squint hard enough. G.
Yoseob gets himself a cat.
Junhyung is surprised. He’s not surprised because Yoseob jumped on his face after opening the door for him, or because he proceeds to shove a feline beast in his face right afterwards - well, maybe those are additional factors. Junhyung is mostly surprised because, while bouncing excitedly and twirling the tiny ball of black fur in the air, which almost makes him feel pity for the thing, Yoseob announces that is his cat.
“Say hi to Jokie, the kitty,” he coos with puckered lips as he nests the cat in his chest. “Isn’t he adorable?”
“Is that thing living here?” Junhyung asks Doojoon, who’s sitting on the couch behind them with a less than amused face, and completely ignores the pout Yoseob’s giving him.
The leader gives a helpless shrug, saying something about how he’d given up. Junhyung blinks.
“Is that thing living here?” he turns around on the balls of his feet, hissing at Yoseob with narrowed eyes.
“I always thought we should have a pet,” the younger one stammers, blinking back at Junhyung, unable to understand why he seems furious. Who could be furious when there’s such a cute, defenseless creature in their dorm, and they can all raise him together and teach him tricks and see him grow up, like his daddies - Yoseob hugs the kitty closer to his face out of sheer excitement.
“I’m allergic, you can’t have it in here. That thing’s going to fucking kill me,” he growls between gritted teeth.
“You’re not allergic,” Yoseob squints, offended, “and he’s not a thing! He’s Jokie, the kitty. Our kitty,” and he gestures at the dorm in an attempt to refer to the remaining members of the group.
Junhyung stares, abashed, as Yoseob mentions there’s a litter box in the kitchen (“but we eat there”, he cried out) and pulls out a few cat toys as he drops to the floor and plays with the furry thing on his lap. Doojoon simply watches with a tired sigh of defeat, and Junhyung considers maybe their leader is just losing the hang of it.
But Junhyung has a back-up plan. Since the rest of the members still haven’t arrived in the dorm, he decides that as soon as they step through the front door, he will call a voting for who wants the cat and who doesn’t, and he knows Yoseob will not have the heart to stand against the majority of the group. Because, well, it’s the majority.
“He’s so fuzzy,” Kikwang cries minutes later, nuzzling the kitty’s back as Dongwoon caresses one of the tiny ears with a finger. “We can be, like, his daddies,” he almost shrieks in excitement, and there are tears rolling down Yoseob’s face, there are legitimate tears.
Junhyung should have remembered that the hole in his plan is that he works with a bunch of useless idiots.
Hyunseung, however, is merely watching them with a half smile and folded arms over his chest, leaning into a wall silently. Glancing at him, Junhyung feels hope grow in his chest.
“So, do you want the cat?” he asks the boy, who blinks, a little startled, at him. All eyes turn to Hyunseung, making his own widen a little. “Both Doojoon and I don't want it in here,” he pretends he doesn’t hear Kikwang’s protest that Jokie’s not an it, “and if you also don’t want it, then it’s half of us.”
Yoseob and Kikwang give Hyunseung matching pleading looks, their eyes looking even rounder with the pitifully tilted eyebrows. Dongwoon also seems to be so fond of the kitty, smiling as it paws his wiggling fingers, then looking up curiously to see what Hyunseung will decide as the kitty tries biting his fingers with its tiny teeth.
Hyunseung bites his lip, glancing back and forth between the three of them, Doojoon’s moderately hopeful face and Junhyung’s anxious, twitchy one, until he throws his hands in the air and tells Doojoon and Junhyung he’s sorry.
“Look how happy they are with the cat,” he explains, pointing a finger to the celebrating trio and, of course, clueless Jokie in Dongwoon’s arms. "I know it's responsability, but it might be fun."
“They are pretty happy,” Doojoon considers with a contemplative nod, and Junhyung gapes at the two of them, making an embarrassing little noise in the back of his throat in frustration because the only two onto which he could rely are betraying him like that.
He knows, he knows, the goddamn cat will be shedding hair and throwing up fur balls on his bed, not anyone else’s - and that’s the most optimistic prediction he can think of.
On that night, he sulks in a corner, sullenly watching the rest of the group (even Doojoon, that backstabbing bastard) form a circle in the living room to play with Jokie, all wearing identically stupid grins while the cat merely does its cat job by mewling, walking a little and doing nothing.
“It’s not as if you could just decide by yourself that you could have a cat, you know,” he suddenly blurts out to Yoseob, who turns around to blink at him. “You have to ask permission before doing things like these.”
“You’re the one who should like Jokie the most out of us,” the younger one retorts with a pout, picking up the cat and nearing Junhyung, who inches back out of instinct. “He was named after you, after all.”
Junhyung blinks, stares, gapes.
“What.”
“Yeah,” Yoseob smiles while Junhyung hears snickers from a point behind the boy, snickers that sound a lot like Hyunseung’s and Doojoon’s. “He’s Jokie because you’re Joker. You know, English,” he beams, holding the kitty closer to his face. Junhyung can’t point out the dumb mistake there because of his current catatonic state.
“I only bought him because he reminds me so much of you,” Yoseob goes on. “You’re both cute and shy in the same way,” he giggles when Jokie quivers back into his hands as if shying away from Junhyung’s static, disbelieving face. “See?”
At least, Junhyung thinks, the cat is sensible enough to feel embarrassed for the absurd in this situation. Maybe the problem isn’t the poor kitty - maybe they should just get rid of Yoseob instead.
He thinks he can be in the winning party for that voting.
Um, hi. This was my first time ever writing het (and actually focusing on it), so I'm sorry if it's too awkward, I'm still tiptoeing around the concept. Also, I'm sorry I make you nauseous with my ridiculous Seungho bias, but it's very hard to hold it back :(
Oh, and it's also my first time ever attempting to write B2ST (think of this as a crazy, experimental post, if you will) without any MBLAQ member to give me any support, and I don't know a whole lot about them, so there might be mistakes :|
Just. Be careful when reading, ok? :/
Drown
(MBLAQ, T-ara) Joon/Soyeon, one-sided Seungho/Joon. G.
Injung doesn't know why she tortures herself like this.
She shifts on her feet impatiently, tightening her hold on the umbrella. Her heart is shattered, stepped over again and again and again, and yet there she stands, stupidly offering it once again, knowing it’ll be crushed just like before.
But she can’t help herself, can she?
“Changsun ah,” Injung whispers, and the name gets lost under the loud noise of the heavy rain pouring over them. It washes her legs, her socks and feet and she’s freezing, which leaves her wondering how he must feel, sitting on the floor like that, uniform soaked by the unceasing drops.
She knows he didn’t realize yet she was there by his side. He never does, not once.
“Changsun ah,” she calls out firmly this time, bringing the umbrella closer to her. His body remains still but the expressionless eyes move up, only showing the faintest hint of surprise to see her there. The brown hair strands now look black, glued to his face as the water runs through them.
Injung bites her lip, looking back at him. He’s as broken and pitiful and ridiculous as her, both of them are pathetic, and a part of her wishes she could feel some sort of vengeful joy out of seeing him like that, finally stuck at the same abyss he’s thrown her into a long time ago.
She almost wants to smirk and say she’s pleased, but she couldn’t ever be happy when he’s as miserable as that.
“He thinks I’m disgusting, doesn’t he?” he finally speaks up, spitting out the water that insists in flowing into his lips. She told him confessing was a bad idea, and not out of jealousy. Obviously he didn’t listen, he never would. “The way he looked at me,” he trails off and smiles the saddest, most hollow smile she’s ever seen on his lips, and it doesn’t fit. Something as lifeless as that would never fit Changsun. “Fuck, he didn’t even have to say anything. He hates me.”
“Changsun ah, you should go home,” she chooses to ignore talking about Seungho. She shouldn’t, but right now she despises everything about him for putting Changsun in that state. They’re classmates and friends, close dear friends, and Seungho’s been there for her so many times. Whether she needed help with an upcoming test or a shoulder to cry on after her grandmother’s death, Seungho was there. He’s hugged her through so many of her sobs over Changsun - she shouldn’t hate him, but, at that moment, she does, and that dreadful thought consumes her every soul with guilt. So she wants to ignore that nagging feeling.
“Do you know, noona?” Changsun gasps out, chest heaving as he moves his face up to eye her. “Do you know what it’s like to be ignored like this by the one person you love with all your fucking heart?”
Injung blinks, swallowing the words that try to make their way out of her lips.
She might have an idea.
“You’ll catch a cold,” she says instead and decides to walk to him when he coughs, crouching beside him and shielding him from the rain under her umbrella. Patting his cold, wet head, she lets her hand run down the side of his face, chest tightening when he leans his head onto her hand, closing his eyes.
“I want him so much,” he mumbles, humming at the caress her fingers do on his skin. “Why can’t I have him, noona? Why can’t he just,” his breath hitches and he bites back a sob, “like me?”
“Changsun ah,” she mutters, moving closer until the tip of her forehead is against his and it hurts, why why why, why is she listening to him pine over Seungho when he should be saying love words to her and only her instead.
She hates Seungho.
“I need him,” he says against her cheek, hands roaming up the arms that hold his neck. He opens his eyes to realize the umbrella had slipped off from her hold, now swaying gently on the floor next to them, forgotten.
Their faces move on their own and they’re breathing in heavy, moist puffs against each other’s lips. They look into each other’s eyes, the sight blurry and confusing, and it makes them feel dizzy.
She shouldn’t, she knows she shouldn’t because it’s not her the one he wants, but it’s been so long, and she’s never been this close. It’s surprisingly easy to simply give in.
He’s kissing her, desperately and unabashedly, tongue swirling against hers as he wishes he could do to Seungho’s, mind picturing Seungho’s plush, inviting lips as he caresses hers with his own. It’s not bad, she’s a friend, she understands. He doesn’t have to feel guilty, he just has to take it all out because not being able to kiss Seungho hurts so much.
As they cling onto each other, drowning their sorrow in one another’s arms, she hovers over him and protects him from the rain, serves as his support, his faithful, loyal support. She gets lost in the kiss and shuts her mind off, shoving those thoughts away because she knows.
She knows that comfort is all she will ever be to him.
For Every Rule
(MBLAQ, 2NE1) Seungho/Dara. G.
Truth to be told, Seungho shouldn’t even be there.
They only meet up occasionally, when they happen to be scheduled for the same shows, or in the backstage of festivals or holiday concerts. They bow at each other respectfully - Seungho is always a little stiff because, on top of being an important sunbae, she’s also the older sister of his friend and fellow bandmate.
Dara smiles warmly and jokes, asks him to keep an eye on Thunder for her and take good care of him. Thunder grunts in irritation and laces an arm around her shoulders while Seungho laughs with an obedient bow, and he tells her it’s probably time for her to get back to her dressing room. Everyone knows he strictly times MBLAQ’s conversations with his sister, and Seungho recognizes his duty as a good brother so he just waves at Dara as she tells him they should meet up sometime, Thunder’s arm blocking her face.
He never thought she’d want to stick to her word, and thus is surprised when she texts him. Let’s have some coffee tomorrow, it says, followed by some cheerful emoticons. Seungho’s taken aback, wondering if he should accept the invitation.
“Sanghyun ah gave you my phone number?” he asks skeptically after they walk to a table for two inside the small café. He accepts her offer because she’s a sunbae and the older sister of his friend, so it’d be impolite to turn her down, and Seungho’s all about good manners.
She smiles mischievously, teeth sparkling under the dim, orange-ish lights of the establishment. “Chaerin ah asked him for me.”
Seungho nods understandingly, smiling along. They make small chat about their careers and what jobs they have been engaged in, then talked about Thunder, Dara sharing embarrassing childhood stories while Seungho accused some recent happenings in return.
“He still says he would never let any of you talk to me when he’s not around?” she raises her brows curious after Seungho absent-mindedly mentioned Thunder’s obsessive protection towards her amidst the conversation.
“He claims he’d rather burst into flames before that happens,” he sneered, taking a sip of his tea. “I probably shouldn’t even be here right now.”
“And yet, you are,” she glances at him before grinning, watching as the corner of his lips tugged up on their own in response.
“And yet, I am,” he nods, looking down at his cellphone on the table.
“It’s funny, though,” she breaks the somewhat unsettling silence that lingers between the two of them, pushing a few hair strands behind her ear. “Last month he actually gave me a list of guys he trusts enough to go on a date with me. Printed, all of the names in capitals. I’m guessing he wanted to make it official.”
Seungho giggles and shakes his head because oh, Sanghyun ah. She nods solemnly, leaning onto the table to rest her face on a hand.
“It’s funny that he still says none of you can talk to me because the first name on the list is yours,” she informs, observing his reaction with interest. She amusedly mirrors his raise of brows, easily slipping into one of her heart-warming smiles as he gapes.
“He never told me anything,” he swears, and she believes him. Thunder can be very odd when he puts some effort into it.
“And I should tell you that his idea of an ideal boyfriend for me is a lot different from my own,” she pulls a thoughtful face when he smiles a little sourly at the remark, a brief hint of what could be disappointment running through his face even though he tries to shake it off. That moment, right then as he gives an awkward smile looking out the window across the café, white teeth biting onto the lower full lip, is when she’s completely sure of what she wants.
Her smile this time is a little less innocent, a little more demanding, and she leans over the table to lower her voice secretively, eyes bright with excitement.
“But I guess every rule has its exception.”
Only Human
(MBLAQ, After School) Seungho/Nana. G.
Jina is fascinated by the eyes that glitter behind the dark mask.
The first time she sees his eyes, they’re behind a dark mask, glancing emptily at the moving figures in the ball room. Jina stops breathing, the arm she uses to hold up her porcelain white mask drops, and she finds herself lost in that gaze that isn’t directed at her. Her sister pinches her arm and instructs her to put back her mask back on in a hiss. She complies, but her eyes are still locked with the hollow ones across the room, bound undisturbed the twirling bodies swaying between the two of them for all she acknowledges is his presence alone, drawing her in with so much darkness and sadness flowing from a mere gaze.
She needs to see what face the black mask hides, she must know what features go around those sad eyes and see for herself if they’re as inebriating as the glittering dark of his eyes as she takes them to be.
“Is the gentleman unimpressed by the beauty of the masks my father’s guests carry?” she asks from behind him, unsure of how she managed to address to a male she’d never seen before, even more of how her voice could be heard so decided and firm when she usually talked through shy whispers.
Jina’s breath once again leaves her lips as he turns around, gaze aimed at her, and the eyes look even emptier under the moonlight glow that strikes them through the window behind her.
She can’t see because the mask cover all of his face (all of it but the eyes, shining through the mat surface), but she can tell that he’s smiling, although he remains silent. “Is that why you picked yourself such a brim one?” she tries again, tone defying and completely unlike her own.
“The beauty of masks seems very brittle in comparison to the truths they hide underneath their bright colors,” he says, his voice deep and alluring, and she gasps through her parted lips, wanting to hear it again, wanting to hear it forever.
“But they are more meaningful when they paint the colors of their carriers’ hearts, are they not?” she finds herself whispering back, unable to look away from the cold intensity of those glittering eyes, now looking at her with amusement.
“As expected, Miss Jina has an answer right at the tip of her tongue for all who perceive the world differently from how she does,” he’s smiling again, eyelids slanting up softly and she notices how pale his skin is in contrast to the blackness of his mask and eyes.
“You know my name, stranger?” her mind’s still twirling, leaving her dizzy because her name had never sounded any more beautiful than that voice made it.
“Doesn’t everyone in this room?” his eyes turn again to smile.
Behind them, the guests in the room join their voices to cheerfully count down to the midnight, all hands flying to the knots behind their napes so the masks would fall undone when the clock’s hands meet in its peak. She gazes at him expectantly, drawing a million sketches of what his face looked like, all seeming clumsy and unworthy of that pair of eyes.
“Tell me, Miss Jina,” he hunches forward a little, bringing their covered faces closer and making her gulp anxiously at the proximity, the echoes of sevens and sixes and fives in her ears, “if it’s true that masks are the windows to our souls, much like our eyes, should we find out at the tick of midnight that you really are an angel covered in white that shall bring life to this room, and I am the demon haunted by darkness that came to steal all the lives away?”
It’s four, and it’s three, and his fingers grab the tip of the mask softly, eyes never leaving hers. He steps closer, watching her look back at him with childlike passion and then a hint of fear that makes her chest heave and his eyes smile once again.
And they count two, and they count one, and masks fly up to the roof as cheers are heard across the manor. She brings down her mask and nervously watches his slide down his face, both of them dropping to the floor, tinkering as the black and the white are removed and all that is left is the two of them, his sad eyes looking into her admiring ones, her hand daringly reaching up to touch the milky skin of his cheek.
Unknown and beautiful, beyond her imagination’s endeavors, with the red of his lips and black of his eyes contrasting against the pale skin in a dazzling palette. Like a new mask of new thrilling colors that had been so shamefully darkened by the previous one.
“For all I know, as much as we can both be an angel and a demon wearing masks of our own,” Jina mutters, leaning closer in a way no woman should stand next to a man, “so far we don’t go much further than our eyes meet,” and she’s dizzy when his breath tickles her lips.
Her eyelids flutter closed.
“We’re only human.”
She Takes The Blame
(MBLAQ, Brown Eyed Girls) Mir/Narsha. G.
It’s her fault.
Hyojin thinks it’s her fault.
Dating a kid - they had laughed at her, tried to open her eyes to the obvious truth. She shook her head at them, laughed even. They were different from most, Hyojin knew. Cheolyong was different from most.
Her fault for being so oblivious.
He made her feel alive, sparking something in her that she didn’t remember feeling in such a long while. With him everything was easy as yes or no, he hated buts and ifs. It was as simple as a smile, and he was always smiling at her, embracing her in that naïve way that made her heart flutter, body fitting perfectly against hers.
Her fault for having chosen to be oblivious.
Cheolyong was the sunshine after a rainy day, bringing all the colors in the rainbow as he warmed up the coldness in her. He reminded her of what it was like to just close her eyes and enjoy the wind against her hair, and he would hold her from behind with his face buried in her neck, and asked her not to ever let him go, noona, please don’t ever let go.
And now she was left with nothing but her own blame.
It started getting difficult. Cheolyong wanted more than he could have, and he tried saying it was ok, tried pretending he understood it. But he didn’t. She knew he didn’t, because he was just a kid, he shouldn’t have to understand anything. Sure there were still the sunshine and the colors and warmth, but she began feeling like the world he painted for her was not a place where she belonged. She was bringing nothing but her emptiness into it, blurring the smiles and the repetitions of yes, always yes, with her buts and ifs and nos. Cheolyong didn’t deserve that.
The bitter guilt that was not the one she felt for putting an end to it.
He asked her why she was using that tone. His face was serious, more serious than she’d ever seen it, and that broke Hyojin’s heart. He winced when she said they should be friends, glaring at her with so much hurt in his eyes she almost couldn’t take it. Just say you’ve had enough, he said with a humorless chuckle. Just say you want out. She remained silent, words caught in her throat because no, she didn’t want out, she would never want out. But she refrained from saying it, only lowering her head when he turned around to leave. It was already hard enough if she didn’t stretch it any longer, she didn’t have it in her to make it any more painful.
It was the guilt of having started a beginning.
Heads Will Roll
(MBLAQ, 2NE1) Thunder/CL. PG-13.
Sanghyun knows she’s trouble.
From the moment Sanghyun puts his eyes on her, he knows she’s trouble.
He’s behind the counter, doing his job and pouring drinks for the club’s clients, trying to make out the words they shout over the loud, heavy electronic beats. He catches her by the corner of his eye, a wave of long blonde hair that attracts attention amidst the sea of blacks and purples and blues in the club. She looks frightened, looking in all her directions as if looking for someone.
It isn’t an inch out of ordinary to see people crane their necks in an attempt to spot familiar faces - it is odd when they look relieved not to find what they were looking for.
She nears the counter and orders the heaviest drink on the menu. Sanghyun doesn’t arch an eyebrow, doesn’t show surprise - he knows she’s trouble.
“Your face is pretty,” she suddenly shouts after he hands her the drink, unfazed by the guy trying to push her off the counter with his elbow.
He blinks at her, stopping on his tracks, and looks right into her eyes to see her give a very bright grin, eyes nearly disappearing under such heavy lashes and eyeliner. He smiles back and would thank her, but the guy was now yelling at her to leave the counter if she’d already been served. Sanghyun turns to him instead, eyelids narrowing coldly.
“She stays wherever she wants to stay,” he shouts in a dry voice, shoving the bottle of bear he’d ordered into his chest. “She’s my guest.”
The guy says anything that none of them actually care about before getting lost, quickly slipping away from their memory as the glance into each other once again.
She glances back occasionally, probably trying to spot those friends of hers she was curiously happy not to find. Sanghyun decides to ignore that for the time being.
“I’m Sanghyun,” he informs as he pours the contents from the mixer - the strong smell making his eyes water a little - into a cup to serve another girl. She’s looking at him with another one of those smiles, and Sanghyun realizes he enjoys it. “What about you?”
She holds out her hand above the counter, waiting for him to shake it. “You can call me CL.”
“CL?” he chuckles, glancing at the outstretched hand. “That’s secretive,” he grins, puts down the gin bottle he’s holding and grabs her hand, lifting it to his lips and kissing it awkwardly. He has absolutely no idea of why he did that as it certainly isn’t his style to act as though he knows how to behave around a girl (because he doesn’t), but something about the timing, and her eyes and the long hours in the craze behind that counter have an unusual effect on his head, the effect that makes him do this kind of silly thing.
“You’re so not good at this,” CL laughs but brings the hand to her chest tenderly.
They have bits of conversations over the loud music, although he’s not sure she can actually hear his answers. She turns her head back one again, whipping it back forward with a stern expression. He notices she’s lowering her face between her shoulders, suddenly seeming very livid and grim.
When he glances at the door across the club, he notices a strange group of men who are decidedly not regulars, scanning the place just like she’d done moments ago. He cocks an eyebrow.
“Friends of yours?” he asks, nodding at their direction.
“Yeah, they’re from my classroom in school. Probably want to know why I skipped class today,” she says sardonically and smirks when she realizes he’s laughing.
“I just want to know if you’re a thief,” Sanghyun gazes at her, waiting for a reply. For all he knows (which is nothing, really), she could pass him some cheap lie just to get what she wants and he’d be screwed up, probably even losing his job. However, he sticks to his decision firmly, and that’s not something he often does, facing her with utmost seriousness.
“I wouldn’t do anything to harm you,” CL says with matching solemnity and Sanghyun detects the honesty in her voice, not missing the way she dodges the point of his question, though. Glancing at the approaching men, he lowers his eyes and sighs.
“Here,” he tosses a key at her, tilting his head to somewhere behind him. “The locker is the door back there, you can come around the counter through that door to your right. I’ll let you know when they leave.”
CL’s grinning at him, a hundred whispers of thank you thank you thank you pouring from her mouth as she follows his instructions, locking herself up in the room within mere moments. Sanghyun is left with his clients, biting at his lip nervously, wondering if he was making a mistake. Not because he didn’t trust her - precisely because he was putting a whole lot of trust into her for a total stranger.
The men don’t leave until some point before three in the morning, when a bouncer comes back in to announce they’re closing up. It’s Tuesday, so they pack up business a lot earlier than in the weekends. They glance around the empty club, eyes lingering on Sanghyun with a fair amount of suspicion, but then again, they do the same to the waiters and the DJ.
“Gentlemen,” Sanghyun nods at them conversationally under the analyzing stare. They grunt a response before exchanging looks among themselves and agreeing to leave. Sanghyun lets out a sigh, letting his shoulders drop tiredly as he talks back to a few of the waiters on their way out, waving them goodbye.
Once he’s sure it’s positively safe, he knocks at the door behind the counter, wondering for a moment if CL hadn’t jumped off the small window it had on the top of wall and left him locked on the outside. That possibility is quickly discarded when CL opens the door, smiling at him.
“Thanks,” she says first thing, and sounds like she means it. “I’m sorry for putting you through this.”
“I guess you won’t explain, since you don’t even want to say your real name,” he shrugs, closing the door behind him after he’s in. She smiles a little apologetically, but then lets her eyes drop to the floor. “Hey,” he says after a beat, frowning a little. “Is that my jacket?”
She starts and glances at the jacket around her, quickly taking it off. “Yeah, I thought it was cool so I tried it on. You have good taste in clothes.”
He notices for the first time that she’d looked through his locker.
“I didn’t take anything, I swear. I just got bored in here all by myself,” she giggles, stepping closer to him with the jacket in her arms. She looks up at him, golden bangs falling onto the sides of her face, and brings the collar to her face, sniffing the cologne that had drenched into the fabric. “Plus, you smell really good.”
Sanghyun tries muttering something, but her gaze is bearing him of all capacity of thought.
“You can have the jacket if you want it,” is the first thing that comes to his mind, and he says it in such a stupid way he would have slapped his face if he wasn’t so busy being frozen on spot, head slowly lowering as their bodies touch, her hands letting go of the jacket to grasp his uniform shirt.
“Thanks,” CL says for the third time that night, leaning onto him on the tips of her toes, a smile playing on her lips as she remembers something. “You never thanked me.”
“For what?” he whispers, fingers caressing the small of her back to pull her closer.
“For saying your face is pretty,” she smiles and their lips finally meet, shyly at the first kiss, and then unleashing all the heat they stored in when they talked over the counter hours ago, her arms curling around his neck as his bind around her waist, both of them needing the other one closer, flushed right against them.
They stumble over until Sanghyun’s back met the locker rather painfully, but it never stops him from lettings his hands roam over her waist, under her shirt, and she mewls into the kiss, so fucking beautiful.
“I guess you just found a way to thank me well enough, pretty face,” CL grins as she unbuttons his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders.
“Sanghyun,” he mutters because that is very important, “call me Sanghyun.”
She nods as he lifts her shirt and holds her back against him, whispering and gasping and moaning the name, and he was right about that being important.
When he wakes up a few hours later with a headache from such little sleep but also with a gladly persisting pleasant sensation, he finds himself alone in the locker room, back incredibly sore from his awkward sleeping position. He glances around and smiles when he realizes his jacket is nowhere to be found. Instead, right next to him he finds a skull ring he remembers seeing on CL’s hand on the previous night.
His grin only gets wider, and he ruffles his hair, letting out a groan of frustration and happiness, because he knows - just knows - that was not the last of CL he’d be seeing. After all, he knew she was trouble from the moment he put his eyes on her, and trouble doesn’t go away so easily.
The Ugly Girl
(MBLAQ) G.O./Joon. R.
A reality in which Joon’s supposedly unattractive.
G.O. laughs for about three straight minutes under Joon’s indignant stare. As far as the younger one is concerned, there is nothing slightly amusing about this situation. This is a drama, not a cheap comedy.
“Hyung,” he turns to Seungho with a whiny voice, and the current high pitch becomes even more evident, making G.O. fold over his lap in laughter. “Make him stop!”
Seungho blinks at them for a second, but then Joon seems to be at the verge of long, heavy girl tears, so he pats G.O.’s shoulder and gives him a stern look that only partly works, because G.O. is biting his lip to keep the rest of the laughter in.
The funny part is not that Joon woke up as a girl (weirdly enough, it even makes some sort of sense, but none of them wants to think too much into that). It’s funny because Joon is merely half as attractive as a girl as he is as a guy, and Joon is hysterical at the thought of not being drop dead gorgeous because he’s never done this.
(“Oh, my God,” he says a couple of hours later, glaring in horror at Mir. “I can’t believe I’ll have to live as someone only barely hotter than you.” And he wails again, not even properly giving Mir any time to feel offended.)
It instantly loses its hilariousness because Joon’s horribly insecure without a painstakingly sexy body, complaining all the time about how ugly he is now and asking them to keep loving him even though he’s no longer their only hope to beat other male groups in matters of appearance, dramatically apologizing to Thunder for leaving him all by himself in that endeavor from now on. Joon’s always been all about ridiculous hyperboles, but his female self takes it to a whole other level.
What makes everything a bit better is that he’s comforted by the fact he has huge breasts for an Asian woman, so he constantly tries to bring attention to that particular part of his body. Being a guy, he knows guys won’t look at a girl’s face if she has a nice rack, so he invests in that theory and is quite successful. Not once does Mir fail to engage in long conversations with his boobs, and a voice coming from an irrelevant spot above them answers his questions.
They repeatedly tell him he looks just fine (Mir wonders why he would even care about having a pretty face when he has breasts like those), but it’s all gone to waste. Joon laments the deformation of his stunning face and carefully sculpted body, gifts from God to all humanity that some sort of evil force had decided to take away from his possession.
“Hyung,” Thunder calls one day at lunch, turning to Joon. “Can you do the laundry tomorrow? Since you’re on your break and will stay in the apartment tomorrow.”
He stops talking because Joon sobs loudly into his hands. Just as he frowns confusedly at his bandmate, shaking his head when the others start giving him accusing glares, Joon looks up at him with absolutely hurt eyes.
“You never asked me to do the chores when I was good-looking,” he gasps out as a tear rolled down his cheek. “THE UGLINESS THIS UTERUS GAVE ME IS CHANGING EVERYTHING.”
And he storms out the kitchen with loud sobs, making Seungho groan tiredly because girl Joon never talks to anyone that isn’t Seungho hyung once he’s upset, because Seungho’s the only gentleman in the group who does not ever stare at his breasts, even though he supposedly wants people to look at them. He drags himself to Joon’s bedroom, not without smacking the back of Thunder’s head first.
(“For God’s sakes, Changsun,” they hear Seungho groan from the room in a particularly distasteful intonation, “I’m already here with you - you have me, don’t you? You don’t have to call me oppa.” They can feel the shudder in Seungho’s voice as he recites the word.
“But oppa,” Joon insists, whines, and Seungho lets out another suffered groan.)
“I’ll never be able to find love again,” Joon mewls sadly into a pillow, thrown across G.O.’s bed. “I’m fated to eternal loneliness and misery with my ugliness, just like Cheolyong and Seungho hyung.”
“I thought Seungho was your knight on a white horse,” G.O. snickers, watching the younger boy’s head jerk slightly.
“He is, but that doesn’t make him nearly as hot as I am,” he mutters, probably feeling a little guilty. Then he grimaces. “Better yet, as I was,” and he buries his face back into the pillow.
“Look,” G.O. says with a heavy sigh, gripping Joon’s shoulders and pulling him up to face him. “You’re not ugly, and you’re far from just average. You look great, I don’t know why you’d think you’re so repellent as a woman.”
“You’re just saying that,” Joon attempts a pout, but his lips are tugging up reflexively. G.O. smiles at him and shakes his head. “You think I’m a hideous monster who can only be less unattractive than Cheolyong.”
“While you really are a whole lot better than Cheolyong, I’d say he’s hardly the only person you surpass in terms of looks,” he says honestly and cups Joon’s cheek, watching the watery eyes look back into his. “You can never not be beautiful, Changsun.”
Joon is kissing him before he can pull off any reaction, and their bodies flush together, hips rolling up into each other’s. Joon parts his lips to let out a soft moan when G.O.’s mouth kisses his neck, and they lie down, G.O. above him, quickly maneuvering them out of their clothes. Joon’s fingers run down his hair and massage his nape as he kisses down his neck and breasts and stomach, only to let go of him to violently grip the sheets moments later, one leg curling over G.O.’s shoulder as he hums out his pleasure.
They move together as G.O. thrusts into him, their lips seeking each other’s in a rush. Joon moans into his mouth lustfully, body arching right up into his and nails leaving marks down G.O.’s back while the older one fastens his pace, jerking his hips against Joon’s more and more deeply. Joon’s mind goes blank as he rakes on G.O.’s shoulders, a quiet scream lost in his throat, only to be filled with the other man’s orgasm merely seconds into his afterglow.
It’s lucky, Joon thinks, that on the next day he goes back into being the impeccably beautiful male he’d always been, if not even hotter, he would later add as he makes love to the mirror (moaning more loudly than on the previous night), because that will certainly cancel all possibilities of pregnancy, which he had worried about just before drifting off to sleep. He thanks G.O. for making him see that it was impossible for him not to be flawless Lee Joon, since that was obviously what got his body back, and G.O. just stares at Joon’s male naked body next to his, right where there should be nude breasts, and then glowers, sourly figuring this is what one gets if they give into Joon under any circumstances.
(“This only proves that you must be horrible in bed,” Joon says to Mir later that day, ignoring the younger one’s piercing glare. “Even when I was slightly less pitiful looking than you, I could have more sex than you had in about an entire year.”
Mir tells himself it’d be bad publicity if he was arrested for strangling a bandmate.)
Becoming Friends
(MBLAQ, Secret, Jay Park) Gen. Seungho, Jay. Slight Seungho/Sunhwa. G.
Seungho is invited to We Got Married, much to his bemusement.
Seungho blinks and thinks there must be some mistake. He sort of wants to go to the previous room in the sequence of five rooms he had gone through to carry on with the show in his journey to find his fictional bride so they would have their fictional wedding and lead the popular Korean show named We Got Married, a show he still couldn’t believe he was invited into as half of their “next top star couple” - for one thing, he was the last option in his whole group to solo appearances on variety shows, let alone such a well-known one (he’d asked, multiple times, if they had not misspelled the name Lee Joon when contacting his agency).
He was even all dressed up in a white tuxedo, supposedly to carry out the ceremony after he met his pretend spouse. In the previous room he had met Han Sunhwa in a lovely white dress, and when he smiled (not giggled) brightly at her because he sort of had a semi-publically admitted crush on her, she widened his eyes at him, stopping him from approaching.
“Oppa, I’d love to get married to you,” she had said because she might or might not correspond to the silly crush, “but on what show do you think you’re on?”
Her question had confused him beyond wording, and, as she told him he should proceed to the next and final room - the one in which the ceremony would be held, if the church-like decoration was any indication - to know who his real partner would be.
And now he gapes, closing the door behind him, at no one other than Jay Park, standing before and altar with an expectant grin that melted into a bewildered frown that appropriately matched Seungho’s. The both look at each other and then at the filming crew who’s cracking up by now, inquiring what the heck was going on in there with half nervous, half disbelieving voices.
At that moment, a comedian shows up in a fancy master of ceremony outfit and positions himself behind the altar, telling them to approach, not without referring to them as “grooms”. They comply, eyes anxiously following the man’s moves as they want for the explanation for that blatant mistake - it had to be a mistake, oh god, it had to. The man holds his arms up as a priest would in the beginning of a matrimonial celebration.
“Welcome to the first season of We’ve Become Friends, the show branching from the We Got Married series in which we’ll form inseparable friendships between two compatible idols who are yet not close with each other,” he begins and the rest of his words are muffles by the insane cackling coming from the filming crew and the horribly enthusiastic squeals coming from the girls and women on the set - Seungho should have been suspicious of their knowing, ogling smiles when he first showed up to get his make-up done that day.
Seungho and Jay share a long, desperate groan and sort of laugh because it is so ridiculous it’s incredible that it’s even being filmed. They hear the host list up some of the similarities in their public personas and crack a few jokes about how they should be long time best friends by now. When a random noona shrieks about how cute they are, they understand the reason it’s being filmed after all.
Fans are a scary, scary thing.
Just as the crack ceremony proceeds, Seungho looks down and frowns at Jay’s impeccably black tuxedo, then raises a brow at the pink flowers sticking out of his own jacket’s pocket, right before the rings are given to them. Dear lord, they’d have rings - “friendship rings,” the host had told them with a mocking smile.
“Wait a second,” he feels the need to say out loud, looking at the MC and Jay. “Am I supposed to be the bride here?” he asks, laughing when everyone giggles, Jay almost dropping to his knees in defeat.
Here, Kitty Kitty
(B2ST) Gen. Yoseob/Junhyung if you squint hard enough. G.
Yoseob gets himself a cat.
Junhyung is surprised. He’s not surprised because Yoseob jumped on his face after opening the door for him, or because he proceeds to shove a feline beast in his face right afterwards - well, maybe those are additional factors. Junhyung is mostly surprised because, while bouncing excitedly and twirling the tiny ball of black fur in the air, which almost makes him feel pity for the thing, Yoseob announces that is his cat.
“Say hi to Jokie, the kitty,” he coos with puckered lips as he nests the cat in his chest. “Isn’t he adorable?”
“Is that thing living here?” Junhyung asks Doojoon, who’s sitting on the couch behind them with a less than amused face, and completely ignores the pout Yoseob’s giving him.
The leader gives a helpless shrug, saying something about how he’d given up. Junhyung blinks.
“Is that thing living here?” he turns around on the balls of his feet, hissing at Yoseob with narrowed eyes.
“I always thought we should have a pet,” the younger one stammers, blinking back at Junhyung, unable to understand why he seems furious. Who could be furious when there’s such a cute, defenseless creature in their dorm, and they can all raise him together and teach him tricks and see him grow up, like his daddies - Yoseob hugs the kitty closer to his face out of sheer excitement.
“I’m allergic, you can’t have it in here. That thing’s going to fucking kill me,” he growls between gritted teeth.
“You’re not allergic,” Yoseob squints, offended, “and he’s not a thing! He’s Jokie, the kitty. Our kitty,” and he gestures at the dorm in an attempt to refer to the remaining members of the group.
Junhyung stares, abashed, as Yoseob mentions there’s a litter box in the kitchen (“but we eat there”, he cried out) and pulls out a few cat toys as he drops to the floor and plays with the furry thing on his lap. Doojoon simply watches with a tired sigh of defeat, and Junhyung considers maybe their leader is just losing the hang of it.
But Junhyung has a back-up plan. Since the rest of the members still haven’t arrived in the dorm, he decides that as soon as they step through the front door, he will call a voting for who wants the cat and who doesn’t, and he knows Yoseob will not have the heart to stand against the majority of the group. Because, well, it’s the majority.
“He’s so fuzzy,” Kikwang cries minutes later, nuzzling the kitty’s back as Dongwoon caresses one of the tiny ears with a finger. “We can be, like, his daddies,” he almost shrieks in excitement, and there are tears rolling down Yoseob’s face, there are legitimate tears.
Junhyung should have remembered that the hole in his plan is that he works with a bunch of useless idiots.
Hyunseung, however, is merely watching them with a half smile and folded arms over his chest, leaning into a wall silently. Glancing at him, Junhyung feels hope grow in his chest.
“So, do you want the cat?” he asks the boy, who blinks, a little startled, at him. All eyes turn to Hyunseung, making his own widen a little. “Both Doojoon and I don't want it in here,” he pretends he doesn’t hear Kikwang’s protest that Jokie’s not an it, “and if you also don’t want it, then it’s half of us.”
Yoseob and Kikwang give Hyunseung matching pleading looks, their eyes looking even rounder with the pitifully tilted eyebrows. Dongwoon also seems to be so fond of the kitty, smiling as it paws his wiggling fingers, then looking up curiously to see what Hyunseung will decide as the kitty tries biting his fingers with its tiny teeth.
Hyunseung bites his lip, glancing back and forth between the three of them, Doojoon’s moderately hopeful face and Junhyung’s anxious, twitchy one, until he throws his hands in the air and tells Doojoon and Junhyung he’s sorry.
“Look how happy they are with the cat,” he explains, pointing a finger to the celebrating trio and, of course, clueless Jokie in Dongwoon’s arms. "I know it's responsability, but it might be fun."
“They are pretty happy,” Doojoon considers with a contemplative nod, and Junhyung gapes at the two of them, making an embarrassing little noise in the back of his throat in frustration because the only two onto which he could rely are betraying him like that.
He knows, he knows, the goddamn cat will be shedding hair and throwing up fur balls on his bed, not anyone else’s - and that’s the most optimistic prediction he can think of.
On that night, he sulks in a corner, sullenly watching the rest of the group (even Doojoon, that backstabbing bastard) form a circle in the living room to play with Jokie, all wearing identically stupid grins while the cat merely does its cat job by mewling, walking a little and doing nothing.
“It’s not as if you could just decide by yourself that you could have a cat, you know,” he suddenly blurts out to Yoseob, who turns around to blink at him. “You have to ask permission before doing things like these.”
“You’re the one who should like Jokie the most out of us,” the younger one retorts with a pout, picking up the cat and nearing Junhyung, who inches back out of instinct. “He was named after you, after all.”
Junhyung blinks, stares, gapes.
“What.”
“Yeah,” Yoseob smiles while Junhyung hears snickers from a point behind the boy, snickers that sound a lot like Hyunseung’s and Doojoon’s. “He’s Jokie because you’re Joker. You know, English,” he beams, holding the kitty closer to his face. Junhyung can’t point out the dumb mistake there because of his current catatonic state.
“I only bought him because he reminds me so much of you,” Yoseob goes on. “You’re both cute and shy in the same way,” he giggles when Jokie quivers back into his hands as if shying away from Junhyung’s static, disbelieving face. “See?”
At least, Junhyung thinks, the cat is sensible enough to feel embarrassed for the absurd in this situation. Maybe the problem isn’t the poor kitty - maybe they should just get rid of Yoseob instead.
He thinks he can be in the winning party for that voting.