And there wasn't even cucumber in the sandwiches. (complete)
Rating: R
Chaerin is slumped in her seat, morose at the idea of spending hours in a confined space with this jackass and not being able to do anything since Seunghyun called control over the radio, claiming it was his right as a driver and everything.
They dislike each other. The origin of the feud was probably Jiyong, jealousy, and God knows what else starts with a J, and now they try to reduce the time spent together to a minimum. But just this morning, Hyunsuk told Chaerin she had to get South by her own means, and oh, isn’t that convenient? Seunghyun just happens to own a car and he’s gotta be there by the next day too.
Chaerin called Jiyong before leaving and whined, because Jiyong had already left and taken the train like any normal person would. He just laughed and didn’t tell her Seunghyun had already given him a phone call.
“She’s gonna sulk at me all ride long,” he’d freaked out.
“Are you scared?” Jiyong had laughed.
Seunghyun isn’t scared, not anymore, because while Chaerin is definitely sulking at him, they have James Brown sitting in their backseat and Seunghyun caught her humming under her breath once or twice already.
He waits a little while before starting to talk, because just bursting out in speech would be plain weird right now - she grunted a ‘hello’ earlier in the evening and he quirked back a smile, only it froze the moment she glared.
A familiar song comes on the radio; Seunghyun decides to be nice for once and leaves it on.
Chaerin squirms in her seat. He didn’t have to do that. She hates that he acts so polite.
Seunghyun sends her a quick glance: frown on her face and gnawing her lips. He attacks the chorus. Chaerin looks up sharply and he grins at her over the lyrics, a muted ‘come on’. She sighs only a bit, inaudible over the music, and sings along. There. It wasn’t that hard.
By the time three songs have passed, they’re notably less tense and Seunghyun cheerfully flames the jackasses who got their driver’s license at the lottery. Chaerin fiddles with the buttons on the console, smug that he now lets her. Seunghyun only pretends not to see.
Her stomach growls loudly, shortly after he switched the headlights on, and he laughs a bit obnoxiously, until he sees the edge of a scowl on her face, after which he offers to stop by a MacDonald’s.
“Can we get takeaway?” Chaerin asks. Seunghyun concedes it’ll save them time.
They’re generally a mess at the drive-through, getting their orders mixed up and taking hours to make up their minds, and the girl with the red cap is glaring at them behind her dirty window. Chaerin and Seunghyun end up getting a Big Mac each and a large portion of fries they’ll be able to share.
“Coke- do you want Coke?” Seunghyun asks Chaerin.
“No, thanks,” she declines.
“A Coke for me,” he tells the waitress, while Chaerin says: “Wait, one for me, too,” before Seunghyun changes his mind and says: “No, actually, leave it, it’ll spill.”
They get one Coke and two straws.
Chaerin has a handful of greasy meat, bread and vegetables and she’s dripping salad and mayonnaise on the upholstery of the car, which upsets her because she doesn’t want to look rude and clumsy to Seunghyun. He only snorts, though, around a mouthful of fries, and demonstrates his own private technique to eat the three layers of bread and meat without any collateral damage:
“You keep it in the box and you take it in your mouth like this, just using this hand.”
The demonstration comes with abundant hand gestures and practical examples, and soon Chaerin is folded in half with giggles, which Seunghyun feasts on. He likes having an audience, he likes being cool.
“But how do you get it in your mouth?” Chaerin asks between high-pitched fits of laughter.
He beams at her, delighted: “You just push it inside, like this.”
She snickers and he raises an eyebrow, and then she drops: “That’s what she said.”, and she’s a sobbing mess of laughter on her seat, and he can’t quite believe she just cracked her first - dirty - joke in this car.
They both laugh until they cry.
***
It’s late, they’re still far away from their destination, and Seunghyun’s eyelids have begun to flutter helplessly. Chaerin gets to pick between a crabby motel and a handeol room in a house owned by a scary old lady. Handeol it is. She still has her standards, and the look in the receptionist’s eyes made her feel like a slut, when he saw them both walk in.
The old lady, on the other hand, thinks she’s a boy and asks Seunghyun if she’s a good dongsaeng. Chaerin dejectedly looks down at her chest once they’re alone, and pretends not to hear Seunghyun snicker.
The room is small and dusty, and the mattresses desperately thin. Chaerin piles her coat on top of hers in a weak attempt to make it thicker and resigns to spend the worst night of her life - while Seunghyun is actually pretty comfy on his side - when she sees the monstrous cockroach in a corner of the room.
“Kill it.” she first demands, deceptively calm.
Seunghyun blinks owlishly at her: “It’s just a-“
“Kill it!” Chaerin yelps.
Seunghyun turns to her, slowly, and starts grinning.
“Oppa,” she warns him, “kill that thing now. And if you even think of throwing it at me or something, I’ll tear your balls off. With my bare hands.”
He nods slightly, still smiling, and executes the cockroach in three swift shoe smashes. His consolation is that while he does so, goggly admiration replaces some of the repulsion in her eyes.
Chaerin gingerly inches her mattress closer to his once the lights are off, just in case.
Seunghyun wakes up before his alarm even rings, and looking at Chaerin, he turns it off. She fell asleep late, he knows, turning and trashing at his side, upset by thoughts of crawling insects and by the too flat mattress.
He sends a quick message to Jiyong, warning him they’ll be late, caught in a traffic jam as they are.
“nice try” Jiyong sends back, but he doesn’t explicitly tell Seunghyun to hurry up so all in all it’s a victory.
He gets down to the kitchen and the old lady forcefully jams some rice in his mouth while he tries to speak. Finally, he gets to pay and bring up a thermos of tea for Chaerin.
She wakes up cranky. She hasn’t slept well, her back hurts, and oh f-, they’re late. Chaerin storms down the stairs, narrowly missing Seunghyun who’s displaying the worst case of bed hair ever and a cheesy smile.
“We gotta go,” Chaerin snaps at him, “why didn’t you wake me up?”
He holds his palms up in defense: “I got you free time, Jiyong isn’t expecting us before noon.”
She purses her lips and sullenly accepts the hot tea.
At the bottom of the stairs, the old lady is staring at her tight-fitting shirt, looking downright scandalized.
The radio player is stuck on some has-been radio and cheerfully switches from Shim Soobang to Lee Yongjong. Chaerin does the yoga breathing thing and deals with it. Seunghyun is in a bad mood - the traffic jam turned out to be real - karma - and now Jiyong is pissed and sends him messages that say: “your lies stopped amusing me at least fifty minutes ago”. God, sometimes Seunghyun hates working with that midget. He’s already cursed and banged on the steering wheel, and Chaerin is trying to improve the situation by sending picture proofs to Jiyong, inventively captioned: ‘see?’ and ‘yes, this is still the same car’.
It’s hot, too, and their skins are sticking to the upholstery of their seats, all itchy and clammy. The air-con doesn’t work, and Chaerin broke the handle trying to roll her window down. Seunghyun is thirsty. So is she, but she’s a bit scared of him at the moment to ask for a stop. In the end, she buys a pear-apple the size of a small watermelon from a Pakistani fruit vendor and makes a mess eating half of it, her hand all sticky with juice.
Seunghyun notices but refrains from saying anything, because he doesn’t need that on top of everything else to piss him off. Chaerin sends him a sideway glance.
“Want some?”
She feeds him bits of apple while he drives, and gets a funny sensation when his lips briefly close around her fingertips.
***
When they’re finally there, Jiyong has dug a little circle in the gravel, waiting for them, and his hair is all over the place. They look at him and both feel that somehow, it was worth it.
He hugs Chaerin first, protective and only a bit mad, and fusses over her while Seunghyun smiles and tries to be cool.
“I’m glad to see you,” Chaerin tells Jiyong. He nods at her, and then punches Seunghyun in the stomach. Mock hard, only not really. Because Seunghyun deserved it.
During this week in the South, they all get closer, the three of them, and they couldn’t tell exactly if it’s because they have more opportunities to spend some time together, or because they create those opportunities.
The thing is, one night, they’re walking down some brightly lit avenue, and Jiyong’s arm is wrapped around Chaerin’s waist while the other hand tugs Seunghyun along.
He talks a lot and he’s glad because he ‘missed them’, he repeats a lot: “I missed you two,” and neither Chaerin nor Seunghyun can bring themselves to tell him they were just gone for two days.
Jiyong wants to drink with them. He tells them this with his bright eyes and heart-melting smile, and they both smile back like the saps they are. At first it stays like a drinking session between co-workers: they rant about Hyunsuk and the schedules and the timetables and the company retreats - worst trip ever, they agree. And then at some point, maybe between the fourth and fifth bottle, Jiyong is really drunk, Chaerin’s cheeks are tinged pink and Seunghyun has hands a little bit all over them.
“Something has changed,” Jiyong muses to his glass. “What changed?”
They exchange looks over his head and though there’s no guilt, well. It gnaws at them.
“I’m not too sure where I stand with my work, right now,” Jiyong then confesses. “I feel like I’m in some sort of tunnel and I’ve just gotta push through it.”
There’s a small silence. Then:
“That’s what he said,” Seunghyun mutters. Chaerin looks up to him sharply, their eyes meet, and yes, Jiyong is right: something has changed.
***
It’s been arranged, Chaerin can take the train with the rest of the company, and she’s already prepared for a painless journey and a bowl of ramyun when she comes home, only when it’s time to leave for the station, her bag is nowhere to be seen. Jiyong watches her tear the place upside down for a while, then places a hand on her wrist to make her sit down.
“I can’t believe it,” he mutters, “he’s such a kid.” He types furiously on his cellphone and when it buzzes back, his expression is positively murderous.
“Sorry,” he tells Chaerin through gritted teeth. “Looks like you’re not coming with us.”
She stares at him.
“Something came up,” Jiyong not quite explains. “Just stay here and he’ll pick you up.”
“Who?” she asks, feeling like rationality has somehow been lost along the way.
“Seunghyun,” Jiyong bites out, “that’s who.”
So she’s sitting on that small bench, probably getting sunburn, when Seunghyun pulls off in front of her.
“What the hell?” she says, too tired to even yell.
“I’ve got your bag,” he answers, and he tries a grin.
He drives with his eyes very black and focused on the road, only some times he’ll pay her a quick glance and it sets Chaerin’s nerves on edge. She hadn’t planned to find herself in such close contact to him that soon after the night in the bar. She hugs her knees to her chest, bare feet propped up on her seat.
Inwardly, Seunghyun is almost as awkward as her, and he doesn’t know what to say, which unsettles him. Silence frankly seems like the best option at the moment.
The engine starts to heat up. Seunghyun sees the little red button blink aggressively and says nothing, hoping it’ll pass without Chaerin noticing. He subtly switches the heater on. Five minutes later, the car starts beeping.
“you’ve gotta be kidding me,” Jiyong comments when Chaerin texts him. Sadly, she agrees with him.
Seunghyun looks at her and opens his mouth at the same time she does, determined to start yelling at him:
“I’m sorry,” he bursts out.
Chaerin bites her lip, at the exact same time the car comes to a lurching stop, with the noise of a small animal dying.
The temperature inside of the cubicle has risen to ‘unbearable’ and Chaerin steps out of the car before she feels tempted to murder Seunghyun right here, right now. It wouldn’t do any good to eliminate any potential help, though up to now he’s been more of a walking catastrophe for her. See, she tells herself, this is why we hated him, precious.
Seunghyun is miserable, sitting against the side of the car and desperately trying to catch some network.
His phone battery dies, so he gathers courage and walks up to Chaerin:
“I think we should walk to the last village we saw,” he tells her.
“This is all your fault,” she informs him calmly. “You kidnapped me and now I’m stuck here because of you.”
Seunghyun doesn’t answer, head low. His foot is tracing little patterns in the dirt; suddenly Chaerin thinks of Jiyong.
“The last village was at least twenty kilometers away,” she says, softer. “And it’s getting dark. We should stay here until a car drives by.”
Seunghyun nods, and sits at her feet while she rocks back and forth, propped up on the barrier. He looks like a huge watchdog.
***
“I’ve got food in the trunk,” Seunghyun says suddenly. He can’t believe he forgot, it was supposed to be their picnic. Chaerin swats at his head, half jokingly, and jumps on her feet to rummage around the ice chest. He watches her with a small smile, the curve of her back and the Y of perspiration on her teeshirt.
He turns the warning lights of the car on and jogs to the small space under a tree, where she spread her jacket on the floor. Her mouth is circled red with the juice of tomatoes and Seunghyun feels something in him give at the sight.
They eat in silence, side-by-side, while it’s getting darker around them.
She wordlessly hands him the bottle of iced - well, not anymore - green tea and he takes it thankfully, his throat is dry but he wanted her to drink all she wanted first.
Some of the drink dribbles down the corner of Seunghyun’s lips, his chin - Chaerin scoots away subtly. She can’t really deal with whatever ‘this’ is right now. Turning away she starts packing the remains of their food in the ice chest, piling every box methodically to occupy her mind. The damp hand placed on the small of her back is a burst of electricity up her nerves.
This is it, Seunghyun thinks. This is the point where she either slaps him or-
“Come on,” he says, very low. “CL.”
“Fuck,” Chaerin breathes.
They half-push, half-drag each other to the backseat of the car, and they’re lucky they thought of opening the doors wide because it’s already uncomfortably warm in there.
Seunghyun settles between her spread legs and pushes his tongue in her mouth, like he’s been craving to for so long, only she always refused to acknowledge him.
Chaerin pulls at his teeshirt and refuses to let herself think about what she’s doing; the only thing remaining is, she wants this and he’s willing to offer it to her on a platter, so why wonder? Struggling with the buckle of his belt is dirty and sends thrilling shivers up her thighs, her back, where he managed to slip a hand.
Seunghyun is fumbling with the tiny hooks of her bra, his fingers are too big and too slippery and his other hand is busy cupping the back of her neck to kiss her deeper and stronger. He likes the feeling of her stroking the hair at the back of his neck, and the way she snakes a hand past the waistband of his underwear to stroke him.
Chaerin watches when Seunghyun lets go of her to arch his back, head tipping forward in pleasure. She drags him down by the neck and kisses him then, and whispers in his ear to take her clothes off.
He does, half-blinded by want, and feels grateful that she helps when he’s stuck with buckles and buttons and zippers and snaps. Can’t they ever wear normal clothes? He realizes he said that out loud when she watches him with dilated pupils.
Chaerin tugs on Seunghyun’s pants and doesn’t care about foreplay, not now.
“Tell me you’ve got some,” she growls out. “Tell me this is the one thing you did think about.”
He grins down at her, thrilled by her bluntness. “I have some,” he whispers hotly in her ear. “I just gotta let go of you for a sec, though.” Seunghyun likes her whine when he pulls off and boldly places a hand on her thigh, quiet reassurance and promise of what’s coming next.
She’s the one who deals with the wrapper, partly because his hands seem clumsy and feverish, and partly because she likes the brief instant when she rolls the condom down on him and Seunghyun sighs.
They kiss wetly, and then he’s pushing into her because they’re both at the end of their patience and have been dragging this for too long, they need this and it shows in the way they sigh in unison. Seunghyun rolls his hips minutely and revels in the warmth and the tightness of her body.
Chaerin feels him in her and can’t quite believe it yet, how good this is. They lock eyes and she shudders, and has to look away - eventually closes her eyes when he starts moving and his mouth pecks gently at her neck.
She’s- she’s clutching at him like a vice and welcoming him in her body, with some softness and gentleness in her touch that he had been longing for but hadn’t expected. Chaerin is different during sex. She becomes sweet in a way that makes it different to Seunghyun than just fucking, and with each push into her he feels grateful for something he can’t quite yet describe. He tries his best to please her, too, to be gentle and slow, but she won’t let him and pulls him closer to her when he pulls back.
He’s sensual and she likes it, likes the way he sounds when he slides into her. It’s like the sound fits the sensation; her belly rubs against his when she arches, so she does it again and again until he’s almost restraining her, choking with want and Chaerin wants him to crumble in her arms.
Seunghyun does, when she slips her fingers in his hair, messes it up, before pulling him down to kiss him sweetly. He does because in that single instant he believes he’s got her wrapped around his finger and he’s the king of the world and she can be his queen.
Seunghyun comes with a muffled, low whine against her shoulder and Chaerin strokes his hair lazily through the aftermath. She feels smug.
Pulling out of her physically pains him and Seunghyun collapse right back into her arms, basking in her embrace.
“Did you…?” he asks. She huffs in laughter, warm breath brushing against his ear:
“No,” she answers. “But I still liked it.”
He’s a bit disappointed and his male ego a bit wounded, and also he can’t quite understand how it’s possible to ‘still like it’. Girls, he figures.
Guys, Chaerin thinks when he falls asleep on top of her, uncaring of anything. Her knee is bent at an awkward angle so she shifts until she’s more comfortable, enveloping him whole. She just hopes no car passes by while they’re napping.
***
They both wake up when it gets chilly outside and their skins, from clammy, have turned cold. Chaerin winces when Seunghyun peels himself off her and for a while he can’t meet her eyes; they both look away.
The teeshirt she had wanted to put back on smells of the passed day, dirty and sweaty, so Chaerin tosses it back under the seat and leans over the back to dig her bag from the trunk. Seunghyun watches her fish out a teeshirt, unselfconscious about her body and the hint of a nipple peeking out of her bra. He finds he can’t quite take his eyes off her, even now, and he couldn’t say if he feels relieved or dead-scared that the- the thing, the craving, hasn’t stopped after they slept together. He wonders what he’s gonna tell Jiyong.
“Do you want a cigarette?” he asks. He’s over-polite, and his voice sounds broken and raspy. Chaerin suppresses a shiver.
“I don’t smoke,” she points out.
Seunghyun nods, lights a cigarette for himself and takes the first, best puff. His eyes are trained on her and while he looks confident, he doesn’t know what to do.
Chaerin reaches a hand; he pushes her wrist away gently and holds the cigarette to her lips: she sucks in a breath and coughs a bit, and when he moves his hand away it’s to kiss her instead, softly.
“Did you know?” he asks when they pull away.
“I had no idea,” she answers.
“Jiyong knows,” he tells her, and she nods. It makes sense that he would.
They wait for a car to pass, Chaerin sitting down yoga-still on the hood of the car and Seunghyun leaning at her side. They’re both sharply aware of the fact that she didn’t answer the unasked question, do you reciprocate or am I floundering alone here?
Flounder, she first thought a bit cruelly, with that instinct that she sometimes has to crush the people who confessed to her. And then she looked at him and saw that it’s Seunghyun, it’s not just any fanboy with a crush, it’s so much more. It’s Seunghyun, reaching for her and she didn’t say she wanted him back.
It’s killing him. She probably knows, but it’s killing him. Seunghyun had thought - he had thought once she knew she would shift her stance. But here she is, staring away into the night, eyes following the turns of the road stretching still in front of their eyes, and she refuses to look at him. Again. Worse than before.
He decides then that he’ll stop trying - and just then the truck stops by, as if Seunghyun getting rid of the will to pursue her was just what karma needed to get them going again.
This time it is a motel, some kind of truck driver relay-inn, and Chaerin makes herself minuscule in her oversized hoodie. She would give anything to pass for a boy again. Instead, it’s like the eyes of the assistance have found their focal point.
Seunghyun doesn’t like the looks Chaerin is getting. He rushes the counter girl so that they soon get the key to the single bedroom he requested - he doesn’t want her to be alone this night either, the locks in this place don’t seem very secure. The tiredness accumulated during the day is making him cranky and brusque; his nerves are on edge and he just longs for a bed to sleep in.
Seunghyun takes the small couch. The whole bedroom smells of cold tobacco and dust. Chaerin shimmies out of her pants and pretends not to feel the level of awkward rising to a peek. She can’t bring herself to say something to him and, worst of all, feels vaguely guilty when nothing is actually her fault. Or is it? To avoid the questions, she locks herself into the bathroom and her feet leave perspiration prints on the dirty tiles.
Seunghyun slams to glass panel of the balcony on his way out for a smoke. He hates this. He hates what it’s become. He hates that somehow she’s entitled to hate him since he’s the one who dragged them into this mess.
The cigarette tastes bitter on his lips; the night is uncomfortably warm after the chill of the AC in the room: his teeshirt sticks to his shoulders, itchy.
The sliding door wobbles open with a cheap clatter and Chaerin’s voice is telling him to come to bed, now, they’ll have a long day again tomorrow. It’s so soft it hurts.
She watches him fold his huge body awkwardly on the stained cushions of the couch and frowns:
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“You sleep on the bed,” he tells her. “I’ll just…”
Chaerin sighs. She wonders how he actually manages to look small and unsure.
“Get your ass here.” she orders him. “Don’t be stupid.”
Oh. Okay then.
***
Hyunsuk sent a car to pick them up and they hesitate briefly before Seunghyun decides to go sit next to the driver and makes awkward chatter about the weather, while Chaerin, backseat, enjoys the air conditioning and looks by the window: morose parade of grey fields and industrial buildings.
They meet eyes in the rear-view mirror and there’s a catch of breath on both their parts, the hint of a smile on her lips - Seunghyun clenches his fist on the armrest and Chaerin sees it, she sees the white knuckles and his nails clipped short and suddenly she feels better.
Driving into the suburbs of Seoul, Seunghyun texts Jiyong that they’re back. He gets no reply, and it upsets him. Twisting in his seat, he turns back to tell that to Chaerin and her eyes widen a bit, almost imperceptibly. She nods and gives a hint of a grabbing hand at him.
Seunghyun looks her dead in the eye. Not for the first time, he looks unsure and expectant, and her reaching fingers are at the same time the hyphen and the question mark between them.
Then the light turns to green, the car starts off again, and the thing is lost.
The driver drops Chaerin off first. She extricates herself from the backseat and goes to get her bag in the trunk; Seunghyun thinks she’ll leave without anything more than an awkward smile-and-wave. He’s wrong. She walks to his side of the car, bag thrown over her shoulder, and when she leans forward he lowers the window. Her hand grips the sill and her sunglasses invade his vision.
“I’ll see you,” she tells him. “Thank you,” she adds for the driver. And she smiles at Seunghyun one last time, discrete and private.
“Bye,” he grumbles between quirked lips.
They both spend the evening thinking about what happened and their thumbs hover above the keypads of their cellphones. In the end Chaerin turns it off and rolls over to face the wall, eyes closing on an old JYP poster that’s curling and yellowing at the edges.
Seunghyun tosses and turns over, upset and itchy and giddy, gets up to pour himself a glass of cold water, goes to the bathroom, stubs his toe against the corner of a door and swears, very loud. Then he goes back to bed because apparently being awake has become dangerous for him.
Chaerin bumps into Jiyong at the coffee machine, on the next morning. She’s excessively cheerful to fend off the inexplicable awkwardness between them, and Jiyong watches her with narrowing eyes. She can feel it. He’s not buying- it. The lies. Except not, because she hasn’t said anything about the trip with Seunghyun, and it hasn’t even been brought into the conversation yet, and really there is no point in being so nervous. She fills the conversation with increasingly random comments about the weather and the schedules and the deadlines and Jiyong looks forever unimpressed, and then, just to spice things up, Seunghyun barges into the coffee room.
Chaerin and him successively avoid each other’s eyes for a fraction of second before they look at each other. Then there is that very weird moment: they share something, again, and Seunghyun feels suddenly too tall while Chaerin gets the ba-bumps.
They both have the sinking feeling they must be terribly obvious, Jiyong eying them with something akin to sadness in his eyes; he doesn’t ask what’s changed, though. He probably knows.
It’s terrible, the guilt that gnaws at them; it’s terrible because it’s not justified. It’s not like they did something openly reprehensible Jiyong could get mad about. It’s not like it would be normal, expected, to go and tell him: “We’ve been stupid. We apologize.”
Seunghyun pictures how that would go (“We slept together. Sorry.”) and cringes because what the hell? It’s not like there was commitment on either side, and even though sometimes he caught Jiyong with the misty eye while looking at Chaerin he’s not too sure it wasn’t just the dust in Teddy’s office.
Plus there is how they often ended up catching each other looking at her. That’s probably how Jiyong figured it out. And anyway Seunghyun told him afterwards, so- that’s another thing. Jiyong knew. Jiyong knows about the- the infatuation, Jiyong was supportive and everything. He wouldn’t mind. Never. No.
Chaerin offers that they all go grab a beer after work because she can’t stand the awful, embarrassing silence - and the stares, oh please, kill her now. Jiyong is at her side and he glares at the bottom of his plastic cup before breathing through his nostrils and saying:
“Fine. Tonight, okay.”
“Awesome,” Seunghyun tries to say. His voice squeaks. Jiyong aims his empty cup at the bin, misses, and leaves the room.
***
Seunghyun watches Chaerin for a long time after Jiyong’s left, and she shudders a bit - it’s intense.
“What?” she says defensively.
“I wanted to call you last night,” he answers. His voice is soft like an olive branch held out. Here, peace. Seunghyun tells her in a few words what she had hoped and feared to hear; Chaerin listens with a dry mouth, fiddling with the rim of her empty cup.
When he’s done talking he stands right between too far and too close, and it’s up to her to either push him away or tug him forward.
She ends up stalking him to a corner of the room. Seunghyun smiles in her hair tied in a messy bun when she hugs him, so tight, like she doesn’t want to let go anymore.
So making out in a bathroom stall is just as awkward as Chaerin had thought it would be. Seunghyun is pressing her against the door and the lock is digging into her back. However, she also finds that she doesn’t care so much when his mouth is nudging hers and the cologne he’s wearing still smells awesome.
“This is not what I had in mind when I came to work this morning,” Seunghyun confesses. He’s grinning from ear to ear, that kind of wide smile that makes him look a bit retarded - the kind she likes.
She smirks back at him:
“Really? You don’t usually drag women in the men’s bathroom to molest their mouths? That’s not what the rumors say…”
He huffs in laughter and Chaerin discovers that she likes them better that way, relaxed and comfortable around each other, rather than in this parody of a Cold War they had established.
“Only you, baby,” he tells her (it’s a lie, actually - but not really).
Chaerin smiles wide and Seunghyun thinks it’s pretty, in the way it escapes the usual canons. A smile without standards, unabashed and that’s why he likes it.
She has to stand on tiptoes to kiss him, tiny feet strapped in monstrous shoes. Seunghyun bows his head to make the kiss easier and shivers when she strokes the back of his neck.
“I gotta go,” she mumbles. “See you tonight.”
It sounds - almost - like a date when she says it that way, and Chaerin doesn’t miss the look Seunghyun sends her when she gets out of the bathroom.
On the other hand, she kind of hates him when she bumps into Seungri who’s just coming in at the same time. (She gets mocked endlessly. Seungri is clueless, and a brat.)
***
Seunghyun walks to the stand with Jiyong. He yawns every other second to pretend he’s tired, and justify the currently heavy silence looming over them. Knowing Jiyong, though, he’s probably seeing right through his game and the icy façade hides a crafty mind, busy coming up with a torrent of insults and curses; he must think Seunghyun betrayed him in the worst way ever. He must hate him now.
Somehow, Seunghyun thinks he can’t live with the idea.
Chaerin is late. They don’t know it yet because technically she still has five minutes to show up, but bra unhooked, hair in a giant knot and only one sock on, there is no way she can make it on time.
‘im stuck in the traffic,” she texts Jiyong.
‘this excuse is getting old,” he sends back.
Seunghyun sees him smile. He raises a hopeful, tentative eyebrow, and Jiyong relaxes a bit in his seat:
“Chaerin’s late,” he says.
Seunghyun feels himself teetering on a dangerous edge here, always so aware of the potential landslide.
“Oh?” he breathes. “Really?”
Jiyong smiles more easily now:
“Yes,” he says. “But let’s be nice and humor her when she arrives.”
The weight on her chest lifts a bit: Jiyong sent her a tiny, insignificant but oh so speaking:
:)
She hums an unknown song under her breath, willing for the taxi to go faster, and it’s only when she’s paying that she realizes it was Shim Soobang.
I know nothing but love. What a joke.
They’re sitting side-by-side, waiting for her - she has no idea who to smile at first, so she ducks her head and mumbles something about Namsan Bridge being clogged at this hour.
They both watch Jiyong laugh, loud and bright and clear, just like the alcohol being poured into small glasses; the sounds brings them all together.
They fit despite their differences, despite the fact that Seunghyun can easily wrap his hand around two glasses at once when Chaerin’s is only large enough for one.
There’s the obvious, glaring dissimilitude of anatomy, and then there are the more subtle changes from one of them to the other.
How Jiyong and Chaerin both speak quickly, like they’re scared to run out of breath, like they want to fill everything with speech. Seunghyun listens to them and he’s the one left breathless.
Chaerin studies their profiles and finds she likes Seunghyun’s better. He’s more handsome. He’s more her type. But there’s something about Jiyong, so irrevocable prettiness that she can’t help but crave.
More than once she has to refrain from reaching a hand to touch his face.
They’re drunk.
The three of them, they’re drunk.
But Seunghyun and Chaerin are drunker because they had more at stake when they walked in. They gambled everything they had, and now they’re not sure whether or not they won.
Jiyong is too small, too thin to support them both and their trio wobbles a bit in the streets, Seunghyun huge and the other two smaller. They make the weirdest picture but walking like this, even sweaty and inebriated, Chaerin feels herself smile when Jiyong wraps his arm carefully around her waist so she doesn’t fall.
In superhero world, there are no triplets. Only duos of heroes and their sidekicks. Batman and Robin. The Joker and Harley Quinn, like this teeshirt Seunghyun used to wear.
No: Super Man and Lois Lane and their best friend.
Seunghyun doesn’t care. They’re not superheroes. They’re just, ordinary Seunghyun, Jiyong and Chaerin, and they’re ready to kick some ass.
Chaerin is slumped in her seat, morose at the idea of spending hours in a confined space with this jackass and not being able to do anything since Seunghyun called control over the radio, claiming it was his right as a driver and everything.
They dislike each other. The origin of the feud was probably Jiyong, jealousy, and God knows what else starts with a J, and now they try to reduce the time spent together to a minimum. But just this morning, Hyunsuk told Chaerin she had to get South by her own means, and oh, isn’t that convenient? Seunghyun just happens to own a car and he’s gotta be there by the next day too.
Chaerin called Jiyong before leaving and whined, because Jiyong had already left and taken the train like any normal person would. He just laughed and didn’t tell her Seunghyun had already given him a phone call.
“She’s gonna sulk at me all ride long,” he’d freaked out.
“Are you scared?” Jiyong had laughed.
Seunghyun isn’t scared, not anymore, because while Chaerin is definitely sulking at him, they have James Brown sitting in their backseat and Seunghyun caught her humming under her breath once or twice already.
He waits a little while before starting to talk, because just bursting out in speech would be plain weird right now - she grunted a ‘hello’ earlier in the evening and he quirked back a smile, only it froze the moment she glared.
A familiar song comes on the radio; Seunghyun decides to be nice for once and leaves it on.
Chaerin squirms in her seat. He didn’t have to do that. She hates that he acts so polite.
Seunghyun sends her a quick glance: frown on her face and gnawing her lips. He attacks the chorus. Chaerin looks up sharply and he grins at her over the lyrics, a muted ‘come on’. She sighs only a bit, inaudible over the music, and sings along. There. It wasn’t that hard.
By the time three songs have passed, they’re notably less tense and Seunghyun cheerfully flames the jackasses who got their driver’s license at the lottery. Chaerin fiddles with the buttons on the console, smug that he now lets her. Seunghyun only pretends not to see.
Her stomach growls loudly, shortly after he switched the headlights on, and he laughs a bit obnoxiously, until he sees the edge of a scowl on her face, after which he offers to stop by a MacDonald’s.
“Can we get takeaway?” Chaerin asks. Seunghyun concedes it’ll save them time.
They’re generally a mess at the drive-through, getting their orders mixed up and taking hours to make up their minds, and the girl with the red cap is glaring at them behind her dirty window. Chaerin and Seunghyun end up getting a Big Mac each and a large portion of fries they’ll be able to share.
“Coke- do you want Coke?” Seunghyun asks Chaerin.
“No, thanks,” she declines.
“A Coke for me,” he tells the waitress, while Chaerin says: “Wait, one for me, too,” before Seunghyun changes his mind and says: “No, actually, leave it, it’ll spill.”
They get one Coke and two straws.
Chaerin has a handful of greasy meat, bread and vegetables and she’s dripping salad and mayonnaise on the upholstery of the car, which upsets her because she doesn’t want to look rude and clumsy to Seunghyun. He only snorts, though, around a mouthful of fries, and demonstrates his own private technique to eat the three layers of bread and meat without any collateral damage:
“You keep it in the box and you take it in your mouth like this, just using this hand.”
The demonstration comes with abundant hand gestures and practical examples, and soon Chaerin is folded in half with giggles, which Seunghyun feasts on. He likes having an audience, he likes being cool.
“But how do you get it in your mouth?” Chaerin asks between high-pitched fits of laughter.
He beams at her, delighted: “You just push it inside, like this.”
She snickers and he raises an eyebrow, and then she drops: “That’s what she said.”, and she’s a sobbing mess of laughter on her seat, and he can’t quite believe she just cracked her first - dirty - joke in this car.
They both laugh until they cry.
***
It’s late, they’re still far away from their destination, and Seunghyun’s eyelids have begun to flutter helplessly. Chaerin gets to pick between a crabby motel and a handeol room in a house owned by a scary old lady. Handeol it is. She still has her standards, and the look in the receptionist’s eyes made her feel like a slut, when he saw them both walk in.
The old lady, on the other hand, thinks she’s a boy and asks Seunghyun if she’s a good dongsaeng. Chaerin dejectedly looks down at her chest once they’re alone, and pretends not to hear Seunghyun snicker.
The room is small and dusty, and the mattresses desperately thin. Chaerin piles her coat on top of hers in a weak attempt to make it thicker and resigns to spend the worst night of her life - while Seunghyun is actually pretty comfy on his side - when she sees the monstrous cockroach in a corner of the room.
“Kill it.” she first demands, deceptively calm.
Seunghyun blinks owlishly at her: “It’s just a-“
“Kill it!” Chaerin yelps.
Seunghyun turns to her, slowly, and starts grinning.
“Oppa,” she warns him, “kill that thing now. And if you even think of throwing it at me or something, I’ll tear your balls off. With my bare hands.”
He nods slightly, still smiling, and executes the cockroach in three swift shoe smashes. His consolation is that while he does so, goggly admiration replaces some of the repulsion in her eyes.
Chaerin gingerly inches her mattress closer to his once the lights are off, just in case.
Seunghyun wakes up before his alarm even rings, and looking at Chaerin, he turns it off. She fell asleep late, he knows, turning and trashing at his side, upset by thoughts of crawling insects and by the too flat mattress.
He sends a quick message to Jiyong, warning him they’ll be late, caught in a traffic jam as they are.
“nice try” Jiyong sends back, but he doesn’t explicitly tell Seunghyun to hurry up so all in all it’s a victory.
He gets down to the kitchen and the old lady forcefully jams some rice in his mouth while he tries to speak. Finally, he gets to pay and bring up a thermos of tea for Chaerin.
She wakes up cranky. She hasn’t slept well, her back hurts, and oh f-, they’re late. Chaerin storms down the stairs, narrowly missing Seunghyun who’s displaying the worst case of bed hair ever and a cheesy smile.
“We gotta go,” Chaerin snaps at him, “why didn’t you wake me up?”
He holds his palms up in defense: “I got you free time, Jiyong isn’t expecting us before noon.”
She purses her lips and sullenly accepts the hot tea.
At the bottom of the stairs, the old lady is staring at her tight-fitting shirt, looking downright scandalized.
The radio player is stuck on some has-been radio and cheerfully switches from Shim Soobang to Lee Yongjong. Chaerin does the yoga breathing thing and deals with it. Seunghyun is in a bad mood - the traffic jam turned out to be real - karma - and now Jiyong is pissed and sends him messages that say: “your lies stopped amusing me at least fifty minutes ago”. God, sometimes Seunghyun hates working with that midget. He’s already cursed and banged on the steering wheel, and Chaerin is trying to improve the situation by sending picture proofs to Jiyong, inventively captioned: ‘see?’ and ‘yes, this is still the same car’.
It’s hot, too, and their skins are sticking to the upholstery of their seats, all itchy and clammy. The air-con doesn’t work, and Chaerin broke the handle trying to roll her window down. Seunghyun is thirsty. So is she, but she’s a bit scared of him at the moment to ask for a stop. In the end, she buys a pear-apple the size of a small watermelon from a Pakistani fruit vendor and makes a mess eating half of it, her hand all sticky with juice.
Seunghyun notices but refrains from saying anything, because he doesn’t need that on top of everything else to piss him off. Chaerin sends him a sideway glance.
“Want some?”
She feeds him bits of apple while he drives, and gets a funny sensation when his lips briefly close around her fingertips.
***
When they’re finally there, Jiyong has dug a little circle in the gravel, waiting for them, and his hair is all over the place. They look at him and both feel that somehow, it was worth it.
He hugs Chaerin first, protective and only a bit mad, and fusses over her while Seunghyun smiles and tries to be cool.
“I’m glad to see you,” Chaerin tells Jiyong. He nods at her, and then punches Seunghyun in the stomach. Mock hard, only not really. Because Seunghyun deserved it.
During this week in the South, they all get closer, the three of them, and they couldn’t tell exactly if it’s because they have more opportunities to spend some time together, or because they create those opportunities.
The thing is, one night, they’re walking down some brightly lit avenue, and Jiyong’s arm is wrapped around Chaerin’s waist while the other hand tugs Seunghyun along.
He talks a lot and he’s glad because he ‘missed them’, he repeats a lot: “I missed you two,” and neither Chaerin nor Seunghyun can bring themselves to tell him they were just gone for two days.
Jiyong wants to drink with them. He tells them this with his bright eyes and heart-melting smile, and they both smile back like the saps they are. At first it stays like a drinking session between co-workers: they rant about Hyunsuk and the schedules and the timetables and the company retreats - worst trip ever, they agree. And then at some point, maybe between the fourth and fifth bottle, Jiyong is really drunk, Chaerin’s cheeks are tinged pink and Seunghyun has hands a little bit all over them.
“Something has changed,” Jiyong muses to his glass. “What changed?”
They exchange looks over his head and though there’s no guilt, well. It gnaws at them.
“I’m not too sure where I stand with my work, right now,” Jiyong then confesses. “I feel like I’m in some sort of tunnel and I’ve just gotta push through it.”
There’s a small silence. Then:
“That’s what he said,” Seunghyun mutters. Chaerin looks up to him sharply, their eyes meet, and yes, Jiyong is right: something has changed.
***
It’s been arranged, Chaerin can take the train with the rest of the company, and she’s already prepared for a painless journey and a bowl of ramyun when she comes home, only when it’s time to leave for the station, her bag is nowhere to be seen. Jiyong watches her tear the place upside down for a while, then places a hand on her wrist to make her sit down.
“I can’t believe it,” he mutters, “he’s such a kid.” He types furiously on his cellphone and when it buzzes back, his expression is positively murderous.
“Sorry,” he tells Chaerin through gritted teeth. “Looks like you’re not coming with us.”
She stares at him.
“Something came up,” Jiyong not quite explains. “Just stay here and he’ll pick you up.”
“Who?” she asks, feeling like rationality has somehow been lost along the way.
“Seunghyun,” Jiyong bites out, “that’s who.”
So she’s sitting on that small bench, probably getting sunburn, when Seunghyun pulls off in front of her.
“What the hell?” she says, too tired to even yell.
“I’ve got your bag,” he answers, and he tries a grin.
He drives with his eyes very black and focused on the road, only some times he’ll pay her a quick glance and it sets Chaerin’s nerves on edge. She hadn’t planned to find herself in such close contact to him that soon after the night in the bar. She hugs her knees to her chest, bare feet propped up on her seat.
Inwardly, Seunghyun is almost as awkward as her, and he doesn’t know what to say, which unsettles him. Silence frankly seems like the best option at the moment.
The engine starts to heat up. Seunghyun sees the little red button blink aggressively and says nothing, hoping it’ll pass without Chaerin noticing. He subtly switches the heater on. Five minutes later, the car starts beeping.
“you’ve gotta be kidding me,” Jiyong comments when Chaerin texts him. Sadly, she agrees with him.
Seunghyun looks at her and opens his mouth at the same time she does, determined to start yelling at him:
“I’m sorry,” he bursts out.
Chaerin bites her lip, at the exact same time the car comes to a lurching stop, with the noise of a small animal dying.
The temperature inside of the cubicle has risen to ‘unbearable’ and Chaerin steps out of the car before she feels tempted to murder Seunghyun right here, right now. It wouldn’t do any good to eliminate any potential help, though up to now he’s been more of a walking catastrophe for her. See, she tells herself, this is why we hated him, precious.
Seunghyun is miserable, sitting against the side of the car and desperately trying to catch some network.
His phone battery dies, so he gathers courage and walks up to Chaerin:
“I think we should walk to the last village we saw,” he tells her.
“This is all your fault,” she informs him calmly. “You kidnapped me and now I’m stuck here because of you.”
Seunghyun doesn’t answer, head low. His foot is tracing little patterns in the dirt; suddenly Chaerin thinks of Jiyong.
“The last village was at least twenty kilometers away,” she says, softer. “And it’s getting dark. We should stay here until a car drives by.”
Seunghyun nods, and sits at her feet while she rocks back and forth, propped up on the barrier. He looks like a huge watchdog.
***
“I’ve got food in the trunk,” Seunghyun says suddenly. He can’t believe he forgot, it was supposed to be their picnic. Chaerin swats at his head, half jokingly, and jumps on her feet to rummage around the ice chest. He watches her with a small smile, the curve of her back and the Y of perspiration on her teeshirt.
He turns the warning lights of the car on and jogs to the small space under a tree, where she spread her jacket on the floor. Her mouth is circled red with the juice of tomatoes and Seunghyun feels something in him give at the sight.
They eat in silence, side-by-side, while it’s getting darker around them.
She wordlessly hands him the bottle of iced - well, not anymore - green tea and he takes it thankfully, his throat is dry but he wanted her to drink all she wanted first.
Some of the drink dribbles down the corner of Seunghyun’s lips, his chin - Chaerin scoots away subtly. She can’t really deal with whatever ‘this’ is right now. Turning away she starts packing the remains of their food in the ice chest, piling every box methodically to occupy her mind. The damp hand placed on the small of her back is a burst of electricity up her nerves.
This is it, Seunghyun thinks. This is the point where she either slaps him or-
“Come on,” he says, very low. “CL.”
“Fuck,” Chaerin breathes.
They half-push, half-drag each other to the backseat of the car, and they’re lucky they thought of opening the doors wide because it’s already uncomfortably warm in there.
Seunghyun settles between her spread legs and pushes his tongue in her mouth, like he’s been craving to for so long, only she always refused to acknowledge him.
Chaerin pulls at his teeshirt and refuses to let herself think about what she’s doing; the only thing remaining is, she wants this and he’s willing to offer it to her on a platter, so why wonder? Struggling with the buckle of his belt is dirty and sends thrilling shivers up her thighs, her back, where he managed to slip a hand.
Seunghyun is fumbling with the tiny hooks of her bra, his fingers are too big and too slippery and his other hand is busy cupping the back of her neck to kiss her deeper and stronger. He likes the feeling of her stroking the hair at the back of his neck, and the way she snakes a hand past the waistband of his underwear to stroke him.
Chaerin watches when Seunghyun lets go of her to arch his back, head tipping forward in pleasure. She drags him down by the neck and kisses him then, and whispers in his ear to take her clothes off.
He does, half-blinded by want, and feels grateful that she helps when he’s stuck with buckles and buttons and zippers and snaps. Can’t they ever wear normal clothes? He realizes he said that out loud when she watches him with dilated pupils.
Chaerin tugs on Seunghyun’s pants and doesn’t care about foreplay, not now.
“Tell me you’ve got some,” she growls out. “Tell me this is the one thing you did think about.”
He grins down at her, thrilled by her bluntness. “I have some,” he whispers hotly in her ear. “I just gotta let go of you for a sec, though.” Seunghyun likes her whine when he pulls off and boldly places a hand on her thigh, quiet reassurance and promise of what’s coming next.
She’s the one who deals with the wrapper, partly because his hands seem clumsy and feverish, and partly because she likes the brief instant when she rolls the condom down on him and Seunghyun sighs.
They kiss wetly, and then he’s pushing into her because they’re both at the end of their patience and have been dragging this for too long, they need this and it shows in the way they sigh in unison. Seunghyun rolls his hips minutely and revels in the warmth and the tightness of her body.
Chaerin feels him in her and can’t quite believe it yet, how good this is. They lock eyes and she shudders, and has to look away - eventually closes her eyes when he starts moving and his mouth pecks gently at her neck.
She’s- she’s clutching at him like a vice and welcoming him in her body, with some softness and gentleness in her touch that he had been longing for but hadn’t expected. Chaerin is different during sex. She becomes sweet in a way that makes it different to Seunghyun than just fucking, and with each push into her he feels grateful for something he can’t quite yet describe. He tries his best to please her, too, to be gentle and slow, but she won’t let him and pulls him closer to her when he pulls back.
He’s sensual and she likes it, likes the way he sounds when he slides into her. It’s like the sound fits the sensation; her belly rubs against his when she arches, so she does it again and again until he’s almost restraining her, choking with want and Chaerin wants him to crumble in her arms.
Seunghyun does, when she slips her fingers in his hair, messes it up, before pulling him down to kiss him sweetly. He does because in that single instant he believes he’s got her wrapped around his finger and he’s the king of the world and she can be his queen.
Seunghyun comes with a muffled, low whine against her shoulder and Chaerin strokes his hair lazily through the aftermath. She feels smug.
Pulling out of her physically pains him and Seunghyun collapse right back into her arms, basking in her embrace.
“Did you…?” he asks. She huffs in laughter, warm breath brushing against his ear:
“No,” she answers. “But I still liked it.”
He’s a bit disappointed and his male ego a bit wounded, and also he can’t quite understand how it’s possible to ‘still like it’. Girls, he figures.
Guys, Chaerin thinks when he falls asleep on top of her, uncaring of anything. Her knee is bent at an awkward angle so she shifts until she’s more comfortable, enveloping him whole. She just hopes no car passes by while they’re napping.
***
They both wake up when it gets chilly outside and their skins, from clammy, have turned cold. Chaerin winces when Seunghyun peels himself off her and for a while he can’t meet her eyes; they both look away.
The teeshirt she had wanted to put back on smells of the passed day, dirty and sweaty, so Chaerin tosses it back under the seat and leans over the back to dig her bag from the trunk. Seunghyun watches her fish out a teeshirt, unselfconscious about her body and the hint of a nipple peeking out of her bra. He finds he can’t quite take his eyes off her, even now, and he couldn’t say if he feels relieved or dead-scared that the- the thing, the craving, hasn’t stopped after they slept together. He wonders what he’s gonna tell Jiyong.
“Do you want a cigarette?” he asks. He’s over-polite, and his voice sounds broken and raspy. Chaerin suppresses a shiver.
“I don’t smoke,” she points out.
Seunghyun nods, lights a cigarette for himself and takes the first, best puff. His eyes are trained on her and while he looks confident, he doesn’t know what to do.
Chaerin reaches a hand; he pushes her wrist away gently and holds the cigarette to her lips: she sucks in a breath and coughs a bit, and when he moves his hand away it’s to kiss her instead, softly.
“Did you know?” he asks when they pull away.
“I had no idea,” she answers.
“Jiyong knows,” he tells her, and she nods. It makes sense that he would.
They wait for a car to pass, Chaerin sitting down yoga-still on the hood of the car and Seunghyun leaning at her side. They’re both sharply aware of the fact that she didn’t answer the unasked question, do you reciprocate or am I floundering alone here?
Flounder, she first thought a bit cruelly, with that instinct that she sometimes has to crush the people who confessed to her. And then she looked at him and saw that it’s Seunghyun, it’s not just any fanboy with a crush, it’s so much more. It’s Seunghyun, reaching for her and she didn’t say she wanted him back.
It’s killing him. She probably knows, but it’s killing him. Seunghyun had thought - he had thought once she knew she would shift her stance. But here she is, staring away into the night, eyes following the turns of the road stretching still in front of their eyes, and she refuses to look at him. Again. Worse than before.
He decides then that he’ll stop trying - and just then the truck stops by, as if Seunghyun getting rid of the will to pursue her was just what karma needed to get them going again.
This time it is a motel, some kind of truck driver relay-inn, and Chaerin makes herself minuscule in her oversized hoodie. She would give anything to pass for a boy again. Instead, it’s like the eyes of the assistance have found their focal point.
Seunghyun doesn’t like the looks Chaerin is getting. He rushes the counter girl so that they soon get the key to the single bedroom he requested - he doesn’t want her to be alone this night either, the locks in this place don’t seem very secure. The tiredness accumulated during the day is making him cranky and brusque; his nerves are on edge and he just longs for a bed to sleep in.
Seunghyun takes the small couch. The whole bedroom smells of cold tobacco and dust. Chaerin shimmies out of her pants and pretends not to feel the level of awkward rising to a peek. She can’t bring herself to say something to him and, worst of all, feels vaguely guilty when nothing is actually her fault. Or is it? To avoid the questions, she locks herself into the bathroom and her feet leave perspiration prints on the dirty tiles.
Seunghyun slams to glass panel of the balcony on his way out for a smoke. He hates this. He hates what it’s become. He hates that somehow she’s entitled to hate him since he’s the one who dragged them into this mess.
The cigarette tastes bitter on his lips; the night is uncomfortably warm after the chill of the AC in the room: his teeshirt sticks to his shoulders, itchy.
The sliding door wobbles open with a cheap clatter and Chaerin’s voice is telling him to come to bed, now, they’ll have a long day again tomorrow. It’s so soft it hurts.
She watches him fold his huge body awkwardly on the stained cushions of the couch and frowns:
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“You sleep on the bed,” he tells her. “I’ll just…”
Chaerin sighs. She wonders how he actually manages to look small and unsure.
“Get your ass here.” she orders him. “Don’t be stupid.”
Oh. Okay then.
***
Hyunsuk sent a car to pick them up and they hesitate briefly before Seunghyun decides to go sit next to the driver and makes awkward chatter about the weather, while Chaerin, backseat, enjoys the air conditioning and looks by the window: morose parade of grey fields and industrial buildings.
They meet eyes in the rear-view mirror and there’s a catch of breath on both their parts, the hint of a smile on her lips - Seunghyun clenches his fist on the armrest and Chaerin sees it, she sees the white knuckles and his nails clipped short and suddenly she feels better.
Driving into the suburbs of Seoul, Seunghyun texts Jiyong that they’re back. He gets no reply, and it upsets him. Twisting in his seat, he turns back to tell that to Chaerin and her eyes widen a bit, almost imperceptibly. She nods and gives a hint of a grabbing hand at him.
Seunghyun looks her dead in the eye. Not for the first time, he looks unsure and expectant, and her reaching fingers are at the same time the hyphen and the question mark between them.
Then the light turns to green, the car starts off again, and the thing is lost.
The driver drops Chaerin off first. She extricates herself from the backseat and goes to get her bag in the trunk; Seunghyun thinks she’ll leave without anything more than an awkward smile-and-wave. He’s wrong. She walks to his side of the car, bag thrown over her shoulder, and when she leans forward he lowers the window. Her hand grips the sill and her sunglasses invade his vision.
“I’ll see you,” she tells him. “Thank you,” she adds for the driver. And she smiles at Seunghyun one last time, discrete and private.
“Bye,” he grumbles between quirked lips.
They both spend the evening thinking about what happened and their thumbs hover above the keypads of their cellphones. In the end Chaerin turns it off and rolls over to face the wall, eyes closing on an old JYP poster that’s curling and yellowing at the edges.
Seunghyun tosses and turns over, upset and itchy and giddy, gets up to pour himself a glass of cold water, goes to the bathroom, stubs his toe against the corner of a door and swears, very loud. Then he goes back to bed because apparently being awake has become dangerous for him.
Chaerin bumps into Jiyong at the coffee machine, on the next morning. She’s excessively cheerful to fend off the inexplicable awkwardness between them, and Jiyong watches her with narrowing eyes. She can feel it. He’s not buying- it. The lies. Except not, because she hasn’t said anything about the trip with Seunghyun, and it hasn’t even been brought into the conversation yet, and really there is no point in being so nervous. She fills the conversation with increasingly random comments about the weather and the schedules and the deadlines and Jiyong looks forever unimpressed, and then, just to spice things up, Seunghyun barges into the coffee room.
Chaerin and him successively avoid each other’s eyes for a fraction of second before they look at each other. Then there is that very weird moment: they share something, again, and Seunghyun feels suddenly too tall while Chaerin gets the ba-bumps.
They both have the sinking feeling they must be terribly obvious, Jiyong eying them with something akin to sadness in his eyes; he doesn’t ask what’s changed, though. He probably knows.
It’s terrible, the guilt that gnaws at them; it’s terrible because it’s not justified. It’s not like they did something openly reprehensible Jiyong could get mad about. It’s not like it would be normal, expected, to go and tell him: “We’ve been stupid. We apologize.”
Seunghyun pictures how that would go (“We slept together. Sorry.”) and cringes because what the hell? It’s not like there was commitment on either side, and even though sometimes he caught Jiyong with the misty eye while looking at Chaerin he’s not too sure it wasn’t just the dust in Teddy’s office.
Plus there is how they often ended up catching each other looking at her. That’s probably how Jiyong figured it out. And anyway Seunghyun told him afterwards, so- that’s another thing. Jiyong knew. Jiyong knows about the- the infatuation, Jiyong was supportive and everything. He wouldn’t mind. Never. No.
Chaerin offers that they all go grab a beer after work because she can’t stand the awful, embarrassing silence - and the stares, oh please, kill her now. Jiyong is at her side and he glares at the bottom of his plastic cup before breathing through his nostrils and saying:
“Fine. Tonight, okay.”
“Awesome,” Seunghyun tries to say. His voice squeaks. Jiyong aims his empty cup at the bin, misses, and leaves the room.
***
Seunghyun watches Chaerin for a long time after Jiyong’s left, and she shudders a bit - it’s intense.
“What?” she says defensively.
“I wanted to call you last night,” he answers. His voice is soft like an olive branch held out. Here, peace. Seunghyun tells her in a few words what she had hoped and feared to hear; Chaerin listens with a dry mouth, fiddling with the rim of her empty cup.
When he’s done talking he stands right between too far and too close, and it’s up to her to either push him away or tug him forward.
She ends up stalking him to a corner of the room. Seunghyun smiles in her hair tied in a messy bun when she hugs him, so tight, like she doesn’t want to let go anymore.
So making out in a bathroom stall is just as awkward as Chaerin had thought it would be. Seunghyun is pressing her against the door and the lock is digging into her back. However, she also finds that she doesn’t care so much when his mouth is nudging hers and the cologne he’s wearing still smells awesome.
“This is not what I had in mind when I came to work this morning,” Seunghyun confesses. He’s grinning from ear to ear, that kind of wide smile that makes him look a bit retarded - the kind she likes.
She smirks back at him:
“Really? You don’t usually drag women in the men’s bathroom to molest their mouths? That’s not what the rumors say…”
He huffs in laughter and Chaerin discovers that she likes them better that way, relaxed and comfortable around each other, rather than in this parody of a Cold War they had established.
“Only you, baby,” he tells her (it’s a lie, actually - but not really).
Chaerin smiles wide and Seunghyun thinks it’s pretty, in the way it escapes the usual canons. A smile without standards, unabashed and that’s why he likes it.
She has to stand on tiptoes to kiss him, tiny feet strapped in monstrous shoes. Seunghyun bows his head to make the kiss easier and shivers when she strokes the back of his neck.
“I gotta go,” she mumbles. “See you tonight.”
It sounds - almost - like a date when she says it that way, and Chaerin doesn’t miss the look Seunghyun sends her when she gets out of the bathroom.
On the other hand, she kind of hates him when she bumps into Seungri who’s just coming in at the same time. (She gets mocked endlessly. Seungri is clueless, and a brat.)
***
Seunghyun walks to the stand with Jiyong. He yawns every other second to pretend he’s tired, and justify the currently heavy silence looming over them. Knowing Jiyong, though, he’s probably seeing right through his game and the icy façade hides a crafty mind, busy coming up with a torrent of insults and curses; he must think Seunghyun betrayed him in the worst way ever. He must hate him now.
Somehow, Seunghyun thinks he can’t live with the idea.
Chaerin is late. They don’t know it yet because technically she still has five minutes to show up, but bra unhooked, hair in a giant knot and only one sock on, there is no way she can make it on time.
‘im stuck in the traffic,” she texts Jiyong.
‘this excuse is getting old,” he sends back.
Seunghyun sees him smile. He raises a hopeful, tentative eyebrow, and Jiyong relaxes a bit in his seat:
“Chaerin’s late,” he says.
Seunghyun feels himself teetering on a dangerous edge here, always so aware of the potential landslide.
“Oh?” he breathes. “Really?”
Jiyong smiles more easily now:
“Yes,” he says. “But let’s be nice and humor her when she arrives.”
The weight on her chest lifts a bit: Jiyong sent her a tiny, insignificant but oh so speaking:
:)
She hums an unknown song under her breath, willing for the taxi to go faster, and it’s only when she’s paying that she realizes it was Shim Soobang.
I know nothing but love. What a joke.
They’re sitting side-by-side, waiting for her - she has no idea who to smile at first, so she ducks her head and mumbles something about Namsan Bridge being clogged at this hour.
They both watch Jiyong laugh, loud and bright and clear, just like the alcohol being poured into small glasses; the sounds brings them all together.
They fit despite their differences, despite the fact that Seunghyun can easily wrap his hand around two glasses at once when Chaerin’s is only large enough for one.
There’s the obvious, glaring dissimilitude of anatomy, and then there are the more subtle changes from one of them to the other.
How Jiyong and Chaerin both speak quickly, like they’re scared to run out of breath, like they want to fill everything with speech. Seunghyun listens to them and he’s the one left breathless.
Chaerin studies their profiles and finds she likes Seunghyun’s better. He’s more handsome. He’s more her type. But there’s something about Jiyong, so irrevocable prettiness that she can’t help but crave.
More than once she has to refrain from reaching a hand to touch his face.
They’re drunk.
The three of them, they’re drunk.
But Seunghyun and Chaerin are drunker because they had more at stake when they walked in. They gambled everything they had, and now they’re not sure whether or not they won.
Jiyong is too small, too thin to support them both and their trio wobbles a bit in the streets, Seunghyun huge and the other two smaller. They make the weirdest picture but walking like this, even sweaty and inebriated, Chaerin feels herself smile when Jiyong wraps his arm carefully around her waist so she doesn’t fall.
In superhero world, there are no triplets. Only duos of heroes and their sidekicks. Batman and Robin. The Joker and Harley Quinn, like this teeshirt Seunghyun used to wear.
No: Super Man and Lois Lane and their best friend.
Seunghyun doesn’t care. They’re not superheroes. They’re just, ordinary Seunghyun, Jiyong and Chaerin, and they’re ready to kick some ass.