dispatch could never
dispatch could never
youngk/nayeon
g, 3192w
nayeon always has good gossip. brian wants in on it.
written for team procrastinator's 2018 holiday fic exchange on ao3.
It’s just like any other ordinary day off in the dorm; Brian and Wonpil lounging on the slightly beaten up couch while Jae chills on the floor watching dumb Youtube videos on his phone and planning his next episode. The curtains are pulled open, letting in the warm autumn sun. Brian watches the sunlight glinting off the metal frames of the windows in the apartment opposite and prays for an angel to get him out of here.
“I’m gonna grab a coffee,” he announces to the room.
“Get me an iced mocha,” Jae replies without even looking up. Wonpil just stretches; his way of saying he isn’t going anywhere. Brian suppresses the sudden urge to pull out all his hair.
His phone suddenly pings, and he picks it up from where it lies untouched on the armrest. He’d spent the morning video calling his parents to wish them Happy Autumn Festival, with the same empty promises that he’ll be back to spend it with them next year, and now he just wants to keep it low key for the rest of the day.
you won’t believe this, says the unfamiliar number on his screen. He peers at it as if it might magically morph into letters and then a name, but it stays as it is. He squints into the distance, trying to decide how to respond, and Jae remarks that he looks like he’d be needing some glasses himself soon.
What? he types out instead, after smacking Jae on the back with his foot. Then he adds Who is this, by the way
jungyeon and jimin are dating!!!!!!!! comes the reply.
“WHAT?!” Brian bolts upright on the couch. Wonpil, who’s legs are draped over his, looks at him with all the hurt feelings of a disturbed cat and Jae lying flat on the floor narrows his eyes even more than humanly possible. Brian apologises to Wonpil and digs his foot into Jae’s hip before his phone pings from a new message.
I meant bts’ jimin by the way. not our jimin. I mean, it’d be possible but she also has a thing for jackson so….
WHAT?! Brian types out instead.
also it’s nayeon, the person replies. thought you had my number. anyway, I just really wanted to tell someone who wasn’t in twice. what are you up to?
About to go get a coffee, Brian types out. He thinks about the current situation - him, Jae and Wonpil lying around the dorm completely bored out of their minds while Sungjin and Dowoon have gone back to Busan for the holidays - and adds, You wanna come?
text me the address, she replies. Brian does, then clicks on the number and adds it to his contacts under - he pauses, then types out - Nayeon.
She turns up in oversized sunglasses, a baseball cap and a face mask covering her mouth and nose. Brian fights the urge to laugh and instead manages an overly bright smile. She pulls off the sunglasses and cap but keeps the mask on. She squints suspiciously at his smile with noticeably unmade up eyes.
“You know, that’s a surefire way to tell people you’re a celebrity,” he motions at the baseball cap with his chin. “In fact, it’s probably the worst disguise in the world.”
“Oh, so that’s why you decided to walk around making sure your fans definitely know it’s you they’re following?” she retorts. “Hot chocolate please,” she says sweetly to the barista as they come up to the counter. Brian conceals another grin at her sudden switch in tone.
“No, I just don’t have rabid fans like you do,” he replies, holding his card out to the barista.
Nayeon lets the jab slide, frowning at him with her eyebrows instead. “I can pay for myself, thanks.”
“Think of it as an exchange,” he shakes his head. “I get you drinks and you pay me in scandals.”
Nayeon laughs, eyes sparkling brown in the autumn sun. It’s infinitely better than Jae’s squeezed-eye-eardrum-splitting cackle, or Dowoon’s silent chuckle, and for the first time that day Brian feels just a little bit better about not being able to head back to Toronto to visit his parents during Chuseok like he said he would the year before. “I have a better idea,” she suggests as they walk out into the street, clutching their drinks. “We exchange scandals and next time I’ll get the drinks. Deal?”
Brian looks at her over the rim of his takeaway cappuccino. “I can’t let a pretty girl pay for drinks. That’s not how the world works.” He winks, and Nayeon rolls her eyes.
“No goss for you then,” she shrugs, and walks on ahead. Brian breaks into a jog to catch up with her.
“Hey, I was kidding. Give me the dirt.”
She turns, walking backwards so she can smile at him while she sips on her hot chocolate. “Deal?”
“Deal.”
She smiles so wide it’s blinding.
“Anyway, I did some digging after you told me about Jungyeon and I have no idea what’s going on. Apparently a year ago they hated each other?”
She laughs again. “They were stuck in limbo, if I’m honest. You know when you like someone and it seems like they like you back but then they don’t but then they do? That’s what it was, really. Also you know Jungyeon. She’s not the most explicit person around when it comes to dealing with feelings.”
Brian doesn’t really know but he nods anyway.
“You tell me a scandal now.”
He doesn’t have to think very hard. “Jae and Lim are having this thing where they’re kind of dating but also kind of aren’t.”
Nayeon’s eyes widen. “No way!”
“Also,” Brian continues, “Jae asked me to get him an iced mocha so let’s walk around the block and then you can get it for him. We’ll call it even. Deal?”
Her long, brown hair looks golden in the setting sun. The wind whips strands of it above and around her head so it looks a little like she’s been electrocuted. Brian grins. She cocks her heads to the side, then twirls around to fall into step with him. She nudges him with her elbow. “Deal. Keep talking.”
Heard you were in Japan. Something about a concert? Brian texts Nayeon, along with a photo of Tokyo Tower.
what are you doing here! she replies.
You’re not the only one who has concerts overseas, he quips.
haha, very funny. coffee? she asks.
They meet in a small alleyway coffee shop where it’s unlikely anyone would recognize them. Nayeon keeps her hat on regardless. “How did you know about this place?” she asks when she first walks through the door and Brian replies with a “I’m constantly on the lookout for secret date places so…” She makes a show of walking back out the door until he admits one of their Japanese staff bought coffee from there the day before.
“So do you have any new scandals for me?” she asks as she sips on her usual hot chocolate, looking at him over the rim of her mug. Somehow, it calms Brian to see a familiar face in a still unfamiliar country. Even if he is here with his band, he feels a little like a normal person on holiday with a friend. Even if he still doesn’t really know said friend very well.
He shakes his head. “Jae and Lim are still going ambiguously strong. Mark continues to be interested in nothing. Umm… Dowoon may or may not be into someone right now?”
“Oh?” her ears perk up. “Do tell.”
He shrugs. “With Dowoon, it’s impossible to tell anything.”
She sighs. “Maybe I picked the wrong person to have gossip sessions with,” she wrinkles her nose slightly, then smiles. Brian is immediately reminded of bunnies. Bunnies in black bucket hats. “I’ll tell you some of what I found out. Jennie and EXO’s Kai just started going out! They’re in Paris for a weekend right now. Isn’t that so romantic?”
“That’s risky,” Brian comments instead, leaning back in his chair and crossing one ankle over his knee.
“But romantic,” Nayeon insists.
“If I were dating another idol I’d keep it low key,” he smiles, and gestures around the small coffee shop. “Just like this.” He wags a suggestive eyebrow at her.
“If you don’t stop that I’m going to throw my shoe at you,” Nayeon says firmly with an equally calm smile. It takes Brian the best of 5 minutes to stop laughing, while Nayeon struggles to keep looking firm. Just the slightest twitch of her lips gives her away.
“So you’re saying you’d like someone who would whisk you away on weekend overseas trips and surprise you with grand dinners and stuff like that, huh?” He manages when he’s calmed down somewhat. She shoots him a suspicious look.
“You’re not making fun of me, are you?”
“Just gathering material for our next song,” he says easily. “It’ll be about a girl who wants the world,” he gestures to her, “and the guy who can’t give it to her,” he points at himself. “Maybe Sungjin could be the girl and Wonpil could be the guy,” he adds. Nayeon bursts out laughing, covering her mouth with one hand while her eyebrows turn upwards. He’s never really noticed her eyebrows before. Well, he’s never actually observed her laughing so close before. She was always just Im Nayeon, popular trainee, later popular member of the current most popular girl group, someone he bumped into in hallways and JYP concerts and end of year concerts and never really said anything other than ‘hi’ to.
“You and Jae could play the couple the main couple is always gossiping about,” she suggests. “And Dowoon could be the barista.”
“Or I could be the barista,” he corrects. There are many things he and Jae could be, and a couple is definitely not one of them. Maybe if they were fighting. Sometimes their manager keeps reminding him that they’re supposed to play the part of the “overseas couple” but Brian just can’t bring himself to do it. He can be cheesy and flirty and look really attractive on stage but he just can’t bring himself to be outrageously fake. He supposes this is why day6 constantly struggles between being just “idol” or just “band.”
“You really hate being told to do all this fake idol business, don’t you,” Nayeon observes, suddenly looking thoughfuI. Brian blinks at her, a little taken aback. He hadn’t expected her to see through him so easily. “Anyway, I think you’d end up flirting with all the girls if you were barista,” she beams. They end up planning out their increasingly ridiculous music video until Brian notices the time and suggests they leave before they both get yelled at. Nayeon insists, but he foots the bill.
“You never told me how you found out about Jimin and Jackson,” he mentions as they walk down the street, hands shoved into pockets to keep them warm. "Or how you got my number. Or why."
“Aren’t you supposed to be the observant one?” she glances up at him. “Like you write all the love songs and all, I thought you’d be the first person to notice these things.”
He glances up at the power lines to avoid her gaze until she nudges him in the side, laughing. “Are all girls really this observant?”
Her eyes are shining. “I just know everything.”
“Sure.”
He notices she completely ignores the latter part of the question about his number.
“It’s ok if you don’t believe it. I still know more than you do.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it, admitting defeat. “Before you know it you’ll be writing songs in my place,” he remarks.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Nayeon says breezily. He looks down at her. She’s looking straight ahead with a grin on her face as they trudge through golden brown leaves littering the ground. “You’re pretty amazing at what you do, you know.”
Brian carries that special warmth in his chest throughout the rest of their tour, along with the image of Nayeon walking down a side street in Tokyo, boots crunching through vibrant autumn leaves that line the ground and golden ginkgo leaves fluttering around her as she turns and beams at him.
A few weeks later, as he’s scrolling through his contacts, he comes across Nayeon. His finger hovers over the number, then he changes his mind. He hasn’t spoken to her for weeks and he knows she’s incredibly busy right now with concerts and comebacks and end of year things and they’ve bumped into each other on their way to their respective special stage practices but…
“Hey.”
He looks up, gaping. Nayeon stands over him, holding a takeaway cup tied with a red ribbon.
“Long time no see,” he manages, untangling his legs from where they were resting on the chair in front of him and gesturing for her to sit. She shakes her head.
“I’ve gotta get back to practice,” she wrinkles her nose slightly. He hadn’t realized that he’d actually kind of missed that nose wrinkle of hers. “But I just came by to say happy birthday!” she says simply but happily. She holds the cup out to him and he takes it, a little bewildered.
“How did you know?” he asks blankly.
She laughs. Her eyes sparkle slightly under the artificial lighting of the little studio he’s sitting in. “I know everything, remember?”
He grins. “I forgot. Hey thanks so much,” he holds up the coffee cup. “I really appreciate it.”
She shakes her head and heads for the door. “It’s nothing, really. You just look really exhausted. And it sucks to be working this hard on your birthday.”
She looks even worse, dark circles and eyebags lining her eyes and her skin looks paler than usual. Still, her smile is dazzling, and warms him even more than the hot coffee he’s holding in his hand. He knows just the thing to cheer her up. “I heard somebody we know got into a super messy breakup recently. I’ll tell you about it next time.” He grins.
Her smile widens, and then she’s gone.
Left alone with his coffee present, Brian goes back to his phone, hits edit under Nayeon’s name, and changes it to Nayeonie. As he tucks his phone back into his pocket, he makes a mental note to get Jae to ask Lim about any breakups that might have happened recently. Girls were just so much better at these things than he was.
Merry Christmas!
Brian rolls over in bed and looks at the multiple emojis littering the rest of the message. A gif pops up a second later, fireworks exploding over the screen. In the dark room, the brightness of his screen leaves his eyes a little watery.
Merry Christmas, he replies. I saw the video by the way, he adds. It was cute.
thanks. I’m so heckin tired.
Hot chocolate fixes everything. My treat? He sends her a gif of a big eyed rabbit looking pleadingly at the camera.
you’re on, she replies.
He tries to suppress a giant grin and fails. Just as he clicks his screen off he becomes aware of someone standing in the doorway. He falls off the bed with a start and Jae snaps the light on, looking bleary eyed but with a sly grin on his face.
“You know, I used to look like that when Lim first started texting me,” he says in English with a knowing raise of an eyebrow, then ambles into the kitchen where Brian hears him drinking straight from the water jug.
“Stop drinking out of the water jug!” he hisses through the open doorway and switches the light off before Jae can walk past and comment on the way his cheeks are burning. Jae just replies with a muffled “yes, mom” and chuckles on the way back to his own room.
A little past 2 in the morning, Nayeon turns up at the park, wrapped in an oversized scarf that covers the bottom half of her face. In the streetlights her makeup-less eyes look even more exhausted than before, but they still carry that glitter that everyone always seems to have after a performance.
“Oh god, this is amazing,” she breathes as Brian passes her a steaming takeaway cup of hot chocolate. She looks quizzically at the red ribbon wrapped around it, then up at him.
“Merry belated Christmas,” he knocks his own cup against hers and they both take a long, enthusiastic drag. "And you've been looking crazy exhausted lately," he adds, and she wrinkles her nose and elbows him in the ribs. He produces a packet of marshmallows that immediately lights her face up and she stuffs 2 into her mouth without further delay. He laughs.
“You have no idea how good this is after standing on a freezing stage in a mini skirt,” Nayeon presses the cup against her cheek. Brian passes her another marshmallow, which she drops into the drink. “You had fun, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, it was good,” he replies.
“Anyway, you said you had some really hot goss to tell me? I’ve been looking forward to it since Christmas,” she nudges him, grinning. “This better be really scandalous.”
Brian tries to assume his usual calm demeanour when he’s about to say something incredibly cheesy. “Well…” he pauses, and a white fleck flutters past his eyes.
“Snow!” Nayeon exclaims, holding her arms out as more flecks float downward. She turns towards him, snow clinging to her hair and scarf. Her eyes sparkle a thousand times more than the stars in the sky. It calms him down right away. Something about her just does that to him. He takes a deep breath and jumps for it.
“I thought, maybe, we could start our own scandal,” he says. “You know, you and me.”
Nayeon wavers for a second, staring at him, then she nudges his foot with hers. “Seriously, you never quit, do you?” she grins, but the scarf doesn’t quite cover the pink of her cheeks.
“Never,” he tells her seriously, and then he smiles. “I mean, I know you’d rather have a huge bouquet of roses and maybe get whisked off to a secret location somewhere on the mountains where you can see the city sparkling below and all I got for you is a little cup of hot chocolate but -“
She steps on his foot. “This,” she takes his gloved hand, holding the cup in her other hand and looking determinedly up at him, “is even better than all of that.” And then she bursts into that smile that makes his insides feel like they’re on fire. “Okay, fine, but only under one condition.”
“What?”
“Next time you have to tell me who had that really messy breakup. Oh, and you let me pay for the drinks.”
Brian laughs, and offers her his arm. She takes it and they set off down the path, the snow silently muffling everything else until it feels like they’re the only two people left in the world.
*
youngk/nayeon
g, 3192w
nayeon always has good gossip. brian wants in on it.
written for team procrastinator's 2018 holiday fic exchange on ao3.
It’s just like any other ordinary day off in the dorm; Brian and Wonpil lounging on the slightly beaten up couch while Jae chills on the floor watching dumb Youtube videos on his phone and planning his next episode. The curtains are pulled open, letting in the warm autumn sun. Brian watches the sunlight glinting off the metal frames of the windows in the apartment opposite and prays for an angel to get him out of here.
“I’m gonna grab a coffee,” he announces to the room.
“Get me an iced mocha,” Jae replies without even looking up. Wonpil just stretches; his way of saying he isn’t going anywhere. Brian suppresses the sudden urge to pull out all his hair.
His phone suddenly pings, and he picks it up from where it lies untouched on the armrest. He’d spent the morning video calling his parents to wish them Happy Autumn Festival, with the same empty promises that he’ll be back to spend it with them next year, and now he just wants to keep it low key for the rest of the day.
you won’t believe this, says the unfamiliar number on his screen. He peers at it as if it might magically morph into letters and then a name, but it stays as it is. He squints into the distance, trying to decide how to respond, and Jae remarks that he looks like he’d be needing some glasses himself soon.
What? he types out instead, after smacking Jae on the back with his foot. Then he adds Who is this, by the way
jungyeon and jimin are dating!!!!!!!! comes the reply.
“WHAT?!” Brian bolts upright on the couch. Wonpil, who’s legs are draped over his, looks at him with all the hurt feelings of a disturbed cat and Jae lying flat on the floor narrows his eyes even more than humanly possible. Brian apologises to Wonpil and digs his foot into Jae’s hip before his phone pings from a new message.
I meant bts’ jimin by the way. not our jimin. I mean, it’d be possible but she also has a thing for jackson so….
WHAT?! Brian types out instead.
also it’s nayeon, the person replies. thought you had my number. anyway, I just really wanted to tell someone who wasn’t in twice. what are you up to?
About to go get a coffee, Brian types out. He thinks about the current situation - him, Jae and Wonpil lying around the dorm completely bored out of their minds while Sungjin and Dowoon have gone back to Busan for the holidays - and adds, You wanna come?
text me the address, she replies. Brian does, then clicks on the number and adds it to his contacts under - he pauses, then types out - Nayeon.
She turns up in oversized sunglasses, a baseball cap and a face mask covering her mouth and nose. Brian fights the urge to laugh and instead manages an overly bright smile. She pulls off the sunglasses and cap but keeps the mask on. She squints suspiciously at his smile with noticeably unmade up eyes.
“You know, that’s a surefire way to tell people you’re a celebrity,” he motions at the baseball cap with his chin. “In fact, it’s probably the worst disguise in the world.”
“Oh, so that’s why you decided to walk around making sure your fans definitely know it’s you they’re following?” she retorts. “Hot chocolate please,” she says sweetly to the barista as they come up to the counter. Brian conceals another grin at her sudden switch in tone.
“No, I just don’t have rabid fans like you do,” he replies, holding his card out to the barista.
Nayeon lets the jab slide, frowning at him with her eyebrows instead. “I can pay for myself, thanks.”
“Think of it as an exchange,” he shakes his head. “I get you drinks and you pay me in scandals.”
Nayeon laughs, eyes sparkling brown in the autumn sun. It’s infinitely better than Jae’s squeezed-eye-eardrum-splitting cackle, or Dowoon’s silent chuckle, and for the first time that day Brian feels just a little bit better about not being able to head back to Toronto to visit his parents during Chuseok like he said he would the year before. “I have a better idea,” she suggests as they walk out into the street, clutching their drinks. “We exchange scandals and next time I’ll get the drinks. Deal?”
Brian looks at her over the rim of his takeaway cappuccino. “I can’t let a pretty girl pay for drinks. That’s not how the world works.” He winks, and Nayeon rolls her eyes.
“No goss for you then,” she shrugs, and walks on ahead. Brian breaks into a jog to catch up with her.
“Hey, I was kidding. Give me the dirt.”
She turns, walking backwards so she can smile at him while she sips on her hot chocolate. “Deal?”
“Deal.”
She smiles so wide it’s blinding.
“Anyway, I did some digging after you told me about Jungyeon and I have no idea what’s going on. Apparently a year ago they hated each other?”
She laughs again. “They were stuck in limbo, if I’m honest. You know when you like someone and it seems like they like you back but then they don’t but then they do? That’s what it was, really. Also you know Jungyeon. She’s not the most explicit person around when it comes to dealing with feelings.”
Brian doesn’t really know but he nods anyway.
“You tell me a scandal now.”
He doesn’t have to think very hard. “Jae and Lim are having this thing where they’re kind of dating but also kind of aren’t.”
Nayeon’s eyes widen. “No way!”
“Also,” Brian continues, “Jae asked me to get him an iced mocha so let’s walk around the block and then you can get it for him. We’ll call it even. Deal?”
Her long, brown hair looks golden in the setting sun. The wind whips strands of it above and around her head so it looks a little like she’s been electrocuted. Brian grins. She cocks her heads to the side, then twirls around to fall into step with him. She nudges him with her elbow. “Deal. Keep talking.”
Heard you were in Japan. Something about a concert? Brian texts Nayeon, along with a photo of Tokyo Tower.
what are you doing here! she replies.
You’re not the only one who has concerts overseas, he quips.
haha, very funny. coffee? she asks.
They meet in a small alleyway coffee shop where it’s unlikely anyone would recognize them. Nayeon keeps her hat on regardless. “How did you know about this place?” she asks when she first walks through the door and Brian replies with a “I’m constantly on the lookout for secret date places so…” She makes a show of walking back out the door until he admits one of their Japanese staff bought coffee from there the day before.
“So do you have any new scandals for me?” she asks as she sips on her usual hot chocolate, looking at him over the rim of her mug. Somehow, it calms Brian to see a familiar face in a still unfamiliar country. Even if he is here with his band, he feels a little like a normal person on holiday with a friend. Even if he still doesn’t really know said friend very well.
He shakes his head. “Jae and Lim are still going ambiguously strong. Mark continues to be interested in nothing. Umm… Dowoon may or may not be into someone right now?”
“Oh?” her ears perk up. “Do tell.”
He shrugs. “With Dowoon, it’s impossible to tell anything.”
She sighs. “Maybe I picked the wrong person to have gossip sessions with,” she wrinkles her nose slightly, then smiles. Brian is immediately reminded of bunnies. Bunnies in black bucket hats. “I’ll tell you some of what I found out. Jennie and EXO’s Kai just started going out! They’re in Paris for a weekend right now. Isn’t that so romantic?”
“That’s risky,” Brian comments instead, leaning back in his chair and crossing one ankle over his knee.
“But romantic,” Nayeon insists.
“If I were dating another idol I’d keep it low key,” he smiles, and gestures around the small coffee shop. “Just like this.” He wags a suggestive eyebrow at her.
“If you don’t stop that I’m going to throw my shoe at you,” Nayeon says firmly with an equally calm smile. It takes Brian the best of 5 minutes to stop laughing, while Nayeon struggles to keep looking firm. Just the slightest twitch of her lips gives her away.
“So you’re saying you’d like someone who would whisk you away on weekend overseas trips and surprise you with grand dinners and stuff like that, huh?” He manages when he’s calmed down somewhat. She shoots him a suspicious look.
“You’re not making fun of me, are you?”
“Just gathering material for our next song,” he says easily. “It’ll be about a girl who wants the world,” he gestures to her, “and the guy who can’t give it to her,” he points at himself. “Maybe Sungjin could be the girl and Wonpil could be the guy,” he adds. Nayeon bursts out laughing, covering her mouth with one hand while her eyebrows turn upwards. He’s never really noticed her eyebrows before. Well, he’s never actually observed her laughing so close before. She was always just Im Nayeon, popular trainee, later popular member of the current most popular girl group, someone he bumped into in hallways and JYP concerts and end of year concerts and never really said anything other than ‘hi’ to.
“You and Jae could play the couple the main couple is always gossiping about,” she suggests. “And Dowoon could be the barista.”
“Or I could be the barista,” he corrects. There are many things he and Jae could be, and a couple is definitely not one of them. Maybe if they were fighting. Sometimes their manager keeps reminding him that they’re supposed to play the part of the “overseas couple” but Brian just can’t bring himself to do it. He can be cheesy and flirty and look really attractive on stage but he just can’t bring himself to be outrageously fake. He supposes this is why day6 constantly struggles between being just “idol” or just “band.”
“You really hate being told to do all this fake idol business, don’t you,” Nayeon observes, suddenly looking thoughfuI. Brian blinks at her, a little taken aback. He hadn’t expected her to see through him so easily. “Anyway, I think you’d end up flirting with all the girls if you were barista,” she beams. They end up planning out their increasingly ridiculous music video until Brian notices the time and suggests they leave before they both get yelled at. Nayeon insists, but he foots the bill.
“You never told me how you found out about Jimin and Jackson,” he mentions as they walk down the street, hands shoved into pockets to keep them warm. "Or how you got my number. Or why."
“Aren’t you supposed to be the observant one?” she glances up at him. “Like you write all the love songs and all, I thought you’d be the first person to notice these things.”
He glances up at the power lines to avoid her gaze until she nudges him in the side, laughing. “Are all girls really this observant?”
Her eyes are shining. “I just know everything.”
“Sure.”
He notices she completely ignores the latter part of the question about his number.
“It’s ok if you don’t believe it. I still know more than you do.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it, admitting defeat. “Before you know it you’ll be writing songs in my place,” he remarks.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Nayeon says breezily. He looks down at her. She’s looking straight ahead with a grin on her face as they trudge through golden brown leaves littering the ground. “You’re pretty amazing at what you do, you know.”
Brian carries that special warmth in his chest throughout the rest of their tour, along with the image of Nayeon walking down a side street in Tokyo, boots crunching through vibrant autumn leaves that line the ground and golden ginkgo leaves fluttering around her as she turns and beams at him.
A few weeks later, as he’s scrolling through his contacts, he comes across Nayeon. His finger hovers over the number, then he changes his mind. He hasn’t spoken to her for weeks and he knows she’s incredibly busy right now with concerts and comebacks and end of year things and they’ve bumped into each other on their way to their respective special stage practices but…
“Hey.”
He looks up, gaping. Nayeon stands over him, holding a takeaway cup tied with a red ribbon.
“Long time no see,” he manages, untangling his legs from where they were resting on the chair in front of him and gesturing for her to sit. She shakes her head.
“I’ve gotta get back to practice,” she wrinkles her nose slightly. He hadn’t realized that he’d actually kind of missed that nose wrinkle of hers. “But I just came by to say happy birthday!” she says simply but happily. She holds the cup out to him and he takes it, a little bewildered.
“How did you know?” he asks blankly.
She laughs. Her eyes sparkle slightly under the artificial lighting of the little studio he’s sitting in. “I know everything, remember?”
He grins. “I forgot. Hey thanks so much,” he holds up the coffee cup. “I really appreciate it.”
She shakes her head and heads for the door. “It’s nothing, really. You just look really exhausted. And it sucks to be working this hard on your birthday.”
She looks even worse, dark circles and eyebags lining her eyes and her skin looks paler than usual. Still, her smile is dazzling, and warms him even more than the hot coffee he’s holding in his hand. He knows just the thing to cheer her up. “I heard somebody we know got into a super messy breakup recently. I’ll tell you about it next time.” He grins.
Her smile widens, and then she’s gone.
Left alone with his coffee present, Brian goes back to his phone, hits edit under Nayeon’s name, and changes it to Nayeonie. As he tucks his phone back into his pocket, he makes a mental note to get Jae to ask Lim about any breakups that might have happened recently. Girls were just so much better at these things than he was.
Merry Christmas!
Brian rolls over in bed and looks at the multiple emojis littering the rest of the message. A gif pops up a second later, fireworks exploding over the screen. In the dark room, the brightness of his screen leaves his eyes a little watery.
Merry Christmas, he replies. I saw the video by the way, he adds. It was cute.
thanks. I’m so heckin tired.
Hot chocolate fixes everything. My treat? He sends her a gif of a big eyed rabbit looking pleadingly at the camera.
you’re on, she replies.
He tries to suppress a giant grin and fails. Just as he clicks his screen off he becomes aware of someone standing in the doorway. He falls off the bed with a start and Jae snaps the light on, looking bleary eyed but with a sly grin on his face.
“You know, I used to look like that when Lim first started texting me,” he says in English with a knowing raise of an eyebrow, then ambles into the kitchen where Brian hears him drinking straight from the water jug.
“Stop drinking out of the water jug!” he hisses through the open doorway and switches the light off before Jae can walk past and comment on the way his cheeks are burning. Jae just replies with a muffled “yes, mom” and chuckles on the way back to his own room.
A little past 2 in the morning, Nayeon turns up at the park, wrapped in an oversized scarf that covers the bottom half of her face. In the streetlights her makeup-less eyes look even more exhausted than before, but they still carry that glitter that everyone always seems to have after a performance.
“Oh god, this is amazing,” she breathes as Brian passes her a steaming takeaway cup of hot chocolate. She looks quizzically at the red ribbon wrapped around it, then up at him.
“Merry belated Christmas,” he knocks his own cup against hers and they both take a long, enthusiastic drag. "And you've been looking crazy exhausted lately," he adds, and she wrinkles her nose and elbows him in the ribs. He produces a packet of marshmallows that immediately lights her face up and she stuffs 2 into her mouth without further delay. He laughs.
“You have no idea how good this is after standing on a freezing stage in a mini skirt,” Nayeon presses the cup against her cheek. Brian passes her another marshmallow, which she drops into the drink. “You had fun, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, it was good,” he replies.
“Anyway, you said you had some really hot goss to tell me? I’ve been looking forward to it since Christmas,” she nudges him, grinning. “This better be really scandalous.”
Brian tries to assume his usual calm demeanour when he’s about to say something incredibly cheesy. “Well…” he pauses, and a white fleck flutters past his eyes.
“Snow!” Nayeon exclaims, holding her arms out as more flecks float downward. She turns towards him, snow clinging to her hair and scarf. Her eyes sparkle a thousand times more than the stars in the sky. It calms him down right away. Something about her just does that to him. He takes a deep breath and jumps for it.
“I thought, maybe, we could start our own scandal,” he says. “You know, you and me.”
Nayeon wavers for a second, staring at him, then she nudges his foot with hers. “Seriously, you never quit, do you?” she grins, but the scarf doesn’t quite cover the pink of her cheeks.
“Never,” he tells her seriously, and then he smiles. “I mean, I know you’d rather have a huge bouquet of roses and maybe get whisked off to a secret location somewhere on the mountains where you can see the city sparkling below and all I got for you is a little cup of hot chocolate but -“
She steps on his foot. “This,” she takes his gloved hand, holding the cup in her other hand and looking determinedly up at him, “is even better than all of that.” And then she bursts into that smile that makes his insides feel like they’re on fire. “Okay, fine, but only under one condition.”
“What?”
“Next time you have to tell me who had that really messy breakup. Oh, and you let me pay for the drinks.”
Brian laughs, and offers her his arm. She takes it and they set off down the path, the snow silently muffling everything else until it feels like they’re the only two people left in the world.
*