I don't care, if you don't (3/?)
I don't care, if you don't (3/?)
~ 3,800 w, pg, (changmin/yoona) par i / ii
the truth is ugly and she cries her ugly tears into the pages of pretty love letters to her pretty ex-lover.
■ it feels like this took forever to write lol
■ this fic got a name change if you didn't know, it used to be how to say goodbye
Changmin hangs around the Ritz-Carlton hotel bar for most of his free time. It’s a ritual of a sort. He doesn’t sleep a wink, wait until the sun pays a visit to his view, put on fresh clothes, wander around aimlessly until he wounds up at the same place, at the same time.
Jazz music plays softly in the background always and the lighting stays dimmed, dark and mysterious from a scene in some cliché movie where strangers meet and have intellectual conversations about all sort of pretentious snobbish things. The bartender never says a word, unless requested. He doesn’t smile either, he waits for an order, nod then uncapped a bottle.
“Brandy”
Changmin likes how it works - no questions, just alcohol.
He half hopes that Jessica will find him here alone. That their eyes would meet across the bar with sentiment looks of I'm sorry and I love you because after all, it’s always been you and I. Similar to all those years of breaking and coming together again.
Yunho starts asking - the typical; Where? When? Why? How? Changmin doesn’t know but Yunho thinks that deep inside he does. They play shrink and patient for days until Yunho’s temper takes over and decides Changmin needs to figure this one on his own, like it’s a math equation or a piece of puzzle for one only.
A few weeks after their last discussion, Changmin thinks he might need a real shrink, for his drinking problem.
She sees Donghae everywhere.
Not in a sense where his presence is near. Yoona sees him when the manager drives her to her respective schedules - on the billboard, on the television, on the news then there’s the occasional double takes on some doe eyes, brown hair stranger down the street.
It’s never Donghae but she still feels the rush of adrenaline every time, as if her feet were ready to spring to life by its own accord and take her far, far away from the familiar figure of her familiar ex-boyfriend.
Then Yoona sees him once, when she's getting coffee. This time he doesn’t come in the form of a moving image nor cardboard advertisement. He’s real and he’s there, right in front of her two eyes with black coffee shot glass in hand, flipping through a glossy copy of GQ.
She doesn't know what to do with the shock, so she just runs away.
A brunette with porcelain skin and pouty pink lips disappear into the crowd and leave behind her hand knitted scarf, a piece of snow white wool lying next to the phone booth.
Changmin thinks that’s Yoona he’s seeing from across the street, running.
But then again, he sees a lot of things these days.
“I saw Donghae.”
Her words fly out of her mouth and into mid-air once she steps foot into her safe place. Yoona collapses against the door, a hand gripping tightly at the coat hanger to keep her from falling to the floor. Yoona’s stomach drops to her feet and she’s sweating, just a little but it’s winter in Seoul - what excuse does she have for that? Her whole system is shutting down on her, Yoona acknowledge this with a heavy heart of worries.
“You saw Donghae?!”
Sooyoung gives Sunny an astonished look, throwing her magazine down on the couch, “You seriously just going to sit there and ask questions?”
The blonde’s mouth gape open but no sound escapes, Sooyoung doesn’t wait for it like she knows how Sunny won’t be able to excuse herself out of this one. Yoona stares at the tall girl wordlessly as she aimlessly work her way through a kitchen drawer after another.
Seohyun comes to her rescue, eventually, and whips out a bottle of green tea, shoving it down her throat. “How are you feeling, unni?”
Crap. Shit. She wants to say, scream, “I’m alright now.”
Jessica too loud for it to be only for her ears and turns off the television. “What happened?” she asks flippantly.
“I - I was just on my way to the SM building,” she begins, lips trembling and voice faltering, “And you know th - that coffee shop next to the building?” The girls nod, listening diligently to her run-in story,
“He was just sitting there with the coffee.”
Sooyoung looks, mostly, confused. “And?”
“That was it.”
“Oh,” Sunny says and it sounds something like pity, “Right…uh…sit! I’ll go make you some lunch.”
The girls put their hand all over her shoulders and Yoona thinks it weight much more that it really should. They sit her down and hands her glasses of water, reciting their apologetic speeches that sounds prepared and recycled. Half of what they say is meaningless because the words lack genuinity and authenticity.
It doesn’t feel like love and care anymore around this place. Now it reeks of judgements and miseries they have absorb over the years.
This isn’t her home anymore.
Yoona doesn’t live here anymore.
He spots Donghae, drinking alone at the coffee place next to the company building.
Changmin still feels the sense of friendship that had progressed throughout the years of shared training years but something has shifted between them, a new found indescribable feeling blurs that line between a greeting and a goodbye.
So he promptly turns and leaves. Only a couple of steps later, does he hear the Changmin! being called. It sounds confident and bright, just like Donghae.
As Donghae approaches him, he remembers Yoona and her smile and all the things that have gone missing with in her. He doesn’t find Donghae repugnant but there’s a change somewhere.
Changmin feels it when Donghae puts his arm around his shoulder and smile, saying “How are you?”
“Alright”
“I’m just having coffee,” he says, leading him to the direction of the coffee place, “You should join me! We haven’t talked in ages.”
“Actually,” he pulls back, “I have to go see my manager hyung, he’s been waiting at the office.”
“Give me five minutes, I didn’t see you at that New Year thing,”Donghae waves it off, a playful smile
still playing on his lips. “Oh come on, it’ll be like the old time - like nothing has change.”
(The only difference now is that he is all too aware of the cracks behind the appearance of the girl Donghae broke the heart of.)
“Okay”
Yoona spends the evening alone in her bedroom re-reading her diary.
There are scrawny hand writings of his name on every second page. Many beautiful prose and pretty words about him and his dimples and his smiles, they all fit in a storybook for a little girl who believes in receiving and giving love.
The truth is ugly and she cries her ugly tears into the pages of pretty love letters to her pretty ex-lover.
A fourteen years old version of her wrote about dreams of romance with Lee Donghae.
And just like that her twenty two years old self wakes up.
So he retreats back to what he knows back in the days; black coffee, a discussion about the depressing training days and heart-lifting stories about success. All and all, a heart-to-heart with his old friend, Lee Donghae.
“How did we get here?” Donghae muses as he checks his phone one last time before turning it off,
“Both back to single again and we dated those girls for almost half of our life,” he pauses, looking exasperated by the decade mark, “Can you believe how quickly things change?”
Changmin drinks his coffee and grimaced. “Yeah, yeah, it’s a big change.”
“Adapting to it?”
“Like a dog in the wild”
They both laugh and it sounds unnatural, forced and hostile. It reminds him of the beginning of their friendship, the space between them filled with distasteful air of awkwardness. Changmin wonders if
Donghae feels it too or if he has gotten immune to it in the past fifteen minutes
“You talk to Yoona?” Donghae asks, finishing his cup of coffee.
Changmin pauses and sit up. “No, you?”
“Nah,” he says, shaking his head lightly, “Not since the party, that was last time I talked to her - saw her!”
After he and Donghae parts way, Changmin continues his drinking routine and for the first time he thinks of Yoona instead of Jessica.
She had no real reason to run this morning, Yoona realises.
“I saw Donghae this morning,” she says to Tiffany when they’re getting their nails done, “And I ran.”
She hears Tiffany gasps and knows it’s not the good kind. “In heels?”
Yoona rolls her eyes and supresses a smile. “Is that really the important part?”
“Sorry,” and her smile is too, “Wait, so did he talk to you?”
“No”
Tiffany nods slowly, it's easier to understand her situation from the outside. “It’s okay, Yoona, I understand. Seeing your past can be scary, it’s just there, staring right at you, trying to keep you from moving on.”
“Especially when the past comes in a form of a man.” She jokes, slicing through the tension, “But I’ve moved pass it. I’m okay now, he’s just another person to me now - he doesn’t mean much anymore.”
The stylists move onto their hair and they move onto a more cheerful topic.
Changmin walks up and down the emergency staircase of his work place, counting the steps as he goes. The number two hundred and sixty seven and two hundred sixty eight swimming in his mind and he can’t decide on one.
In between the alcohol consumption and the walk to SM building, Changmin sees Girls’ Generations on the big screen outside the train station. Sooyoung, followed by Yuri’s fair effort at rapping then there was Jessica - all golden locks and dazzling smiles.
He thinks there’s got to be a moment there where he hates Seoul, whole-heartedly.
There's a soft knock at the door of the rehearsal room.
She glances at the clock and it tells her that it’s too late in the night for anyone to be wandering around. It’s all sweaty heat in the room and Yoona’s on a brink of a relapse. She sprawls across the wood floor in her crop top and trackies, too hot to breathe and prays there’s no early schedules tomorrow.
“Come in!”
“Yoona?”
Changmin looks genuinely astounded by their accidental meeting, his eyes traveling from her sweaty form to the boom box then to her again. He shakes his head slowly and crosses the room to the source of music and hits pause.
“I should have known it was you.” Changmin says, smiling a little as he lies down next to her.
“I should have known it was you too,” she glances at him over her shoulder, all eyelashes, “No one walks around at this hour.”
He just chuckles. “No one practices at this hour.”
"Yeah...you're right." She admits, nodding thoughtfully. “I just need extra rehearsing time; I’m falling behind with choreography.”
Changmin raises an eyebrow, lifting his arms and resting his head on it. “You’re not falling behind, Yoona, I saw your performance today.”
She laughs, quiet but like she means it. “You watched it?”
“Yeah, enough of it,” he nods, “So what’s your excuse now?”
“What’s yours?”
He smiles thinly, not quite un-amused. “I asked you first.”
He seems more curious than accusatory, so Yoona answers honestly. “I need distraction.” His mouth falls open, the word ‘from’ ready to spring free from his throat. “It’s Donghae, I saw him today and I choked - ran, actually.”
“I saw you.”
Yoona sits bolt upright, sharp eyes on him. “You did?”
“Yeah,” Changmin frowns, taking a breath, “I saw you running from across the street but I wasn’t sure if it was really you or not.” He purses his lips, sitting up with something like an epiphany in his eyes.
“You’re still not over it.”
“Wha -“
“It’s all just an act, isn’t it?” He comes charging full speed at her. “You’re playing pretend - in a role where you’re fine, where you wake up and it doesn’t hurt and you don’t want to scream for help, for anyone to help rid of you of the heart aches and the pain and every memory he has given you.”
But Changmin just smiles angelically. “You can’t be strong all the time, Yoona, no one’s asking you to - especially not me.”
“No one asked for your opinion.”
She storms out without looking at him again
The honesty of his speech frightens her, because a part of her knows he's right.
The next morning, Changmin paces around the living room, feeling desperate. The feeling of regret and satisfactory waging war against the law of his mind, trying to outdo each other.
Changmin worries that he’s said something wrong; he worries that he's crossed the line that isn’t really there and he knows he shouldn’t because he has discovered the whole truth even if it was unpleasant. But he remembers how the color rushes hotly to her face and her fingers flex into fists, her eyes edge of sad.
He knows he has to do something, but he isn't sure what.
“Hyung,” he announces over breakfast, throwing a coat over his shoulder, “I’m going out.”
“What?” Yunho says, looking exasperated as he drops his ham sandwiches back on his plate.
“Where?”
He looks at Yunho for a long moment. Changmin doesn't move.
“I’ll be back before lunch,” he says, a foot out the door, “With lunch.”
“Uh…hey, Jessica’s at a recording session right now. It’s only Yoona and I here today.”
“I’m here because of Yoona - not Jessica.”
Tiffany’s bewilderment reflects Yoona’s own. The two girls continue to stare at each other wordlessly, Tiffany at the door Changmin’s hovering over and Yoona at the dining table with a spoonful of cornflakes in her mouth.
“C - come in.” Tiffany says and it sounds more like a question rather than an invitation.
“Thank you,” his voice rings clear in his ears and she takes an unsteady breathe.
She's dumbfounded. Why the hell did he come here?
Tiffany waits for half a moment, and then, she fires at him. “We’re having breakfast now. Would you like anything?”
Changmin steps into the room warily, willing Yoona to look at him. But she stares at her bowl of Cheerios, swinging her hair over her face so he can't see her.
“Thanks, Tiffany but I’ve already had breakfast on the way here.”
She nods hesitantly, glancing up at Changmin who’s taking off his coat. “I need to go get ready for my schedule so…if you need anything, just knock on my door, okay?”
Yoona’s too tired to fight her, so she wordlessly nods
She refuses to look at him and keep her eyes on Tiffany until she disappears into her room then back at the bowl. The sound of the chair dragging noisily makes her cringe, the sight of his form besides her and she cringes even more.
And then, without warning, the words are rushing out of him, and she doesn’t think she’s prepared to hear what he has to say.
“I’m sorry for what I did last night,” he says softly, “You were right, you didn’t ask for my opinion and I shouldn’t have butt into your business, it’s your life and I had no say in it.”
Yoona glares at him. “But you still think it’s true?” she says, crossing her arm, “That I’m in denial, about Donghae and my feelings.”
He flinches and sits up to look at her, “Yeah bu -“
“But what, Changmin?” she whispers, wiping her nose with her sleeve, an uncertain movement that leaves her ashamed, “You think I’m pathetic.”
Her jaw drops, shock spiraling across his face. “I think you’re sad, Yoona, not pathetic.”
She stares at him in disbelief.
“You think that you should be able to come to terms with it, just because he’s unwounded. To show to the rest of the world how unfazed you are by the loss of Donghae,” he’s too far gone to stop now,
“For what, Yoona? So you can be equal with him? You don’t allow yourself to grieve, to be a weakling. What you do is create fiction, a girl who can’t be brought down by anything to hide the real you - hurt and scared.”
Yoona clenches her fists and resists the urge to hit him. “You know, Changmin, just because we fucked around a few times, it doesn’t mean you know me.”
He holds her gaze like it will be the last time he ever looks at her. “You dropped this.” And then, he pulls out something of hers from his coat pocket, throwing it on the table and strides away without so much as a backward glance.
She trembles and doesn't know why she feels like she's lost something.
Something she can't get back.
Later, much later, when she’s alone and doesn't know what else to do.
"I'm sorry," she whispers into the darkness.
No one replies.
She ambushes him in the middle of the night, when he's too worn out to fight her. Yoona stands awkwardly by the door of his dorm, looking at him resigned and apologetic.
“I’m too drunk to fight with you, Yoona,” he says as gently as he can, reminding himself that she also got her heartbroken and that it has got to be really difficult for her to cope with his words from yesterday, “Just go home.”
She swallows, hard. The sound echoes in the enclosed space.
Changmin looks at her and sigh, swaying on his feet. “Why are you here, Yoona?”
Yoon swallows again, weary, a little broken. “I’m here to apologize for what I said this morning, it was mean and cruel an - and I didn’t mean it.”
After a moment of strangely affable silence, Changmin says, “Make me a cup of coffee and you’re forgiven, alright?”
She hesitates briefly, then nods.
He gives her a knowing smile, lean against her then whispers, “Don’t worry, Yunho’s out. The real problem is I’ve drank too much to walk straight.”
She suppresses the urge to laugh when he trips on his own feet. “I can see that,” she says, placing his arm around her shoulder for support. “You’re lucky I take pity upon your kind - the drunktards.”
Changmin's eyebrows knit together. “Are you here to piss me off or say sorry?”
Yoona shrugs and laughs, loud and free. “A bit of both.”
Night has just begun to fall when Yoona strides into the kitchen and says teasingly, “It’s already six thirty. I think you can eat the steak now, staring at it won’t make you any less hungry.”
He sighs, relieve. “Finally.”
She sits across the table from him, cradling a warm mug of coffee in her hands, snow still in her hair and coat. They’re quiet for a moment, just looking at each other with a vague sense of discomfort.
The Changmin just smiles at her. It's a warm smile, the kind of smile he's rarely dispensed over the past few weeks. “You make great steak.”
“You think so?” She smiles, cupping her face in her two hands. “I haven’t cooked this in a while, thought I’d be a bit rusty.”
He swallows down the foot and starts working on the meat. “If your cooking is rusty, what do you call Yunho’s or mine?”
Yoona smiles again, unsure this time. “Why were you drunk, Changmin?”
Changmin lets out a long exhale, slowly raising his eyes until he can look at him comfortably. Yoona expects to see pain and anger in his gaze, but she sees none of that, instead she sees a man who’s defeated and crushed.
Yoona has to remind herself that Changmin is Changmin and what she wants to do will cross dangerous territories that neither of them has ever thought to exist between them. So she holds herself inside. She holds all of it inside, especially the many things she wants to say to him - when will you stop doing this to yourself? Jessica doesn’t love you so let go and find someone else better and most of all, the one question no one should ever ask or even think of but she does all the time and she doesn’t know how to stop - will you please kiss the pain away?
She can’t hold his gaze for too long anymore.
And without knowing, her hand is gripping the table and pulling her up to her feet. She goes to him in a blur and her arms are going around him, she's holding him tightly, because she knows (even if he doesn’t) that they have lost their guiding light forever, that they now, only have each other.
Changmin doesn’t say anything but doesn’t push her away and that’s good enough for Yoona.
But suddenly, he’s cradling her face in his hands and she doesn’t have time to process what’s happening because his tongue is dipping into her mouth with reckless abandon, covering her lips with his in a searing movement that clouds her mind with desire.
Yoona could pull away right now, she knows she should.
She can't forget Donghae. She just can't. She knows that now.
But she can’t pull away either. She doesn't even wrench her lips from Changmin’s.
She smoothes her stockings into place and Changmin stares silently, thinking about the wrongness of them and what they have just done (again). In fact, there shouldn’t be a them at all.
“Changmin,” she says carefully, moving her hair away from her shoulder, “Could you zip me up?”
He’s slow to get up, ambling over to her like they have all the time in the world when all they have are fleeting moments of lust and passion. His fingers toy with the zip, bothered by the prospect of zipping her up and having to watch her walk out of here.
“You can stay.”
She stands awkwardly by the foot of the bed, hanging her head as she whispers, “No, I can’t.
Yoona’s can’t say she’s all too surprised when she gets back and finds a figure waiting in the dark for her.
“Unni, you shouldn’t have wait up fo -“
“Why did you do it, Yoona?”
Once her breathing has evened out and her rocketing pulse has steadied somewhat, she finds her voice again, “What do you mean?”
“Did You sleep with Changmin?”
~ 3,800 w, pg, (changmin/yoona) par i / ii
the truth is ugly and she cries her ugly tears into the pages of pretty love letters to her pretty ex-lover.
■ it feels like this took forever to write lol
■ this fic got a name change if you didn't know, it used to be how to say goodbye
Changmin hangs around the Ritz-Carlton hotel bar for most of his free time. It’s a ritual of a sort. He doesn’t sleep a wink, wait until the sun pays a visit to his view, put on fresh clothes, wander around aimlessly until he wounds up at the same place, at the same time.
Jazz music plays softly in the background always and the lighting stays dimmed, dark and mysterious from a scene in some cliché movie where strangers meet and have intellectual conversations about all sort of pretentious snobbish things. The bartender never says a word, unless requested. He doesn’t smile either, he waits for an order, nod then uncapped a bottle.
“Brandy”
Changmin likes how it works - no questions, just alcohol.
He half hopes that Jessica will find him here alone. That their eyes would meet across the bar with sentiment looks of I'm sorry and I love you because after all, it’s always been you and I. Similar to all those years of breaking and coming together again.
Yunho starts asking - the typical; Where? When? Why? How? Changmin doesn’t know but Yunho thinks that deep inside he does. They play shrink and patient for days until Yunho’s temper takes over and decides Changmin needs to figure this one on his own, like it’s a math equation or a piece of puzzle for one only.
A few weeks after their last discussion, Changmin thinks he might need a real shrink, for his drinking problem.
She sees Donghae everywhere.
Not in a sense where his presence is near. Yoona sees him when the manager drives her to her respective schedules - on the billboard, on the television, on the news then there’s the occasional double takes on some doe eyes, brown hair stranger down the street.
It’s never Donghae but she still feels the rush of adrenaline every time, as if her feet were ready to spring to life by its own accord and take her far, far away from the familiar figure of her familiar ex-boyfriend.
Then Yoona sees him once, when she's getting coffee. This time he doesn’t come in the form of a moving image nor cardboard advertisement. He’s real and he’s there, right in front of her two eyes with black coffee shot glass in hand, flipping through a glossy copy of GQ.
She doesn't know what to do with the shock, so she just runs away.
A brunette with porcelain skin and pouty pink lips disappear into the crowd and leave behind her hand knitted scarf, a piece of snow white wool lying next to the phone booth.
Changmin thinks that’s Yoona he’s seeing from across the street, running.
But then again, he sees a lot of things these days.
“I saw Donghae.”
Her words fly out of her mouth and into mid-air once she steps foot into her safe place. Yoona collapses against the door, a hand gripping tightly at the coat hanger to keep her from falling to the floor. Yoona’s stomach drops to her feet and she’s sweating, just a little but it’s winter in Seoul - what excuse does she have for that? Her whole system is shutting down on her, Yoona acknowledge this with a heavy heart of worries.
“You saw Donghae?!”
Sooyoung gives Sunny an astonished look, throwing her magazine down on the couch, “You seriously just going to sit there and ask questions?”
The blonde’s mouth gape open but no sound escapes, Sooyoung doesn’t wait for it like she knows how Sunny won’t be able to excuse herself out of this one. Yoona stares at the tall girl wordlessly as she aimlessly work her way through a kitchen drawer after another.
Seohyun comes to her rescue, eventually, and whips out a bottle of green tea, shoving it down her throat. “How are you feeling, unni?”
Crap. Shit. She wants to say, scream, “I’m alright now.”
Jessica too loud for it to be only for her ears and turns off the television. “What happened?” she asks flippantly.
“I - I was just on my way to the SM building,” she begins, lips trembling and voice faltering, “And you know th - that coffee shop next to the building?” The girls nod, listening diligently to her run-in story,
“He was just sitting there with the coffee.”
Sooyoung looks, mostly, confused. “And?”
“That was it.”
“Oh,” Sunny says and it sounds something like pity, “Right…uh…sit! I’ll go make you some lunch.”
The girls put their hand all over her shoulders and Yoona thinks it weight much more that it really should. They sit her down and hands her glasses of water, reciting their apologetic speeches that sounds prepared and recycled. Half of what they say is meaningless because the words lack genuinity and authenticity.
It doesn’t feel like love and care anymore around this place. Now it reeks of judgements and miseries they have absorb over the years.
This isn’t her home anymore.
Yoona doesn’t live here anymore.
He spots Donghae, drinking alone at the coffee place next to the company building.
Changmin still feels the sense of friendship that had progressed throughout the years of shared training years but something has shifted between them, a new found indescribable feeling blurs that line between a greeting and a goodbye.
So he promptly turns and leaves. Only a couple of steps later, does he hear the Changmin! being called. It sounds confident and bright, just like Donghae.
As Donghae approaches him, he remembers Yoona and her smile and all the things that have gone missing with in her. He doesn’t find Donghae repugnant but there’s a change somewhere.
Changmin feels it when Donghae puts his arm around his shoulder and smile, saying “How are you?”
“Alright”
“I’m just having coffee,” he says, leading him to the direction of the coffee place, “You should join me! We haven’t talked in ages.”
“Actually,” he pulls back, “I have to go see my manager hyung, he’s been waiting at the office.”
“Give me five minutes, I didn’t see you at that New Year thing,”Donghae waves it off, a playful smile
still playing on his lips. “Oh come on, it’ll be like the old time - like nothing has change.”
(The only difference now is that he is all too aware of the cracks behind the appearance of the girl Donghae broke the heart of.)
“Okay”
Yoona spends the evening alone in her bedroom re-reading her diary.
There are scrawny hand writings of his name on every second page. Many beautiful prose and pretty words about him and his dimples and his smiles, they all fit in a storybook for a little girl who believes in receiving and giving love.
The truth is ugly and she cries her ugly tears into the pages of pretty love letters to her pretty ex-lover.
A fourteen years old version of her wrote about dreams of romance with Lee Donghae.
And just like that her twenty two years old self wakes up.
So he retreats back to what he knows back in the days; black coffee, a discussion about the depressing training days and heart-lifting stories about success. All and all, a heart-to-heart with his old friend, Lee Donghae.
“How did we get here?” Donghae muses as he checks his phone one last time before turning it off,
“Both back to single again and we dated those girls for almost half of our life,” he pauses, looking exasperated by the decade mark, “Can you believe how quickly things change?”
Changmin drinks his coffee and grimaced. “Yeah, yeah, it’s a big change.”
“Adapting to it?”
“Like a dog in the wild”
They both laugh and it sounds unnatural, forced and hostile. It reminds him of the beginning of their friendship, the space between them filled with distasteful air of awkwardness. Changmin wonders if
Donghae feels it too or if he has gotten immune to it in the past fifteen minutes
“You talk to Yoona?” Donghae asks, finishing his cup of coffee.
Changmin pauses and sit up. “No, you?”
“Nah,” he says, shaking his head lightly, “Not since the party, that was last time I talked to her - saw her!”
After he and Donghae parts way, Changmin continues his drinking routine and for the first time he thinks of Yoona instead of Jessica.
She had no real reason to run this morning, Yoona realises.
“I saw Donghae this morning,” she says to Tiffany when they’re getting their nails done, “And I ran.”
She hears Tiffany gasps and knows it’s not the good kind. “In heels?”
Yoona rolls her eyes and supresses a smile. “Is that really the important part?”
“Sorry,” and her smile is too, “Wait, so did he talk to you?”
“No”
Tiffany nods slowly, it's easier to understand her situation from the outside. “It’s okay, Yoona, I understand. Seeing your past can be scary, it’s just there, staring right at you, trying to keep you from moving on.”
“Especially when the past comes in a form of a man.” She jokes, slicing through the tension, “But I’ve moved pass it. I’m okay now, he’s just another person to me now - he doesn’t mean much anymore.”
The stylists move onto their hair and they move onto a more cheerful topic.
Changmin walks up and down the emergency staircase of his work place, counting the steps as he goes. The number two hundred and sixty seven and two hundred sixty eight swimming in his mind and he can’t decide on one.
In between the alcohol consumption and the walk to SM building, Changmin sees Girls’ Generations on the big screen outside the train station. Sooyoung, followed by Yuri’s fair effort at rapping then there was Jessica - all golden locks and dazzling smiles.
He thinks there’s got to be a moment there where he hates Seoul, whole-heartedly.
There's a soft knock at the door of the rehearsal room.
She glances at the clock and it tells her that it’s too late in the night for anyone to be wandering around. It’s all sweaty heat in the room and Yoona’s on a brink of a relapse. She sprawls across the wood floor in her crop top and trackies, too hot to breathe and prays there’s no early schedules tomorrow.
“Come in!”
“Yoona?”
Changmin looks genuinely astounded by their accidental meeting, his eyes traveling from her sweaty form to the boom box then to her again. He shakes his head slowly and crosses the room to the source of music and hits pause.
“I should have known it was you.” Changmin says, smiling a little as he lies down next to her.
“I should have known it was you too,” she glances at him over her shoulder, all eyelashes, “No one walks around at this hour.”
He just chuckles. “No one practices at this hour.”
"Yeah...you're right." She admits, nodding thoughtfully. “I just need extra rehearsing time; I’m falling behind with choreography.”
Changmin raises an eyebrow, lifting his arms and resting his head on it. “You’re not falling behind, Yoona, I saw your performance today.”
She laughs, quiet but like she means it. “You watched it?”
“Yeah, enough of it,” he nods, “So what’s your excuse now?”
“What’s yours?”
He smiles thinly, not quite un-amused. “I asked you first.”
He seems more curious than accusatory, so Yoona answers honestly. “I need distraction.” His mouth falls open, the word ‘from’ ready to spring free from his throat. “It’s Donghae, I saw him today and I choked - ran, actually.”
“I saw you.”
Yoona sits bolt upright, sharp eyes on him. “You did?”
“Yeah,” Changmin frowns, taking a breath, “I saw you running from across the street but I wasn’t sure if it was really you or not.” He purses his lips, sitting up with something like an epiphany in his eyes.
“You’re still not over it.”
“Wha -“
“It’s all just an act, isn’t it?” He comes charging full speed at her. “You’re playing pretend - in a role where you’re fine, where you wake up and it doesn’t hurt and you don’t want to scream for help, for anyone to help rid of you of the heart aches and the pain and every memory he has given you.”
But Changmin just smiles angelically. “You can’t be strong all the time, Yoona, no one’s asking you to - especially not me.”
“No one asked for your opinion.”
She storms out without looking at him again
The honesty of his speech frightens her, because a part of her knows he's right.
The next morning, Changmin paces around the living room, feeling desperate. The feeling of regret and satisfactory waging war against the law of his mind, trying to outdo each other.
Changmin worries that he’s said something wrong; he worries that he's crossed the line that isn’t really there and he knows he shouldn’t because he has discovered the whole truth even if it was unpleasant. But he remembers how the color rushes hotly to her face and her fingers flex into fists, her eyes edge of sad.
He knows he has to do something, but he isn't sure what.
“Hyung,” he announces over breakfast, throwing a coat over his shoulder, “I’m going out.”
“What?” Yunho says, looking exasperated as he drops his ham sandwiches back on his plate.
“Where?”
He looks at Yunho for a long moment. Changmin doesn't move.
“I’ll be back before lunch,” he says, a foot out the door, “With lunch.”
“Uh…hey, Jessica’s at a recording session right now. It’s only Yoona and I here today.”
“I’m here because of Yoona - not Jessica.”
Tiffany’s bewilderment reflects Yoona’s own. The two girls continue to stare at each other wordlessly, Tiffany at the door Changmin’s hovering over and Yoona at the dining table with a spoonful of cornflakes in her mouth.
“C - come in.” Tiffany says and it sounds more like a question rather than an invitation.
“Thank you,” his voice rings clear in his ears and she takes an unsteady breathe.
She's dumbfounded. Why the hell did he come here?
Tiffany waits for half a moment, and then, she fires at him. “We’re having breakfast now. Would you like anything?”
Changmin steps into the room warily, willing Yoona to look at him. But she stares at her bowl of Cheerios, swinging her hair over her face so he can't see her.
“Thanks, Tiffany but I’ve already had breakfast on the way here.”
She nods hesitantly, glancing up at Changmin who’s taking off his coat. “I need to go get ready for my schedule so…if you need anything, just knock on my door, okay?”
Yoona’s too tired to fight her, so she wordlessly nods
She refuses to look at him and keep her eyes on Tiffany until she disappears into her room then back at the bowl. The sound of the chair dragging noisily makes her cringe, the sight of his form besides her and she cringes even more.
And then, without warning, the words are rushing out of him, and she doesn’t think she’s prepared to hear what he has to say.
“I’m sorry for what I did last night,” he says softly, “You were right, you didn’t ask for my opinion and I shouldn’t have butt into your business, it’s your life and I had no say in it.”
Yoona glares at him. “But you still think it’s true?” she says, crossing her arm, “That I’m in denial, about Donghae and my feelings.”
He flinches and sits up to look at her, “Yeah bu -“
“But what, Changmin?” she whispers, wiping her nose with her sleeve, an uncertain movement that leaves her ashamed, “You think I’m pathetic.”
Her jaw drops, shock spiraling across his face. “I think you’re sad, Yoona, not pathetic.”
She stares at him in disbelief.
“You think that you should be able to come to terms with it, just because he’s unwounded. To show to the rest of the world how unfazed you are by the loss of Donghae,” he’s too far gone to stop now,
“For what, Yoona? So you can be equal with him? You don’t allow yourself to grieve, to be a weakling. What you do is create fiction, a girl who can’t be brought down by anything to hide the real you - hurt and scared.”
Yoona clenches her fists and resists the urge to hit him. “You know, Changmin, just because we fucked around a few times, it doesn’t mean you know me.”
He holds her gaze like it will be the last time he ever looks at her. “You dropped this.” And then, he pulls out something of hers from his coat pocket, throwing it on the table and strides away without so much as a backward glance.
She trembles and doesn't know why she feels like she's lost something.
Something she can't get back.
Later, much later, when she’s alone and doesn't know what else to do.
"I'm sorry," she whispers into the darkness.
No one replies.
She ambushes him in the middle of the night, when he's too worn out to fight her. Yoona stands awkwardly by the door of his dorm, looking at him resigned and apologetic.
“I’m too drunk to fight with you, Yoona,” he says as gently as he can, reminding himself that she also got her heartbroken and that it has got to be really difficult for her to cope with his words from yesterday, “Just go home.”
She swallows, hard. The sound echoes in the enclosed space.
Changmin looks at her and sigh, swaying on his feet. “Why are you here, Yoona?”
Yoon swallows again, weary, a little broken. “I’m here to apologize for what I said this morning, it was mean and cruel an - and I didn’t mean it.”
After a moment of strangely affable silence, Changmin says, “Make me a cup of coffee and you’re forgiven, alright?”
She hesitates briefly, then nods.
He gives her a knowing smile, lean against her then whispers, “Don’t worry, Yunho’s out. The real problem is I’ve drank too much to walk straight.”
She suppresses the urge to laugh when he trips on his own feet. “I can see that,” she says, placing his arm around her shoulder for support. “You’re lucky I take pity upon your kind - the drunktards.”
Changmin's eyebrows knit together. “Are you here to piss me off or say sorry?”
Yoona shrugs and laughs, loud and free. “A bit of both.”
Night has just begun to fall when Yoona strides into the kitchen and says teasingly, “It’s already six thirty. I think you can eat the steak now, staring at it won’t make you any less hungry.”
He sighs, relieve. “Finally.”
She sits across the table from him, cradling a warm mug of coffee in her hands, snow still in her hair and coat. They’re quiet for a moment, just looking at each other with a vague sense of discomfort.
The Changmin just smiles at her. It's a warm smile, the kind of smile he's rarely dispensed over the past few weeks. “You make great steak.”
“You think so?” She smiles, cupping her face in her two hands. “I haven’t cooked this in a while, thought I’d be a bit rusty.”
He swallows down the foot and starts working on the meat. “If your cooking is rusty, what do you call Yunho’s or mine?”
Yoona smiles again, unsure this time. “Why were you drunk, Changmin?”
Changmin lets out a long exhale, slowly raising his eyes until he can look at him comfortably. Yoona expects to see pain and anger in his gaze, but she sees none of that, instead she sees a man who’s defeated and crushed.
Yoona has to remind herself that Changmin is Changmin and what she wants to do will cross dangerous territories that neither of them has ever thought to exist between them. So she holds herself inside. She holds all of it inside, especially the many things she wants to say to him - when will you stop doing this to yourself? Jessica doesn’t love you so let go and find someone else better and most of all, the one question no one should ever ask or even think of but she does all the time and she doesn’t know how to stop - will you please kiss the pain away?
She can’t hold his gaze for too long anymore.
And without knowing, her hand is gripping the table and pulling her up to her feet. She goes to him in a blur and her arms are going around him, she's holding him tightly, because she knows (even if he doesn’t) that they have lost their guiding light forever, that they now, only have each other.
Changmin doesn’t say anything but doesn’t push her away and that’s good enough for Yoona.
But suddenly, he’s cradling her face in his hands and she doesn’t have time to process what’s happening because his tongue is dipping into her mouth with reckless abandon, covering her lips with his in a searing movement that clouds her mind with desire.
Yoona could pull away right now, she knows she should.
She can't forget Donghae. She just can't. She knows that now.
But she can’t pull away either. She doesn't even wrench her lips from Changmin’s.
She smoothes her stockings into place and Changmin stares silently, thinking about the wrongness of them and what they have just done (again). In fact, there shouldn’t be a them at all.
“Changmin,” she says carefully, moving her hair away from her shoulder, “Could you zip me up?”
He’s slow to get up, ambling over to her like they have all the time in the world when all they have are fleeting moments of lust and passion. His fingers toy with the zip, bothered by the prospect of zipping her up and having to watch her walk out of here.
“You can stay.”
She stands awkwardly by the foot of the bed, hanging her head as she whispers, “No, I can’t.
Yoona’s can’t say she’s all too surprised when she gets back and finds a figure waiting in the dark for her.
“Unni, you shouldn’t have wait up fo -“
“Why did you do it, Yoona?”
Once her breathing has evened out and her rocketing pulse has steadied somewhat, she finds her voice again, “What do you mean?”
“Did You sleep with Changmin?”