the pursuit of happiness (1/3)whetstoneOctober 17 2010, 07:21:49 UTC
i'm still working on 2ne1's characterization, so sorry if this is shitty dksljggs /o\
seungho is, predictably, good at art.
he shows her sketches of the outfits he’s planning for her before he actually puts them together, and she likes the way her face looks, shaded in with his charcoal. her cheekbones are high, face narrow, eyes big and brows arched. he draws her hands propped up on her hips, he tells her, so he can put rings on them.
sometimes she catches him doodling in the margins of his notebook during her breaks from dance practice. she’ll flop down beside him, draw little slash marks on the necks of the small figures so he can doodle in blood spatter or guns. “mass murderer,” he chides, and sometimes he’ll draw in a little cl-roo, a gun in her hands and her hair a whorl of whatever color pen he’d chosen that day, usually blue.
for a while chaerin thinks that maybe he can fill in the things she can’t find herself. seungho always knows which things go together, which necklace goes with what shirt, what color laces to pair with which sneakers. he goes out almost every night and wanders into their apartment bright-eyed and alert, sarcasm thick on his tongue.
but one day she’s flipping through his sketchbook and finds, between the cut-outs of fall/winter collections and flyers for sample sales, a letter.
the seal in the upper corner and the typeface tell her it’s official, and when she turns the page it stares her in the face: notice of enlistment, it says. chaerin’s eyes stare at the hangul and the hanja and then the date.
“freaks me out,” a voice to her left says, and when she looks up seungho is slouched against the wall, scrubbing a hand through what’s left of his hair (it’s red today). “i thought of maybe pulling out some teeth, but i guess that wouldn’t work anymore.” his voice is small now, not nearly so sure, and it drops to a whisper when he sits down, when daniel enters the room and begins to cross it, when seungho slips the notebook shut.
“i haven’t told him yet,” he mumbles. “let’s keep that a secret for now.”
---
seunghyun likes books. he likes music, too: not jiyong’s bass-heavy electronica or seungri’s autotuned pop, youngbae’s slick r&b or daesung’s quiet neo-soul. it’s something chaerin hasn’t heard in a while, real guitars and voices the opposite of perfect, so it’s nothing for her to wander into his room and sit down on the corner of the bed.
seunghyun’s got his feet propped up on the same mattress, arms crossed as he sits slumped in his desk chair. when the bed dips he starts, nodding at her sleepily before he puts his book down and gestures to the ever-present wine bottle on his desk.
they get drunk. seunghyun gets more talkative and chaerin gets more friendly, and soon he’s extolling the virtues of damien rice and she’s laughing -- “really, oppa, he sounds like someone from lord of the rings” -- so when he leans in, his kiss lands somewhere between the corner of her mouth and her teeth.
“sorry,” he says, and she shrugs. they try again, but the angle’s funny and her nose bumps against his, the beginnings of his stubble scratching her chin. they spend the rest of the night getting better at it, but seunghyun finishes off the wine on his own, leaving her with a stack of old books and a promise to lend her more if she wants. his eyes slide past her even as he kisses her goodbye, and the next morning at the photoshoot he studiously avoids her until she punches him in the arm, hard enough for it to hurt.
dara teases her relentlessly for the stubble rash later. chaerin starts to think indie rock is overrated.
---
the night before seungho goes to the army they have a party.
they put on their gaudiest outfits, bom tripping along in sky-high spiked heels. she clutches onto chaerin’s arm as they saunter into the club, and for a while everything’s strobe lights, seungho yelling war is over if you want it, speaking in british accents with daniel, getting water for dara and shots with taeji. when more people bound in, they start all over again.
the pursuit of happiness (2/3)whetstoneOctober 17 2010, 07:22:40 UTC
she’s watching bom and kush fight over an appetizer when jiyong sidles up next to her. he’s looking particularly g-dragonish today, clothes skimpier and more colorful than usual, but the goofy smile splashed across his face is really his; when he turns it on her, she can’t help but mirror it.
“they’re cute,” he yells over the music.
“he has a girlfriend!”
“it’s okay, they’ll never go anywhere.”
“how do you know?”
“i just know,” he says, grinning. “there are no secrets in this family.”
chaerin panics for a split-second. jiyong’s arm winds around her shoulders and she’s reminded of exactly one month in 2006, when her eyes were full of him and his hair and his clothes and his laugh, his pep-talks and the very tips of his fingers brushing against hers, sending shivers along her nerves to her spine.
if he knows that particular secret, he says nothing about it. so she crows, “oppa, i know something you don’t know.”
jiyong raises an eyebrow.
“don’t ever go for indie rock kids,” she says, and jiyong laughs. then she recounts the night with seunghyun, the both of them doped up on wine and sad music, and something in his face changes.
“it’s like kush-oppa and bommie,” she says. “you’re friends, and there’s that point where you could be more if you wanted to, but you really don’t want to. you know what i mean?”
“not really,” jiyong replies. he knuckles her knee, eyes flitting towards the crowd.
“oppa,” she says, and when she unfurls his fist there are half-moons in the skin of his palm. “do you like him?”
“yeah.” jiyong shrugs. he looks at her mouth then, like he’s trying to trace the path seunghyun had made there. “no secrets in this family.”
---
teddy plays all kinds of instruments, or at least that’s what it seems like. the mixing board can be a piano or a guitar, a harp or a violin, but mostly it pumps out what her father would laughingly dub “noise,” electronic bleeps teddy easily strings into songs.
when chaerin comes in with the rest of her group she pulls out her own chair. she props her chin in her hands and watches him work for a while as minji does vocal takes in the soundbooth.
“tired?” she asks.
teddy nods absentmindedly, mouth moving with lyrics chaerin’s sure she’ll have to memorize later.
“do you want some food?”
“order whatever you want, chaerin-ah. i’ll pay.”
“i’m not really hungry,” she says, but teddy’s gone back to the computer, eyes roving over the screen. when she turns back to the booth minji pouts at her, big eyes and blown-out cheeks from behind the microphone screen.
when it’s her turn behind the glass she does her best. the verse flies out of her like it’d always been there, waiting. bom punches a fist into the air and dara turns away from the camera, flashing her a thumbs up. chaerin saunters out of the booth, proud in her skintight jeans and leather jacket, but teddy’s eyes roam over the curves of her voice on the screen, not the ones on her body.
the next time she goes in to record she’s wearing her rattiest hoodie and an old pair of flared-legged jeans, leaving right after her part. she’s decided to take guitar lessons on her own, starting today. maybe piano, too.
the pursuit of happiness (3/3)whetstoneOctober 17 2010, 07:23:25 UTC
when chaerin tells dara about seungho and seunghyun, jiyongie’s problem and teddy’s obliviousness, she just shakes her head.
“men,” she scoffs. the ponytail she’s made of her bangs dangles across her face when she rolls over on the couch to look at her. “listen to me, chaerin. making lists is dumb.”
“i wasn’t making a list.”
dara stares at her. “but you...i thought you said you liked seungho because of the drawing thing?”
“so?”
“and then top-sshi because of the music and the books, and jiyongie...”
“everyone likes jiyongie.”
“okay, true.” dara winds her hair around her finger as she thinks. “and we all know your deal with teddy-oppa.”
“unfortunately.” chaerin crosses her arms, putting on her best leader face as she frowns. “what are you trying to say?”
“you’re looking for all the traits you want in different people--”
“i have high standards--”
“and having standards is kind of dumb anyway, i think--”
“i’m not going to just settle for some guy--”
“all i’m saying,” dara cries, tossing a throw pillow in the vicinity of her head, “is you should be more impulsive with things like this.”
“impulsive.”
“experimental?” dara ducks the stuffed bear chaerin hurls her way. “unless you want to pine after teddy-oppa forever.”
“definitely not.” she’ll tease him about it forever, chaerin thinks, but definitely no on the pining thing.
“okay, great,” dara beams. “i’ll send an experiment your way.”
“what?”
“trust me,” she says, and when she stands, the bear clutched in her arms, she swishes its hands together and winks.
---
so when little seunghyun, lee seungri, seungri with his scam self-help books and lack of artistic talent, his horrible taste in music and clothes, when seungri tries pinning her to the studio wall, something young and almost scared in his eyes, she lets him. when he kisses her, she kisses back, and when he opens his mouth into her own she grabs him by the collar, pulls him in until everything’s tongues and teeth. seungri’s a fast learner, it’s what keeps him so full of himself, so by the time seunghyun wanders in, a towel around his shoulders, the choking noise he makes is something she can barely hear at all.
jiyong is kind of horrified and seunghyun won’t come out of his room and kush doesn’t stop laughing. teddy looks almost offended until he finally reaches over to touch her, hand ruffling her bangs, and seungho makes a special call all the way from training camp to chew her out, but when seungri drapes an arm over her shoulders and compares them to jay-z and beyonce, she laughs so hard she almost cries, face tucked under his shoulder, and that’s enough, his hand in her hair, his eyes amused over his mock-offended face.
what cl says she wants in a man vs. what she actually needs. clseungri.
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seungho is, predictably, good at art.
he shows her sketches of the outfits he’s planning for her before he actually puts them together, and she likes the way her face looks, shaded in with his charcoal. her cheekbones are high, face narrow, eyes big and brows arched. he draws her hands propped up on her hips, he tells her, so he can put rings on them.
sometimes she catches him doodling in the margins of his notebook during her breaks from dance practice. she’ll flop down beside him, draw little slash marks on the necks of the small figures so he can doodle in blood spatter or guns. “mass murderer,” he chides, and sometimes he’ll draw in a little cl-roo, a gun in her hands and her hair a whorl of whatever color pen he’d chosen that day, usually blue.
for a while chaerin thinks that maybe he can fill in the things she can’t find herself. seungho always knows which things go together, which necklace goes with what shirt, what color laces to pair with which sneakers. he goes out almost every night and wanders into their apartment bright-eyed and alert, sarcasm thick on his tongue.
but one day she’s flipping through his sketchbook and finds, between the cut-outs of fall/winter collections and flyers for sample sales, a letter.
the seal in the upper corner and the typeface tell her it’s official, and when she turns the page it stares her in the face: notice of enlistment, it says. chaerin’s eyes stare at the hangul and the hanja and then the date.
“freaks me out,” a voice to her left says, and when she looks up seungho is slouched against the wall, scrubbing a hand through what’s left of his hair (it’s red today). “i thought of maybe pulling out some teeth, but i guess that wouldn’t work anymore.” his voice is small now, not nearly so sure, and it drops to a whisper when he sits down, when daniel enters the room and begins to cross it, when seungho slips the notebook shut.
“i haven’t told him yet,” he mumbles. “let’s keep that a secret for now.”
---
seunghyun likes books. he likes music, too: not jiyong’s bass-heavy electronica or seungri’s autotuned pop, youngbae’s slick r&b or daesung’s quiet neo-soul. it’s something chaerin hasn’t heard in a while, real guitars and voices the opposite of perfect, so it’s nothing for her to wander into his room and sit down on the corner of the bed.
seunghyun’s got his feet propped up on the same mattress, arms crossed as he sits slumped in his desk chair. when the bed dips he starts, nodding at her sleepily before he puts his book down and gestures to the ever-present wine bottle on his desk.
they get drunk. seunghyun gets more talkative and chaerin gets more friendly, and soon he’s extolling the virtues of damien rice and she’s laughing -- “really, oppa, he sounds like someone from lord of the rings” -- so when he leans in, his kiss lands somewhere between the corner of her mouth and her teeth.
“sorry,” he says, and she shrugs. they try again, but the angle’s funny and her nose bumps against his, the beginnings of his stubble scratching her chin. they spend the rest of the night getting better at it, but seunghyun finishes off the wine on his own, leaving her with a stack of old books and a promise to lend her more if she wants. his eyes slide past her even as he kisses her goodbye, and the next morning at the photoshoot he studiously avoids her until she punches him in the arm, hard enough for it to hurt.
dara teases her relentlessly for the stubble rash later. chaerin starts to think indie rock is overrated.
---
the night before seungho goes to the army they have a party.
they put on their gaudiest outfits, bom tripping along in sky-high spiked heels. she clutches onto chaerin’s arm as they saunter into the club, and for a while everything’s strobe lights, seungho yelling war is over if you want it, speaking in british accents with daniel, getting water for dara and shots with taeji. when more people bound in, they start all over again.
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“they’re cute,” he yells over the music.
“he has a girlfriend!”
“it’s okay, they’ll never go anywhere.”
“how do you know?”
“i just know,” he says, grinning. “there are no secrets in this family.”
chaerin panics for a split-second. jiyong’s arm winds around her shoulders and she’s reminded of exactly one month in 2006, when her eyes were full of him and his hair and his clothes and his laugh, his pep-talks and the very tips of his fingers brushing against hers, sending shivers along her nerves to her spine.
if he knows that particular secret, he says nothing about it. so she crows, “oppa, i know something you don’t know.”
jiyong raises an eyebrow.
“don’t ever go for indie rock kids,” she says, and jiyong laughs. then she recounts the night with seunghyun, the both of them doped up on wine and sad music, and something in his face changes.
“it’s like kush-oppa and bommie,” she says. “you’re friends, and there’s that point where you could be more if you wanted to, but you really don’t want to. you know what i mean?”
“not really,” jiyong replies. he knuckles her knee, eyes flitting towards the crowd.
“oppa,” she says, and when she unfurls his fist there are half-moons in the skin of his palm. “do you like him?”
“yeah.” jiyong shrugs. he looks at her mouth then, like he’s trying to trace the path seunghyun had made there. “no secrets in this family.”
---
teddy plays all kinds of instruments, or at least that’s what it seems like. the mixing board can be a piano or a guitar, a harp or a violin, but mostly it pumps out what her father would laughingly dub “noise,” electronic bleeps teddy easily strings into songs.
when chaerin comes in with the rest of her group she pulls out her own chair. she props her chin in her hands and watches him work for a while as minji does vocal takes in the soundbooth.
“tired?” she asks.
teddy nods absentmindedly, mouth moving with lyrics chaerin’s sure she’ll have to memorize later.
“do you want some food?”
“order whatever you want, chaerin-ah. i’ll pay.”
“i’m not really hungry,” she says, but teddy’s gone back to the computer, eyes roving over the screen. when she turns back to the booth minji pouts at her, big eyes and blown-out cheeks from behind the microphone screen.
when it’s her turn behind the glass she does her best. the verse flies out of her like it’d always been there, waiting. bom punches a fist into the air and dara turns away from the camera, flashing her a thumbs up. chaerin saunters out of the booth, proud in her skintight jeans and leather jacket, but teddy’s eyes roam over the curves of her voice on the screen, not the ones on her body.
the next time she goes in to record she’s wearing her rattiest hoodie and an old pair of flared-legged jeans, leaving right after her part. she’s decided to take guitar lessons on her own, starting today. maybe piano, too.
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“men,” she scoffs. the ponytail she’s made of her bangs dangles across her face when she rolls over on the couch to look at her. “listen to me, chaerin. making lists is dumb.”
“i wasn’t making a list.”
dara stares at her. “but you...i thought you said you liked seungho because of the drawing thing?”
“so?”
“and then top-sshi because of the music and the books, and jiyongie...”
“everyone likes jiyongie.”
“okay, true.” dara winds her hair around her finger as she thinks. “and we all know your deal with teddy-oppa.”
“unfortunately.” chaerin crosses her arms, putting on her best leader face as she frowns. “what are you trying to say?”
“you’re looking for all the traits you want in different people--”
“i have high standards--”
“and having standards is kind of dumb anyway, i think--”
“i’m not going to just settle for some guy--”
“all i’m saying,” dara cries, tossing a throw pillow in the vicinity of her head, “is you should be more impulsive with things like this.”
“impulsive.”
“experimental?” dara ducks the stuffed bear chaerin hurls her way. “unless you want to pine after teddy-oppa forever.”
“definitely not.” she’ll tease him about it forever, chaerin thinks, but definitely no on the pining thing.
“okay, great,” dara beams. “i’ll send an experiment your way.”
“what?”
“trust me,” she says, and when she stands, the bear clutched in her arms, she swishes its hands together and winks.
---
so when little seunghyun, lee seungri, seungri with his scam self-help books and lack of artistic talent, his horrible taste in music and clothes, when seungri tries pinning her to the studio wall, something young and almost scared in his eyes, she lets him. when he kisses her, she kisses back, and when he opens his mouth into her own she grabs him by the collar, pulls him in until everything’s tongues and teeth. seungri’s a fast learner, it’s what keeps him so full of himself, so by the time seunghyun wanders in, a towel around his shoulders, the choking noise he makes is something she can barely hear at all.
jiyong is kind of horrified and seunghyun won’t come out of his room and kush doesn’t stop laughing. teddy looks almost offended until he finally reaches over to touch her, hand ruffling her bangs, and seungho makes a special call all the way from training camp to chew her out, but when seungri drapes an arm over her shoulders and compares them to jay-z and beyonce, she laughs so hard she almost cries, face tucked under his shoulder, and that’s enough, his hand in her hair, his eyes amused over his mock-offended face.
she’ll ask jiyong to throw the books out later.
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