INSOMNIA FOR WOULD-BE LOVERS
DISCLAIMER:
The following work(s) are fictitious in nature, including but not limited to characters and events. The content herein, coincidental or otherwise, is in no way a true reflection of the actual celebrities depicted, and is purely created for personal entertainment. No profit is being made. Any artwork is made by me unless otherwise stated.
insomnia for would-be lovers
implied yonghwa/seohyun, jonghyun/sunny ⌖ 1035w → g
it's a classic rush, and they're all searching for the next high.
[ ♫ weightless ]
It begins like any other night. They sit at a round table in a quiet restaurant and share stories. Sunny begins the conversation about the fan that tried to jump the fence to get at one of the girls the other day but fell flat on his face, and Sunny recalls the way she and the others were momentarily stricken about what to do as the managers rushed them off-stage - everyone but Seohyun, who had giggled uncontrollably and couldn't stop the laughing fit that plagued her for the next ten minutes.
(During the story, while Sunny makes fun of the younger girl by pinching her cheeks, Jonghyun looks at his hyung with an expression of disbelief. His eyes read, Oh my god, she really is weird - weirder than Jungshin. Is there anyone weirder than Jungshin? Are you sure this is the girl you married on public television? Yonghwa shrugs, and Jonghyun wrinkles his nose when he finally realizes what's extremely obvious. It's not that he isn't smart or observant; he just doesn't normally care.)
When the waiter comes by to take their order, they decide on a medium pizza with kimchi, pepperoni, and olives. It isn't until the waiter says they're allowed two more toppings for free that Jonghyun and Seohyun get into a heated debate about what's better.
"But meat is better," he urges. "And you need to eat more of it, I think."
She vehemently objects and points out all that is bad about more meat and talks about the positive benefits of vegetables. Yonghwa and Sunny share a look, one that asks what happened to their normally composed companions and what's caused them to degenerate rapidly into nine-year-old territory.
They finally settle for extra meat and vegetables, which Yonghwa states they should have done from the beginning. He is quickly ignored, as they both cite his ignorance to the wonderful properties of different food groups.
For the most part, however, they laugh until their lungs have inhaled too much air and their stomachs hurt. When Yonghwa makes a move to eat the leftover ice in his glass, Seohyun swipes it away.
"You know I'll eat it sometime, Ju-hyun. Might as well do it under your watchful eye."
She relents, grumbling.
They've taken up space for two hours, eating and conversing, when they finally finish. They stand outside the pizza parlor under the striped awning as the girls try to hide further into their oversized sweatshirts while the boys fix their sweater hoods over their caps. They share grins amongst each other when none of the passersby glance in their direction, and they feel elated like they finally have a joke no one knows the answer to, or like they've touched the sky.
"What should we do?" Jonghyun asks.
The next two hours is spent debating over where they should go next. It's only ten and it's early, and "No, Seohyun, you can regenerate your cells later," Sunny chides lightly. Yonghwa suggests the beach ("Again?"), Jonghyun a food stall ("We just ate!"), Seohyun the library ("Maybe she should go to sleep."), and Sunny volunteers the idea that they should keep thinking.
What they end up doing is eat ice cream, searching and fooling around in a trinket shop, and walk in vacant alleys for an hour. During their walk, there is a distant, but rhythmic boom boom boom, its bass deep and thudding, and Seohyun starts in its direction before Yonghwa steers her back into the group.
"You're not missing anything," Sunny insists. The three of them laugh while the youngest stares at them in confusion, pressing for more information.
They find themselves in a children's playground on the way home. They spend a lost hour sharing the swings and clumsily sweeping down the slides that are too short for their tall frames (except Sunny, whom Jonghyun reminds more than enough times to the point where she chucks her shoe in his direction). Yonghwa suggests he and Jonghyun race across the monkey bars, and they shimmy forth (with a not-so-subtle effort to impress), and it quickly turns into a funny sort of grudge match when Jonghyun starts skipping bars ("You never said there was a rule against this!"), and Yonghwa halts his progress by wrapping his legs around the younger boy's torso until they fall to the ground in a heap of laughter.
It's a quarter before three when the boys drop off the girls. When Sunny bats her eyes, it's to get on Jonghyun's nerves; when she presses a chaste kiss to his cheek, it's to appease him. Happily, she heads toward their building, slipping her arm around Seohyun's and dragging her backwards into the high-rise.
Seohyun tries her best to bow and wave good-bye. She spares Yonghwa a final glance before she's pulled into the elevator.
Forty-five minutes later, Seohyun's phone beeps just seven minutes into sleep, and one minute before REM (she knows, approximately, because she read about sleeping habits in a book once upon a time). Its buzz and vibration shocks her into full consciousness but not before she experiences the startling feeling of her bed giving way and falling to a bottomless end.
We had fun, it reads, but Seohyun knows better and knows it might as well say, I had fun.
It's nothing big, but she's smiles to herself. She tries to formulate an answer in various ways before canceling her text. No amount of smiley faces or expressions of gratitude would do her feelings justice (she just hopes he doesn't think she's ignoring him, but it's okay because she'll deal with it the next time she sees him). Instead, she shoves her mobile under her pillow and curls into a half-moon, prepared to see the morning.
(Tiffany is busy preparing dinner with Taeyeon when she catches Sunny and Seohyun heading straight for the door.
She points at them with her spatula. "Oi, where are you two going again? We made dinner!"
"Bye, unnie!"
"They're up to something fishy, Taeyeon. I think we should follow them."
"It's okay. I'm having Sooyoung follow them. Right, Sooyoung?"
Sooyoung grins at the older girls before the humor disappears from her face. "If those two marry before me, they're dead.")