Work Text:
You wake up.
Sunlight streams in through the slit window near the ceiling of the bedroom in your half-basement apartment, painting everything in the warming shades of late morning. Adrenaline spikes through you. Are you late?! No...no, it’s Saturday. No rehearsal to get to. No anything to get to unless you feel like hitting the gym later.
You groan and scrub a hand down your face. For some reason you feel bone-tired even though you must have slept a good ten hours or so. You feel like you were having a dream…? But the memory of it slips through your fingers the more you try to hold on so you let it go without a fight. It doesn’t matter anyway. You’ve learned that the important ones, the ones that come true, jolt you out of sleep with a fast-beating heart and dripping with sweat, imprinting themselves on you starkly like a flashbulb memory.
Shaking off the lingering weirdness and the stuffed-cotton feeling in your head, you lever yourself up out of bed and take the shower you’d been too exhausted to take last night, going through the motions on autopilot as you stare at the tile and try not to let your mind wander too far.
Daydreaming’s been getting dangerous lately.
By the time you’re done, towel around your waist and hair clinging damply to your back, you notice something different. Breakfast? It smells like someone’s made breakfast…
You live alone.
A second adrenaline spike hits you and you skid into the kitchen to find...no one. Of course no one’s there. What’s a burglar or stalker gonna do, pop by your place and make you food? Yeah right. Your second thought is that maybe Saeyoung or Yoosung crashed here after last night and decided to play nice to return the favor, but still, no one is here and none of the pots or pans have been used, the few dishes in the sink having been there a couple days already.
You do, though, notice a lone plate on the table. And something’s on it. A creeping feeling of dread rises over you as you take one step closer and then another, trying to get a better look. You feel like you should turn back. Ignore it. You feel like once you see what it is you’ll never know peace again.
“Zen? Are you finally done? Geez, you’re so slow,” says the omelette.
You are absolutely right.
“Y-YOOSUNG?!” You stumble back, thudding against the wall, and you just barely manage to save the towel from falling off of you. No matter how hard you blink the omelette is still there. You cast your eyes wildly around yourself, half-expecting Yoosung to jump out from behind the couch or something with a ‘GOTCHA!’ but the omelette just snickers at you instead.
“Why are you... what are you—?!” Your mouth opens and closes fruitlessly. “Why are you here???”
“What are you talking about? You’re the one that invited me over, remember? You said something about not wanting me to walk back drunk.” Yoosung’s voice turns sulky. “I didn’t even drink that much this time.”
“That’s...good…” You start edging around towards the fridge, hoping against hope that maybe once you get some food in you you’ll stop hallucinating your friend as a breakfast item. Your heart won’t stop thumping like you’ve run a marathon.
“Wait, where are you going?” Yoosung whines. “Aren’t you going to eat me yet? I got myself all dressed up for you and everything…”
“Um. I don’t have a fork,” is what you say for some reason, instead of the perfectly reasonable WHAT THE HELL you could have sworn was poised on the tip of your tongue.
“That’s okay.” The ketchup mouth curves up into a coy smile as a shiver claws up your spine. “You know...I don’t mind if you use your hands.”
You scream.
And then you wake up. Again. Hopefully for real this time.
“God. Goddamit. What. What the hell was that?!” You cover your face and try to catch your breath, chest heaving. After a minute your hands fall back to the mattress with a thump and you stare at the ceiling. It holds no answers for you. Sweat sticks the sheets to your legs, and you kick them off until they fall to the floor with a plop. You’re pretty sure the entire day is ruined.
But you know what, your dream-self was right before—daydreaming is dangerous and only getting worse. So you don’t give yourself the time for it anymore. The whole weekend you’re either running or lifting weights or pouring over the script you already know by heart.
You avoid the messenger.
Every time you pick up your phone to log in, ketchup eyes gleam at you from a dark corner of your mind and you just can’t bring yourself to do it. Nope. Not today. You’ll forget all about it by next week, maybe think it’s funny. Hilarious even. But you’re just not there yet.
It’s doubly not funny when you run into Yoosung on the way to the gym.
“Zen!”
You choke on air because you know that voice before you even turn around, and when he runs up to you all puppy-like and bright and excited it hits you like a fist to the gut, leaving you dazed and kind of stupid as you stare at his face.
Yoosung stops abruptly in the middle of greeting you once he catches a good look at you. “Zen…? Are you okay? I’ve never seen you look this bad.”
“I look bad?!” Your whole body twitches in an aborted attempt to find a mirror, but you know there isn’t one anywhere around. Maybe you could use the shop window over there…?
“Well, bad for you,” Yoosung corrects, rolling his eyes. “I don’t think you could ever actually look bad bad.”
You settle down a little but you still feel twitchy. A twitchiness that spikes when Yoosung takes a step closer, peering up into your face. For a moment the only thing you can see is wide, purple eyes.
“Wow...I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with dark circles before,” he marvels, hand reaching out unselfconsciously, like he’s not even thinking about it.
You jerk your head back and push him away with an arm, heart in your throat.
“Hey!” Yoosung complains. “Zen, what are you...Zen…? Hey wait, where are you going?”
“Sorry, late for something!”
You do not look back.
“When are you going to eat me, Zen?”
“When am I gonna wake up?” You say miserably, stomach rumbling.
“You can’t keep running away from me forever.”
“Watch me.” You slump over the kitchen table and bury your face in your arms. “I can do anything if I try hard enough.”
It’s crunch week at the theatre and you couldn’t be more grateful for it. From sunrise to sunset you’re dedicated to the stage and when you sleep you’re too exhausted to dream. And maybe you can’t look at an egg anymore without feeling a little queasy and maybe you give yourself whiplash every time you pass a short guy with blond hair on the way to work, but it’s fine. Everything’s fine. After this, definitely after this, is when it’s gonna stop bothering you. Any day now you’ll be fine.
Jaehee
You haven’t been in the messenger recently and I know your new production is coming up...Please don’t work yourself too hard. Your health is important.
Saeyoung
No new selfies?!!!
Zen selfie bot queue at…
…
...0% T_T
Yoosung
Zen! Where are you?? Everybody’s getting really worried...
You are not fine.
You don’t know how much time passes—a week, two?—but you’re jogging loops around the park when you see a short guy with blond hair up the path in the distance and you mentally pat yourself on the back when you pass by him, ignoring him successfully. You can’t keep being jumpy at strangers forever. This is, surely, a good sign.
“Zen!”
You hear quick, familiar footsteps coming up behind you. Your blood freezes.
“Zen, wait up!”
You break out into a sprint instead.
Your strength and endurance are great, if you do say so yourself, and you go for a run at least three times a week, so it should have been the easiest thing in the world to lose him. But surprisingly Yoosung is a very good runner too, and he is very, very intent on catching you.
“Stop following me!”
“No!! Why are you being like this?!” Yoosung yells back, with the edge of a whine. “Why are you being so weird?! Stop avoiding us! I’m even starting to miss your nagging now…”
He pursues you doggedly, through running paths and grassy patches and random passersby until you get lost in the most forgotten edges of the park, but soon enough you can hear his breathing heave and wheeze and you know you’ve won. You just need to power through this and then maybe suffer through another week or two alone and you’ll get over it and everything will go back to norm—
“Z...Zen, please —!”
You hear the thickness of frustrated tears in his voice and you stop as if you’ve slammed into a brick wall.
Yoosung thumps into your back, gasping, and it takes everything in your power not to jolt and push him off of you. He immediately grabs a hold of your shirt, taking it tight in his fist like he’s afraid you’re gonna take off again. You’re well and truly stuck now. But even if you weren’t you’d still be turning around and checking him over because Yoosung Kim’s real tears are always the worst thing in the world. You’ll never be able to leave him alone when he cries.
He’s half scrubbing his tears away with the heel of his hand and half glaring at you, face red and sweaty from trying to keep up for so long. But now that he’s got you he doesn’t quite know what to do with you, biting his lip and looking down before squaring his shoulders and looking back up again. “I...you…” He shakes his head, irritated. “What’s going on with you?”
Honestly you couldn’t answer that question even if you tried. ‘Hey, I keep having dreams where you beg me to eat you?’ ‘Every time I look at you it’s getting harder to look away?’
“It’s not…” he trails off, clears his throat. “Um. I know you were taking care of me again that night when I drank too much. Did I say something…?”
A strangled noise dies in your throat and his face goes ash white. Don’t think about it don’t think about it, stop thinking about it, Zen.
“Oh my god, oh no,” Yoosung mumbles, shell-shocked, “that wasn’t a dream, I really said that?? Look, just forget about it! I mean, this kind of thing probably happens to you all the time right…”
He’s right, guys come on to you more often than you want to admit outside of the occasional ‘my beauty is enough to make anyone fall for me’ joke, but it’s the easiest thing in the world to turn them down politely and laugh it off later. But this is Yoosung , and even all your excuses of ‘well, he was drunk’ weren’t enough to keep you from dwelling on it until it even came out into your dreams. You remember that other time when he was drunk, when he kept putting his hands all over you and tried to crawl into your lap as you were talking on the phone to Saeyoung’s girlfriend, when you were still a little heartsick that she hadn’t wanted you.
You’re not supposed to feel like this when a guy likes you.
Suddenly Yoosung’s eyes are laser-focused on your face. “Are you...blushing?!”
You emit another strangled noise and Yoosung’s biting his lip again, looking up through his lashes at you in a way that makes your whole head go blank. He takes a breath. Then his hand is at your waist and he’s getting into your space testingly, teasingly, nervous but bold in a combination that’s distinctly Yoosung and god, he’s so cute and you’re just
so
very
hungry.
You’re kissing Yoosung before you even realize you’re going to and the squeak it pulls out of him kills any second thoughts you might have. Then Yoosung’s kissing back, clumsy but wholehearted, and you admit it. You want him. You want to eat him alive.
Your hand anchors the back of his head and you hold nothing back, weeks and weeks of denied feelings pouring out through the wet smack of your lips and the slick slide of your tongue exploring his mouth. It seems like barely any time passes before he’s pulling away with a gasp, panting for breath. His eyes are dazed and his lips are red and shiny and you can’t even describe the look on his face: awed and disbelieving and darkly satisfied all at once.
“You win,” you murmur, watching intently as Yoosung licks the wetness off his lips. “You caught me.”
“About time,” he complains, with a sort of breathless laugh. He pushes you backwards into a tree and maybe you shouldn’t be making out with him in broad daylight in a public park but no one’s over here and finally giving in is thrilling in a way that ruins your caution and you’ve never been the best with self-control anyway.
And god, you’re so wrapped around this guy’s fingers it’s insane. Honestly, you have been for a while.
And you really, really like it.