Work Text:
Yuri. (18 -present day-)
It was gradual, the change.
Or was it that she’d only just begun to notice in small, steady increments; the consequence of watching the day by day wilt or bloom of a flower, unsure of when it began, but carrying nonetheless a certain foresight of the end result.
She asked the others about Hansol—had they noticed it at all, the fading star that he was. Sohee was indifferent, seemed to have other things on her mind than the subtle changes of Hansol’s attitude (and she wanted to be a little miffed at her for this, she did, but even Sohee couldn’t carry the world for as strong as her shoulders were). Junhee seemed to agree, but her coping methods fell a little on the abrasive side; brushing it off, wanting to excuse it as something of a phase because those were easier to deal with. You sit through them; you wait them out. You don’t have to watch as they hurt with it. (Hyosang was notorious for his mood swings—she was accustomed to that, and not much else.)
Hayana didn’t know him as well, couldn’t say for sure if his behavior was peculiar. But she trusted Yuri’s judgment, kissed her softly when she began to grow frustrated with doubt. “Talk to him,” she suggested one day on their way home from school. “Maybe he just needs someone to notice.”
It’s a few days later when she manages to get him alone. She takes him to his favorite ice cream parlor and pays extra for a second scoop on his waffle cone. He knows this is buttering him up, knows that there’s something impending in the air but there isn’t much room to argue when he’s nose deep in double chocolate fudge brownie gelato—arguably the closest to heaven that he’s ever been since the five minutes he spent in that dark, small closet with Min Yoongi in the ninth grade.
This is tricky, Yuri thinks, because Hansol is incredibly sly. He parades around as a blunt, open book and because he’s so skilled at lying, everyone believes him without question. She has the upper hand though, because Hansol forgets that she’s known him for years. He forgets that she’s the wallflower with a fine eye for detail. He forgets she’s the writer and he’s only an enigma to those who don’t know how to read him like she does.
So when she asks him, quietly leaning across the table, if things are alright at home (home, because that is neither where his heart is nor where he finds his daily comfort), she looks for that twinkle in his eye that suggests he’s going to lie. And he does, grin an almost sincere stretch of mouth. If not for the brief flash of panic in his eyes or the way his shoulders tense, she wouldn’t have been able to tell.
“Hansol.” She whispers harshly. Suddenly his resolve begins to break and he’s shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Honestly.”
“I am being honest~,” he tries, smile barely there behind his ice cream.
When she opens her mouth to berate him, he cuts her off quickly with a stern look—his voice no longer the sweet glide it was before, but desperate and urgent. “Noona. Let it go, okay?”
She understands then that pushing won’t get her anywhere, but turning away from whatever is boiling inside of Hansol feels like giving up. She twiddles her thumbs for a moment, trying to think quickly on her feet. How can she do something about this? If he won’t talk about it, how can she still help?
After a tense minute or two, she clears her throat, looks up with a smile that intends to make amends before he can emotionally pull himself any further away from her. “Do you want to stay the night at my place? My mom misses you visiting. We can stay up all night and watch horror movies and eat cake until we vomit.”
Relief washes over her when he smiles—it’s a big grin that he doesn’t know how to fake.