Work Text:
and I can still see it all in my mind
all of you, all of me intertwined
i once believed love would be black and white
Sunwoo’s a good kid. He’s the kind of son who runs out in the rain to help his mother bring the laundry in, the kind of friend who knows exactly when to crack a joke to ease the tension, and when to pat your back through the tears. He’s the kind of boy who never starts a fight over his own pride, the kind who works hard and plays hard and knows what he wants out of his life.
He’s the kind of man you’d love to bring home to meet your family.
Sunwoo is stable. And that’s why, when her friends bring up the possibility of him liking her, Deoksun thinks she might like him a little bit too.
They get along well enough and she understands him to an extent, though they’re more different than alike. He’s smart, she’s ...academically untalented, he’s mature and calm, she’s a bit of a hothead, he’s a planner- he’s planned his upcoming days and weeks and months and years to get where he wants to be, Deoksun just takes each day as it comes.
She figures they balance each other out.
She also figures he might like her back. She knows that no one comes over to borrow something as common as a sewing kit that often. Deoksun may be stupid but she’s not that stupid.
So when he says that it’s Sung Bora he likes, it’s an atom bomb on all of her daydreams. With tears in her eyes and her confession on the tip of her tongue, she runs back inside and breaks down.
Why on earth would a perfectly good person like Sunwoo like that monster? Did he really like the same Sung Bora she knew? The Sung Bora who’d pulled out half of Deoksun‘s hair during their fights, the Sung Bora who NEVER ran errands for their parents, the Sung Bora who came back home smelling like tear gas and refused to apologise, the Sung Bora who was ready to starve for her stubborness.
The Sung Bora that the entire neighbourhood was a little afraid of- apart from Sunwoo apparently.
What could Bora give Sunwoo, that Deoksun couldn’t? She stays up for hours but she can’t wrap her head around it.
She’s not as disappointed as she thought she’d be. Just a bit disgusted.
“Sung Bora,” she shudders as she falls asleep.
and I can still see it all in my head
back and forth from New York
(sneaking in your bed)
i once believed love would be burning red
The first time she notices Junghwan, is when they’re pressed together in the narrow alley, panting for breath.
She leans her head against his chest, desperate to catch a moment of rest when she hears his breath hitch. She sneaks a look up at him, and startles as she catches him sneaking a look at her. They quickly look away from each other.
When they finally get back to safety, they never really address it. Everything’s easy and they’re back in familiar territory, and he’s chiding her for losing his precious alcohol.
Deoksun thinks she might have imagined the strange moment between them.
After Sunwoo’s betrayal, she’s more than a little skeptical when her friends tell her that this one’s for real and Junghwan genuinely seems to like her and no one travels two hours to get to McDonald’s just because their “friend” asks them to and Deoksun, test it out for yourself and see
It’s only when Junghwan stares right into her and says “Don’t. Don’t go on the date.” that she finally allows her heart to skip a beat.
The problem with Junghwan, she thinks a few months later, steam practically billowing out of her ears, is that he doesn’t make any fucking sense.
He’s nice to her one minute- holding on to her on the bus so she won’t fall, lying next to her on the bed and promising he’ll accompany her to the concert, gifting her the pink gloves she’s wanted all year even though he isn’t her secret Santa.
He’s complete asshole the next minute though- saying she looks ugly in that dress she loves, calling her an idiot one too many times, constantly mocking her and teasing her until there are tears in her eyes, and her cheeks are blotchy from embarrassment, until she wants to explode and hit him for making her feel less than.
It’s usually bearable- being mean might be his love language, she would reason with herself. It was Jungpal after all.
The shirt was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Deoksun never expected him to throw away her gift to him that easily. She’d picked that shirt out after thinking hard for a whole week.
Something awful was stuck in her throat as she stared at him. Even if he didn’t like the gift, if he really liked her, he’d never have given it to Jungbong. He hadn’t even bothered to explain it to her, he just stood there, caught red-handed with that stupid look on his face while her heart broke and broke and broke.
Maybe the spark that had burned so bright between them hadn’t been that bright after all, if it could fizzle out into nothing so easily.
but it’s golden
like daylight
Falling in love with Taek comes as naturally as falling asleep and Deoksun doesn’t know exactly when or how it happens, just that it does.
She’s always had a soft spot for Taek, all of them have. She likes to think there’s something purer, softer, sweeter about their friendship, though, something irreplaceable and precious that she wants to tuck inside her coat and never let go of.
She likes making him ramen while he’s preparing to go against a particularly gruelling opponent.
She likes sitting next to him in the silence, quickly finishing up his yogurt as he solves the Rubick’s Cube that she can’t make head or tail of.
She likes spending the day with him at the beach, just the two of them- making them milk tea just the way he likes it and playing around on the beach, tossing him into the ocean despite all of his resistance, laughing and laughing, She likes the quiet ride home on the bus.
Growing up in a house with parents who were always at odds with each other, with little money and even less space, and with Sung Bora for a sister, with loves that failed before they could begin, the kind of peace and contentment that Taek brings is new to her.
China shows her a side of Taek’s life she’s never really seen before. Everyone flocks around him like moths to a lamp, and his presence is everywhere. He’s all anyone talks about. He’s all anyone can think about. He’s the champion that everyone wants a piece of, and she feels like she’s losing a piece of him.
She sees his head resting against the elevator wall as soon as the doors close, and how he never wants to eat. She knows he’s a naturally quiet person, but she’s never seen him talk so little. She’s never seen him take that many pills a day. She’s never seen him smoke before.
And yet.
She sees him look over at her, utterly exhausted after his win and she’s bursting with pride and happiness for him, it’s overflowing as she grins at him. She sees the corners of his mouth turn up slightly, as if he can’t help himself. It feels like she’s won something too.
She thinks she finally sees him.
“You don’t know a thing about me.”
Deoksun scoffs at the words. Taek’s a bigger idiot than she thought. If there’s one thing she’s confident about, it’s that she knows Taek, down to his bones, in a way she doesn’t know anyone else. In a way she doesn’t want to know anyone else.
“I have someone I like. I’m going to confess to her soon,” his voice is shy, but his gaze is strong and it’s on her and she wonders if maybe he’s right and she doesn’t know anything at all.
She’s worried about him. The match had been 10 hours long, a gruelling one even by his usual standards and he’d passed out like a baby after she’d force fed him the food that ahjumma sent over.
She tucks him into the blanket, and there’s something aching in her as she sits by him.
She doesn’t know when or how she falls asleep, only that she does and when she wakes up he’s looking at her and she’s looking at him. There’s a fragile, dream-like quality to it, glass on the verge of shattering.
He kisses her.
She thinks of his smile, unhurried and bright like a sunrise blooming on the horizon, and the way he holds her, head on her shoulder, hand in hand and she’s far too young and far too scared to risk this, to lose him. She’s full of longing for how much more they could have, but she’s full of warmth for what they already do.
That’s enough for her right now.