paranoia!

   < w. @benessa >

he’s sitting on the shoreline, half in the water and half in the sand, enjoying the cool breeze and just living in the moment. this little (kind of an understatement, but whatever!) party is the near closest thing that reminds him to home; if he closes his eyes and pretends, he’s back in the orange county. dad’s just made a his favorite and is shouting from the back porch for stevie to come inside. but the yelling around him isn’t his dad– it’s a bunch of strangers, acquaintances stevie won’t remember the names of. and nessa is here. somewhere. 

taking his eyes off the water, he looks over the crowd, all dispersed on the beach around the bonfire. there’s a few down the shoreline near him, some others further up– isolated, doing god knows what. pushing off the sand and up to a standing position, stevie stretches– groaning as he shuffles onto the sand, shaking out his hair like a dog. his shorts and the bottom of his shirt is soaked, but he pays little attention to it, moving his attention to the party-goers.

she remembers staring into a bonfire like this, snuggled up against her boyfriend at the time and feeling like life was fine for once. except now she's cold as the night sea breeze hits her skin and makes a mess out of her hair. she doesn't particularly mind, shuffling closer to the fire as she reminisces. the dancing flames mesmerize and distract her enough that she doesn't notice stevie's presence until he makes himself known.

"just casually burning my retinas out," she jokes, shifting a little to make room for him next to her. naturally, one hand comes up to find a spot on his waist and tug him closer so she can rest her head on his shoulder, but she gets as far as touching him before recoiling from the dampness. "whoa, what the— why are you wet?" she laughs. "looks like you beat them to it. i guess you're going back in?" she's fond of his gravitation towards the ocean, finds it cute when anyone's particularly passionate about something.

@benessa

“it’s jinyoung, i’m coming in!” jinyoung half-shouts into the door that doesn’t belong to him as he punches in the code. all he wants is to make sure nessa knows he’s not some home invader here to kill her like some true crime podcast story without disturbing every single one of her neighbors. he’s not sure he succeeded in either, but he lets himself into her place anyways, once again announcing his presence as he kicks his shoes off by the door. “ness, it’s me,” he pops his head into the rest of the apartment, looking for his friend, and shooting her a grin when he finally makes eye contact. “i didn’t scare you, did i?”

maybe he’s a little too familiar. they’re friends, jinyoung might even call nessa his best friend if he had such a thing, but they’re also… complicated. there’s a lot of memories in this place. a lot of words shared that he’ll never speak to her again, a lot of laughter, a lot of tears. jinyoung is under no illusions that he was really a good boyfriend to nessa when they gave the relationship a shot. but he hopes, even now, that he was a decent one sometimes. there’s a part of him that still feels guilty even if he’s over it. he knows he still cares about her, but he can’t be the one to care about her like that. moon jinyoung just isn’t made out of boyfriend material; he must be cut from a different kind of cloth.

anyway, his visit is a little last minute, but shouldn’t be totally by surprise; he did text her, like, twenty minutes ago letting her know he was coming over. if nessa didn’t look at her phone since then, that’s on her. his excuse to invite himself in? a couple of scrunchies that sooyoung insisted didn’t belong to her and jinyoung couldn’t think would belong to anyone else. it’s only fair that he returns them to their rightful owner, right? he’s pretty sure nessa probably still has a sock or something of his over here too. he’s not going to complain about that, but he supposes that’s just a side effect of the nature of what their relationship originally was, what it came to be, and what it is now.

which leads her to the half-assed attempt at getting out of bed, only getting as far as brushing her teeth and laying on the couch before sleep overtook her consciousness again. it's not until her door opens and her home is invaded when she finally, properly wakes up.

"ah— hey," she tries her best to not look shell-shocked in nothing more than an oversized shirt and her underwear. she should really be more concerned that there's a man in her house, but her lack of shame does stem from familiarity. "nope. didn't scare me. not at all," oh geez...why did it have to be jinyoung?

the last time they properly spoke is an embarrassing memory for her—a combination of unsaid words and awkward silences after weeks, if not months of almost-arguments and almost-breakups. well, it ended up being an actual breakup, which explains why she can't look jinyoung in the eye as he enters the room.

"probably," she shrugs when she's presented with the scrunchies, rubbing at her eye drowsily. her hair's a bit too short for scrunchies right now, having chopped a good length of it off earlier in the year (totally unrelated to the breakup), but it's been getting to a point where she could probably make good use of them soon enough.

she reaches a hand out from where she's sitting on the couch for him to pass the gift over. perhaps it's an excuse to get him to approach her, even considering the fact that he's the one visiting her home right now. part of her wants him closer, within arm's reach so she can wrap them around his waist and nuzzle into his shirt (among other things), but he probably wouldn't be too happy about it. he's made it clear that they can't be the way they were before anymore—a cruel ask for nessa who doesn't know anything else.