어쩌나

  okay i ended up doing something i was already thinking about doing but hesitated which was to bring hwan back. i absolutely adore chunhwa, but this works out better for me atm, i think. anyway. some basic info is under the post, i also have joohwan’s profiles up, and i’ll be adding the plots here as soon as i post it in a lil bit. like this post if you’d like me to message you! and you can also find me on discord @ moonpsy#4969

their arms partially crossed, one hand resting upward at their other elbow, the other pressing cold glass to skin. for, maybe, a couple of minutes, it could soothe the heat ever threatening to engulf their body. “i know i do. i’m a hot piece.” the words, in another time, another place may have been toned for cockiness, flirtation, yet then, they laced with slithering bite. their eyes raked over her another time, while thoughts stayed locked behind their tongue. if only it were easy enough to set aside their anger as much as they could other emotions. betrayal could be boxed up long enough to slip inside her clothes and reveal her wings. anger had no place to go. instead, they envisioned ripped, tattered clothes, bruises and screams.

excessive effort dragged their eyes to meet hwan’s. their chin lifted. those eyes looked pathetic to be filled with so much despair that wasn’t warranted. she wanted to speak to them, yet, “you haven’t called in a while.”

“you are,” it slipped, flowing through her lips before she could catch herself. her words were still whispered, though, probably difficult to hear in the party atmosphere, however quiet the bar was compared to the rest of the venue. if pushed, hwan would blame it on the slow setting effects of the tab she had taken, the one with the taste she could no longer recall after downing a couple of glasses of champagne in the mean time. she didn’t want to interact with andy as she was getting high — joohwan knew andy would notice and she didn’t want them to be angry at her. or well, didn’t want them to be angrier. 

“oh, i’m sure they don’t. if they did, they would have put more effort than throwing us in front of a white wall with a few christmas decorations.” suji usually isn’t such a negative nelly, but the end of the year is bringing back some bad personal memories of what happened the year before, and she thinks she would have appreciated spending this time in her apartment, watching some bad romantic comedy. why couldn’t it have ended with the recording of the songs? the companies were oddly pushing through with so many promotional things, and she simply didn’t get it. 

with a hum, she shrugs. “i have mixed feelings,” she admits. “my birthday comes around the same time so i’ve never really enjoyed having those two blur together if you know what i mean.” suji doesn’t know when joohwan’s birthday is, but she’s come to realize it’s a more occurrence than she expected. fellow idols having birthdays near big holidays. “i think the warm, holiday spirit is nice, but the end of the year for us is always just filled with so much. could never truly enjoy it.”

“not really, my birthday is in november, i never had to deal with it clashing with any sort of holiday,” just her sister’s. but joohwan and joohyun had long since learned how to navigate having birthdays that were so close from one another. if anything, it made birthday parties convenient. maybe hwan would’ve been annoyed if her sister was much younger than her, but their three year difference made it so that joohyun felt more like a friend than an annoying younger sibling anyway. “sounds annoying, though. if you’re enthusiastic about birthdays, then i’m sure it’s quite annoying to have to share it with a major holiday.”

the end of the year was always a busy time for most idols. or at least the ones in the three companies involved with this project as well. the end of the year music programs and award shows involved practicing different versions and remixes of the same one or two songs. while suji and equinox didn’t fall under that category this year, she assumed that anybody else on this set probably was. she didn’t blame them for looking so tired.

she can’t help but chuckle at the brutal truth that joohwan lets out. “at least you’re honest,” she says with a shrug. looking down at her own outfit, she scrunches her nose at the mix of white and red. she definitely looks festive, and she can’t imagine the work that was put into make sure that everybody looked coordinated yet different at the same time, but she wasn’t fully feeling it either. “maybe that was their initial plan. all the red and white make us look like modern day santas anyway. i’m just glad they didn’t go all ridiculou on us and make us dress up as rudolph or something.”

joohwan never knows how anyone will react to her honesty. she doesn’t think she’s as bad as she was when she was younger, a trainee with too big of an ego and lacking a proper leash to keep her in her place, but she also knows her mind doesn’t jump to the kindest and most socially appropriate thoughts. it’s why her personality is still curated to the best of her ability, only those closest to her being privy to it. when suji doesn’t comment on it, however, some of the tension in her shoulders loosens. “i don’t think this is a very well done set, but i also don’t think they care.”

hwan, in a distance that shortened with each thought, each breath, each moment they knew they should be walking away. fog overwhelming, there was no chance they could manage to shove away the gravitational pull she had on them. two steps left, and their feet moved forward, meeting halfway in its last second.

damn it.

she looked good. that much more adventurous within a sea of goldfish; andy’d expect no less. she was always different, had been different, was the difference. fuck their head hurt. inebriated was a terrible time to try to rewrite their emotions and desires. forgetting, slipping into her pull, crashing planets and chunks flying off, damn if that didn’t sound nice. they clenched their jaw, tightened their fingers around the glass in their hand. pissed, they were. can’t forget that. “what do you want?”

@fmdjoohwan​

she didn’t mean to approach, at first. wallowing on her misery had sounded like a better alternative, as it had now become her usual state most of the time. joohwan didn’t remember the last time she had spent a night completely sober. perhaps when she filmed the music video for her solo debut? but then... she wasn’t entirely sober for that either. not to the point where it would risk her performance, but the medicine that kept her anxiety at bay had never felt more needed and appropriate. 

hwan should leave andy alone. she doubted they wanted her to bother them like this, doubted they wanted to confront her especially in such a public setting, but joohwan couldn’t help it. before she noticed, her legs were taking her towards andy, the glass in her grip still half full with whatever the bartender had thought to give her. in her heeled boots and the posture she was expected to keep, considering the outfit she was wearing, joohwan properly towered over andy, but she felt nothing but small under their gaze. 

among the stars. exclusive gala aesthetic. 

okay before we turn up the skepticism LISTEN to what i have to say !!!  when joohwan heard about the theme for the gala being among the stars, she immediately thought sci-fi/futuristic concept and she called her stylist to exchange some ideas about it. they thought about doing something more discreet and whatnot but they came to the conclusion that this was pretty much the only chance hwan would have of actually doing something slightly more avant garde (for an amab person), SO hwan gave the name of the one designer she thought she’d never be able to wear something of: iris van herpen. 

iris is like... a fucking genius and joohwan is obsessed with her. there’s not a lot that hwan could wear from her collection (and it’s not like she has enough pull to get a commission lmao) BUT iris has a couple of jumpsuits that joohwan’s stylist managed to grab and adjust to fit hwan in a way that isn’t too scandalous. so obviously it’s not fitted the way a woman’s jumpsuit is, and in this case the fabric was made less transparent with a cover underneath. hwan didn’t give up on the cape though!!!! the cape is important!!! not very practical and people would step all over it several times but you know what hwan doesn’t care.

emotions, at times, felt like a language completely full of loan words that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t decipher. the words were familiar, or ones understood on their own, yet when put together, were gibberish. put through a translator, what came out was anger, near every time. not right, but not entirely wrong.

hard to come by, too, emotions were for andy. despite the frequency of their anger, andy’s usual emotional state was nothing, a numbness that required being beaten into in order to change into any state that wasn’t anger. there was a distinct difference between the anger that resided a singular skin layers’s depth down, ready to pop out at minor annoyances, and the anger that layered on top of layers as hwan had spoken. complex, undecipherable, a language of loan words.

they’d taken to pacing, walking back and forth in this too fucking tiny space. why the fuck was this table so massive? they’d banged their feet into the stupidly massive legs multiple times already, yet couldn’t be fucked to give a single shit. barely registered. andy wasn’t sure they’d register much in this state. maybe if they broke a rib.

why them? why them? andy looked down as they forced themselves to take a breath, one that came out in a punch of air. they were shaking, the entirety of their arms at least. a stop, said shaking hands rose, heels of them pressed over andy’s aching forehead. they wanted to pummel that bitch, the fucking nasty whore that thought fucking around with their relationship was fine. a hand swung out, knocked a chair backwards. it didn’t fall completely, caught by the walls that housed it, which was only all the more aggravating. they tried again, pushed sideways, as it got caught on other chair legs. a third time, it fell with a final thud. andy kicked underneath the seat, and in a whoosh of air turned back to hwan. their hands slammed upon the wood of the table, chill not cold enough to counteract the heat emanating off of them. fingers scraped back, bent with a strain. reddened, it should hurt, too. should.

andy’s voice bellowed despite the small space between them, “if you don’t know why you’d do something, don’t do it in the fucking first place! i don’t care how fucking sorry you are! you think that fixes it? i’ll go yeah, thanks babe, let’s do this again next week!”

joohwan was no stranger to trauma. much like everybody else, she carried her own around, buried deep, unwilling to stare at it straight unless her therapist forced her to do so. joohwan didn’t like it, the process of reliving whatever had caused her to be like this, even if she was able to acknowledge why it was necessary, why she had to go through it. for some unfathomable reason, joohwan still clung to the ideal of becoming better. a better person, a better sister, a better dancer and performer, a better grandkid, a better— a better girlfriend. and there was no way for her to do that if she refused to work around the good and the bad that had both shaped her to the person she had become. 

already, she felt her trauma making itself known, felt the racing of her heart, her breathing that increased the more and more andy paced. she knew what was going to happen from here — joohwan didn’t recall the last time she saw andy this angry, at least not in a situation where she wasn’t angry as well. usually they fed off each other, their emotions matching, the volume of their voices matching. it happened more often when they were younger, when neither of them had the softened edges they do nowadays, for each other at least, when the only thing both of them knew how to do when faced with feelings too strong to handle was to lash out. she knew what would come next. and as much as joohwan knew it was her fault, she couldn’t help but being terrified of it.

not of andy, no. she flinched, as they threw the chair down, as they kicked and slammed their hands on the table, but hwan knew better than to assume andy would ever hurt her. no, andy’s anger was a familiar beast, one hwan didn’t dare believe would ever bare its sharp claws at her. she was terrified because she knew andy was going to leave. she knew, deep down, that there was no scenario in which andy did not leave. no matter what she said, no matter what excuses she gave, joohwan knew. 

her automatic reaction was to want to keep her gaze down, to evade their eyes, but she thought they deserved better than that. so hwan held their glare, even as the fury contained within sent a shiver down her spine. “i don’t— i don’t expect an apology to fix it,” she whispered, clutching her hands in her lap, teeth worrying at her bottom lip. “it doesn’t mean i’m not sorry. i can’t change what happened but it doesn’t mean i cannot regret it. you deserve better, but what i can give you is an apology. even though i don’t expect you to take it.”

“wow, they really tried hard to make this seem christmas-y.” 

it’s not directed at anybody in particular, but she so happens to be standing besides joohwan so they’re the one that ends up being roped into the conversation. personally, she preferred the outfits she was given for the dear santa shoot. understandably, it’s probably easier to match up three individuals with a concept rather than almost twenty. trying to keep them all in theme yet different enough so nobody has complaints. 

“guess it kind of worked? well, the colors at least,” she continues while picking at the dust on her sweater. “i think we could have used a little more green though. what do you think?” she’s trying to fill in the gaps between the shoots by keeping a conversation. zoning out and playing on her phone could only do so much, and she’s just hoping that joohwan doesn’t flat out ignore her. 

@fmdjoohwan​

joohwan hasn’t gotten proper sleep in two days. she knows it shows in the dark circles under he eyes, the sunken appearance of her cheeks as well as the eyes she can’t help closing every now and then. the look on the make up artist’s face hadn’t cleared for a second as she tried her best to make joohwan look presentable, but she didn’t have the energy to apologise. she’s only here to take these pictures and go back home as fast as possible. 

hyeju didn’t take offense whenever she had someone tell her later on that, initially, they had found her intimidating. it’s not a type of impression that she purposely tried to give off, but she assumes it’s her stoic expressions and her collected mannerisms that make her seem like that. of course, she doesn’t do much to correct peoples’ first impressions. to her, it doesn’t matter how people find her if it wasn’t affecting her directly. she’s probably had some bad rumors fly around about her one time or another during her career, but they’ve never reached her ears. or if they did, it was done so subtly that she never caught on.

nevertheless, she thinks that having one meal with her is probably enough to turn that false impression around. that’s not the reason why she’s called out joohwan, but she thinks they could use a relaxing dinner. will probably be up to them to judge whether it’s really relaxing or not though. when they talk in, hyeju checks her clock as she hasn’t been keeping check of the time. “i didn’t even realize, you’re fine,” she says before nodding her head once in acknowledgement of joohwan walking in. “same old. solo promotions are tiring, but it’s music that feels closer to what i like. how about you? bc letting you go solo any time soon?” 

genuine interest about the affairs of others in the industry doesn’t come to joohwan often, but she’s far from being a dumb person. with her own aspirations and desire for more, joohwan knows the best thing she can do is to pay attention to what her seniors are doing, particularly the ones under the same company as hers. hyeju is joohwan’s direct senior and whereas her image doesn’t necessarily match joohwan’s, she’s had an enviable solo career that joohwan only hopes to replicate somehow. so she pays attention. “i really enjoyed your album, sunbae,” it’s— mostly not a lie. joohwan hadn’t disliked it, which is more than she can say about so many of her industry peers. “i was actually thinking about covering heroine,” truth. “i think it would be fun. are you enjoying performing it?”

excitement churns in his stomach as he hears the faint tell tale signs of the crowd being hyped up. the end of the year shows are always a different kind of enthralling and to get to perform year after year will never not amaze max. he knows that if anything is temporary it’s their spotlight during these shows, knowing the way they get more and more screen time will eventually fade. 

so he’s determined to make the best of it. he’s in the middle of monitoring his performance when nimble fingers grab his wrist and pull. eyes widening in confusion he follows disorientated until he finally sees the figure dragging him on. worry immediately gnaws at his consciousness and his brain goes into overdrive, trying to figure out what would have caused such a reaction from the elder.

the moment the door snaps shut behind them and he’s faced with one of the most scariest expressions he’s ever seen on joohwan’s face, he can’t help but stiffen under the touch on his shoulders. the request doesn’t do much to ease the tension even if the selfish part of his brain supplies that at least it wasn’t his fault. “laugh? shit- dude, I’m-,” stunted into performance mode he blinks owlishly, gaping at words or anything to make the other laugh.

“uh uhm… remember that time I fell during dance practice last week and one of the guys decided to roll me around while singing rolling in the deep? that was pretty hilarious, no?” it’s an attempt at least as an uncertain grin widens across his lips. he’s really more the hug and silent support kind of guy.

the last thing joohwan wants is to ruin someone else’s night, to trouble someone with her own issues. she’s the last person to want to talk about the things that happen to her, to need reassurance or a pick me up. joohwan suffers in silence — either that or she turns her pain into anger, but neither of those things seem to be working. it’s extra hard when she’s the one to blame, when it’s her own decisions that lead her to where she is. but well. there’s not much she can do about that, and maybe she’s taking advantage of the fact that max is very much not likely to try to get rid of her. he can resent her later if he so much desires.

it’s not difficult for her to recall exactly what he brings up. she hadn’t been paying too much attention, but it had been a moment of reprieve, especially as her head ached desperately. joohwan snorts. “you— your ideal of trying to make me laugh is terrible,” she shakes her head, letting it hang low momentarily, as the brief smile that had curled up her lips fades. “i’m sorry. it’s not— it’s not your fault.”

her hands sit on the table, both of them spread out, fingers splayed against the dark mahogany. momentarily, joohwan thinks back on the day she bought it. it had been a small dream of hers, to own a dinning table big enough to fit every single person she loves and cares about, every single person she’d like to cook a meal for one day. originally, it’d make it so the table would barely be able to fit more than four people. but this one she bought thinking about more, thinking about family — the one she has and the one she longs to — and it occupies most of the room at this point. it’s too big, it doesn’t fit. she should’ve thought better, should’ve known better. she takes a deep breath, or attempts to; her breathing is still unsteady, her body shivering all over. maybe she’ll have to sell the table.