erika

“No, I know that, Bin, but what was I supposed to do?” proclaimed a brunette boy, his soft brown locks covered by a beanie and wide framed glasses sat across the bridge of his nose comfortably. He was sitting a few tables away from you, his work resting on the table in front of him, albeit obviously untouched. One of his grey hoodie clad arms was holding a phone by his ear while the other was running over his face in a distraught manner, knocking the glasses off of his face and onto the floor with a loud metallic noise. You watched them fall as you realized he hadn’t even noticed in his hurry to continue what he had been previously saying. “I mean you should have seen my mother! “who are you bringing” this and “you don’t have a girlfriend already” that! How was I supposed to know my cousin’s wedding was in one week when I told her I’d have a date!” 

Your eyes widened at his exclamation and you nearly chuckled at the hilarity of the similar situations you and your new library buddy had found yourselves in. It wasn’t until his head hit the table, rather loudly you may add, that you started formulating your plan. Your eyes drifted back to the glasses lying on the floor haphazardly again that you made a move to get out of your seat as nonchalantly as your growing nerves would let you. Once you realized he wouldn’t notice you while wallowing in his misery as his friend, Bin, was laughing quite hard at his friend’s grumbling into the table you giggled softly. Then, taking a deep breath and stealing your nerves, you picked the forlorn glasses up off of the floor. 

You tapped on his shoulder lightly as you rounded the table to stand beside him. His head whipped up rapidly at your presence and his hand pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment. You found yourself suddenly more nervous than before while staring into his deep brown eyes and  completely forgot everything you were going to say moments before. The boy was the first one to snap out of it. 

“Oh! Was I being too loud? I didn’t realize anyone else was here!” He said loudly, obviously startled. You laughed softly, the nerves rolling off of you in waves. 

“I was actually coming over here because you dropped these.” You said, holding the glasses up so that he could see them. His mouth formed a comical “o” shape before he smiled sheepishly up at you. His hand reached forward to take them from your hand, but before his fingers could make contact with the cool metal you had yanked them swiftly backwards, reveling in the shocked and confused expression that then graced his features. “But! I’ll only give them back if you have a chat with me first.” You said, teasingly, your expression teetering on sinister. 

His brow furrowed deeply before he pulled the phone in his other hand back up to his ear, his eyes staying locked with yours the whole time. “Bin, i’m gonna have to call you back later.” Words of protest could be heard from the other end of the line, but the boy in front of you obviously didn’t care as he hung up and motioned his hand towards the other seat at the table in front of him. You smiled, grateful that he was willing to hear you out, and took a seat. 

----

That was how this whole ordeal started. Now, nearly two months later, you and Jisung have been fake dating for every event, double date, and any other thing that may arise. Your “contract” was simple: stay together mutually until the services included are no longer in need, only consensual touching/kissing in public, don’t tell anyone else, and ABSOLUTELY NO falling in love. So far everything has gone well and to plan, maybe even too well. You found yourselves being good friends even. You spent evenings together eating take out on your couch when he had been burnt out from his studies in music production. You would go to the skate park together on weekends, spending hours gaining new bruises, laughing too hard, and ending the day getting ice cream and watching the sunset. It was perfect, or so you thought. Jisung, however, seemed to have different feelings.

Recently you two had been talking less, your life becoming occupied with a male crush you had developed feelings for in your calculus class that semester. You had told Jisung all about it and you had thought he was giving you this new space to spend time with your new infatuation since the busy season of events where the “fake relationship” you were in was necessary, but your thoughts had since changed. He stopped responding to your messages, even when you were offering to buy the takeout he so hated paying for. He stopped taking your calls, even the ones where you were trying to ask him to escort you to family dinners so your mother would stop bugging you. Eventually, you stopped seeing him at all, even in his favorite locations he would always be hanging out with his friends. You began to wonder if he was alright, what had happened, and how you could get a hold of him. Without even realizing you had become accustomed to his company.

Your worries persisted until one day when you were passing by a new coffee shop in town and decided to stop by to check it out. You walked through the large glass doors with a small smile playing on your lips at the pungent scent of coffee filling your nose pleasantly. However, that small smile swiftly fell from your features at the sight sitting directly in front of you. At a table in the middle of the small cafe was the boy you had been worried sick over, sitting perfectly fine, all dressed up, with a pretty girl sitting in front of him. You stood still for a moment, watching as her hand caressed his arm lightly, a giggle leaving her lips, before you sprung into action. You pulled your phone from your bag as quick as you could while your fingers shook with the anger slowly rising through you and rattling your bones. You tapped your foot impatiently as you dialed his number, eyeing the ugly, too-cracked screen you had come to know so well.

Once you saw the phone light up you took note of the caller ID saying “do not pick up,” snorting incredulously at the obvious insult and crossing your arms impatiently as the ringing continued. Jisung looked at the phone sparingly, before sighing deeply, smiling at the girl apologetically, and then proceeding to hang up on you. You gasped sharply, unsure why the gesture felt so cutting, and in a flurry of panic made your decision to make your move now, while you could reach him. You marched up to him quickly, uncaring of how messy your appearance was currently. As you walked furiously up behind him, your eyes caught on to the strange look the female was giving you, but you were too angry to care about what she thought in the moment.

As you approached, you outstretched your hand and gripped onto the shoulder of his nearest to you, turning him harshly in his seat towards you. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Ji?” You practically yelled at him. His face was nearly comical enough to make you laugh. Nearly. He floundered for words, but you stopped him with one hand coming up and an expression he had never seen on you before. “You haven’t responded to my texts or calls, I can’t find you anywhere, your friends won’t even look at me to give me answers, and what? Then I find you here with some girl? Do you have any idea how selfish you’ve been?! I’ve been worried sick! What the fuck, Jisung!?” You knew you were being hysterical, but once the words were coming out of your mouth you couldn’t bring yourself to stop. You weren’t sure where all of these emotions were coming from so suddenly, but now that you were facing him you felt things bubbling up in your chest that you had to assume were anger and frustration at how he had been acting recently. His jaw clenched tightly, his face hardening, and he stood up suddenly as you finished. His rapid motion caused your hand to drop from his shoulder and the chair to screech suddenly, drawing many prying eyes towards your current argument.

You stumbled backwards slightly in shock of the new, intimidating expression of Jisung’s face that you weren’t familiar with. You tried to regain your confidence, but the man standing in front of you wasn’t similar to the Jisung you had known before. He stood tall, unafraid, his eyes held a fiery passion, his expression a swirling pool of emotions, and his voice was in stark contrast to the cheery, overly playful, and annoying boy you had been spending time with. “I’m selfish, y/n? Me? You only ever think about how you feel! You run around messing with people’s heads and when you finally get bored, you run off. Isn’t that right? What was that boys’ name again? Chan? Why don’t you go tell him, huh?? Maybe then you’d be talking to someone who cares! I don’t want to be your boyfriend when there’s not another phone to ring!” When he spoke, you listened, your fists clenching tightly and your cheeks heating up at his harsh words. You felt tears beginning to pool in your eyes at the embarrassment. You bit your lip and stared deep into his eyes as his breaths evened out from the ragged way they were coming out before due to all of the pent up emotions.

“Fine, Jisung.” You said, your voice crackling slightly, causing more heat to rush to your cheeks. You pulled the straps of your back higher up your arm and began to look around at the faces now staring at your display sheepishly. Your eyes caught his again, only briefly before a few soft tears fell past your lashes. You clenched your fists and turned to leave before saying one last thing to him, never turning to face him again. “Whatever was left of this whole relationship thing is over, Jisung. Have fun on your date.” You said quietly before slowly making your leave, apologizing to the annoyed customers on your way out.

Jisung made a sudden move to stop you, but instead of following through, his brow furrowed and he straightened out his clothes before turning to the girl who had waited, carefully watching the events that had unfolded before her. He apologized briefly and offered to drive her home before heading back to his shared apartment wallowing in his own stupidity-caused misery.

----

“You are the biggest idiot on the planet.” Chan sighed, laughing softly and patting your head in a reassuring manner. “You really just don’t see it do you?”

“See what?” You said through your resentful bite of ice cream, glaring up at his seated form across from you. It had only been a couple of days since the incident and you had taken the advice of your self-proclaimed enemy's’ and gone to Chan. He only laughed, shaking his head and repeating his first statement. You groaned loudly in protest, but eventually gave up grabbing his ice cream to take a bite, uncaring of the noises of anger that left him.

----

“You are the biggest idiot on the planet.” Changbin said, cackling loudly at Jisung’s dramatized anger as he watched you flirting and eating ice cream with Chan in what used to be yours and Jisung’s favorite ice cream shop. He gagged loudly watching how you leaned over the table to take a bite out of Chan’s ice cream, in the way you used to do with Jisung. 

“How can they just be fine after all of that? God! What am I supposed to do now?” He sighed, throwing his hands up in frustration. Changbin only laughed, shoving him forward. 

“Let me recall what you told me. Number one, you’re in love with them and didn’t know what to do about that, so you ghosted them making them think you had something seriously wrong with you, only for them to find out you were perfectly fine and on a date with someone else. Number two, you then proceeded to yell at them in front of a whole cafe full of people making them cry, and number three, you didn’t even think to apologize.” Changbin said, summing up the series of unfortunate events nicely. “I mean, bro, do I really need to call you stupid again?” Jisung only groaned louder, slapping Changbin’s arm harshly while the other laughed at his misfortune.

----

It had been one week and you were miserable to say the least. Your floor was covered in takeout containers from the places you and Jisung used to frequent, the sound of the dumb action movies Jisung used to force you to watch was constantly drafting through your house on a steady stream, and tissues littered your bed from the amount of times you had cried without understanding why over your newfound enemy. 

“Dude, this is, like, really gross.” Chan said, pointing at the messy state your room was in. You let your bloodshot eyes peek out from under your comforter to eye the man holding a spare key and a bag of fresh groceries peering in from your bedroom door. 

“If you’re here to lecture me I don’t want to hear it.” You said, turning over in your bed. “Just leave the food on the counter. I’ll get to it eventually.” 

“This really isn’t healthy. You’re supposed to get outside everyday for your daily recommended amount of vitamin D and I’m sure you haven’t been drinking your recommended eight cups of water recently!” Chan said cheekily, turning to take the groceries he had brought to your studio apartment’s kitchen. You groaned loudly, fumbling to find your TV remote and throwing it towards the area in which the offending party was once standing. It bounced off the wall loudly in a similar fashion to the laughter that came boisterously from down the hall, causing you to sigh and pull the covers further over your head. 

----

You were all Jisung could think about. He saw you everywhere. In the passenger seat of his car while he drove with the windows down he could picture your smile as the wind mused your hair wildly. He saw your face in the reflection staring back at him through the iced americano he got every morning at your favorite coffee shop, hoping to maybe see your body bounding up to the counter happily giggling at the way he would pull faces at your shenanigans this early in the morning. He constantly pictured the way your arms would swing in tandem as your fingers were interlocked with his on those dreaded shopping double dates with your older sister and her boyfriend you hated. He could practically hear your groans as she dragged you away from him yet again to try on the clothes she had picked out in the thirteenth store that day. He could remember the way your voice curled around every syllable of his name in pleased annoyance. He pictured your smile and bright eyes every time he shut his eyes for a moment of reprieve from the memories of you littering his world. You had found a way to intertwine your roots into his life, like a weed trying to suck all the nutrients and sanity out of his soil. He missed you and he felt terrible.  

He had been trying to figure out what to do for days now. He never imagined falling this hard for you when you approached him with your proposition that night in the library on campus. Though, he should have realized sooner in the way heat rushed to his cheeks when you called him sweet nicknames in front of his friends, or the way your touch sent sparks through his fingertips, never stopping until his heart felt like it was about to burst. Especially when you had attended that wedding with him and your lips had met during the final dance of the night and he felt as though he was going to faint. His head would spin around you and he had been planning for a while, trying to find the right time to confess. That was, until you told him about Chan. 

He remembered that night clearly. You had been curled up in your favorite blanket, eating his takeout that you had stolen only moments prior, laughing at his protests. You looked so soft he wasn’t sure he would be able to stop himself from kissing you on that couch that night. Then, you suddenly looked at him with an expression that resembled the excitement of a kitten ready to pounce and he thought his heart had stopped for a moment. You began to excitedly start telling him about this boy you met in class that had caught your attention and Jisung thought about how much he wished his heart had stopped, saving him from the pain now piercing it sharply. 

Snapping out of his own thoughts with a groan he ran his hands through his already messy hair. He determined staying in his dorm and wallowing in his own self pity wouldn’t do him any good, instead hastily grabbing his keys and heading out to clear his head. 

----

You were sitting at your “reserved” table at your favorite cafe this afternoon, across from Chan who had convinced you with help on your calculus homework to come out of your blanket cocoon. It was the first time since weeks ago with Jisung that you were even coming here and your eyes kept shifting anxiously towards the door in case of the appearance of said male. You weren’t sure if you were dreading seeing him, or hoping to get to glance at his mess of brown hair and playful smile you seemed to be missing so much. Chan kept laughing at your anxious expression, trying to get you to lighten up and teasing you for your obliviousness to your own feelings.

It had taken until your time away from Jisung to realize how much your feelings for him had really grown. You recalled on the butterflies that fluttered in your chest when he would laugh at your dumb jokes, the way his callused-from-guitar-playing hands would slide into your smaller, smoother one would cause a grin to break out onto your face, or the way his warmth felt against your back as you stayed close watching his dumb movies together would give you a feeling of solace unable to be described in any other way. You came to the realization that you didn’t want your fake relationship to be so fake anymore and it scared you, so when you met Chan you told Jisung. You weren’t sure what you were hoping for from that. For Jisung to stop your advances with someone else, or an escape from the suffocating feelings in your chest when Jisung looked at you, you weren’t able to decide. 

When Chan’s smile slipped from his face and a nearly inaudible “oh shit” left his lips it snapped you out of your tacky thoughts. You head whipped towards the direction he was staring and what you found caused you to drop your nearly full coffee, spilling it all over the floor in front of you. 

“Oh my god. Fuck.” You said loudly, rushing to grab whatever you could to start cleaning up the spill. Eyes were now finding their way to you and your face began heating up significantly. It wasn’t until there was a hand on your shoulder that you looked up from your mistake frantically. The boy standing over you looked different than you remembered, his eyes had dark circles lining them, his cheeks a little more sunken, but the small, playful smile gracing his lips was the same that made your heart lurch in your chest painfully. Your lips parted as he gracefully handed you a small stack of napkins, more in his other hand. You slowly grabbed them, your eyes never leaving his form as he leaned down to begin helping you clean your mess. You took note of how eyes began to stray from your mishap at his help and Chan’s laughter could be heard from above your crouched forms. You made a mental note to give him hell for that later. 

Once you and Jisung had cleaned up the mess, Chan offered to throw away the soiled paper, a ploy you realized so he could leave you two alone together. As you stared up at Jisung’s anxiously fidgeting form you felt the anger from before starting to bubble up in your chest, past all of the overwhelming feelings settled there. 

“Thanks for the help.” You said bluntly, staring at him questioningly, silently wondering why he was lingering. You took in his appearance, in awe of how much you missed him and wished longingly that you could reach out and hold his hand again. 

“Um..can we talk about things?” He said, his eyes finally finding yours again. His hands fidgeting nervously and you found yourself wondering why he seemed so on edge. A small part of you hoped he was missing you as much as you missed him. When you silently nodded your head and took a seat at the now empty table you heard his audible sigh of relief and laughed a little at how excitedly he plopped himself into the seat across from you. 

You sat there for a moment, watching him and curiously furrowing your brow, motioning toward him in a way to offer him the ability to speak. “Oh! I um- well- god. I really wasn’t prepared to see you here, so give me a second to collect my thoughts.” He said, stumbling over his own words. A boisterous laugh slipped from your lips at the comical thoughtful look that passed over his features. His eyes snapped to your face as you laughed and you saw an emotion you couldn’t name pass through his eyes, making you shut your mouth quickly, trying to contain your giggles. 

“I love you.” He said suddenly, his face immediately going red, your eyes going wide and your mouth falling open while you stared at him critically. “Shit, oh my god. I didn’t mean that! Wait no I did, but I didn’t mean to just blurt it out like that holy shit.” He said, fumbling with his words, his hands flying up to cover his extremely red face in embarrassment. You found yourself clutching your stomach as laughter left you lips at a rapid rate. He peeked through his fingers up at you, his smile barely staying contained at your joyous chuckles. “I really look like an idiot right now, don’t I?” He said sheepishly. 

“A little bit.” You said breathlessly, smiling at him. “But only a little, because I also love you. Though, you were a bit of an ass to me to be confessing like this.” You said confidently, hoping the nervous way your heart was fluttering in your chest wasn’t outwardly visible. 

His eyes snapped to you fully now, his hands falling from their position covering his face. His shock was evident at your words. “What? I- Aren’t you dating Chan?” He said incredulously, pointing to the male trying, and failing, to look inconspicuous by the trash cans. When he noticed he had been caught, he lifted a hand up in greeting an abashed smile on his face, laughter more than obviously tickling his lips. 

“Chan?!” You shouted, dubious. Your laughter peeled from your lips, the happy smile on your face hurting your cheeks. “Yeah, absolutely not. I hate him!” You said, a bit too excitedly. A noise of disgust could be heard a few feet away, Jisung snorting in laughter at the exchange in the midst of the relief washing over his features. 

“I’ve missed you.” Jisung said, softer now with a more genuine smile. A flush was still prominent on the apples of his cheeks. You stared back at him, shocked and happy, your own cheeks beginning to feel hot. 

“I missed you too, Ji. God. I thought you hated me.” You said, a nervous laugh leaving your lips at the sudden seriousness of the situation. Your eyes drifted to stare at the table now, wanting to avoid the intense look in Jisung’s eyes. 

“I could never hate you, y/n.” Jisung said, his hand reaching across the table to flick your own resting there playfully. You laughed, swatting his hand away. He chuckled softly, his eyes never leaving your face. “Why don’t we go somewhere else to finish this conversation, we can even grab some ice cream.” He offered, wanting to make up lost time. You nodded, smiling up at him sweetly, making his heart thud loudly in his chest. He grabbed your hand, lacing his fingers with yours and dragging you towards the door. You stumbled over your own feet trying to match his pace, making you yell at him. He laughed at you and pushed you over teasingly. “Ohhh you wanna kiss me so bad.” He said, leaning over you. Your face flushed slightly and you bit your lip while you shoved both of your hands against your chest.

“In your dreams, Sung.” You said loudly, making haste to run past him in the direction of his car. You heard his footsteps hurriedly rushing to catch up to you. Laughter slipped from your lips quietly at the silliness of the relieving situation. Then you heard a second pair of footsteps coming from behind you and you curiously looked over your shoulder for the source, the sight making your laughter fall from your lips louder. 

“Hey! You guys can’t just leave! I still need a ride!!” An angry Chan yelled after you two. Jisung quickened his pace with a yelp, grabbing your hand as he passed and dragging you along to rush to the car. You felt your cheeks becoming sore from the perpetual smile on your face, but you wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

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