For whetstone! You're Gonna Find Yourself Somewhere, Somehow (2NE1, CL/Dara, PG-13)
Title: you're gonna find yourself somewhere, somehow
Recipient: whetstone
Group(s)/Artist(s): 2NE1
Pairing(s)/Character(s): cl/dara
Rating: pg13
Warning(s): swearing
Summary: everything's business as usual, until it isn't anymore.
Note(s): tweaked bits of the november/december 2012 timeline to make this work, so many apologies for that! title from corinne bailey rae's put your records on. 3,148 words.
"Come to Universal Studios with us," Sandara's saying through the thick haze of sleep. "Hey, we're in Singapore. Let's go out and do something."
Chaerin grunts and rolls over. Firm hands grab at her shoulders and shake her for a bit before receding. "Mmf. Stop. Still tired."
"It's almost noon," comes Sandara's voice from the window, matter-of-fact. She throws the blinds open and Chaerin recoils into her pillow. "Well?"
"No," she mumbles, burrowing deeper into the sheets.
Chaerin hears a muffled sigh, and then: "Fine. Suit yourself. I'm taking Minji."
"Do," Chaerin says, and goes back to sleep.
She finally drags herself out of bed at four in the afternoon. The rest of the suite's deserted-understandably so: everyone's probably out enjoying the sunshine, communing with nature before they have to pack up and go back to freezing Seoul. And Singapore is beautiful, all fresh air and clear sky, sprawling beachfronts and shopping districts that bustle with activity. She doesn't blame them.
Chaerin curls up on the couch with her laptop balanced on her knees and pulls up the stream of half-complete scratch tracks Teddy's been sending her in erratic bursts since late July. The raps she writes for herself should come easy, at least, but coaxing the words out is like pulling teeth.
"What do you do," she'd asked him once, "when you feel like everything you come up with is shit?"
He'd looked at her askance from beneath his customary snapback (red with a white rim that day, she remembers), and said, "Keep going."
Except the four of them have been all over the world by this point and Chaerin still feels sucked dry. Maybe it's stupid to think that she can soak up some sort of cosmic inspiration just because she's traveling, and she doesn't feel like she has the right to be in any sort of creative rut, anyway-she's not Choice or Teddy or even Jiyong, who pulls things out just to scrap them so fast she's surprised he doesn't get whiplash.
Chaerin, on the other hand, is given pre-packaged songs to write a couple of occasional paltry raps for and then promote exhaustively as a group for as long as they can. As far as depth of involvement is concerned, she's barely scraped the surface.
She loves her job, and performing, and most everything that comes with it: the weight of the bedazzled microphone in her hand, the clean burn in her arms and legs after a particularly long set, sweat trickling down her neck, a sense of accomplishment sitting heavy in her chest. But the tour's over, now, and the same thought returns-four years, and all she's done is sing other people's songs. Music, music, everywhere, and none of it is hers.
Sandara and Minji come back at dusk and bring the smell of the ocean with them. Chaerin pulls her hair up into a messy bun and squints at them. "How was it?"
"Fine," says Sandara, her voice clipped.
"We went to the beach, after," Minji says, sending Dara a glance and taking over when it's clear she isn't going to continue. "Where's Bom-unnie?"
Chaerin shrugs and turns back to her computer. "She was gone when I woke up."
"What did you do all day?" Sandara asks after a long moment, peering over Chaerin's shoulder with reluctant curiosity.
"More of the same," she says. She scrolls through everything she's typed out and scowls. She can see Sandara pursing her lips from the reflection of her face on the screen. "What?"
"You don't like what you've written."
Chaerin scrubs a hand over her mouth. "Doesn't matter, anyway." She attaches the files to an email and fires it off to Teddy. "Sajangnim has the final opinion on everything."
"Still," Sandara persists. "This is why I asked you to come with us this morning. Maybe seeing the city would've helped, I don't know. Galvanize your creative mind. Whatever."
Chaerin sends her a tired look. "And what would I have written about? Transformers 3D?" Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Minji slinking into her room. "Don't you think, after half a year of touring, something would've taken by now?"
"Maybe you aren't looking in the right place," she says, too serious for Chaerin to laugh or shrug it off.
"Yeah," Chaerin mutters instead. "Maybe."
Bom walks in, sweaty towel slung around her shoulders. "Where were you?" Dara asks.
"Gym," she says, wiping her face and striding toward the bathroom. "Master Hwang."
In Seoul, Chaerin wakes up missing Paris for the first time in years. It isn't the stereotypical French bullshit she misses-not chocolate croissants or the Eiffel Tower or La Seine, at least not any more than she might long for kimchi or the Han River when away from Korea. What she misses is when CL meant ciel meant sky-tout est possible, the sky is the limit, the feeling that she could do anything she wanted.
They stay in the city long enough to perform at the MelOn Music Awards, and for sajangnim to say something blandly complimentary about what little Chaerin's turned in for perusal. "It's your first time, of course, so I don't expect much," he says, hand falling heavily on her shoulder. "These things take practice."
"Of course," she says, and tries to smile.
After the performance, she gets an email from Jeremy and slinks away under cover of darkness for Hong Kong. There's an hour in there of no cameras, no paparazzi, no flashing lights-and then she's getting let into some swanky club, bass beats reverberating straight through her chest.
"How's the new album?" Jeremy yells over the noise, stepping close so that she can smell the heavy whiffs of cologne coming off him in waves.
"It's going," she says, and takes the first in a long line of shots.
There's an interview with Ketchup and a matching photo shoot waiting for her in the morning. She spends the afternoon perusing the shops at the World Trade Centre, racks up a bill that would probably give her dad a heart attack. She debates sending him a message about it but manages to refrain-he's working on his next book, and it's kind of an asshole move, anyway.
Jeremy provides a running stream of commentary about his latest projects the whole day, to which she lends half an ear. Intellectually, she understands that his fixation on them is indubitably creepy-being used as a muse, unwitting or not, is at its core objectification-but she can't help the irrational, petulant thought that at least someone likes them best.
She goes to another one of Jeremy's parties that night, is decidedly tipsy and well on her way to plastered when she sees Sandara's head bobbing through the crowd. She isn't wearing any make-up and manages to look effortlessly beautiful anyway, standing next to Jeremy with her hair pulled up into a smooth ponytail, eyes wide.
Dara leans up to say something into his ear. He leers down at her and something hot and ugly rises up in the back of Chaerin's throat. She thinks she might be sick. "I think I'm going to be sick," Chaerin announces, and Yulia sends her an alarmed look. "Where's the bathroom in this place?"
The terrible lighting in the restroom doesn't help with the dizziness or the bile that hits the back of her throat with a vengeance, but she manages to make it to one of the stalls in time to vomit into a toilet instead of all over the floor. She grabs a wad of toilet paper and flushes, scrubs her mouth. The tap water she rinses her mouth out with is freezing.
"Chaerin?" comes Dara's voice as the door swings open behind her. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," Chaerin bites out, and continues gargling. "What are you doing here?"
The pause stretches on beyond comfort before Sandara replies. "You didn't tell us you were leaving."
Chaerin turns and snorts. Dara's closer than she thought she was, almost hovering. "You didn't come all the way here just to tell me that."
"We didn't find out until Bom saw photos of you on the Internet," she remarks, mouth slanting downward in an unhappy arc.
"Brave new world," Chaerin quips in English. Dara still looks unduly hurt and Chaerin sighs, frustrated. "Please. It's not like you haven't done your fair share of skipping town without telling anyone. Remember October? We had no idea you were in the Philippines until you came back."
"This isn't about me." Sandara crosses her arms. "What are you even doing?"
Chaerin makes a vague gesture in the air. "Supporting a friend. Did you see Jeremy's-"
"Stop. That's-I meant-" She makes an irritated noise. "What is it that you want?"
Chaerin frowns, shoves down the urge to lock herself back into one of the stalls just to avoid this conversation. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You say you want to write, but when you're finally given the opportunity it just makes you even more miserable. And now you're partying it up in Hong Kong?"
Chaerin pinches the bridge of her nose, stomach roiling again. "Is this really the right time or place?"
"Don't try to sidestep now," Dara snarls, and Chaerin looks up so fast her head swims. "We should've talked about this a long time ago. So what, because you can't come up with something earth-shatteringly perfect, you don't want to show it to anyone? That's stupid. You're just torturing yourself like this." A pause, and then: "Us, too. We don't deserve that. We don't want to be miserable."
Chaerin opens her mouth to respond and Dara waves it away.
"It isn't fair to you, either," she continues crossly. "This is going to sound like some fucking grade school shit, but I don't care. Maybe that's what you need. Look-you do your best with the chance you've been given." She raises her eyebrows. "Because you don't always get another. Stop hiding. What are you afraid of? How can you expect things to happen if you don't fight for it-"
"What do you know about fighting for anything?" Chaerin hisses-and regrets it the moment it comes out of her mouth because this is Sandara, who fought in the Philippines for what she wanted, and then, when those opportunities trickled away, came back and fought in Korea. For whatever reason (the happy-go-lucky persona, her perpetual, toothy smile, the way everything seems to slide right off her), it's easy to forget that her entire life has been an exercise in clawing herself back up again-from a father who abandoned her, through an industry that says oh, no, you're too old for us now, past the lackluster showing in Japan and an indefinitely postponed comeback.
It must show on her face because Dara doesn't snap back again, just shakes her head.
"Sorry," Chaerin says, deflating. "I didn't mean-shit. I'm an idiot."
"Only a little bit," Sandara allows.
She's not frowning anymore, though, so Chaerin counts it as a draw.
Dara slides up to sit on the counter, legs swinging. "What is it that you want?" she repeats.
Chaerin takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. "I don't know," she says at last, voice small. I'm 22 years old and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
"That's okay," Dara replies, reaching out to grab her arm, fingers rubbing smooth circles against the skin of her wrist. Chaerin feels her shoulders relax in increments, the waves of nausea abating a little. "You'll figure it out. Sometimes it just takes a while."
They fly home the next day, and it's immediately back to the practice room grind to rehearse for end-of-year performances. This is familiar territory: staying up till two in the morning at HQ, talking choreography and logistics and familiarizing the stage designs with Jaewook, downing bottled water by the six-pack, grinning when Bom imitates one of Minji's dance breaks.
Bom makes them thermoses of herbal tea in the mornings, for when the snow outside's particularly thick and they need something warm to hold onto. It tastes terrible as usual-but it's a labor of love, and does its job of kicking her ass awake when she needs it the most.
"You're feeling better," Bom tells her the week before SBS, when Chaerin's downing cups of it to ease the scratchiness in her throat.
"No, I feel like crap, actually."
"I mean," Bom makes a face, here, "in life? In general? We were pretty worried about you for a while."
"I'm sorry," Chaerin says, sliding a hand beneath her beanie and rubbing at her forehead. "You didn't have to."
"Of course we did," she says, offended. "Didn't you ever learn in school?" she continues, hands clasped loosely around her thermos. "Bottling things up like this isn't healthy. You can talk to us, you know."
Minji corners her in the bathroom later and tells her as much. It's awkward, but not in an unpleasant way. Minji is driven and talented and knows what she wants, more than Chaerin can say for herself, even though she's older-which, in retrospect, might've fostered an artificial distance that she'd never intended.
Minji stares at her strangely through the mirror when Chaerin voices this aloud, picking at her fringe. "I never thought-unnie, I really-" She breaks off and laughs, a high mellow sound that echoes off the walls. "I've always admired you a lot."
Chaerin blinks at the non sequitur, but goes with it anyway. "I can't imagine why," she says drily. "I've been kind of a shit unnie."
"Nah," says Minji, washing her hands and following her out the door. "Sometimes you don't know what to do-but, I mean, you didn't grow up with siblings, so I get it. These things take time."
"You're a lot smarter than I am, maknae," she says. She reaches over to adjust Minji's collar, undoes the top two buttons to loosen it up and let in air.
"I wouldn't say that," Minji replies. She fingers her shades. "More spritely, maybe."
"Oh, shut up," Chaerin says, laughing. "I'm not that much older than you are."
Minji's the only one who goes home for Christmas. Chaerin spends the 24th in the studio, speaks to Teddy and Pilkang, sees Jiyong before he flies to Thailand to escape the cold for a couple of days.
When she gets back to the dorm, Bom's got a facemask on and has two pizzas set out on the coffee table in front of the television. Chaerin steals a slice and squashes herself between Bom and the armrest of the couch, half paying attention to the reruns of Infinity Challenge playing on MBC.
Dara floats downstairs at ten, hair wet from a shower, smelling of the pomegranate body wash she'd gotten in Singapore. She perches on the armrest and flicks through apps on her phone. "What's up?" Chaerin says over the drone of the television, leaning against Sandara's shoulder and peering at the screen. "You've been quiet all day."
"Just thinking," she says.
"What about?"
"Things," she says, grinning a little when Chaerin makes an exasperated noise.
Bom packs the leftover pizza in the fridge and washes her facemask off. "I'm going to bed," she announces, yawning. "Lock the door behind you when you go upstairs."
"Night, unnie," Chaerin says. When she turns back, Dara's gazing into the middle distance, her fingers idle on her phone. "Penny for your thoughts?"
Dara refocuses on her. "You really wanna know?"
"Of course," she says, vaguely taken aback. "Why wouldn't I?"
Sandara sets her phone aside and studies her for a minute. Chaerin stares back: Dara's hair's still drying, soft-looking despite all the dye jobs and strange cuts it's been through this year. Thin lips part a little when she exhales, and her hands curl loosely in the flannel of her pajama bottoms. Her mouth is very red.
This is the thought that sticks with her. She figures out what's going to happen a moment before it actually does, and lets it come.
Chaerin's been kissed before, mostly by clumsy high school boys who act like they want to devour her whole, as if she would ever let it happen. Those have always either died at second base, or ended in hasty handjobs and her ironing her frustrations out with her own fingers, too much and too little at the same time.
Dara is 29 and kisses like it's a revelation, slow and sure and inexorable-eases her tongue into Chaerin's mouth in a way that feels less like an intrusion than it does a mutual exchange, Chaerin's teeth scraping against her bottom lip, her hair falling into Chaerin's face.
"I don't know," Dara replies, panting a little when she pulls back. There's an apprehensive look on her flushed face. "You tell me."
Chaerin licks her lips thoughtfully. Before she can say anything, Dara's phone buzzes three times in quick succession. Sandara groans and flops backward, reaching over to check her messages.
"Well," she says, glancing up at Chaerin. "It's Christmas Day."
"Merry Christmas," Chaerin says, pulling her legs up and crossing them on the sofa. "This is all terribly cliché, you know."
"Is it?" Dara asks. She grins a little. "Well, there's a reason things are cliché, right? People like it. Maybe you should try writing about it."
"I'm not sure Korea's ready for serious girl-on-girl action, no matter how couched it is in trite language," she points out, voice wry.
"It's an idea," Sandara insists.
"Hey, it's an idea," Chaerin agrees. "And-I mean, it's, you know. Nice. Personally."
She doesn't protest when Dara grins and sways in again to press their lips together.
"Hey, come to Lotte World with us," someone's saying, barely audible through Chaerin's thick cocoon of blankets. "It's almost six on New Year's Day and I want to beat the morning rush."
"Sleep," Chaerin moans scratchily, clawing the air when the sheets get ripped out from beneath her with unceremonious vigor. "Nooooo."
"You don't have a choice," Dara replies, exasperated, but mostly fond. She pulls Chaerin up and drags her listless body off the mattress, half-carries her out the bedroom door.
Chaerin cracks an eye open and glares at her. "I hate you."
"You love me," she replies, sticking half a breakfast bun in Chaerin's mouth to stop her from saying anything else.
Bom is making food in the kitchen to bring with them, and Minji's doing complicated sets of morning calisthenics in their living room. She has no idea why they're both in the upstairs apartment, but still feels too much like death to ask.
"Today is going to be a great day," Dara announces, patting Chaerin's back.
Chaerin just rolls her eyes and chews the bread in her mouth. When she's more awake, she might even agree.
fin
Recipient: whetstone
Group(s)/Artist(s): 2NE1
Pairing(s)/Character(s): cl/dara
Rating: pg13
Warning(s): swearing
Summary: everything's business as usual, until it isn't anymore.
Note(s): tweaked bits of the november/december 2012 timeline to make this work, so many apologies for that! title from corinne bailey rae's put your records on. 3,148 words.
"Come to Universal Studios with us," Sandara's saying through the thick haze of sleep. "Hey, we're in Singapore. Let's go out and do something."
Chaerin grunts and rolls over. Firm hands grab at her shoulders and shake her for a bit before receding. "Mmf. Stop. Still tired."
"It's almost noon," comes Sandara's voice from the window, matter-of-fact. She throws the blinds open and Chaerin recoils into her pillow. "Well?"
"No," she mumbles, burrowing deeper into the sheets.
Chaerin hears a muffled sigh, and then: "Fine. Suit yourself. I'm taking Minji."
"Do," Chaerin says, and goes back to sleep.
She finally drags herself out of bed at four in the afternoon. The rest of the suite's deserted-understandably so: everyone's probably out enjoying the sunshine, communing with nature before they have to pack up and go back to freezing Seoul. And Singapore is beautiful, all fresh air and clear sky, sprawling beachfronts and shopping districts that bustle with activity. She doesn't blame them.
Chaerin curls up on the couch with her laptop balanced on her knees and pulls up the stream of half-complete scratch tracks Teddy's been sending her in erratic bursts since late July. The raps she writes for herself should come easy, at least, but coaxing the words out is like pulling teeth.
"What do you do," she'd asked him once, "when you feel like everything you come up with is shit?"
He'd looked at her askance from beneath his customary snapback (red with a white rim that day, she remembers), and said, "Keep going."
Except the four of them have been all over the world by this point and Chaerin still feels sucked dry. Maybe it's stupid to think that she can soak up some sort of cosmic inspiration just because she's traveling, and she doesn't feel like she has the right to be in any sort of creative rut, anyway-she's not Choice or Teddy or even Jiyong, who pulls things out just to scrap them so fast she's surprised he doesn't get whiplash.
Chaerin, on the other hand, is given pre-packaged songs to write a couple of occasional paltry raps for and then promote exhaustively as a group for as long as they can. As far as depth of involvement is concerned, she's barely scraped the surface.
She loves her job, and performing, and most everything that comes with it: the weight of the bedazzled microphone in her hand, the clean burn in her arms and legs after a particularly long set, sweat trickling down her neck, a sense of accomplishment sitting heavy in her chest. But the tour's over, now, and the same thought returns-four years, and all she's done is sing other people's songs. Music, music, everywhere, and none of it is hers.
Sandara and Minji come back at dusk and bring the smell of the ocean with them. Chaerin pulls her hair up into a messy bun and squints at them. "How was it?"
"Fine," says Sandara, her voice clipped.
"We went to the beach, after," Minji says, sending Dara a glance and taking over when it's clear she isn't going to continue. "Where's Bom-unnie?"
Chaerin shrugs and turns back to her computer. "She was gone when I woke up."
"What did you do all day?" Sandara asks after a long moment, peering over Chaerin's shoulder with reluctant curiosity.
"More of the same," she says. She scrolls through everything she's typed out and scowls. She can see Sandara pursing her lips from the reflection of her face on the screen. "What?"
"You don't like what you've written."
Chaerin scrubs a hand over her mouth. "Doesn't matter, anyway." She attaches the files to an email and fires it off to Teddy. "Sajangnim has the final opinion on everything."
"Still," Sandara persists. "This is why I asked you to come with us this morning. Maybe seeing the city would've helped, I don't know. Galvanize your creative mind. Whatever."
Chaerin sends her a tired look. "And what would I have written about? Transformers 3D?" Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Minji slinking into her room. "Don't you think, after half a year of touring, something would've taken by now?"
"Maybe you aren't looking in the right place," she says, too serious for Chaerin to laugh or shrug it off.
"Yeah," Chaerin mutters instead. "Maybe."
Bom walks in, sweaty towel slung around her shoulders. "Where were you?" Dara asks.
"Gym," she says, wiping her face and striding toward the bathroom. "Master Hwang."
In Seoul, Chaerin wakes up missing Paris for the first time in years. It isn't the stereotypical French bullshit she misses-not chocolate croissants or the Eiffel Tower or La Seine, at least not any more than she might long for kimchi or the Han River when away from Korea. What she misses is when CL meant ciel meant sky-tout est possible, the sky is the limit, the feeling that she could do anything she wanted.
They stay in the city long enough to perform at the MelOn Music Awards, and for sajangnim to say something blandly complimentary about what little Chaerin's turned in for perusal. "It's your first time, of course, so I don't expect much," he says, hand falling heavily on her shoulder. "These things take practice."
"Of course," she says, and tries to smile.
After the performance, she gets an email from Jeremy and slinks away under cover of darkness for Hong Kong. There's an hour in there of no cameras, no paparazzi, no flashing lights-and then she's getting let into some swanky club, bass beats reverberating straight through her chest.
"How's the new album?" Jeremy yells over the noise, stepping close so that she can smell the heavy whiffs of cologne coming off him in waves.
"It's going," she says, and takes the first in a long line of shots.
There's an interview with Ketchup and a matching photo shoot waiting for her in the morning. She spends the afternoon perusing the shops at the World Trade Centre, racks up a bill that would probably give her dad a heart attack. She debates sending him a message about it but manages to refrain-he's working on his next book, and it's kind of an asshole move, anyway.
Jeremy provides a running stream of commentary about his latest projects the whole day, to which she lends half an ear. Intellectually, she understands that his fixation on them is indubitably creepy-being used as a muse, unwitting or not, is at its core objectification-but she can't help the irrational, petulant thought that at least someone likes them best.
She goes to another one of Jeremy's parties that night, is decidedly tipsy and well on her way to plastered when she sees Sandara's head bobbing through the crowd. She isn't wearing any make-up and manages to look effortlessly beautiful anyway, standing next to Jeremy with her hair pulled up into a smooth ponytail, eyes wide.
Dara leans up to say something into his ear. He leers down at her and something hot and ugly rises up in the back of Chaerin's throat. She thinks she might be sick. "I think I'm going to be sick," Chaerin announces, and Yulia sends her an alarmed look. "Where's the bathroom in this place?"
The terrible lighting in the restroom doesn't help with the dizziness or the bile that hits the back of her throat with a vengeance, but she manages to make it to one of the stalls in time to vomit into a toilet instead of all over the floor. She grabs a wad of toilet paper and flushes, scrubs her mouth. The tap water she rinses her mouth out with is freezing.
"Chaerin?" comes Dara's voice as the door swings open behind her. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," Chaerin bites out, and continues gargling. "What are you doing here?"
The pause stretches on beyond comfort before Sandara replies. "You didn't tell us you were leaving."
Chaerin turns and snorts. Dara's closer than she thought she was, almost hovering. "You didn't come all the way here just to tell me that."
"We didn't find out until Bom saw photos of you on the Internet," she remarks, mouth slanting downward in an unhappy arc.
"Brave new world," Chaerin quips in English. Dara still looks unduly hurt and Chaerin sighs, frustrated. "Please. It's not like you haven't done your fair share of skipping town without telling anyone. Remember October? We had no idea you were in the Philippines until you came back."
"This isn't about me." Sandara crosses her arms. "What are you even doing?"
Chaerin makes a vague gesture in the air. "Supporting a friend. Did you see Jeremy's-"
"Stop. That's-I meant-" She makes an irritated noise. "What is it that you want?"
Chaerin frowns, shoves down the urge to lock herself back into one of the stalls just to avoid this conversation. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You say you want to write, but when you're finally given the opportunity it just makes you even more miserable. And now you're partying it up in Hong Kong?"
Chaerin pinches the bridge of her nose, stomach roiling again. "Is this really the right time or place?"
"Don't try to sidestep now," Dara snarls, and Chaerin looks up so fast her head swims. "We should've talked about this a long time ago. So what, because you can't come up with something earth-shatteringly perfect, you don't want to show it to anyone? That's stupid. You're just torturing yourself like this." A pause, and then: "Us, too. We don't deserve that. We don't want to be miserable."
Chaerin opens her mouth to respond and Dara waves it away.
"It isn't fair to you, either," she continues crossly. "This is going to sound like some fucking grade school shit, but I don't care. Maybe that's what you need. Look-you do your best with the chance you've been given." She raises her eyebrows. "Because you don't always get another. Stop hiding. What are you afraid of? How can you expect things to happen if you don't fight for it-"
"What do you know about fighting for anything?" Chaerin hisses-and regrets it the moment it comes out of her mouth because this is Sandara, who fought in the Philippines for what she wanted, and then, when those opportunities trickled away, came back and fought in Korea. For whatever reason (the happy-go-lucky persona, her perpetual, toothy smile, the way everything seems to slide right off her), it's easy to forget that her entire life has been an exercise in clawing herself back up again-from a father who abandoned her, through an industry that says oh, no, you're too old for us now, past the lackluster showing in Japan and an indefinitely postponed comeback.
It must show on her face because Dara doesn't snap back again, just shakes her head.
"Sorry," Chaerin says, deflating. "I didn't mean-shit. I'm an idiot."
"Only a little bit," Sandara allows.
She's not frowning anymore, though, so Chaerin counts it as a draw.
Dara slides up to sit on the counter, legs swinging. "What is it that you want?" she repeats.
Chaerin takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. "I don't know," she says at last, voice small. I'm 22 years old and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
"That's okay," Dara replies, reaching out to grab her arm, fingers rubbing smooth circles against the skin of her wrist. Chaerin feels her shoulders relax in increments, the waves of nausea abating a little. "You'll figure it out. Sometimes it just takes a while."
They fly home the next day, and it's immediately back to the practice room grind to rehearse for end-of-year performances. This is familiar territory: staying up till two in the morning at HQ, talking choreography and logistics and familiarizing the stage designs with Jaewook, downing bottled water by the six-pack, grinning when Bom imitates one of Minji's dance breaks.
Bom makes them thermoses of herbal tea in the mornings, for when the snow outside's particularly thick and they need something warm to hold onto. It tastes terrible as usual-but it's a labor of love, and does its job of kicking her ass awake when she needs it the most.
"You're feeling better," Bom tells her the week before SBS, when Chaerin's downing cups of it to ease the scratchiness in her throat.
"No, I feel like crap, actually."
"I mean," Bom makes a face, here, "in life? In general? We were pretty worried about you for a while."
"I'm sorry," Chaerin says, sliding a hand beneath her beanie and rubbing at her forehead. "You didn't have to."
"Of course we did," she says, offended. "Didn't you ever learn in school?" she continues, hands clasped loosely around her thermos. "Bottling things up like this isn't healthy. You can talk to us, you know."
Minji corners her in the bathroom later and tells her as much. It's awkward, but not in an unpleasant way. Minji is driven and talented and knows what she wants, more than Chaerin can say for herself, even though she's older-which, in retrospect, might've fostered an artificial distance that she'd never intended.
Minji stares at her strangely through the mirror when Chaerin voices this aloud, picking at her fringe. "I never thought-unnie, I really-" She breaks off and laughs, a high mellow sound that echoes off the walls. "I've always admired you a lot."
Chaerin blinks at the non sequitur, but goes with it anyway. "I can't imagine why," she says drily. "I've been kind of a shit unnie."
"Nah," says Minji, washing her hands and following her out the door. "Sometimes you don't know what to do-but, I mean, you didn't grow up with siblings, so I get it. These things take time."
"You're a lot smarter than I am, maknae," she says. She reaches over to adjust Minji's collar, undoes the top two buttons to loosen it up and let in air.
"I wouldn't say that," Minji replies. She fingers her shades. "More spritely, maybe."
"Oh, shut up," Chaerin says, laughing. "I'm not that much older than you are."
Minji's the only one who goes home for Christmas. Chaerin spends the 24th in the studio, speaks to Teddy and Pilkang, sees Jiyong before he flies to Thailand to escape the cold for a couple of days.
When she gets back to the dorm, Bom's got a facemask on and has two pizzas set out on the coffee table in front of the television. Chaerin steals a slice and squashes herself between Bom and the armrest of the couch, half paying attention to the reruns of Infinity Challenge playing on MBC.
Dara floats downstairs at ten, hair wet from a shower, smelling of the pomegranate body wash she'd gotten in Singapore. She perches on the armrest and flicks through apps on her phone. "What's up?" Chaerin says over the drone of the television, leaning against Sandara's shoulder and peering at the screen. "You've been quiet all day."
"Just thinking," she says.
"What about?"
"Things," she says, grinning a little when Chaerin makes an exasperated noise.
Bom packs the leftover pizza in the fridge and washes her facemask off. "I'm going to bed," she announces, yawning. "Lock the door behind you when you go upstairs."
"Night, unnie," Chaerin says. When she turns back, Dara's gazing into the middle distance, her fingers idle on her phone. "Penny for your thoughts?"
Dara refocuses on her. "You really wanna know?"
"Of course," she says, vaguely taken aback. "Why wouldn't I?"
Sandara sets her phone aside and studies her for a minute. Chaerin stares back: Dara's hair's still drying, soft-looking despite all the dye jobs and strange cuts it's been through this year. Thin lips part a little when she exhales, and her hands curl loosely in the flannel of her pajama bottoms. Her mouth is very red.
This is the thought that sticks with her. She figures out what's going to happen a moment before it actually does, and lets it come.
Chaerin's been kissed before, mostly by clumsy high school boys who act like they want to devour her whole, as if she would ever let it happen. Those have always either died at second base, or ended in hasty handjobs and her ironing her frustrations out with her own fingers, too much and too little at the same time.
Dara is 29 and kisses like it's a revelation, slow and sure and inexorable-eases her tongue into Chaerin's mouth in a way that feels less like an intrusion than it does a mutual exchange, Chaerin's teeth scraping against her bottom lip, her hair falling into Chaerin's face.
"I don't know," Dara replies, panting a little when she pulls back. There's an apprehensive look on her flushed face. "You tell me."
Chaerin licks her lips thoughtfully. Before she can say anything, Dara's phone buzzes three times in quick succession. Sandara groans and flops backward, reaching over to check her messages.
"Well," she says, glancing up at Chaerin. "It's Christmas Day."
"Merry Christmas," Chaerin says, pulling her legs up and crossing them on the sofa. "This is all terribly cliché, you know."
"Is it?" Dara asks. She grins a little. "Well, there's a reason things are cliché, right? People like it. Maybe you should try writing about it."
"I'm not sure Korea's ready for serious girl-on-girl action, no matter how couched it is in trite language," she points out, voice wry.
"It's an idea," Sandara insists.
"Hey, it's an idea," Chaerin agrees. "And-I mean, it's, you know. Nice. Personally."
She doesn't protest when Dara grins and sways in again to press their lips together.
"Hey, come to Lotte World with us," someone's saying, barely audible through Chaerin's thick cocoon of blankets. "It's almost six on New Year's Day and I want to beat the morning rush."
"Sleep," Chaerin moans scratchily, clawing the air when the sheets get ripped out from beneath her with unceremonious vigor. "Nooooo."
"You don't have a choice," Dara replies, exasperated, but mostly fond. She pulls Chaerin up and drags her listless body off the mattress, half-carries her out the bedroom door.
Chaerin cracks an eye open and glares at her. "I hate you."
"You love me," she replies, sticking half a breakfast bun in Chaerin's mouth to stop her from saying anything else.
Bom is making food in the kitchen to bring with them, and Minji's doing complicated sets of morning calisthenics in their living room. She has no idea why they're both in the upstairs apartment, but still feels too much like death to ask.
"Today is going to be a great day," Dara announces, patting Chaerin's back.
Chaerin just rolls her eyes and chews the bread in her mouth. When she's more awake, she might even agree.
fin